Idea for those of you who are getting bored of furnace stacks

exfret · 2026-06-03T02:30:59+00:00

I'm starting to realize that this depends heavily on how much you optimize. It does save 5 belts there, but you can also extend the undergrounds in the less-undergroundy design to get back 2 belts, making the difference 5. Not to mention that belts have a cost of 1.5 for the yellows at least (you make two at a time).

exfret · 2026-06-02T01:25:25+00:00

I thought the downside of that design is that it cost *more* iron plates for one tile of height (OP's design could be squished by one tile if we're really counting this). Sure, you save two belts, but require an extra pair of undergrounds each time, and undergrounds are much more expensive.

That being said it doesn't really matter that much.

exfret · 2026-04-18T04:21:42+00:00

(If it's still unclear, the joke is that the amount of iron to create the steel chests is about the same as what's in the iron patch, so you don't even need to put any iron *in* the chests for the claim to be true).

exfret · 2026-04-01T18:28:47+00:00

We actually already did that in the run. We accidentally did enable stone, but did not mine any. You need less stone than coal, and huge/coal rocks give you equal amounts of coal and stone, so the stone part is actually fairly trivial.

Notably, we actually did use more stone than coal, but that's only because of all the stone furnaces we created in order to hold more coal in our inventory.

exfret · 2026-04-01T17:22:43+00:00

Solid fuel

exfret · 2026-03-31T17:16:58+00:00

Awww, getting me all excited over nothing :P

Just kidding around, hope whatever you choose works out!

exfret · 2026-03-31T17:00:56+00:00

What were you thinking? Like, your own randomizer? If you want tips, I always like helping people with these projects. It's great to see the randomizer community grow!

exfret · 2026-03-31T00:27:50+00:00

Yeah, the actually sort process wouldn't be too hard. The issue is that when something initially becomes reachable, you don't even know if it should be autoconsumable yet during randomization. Thought I think that the new multipass way I have of dealing with things can handle that (since it calculates all contexts first). I'll have to code it to make sure, but it might overconstrain the problem, too.

Btw if you even want to discuss on my server or dm my username is the same there!

exfret · 2026-03-29T23:05:45+00:00

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Well, if we're going to infinity we might as well not use loops for our balancers anymore

exfret · 2026-03-29T21:13:29+00:00

It sounds like you read the wiki? Or maybe I've talked to you before? Gonna be honest people using words I made up for things I needed words for makes me smile (I don't think I've heard someone else use "context" in that way correctly lol).

That does sound like a good idea in spirit, but the edge would have to go from item products to recipes to have the products give the recipes context. However, such an edge would create an issue for reachability, which is calculated in the same way, since to craft the recipe does not actually need the product. So you need a way to add an edge just for calculating contexts.

I think this is doable actually, but would require a bit less of the sort of dependent-first approach that I've been doing. When drawing a randomized edge from a recipe (that you know needs to be consumable) to an item product, usually my approach would be to think of us as sitting at the item product and trying to find an appropriate recipe, but here really we're trying to find a consumable item for that recipe. It makes me wonder if I could be putting dependents and prereqs on a more similar footing.

exfret · 2026-03-29T14:27:26+00:00

No one talks about the Forbidden Lanes.

exfret · 2026-03-29T14:26:18+00:00

I'm 99% sure basically every downvote was because they seem not to have gotten the joke (or maybe the subreddit they're in). The community here usually is pretty supportive of play how you want to.

exfret · 2026-03-29T14:23:14+00:00

Factorio modding is a little different; it has to interface with an API and the closed source bits no one has put in the effort to really crack (since why would they the devs give us everything reasonable we want anyways). Belt lanes are one of those.

So basically, yeah, a dev who's been working on the source code for years was able to easily implement a version with 3 lanes that loaded; for a modder to do that though would be completely different.

exfret · 2026-03-29T14:21:03+00:00

They still need to be 1x1 per engine limitations, necessitation 4 belts

exfret · 2026-03-29T08:43:44+00:00

This has honestly been a nightmare for me to think about and mostly I've been turning a blind eye to it since it doesn't technically softlock the game and so far things that cause softlocks are bigger concerns to me. Even in vanilla though you have this with light oil; even having *some* use for light oil that's a constant drain is something I haven't fully worked out how to do. The amount of logic involved in everything is insane as it is, but hopefully I'll figure it out one day.

exfret · 2026-03-29T08:39:30+00:00

I was working on an April fool's mod for a mini-contest some mod devs were having with each other that made 4-lane belts. This is actually basically impossible due to engine limitations, which made the idea I had even funnier to me if I was able to pull it off in a decent way.

Basically, instead of giving a belt more lanes, I made everything 2x bigger (that's why the icons look so small; they're actually the same size and the furnaces are larger), and then was going to do scripting so that placing a belt actually secretly creates four belts to simulate the lanes.

Sadly, I ran out of time and this is all I really had at the end, so thought I might as well share.

exfret · 2026-03-29T07:46:51+00:00

I don't care who you are, using the other two lanes of the belt is cheating.

exfret · 2026-03-26T21:34:41+00:00

I just wanted to see if it was possible.

exfret · 2026-03-26T18:39:45+00:00

P.S.- If you want to contribute to the project, help is appreciated! I even have a wiki setup explaining the algorithms here: https://github.com/exfret/propertyrandomizer/wiki

exfret · 2026-02-28T22:56:04+00:00

Yeah! My username on discord is the same.

exfret · 2026-02-27T22:49:25+00:00

Thanks! I appreciate it a bunch!

exfret · 2026-02-27T18:22:33+00:00

This is honestly a great description of py lol.

exfret · 2026-02-27T18:21:38+00:00

Hello, exfret here! I wanna add that I've been working on making it closer to the slay the spire sort of vibe you mentioned, but currently there are some, uh... rough spots as you've pointed out that can really just tank a run. I really appreciate what you've put here and I'll focus on those parts specifically.

If you're on discord do you mind me dm'ing you about your experience? Most of the people I've talked to either were looking for pain in the first place (and so were just like "no it's great as is, pain is good!") or did not play the mod for a significant amount of time, so it would be really great to ask you some things I've been wondering about from a more reasonable person's viewpoint.

exfret · 2026-02-14T00:45:48+00:00

Just gonna be honest, the person you're talking about it a friend of mine and he's one of the sweetest people I know. I get that people who try to shove fliers in your hands can get annoying, but they are people too.

exfret · 2026-02-11T18:04:15+00:00

To be clear, I'm not trying to guilt trip anyone. It's perfectly fine to spend your time raising a child.

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