okay so a basic compact loader costs...
1x wood
1x stone
1x basic belt

This is pretty ridiculous. Loaders eclipse inserters in most cases, handling fully compressed belts where even inserters struggle to do this.

Looking at the Loader Redux mod, we can see that his first tier loader costs 5x inserters as well as chips, iron, and belts.
And those aren't even compact.

Considering the power of loaders, it really feels like something which should be somewhat costly, so as to make inserters still preferable in many if not most situations. What do you think?

My memory is rusty on this but I think I used those costs just for continuity, they were what the old recipe autogeneration picked based on underground costs (I think). Open to changing them, what do you think would make more sense for cost?

These loaders are considerably more potent than Loader Redux due to the size, which is far more versatile. I'm used to trying to fit Redux's loaders into my builds but when I put the compact ones in, it is startling how much more compact things get.

As such, it's very powerful in its effect. There should definitely be an incentive to choose between costly but more convenient loaders and cheaper inserters.

For starters, I think each tier of loader should require that same tier of inserter. Five of them sounds about right, since that is what Loader Redux uses (though only for the yellow ones)

With Bob's, the inserters get kind of pricey in the upper range, so having to build 5x ultimate inserters to make an ultimate loader does make sense.

Additionally, it should require a few chips. Bob's provides quite a few tiers of electronic boards, beginning with basic electronic board.

Probably some steel as well as a small number of belts for the casing.

This makes the player work for the convenience of loaders, but once you've set up your production line, you'll get a lot of them anyway.

Curious if you're gonna fix this sometime soon?

I'm not enough of a Bob's player to come up with appropriately balanced new recipes - since each loader tier requires the prior tier's loader (at least at the moment) adding stuff like inserters to each tier can balloon the total cost pretty quickly.. so I guess what I'm looking for is more specifics about which tier recipes need what changes. The file where the recipe costs are defined is here, if you have specific ideas on what changes should occur you should be able to fairly easily unzip the mod directory and edit that file to test your changes out - it'll impact automated loader production for anyone using the mod who's got an existing save with that set up, so I want to make sure we're making changes carefully.

Sure I'd be happy to give you an appropriate set of costs. Will get back to you soon.

Alright, I figured it out.
The idea here is to keep it simple while also making sure it's not eclipsing the inserters too badly.

If you want to unload a fully compressed belt of a particular color WITHOUT loaders, what you need to do is make this situation...

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/215347798533472256/559551492428922892/unknown.png

This is exactly what I used to do before I found Loaders Redux.

Only loaders are far more compact. Especially the ones in your mod. So I figure the cost should be a bit higher to offset the convenience of not having to build the above mechanism.

Proposal -- 4x inserters + 2x splitters + 10x chassis material.

Basic Compact Loader:
4x burner inserters + 2x basic splitters + 10x wood

Compact Loader:
4x inserters + 2x splitters + 10x tin

Fast Compact Loader:
4x fast inserters + 2x fast splitters + 10x bronze

Express Compact Loader:
4x express inserters + 2x express splitters + 10x aluminum

Turbo Compact Loader:
4x turbo inserters + 2x turbo splitters + 10x titanium

Ultimate Compact Loader:
4x ultimate inserters + 2x ultimate splitters + 10x nitinol

Hey there. Any thoughts on the above recipes?

Sorry for the delay, it's been a busy week. I should have time to see about wiring up these recipes this weekend - it's a surprisingly tedious bit of code to write properly, since Bob's items have a lot of conditions that enable or disable them I need to write a lot of conditional logic for alternative ingredients. I think to start out with since this is such a big change, I'll put the revamped recipes behind a startup option - that way users with automation relying on the old recipes can keep them active if they want.

The difficulty I see with the above is what Shane said. I have bob's logistics, but I don't run bob's ores. So I don't have all those extra materials. My only complaint with the recipes is that when you use logistics and have the five tiers of stuff, the yellow tier loader uses the white tier but the yellow tier stackbox doesn't use the white tier and instead uses yellow tier belts. I set up my factory under the mistaken assumption that each one upgraded from the last and then when it wasn't producing, I got confused.

Ah well.

Clearly, optional recipe models would be the best solution depending on if one is using Bob's revamp or not.

Proposal #2 -- 4x inserters + 2x splitters + 10x VANILLA chassis material.

Basic Compact Loader:
4x burner inserters + 2x basic splitters + 10x wood

Compact Loader:
4x inserters + 2x splitters + 10x iron

Fast Compact Loader:
4x fast inserters + 2x fast splitters + 10x steel

Express Compact Loader:
4x express inserters + 2x express splitters + 10x steel

Turbo Compact Loader:
4x turbo inserters + 2x turbo splitters + 10x steel

Ultimate Compact Loader:
4x ultimate inserters + 2x ultimate splitters + 10x steel

Looks great. I'd have no problems with that recipe.

@shanemadden what do you think of the above?

Looks great! Sorry for the delay, got started on the alternate recipes yesterday between all the bug fixes, should have a release sometime today.

Awesome thanks!

I might have lied about having this ready today, but hopefully tomorrow - top of my list ;)

lol alright.
You dodged a bullet today, btw, that you didn't know about.
OhChirpy's mod for bob's items makes a call to your custom sprite function, but he was passing 32x32 in for size of everything, which broke when trying to make stacked graphics for Bob's resistors and transistors which use 128x128 graphics.
Also, he was missing some code to override the images for the 3 types of vanilla chips as they are translated into bob's. We knew the problem was either in his mod or yours. Ended up being his. ^_^

Oh also we'll probably come up with some more consistent for the stacking beltbox recipes as well. They're kind of a mess. ;)

Suggestion on the forum thread was to base them on the splitter recipes, maybe to double the ingredients in the process. Can do that programmatically - I was actually planning on adding that as a separate option alongside the option for your recipes. Thoughts?

In regards to loaders:
Well, the main thing you want to avoid is getting too many different ingredients because that's just annoying. Some of the higher tier splitters have quite a lot of ingredients. So it's better to just require the splitter itself as a recipe ingredient.

In regards to the stacking belt boxes:
Loaders are FAR more common than the belt boxes in terms of use and variety of purpose. So I think it's safe to assume the belt boxes are going to be far more pricey. As for what to base this on, again you want to keep it simple. And you want the recipes to be the same regardless of whether someone is using Bob's custom ores or not.

To do this, you just need to use the various intermediate parts like the different kinds of chips and inserters etc. You're already doing this to a degree, but it is very inconsistent. Let's list out what we've currently got and see where the problem is.

Basic beltbox: (far far too cheap)
1 wood
1 stone
1 basic belt

Yellow beltbox:
10 iron
4 yellow belt
4 basic electronic board
10 iron gears

Fast (red) beltbox:
20 iron plate
1 yellow beltbox
2 electronic circuit board (high tech)
20 iron gear

Express (blue) beltbox:
30 iron plate
1 fast (red) beltbox
30 iron gears
100 lubricant

Turbo (purple) beltbox:
40 iron plate
1 Express (blue) beltbox
5 Electronic Logic Board
40 iron gear

Ultimate (green) beltbox:
50 iron plate
1 turbo (purple) beltbox
20 electronic logic boards
50 iron gears

Hopefully you can see how inconsistent this is. It is also not balanced for the technology tiers available at each speed. For instance, you've got ECBs required to make red beltboxes, but those are not required at all for any other red belt, splitter, inserter, etc. What you need is a set of recipes which is consistent and matches surrounding technology. Something like this:

10x chassis material (wood, iron, steel, then stay on steel for each tier)
5x of the same tier's splitter
10x of the same tier's inserter
20x gears (iron, iron, steel, then stay on steel going on up)

This way, every single beltbox has a similar recipe and also scales up nicely per tier because it relies on the other items of that tier.

I know you're pressed for time, so I've gone ahead and updated all the recipes for loaders and beltboxes.
Feel free to review and incorporate :)

https://pastebin.com/Jqf7DGki

Next, I'll try and come up with good recipes for the crating machines themselves. We may also attempt to fully integrate them with Bob's various tiers.

First impression is that crating machines should cost a number of stacking beltboxes of that tier as an ingredient. Maybe eight, since they are capable of compressing things down 8x more than the beltboxes.

So 8x beltboxes + 10x chassis material would make it a nice and simple recipe.

The crating machine recipes are actually quite broken now, thanks to Bob's repurposing of the name fast-inserter to be his "express inserter". So yellow (tier 1) crating machines actually require cobalt when playing in bob's.

https://pastebin.com/pG3ywQ9U
Here's an updated data-final-fixes.lua for you. Fixed the crating machine recipes in the same integration mod!

Oh wow, thanks a ton for digging through all of that! I'll get to work on integrating your changes as soon as I get a chance.

No problem. I'd add the purple and green crating machines as well, although Pawz and I suspect this may be harder than expected because Deadlock's original mod does not provide any AddTier() function. It may be necessary to copy over the entire loop from Deadlock's and add the new machines the hard way.

Pawz and I have been working on an integration mod for Deadlock's crating machines that is separate from the stacking beltbox integration mod (here).

We have got the recipes as well as the SPEED behaving properly. Ended up having to do a whole lot of math to come to a rather simple conclusion:

function getCraftingSpeed(level)
return level * settings.startup["bobmods-logistics-beltspeedperlevel"].value / 15
end

Next on the todo list is to create the turbo and ultimate variations.
When we're done, you should be able to ignore my above pastebin for data-final-fixes.lua and just stick with the bob.lua file.

[edit]

We're rethinking the recipes because I did not include previous tier items in the recipe for the next tier. May be best to include it, so I will adjust all the recipes accordingly to not be too overpriced. Stand by.

Yeah I actually helped Pawz out a little with the speed bit in the mod-making channel on discord :) I don't mind a bit of a delay, busy week here - let me know what you come up with!

I've updated the pastebin for bob.lua above. You'll find each loader and beltbox requires the previous tier as an ingredient (except the first tier of course).

Tomorrow, we'll be continuing to work on our integration mod for the crating machines, which has proven to be a bit tricky, specifically where the technologies are concerned. For now, you should be fine just incorporating the bob.lua file into your mod here. :)

All done!
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/deadlock-crating-integrations

You should be all clear to take the bob.lua pastebin and put that into your mod. Then it should be finished.

Everything having to do with the crating machines themselves is handled in the above linked mod. :)

Released your recipe set behind a default-disabled option in 2.0.10, let me know how it plays! (Looking at the total raw, looks like they might skew a tad expensive still, happy to update with any adjustments you'd like)

I noticed this as well with the total raw. We have begun making assembly lines creating these machines. I will definitely keep you informed if we decide they are too expensive, which may very well end up being the case.

The contrary argument is, of course, the rather extreme utility these things provide. By making them expensive, they are not likely going to be used so frivolously, placing loaders everywhere to get product in or out of a machine / belt when a single inserter can do it far more cheaply. The idea here is to make both options viable. So if it is too much of a burden, I'll reassess. If it's not a big burden, then they can stay as is.