[SPZ2-4806] [0.1.1] Conveyor belts/space belts causing minor gaps

[vapid gyro]

Small gaps appear between shapes on a conveyor belt even in incredibly simple setups.
In the included picture, you can see such a gap. This is a single conveyor fed from a single source over a space belt straight from a miner with 4 extractors.
These gaps happen somewhat frequently and all over the place.

[vapid gyro]

These gaps are not just visual, they signify lower throughput on that belt/line.

[oblique escarp]

[SPZ2-4806] [0.1.1] Conveyor belts/space belts causing minor gaps

Thank you for your report! 😄

I've created a ticket in our internal system for further investigation 🙂

[steady thunder]

I thought I was starting to go mad.

I have the same issue.
This translates into the production of 710 to 718 pieces per minute out of the expected 720 in the vortex.

[modest nymph]

@oblique escarp I didnt want to make a new bug report, but now in 0.1.1 the above mentioned, and/or out of screen gap bug still exsists.

Can i ask is it still a known issue?
Thank you!

[quartz juniper]

Bruno, this is where this was continued for discussion.
https://discord.com/channels/1000343719314198548/1472998830311211038

[oblique escarp]

Hey @modest nymph ! Apologies for the delayed response

Devs are currently working on fixing the de-sync caused by clusters, which seems to be the culprit of this. Devs are working hard to find a solution to this issue.

[sullen cloud]

Has this been fixed for 1.0 ?

[pale fox]

oh this is huge

i swear this issue has been a thing for years

[modest nymph]

@pale fox @sullen cloud Bug is still there. We have to wait for this to get fixed, it seems.

[pale fox]

that one's https://discord.com/channels/1000343719314198548/1472998830311211038 . separate issue

[modest nymph]

Oh sorry. Yeah this is the main sub for this bug now.

[pale fox]

oh wait, hang on

yeah looking at the description this bug is a duplicate of #1472998830311211038 . or vice versa

they're the same issue, so you're right that it's still a thing

i think i have the power to mark it as a duplicate, but that's scary so i wanna let a staff member do it lol

[modest nymph]

Yeah i remember it has been migrated, but found really hard to search it up, now you found it!

[sullen cloud]

Time to uninstall again, thank you for the warning.
It's been a problem since the game was first released into early access.
It causes stackers to back up - the gaps cause shapes on the other belt to wait, forming a queue
After the dimensions update I was getting them very frequently and can't be assed dealing with it again

[pale fox]

there's a simple workaround

just do this and your problems will be solved

[modest nymph]

@pale fox Unfortunately there is no workaround for now. We discussed on another report more than 200 messeges.
The problem is that when you load your save, all the mini miner que/production times gets a random value, and they can "collide". When 2 miners wants to put out at the same time, it just skips one shape. Thats the reason. We tried alot of different solutions with the testers, and that was the final conclusion.

Edit: I'm the original poster of the link you posted. Theres a workaround, you have to connect more miners, to make your lanes compressed.

[sullen cloud]

"Theres a workaround, you have to connect more miners, to make your lanes compressed."

That would fill in those gaps, but you're swapping backup on one side for backup on another aren't you?
I don't know why more players aren't reporting this. My best guess is that a good amount of players who don't speak out and who have the issue haven't pinpointed it to the miners and probably think the issue is with how they've set up their machines

And I have nothing against the developers but because it has been an issue since the game was out in early access, part of me thinks they aren't going to fix it. Though that could be the low mood this brought on talking :/

[pale fox]

the issue is very quickly mitigated when you use trains everywhere

yeah it's still exists, but it takes hours for it to stall enough to where a package doesn't make it to a train

and even then, trains themselves have throughput inconsistencies that need to be accounted for, so this issue typically doesn't get to the point where it actually matters

with trains, it's good practice to slightly oversupply anyway. and that "fixes" this issue

[sullen cloud]

It still needs a proper fix though.
But first reply from a developer in this thread is getting close to a year ago now, less than 3 months to one year ago

[pale fox]

oh yeah for sure. but that's why it's gone unreported

I wouldn't be surprised if it's a low priority bug though

[sullen cloud]

"Theres a workaround, you have to connect more miners, to make your lanes compressed."

Please show me a screenshot of what you have set up for this. In my head it's two space belts merged together, a main belt and one to fill gaps and I'm thinking this would cause both belts to back up since shapes from each belt might be fighting for the same positions. Unless all shapes on the belt which is being used to fill gaps stop completely where the two belts merge, then a gap appears and a shape pulls out into the traffic, filling the gap

[modest nymph]

@sullen cloud I dont use adding plus miners, because i refuse to play a game differently, because optimisation is the key factor for me in these games. So I can tell you, i came from were you are, i have ocd-ish optimisation brain, and for me this bug is game breaking.

To answer your question. Btw, if space belt/belt gets stuck up it doesnt a problem. The shapes only goes forward if it is possible, this way compressing a lane where the miner skips shapes. The only problem beside the final output fluctuating, is when you work with two different shapes in one production lines. Im going to reply with pictures for you to demonstrate later as soon i get time.

To answer your another statement. Yes, alot of people only realize that somethings wrong with their system. I used to be this person, and after several amount of hours i had to realize, that i cant find the life of me, where my prod line is went wrong. That was the point that led me to this discord, and looked for answer from the devs.
The linked bug report has more then 200 messeges, if you have time we discussed every single probability, and the conclusion was that i mentioned above, the desync with miner timings what cause the gaps.

So many people just gets frustrated without knowing what causes the gap, or just dont bother them.

[sullen cloud]

@modest nymph Yea I have OCD too, this game is good for it but that bug does the opposite, so I don't play (again).

No need for pictures but thanks anyway.

I read your report last week some time.
I noticed this bug in the early stages of early access, on a belt straight from an extractor. Got sidetracked by other games and forgot to report it. It was only after the dimensions update when I came back to the game I realized the gaps were causing stackers to back up and space belts to stutter, which is when I reported it and stopped playing. The report got marked as a duplicate and the developer who replied pointed me to this.

I wasn't playing in February though, because of this. If I was and had seen your report, I could have saved you all that pain and told you straight away what it was :/

[sullen cloud]

A photo taken of me 70 years into the future, staring at the screen, still waiting for the gap bug fix so I can play

[modest nymph]

Oh i see. Yeah it could have been useful information of the source of the bug. My main concern is, i reckon its a rather fundamental problem with the simulation itself, maybe not just rewrite some code here and there.
Maybe it could brake some more advanced things if it gets fixed.

Btw if i can ventillate one more major off topic problem, its relating to the floating point precision, aka "farlands".
The farther you move from the vortex, things getting weird. Shapes got distorted, and cursor pointing precision starts to messing up.
In my testings, at sectors that 12-15 blocks away, you can already see some distortion, shaking effect. Alot of players dont ever go that far away, but in my understanding, a game that has random generated shapes, and requires from me to be the most efficient, i find myself go far away to find a perfect shape, and find a way for the logistics, in order to bring it back to the vortex. For me this is another "puzzle" that needs to be solved.
In addition to the new spiral galaxy shape system, this problem gets more relevant than ever.

What pretty unfortunate, this is never going to be fixed, unless they rewrite tha whole code, restart from the start.
Again, alot of people doesnt realize these things, but for example in factorio, while the map basically "infinite", give me some relief i can exprole forever, even i probably never going to reach 1% of the map borders.
Chosing this kind of system where coordinate values determine the position of things, is kinda weird.

I did the same as you, stopped playing when this bug has been discovered (for me at least), and i hoped it will be fixed in 1.0. Sadly we have to wait eventually.

[frozen spindle]

I assume this bug is the reasoning why a random line on my space belt connected to the extraction platform will appear to be falling behind for what feels like literally no reason? I reported this forever ago and it was ignored. I noticed it again with 1.0 and immediately stopped playing, it’s game breaking.

[pale fox]

genuine question, how is it game breaking for you? just trying to understand why it matters so much to you guys 😅

[stray forge]

ok i just ran into this and i'd like to point out that it amplifies in Manufacturer Mode, the further down the production chain you get

[modest nymph]

Yes, as you said. You can find various bug reports that relates to gaps even at the beginning of early access, but i found a way to replicate it, and at that point it got treated seriously.
The most posts you can already find even on reddit, is mainly about space belt related, but the main source of this bug is leads to the very beginning, the extractors/miners.

[modest nymph]

Oh, thats a bigger problem then. I've never look up what is manufacture mode about, but i'll wait till it gets fixed.

@pale fox While you are right, it is not suppose to be game breaking, and this is a little exaggeration. However for alot of people like me, who came from factory games, where for example, when your belt starts to get desaturated (production is not enought), you just go to an "iron patch", and add more to your lane or main bus, whatever.

In this game you have finite kind of shapes, you get to a point, where you want to mass produce something, but dont want to recreate the whole prod line, because you get your base shape from another patch. I hope it makes sense. However its still not gamebreaking, and theres alot of ways to fix this problem, i dont want to play a game another way that its intended, only because theres a bug that i have to get aound, and you cant ignore it completely.

[pale fox]

ah I see. yeah the only factory games I've really played are shapez 1 and 2, so maybe slightly oversupplying is something I've just gotten used to. I can see how that's annoying.
the thing I don't agree with is how it's more prominent in manufacture mode. my manufacture regular save has little to no throughput issues to do with miners, at least none that I've noticed. in that save, I didn't oversupply from miners whatsoever. to be fair, though, my factory was stalled for a long time as the end of my production chain was being set up for each milestone so there's a chance that the backlog never had a chance to clear. I'll have to check when I get the chance

[stray forge]

@pale fox the 'worse' i'm talking about is that one input drop to Ruby B = 2 output drops to Sapphire A = 4 output drops to Emerald A etc

probably i wouldn't have noticed if i'd upgraded Sapphire and Emerald when they became available

[pale fox]

ah that makes sense

yeah to be fair, I was having supply issues but I chalked it up to quick and wait stops being terrible as well as the simulation slowing down because of all the buildings. it might still be that, but I can't say for sure that it's not this bug. I do want to take a look again to see if this is actually the issue

I also want to take a look at my smaller manufacture save, it'll probably help as a "control" of sorts

[stray forge]

it's so nice to have a control, wish i'd made one

[pale fox]

I have a lot of tiny saves and 1 huge one so it'll be nice to be able to compare them lol

so far in my smaller manufacture save I haven't had any supply issues though. at least, I don't think so.... I'm still fixing issues from things I didn't properly upgrade to 3 floors

[stray forge]

heh i deleted everything when i unlocked 3rd floor

i am very blueprint reliant

like 'think about it once and then never again'

[frozen spindle]

I may have been exaggerating a bit, but it does just become a constant concern that just makes the game not fun for me.

[stray forge]

that simple workaround works so well for my case, all the random gaps are gone

[pale fox]

that's valid tbh, can't argue with that

[sullen cloud]

"it does just become a constant concern that just makes the game not fun for me." (Luna)

^ What this person said, to answer your question from earlier. In my case this game is satisfying for my OCD in lining up and mirroring things perfectly, tidy layouts, watching things running smoothly and dozens of belts full of shapes pour into the hub. But the random gaps causing machines which take more than one input of shapes (like stackers) causing belts to queue, back up and stutter kills that for me, or even just seeing the gaps drives me nuts.
Like Greifm, I don't want to play the game differently to how it was intended

[sullen cloud]

The extra belts thing?

[stray forge]

yeah i was getting an unfortunate amount of drops from the miners and it's all better with the extra belt routing

https://discordapp.com/channels/1000343719314198548/1387783924041777192/1497643057649156378

it was happening in classic EA too but was less noticeable

cause manu mode

[frozen spindle]

Seemed to be a decent workaround in my experience, we’ll see how long that last.

[stray forge]

glad it's working for you! hopefully they just fix it eventually

[oblique escarp]

Thank you all for bringing this issue up to surface. We've been working into keeping up with all tickets and reports in both our internal system and Discord/Steam reports. I've reviewed the ticket internally and it's still being worked on by the dev team. We apologize for any inconvenience that this issue may be causing but rest assure it's in our radar and will be pushing for a fix as soon as possible

[stray forge]

thanks for your work - is there any way to test the workaround and maybe add it to a faq somewhere so people know if they see gaps in their miners there's something to try?

i never would have fixed this without a lot of help from the discord

[oblique escarp]

I can add the information to our #🔍troubleshooting post so that it's accesible to all. Just before I add it I want to make sure if the workaround is exactly building the mini-miners as shown on Zack's screenshot above

[stray forge]

that makes sense, i wish i had a before and after save for you lol

because by Diamond in manu mode the cumulative effect was very noticeable on my belts

i might have run a bunch of very long belts

directly from miners

[oblique escarp]

If we could add a picture to the troubleshooting site with all the information required for the workaround it would be enough for any user, but I want to make sure that the workaround effectively works so that we don't add unnecessary edits or false info

[stray forge]

of course 🙂

[modest nymph]

Thank you for your work you did in the past and in the future.
If i can help, we tested the way what Zack's pointed out, and the issue was still present, and every time loading a save, it creates a different outcome. The only workaround was the added plus miner group to the main production.
But i dont want to disturb the investigation, you guys know the best how to handle this.

[stray forge]

that is useful information, thanks so much for your work!

seems like i'll be updating for 15 mining platforms per space belt for a while here

since i'm picky sometimes and use one level of output x 4

[modest nymph]

yeah it might worth it. Now i have a production line that goes in the vortex on 8 input lane, and has so much miner created gaps, at the end it looks like this.

[stray forge]

oh my

train delivery hid a lot of this from me

[modest nymph]

So its a good idea that you advised to make people know about this, i think it happens for the most of us.
Yeah, it could be another workaround, as you see the left side shapes on my screenshot, they being delivered by train and has surplus to saturate the belt fully.

[stray forge]

yeah buffering via train loaders and unloaders seems to significantly reduce the impact

i built my manu mode in one long, long chain and significantly increased the impact

[modest nymph]

I see, I need to try this menu mode, i dont even know what it is about lol.

[pale fox]

going through it, i can say that my smaller manufacture save doesn't have this issue anywhere. this is what all of my standard miners look like
going through my big manufacture save now, but it'll be a bit because it's so big

[modest nymph]

@pale fox The problem is mainly present in the background simulation. This is my clip, you can replicate it with any already bugged miner group. Its only creates gaps when you dont see at it. If you watch it, it happen pretty rarely. Its wery interesting bug for sure. Devs already working on this for months, its a registered bug, but it possible if you reload a new save, shortly after everything seems fine, but later as you save and reload many times, it becomes bugged again, its inevitable unfortunately.

[stray forge]

it was absolutely creating gaps while i watched, in my case

[modest nymph]

Yeah its possible, in my present gameplay too. But this way you can verify.

[stray forge]

that makes sense

[modest nymph]

If anyone interested and have time, the whole investigation from the very beginning to the point it became registered bug report, can find in this, just scroll to the top: https://discord.com/channels/1000343719314198548/1472998830311211038

[pale fox]

yup can confirm this does in fact happen on my large manufacture save

i modified a miner to be able to see it, it's the exact same as every other miner but with upper floors and launchers removed

[stray forge]

that's exactly the belt routing i was using 'til yesterday

[modest nymph]

Yes, if you create a long lane to another platform, it can be spotted better

[pale fox]

i'm now just doing tests to see how much its effect can be noticed both with and without the workaround

[modest nymph]

We discussed this also, it doesnt matter how you route the lanes, because the problem is not with the "lane cant buffer because thers already a shape at the occupied space. The bug is created already when a miner got a signal to put out a shape.

[stray forge]

if you chain it in manu mode with the non-trade station shapes it becomes more apparent, like one to ruby, one to sapphire &etc but that's a lot of work

[pale fox]

i would think that it wouldn't, since the ratio of gaps to shapes stays the same for all miners with the same layout
(but that's also what i want to find out with my tests)

[tidal totem]

I have had problems with my Milestone setup (average 1 -2 gaps per min) and after i changed my miner setup to smth like this Ive been running an hour straight with 100% Eff

[stray forge]

has anyone nailed down the not missing but slightly delayed shapes too? i think it would be the same issue? it was wild watching the size of the gap increase over time

[tidal totem]

Ill report back if this problem appears again

[modest nymph]

This picture has been taken out from the middle of the investiogation. At that point we thought, that the gaps appearing because of the output defference of the miners. Its nothing to do with how and when they put out shapes, even if the in sync or not.

[modest nymph]

Once i saw two gaps after another. Its could be, but what is very important, this bug only creates fluctuations at the rate screen. Its just goes down one nothch and goes back up. Any other anomalys should be not related to that.

Btw if you use the cutter output that creates two different kind of shapes, its important to have overflow splitter on every main output lane, so the gap cant clogged up.

[pale fox]

yeah all from 1 space belt

i guess i never noticed because everything always goes straight into a train with a wait stop

and because everything is delayed pretty equally from the same asteroid, no single lane makes it stall more than others

[stray forge]

oh they're very visible

[pale fox]

and @stray forge you're completely right that tends to compound in the later recipes

[stray forge]

i think i'm off on a lark with that though, cause it's easy to catch without making it super obvious downstream in the production chain

[pale fox]

i'm tracing back the droughts in my exotic supply lines all the way back from the vgas, the issue isn't with trains. i have more than enough for everything, and it's that the majority of the delays are from trains waiting at loaders

the issue can be traced clearly all the way back to ruby which is just now clearing out its reserves from when it wasn't running

and even then, you can see it's running slightly dry
this is a bad example, i had faulty miners on a circle asteroid

[stray forge]

that's what i saw on my save, it went back to Ruby's precursors before i saw the gaps on the mining platform

and then you all helped me diagnose it cause you're awesome

[modest nymph]

I think its more interesting than annoying at this point.

[pale fox]

i agree but i can see how this is annoying

[stray forge]

i love a bug hunt

[pale fox]

i'm definitely not going to try upgrading this big save, but i'll see what i can do on my small one. i don't really want to upgrade 5000 miners

[tidal totem]

this the exact problem i had with the random 1 notch down and 90min+ of 100% since i changed my miners

[modest nymph]

Oh, i forgot to tell the fact, that theres one more way to temporarly fix the bug, but its only theoretically, no one tried as far as i know. Every time you load the save, you have to replace all of the miners (probably at the same time), every single platform for a new one. Because the miner timings gets random value every time. If you load, some could have got the same value than an existing one, and thats when the gap happens.
You can test with an already bugged miner platform. If you delete the only one miner that gets bugged, the bug migrates to another random miner in the whole factory immediately.
And this is only fixes till you save, and load again.

[tidal totem]

hmm let me reload and report back

[pale fox]

you can also just clear them with i, i think

unless there's some other internal timing you're talking about

i wouldn't be surprised if that's the case

[modest nymph]

Maybe yes, i dont know. It depends when the miner got the new timing.

[pale fox]

lol i didn't even mean to catch it lacking

i mean judging by the fact the top ones didn't do that, i'd say there's a decent chance it maybe has the possibility to perhaps prevent the issue occasionally (i dont know)

[modest nymph]

Yeah, and if you try to replace the bottom left row, the gap migrates to another place, be able to goes in that same platform.

[sullen cloud]

Doesn't the shape cluster you're mining from have a chance to make the gaps appear on a different belt the next time you load your save though? This is the way I read this post from @modest nymph
"The problem is that when you load your save, all the mini miner que/production times gets a random value, and they can "collide". When 2 miners wants to put out at the same time, it just skips one shape"

Unless I misread it, that rerouting workaround isn't guaranteed to work the next time you load your save, and the only workaround was to add more belts, so merging an extra space belt to a full space belt, which backs up over time but having the extra shapes means when there's a gap on the main belt, it gets filled by the extra space belt

[stray forge]

@sullen cloud I don't know, I've reloaded my save a lot and the drops aren't replicating with the belt routing changes, at least not noticeably like they were before

[sullen cloud]

Did you only reroute the one belt which has the gaps like this screenshot

[stray forge]

heh no i redid my blueprints and replaced every single mining platform

it took a minute

[sullen cloud]

Yea I meant for each set of miners you've got the gaps on.

[stray forge]

i just did every miner cause the gaps seemed transient

[modest nymph]

@sullen cloud I already made a statement about this pic. Sadly doesnt fix the bug.

@sullen cloud This is the same person's reply 2 messeges later, who posted the original fixed belt picture. At this point the background simulation bug has not been discovered.

[sullen cloud]

So this only works during the game you make it, before you close the game.
But next time you load your save it might not work because of some random values?
Kinda confused. Some people say it's working for them, one said even after they loaded their save a bunch of time it still works

Kinda sad how us players have to try and find a workaround for this still today. It was reported almost a year ago
I know there are a lot of bugs, but a year of being told "we're working on it" leaves me thinking it will never be fixed

[sullen cloud]

I reinstalled to try something. It's ugly but I think it would work.
The trash outlined in green is only to keep those belts on hold. I've put a bunch of these around and want to check the main belts for gaps before I replace those trash with belts

Each belt has an overflow splitter to prevent backup when there are no gaps
If a gap appears on one of the main belts, the backup belt linked to it will fill that gap
And if a gap appears on a backup belt then the main belt fills that gap (I think?)

If a main belt AND the backup belt linked to it both have gaps, I don't know what happens O_o
I haven't had any gaps appear yet

[modest nymph]

You're absolutely right. Its pretty bad this bug made it so far.

But please everyone, theres no way to fixing this by miner belt layout change. It doesnt matter what you do, anyone who says it fixed, just did not played enought, or they buffering with train, or ohter ways. Its a reported known bug, and the developers knows exaclty what is the problem with.

As i mentioned earlier, the load/save refresh works, but only on the first time you start a game. I did already tests when i replaced them, rebuilt a whole 2 shape system from the start in a one single load cycle, and after rebuilt, the gaps still started appear near the nexus.

Btw the main sub for this report is this: https://discord.com/channels/1000343719314198548/1472998830311211038
Please anyone who seek for help, visit this, and you can find every information.

@sullen cloud I dont think you need overflow splitter at all.
This simple way, you'll get fully saturated belt, even if the bug happens at the same lane pair at the same time.
The con is, you have to double all your miner platforms for all you production, which in early game not really worth it.

[sullen cloud]

The splitters prevent each belt from backing up
:

And next video with splitters

The back up doesn't matter here for production lines further down since it only goes back to the miners but I hate seeing them stutter like that

[modest nymph]

Oh i see. Stacking up is going to be inevitable for efficiency at some point, so its not a "bad" thing,

[sullen cloud]

In which case will it be?

[sullen cloud]

Deja vu

[sullen cloud]

If I need to overfill anything (if I ever play again) I can use overflow splitters though for when it's not needed right?

[modest nymph]

All of your train depos, or when you create a main bus.

[modest nymph]

Overflow splitters in be beginning metters on the cutter for example. When you have to different output, and one happen to clogged up, you other shape production stops because the other product of the cutter wont move.
In this sitation the overflow splitter is inevitable.

[modest nymph]

You can put overflow splitters that case also, but it has no purpose after all.

[sullen cloud]

It's good to have them when we need them anyway