Addressing the late game dependency on the limitations of export slots

As someone who has played the game a lot (obviously… I’m the dev :D) and plays a lot of the larger maps, I do find that towards the very late game (when the research tree is totally maxxed-out), that the game does become a bit of a puzzle in terms of rearranging everything so as to ensure you can reach multiple export slots, instead of replying on a single production line.

In other words, I am concerned that export slots become effectively an impossible-to-beat bottleneck.

I’d like to ask the players, especially those with many hours in the game, what they think about this issue. So…

Question one: Is this really a problem? It can mean some frustration towards the late game as you frantically rearrange the factory to fit into a layout where the end of your multiple lines can all somehow split over multiple export slots, which may be in different zones entirely, hence a lot of long lines snaking around the edge. However… is this not just part of the challenge? Does this actually make the game more fun, because it rewards forward thinking at the very start to allow for such a late game challenge?

Secondly. Assuming this is a negative aspect to the game, what is the most enjoyable, fun and satisfying way for me to address this? (speaking as a player).

I’m thinking there are basically three different approaches here:

  1. Alter the current export rate so that (combined with the possible upgrades to the export slot), the total export rate for the final slot is noticeable higher.
  2. Introduce an expensive and researchable ‘rapid export slot’ which has a faster maximum throughput.
  3. Introduce a system where the player can (perhaps at substantial cost), build an extra export slot on any external facing wall (or perhaps restrict this to be a ‘dual’ slot which has to be immediately next to an existing export slot)?

I think we could definitely introduce some fun ways to describe the possible upgrades. maybe ‘extra car transporters’ or ‘rail terminal connection’ to speed up the rapid export slot? :smiley:

What do you think? :smiley:

as you might have seen in my save, i have a line snaking around the sides of the factory. i like i idea of adding an extra slot. the true throughput of a lone export slot is much less than the 60 per hour(1 min cycle), around 38 for a backed up line due to overheads

In the late game there’s several bottlenecks
-#1 is the resource speed, major performance issues on placing tiles (I believe your working on this) this includes the resources can’t keep up at higher game speeds, i have lots more “waiting for resources” on high speed than on normal.
-The Conveyor speed cars move around is quite slow for large builds, forcing you to build dual lanes to get past some of the bottlenecks, particularly at merging junctions.
-Predictive maintenance rate is quite low. Could do with more upgrades.
-The path finding means it seems to preference the last stop on the factory export slot snake, the first one of about 5 which is right next to the QA area gets bypassed unless the snake is nearly full. This doesn’t really effect speed it just means a lot more cars sitting on the line.
-I’d love for production slots to be able to have a bigger stockpile especially when swapping between different spec levels. Fit Wheels, brakes, doors and windows are some of the worst as a lot of the time they don’t have more than enough for one car

Importer and both conveyor increases are very marginal and could do with some bigger boosts for late game upgrades. I’ve messed with some of the speeds in the config and some of the extra boosts make the late game much more enjoyable without going stupid. ~200-250% rates feel much better.

540 in game days on this factory!!! I understand the late game is always going to be difficult, just my 2 cents

All of these points are very fair. There is always some difficulty in making changes when the game is released and there are so many existing maps. I do think we should find a way to reduce the resource constraint though.

One of the ways I would like to explore fixing that would be to actually reduce the import requirements. There are some manufacturing slots that take in 1 item (like 1 steel) but produce 3 or 4 items from it, which means if you introduce those slots to your factory, you ca actually lessen the load on importers.

I think we need more things like that :smiley: and I intend to go through and do a balance tweak on a lot of those manufacturing slots at some point. The trouble is that this makes some items to cheap to make, so it has to be balanced out with changes to production times, and the number of employees etc…

while your tweaking some build slots connect export to the overhead conveyor already there when placed but some don’t. this is really annoying since i’m trying to not change the overhead conveyor much as the freeze and chug is getting really bad