Conveyor belts

[Roadie]

Think like liquid/gas pipes, except for solid materials. They could input/output with storage containers and objects that store things (including outhouse/lavatory, planters, algae terrariums, etc), have an output that drops on the floor, and have an input that sucks up material around it in a given radius and/or acts like a vacuum in a direction and gradually sucks in things. Instead of having a pump that uses power, the conveyor belt as a whole could use some amount of power that scales based on the length of continuous belts. Advanced tech could include splitters/combiners that let you filter materials on a conveyor belt in a particular way.

[DNsingbanana]

Factorio not included  

i was thinking about that also. But i think beltd should take care of the gravity, so you can't make up/down going belts, you have to either let gravity do its work, or use other thinks like cargos. 

I think for inputting on the belt robot arms should be used. You give them a tile where they will look for things (they could take from storage) and they will put it on the other side. Then maybe they could also input in machines themselves as well. 

[Roadie]

22 minutes ago, DNsingbanana said:

so you can't make up/down going belts, you have to either let gravity do its work, or use other thinks like cargos. 

Those are totally a thing, though.

I think for inputting on the belt robot arms should be used. You give them a tile where they will look for things (they could take from storage) and they will put it on the other side. Then maybe they could also input in machines themselves as well. 

Robot arms as a generic input/output device is an interesting idea. That would allow for genericized connections in the same kind of way that arms in Factorio work.

[Hexicube]

As cool as it would be (I'm also a Factorio fan), it would offer no real benefit. In ONI, Duplicants are the inserters and belts, and there are no component chains since everything uses raw materials.

[Roadie]

10 minutes ago, Hexicube said:

and there are no component chains since everything uses raw materials.

Outhouse/lavatory -> compost -> planter boxes is a simple example, and that's just using the first few techs.

[Hexicube]

Either way, Duplicants are the work-force that you lack in Factorio.

[DNsingbanana]

It would be really interesting i personally think if used sparingly (aka they are not so good you use them everywhere). 

If you have production quite far away, and coming at a constant rate (like with slime distiller) it would be really good. Also, as the list of things in the refining section increases, there will be some use of conveyors. 

[Roadie]

10 minutes ago, Hexicube said:

Either way, Duplicants are the work-force that you lack in Factorio.

I think this is overlooking that by mid- and late-game, the duplicants seems like they should be increasingly busy with exploring to find rare resources and setting up outposts to support that exploration. Allowing more automation at higher techs makes this much more practical, and makes it much more feasible for players to actually encounter weird stuff at the edges of asteroids.

[Hexicube]

Just now, Roadie said:

I think this is overlooking that by mid- and late-game, the duplicants seems like they should be increasingly busy with exploring to find rare resources and setting up outposts to support that exploration. Allowing more automation at higher techs makes this much more practical, and makes it much more feasible for players to actually encounter weird stuff at the edges of asteroids.

That's arguably a failure to manage Duplicants. I find the current mechanics to be true to a game about managing a colony, you wouldn't expect an actual colony to let its members go exploring instead of doing more important tasks like cleaning the toilets or making sure the generator is supplied (the latter being something that mine frequently ignore).