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Conveyors and state change...


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During the stream I asked this question and they weren't quite sure.  I'm curious as to whether or not it is intentional that items on conveyors do not change state until they reach the outbox?  It certainly adds some interesting uses for the conveyor regarding transfer of heat. 

However, it is quite inconsistent with pipes and vents.  As such, it made me wonder.

Personally, I'd love to see this mechanic stay as it offers some really interesting devices.  If it is not intended though, it would be good to know so that I don't get used to a feature that will likely be removed.

Please advise!

1 hour ago, Ecu said:

During the stream I asked this question and they weren't quite sure.  I'm curious as to whether or not it is intentional that items on conveyors do not change state until they reach the outbox?  It certainly adds some interesting uses for the conveyor regarding transfer of heat. 

However, it is quite inconsistent with pipes and vents.  As such, it made me wonder.

Personally, I'd love to see this mechanic stay as it offers some really interesting devices.  If it is not intended though, it would be good to know so that I don't get used to a feature that will likely be removed.

Please advise!

Ahhh hey Ecu, I understand what you mean now. Sounds to me like an unintended feature - but I honestly havn't played with conveyors enough to know. Might do some tinkering tomorrow and let you know if I come up with any funky uses.

Just now, Lifegrow said:

Ahhh hey Ecu, I understand what you mean now. Sounds to me like an unintended feature - but I honestly havn't played with conveyors enough to know. Might do some tinkering tomorrow and let you know if I come up with any funky uses.

I've seen a couple people messing with them to transfer heat.  Since they use small packet sizes, it allows the material to get quite hot/cold quickly.  The real interesting aspect is that no matter how hot/cold you get the material, it doesn't stop being a solid until it hits the outbox.

You could use this to say freeze water at one location, run it along the edge of your base to keep it reasonably cool and then have it turn back into water once it gets to your tank, where you pump it right back to get frozen.

7 minutes ago, Ecu said:

I've seen a couple people messing with them to transfer heat.  Since they use small packet sizes, it allows the material to get quite hot/cold quickly.  The real interesting aspect is that no matter how hot/cold you get the material, it doesn't stop being a solid until it hits the outbox.

You could use this to say freeze water at one location, run it along the edge of your base to keep it reasonably cool and then have it turn back into water once it gets to your tank, where you pump it right back to get frozen.

Yes, this sounds amazing - but I fear it may not be intended :D Curiously we were talking tonight about conveyors being able to handle bottled water - seems they sort of can, you just need to thaw it/form it en route :p 

 

1 minute ago, Lifegrow said:

Yes, this sounds amazing - but I fear it may not be intended :D Curiously we were talking tonight about conveyors being able to handle bottled water - seems they sort of can, you just need to thaw it/form it en route :p 

 

Yeah.  It does feel a bit out of place when you compare it to pipes/vents.  This is where I'd love an official response as to whether or not it is intended, just so we know whether or not we can rely on the mechanic remaining.  Given the new art for the conveyored items...you could say that even if it melts or evaporates, it does so in the transfer box...only being released at the end. 

Please have this be the official response so we can do fun stuff with it!  :D

According to one of earlier streams, they're aware of it and left it so intentionally, waiting for ways players will invent to abuse it. So maybe they may return to it later if the abuse is too hard. Or when they're sure they really want to leave the conveyor system in the game.

I would guess the main reason was wide range of things that can happen to drops over time - state changes, decaying, outgassing, etc. Dealing with all these requires development time and that may be better spent elsewhere if the feature is not certain to stay.

29 minutes ago, Kasuha said:

According to one of earlier streams, they're aware of it and left it so intentionally, waiting for ways players will invent to abuse it. So maybe they may return to it later if the abuse is too hard. Or when they're sure they really want to leave the conveyor system in the game.

I would guess the main reason was wide range of things that can happen to drops over time - state changes, decaying, outgassing, etc. Dealing with all these requires development time and that may be better spent elsewhere if the feature is not certain to stay.

I would certainly hope that they have no intention of taking conveyors out of the game at this point.  It does seem reasonable to not handle item state change until outbox, simply from a programming standpoint.  Using it to manipulate heat even mirrors some real world systems as well.

The real issue would be state change.

3 hours ago, Kasuha said:

Or when they're sure they really want to leave the conveyor system in the game.

Not sure why they'd remove it.  Sure, the rollback on Priority and passive leveling reduced the value of the Conveyors, but it didn't remove it.  I've still never really made it to "late game", but I can already think of a bunch of uses just off the top of my head for the robo-arms.  Mostly involving the extraction of resources from unfriendly environments.  For example, getting Dirt out of a P-H2O boiler without figuring out a way for a Dupe to walk in there and pick it up.  Or for collecting Fertilizer out of a mixed NatGas/FertSynth loop without leaking any gases or needing a water lock.

8 hours ago, Ecu said:

Yeah.  It does feel a bit out of place when you compare it to pipes/vents.  This is where I'd love an official response as to whether or not it is intended, just so we know whether or not we can rely on the mechanic remaining.  Given the new art for the conveyored items...you could say that even if it melts or evaporates, it does so in the transfer box...only being released at the end. 

Please have this be the official response so we can do fun stuff with it!  :D

I could see this changing (maybe liquids break the machinery when it hits the destination hopper? That would make sense), but I do expect them to eventually stop solids from sublimating on the belts. It doesn't make much sense when you consider other methods of moving materials are sealed from the outside world, and it doesn't fit the art.

5 hours ago, PhailRaptor said:

Not sure why they'd remove it.  Sure, the rollback on Priority and passive leveling reduced the value of the Conveyors, but it didn't remove it.  I've still never really made it to "late game", but I can already think of a bunch of uses just off the top of my head for the robo-arms.  Mostly involving the extraction of resources from unfriendly environments.  For example, getting Dirt out of a P-H2O boiler without figuring out a way for a Dupe to walk in there and pick it up.  Or for collecting Fertilizer out of a mixed NatGas/FertSynth loop without leaking any gases or needing a water lock.

I have 3 conveyor systems in my current colony. 2 extract items from my fertiliser enclosure (fertiliser and hatch coal - delivered directly to farm stations and coal gens respectively). The last moves ice from my ice frosting room over to my water treatment plant and also accepts manual ice feeding.

My previous colony used them to remove slime from the puft enclosure for my mushroom farm and to remove dirt from my boiler room. I've not done this in the current colony as I have 100t of spare dirt and no real need for more.

Conveyors are, in my mind, the best part of this update and I've barely begun properly exploit them. 

Edit - forgot I had a 4th system in my current colony that scoops harvested crops from my farms and delivers them to the refridgerators/mushers in my kitchen. By no means is this a necessary process but it saves dupes valuable time that can then be spent expanding the Base. My chefs can spend all day just cooking non stop. I'm starting to adopt the mentality that conveyors/sweepers should replace all the minor repeatable delivery tasks within a colony, the only problem is sweepers won't supply fertiliser to a hydroponic farm tile and that's a pretty big time drain.

7 hours ago, Collic said:

I could see this changing (maybe liquids break the machinery when it hits the destination hopper? That would make sense), but I do expect them to eventually stop solids from sublimating on the belts. It doesn't make much sense when you consider other methods of moving materials are sealed from the outside world, and it doesn't fit the art.

The only way for them to effectively "fixing" it would either be to lock them at a min/max temperature while packaged in a conveyor (extremely inconsistent with pipes/vents), or to have them change state while on the conveyor as happens to pipes/vents. 

Given that they must be aware as to how said mechanic was abused before they implemented breaking of pipes/vents due to state change, I have to feel like they understand how this can be abused as well.  Personally, I just want to know if they intentionally left it as such because it is late game technology or what.

Here's my idea for minor abuse, more of a gimmick than a strategy. Lack of state change isn't necessary, but it helps.

The idea is:

  • Fertilizer turns to dirt when heated above 125C
  • Dirt clogs machines, usually making it require manual cleaning
  • If the area with dirt in it has highly pressurized liquid and has no 3-tile-wide dirt blocks, the liquid will break the dirt
  • Mesh tiles prevent dirt formation on them, but not near them

There is still that issue with broken "natural" tiles only giving 50% of the resources, but hey - renewable dirt.

Unfortunately the "dirt room" will be above 125C, so you can't just stick an arm in there to get the dirt out, but I've seen robot arms reaching through diagonals, so maybe there is a way to automate it completely.

dirt factory.png

16 minutes ago, Coolthulhu said:

Here's my idea for minor abuse, more of a gimmick than a strategy. Lack of state change isn't necessary, but it helps.

The idea is:

  • Fertilizer turns to dirt when heated above 125C
  • Dirt clogs machines, usually making it require manual cleaning
  • If the area with dirt in it has highly pressurized liquid and has no 3-tile-wide dirt blocks, the liquid will break the dirt
  • Mesh tiles prevent dirt formation on them, but not near them

There is still that issue with broken "natural" tiles only giving 50% of the resources, but hey - renewable dirt.

Unfortunately the "dirt room" will be above 125C, so you can't just stick an arm in there to get the dirt out, but I've seen robot arms reaching through diagonals, so maybe there is a way to automate it completely.

dirt factory.png

Someone already implemented this on the Discord channel.

DirtSynth3.png

10 hours ago, JonnyMonroe said:

I'm starting to adopt the mentality that conveyors/sweepers should replace all the minor repeatable delivery tasks within a colony, the only problem is sweepers won't supply fertiliser to a hydroponic farm tile and that's a pretty big time drain.

They do supply fertiliser to hydroponic farm tiles. I dont know if it was working or not before yesterday but it does now.

20 minutes ago, Mariilyn said:

They do supply fertiliser to hydroponic farm tiles. I dont know if it was working or not before yesterday but it does now.

Yeah, I just noticed them working on my sleet farm now. Not sure if that was a bug or me just not paying attention.

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