math-and-meta

[ionic galleon]

Alright, I've sent enough runs of items down the line - this is good enough for me. I say that long conveyors, whether empty or full, make no significant difference to client CPU load.

... probably should check the server load, huh?

[vapid gorge]

Possibly? Though considering people will have 100s of km of belts I wonder about that

[ionic galleon]

In that sort of scenario, there's more important performance issues to worry about.

Long-distance trunks aren't going to give you hundreds of km of belts in a 5x6km world

Intense factory-building might, but that's already its own death-to-computer

[lyric kiln]

someone got a picture or a turtorial for oil you can sendt me i really need it

[ionic galleon]

For reference, I'm fairly sure I'd notice a consistent half-percent difference. Very sure I'd notice a consistent 1% difference. My little setup should be enough to register on that, if there is a significant difference.

[wind spade]

look at the machines, look at the recipes, make the production of whatever you need. It's easy

[lyric kiln]

ok

[ionic galleon]

Server CPU also doesn't care about this belt being empty or full - again, confident that it caused no more than a 1% difference if any. Interestingly, server CPU /does/ care about me moving around - that reliably increases server CPU from 12% to 16% for the most part, and spikes up as high as 21% from time to time.

(my compliments to Southnode for the realtime stats in its browser dashboard)

[vapid gorge]

Yeah I think you'd have to have quite a few of any 'thing' to make a significant impact.

[ionic galleon]

Did you know that one pioneer running around makes a big difference to server CPU load? Cause I was really surprised by that.

(actually surprised by drop from 16 to 12 when I stopped moving and stayed put in front of the storage container to do my belt loading/unloading tests)

[vapid gorge]

I wonder if you were crossing a load chunk

[ionic galleon]

I'd be amazed tbh - I was a few hundred metres over ocean near the eastern edge of the map, about midway north/south.

[vapid gorge]

Who knows! Maybe there is a chunk because of a secret island that will exist at 1.0

[vapid nest]

I know it's daunting but when I first was there I just decided to follow my own design and it worked

[lyric kiln]

Ok

[ionic galleon]

There actually are a few islands out there that might be real...

[vapid gorge]

Here’s hoping 🙂

[keen shard]

i dont get how to set up a recycle rubber/plastic exchange

do i put a smart splitter on so they have to send it to the recycle rubber before they can send it forward?

[ionic galleon]

Been a while since I've built that setup, but regular splitters worked fine for me - offhand I don't think we even had smart splitters back then.

[wintry aurora]

I prefer it so that it prioritizes the loop, might not be neccesary though.

[astral tapir]

You jump start it with rubber using the resin from the hor you're turning to fuel, but then yeah you can stick a smart splitter at the end and go any undefined back to the system, and overflow to where you're going to be making other stuff with it

[wintry aurora]

As long as the outside loop consumption is lower than the total production, it should be fine.

[wintry aurora]

I just jump start with rubber or plastic that I already have by dumping into the output.

[astral tapir]

That's illegal

[wintry aurora]

Sometimes if satisfactory tools uses another rubber or plastic recipe, I jump start with that.

[wintry aurora]

eh?

[astral tapir]

Jk, just for automations sake

I did 900 plastic on top of 900 oil, way more than I'm using, so I put another overflow splitter behind those and have four sinks.

I was using some of the plastic on the rubber one to make containers and package fuel when it had excess. I guess you could use it as a mechanic to turn on a light when your setup isn't running at maximum efficiency.

I haven't tried working out all the flow issues not on a server yet, I kind of want to redo the spacing of the refineries from 1 meter apart to 2 so you can soft clearance a door between them

[vapid gorge]

Lots of ways.
Assuming you’re using resin to make residual rubber to feed things. Let’s say you want to make lots of Plastic.

You could use the Res rubber to turn that to plastic.
Use half the plastic the rest into recycled rubber.
Take the rubber and turn it all to plastic.
Send half out, use half to make rubber to turn into plastic.

And you do that until you get the numbers you want

[keen shard]

idk what I have made works but I use smart splitters atm to force the calculated recycle plastic to tubber to always run at 100% then logically the output must be total plastic... i think.

[ember fractal]

Wet concrete is actually OP

[noble agate]

Anything that turns water to resources is OP. Like pure ingots, wet concrete and diluted fuel.

[ember fractal]

Yesss

[wind spade]

Not really op, costs more power and later tech 🤷

[ember fractal]

But it only requires a couple refineries, it produces concrete mad quick

For later stages, I only use wet concrete

[wind spade]

yes, but you trade power requirements and bigger complexity for more production

I don't see how is that OP 🤷‍♂️

[rapid iris]

Lol

Well it gets you more resources out of the water recipes

[wind spade]

you can also get more resources by scouting the map for more nodes 🤷‍♂️

[rapid iris]

And yes it may cost more power, but it could also really help

[wind spade]

I'm not saying it's bad or anything. I just don't agree it's OP

[rapid iris]

Yea, but if you have used all the nodes in the area you have to go scout the map and make a truck/train/long conveyor to get it to where you want

[wind spade]

well the game heavily rewards you for exploration and for building factories around the map, so I don't see a problem with it

[rapid iris]

Yea ik, just saying tho that it can be helpful sometimes, usually if you are great on power

[rapid iris]

Yea true, its just a pain for me bc when i build somewhere far i usually set a train and it can take me 2-3 hours and i loose interest for a day or week

[wind spade]

go there with explorer, it's a few minutes and you can start building the factory immediately

[snow dove]

2-3 hours to run a train line?

[deft lichen]

It can take a while to build through rough terrain if you want it to look nice

[ember fractal]

I just built a mesh train network across the whole map, dual rail.
Took me like 1-2 hours a day for a week.
I can now build factories anywhere on the map, and transport materials to anywhere else

[hazy saffron]

That's the way to do trains

Long distance transit hype

[wind spade]

nah, you should build only where you have factories, no need to build a mesh before

[ember fractal]

Not if you're planning to utilize the whole map

I want a global transit network

And I have factories planned in all areas where there's a cluster of nodes

[wind spade]

you can build it over time, connect each new factory to it

not pre-build rails and then hope they will be useful in the future

[deft lichen]

Already laid tracks might negatively impact your factory placement options

Or, you'll still have to extend out branches

[ember fractal]

i guess we'll see

there will be smaller branches coming off the main mesh to service various factories

[eager igloo]

My plan is to have a single long train that stops and multiple factories and pics up stuff to bring back to my main base

speaking of.... I only just started messing with trains. Is there a limit to how long they can be? Or can you hook up locomotives together to increase their load?

[ember fractal]

my plan is to have 1 sushi train that will bring all essential mats to my storage base, and then distribute to containers using smart splitters

[eager igloo]

Same but i would like to include finished products too

[oblique hollow]

you can have longer trains with more locomotives but freight weight will slow it down as it gets full

[eager igloo]

ok i figured thats how it would work

[neat ravine]

is there a "better" way to produce motors? this took forever and is only producing 5 a minute

or just setup in general

is vertical production worth it?

i also just saw the suplly chain calculator, i did it all on paper

[astral tapir]

optimize alt recipes to use the least amount of machines if that's your goal.

putting a manifold of each step of production on top of each is pretty easy with motors.

it will be easier at later tech tiers with advanced belts

I prefer running all the belts in the air

and using lifts into and out of machines

[vapid gorge]

Many many stops is generally a bad idea. It drastically cuts down o the parts per min you can move and means you have to have huuuuuge stations everywhere

[eager igloo]

ah

[vapid gorge]

For example, a big killer on throughput between point A and B is the 2x30sec load time.

Now you’re saying you want it to stop… 5 times? 10 times? On its loop?

[eager igloo]

oh god no

maybe 3 at most

I plan to network several factories into a sorting hubs/train stations for pick up using trucks and local highways

basically process raw material into ingots/simple materials then pic them up to bring to a giga factory for further processing

[vapid gorge]

That is in fact a thing you can do. A lot of people have that impulse. I’ll warn you that it seems like a lot of people burn out from the increasing complexity of bringing in raw goods to a central point

[keen shard]

will this work?

there are enough machines for 2 full belts

[wind spade]

I'm not sure what directions the belts go

[wind spade]

So you have two full belts coming in?

[keen shard]

no in total of all the machines in this system will produce two full belts

1/3 of each line

[wind spade]

Where are the machines? 🤔

[keen shard]

I dont wanna draw them all

thats why i wrote line with outputs

[wind spade]

I'd just connect enough machines to fill one belt to one belt

[keen shard]

thats what i want to know if I can avoid

[wind spade]

And put that belt into the "box"

Why do you want to avoid simplest solution tho? 🤔

[keen shard]

there isnt enough place for more machines working at 0.45% or whatever it is

[wind spade]

It's one machine extra at most

[keen shard]

nno can do

i like the way i have it

[wind spade]

So, you built a limited space before figuring out the logistics?

Anyway, given the maxed belt throughput bug, I would just run three belts or whatever, just so that they aren't full

[keen shard]

well if I did that I would not have a problem

[vapid gorge]

Overclock 1 machine by 45%?

God I hate injection manifolds

[keen shard]

I guess ill just count up the belts

its not like i use two full belts anyway

i guess it was possible @wind spade

[keen shard]

i think i have been told this before, but i always think about belts as the max they can carry.
its hard to keep clear in the mind

[vapid gorge]

Depends if you care about steady flow. If you dont care about fluctuations you do you

[keen shard]

I dont think I do care about fluctuations its not a problem I have percived

[keen shard]

suppose you built your factories to avoid that problem, how does it manifest?

[vapid gorge]

To avoid loss of maximum throughput on belts?
Not hard actually very few of my machine systems come to 780 except for maybe miners sometimes.

For miners if you absolutely need 780 moved and you’re not smelting on the spot?
Immediately split it into two lines.
Or belt weld to your factory if it’s less than 1km

For factory to factory it’s pretty rare for it to travel long distances AND be at 780.

The easiest thing though is pretending that mk5s only actually do 750pm. You’ll basically never have loss and you won’t have to think about it.

Just depends how you want to approach the problem

[cinder silo]

I did that, one welded section right in to a splitter.

[keen shard]

pretty

[gray flower]

hi

[marsh latch]

Using the diluted packaged fuel alt and heavy oil residue alt
How much turbofuel can I get from 120 coal and sulfur?

[karmic fjord]

You can make 150 turbofuel, check the link for the numbers
https://u6.satisfactorytools.com/production?share=EeVdQnLLWOSGHfDJBiCK

@marsh latch

[marsh latch]

Awesome! Thank you

[karmic fjord]

No problem🙂

[frosty owl]

If throughput allows it, merging the pipes with the wire can make for "cleaner" setups

[marsh latch]

id say yes, its a bit more complex but you can have an entire floor dedicated to just belts and logistics to make the factory above or below look better or even easier to do

[remote plover]

guys what is the best way to produce aluminum

[wind spade]

define best

[remote plover]

uhh

opinion maybe?

[wind spade]

any is good imo 🤷‍♂️

depends what you're trying to optimise towards

[remote plover]

i used instant scrap to maximise aluminum production

idk if thats a good idea because sulfur is rare

but it uses very little tbh

[wind spade]

sulfur is also pretty much useless

[remote plover]

oh right yeah sulfur is used very rarely

[wind spade]

apart from aluminum and some small amounts for ammo

[remote plover]

but what about batteries or nuclear power?

[wind spade]

(yes there's also turbofuel but turbofuel is pretty bad imo given nuclear is just much much better)

yeah, there's enough sulfur to get both batteries and nuclear with aluminum

[remote plover]

ive already got a turbofuel plant, i need to go nuclear soon

yeah i think ill stick with instant scrap

very easy to expand

[vapid gorge]

I would say the opposite because it requires extra materials that aren't close to bauxite location thus needing a lot of extra infrastructure

Whereas electrode recipe is very convenient since pretty much all bauxite nodes are really close to oil

[remote plover]

oh well ive got all those materials in one place already. it would be harder for others yeah

[vapid gorge]

You'd have to do sloppy / electrode to avoid the silica mind you

[remote plover]

tbh maybe i shouldve done that

ive got both those recipes too

and petroleum coke is really easy to make it the heavy oil residue alt

[vapid gorge]

Yeah I'm bringing all the world bauxite to one location and I only need 2 pipes of oil to process the whole thing

[remote plover]

damn okay

[vapid gorge]

like... 978 oil pm I think? not a lot

[remote plover]

well im not reworking my instant scrap factory now

[vapid gorge]

That's fair 😄

[remote plover]

that sulfur is gone im never gonna use it

blenders with instant scrap look cool tho

[vapid gorge]

It's just as efficient in alum production. I find it's just less convenient in general since you don't have all those resources at hand in many spots.

If you're just happy about transporting those locations thoug hit doens't make a dif really

I very much like not having to move stuff

[remote plover]

oh that one place between rocky desert and forest is pretty good for that

quartz and sulfur right at your doorstep

[vapid gorge]

... It's a little spread for my taste, just cause the bauxite is a ways off. I think there's a couple better spots for instant scrap?

I also only use Pure Ingots. I just cant be bothered getting more silica

[remote plover]

yeah fair enough theres more than enough bauxite to go around

i just went on satisfactory tools and found out that with electrode and sloppy i could just remove sulfur for a tiny bit of oil and the amount of silica required would stay the same AND the bauxite:aluminum ratio would be the same

i guess maybe ill rework my factory 'someday'

[frosty owl]

Instant scrap offers different resource usage (overall higher), a decent reduction in machine count and simpler water management to make the same amount of scraps for the same amount of bauxite compared to sloppy+electrode

Sloppy+Electrode require a bit less resources (though different too), but needs 1.5 times the machines Instant needs for the same output

[remote plover]

yeah but oil is hella cheaper than sulfur

[frosty owl]

I say nothing on "value" of resources used as that's personal preference. I'm trying to make an objective analysis since I don't know you ^^

[remote plover]

lets just say im unlikely to use ALL the sulfur on the map

[wind spade]

it's unlikely that you use any of the resources on the map

[vapid gorge]

Unless you AIM to use all the sulfur and make very different goals to almost everyone who plays, no, you aren't likely to use all the sulfur.

Maybe if you did it all instant scrap, regular turubofuel? Lots of drones?

[remote plover]

it is unlikely i will play the game

hee hee

[vapid gorge]

I believe greeny meant 'use all of any of the resources'

[wind spade]

well I meant it's unlikely for you to run out of any resource

[vapid gorge]

Unless they were trolling you a bit

[wind spade]

unless you're doing some crazy stuff like sinking all ores

[frosty owl]

Yeah, but the way you worded it leaves space to make some funni

[snow dove]

i wonder how many points you would get if you maxed every node and sank all the ore

[remote plover]

a lot

[wind spade]

this is math and meta, here's no place for funni

[wind spade]

not much, most ores give less than 10 points

[snow dove]

but there is a lot of ore

10’s of thousands a minute of ore

[remote plover]

i thought they meant the products i cant read

[snow dove]

no, just the pure ore

[frosty owl]

I guess <100k/min

[snow dove]

no processing or anything, just ore

[snow dove]

1/min

[remote plover]

man i always try to min max an area and make something and then i leave it for 10s of hours whilst it sinks whilst i go and make another separate factory

so much waste

[wind spade]

bauxite: 9780 * 8
caterium: 11040 * 7
coal: 30900 * 3
copper: 28860 * 3
iron: 70380 * 1
limestone: 52860 * 2
quartz: 10500 * 15
sulfur: 6840 * 11
uranium: 2100 * 35 (can it be sinked)?

total is 817140 per minute with uranium, 743640 without uranium

but it's nothing compared to maxed map with production, not just ores 🤷‍♂️

also getting 817140 points per minute equals to sinking 3.367 turbo motors per minute (1.8 manufacturers making default ercipe)

[noble agate]

Uranium ore can be sinked

Did that when testing my resource train for the nuclear plant

[frosty owl]

Just curios but why would you NOT count Uranium in there? 🤔

[wind spade]

you know how I don't play the game 😛

I wasn't sure if it can be sinked or not

and was too lazy to check

[frosty owl]

#nuclear-sinkability (it's very simple)
Uranium Side: Sink everything BUT Uranium Waste
Plutonium Side: Sink nothing BUT Plutonium Fuel Rods

[hollow juniper]

thats cursed
sinking all the ores gives equal points/min to sinking 3.367 turbo motors/min?
i feel ill

[snow dove]

Much appreciated greeny

does this include the max belts

[wind spade]

yes

[snow dove]

like max overclocked nodes going above 780

[wind spade]

max oc max belt

[snow dove]

and it includes the impure node being under the max belt right?

[hollow juniper]

probably

max everything from each node

most you can get from each node

[oblique hollow]

all nodes maxed to the physically possible degree

[snow dove]

alrighty

[hollow juniper]

"Hey Ferb, i know what we're going to do today!"

[snow dove]

so i i make 4 turbo motors per minute i get more points than sinking every bit of ore in the world

[hollow juniper]

yes

[snow dove]

damn

i guess processing really does increase the points based on work

[hollow juniper]

thats better

[snow dove]

not based on the amount of points the constituent points add up to

[wind spade]

basically each vanilla recipe sums the points of ingredients and then multiplies that by two

[snow dove]

because you most certainly can make more than 3.367 turbo motors per minute using all those resources

[wind spade]

so every process doubles your sink points

[hollow juniper]

you could also Sink Maximum plutonium too
i dont know what max plutonium is though or its points

[snow dove]

it’s that simple?

[hollow juniper]

but im sure thats scary

[wind spade]

for non-alt recipes, yeah

[snow dove]

oh wow

[wind spade]

alt recipes are obviously different since the math is based on regular recipes

but basically the more advanced product, the better is to sink it over raw resources

[hollow juniper]

the only time i found its "good" to sink resources is when testing the max throughput of my trains etc

building my nuclear factory rn ( for the 3rd time yay) and ive had my uranium sinking the whole time so ik my trains work before i start it up and i know what section carrys what
still going to even out the conveyers though but you get the point

[oblique hollow]

good for me.
i once mathed production lines based on "effort / difficulty"
i added together the points of the input products and then multiplied based on which building it was made in, and also took into account how many machines it took up to this point to produce it

[ember fractal]

To avoid waste buildup, should I slowly increase the number of nuclear power plants, as my power needs grow? I don't want to have like 80 nuclear power plants running from the get-go, if I'm not even using that power.

I have a factory design in mind that will churn out 14.4 uranium fuel rods. But I don't want to have too many nuclear power plants running, if I don't need all that power yet

[cinder silo]

If you have your waste handling in place the number of nukes won't matter.

[ember fractal]

I don't have waste handling yet

[cinder silo]

Ahh crap, I didn't even turn the nukes on until waste handling was up, saved me holding on to a huge liability.

[ember fractal]

I just need an extra 5-10k of power for now

You think I can run a few nuke plants and then clean up the waste sometime down the road?

[cinder silo]

That could be achieved in a trivial manner with a fuel station, for the nukes you can run a handful and hold the waste but you do need to overbuild waste handling to catch up.

[ember fractal]

I don't want to invest more effort into fuel at this point

Already have 24k power from my turbofuel plant

Just want to focus on nuclear now

But without the big upfront effort of recycling waste

[scarlet sandal]

I'm a little hesitant about how I should go about the late game...
On your side, for nuclear power for example, how did you built it?
What do you produce on site ? What do you import ( from what type of factory )?
Give me ideas! 🙏😂

[ember fractal]

If you can minimize transportation, that's best. Try to find a location where you have the needed nodes onsite.

I like to produce uranium fuel rods and then transport those far away to a remote location where I set up the nuclear power plants

[meager cradle]

How many engines do i need for 4 freight cars?

[wind spade]

one

[meager cradle]

what'st he math on it so i don't lose speed on my freights?

[versed violet]

Check the wiki for math

[ember fractal]

A fully loaded 8 freight train going up a long 2m ramp, will it slow to 0 and roll back with just 1 locomotive?

https://tenor.com/view/andy-davidson-andy-torchwood-confused-meme-meme-gif-20411968

[vapid gorge]

... That sounds familiar? 7 might be the max for 1 loco? Prob best to do 2x4 car trains or just stick another loco on

[ember fractal]

Just wondering the max freights 1 Loco can drag up a 2m incline

[vapid gorge]

I'm pretty sure there's an equation for it on the loco page on the wiki. Actually it's probably a lot less than 7. I think most folk put on 1 loco for every 4 cars if going up a steep incline

[ionic galleon]

Pretty sure that's the standard recommendation, yeah.

(right now mine are all 1:1, technically, because I only have one train and it only has one freight car)

[ember fractal]

I've done 1:8 before it would slow down going up an incline, but not stop completely

[vapid gorge]

You can have 1:infinity if it's perfectly flat.

1:8 sounds ok at only 1m inclines?

[ember fractal]

Nah I always do 2m ramps

Elevation change of 100 meters

[vapid gorge]

stick 1:4 then

With a 100m elevation change you could look at having a station at the top and bottom to just have an interchange

[ember fractal]

Ok, I can do
LFFFFFFFFL?

That's 1:4

[vapid gorge]

2:8 equal 1:4 yes

[ember fractal]

Cool

[vapid gorge]

ratios are basically just another way to show fractions

kinda

[ionic galleon]

Yeah. 1:4 just means the loco is 1/5 of the train and the freight cars are the other 4/5. 1 loco to 4 freight cars, hence 1:4 (for a total train length of 5)

[ionic galleon]

In other news btw, I'm designing a computer factory - did the math, and this little cluster of Caterium nodes (2x Pure + 2x Normal) will support up to 119/min Computer production. Alts are kinda wild when they align nicely...

Also lol I have 4 different alts for Heavy Oil Residue.

[ember fractal]

119 /m ? which alts are you using?

pure cat ingot, fused quickwire?

[ionic galleon]

Pure Caterium Ingot, Quickwire&plastic circuit board, Caterium Computer

(dunno what the second one's actually called offhand)

[ember fractal]

you'll need a ton of rubber though

[ionic galleon]

And 5/6 that amount of plastic, yeah.

I've got 600/min Crude Oil from the nearest cluster of oil nodes, with heaps of water nearby - currently trying to figure out the best way to extract lots of plastic and rubber from that.

...this is where I should probably learn to use a Satisfactory calculator

[cinder silo]

The same calculator that hates doing anything other than looking at my save 🤣

[ionic galleon]

Just because /you/ torture the poor thing...

[cinder silo]

I merely kept on building after the UObject crashes became a thing back in update 4

[ionic galleon]

Update: I /can/ do it with these resources. Just gonna use 23.6 GW...

[ember fractal]

not too bad

do you NEED 119 comps/m tho?

[ionic galleon]

It's like 4.5x my current generating capacity, so yeah...

[ionic galleon]

Absolutely not. That's just how much this little cluster of Caterium nodes could support.

Time to scale back a little <.<

[ember fractal]

you can do 2 normal nodes worth of caterium

slap some mk3s and 250% them

[ionic galleon]

Update update: 600/min Crude Oil isn't even close to enough for this, I just misunderstood how the calculator works. Reality's gonna scale it back for me <.<

[vapid gorge]

depends what recipes you using

[ionic galleon]

Well, SCIM couldn't find a way with the alts I have. But then again, I don't think it can do loopback solutions like the recycled rubber/plastic. Definitely starting to understand the limits of the tool.

[vapid gorge]

oh sorry thought you mean power production

[ember fractal]

you need tons of rubber for caterium computers

[ionic galleon]

Yep, you're absolutely right. Much more than I had realised, and it's definitely the limiting factor here. Heck, it'll still be the limiting factor even when I get the recycled loopback working

[vapid gorge]

I think I wound up doing silicon CB and cat comps just so I could have a higher output for the area. Less reliance on one resource

[ionic galleon]

Heh, I deliberately chose recipes to end up only using two different resources.

... this may not have been my most intelligent choice ever.

[vapid gorge]

if it produces what you need that's absolutely fine right? Unless it means you can't produce other things you need with those resources

[ionic galleon]

Oh for sure, just not remotely as productive as relying on a broader input base. Still plenty for my needs though

[vapid gorge]

ah yeah cat comps sil cb

[wintry aurora]

What the heck are you producing?? Hundreds of machines per item….

[vapid gorge]

My ... eventual plan... may may take a few years because of the silly style I have, is to make 30 30 120 120 pm of the tier space parts.

Now... These are probably going to dramatically change over the next couple years so I'm mostly working on my curvy nuclear power station for now.

But I imagine I'll probably need a very reasonable number of computers for whatever the final game looks like so this will be moderately accurate I think

I'm actually a bit annoyed at my uranium rod factory because my HMF factory looks like it's going to be a lot of fun

[hybrid dune]

what program are u using?

[vapid gorge]

satisfactorytools.com

[hybrid dune]

Thx

[frosty owl]

Funfact: there was a time in which an alt recipe for Turbomotors required items worth more points than the output turbomotors (pressure cube-using alt). People noticed pretty damn fast, pointed it out, I made a QA post about it and the same day a patch dropped balancing that

[oblique hollow]

@fallow vector

[fallow vector]

I find the scim list easier to read tho, so 🤷‍♂️

[wind spade]

anything in particular?

[vapid gorge]

Really? For me the layout is hellish

[wintry aurora]

I'm being confused by the difference between fine black powder and default in the planner vs the wiki because it's not the same. The wiki is using 60/m, but what shows in the calculator isn't the same as pictured.

The alt numbers are the same as the wiki.

The default isn't the same as the wiki.

[deft lichen]

?

in the future we will clear up differences by marking recipes as "EA-ONLY" and "EX-ONLY" unless they're the same for both

right now, the unmarked one applies to both unless there is one marked as "EX-ONLY"

[wintry aurora]

In fact, I have to quadruple the output to 240 to match the one I'm looking at, and I'm using the eperimental branch of the tool.

The recipe still exists in exp.

Though you're right, the recipe is different in exp, hadn't noticed.

It's more of a tradeoff in the current setup though, less coal for more sulfur.

I guess that's what confused me, the one on wiki is still using U5.

[deft lichen]

the alt is no longer much of an improvement

the alt wasn't changed, the wiki is correct

[wintry aurora]

and I didn't realize that the recipe changed.

[wintry aurora]

It's a bit more situational now.

[vapid gorge]

tag greeny I guess?

or sorry did you mean you were confused by a change in recipe?

[wintry aurora]

I was being confused by a change in recipe vs what is on experimental vs what the wiki was showing.

[vapid gorge]

Ah yeah, will have to poke the wiki volunteers

[wintry aurora]

It was more that I didn't realize the recipe had changed in experimental, compared the two recipes as I was deciding on it, and was confused.

[ionic galleon]

Just realised, I have a combined Computer recipe that's effectively just 3 ingredients at roughly 1:1:1 ratio - Caterium Ore, Fuel, Water.

• Pure Caterium Ingot turns the Water and Caterium Ore into a ton of Caterium Ingots, then normal recipe turns that into heaps of Quickwire

• Recycled Rubber/Plastic loopback setup effectively converts Fuel 1:1 into Rubber and Plastic

• Caterium Circuit Board uses Plastic and Quickwire

• Caterium Computer uses Quickwire + Rubber + Plastic.

Exact ratios, each Computer uses:

• 23.2x Caterium Ore
• 23.2x Water
• 22x Fuel

--
So yeah, I'm about to build a Computer factory that has 3 inputs at roughly 1:1:1. This makes my brain happy.

[gray flower]

wait fuel

what do u mean by fuel @ionic galleon

[ionic galleon]

I mean liquid Fuel. Which tbf isn't a raw material, but I'm getting it as a byproduct from another factory.

[cinder silo]

Flammable computing 🙂

I use the recycled rubber/plastics at my refinery, I thought I built it way overkill but I've managed to actually use more than 75% of the places output.

[ionic galleon]

I've used it in a previous save - offhand I think I independently reinvented it - but literally only yesterday I finally understood that what it really does is just straight-up convert Fuel into Plastic and/or Rubber.

(which is pretty wild tbh, but hey not complaining)

[cinder silo]

My refinery isn't an efficient thing, well not the most efficient, it uses two refinery groups, one using basic plastic, other using basic rubber, the HOR goes to blenders to make dilute fuel, then the rubber/plastic goes to the second grouping to add fuel and make recycled plastic/rubber, doubling the material output of the first group.

120 refineries (60 on plastic, 60 on rubber) in the first part, then 80 refineries, 40 per recycle to double the output.

Brb, need to step away, getting square eyes and it's getting towards 0400.

[ionic galleon]

I mean on the one hand it'd be way more efficient to maximise your Diluted Fuel and then run that into a Recycled loop, but on the other hand I've still got a ton of basic Plastic and Rubber refineries <.<

G'night

[cinder silo]

I'll be back shortly, staring at a screen long term with my eyesight is a good source of eyestrain, brb.

[ionic galleon]

(not sure if better or worse that my basic Plastic and Rubber refineries are all currently disconnected because I'm partway through rebuilding my power grid)

[ionic galleon]

I hear you. Finally got glasses in my late thirties, should have had them from childhood, and jeez the strain that I feel any time I don't wear them now...

[cinder silo]

Back, I needed a drink.

My glasses help me see at a distance but updating my prescription is way overdue, I'm even more short sighted than I was twelve years back when I first got them.

[ionic galleon]

Yeah, updating prescription is important. Mine changed quite a bit from initial diagnosis to the second prescription (which is what I'm on now). I'd been compensating so hard for several decades, that the optometrist couldn't get a good idea of my eyes until I'd spent like 18 months letting my eyes relax with the first set of glasses.

[ionic galleon]

Design update btw: scrapped the fuel input, going actual raw inputs only:

• 23.2x Caterium Ore
• 45.2x Water
• 8.25x Crude Oil

(that's the inputs for one Computer)

[fickle sundial]

petrol once upon a time used to be a byproduct until they realised it was go go juice

[vapid gorge]

Sounds about right

[oblique hollow]

when the world realized fuel was baja blast

[ionic galleon]

I mean to be fair, offhand I think you'd struggle to run a steam engine with a fuel that has such a high vapor pressure. That just happened to be perfect for the internal combustion engine...

[fickle sundial]

I'm curious as to not if the developers decide to put in turbines, but when... especially when it comes to coal fire plants

[oblique hollow]

turbines?

like, hydro power?

if so: theres been a "maybe" answer from them

but only on waterfalls, if ever

@wind spade remember the thing about "slowest factorio belt is faster than fastes Satis belt?
that statement isnt entirely true if you consider that factorio has 4 items per section while we have 1 item per section at best

factorio belts in satis would be
225 items/min
450 items/min
675 items/min

[wind spade]

that depends how you define section

[oblique hollow]

you could go with meter or with relation of item size to belt

items in factorio are tiny compared to a belt

while we have these huge clobbers

[wind spade]

though it's irrelevant anyway, as "speed" is "throughput in any given place on the belt"

pick a spot on a belt, X items will pas per second/minute

[deft lichen]

the "speed" question is probably just about throughput, not item size

[oblique hollow]

increase the distance between items and you also get less

packing does affect things because it adds a delay until another item can be put on a belt

if every item had the rule that there must be 2 m in front and behind, thats a slower possible throughput

[wind spade]

sure, but then the belt will have less advertised throughput

[oblique hollow]

smallest usual legal unit of belt (2m)

you can get smaller, but only with splitter snipping

[wind spade]

I guess it depends whether or not do you talk about real speed of the conveyor, or talk about throughput

because 99% of mentions of "speed" are really "throughput"

[oblique hollow]

its a comparative thing.
if we had a second row, naturally we would have more throughput

[wind spade]

speed should be measured in m/s anyway

[oblique hollow]

so the question is how do you compare unequal transport systems

[wind spade]

either by speed of the belt in m/s or by throughput in items/s

[oblique hollow]

gotta normalize things

[wind spade]

but you can't mix both

and since we don't have factorio's measurement on what is one meter, we can only compare by throughput

which leads back to "fastest SF belt is slower than slowest factorio belt"

[oblique hollow]

what is weird tho is if i read some of the older blog posts, i get this:
"...8 items per belt"

their wiki lists 4 tho

unless i cant read

[deft lichen]

there might be confusion from the fact that there are two lanes

[hollow juniper]

factorio belts are defo slower then satisfactory
theres no way

[oblique hollow]

ye i read on, thats correct

so 1 belt in factorio fits 8 items
and 1 satis belt fits 2 if you go with the 2 m set, and 1 with the 1 meter belt you can create through splitter cutting

[wind spade]

*faster

[hollow juniper]

ive played fact and they seem slower but forgot that they had 2 lanes

more so that 2 would double throughput

[wind spade]

yellow belt is 15/s or 900/min. Even one lane is still 450/min, which is faster than mk1-3

or rather the correct term is "has more throughput"

we can't measure speed since we don't have factorio sizing (what is one meter)

[hollow juniper]

thats why i prefer satisfactory
i prefer constant perfect efficiency and its much much more complicated to do that in factorio

[wind spade]

only mention on wiki is

It can be assumed, that a tile has the length of 1 meter.

I guess you could figure out the belt speeds based on vehicle speed

[oblique hollow]

that just means factorio fits 8 items/m

while we have 1/m

[wind spade]

even if we consider just one lane, factorio's middle belt is already faster than any satisfactory belt

[wind spade]

if it's true

[deft lichen]

a Factorio discord mod claims it is 1 meter (assuming a moderator is a trustworthy source)

[oblique hollow]

we have the same throughput but our items are just too large

[wind spade]

well again, throughput is in items/min, so it's 60/min for SF and 900/min for Factorio. Nothing changes that

[oblique hollow]

our items be too large then

[wind spade]

yes, it's a product of item sizes and stuff, but that still doesn't change which belt has more throughput

[oblique hollow]

they are faster but have less throughput, there

[wind spade]

not sure about speed, that would have to be calculated and I'm feeling lazy today

[oblique hollow]

if we could port our belt over into factorio, assuming it magically gains 2 lanes and their items stay the same size, mk 1 would be 480/min

and mk 5 6240/min

assuming sizes are indeed 1 m

[deft lichen]

there's no bauxite there so no mk5 belts

[oblique hollow]

another win for Satis?

[carmine wigeon]

When I'm hosting my game directly, and my friend joins, I do notice a drop in FPS. According to the network settings tooltip if we reduced the network speed (I assume both of us have to match) this should help my framerate, right? Are there any downsides to this?

A related question. My save time has gotten so long that my friend times out during the save. Is there a setting he (or I) can adjust so that he doesn't time out?

[wintry aurora]

Could have sworn I’ve seen tinier chunks.

[oblique hollow]

splitter cutting

but usually, you cant make things belts than 2 m

[lucid anvil]

how can i divide an input of 5/min into an output of 2/min and another of 3/min?

with splitters

[wind spade]

single splitter

[snow dove]

split in two and let back up

[wind spade]

the machine that needs 2/min will overflow after some time

[lucid anvil]

and with the overflow it will balance itself?

[wind spade]

yes, everything always balances itself, given enough time

basically it doesn't matter how you connect belts, as long as they are fast enough, you'll get 100% efficiency eventually

[lucid anvil]

ok thx

[wind spade]

if you want to speed up the process, just fill the machines with items, it'll start working properly basically instantly

[hollow juniper]

aight question for yall.

got water from Electrode alu recipe (33. 073/min from underclocking) going into my residual rubber array (17.46. 17 normal and one at 64%)
im making batteries for my nuclear drones hence the low numbers

If i reduce one of the rubber refineries to 81.3175% (thus requiring exactly 33.073 Water) and just add the leftover % to the 64% refinery (64+17.3175=81.3175%). Would that get rid of the extra water without worrying about the incoming water from the Pumps reducing outflow from the alu recipe?

Probably badly worded but just want to get some input on it before i base my array on it

[carmine wigeon]

If you're producing exactly 33.073 at the electrodde alu refinery, and using exactly 33.073 at the rubber refinery, then yes you don't need to interconnect that water pipe with the one from the extractors feeding the other ones

[vapid gorge]

Yeah have a separate single refinery of res rubber eating the waste water. Make pipes as simple and as segregated as possible is my advice

[mortal spindle]

How do I divide 75 Ingots from one Oil Refinery into 5 constructors evenly? I know I gotta do splitter math but I have no idea how to do 1 into 5?

I could also do 150 Copper Ingots from 2 sources (Oil Refineries) into 10 Wire Constructors at 15 per minute I am just unsure how to split them.

[ionic galleon]

An equal 5-way split isn't really possible to begin with, but it'll balance out over time anyway.

Easiest option is probably just a centre-fed manifold: split the line, run the centre output into the centre machine, and run each of the side outputs into its own splitter to feed two machines each.

Or you can take a bit more room but save a splitter:

• First splitter: left to machine 1, right to machine 5, middle to second splitter
• Second splitter: left to machine 2, middle to machine 3, right to machine 4

(that'll also technically make the split more unbalanced at first, but it'll still end up equal over time)

[mortal spindle]

Oh so I CAN manifold but it's just a waiting game?

[ionic galleon]

Yeah. If you're supplying the right amount of input for 5 machines, and you're giving one machine more than its fair share, then that machine's input hopper will fill up and stop accepting more input. That will back up its input line, at which point the excess will go to the other machines, and ultimately it'll all wind up balanced.

And if you start the system with all machines fully loaded, then it'll be balanced straight away.

[mortal spindle]

So what if I went larger?

6 into 15? 6 Oil Refineries for 75 Ingots each, total of 450, into 15 Copper Sheet Constructors for 20 Ingots Per Minute Intake?

Wait sorry. Each will be over clocked to 30 per minute intake.

[ionic galleon]

If the amounts balance out, then yeah a manifold will end up working exactly the same as any other basic splitting pattern. Manifold just takes longer to settle into its steady-state behaviour.

[mortal spindle]

Aight. I was just unsure and a bit skepitcal.

[ionic galleon]

All good, it's kind of a lot. And hey, you can just go test this stuff directly if you want - that's reasonable.

[ember fractal]

anyone use personal storage boxes?

[ionic galleon]

Sure, all the time.

[ionic galleon]

Are you looking for info?

[ember fractal]

no, just wondering if people use them at all, and for what

[ionic galleon]

I mean yeah, they're the most efficient way to manually store stuff. I actually have a wall of them back at base, with a column of 3 containers for each of the items that I'm storing there.

(just dismantled a lot of stuff, so I have a bunch of materials and I don't have all the production capabilities right now)

[ember fractal]

why not just throw items into a storage container or industrial storage container, they fit more

[ionic galleon]

Storage container holds the same amount as a personal storage container, and is /much/ smaller.

Sorry, and personal storage container is much smaller

[ember fractal]

oh, for some reason i thought personal storage holds way less

[ionic galleon]

Nope, same amount as a storage container.

And offhand I think you could fit like 64x personal storage containers in the space taken up by a storage container.

[ionic galleon]

I mean, physics says that /should/ be the case...

[ember fractal]

i never have the need to store anything personal tho xD
except maybe shards, ficsit coupons, random stuff

[ionic galleon]

I mean if you don't have the need then don't do it, all good - we all play the game differently.

Personally I keep shards and coupons in my own inventory - don't want to forget where I left them. <.<

[ember fractal]

what kind of items do you store?

[ionic galleon]

Mostly stuff that I need for building. The storage at my base was to hold all the stuff I got from dismantling a bunch of old factories.

Way out west where I am now, I've got like half a dozen personal storage containers to store the parts for the Computer factory that I'm about to build here.

(much more than I could fit in my inventory at once, even with 75 inventory slots)

[ember fractal]

interesting

[gray flower]

i might be making over i think 250k GW

[cinder silo]

250,000Gw is a lot 😛

[ionic galleon]

Yeah, that'd be 250 TW.

Or 250 million MW

Or y'know, 250 million million Watts.

AKA 'a lot'

[gray flower]

Well fyi i am using mods

[fierce ruin]

well yea i think theres only like 2TW of energy available on the map

rofl

dunno how accurate that is

[tropic hawk]

Quite. But at that level of power, it really just becomes irrelevant on if it's off by a few hundred MW.

[tropic hawk]

only 2 TW
You say that like it's not a lot, when it is easily two orders of magnitude bigger than most machines run off of

[fierce ruin]

i mean "only" in the sense that its way less than 250TW, so safe to say the guy was using mods even before he said so 🙂

not that its a smol number

[ionic galleon]

More like 5 or 6 orders of magnitude, but yeah

[sage torrent]

pretty sure without plutonium, raw uranium fuel would produce 630GW off of every node in the map @250%

[fierce cypress]

613gw

[sage torrent]

i was pretty close

[tropic hawk]

OoM are not powers of ten, but rather segmented into sections of 10^3

[ember fractal]

2520 waste / minute LUL

[ionic galleon]

That's news to me, and if it's true then I really want to know. Can you point me to a good reference?

The way I read it, this is confirming my understanding. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_magnitude

[fierce cypress]

just

[wind spade]

Hover over the generator node for accurate info

[fierce cypress]

this one?

[fierce cypress]

also this one seems buggy greeny ^^ reported it on sft disc

[wind spade]

yeah, the 613 GW is after subtracting power needed to run the thing

(which is a bug)

[fierce cypress]

huh didnt even notice @sage torrent 630 GW then ^^

[vapid gorge]

Is 17gw accurate for that though? The plan for my 50.4 rod factory alone is 27gw I believe

Nm I probably use a lot more refineries

Though that extra 10gw seems like a huge dif

[fierce cypress]

thats the power cons according to it

[vapid gorge]

Hmmmmm

[wind spade]

it's without miners

also since you probably maximised power, it made most power efficient setup (due to the bug of subtracting power used for the production line)

[oblique folio]

How can you choose power in Satisfactory tools?

[fierce cypress]

beta feature, available through the sft disc

[oblique folio]

how can I get this disc?

[fierce cypress]

available on the website

community tab, top right

[oblique folio]

there is no sft

[wind spade]

sft = satisfactory tools

[scarlet sandal]

What is this website ? 🙃
I'm using Satisfactory Tools but I can't add Nuclear Power Plant with this website soooo
I would love to know which one you are using

[wind spade]

read few last comments 😛

[scarlet sandal]

Ohhh kk thanks haha

[eager igloo]

guys i messed up

i cant math

How much iron ingots and wire to I need to produce to make 660 cable per minute using the iron wire alt recipe?

[wintry aurora]

Just plug in the amount of cable you need and tweak the recipes (sometimes you have to turn off default recipes to force it to use alts).

You are using Satisfactory Calculator?

@eager igloo ^

Satisfactory tools rather, not calculator. @eager igloo

[eager igloo]

TBH I havent even been using a calculator. Been doing all of it myself cause its easier for me that way

[wintry aurora]

I’ll just plug it into the satis tools then, are you using an iron ingot alt @eager igloo ?

[eager igloo]

yeah

iron wire

im gonna be making iron wire and cast screws

[wintry aurora]

Iron ingot, not wire alt.

[eager igloo]

i dont have an alt for iron ingots yet

[wintry aurora]

Otherwise I'll assume default.

Ok

[eager igloo]

But my factory has like 6 iron nodes within spitting distance so im not too worried about it

Just gonna make little mining depots and move the ore with trucks to process on site

30 constructors for iron wire and 17 for quickwire

[wintry aurora]

Well within the recommended 760 limit to avoid the MK5 belt issue though.

[eager igloo]

yeah

thats why i wanted to use it. I would have had to do multiple belts on copper if i stuck with the normal recipe

[wintry aurora]

for ingots at least, but you can split the wire one.

[eager igloo]

already need to use 2 mk.5s to make all the copper sheets i need

i need 840 iron per minute to feed my screw and cable line :I

and thats not even factoring in plates

[oblique hollow]

better find a recipe that doesnt need screws

[wintry aurora]

Ouch, better get HDD hunting.

[oblique hollow]

iron wire cringe

[eager igloo]

i have stitched and adhered

but for adhered i would have to rework my entire receiving hub

actually for both i would need to....

-.-

ok actually it wasnt too bad to add in a few more smelters. I still have extra room

But also. I have a LOT of alt-recipes unlocked already and all the crash sites i've found so far are items i either cant make just yet or need to run a lot of power to.

RNG just hates me in terms of my iron options apparently

[wintry aurora]

Oh I see, yea, RNG sucks sometimes.

[eager igloo]

NGL i had to research 20 hard drives before i could get the silicon circuit board

[wintry aurora]

There's more HDDs than alt recipes, so, you'll run out of alts before HDDs.

So, you'll get them eventually.

[eager igloo]

yeah

lol im still skittish about the auto save crashing everytime my game freezes up

[wintry aurora]

Yea, was a bit concerned the first few times before I was sure.

[eager igloo]

it still is lol

[deft pendant]

You can turn off autosaves in settings, can't you?

[ember fractal]

It's just hunting for HDs can get tedious with every new playthrough

[sage torrent]

i only went for HDs that were in a general area where i was making a factory

[noble timber]

Yep

Set the interval to 0

[fierce ruin]

y'all, how would I make a 3 to 8 load balancer?

[wintry aurora]

There's an album that was posted on reddit IIRC of a whole bunch of balancer layouts.

You'll have to do a google search.

If you're looking for ingame built examples, I don't have any myself currently.

Although, lemme check my steel stuff on the other save.

[wintry aurora]

What belt input rates are we talking about here though?

[fierce ruin]

I only have access to mk1 and mk2 belts atm, don't have steel set up for mk3

I'm using the coal nodes at the lake near the 1st starting area

[wintry aurora]

Well, regardless of belt speed, the set up would be the same, just wondered how much of a factor that is.

My steel setup is something different, lemme check one other.

Nvm, I don't have a good example to show. All I can say is to google about Satisfactory balancers. I've seen an album with lots of configurations. @fierce ruin

[fierce ruin]

alright

ah screw it I'll just speedrun nobelisks so that I can use the 4th node and not go through pure pain trying to make a 3-8 balancer

[wintry aurora]

Do you have smart splitters?

[fierce ruin]

no, not yet

[wintry aurora]

You could probably balance among the three. Edit: Nvm then, my idea works better with smart splitters.

[vapid nest]

Quick balancing question: 2 belts, one moving 480, the other 120. I need 200 on 3 belts. No mk3 possible and overflowing would be ugly

200 per belt

nvm figured it out

[ionic galleon]

Gotta say, water tower becomes /extremely/ useful when you've got 2100/min Water that you're lifting up by like 250m.

[wind spade]

tbh I'd rather make it 3:9, underclock the 9 machines to 88.8889% and just split each belt into three

[fierce ruin]

I just decided to only use 2 coal miners and it's working perfectly, as I found out I only need 120 coal for 8 gens and the 2 coal mines took care of that perfectly

[wind spade]

even one overclocked could be enough 🙂

and I'd just do a manifold instead of balancing tbh

[fierce ruin]

I forgot overclockong existed tbf

[wind spade]

overclocking is great tool to have miners produce more
underclocking is great tool to make ratios check out

[vapid nest]

damn

you see the problem?

[wind spade]

ummm, I don't

[vapid nest]

the 7.5 assemblers are blocking an additional line of 90 steel pipes

[wind spade]

ah

yeah well that's not something I can fix, as I use a library that makes these positions

[vapid nest]

Oh no I'm not blaming you

It's just frustrating

[wind spade]

in new tools however I'm going to try to find a better visualisation library to allow for better schemes

[vapid nest]

👍

[little kraken]

Question if I can: Does the setup for 300 crude oil --> 900 Plastic V Rubber still work or has it been patched out of existence. I want to give it a shot but I can't get my head around the packaged fuel aspect of it all. Thanks in advance for anyone's time. I have a link for a schematic if anyone is curious but I can't post so maybe IM if you happen to be a curious pioneer

[dim mason]

It does, if you want to see which ratios you need exactly, just use the satisfactory tools calculator
edit: this should be it
https://www.satisfactorytools.com/production?share=LGHuUxXq3PdOKpQR6n70

[wind spade]

it's still in, and idk why it would be "patched", it's not like it's a bug or something

[little kraken]

Cool! That was quick, thanks guys!

[vapid nest]

Either do it with packagers or with blenders, depending on what your tier is

[little kraken]

yeh I would like to blend it all up, but im in too low a tier atm

[brittle thunder]

packaged is fine, its just a few extra machines

[sage torrent]

blenders are quite expensive pre late game however

[frosty owl]

Define "expensive"

[wind spade]

we have infinite resources, nothing is expensive

the only relevant problem is "do you have all the ingredients automated"

[lethal pagoda]

trying to run 4 conveyor belts into 10 different with even distribution. Any advice on how to achieve this. Any tools I can use to help?

[wind spade]

build 12 machines instead of 10, underclock them to 83.3333%, then it's a 1:3 split 4 times 😄

or if you can merge the 4 belts, just merge them all and do a manifold

--S--S--S--S--S
  |  |  |  |  |

[lethal pagoda]

I can do two manifolds with 5 on each branch now that I think about it. I only have Mk3 belts right now.

[wind spade]

that works as well 🙂

[lethal pagoda]

Thanks for the help.

[wintry aurora]

Heh, I had a similar confusion where a line got blocked and was confused where it was. Most of the time it doesn’t do this.

[hollow juniper]

ill probs ask this in the Satisfactory tools chat aswell but does anyone know why the calcuator LOVE recycled rubber/Plastic?
unless i deactivate it everytime i use oil, its ALWAYS there turning plastic into rubber and rubber into plastic

[wind spade]

it's the most resource efficient way to make rubber or plastic

[hollow juniper]

im willing to accept that but i hate that its true

[wind spade]

why hate? 🤔

it's not like it's super complicated or something

[hollow juniper]

just doesn't seem like it should be
like its something overseen by the devs
like "oh you want the maximum possible Plastic from oil? well turn it into fuel and rubber THEN turn it into plastic"

[wind spade]

it's "more complexity -> more product"

you can also make rubber or plastic directly from oil without a X step process

[spring cedar]

takes notes

just started to plan to expand my plastic production, 100/min is not cutting it haha.
looking in the planner, and enabling all recipes, to make 1k plastic/min would need 4500 oil/min.
using the recipe to convert oil to plastic only needs 1500 oil/min.
it seems the direct recipe is better, unless im missing something?

[hollow juniper]

setting targets at 1K/min isnt smart in the long runyou honestly want it to be around 780/min or a multiplication of that to make converying items and rationing it out much easier ion the future

[spring cedar]

good to know, makes sense cause belts and what not.
thanks

[hollow juniper]

np
i learnt it the hardway lol

[wind spade]

1000 is fine

just do two belts

but also, don't prebuild 1k/min unless you know you need that much 😛

[spring cedar]

I like to look at what I may need so i can keep space open for modular expansion 🙂

[hazy saffron]

Anticipating future needs is difficult. Pre-building to a specific target and adjusting later if that doesn't meet demand is absolutely fine

[oblique hollow]

overbuild - realize you need more - overbuild again

[hazy saffron]

The worst thing you can do in this game is act like everything the player builds is permanent.

Or build a second production facility to handle the original consumer of the item.

If you're doing single-item modular factories you're probably deep into the logistics tho

[spring cedar]

just starting this, finally reached trains and am finding that I need to grow exponentially, so I have begun to create Smelting buildings, next is single item factories, then simple train loop to connect the manufacturers to their required inputs.

this should allow me enough production to build without having to manually feed machines.
problem is, my first bottlenect is screws and plastic, so starting there.

My goal is to build things far enough apart to reduce render strain on my old laptop

[hazy saffron]

Staying along the edge of the map might also help a bit

[wind spade]

or just build what you need now 🤷‍♂️

[hazy saffron]

What I need now is a fuckton of plastic for future expansion

[wind spade]

I doubt you need 1000 plastic/min for building

and seems like very arbitrary number for future production

so I'd bet no future plans are calculated

[cinder silo]

1200 in to batteries 🤷‍♂️

[hazy saffron]

I personally don't recall how much plastic I'm making myself but it's at least some

I do love the fact that unless you know exactly what you're going to need in the future and build for only that you're playing the sandbox wrong

[wind spade]

also I just read this... what planner are you looking to?
because for 900 plastic you only need 300 oil with best recipes

[spring cedar]

Was using the SCIM planning tool and just enabled recipies and desired output of plastic.

[wind spade]

ah

SCIM doesn't do any optimisation. And you also can't have multiple recipes per item

so if you select everything, it'll just use all the selected recipes no matter what. And if multiple recipes make the same product, it picks one semi-randomly

[hazy saffron]

SCIM sucks lmao

[wind spade]

check out this https://u6.satisfactorytools.com/production?share=eeU5A51MHihAOFxUh1f5

(sorry, posted wrong link at first)

[spring cedar]

Thanks. Will check it out when i get home. On the bus now

Handy tool. So to get to 10 computers a min, i need 480 plastic a min as an input.

This calculator is the accepted best tool right now?
Ill replace SCIM planner then 🙂

[wind spade]

I can't really say objectively that it's best, especially since I'm the one who made it 🙂
but I generally find it pretty good in most cases and I think people in general do use it for planning

[spring cedar]

Good to know.

I guess ill have to test with plastic and see which is more accurate getting me to my 10 comp /min goal

[wind spade]

both tools will be accurate (in the sense of making you reach the goal)

the main difference is:

• SCIM blindly uses the recipes you select and can't do complex production lines with loops or multiple recipes per item
• SFTools pick recipes from those you chose and optimise for least raw resource usage, can have multiple recipes per item and can do pretty much any production

[deft lichen]

SCIM visualizes every machine which can work for small early game setups, SFTools can handle even large complex production lines without problems

[spring cedar]

Lol. Now imma have to relook at my production through the SFTools lens and see if there are efficiently tweaks I can make

[oblique hollow]

also scim cant do recycling loops properly

[wind spade]

properly or at all? 🤔

I wasn't able to set up any loop in there no matter how hard I tried

[oblique hollow]

i forgor

but if thats the case: scim is wasteful, scim cant recycle

[wind spade]

idk I haven't tried much (got enough trouble with my tool lol)

[wintry aurora]

Question refresh on the MK2 pipe bug, it just has to not be exactly 600, like 599 throughput would be fine, right?

[wind spade]

600 is fine with looping pipe

[wintry aurora]

Allright then.

Rounding down to 132 generators anyway because it's easier to split into groups.

[oblique hollow]

599 is... questionable since you cant really achieve that

[wintry aurora]

It was a hypothetical.

[oblique hollow]

the pipe flow rate will go up and down, 599 is not enough space for flucuations imo

[wintry aurora]

Fair on that point though.

[oblique hollow]

10 to 50 below would be the safer bet

[wintry aurora]

Ok, just wanted to refresh on that info.

[ionic galleon]

A Mk.2 pipe can maintain 600/min under the right circumstances. It's just that you can't trust it to always maintain that under all circumstances where it should.

[devout zephyr]

Hey folks, I was wondering if theres maybe a cheat sheet somewhere with recommended output/min of each component for each tier or stage of the game?

wasn't sure if I should ask in here or #old-questions-and-help 😅

[wind spade]

outputs of components should roughly equal your usage of them for building 😛

given that every person builds differently, there's no "recommended" amount

if you're unsure, start with small number and increase later if you find you're always short on given material

[devout zephyr]

Fair enough 😄 thats very true

[spring cedar]

finished my 2k/min screw factory.
hopefully it holds me over for a little bit 🙂

[ionic galleon]

Good: "Oh my mistake, these 13 machines in my design aren't actually Refineries."
Less-good: "... they're Blenders"

[fringe pawn]

Is the only place you need 600 flow from pipes a 250% clocked oil extractor? What's the actual loss of production if you immediately split the pipe? Would an industrial fluid buffer pre-filled with crude oil at each refinery functionally give you 100% production for the length of your save file's playtime? 2 buffers? 10 buffers?

[ionic galleon]

Why would there be a loss of production if you immediately split the pipe? Unless the tiny bit of pipe between the extractor and the junction is a Mk.1 pipe ofc, in which case you'll only get 300/min at most

[fringe pawn]

I don't know anything about the issues with getting max flow out of MK2 pipes. If a buffer full of crude ahead of every refinery functionally eliminates the issue, that's a small price to pay.

[wind spade]

nah, mk2 pipe works decently if you loop it at the end

[ionic galleon]

I've just switched on a Mk.2 pipe here, and watched it hold 600/min while it filled the inputs of 16 refineries

[fringe pawn]

So what's this whole thing where MK2 pipes perform so poorly that it's almost certain they're going to refactor pipes all together?

Unless that's a joke I haven't been getting?

[wind spade]

not really sure but iirc it's mk2 manifolds with dead end

[brittle thunder]

seem to work OK once filled, unless I've just been lucky/my use case isn't the norm

[wind spade]

with full pipe?

[brittle thunder]

mainly, yes. I try to set things up with a 1 or 2% headroom to allow for 'issues' lol

so once saturated they tend to stay that way and just plod on

[ionic galleon]

Yeah, just plod on at 600 kL/min...

[vapid gorge]

It's more that you have to work around them. Generally having a manifold loop will fix most issues to get a 600 flow, especially if you're feeding from the top.

If you start doing weird things like feeding from the bottom you have to compensate in different ways

[ionic galleon]

And that's why I stick to a relatively narrow palette of options that I /know/ will work properly.

(see also: coding in JS)

[wind spade]

how can you say "work properly" and "coding in JS" in the same message 🤔

[ionic galleon]

Because I know the magic of how to write good production code in JS. 😛

(literally just spent a year writing API-based systems integration pieces in NodeJS, and everyone there loved me)

[wind spade]

'a' in ['a', 'b'] // false
0 in ['a', 'b'] // true

xD

and yeah I know it's just the meme language

[ionic galleon]

Thar be dragons, truly. But there's also a perfectly usable language in there somewhere...

JS and PHP are very similar imo, and not just because they're my two main languages for professional dev work. Each one was in the right place at the right time, was basically the only game in town at a critical moment, and suddenly became /way/ more important and widely-used than it was actually mature enough to handle. So both of them have a ton of quirks and legacy garbage, but also both of them have actually been developed into decent modern languages.

</soapbox>

(though it would be lovely if PHP's functions actually followed predictable conventions in naming and interface)

[wind spade]

I'm a php dev for last 15ish years lol I know what you're talking about

[ember fractal]

PHP is trash, just sayin

[wind spade]

php is great tool if you know how to use it 🤷‍♂️

[versed violet]

Programmed Html Pages is thing of the past, isn't it?

[finite sun]

"101 funny things said by people who didn't read the manual"
in this case, what exactly "in" does

[wind spade]

I'm very well aware of what it does

it's just it's not really obvious for newcommers

[still trout]

well, what does "in" do?

[wind spade]

[value] is in [object keys]

[still trout]

so a and b were defined earlier or what am i missing

[wind spade]

['a', 'b'] is an array of two strings, a and b. a has index 0, b has index 1. So the indexes are 0 and 1, so 0 in ['a', 'b'] is true, but 'a' in ['a', 'b'] is false

[still trout]

amazing

[dull bolt]

Cursed.

[ionic galleon]

Nah, 'cursed' is transliterating JS code into a handful of non-alphanum characters and nothing else. Perfectly doable, still runs fine, but 100% incomprehensible to a human.

[sleek osprey]

guys does anyone know the answer to 2 + 2

[ionic galleon]

yes

[hexed spindle]

I've got an aluminum factory where I used a priority junction to prioritize feeding the water coming out of the refineries over the water coming out of an extractor. This worked, at least for a while, but I came back after save/load and realized that my refineries had their water output backed up and weren't producing anything. Is this something to do with what happens to pipes/buffers on save/load, or is the priority junction setup for recycling water in aluminum production doomed for reasons other than bugs?

[ionic galleon]

I've found them tricky to do properly tbh. Personally I try to avoid recycling water at all - I just extract the full amount of water in the first place, and use the waste water for something else (things like Wet Concrete are great for this)

It's not impossible to make water recycling work properly, but I personally find it not worth the hassle. Your mileage may vary.

[main shuttle]

i know this is almost definitely a "just do what you want" kind of question, but has anyone published a "here's a prime location for this kind of manufacturing"?

[sage torrent]

not really as there arent any convenient locations for aluminum refinement where everything is right there

you usually have to import something via train

[main shuttle]

yea, finally got there on a fresh game & was wondering

only spot where there seems to be bauxite, coal, & quartz closeby is just north of the big hole

oh & copper

[sage torrent]

yeah i set up around that area as well

i made a train circle that brought the components in

[main shuttle]

speaking of, do trains end up outrunning mk5 conveyor belts?

[ionic galleon]

Sort of.

• Train top speed on the level: 120 km/h
• Mk.5 belt speed: ~50 km/h
• Mk.5 belt speed plus Blade Runners running speed: ~125 km/h

(I measured the belt and running speeds the other day, but can't remember the exact numbers offhand)

[wind spade]

The thing is... you don't care about speed. You care about throughput

[main shuttle]

i mean outrunning in terms of efficiency

[wind spade]

Depends what kind of efficiency you mean xD

Power usage? Belts
Space usage? Usually belts
Build time? Trains for large throughput values, belts otherwise
Build materials? Usually trains
Throughput? Mostly trains

[ionic galleon]

Finally figured out video recording from Satisfactory - just tagged you in #streams-and-videos with a demo of that 4.5km hypertube route. Also recently dropped screenshots in #screenshots showing my skyrail design elements, but I think you've seen those already.

[ionic galleon]

Lol @ me, didn't even /occur/ to me that you might not be talking about personal transport. <.<

[ionic galleon]

Depends what you're comparing. A single freight car is guaranteed to have less throughput than 2x Mk.5 belts, but then a single train on a single rail (or rail pair) can carry eg. 100 freight cars' worth all at once (and those get loaded and unloaded in parallel).

[cinder silo]

Fairly slow for 4.5km but I definitely get the design intent behind it being on a universal skybridge.

[ionic galleon]

Yeah, I deliberately kept the speed down so that I wouldn't just blow straight through the station in the middle. 😛

Main thing I wanted to show you there though, is how fast I go through the first cannon. Takes almost no time to get up to speed. Does that make sense?

[cinder silo]

I'd probably have had an actual stop at the station and just outbound cannons from there.

It's one reason I settled on the hub>spokes approach, trying to add midway stops has some drawbacks.

[ionic galleon]

That seemed like a less-good option for reasons that made sense to me at the time, but yeah actually I might do it now.

[main shuttle]

(can you tell this is my first real attempt at doing trains)

[ionic galleon]

Don't currently have enough locations to make a hub-and-spoke system make sense, but I will at some point.

[cinder silo]

True, I still have three unused cannons that'll kill you because I overestimated the number of destinations I'd need ~whoops!

[ionic galleon]

Yeah, but you also have like a dozen spokes with actual destinations on the end. Whereas I have literally 3 locations on my hypertubes: HUB base, Oilfields station, Al outpost. The only other real location on my map is the Computer factory I'm building way out west, and right now I'm just getting to that with a series of short Mk.5 belts spaced out along temporary skyways

[ionic galleon]

All good, we've all been there.

(and no actually I couldn't tell)

[main shuttle]

i guess i just worry about running out of materials between trains stopping by

[ionic galleon]

Chuck a buffer container on your station output, and you won't need to worry about that. Only need to worry about overall throughput.

[hexed spindle]

I chucked a valve on the water extractor input to the system to limit how much it can contribute. We'll see how this goes. I'm skeptical.

[ionic galleon]

Good luck. 🙂

[oblique hollow]

The VIP is a janky mess and nobody understands it. i dont get it either

[hexed spindle]

checks author of PDF he copied design from; worries

[frosty owl]

Do you think whoever invented the wheel knew what they were doing? They just thought "me roll, me fast"

[ionic galleon]

Though to be fair, inventing 'the wheel' is harder than I initially realised. Like yeah sure you can have a disc, but it's not /useful/ unless you also figure out axles and bearings at the very least.

[frosty owl]

Roads are overrated too lol

[ionic galleon]

Yeah. Hence in the one place I have come across natural wheels (fiction ofc), the world they're on has natural ribbons of flat basalt all over the place.

[frosty owl]

Was that the "Golden compass" or something?

And yeah, that's one of the actual reasons we don't see weels in the wild (actual sadness)

[ionic galleon]

If it's any consolation, flagellae use circular bearings at least

[frosty owl]

I heard, but growing the wheel itself (basically an organ one would have to "detach" from their body) is still too much :(

[ionic galleon]

Yup, hence the level of contrivance that Pullman had to resort to in order to make it work.

[marsh gate]

Can anyone explain this.. please?
So I got 320 Copper Ore/min coming down, it hits a splitter... and somehow it's still 320/min.

This is not how Splitters work... it's supposed to be 160/min. I did the math yet the game isn't working right?

The splitter is connected, yes.

[ionic galleon]

And flowing freely?

[marsh gate]

Yes.

[ionic galleon]

How much is on each of the output belts, allegedly?

[marsh gate]

Well originally I was pushing 220/min. I'm not sure how to answer your question though.
The 320/min is being fed by two Mk2 miners using two power slugs (both at 134%).

[ionic galleon]

Can you tell me more about the display in your hand? I can't read the text, and I'm not familiar with the display

[marsh gate]

It's from a mod. Efficiency Checker. Very useful for this purpose.
And before you ask, no the mod isn't outdated. It worked before when I was solving another issue not getting enough to where it needed to be.

[ionic galleon]

Nope, I want to know what it's showing you and what that means.

The first because I can't read it in the screenshot, and the second because I'm not familiar

[marsh gate]

Let me try to give you a better screenshot of the two, using a different tool of that mod.

Alright.
First screenshot is before the splitter. This is expected. It shows 320/min going in, and the supported belt speed being below (showing I'm using an Mk4 Belt).

This second one is after the splitter. This is not normal. I expected to see 160/min, which is why I have an Mk3 belt. Instead...

320 / 2 = 160, right?

[ionic galleon]

You have a mod changing the belt capacity from 480/min to 450/min?

[marsh gate]

I'm actually not sure why it's 450/min to be perfectly honest with you.

No I do not.

[ionic galleon]

That's the same value that's 270/min on the other one. So it's behaving weirdly on both sides.

[marsh gate]

270/min is the normal value for an Mk3, though.

[finite sun]

why exactly are you expecting anything different if one of your splits is blocked, tho?
if one belt can't get any more items, the rest would go to the remaining belt

ah, it's the efficiency checker mod
forget about all this then, why are you expecting it to show actual flow? this is decidedly not what this mod does.

all it does that it checks your producers (in any connected belt system), your consumers, and max potential flow as dictated by belt speed

it never says anything about the actual flow.

[vapid gorge]

so even if that mod checks belts, the only split you're showing us is stopped, so there's no throughput. So you'd still have the max flow.

If you're just starting the game I'd also suggest avoiding mods and getting the basics down tbh.

[ionic galleon]

Me: Wait, why has my fuel production stopped? Did I screw up the head lift to the fuel tower or something?
Me: Oh right, the 2400 kL takes less than 2 minutes to fill when you're producing at 1280/min. Good to know...

(also whoops, I probably should add a third pipe lol)

[brittle thunder]

my pipework is a bit of a mess, but trying to distribute 4800m3/min is 'entertaining'

[ionic galleon]

OK yeah, that's a bit. Theory says 8 pipes, experience says 9

[oblique hollow]

experience says 16

this sounds like long range stuff

you are not going to try and balance 8 pipes with each other

to get to 9

[brittle thunder]

thankfully its all short range, its trying to get the outputs from the blenders to play nicely

[ionic galleon]

Why not? Balancer is dead easy, just a junction on each pipe and connect the junctions on adjacent pipes. I'm doing exactly that for my 4x Water pipes, my 2x Heavy Oil Residue pipes, ...

[oblique hollow]

depending on if its close or far away

[brittle thunder]

its modular, which helps. 24 blenders at 220% in 2 banks of 12, feeding 4 floors of generators. I have basically put a straight manifold on the blenders, 1 on the banks of gennys and then linked it up as well as I can, lol

[oblique hollow]

if you have 4800, that doesnt sound like something you have simply lying around near you

[brittle thunder]

so far, its working, lol

[oblique hollow]

right short range is easy

there you can just connect it all in a big lattice balance style

[brittle thunder]

yeah, exactly that basically

[ionic galleon]

I mean the 4x Water is a bus running the length of this big factory that I'm currently building, not to mention the ~250m vertical lift up to that bus.

What problems should I expect?

[oblique hollow]

long range i woul always only use 50% or 75% of the pipe capacity because best you can do to not inflate the pipe count is split it in half

if you dont trust full capacity pipes

[ionic galleon]

I feel like I'm still missing something pretty major here, because your position doesn't make sense to me. And since it makes sense to you...

[oblique hollow]

just so we are clear, what do you mean with water bus

[ionic galleon]

I mean bus in the electronic circuit sense. The water bus (all 4x interlinked Mk.2 pipes) is where all the water gets put into, and where all the water gets taken out of.

[oblique hollow]

how long is that thing

[ionic galleon]

looks left, looks right, looks further right

Very very rough estimate here, but probably on the order of a kilometre

checks map

Yeah, probably a kilometre, within 10%

[oblique hollow]

right. as long as you dont plan to run around the entire map with that, its a sorta reasonable thing to use locally i guess

[ionic galleon]

Wait, a kilometre of 4x pipe counts as local? The whole map's only 5x6 km.

[oblique hollow]

1 km is local imo. its only 5 x 6 but you wont span something across the map in that fashion usually, you make twists and turns

so you get much more than just 5 km in length if you were to use something like that globally

trains for example only become efficient above 1 km distance

below that its vehicles and belts / pipes

drones are like eeeeeeh 2 km minimum? if its a steep verticap difference or whatnot 1 km is fine too with drones but they are for low throughput anyway

buuut for pipes going more than 1 km is a bad idea

1 km is a hard limit personally.

you have an easier time finding water 1km elsewhere

[ionic galleon]

What undesirable behaviour would you expect from a pipe that's too long?

[oblique hollow]

sluggishness

also its a slow transport method in general

not to mention headlift and all that jazz

short pipelines are better

[ionic galleon]

Headlift goes away with water-tower - it's super handy

[oblique hollow]

you gotta set that up first

and then wait for all that to fill

[ionic galleon]

Slow transport in terms of latency or throughput or both?

[oblique hollow]

both

its kinda tied together

behold: 10 km long pipezilla

this was a performance test

and a test of patience

[gray flower]

NOT ALL IN line with the flow rate

[ionic galleon]

Didn't see the '10km' at first, so I did a rough estimate. Got 9km, which I'm pretty happy with as a guess

[gray flower]

@oblique hollow

[ionic galleon]

What was the steady-state throughput of that pipe?

[stark bronze]

Also does it fluctuate like it belongs in a padded room when you reload the save?

[oblique hollow]

it does the expected visual only dip

when the save loads, the game has no reference of prior flow

and slowly ramps it up, but in reality it already flows at 600

and yes, this thing IS stable

[stark bronze]

Looks like I haven't fully tamed the beast

[oblique hollow]

this thing is surprisingly good at keeping up. for test purposes it feeds into 2 refineries that need 300 m3/min

though as expected, if you disturb it it takes ages for the change to propagate

[thin tusk]

hi i need braining people

how do i split output of smelters

[wind spade]

manifold

[thin tusk]

i cant i have convoyers mk1

[wind spade]

get mk2s or multiple manifolds

[thin tusk]

manifolding it requires mk3 wich i cant make

[wind spade]

multiple manifolds then

[wintry aurora]

He can't make them en masse just yet.

[wintry aurora]

Guy needs help mathing out the splits....

[wind spade]

manifolding is still easier

[thin tusk]

i cant

[wind spade]

multiple manifolds

[wintry aurora]

Belt limitation Greeny......

[thin tusk]

im not smart enough

[wind spade]

each with 60ppm max

[thin tusk]

i dont get how

this is what my thing looks like rn

i need someone to explain me how to manifold (not just an image)

cause i dont get how doing manifold will solve my problem of splitting

[wintry aurora]

Honestly though, since MK1 is your main limitation here, I'd reduce it so that it simplifies your problem until you CAN upgrade belts.

[thin tusk]

even with mk2 i dont know how to manifold

like ik how it works for the most but i dont get how it will help me split

[wintry aurora]

I showed you the manifold page on the wiki.

[thin tusk]

i know !

[wintry aurora]

If you want an ingame representation, I can show in a bit.

[thin tusk]

k thx

[wind spade]

figure out how much each smelter makes (either by counting A/B or just by looking at the smelter's UI), lets call it X
divide needed amount by one smelter production (X/C), that's your number of smelters that need to go to C

for this example, solution is:
A/B = 151.5/5.05 = 30 = X (also the smelter outputs 30/min)
X/C = 88.5/30 = 2.95 (so you need two smelters at 100% and one at 95% for rods)

Repeat the same for plates (basically same calculation, except you use the other number for C)

[wintry aurora]

These are mergers. (yes, I know they're MK5, just shows the basic form)

and these are splitters.

@thin tusk

(lemme know if you want a daytime shot, I considered waiting until daylight)

[thin tusk]

k and how will it help me split am i dumb or is this non sens

[wind spade]

read my message

[thin tusk]

no i can see thx

[thin tusk]

oh didnt see ok

[thin tusk]

thanks a lot i needed taht

[spring cedar]

is there a calculator that prioritizes awesome points?
like how can I exploit a node to get the most points...

[wintry aurora]

Not really as such, no, but the wiki page for the sink does have an analysis. As a general rule (there's a bit of variance and hand made only stuff are worth more than automated parts) though, the higher the tier, the more points, and space elevator parts.

Oh yea, the page has some tips for farming points @spring cedar

[wind spade]

basically every non-alt recipe doubles your points. So process the item as many times as you can.

There's also beta version for that has sink points implemented, but it's kinda broken at times

[spring cedar]

ok thanks

[thin tusk]

is that how to manifold ?

on the path where everything is, its mk2

[frosty owl]

That is a manifold, yes.

[thin tusk]

is it well done ? (for low level cause mk2 expensive)

[wintry aurora]

Isn't MK2 120?

[thin tusk]

yes it is

[wintry aurora]

Question for you though, do you have overclock unlocked yet?

[thin tusk]

oc

or i wouldnt ask for split

i would just do min

[wintry aurora]

Just checking. Was gonna make a setup that should work. Can't right this minute as I'm doing something on the other save.

[wintry aurora]

@thin tusk Back end assumes you're still using MK1 for incoming from the mines, and have three nodes available and aren't overclocking any miners.

Front end is assuming using MK2, the far right one (in second pic) is underclocked to 5%, the left output is iron plate, the right output is iron rod. The manifold will balance itself.

[thin tusk]

i think i got it

[livid meteor]

If I want a LOT of plastic, what's the best way for that?

[spring cedar]

SFTools has good calculations for recycling materials. makes a pretty efficient plastic production line

https://u6.satisfactorytools.com/

[ionic galleon]

Short version is: fuel recycling loop

• Recycled Rubber turns Plastic and Fuel into Rubber
• Recycled Plastic turns Rubber and Fuel into Plastic
• Loop them correctly, and it effectively converts Fuel 1:1 into Plastic.

Combine that with Diluted Fuel, and you can make a /lot/ of Plastic.

[vapid nest]

I really love it when you complete a big project you feel awesome and "yes, I did it all on my own!" but then some line doesn't get enough items to the manufacturers and you immediately get the self doubt that maybe you were too cocky when in the end it was a bugged belt that choked 1/3 of the entire system

And it wasn't just one belt connecting constructor to manifold, it was the output of an entire manifold.

[wintry aurora]

Would 187.5/m nitrogen gas be doable with tank cars? I'm asking because I'm in a bit of a chicken and egg situation, I know it's far better to do bottled, but I want to redo both the oil and aluminium stuff and I won't have aluminium canister production set up yet.

I'm also aware that tank cars have some issues.

I'm still in the 'planning the satisfactory tools setup' phase.

[ionic galleon]

Bottled, a freight car would hold 3200 cubic metres of nitrogen. Near as I can tell, a tank car would hold 500 cubic metres.

Say you have a round-trip time of 5 minutes, slightly longer than the actual round-trip time for my Aluminum ingots train. That means for 187.5/min throughput you'd need 937.5 on each train. Put two tank cars on the train, and you're fine.

So yeah, short answer is yes absolutely it's doable.

[wintry aurora]

Actually, you know what, I forgot that there's two nitrogen well nodes to the south of the area where I've already built some stuff and roughly where I'm gonna build the mall for the more advanced stuff: https://u6.satisfactorytools.com/production?share=YCbRTITn4A7caWTNSHLQ

At that distance, might as well pipe it.

I was just sort of thinking 'would that be an option?'

[vapid nest]

Am new to alumina, is there any easier way? Also, should I make casings separate or in the same factory?

[wintry aurora]

You should get the alts ASAP, otherwise looks fine for an early one. I'd put the casings in the same factory.

[vapid nest]

Because no way I would need 240 AAS ever?

[wintry aurora]

I mean it's fine for your first plant and it's fine for personal use. If you make a large battery factory using the classic battery alt, I could see that.

[livid meteor]

Is the super-state Computer worth it?

[ionic galleon]

Personally I'd go for Pure Quartz Crystal out of those three options, but super-state Computer might be worth it depending on what else you have and what you're doing. Personally I'm using Caterium Computer instead

[gray rock]

Hey is a 8 to 8 Belt balancer a nightmare or slightly straightforward?

[spring cedar]

saw this attempt posted on reddit. looks like a headache

[gray rock]

Oohh thats oldschool

[spring cedar]

wiki has an atricle on balancers

https://satisfactory.fandom.com/wiki/Balancer

[ionic galleon]

ooft

[fierce cypress]

@gray rock I don’t use load balancers much but from memory you have 4x 2:2 load balancers, and the combine then into 2x 4:4 load balancers and then switch up the outputs into two more 4:4 ones or something like that, or a simpler approach if you want full belts is to use a belt compressor

[gray rock]

/cry

[fierce cypress]

Usually there’s an easier alternative

Load balancing is a pain

But once you learn the general pattern you can apply it to most numbers, but it’s still a massive pita

[livid meteor]

I wish load balancing could work via splitter sadge

[fierce cypress]

I mean it does

A splitter is basically a 1:1-3 load balancer

[ionic galleon]

And likewise a merger is a 1-3:1 load balancer

[livid meteor]

I mean yea but I wish you could just set a ratio, so I don't need to use multiple splitters

like 7/1

Btw. what are valves good for? I don't see any use for it

[fierce cypress]

mostly just to prevent backflow

[fierce cypress]

how would you do that with only 3 available outputs?

[livid meteor]

When you could programm each output

and tell your splitter to put 7 items on output then 1 item on output 2

[fierce cypress]

that would be too simple imo

[livid meteor]

That's what I kinda expected from smart or programmable splitters

[fierce cypress]

and you can just overflow anyway

thats why most people go for manifolds over load balancing

[livid meteor]

I would prefer to use less splitter tbh

And not to have a need of a merger/splitter puzzle

takes so much afford and space

[fierce cypress]

thats why manifolds are so good

[livid meteor]

would be my favorite qol update

[fierce cypress]

use a manifold

[fierce cypress]

i doubt thats ever going to come to vanilla, but there is probably a mod out there that works

[shadow prairie]

Ask for mods over at the [official modding discord](#welcome message). - <3 @fierce cypress

Sep 8, 2022, 10:49 PM

[livid meteor]

I dunno it would probably not even be hard to implement tbh

[fierce cypress]

its not that its not hard to implement

[livid meteor]

would be a super good qol update

[fierce cypress]

its that it would be too unbalanced

[livid meteor]

I just hate this manifold stuff

[fierce cypress]

it makes the game too easy

[livid meteor]

why? You still need to unlock programmable splitters

[fierce cypress]

why? its pretty simple

no you dont

[livid meteor]

yes of course but I don't want to spend hours to think about how to split and merge stuff to get the load balancing I want

It just annoys me