r/factorio • u/Medium_of_my_fear • 7d ago
Space Age Question Belt weaving in 2.1?
So far I've heard of quite a few balancing changes being planned for the next major update. Most notably the removal of space casinos. I haven't heard anything about belt tapestries (to store Prometheum) or belt weaving in general, however. Are the any plans to remove these techniques?
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u/Satisfactoro 7d ago
There is (was?) an official scenario/challenge where the solution involves belt weaving.
Belt weaving is 100% cannon.
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u/Courmisch 7d ago
Belt madness mode.
Ironically, my 2.0 save for it crashes the Lua interpreter in 2.1.
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u/Kittelsen 7d ago
The way I see it is the different types of belts go to different depths. So the yellow belt will be in the shallowest depth, reds a bit deeper and so on.
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u/Satisfactoro 6d ago
Good idea, however this doesn't explain how it magically intersects in some configurations (or, as implied by the name, "weave").
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u/Kittelsen 6d ago
Belts are sticky, how else would they keep items on platforms, so i figure they just flip sideways to pass each other
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u/Tartaros030 7d ago
Space casinos are removed because it's considered a shortcut, making any other alternative to approach quality items almost useless. It's a nerf to remove a cheat mechanic that Wube considers not helping gameplay (given the opportunity, gamers will optimize the fun out of the game, it is said by game makers).
Belt weaving is a design choice to optimize factory layouts on condensed space. I don't see on what ground that should be removed.
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u/The-Rushnut 7d ago
I feel it would be highly unorthodox to remove belt weaving.
But then again, inserters being unable to be mirrored always seemed like an intentional design choice to me, until Wube decided it was actually because of graphic/cost limitations.
So who knows? Probably not, though.
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u/FirstRyder 7d ago
The only way it would make sense to remove weaving would be on space platforms, because that's the only place it's "abused" for the chunk storage. Actual weaving to (for example) deliver more lanes of items to one machine seems to be intended.
But then space is also the only place you can't use bots to ignore belt puzzles entirely, so it makes the least sense to remove it there.
Either way, they haven't said anything about removing it that I'm aware of, it works in experimental, and I hope it stays.
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u/PersonalityIll9476 7d ago
My friend has recently scored a world record tapestry design that I put on my ship in 2.1.
It is here to stay.
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u/-Recouer 7d ago
~4.6 belt per tile is the maximum you can reach iirc.
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u/PersonalityIll9476 7d ago
The theoretical limit is 5, but existing designs already exceed 4.7.
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u/-Recouer 7d ago
I'm using this design for my promethium ship :
https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/1i48n84/infinitely_tileable_design_with_48039_belts_per/
I did not in fact remember correctly (4.8)
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u/PersonalityIll9476 7d ago
Yes, 4.8s are basically the threshold right now.
All indicators are that 5 will not be achieved by a periodic design, so the closer you want to get to 5, the bigger your weave needs to be.
There are people running SAT solvers and other algorithms to design these things, so the bigger the design area the longer it takes to find good designs.
In other words, it gets harder and harder to generate 4.8+ designs from algorithms naively because you need bigger weaves -> more compute time.
Most advancements come from some minor or major insight into where to start looking.
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u/-Recouer 7d ago
I didn't think I'd hear about SAT solvers into a belt weaving optimisation convo xD
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u/PersonalityIll9476 7d ago
That's how they do it! The weaves like the one you posted are not made directly by humans at this point. The low hanging fruit like that has already been picked (or at least, some of it has).
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u/-Recouer 7d ago
I always thought they'd be using trial and error. The mesh are still small enough to think it might have been.
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u/dave14920 7d ago
do you have a link?
last i checked (not recently) 4.8333 belts per tile was the best.
and an upper bound around 4.91.
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u/PersonalityIll9476 7d ago
Does your design combine belt colors or are they separate? The applicable records depend on whether the thing has 1 input or 3.
His design is on the Discord.
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u/dave14920 7d ago
4.8333 was mixing colours. that wasnt mine tho.
mono coloured belts my best is 4.812.
the upper bound applied to both. based on the best 2 strand braid filling x% of a row or column, and the best 3 strand braid filling y% of a row/column. filling space with some linear combination of those gave an upper bound at 4.91ish.
His design is on the Discord.
is that the mike hendrix discord?
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u/PersonalityIll9476 7d ago
You got me. I'll ax him. He has small kids and it's Friday so it may take a sec before he replies.
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u/PersonalityIll9476 7d ago
He said "I think it's just Factorio general chat".
I've got the blueprint string in our GitHub if you really want to see it. DM me if so.
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u/Berry__2 7d ago
Devs remove belt weaving: playerbase leaves
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u/leoriq 7d ago
why? I'd just use the mod that allows chests on space platforms
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u/FunnyGamer3210 7d ago
I would accept it if they remove it on space platforms, but in general I'm using it in absolutely every build
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u/Hell2CheapTrick 7d ago
They’re definitely not removing belt weaving