Conveyor & production overhaul - flow limit, water/gas pipes, liquids/gas for production

I see that many people had similar idea. At first, I wanted to leave a comment under a certain post but I realized that there are more ideas I wanted to touch on and wanted to include them all in one submission.

First, this is what mainly inspired me to submit this topic: (credit - Endarkaris on yt)

SHORT VERSION:

• Conveyor flow limit, so people won't use small conveyor instead of a big one every time. Create a reason to use a big one over the small one. Make that feature adjustable in world settings (and make it possible to turn it off for more arcade players who dislike it)
• More types of conveyors. Separate ones for resources, items and ingots, liquids and gasses. There are many submissions with the same idea, although in the long version I expanded this idea a lot further. More depth in survival and bigger challenge when building factories
• Gasses & liquids as a resource for production
• More production blocks that would need those gasses and liquids to craft more complex stuff

LONG VERSION:

FLOW LIMIT

So the main problem and a reason to implement FLOW limit to the conveyors is the balance of small vs big conveyors. With the current logic of SE1, big ships could use the design on the left and benefit with more armor with no drawbacks vs the design on the right.

Yes, you can argue that you can mimic the same concept in SE1 by building the small grid conveyor system with using small rotor/hinge parts on big grids, but the complexity of making it work while being reliable makes it more balanced. In SE1, hard work with tinkering around clang by using the devils tools such as small-big grid connections (rotors/hinges) rewards you with an edge. In SE2, you can just plop the small conveyor on the big ship. Now, thats unfair.

Why flow limit would work:

Bigger grid with more materials/items needed to be transported? Needs more conveyors to increase flow. Otherwise, you'll get ur items later. The game always chased realism, even the steam store page says 'Space Engineers is inspired by reality and by how things work.' - I could end this submission on this quote. But I have more ideas.

Flow isnt the only thing that has to be added, since its measured with for eg volume per s or quantity per s. Here, both would work, since production system, including cargo containers use volume, but also item/s may work (less logic but whatever). Although I like the volume version more.

How would this work:

Small conveyor - 0,125m3 per second, big conveyor 5.625m3/s, since this is the volume of both blocks. If you are bad at math, check out this calculator: https://www.omnicalculator.com/math/cuboid-volume. I believe small grid tube is 50x50x50cm and large grid is 150x150x250, correct if wrong. Or something way simpler such as 0,1m3/s and 1m3/s.

Obviously this is just a basic concept, balance department belongs to the dev team (and modders).

Now, I saw a lot of disapproval under this topic sharing similar idea:

https://support.keenswh.com/spaceengineers2/pc/topic/47223-idea-no-more-instant-transfer-using-conveyor

True, some features/ideas will be loved by others and some will hate it. IMHO, any feature, that can be customized in world settings can be tuned down enough so it becomes fun even for the biggest realism haters. For example - some hate welding, some play survival because of it. Thats why these options exist:

Thats why the FLOW idea would work with everyone. If you prefer the arcade style of your items being available at any times on any part of the grid, just disable it in the world settings. If you want more realism in game, choose your settings accordingly.

Why I love this idea:

Not only because the unifying of both grids needs the balance to be done, but also im a big fan of complex factory systems planning. This gives me a very huge and controversial idea:

I really like games like Factorio, where you need to plan the ins, outs and withins of factories. Or Cities Skylines, where you try to fix traffic jams because the inflow of traffic bigger than what streets can take. See the similarity? In SE2, if the refinery produces more and more items, you need more or bigger conveyors to transport the materials to the cargo containers. Not paying attention? Now that part of your factory becomes a bottle neck. This really enhances the production automation department, where we also need to take the flow into the consideration. First, we need to estimate the produced volume, then we need to divide it by the max conveyor flow.

At some point refineries could produce more than they can output because of the conveyors being the bottle neck. And with more I mean the amounts that not even the most complex conveyor system could take. This gives me a very good idea. What do you do when the cars cant fit on your street in Cities Skylines? You add more lanes. What do you do in Factorio when your factory makes more than your conveyor belts can handle? you upgrade them.

Tierred conveyors. Just an example: Tier 2 - 1,5/2x speed of the basic one. Tier 3 etc.

Too efficient production now requires us to level them up, which IMO enhances survival gameplay. Endgame conveyors could be the ones we have right now in SE1, while the small ones still have a limit but very high up, so the big ones are always superior and nobody will stick to the small ones like in the initial problem.

after exploring other submissions while I was writing, as I said, many had similar or same ideas. Sorry if you feel I stolen and idea or sth, but this also gives us a benefit of Keen seeing we want the same things. It's good, dont u think?

Further enhancements to production:

https://support.keenswh.com/spaceengineers2/pc/topic/45182-conveyor-types-items-power-gasliquids - inspiration to this idea as well as a semi well known game ASTRONEER.

For starters, this submission makes total sense, I see no point in arguing with that idea, thats why Im happy its status is at 'under consideration'. I love the fact of having a pipe for liquids, conveyor tube for materials, and MAYBE conveyor belts for items and processed materials such as ingots with visible animation? Maybe it's too much, I get it. But water pipes make total sense. This would open a specific idea potential - liquids and gasses used for production.

Advanced production & processing:

In later game, in order to craft better stuff and process rarer materials, we would need something more than a rarer resource or fancier refinery. Now, with addition of liquids, we could contain them in tanks, just like O2&H2, and connect the pipes to the refineries/assemblers/smelters//forges/you name it. Same principle with gas. Imagine finding a natural gas or oil source in the ground, building a plant and extracting it, transporting it, containing it and then using it in production of items and fuel - check my other submission about tierred thrusters and different types of them. In shorts - more resources > more types of fuel > more thrusters.

Gasses and liquids would be just like a resource. Survival would be so much deeper.

This general idea of looking for certain liquids and gases is only beneficiary, especially for survival enthusiats, and not only, since we are widening the range of items for ships for creative players. Steam engines, gas combustion engines, more thrusters and many more. It's a HUGE fix for a popular problem of survival - the need for builiding more ships and exploring different planets. When a game has an issue related with its main idea (here- ship building), it really has a hard time with retaining a strong playerbase. Let's assume that the gas or liquid you need is unavailable on the planet you are on, so you need to travel to the one that has it. That gives enough reason to travel, other than just 'colonizing' it. In later game, you could build automated drones that will go and bring it back. ASTRONEER has similar idea, but in SE2 it could be better.

side note regarding the need and reason to build stuff in the current SE1:

Currently, in the vanilla game, there is zero actual reason to even play survival (and yet I spent 1k hours playing it). Well, maybe after releasing the prototech update with endgame blocks, this situation is 5x better, but it still could be improved in SE2. I might drop a separate dedicated submission with ideas I have in order to improve it compared to SE1. The only reasons or goals in survival are the ones you make up - build a colony on mars (for what), build a massive warship (to fight what), or a giant flying civil city (to fly where and for what). You get my point. Survival is just creative with extra steps of mining and welding. There is a reason the mod community is MASSIVE - because we NEED the mods to have fun with the game. I always say, big modding community isnt necessarily a reason to brag, but rather to look into the game why there is a need for so many mods.

Side idea (more obvious): more production blocks.

Side, because I saw keen already working on it + I mentioned it couple of times. There are plenty of vids on yt including something called gearforge. There are some rumors around it but I bet it's gonna be less deep than my idea.

The further we progress, the more sophisticated processing blocks we need. Terraria rings my bell when I think about this. Better blocks not only require better materials, but also these better materials require better refineries/assemblers.

Better ones could have more ports to support the FLOW idea + additional ports needed for liquids and gasses.

and here is a factory in Factorio requiring gas, liquid and copper&iron plates for production. Id love a similar concept in SE2

I'll wrap it up here. If you have more ideas or points you disagree with, feel free to comment. More comments > more traffic > bigger chance a dev to notice ;) Thats the main reason I write these anyways. Feel free to check more out. Cheers