math-and-meta

[wind spade]

cast screw was created to never be picked

[fierce ruin]

are you kidding cast screw is my favourite recipe. i havent found it yet but i had it in my last game

im too lazy to make iron rods

[prisma kraken]

steel rotor i prefer for use in a motor factor for needing lots of rotors

[primal flicker]

cast screws just gets rid of the intermediate rods. it's pretty "meh".

[fierce ruin]

it's amazing when you're bad at math

[wind spade]

it doesn't do anything that other alt recipes wouldn't do

[prisma kraken]

it removes a bunch of rod constructors

[wind spade]

if you want to save resources, you use steel rod
if you want to save space/power, you use steel screws
cast screws don't save any resources and save way less space/power than steel screws

[prisma kraken]

and does simplify the belting maths

[wind spade]

belting math is simplified by underclocking

[primal flicker]

Cast Screws is common loot.

[prisma kraken]

early game i find it useful pre-steel

[frail light]

yes but most cast screw use is done before steel is a thing in game so.... that makes it infinitely more valuable when your doing early game and every watt matters

[wind spade]

pre-steel, stitched plates do the same as cast screws but also save resources

[primal flicker]

I've never found it worth rebuilding a production line for.

[prisma kraken]

its in the early hd research pool as one of the intro 6

yes, but you need iron wire too

[wind spade]

you don't need it

[prisma kraken]

and we're talking about rotors, not plates

[wind spade]

you don't need that many rotors to progress to steel

[primal flicker]

copper rotors + steel screws = 🤤

[prisma kraken]

that was really my point, hold off on mass rotor until you have more options

[wind spade]

for me it's not worth to pick a recipe that will be a bit useful for two hours

and then never used again

[prisma kraken]

i'll still use it at times when i have a surplus of iron and shortage of coal

[frail light]

all recipes have their uses but that doesn't mean that you can choose not to use them because you don't think they have much value

[wind spade]

that's why I said for me

[frail light]

yeah but repeatedly saying its a useless recipe and you shouldn't use it isn't being just for you

[wind spade]

I never said that?

I was simply comparing it's advantages to other recipes and said that the other recipes have those advantages better

[frail light]

read it doesn't do anything that other alt recipes wouldn't do

cast screws don't save any resources and save way less space/power than steel screws

[prisma kraken]

which i do agree with, greeny

[wind spade]

yeah, nowhere there I say "don't use" or "is useless"

[primal flicker]

He said it doesn't do anything another alt can't do. (And I would add, do better).

Every alt has a best use case. But some alts are still woefully underpowered in comparison to their counterparts.

[frail light]

whoops i was reading yours weirdo beardo an his as the same person my bad

[primal flicker]

Which is why moon suggested not scaling up until aquiring those more desirable recipes..

[oblique notch]

For me I don't hold out waiting for recipes while teching up the tiers. Because it's pointless. If I need more of something I go to other nodes and build more. It's only at end game when I want to maximize and optimize do I bother worrying about alts.

[wind spade]

it's the truth though. Out of all the possible paths to make screws, cast screws don't really stand out in any property.

[frail light]

and when you combine those statements with yours it sounds a lot like dont bother trying this

[prisma kraken]

i apologize for picking on cast screw as the example

[oblique notch]

If I have the alt. Awesome. I'll use it. If I don't? Eh. Factory going to get built either way. And I'd rather be building then waiting on an rng

[frail light]

yeah they are an early game best use case when watts are more important

[wind spade]

early game you need screws mostly for reinforced plates, where you can get rid of them by using stitched plates (which give you all the advantages of cast screws + some more). Yes, you also need screws for rotors, but in my eyes you don't need that many to justify wasting a hard drive on it

[oblique notch]

This feels like a difference in perception. For a lot of us with thousands of hours in the game. The "early" game is pointless to optimize for. Only once you've unlocked everything is optimization worth while.

Before that just brute force it by building more. You're not going to run out of resources anytime soon

Could spend an hour hunting HDs and hoping to get an alternative I want. Or just add a couple more rows and another Miner and get back to teching

[prisma kraken]

or do a bit of all of it 🙂

i mean, early game, i don't really focus on rip production because i find lots in hd hunting

[frail light]

I do have thousands of hours in game and i go hard drive hunting while still in biomass phase and when you are that early it is a fairly good recipe

[prisma kraken]

and slum with mk1 belts, etc

[frail light]

you choose the best available alt and sometimes you get weird combos

[prisma kraken]

like phase 1, i truly find spending power on anything but rotors and screws+rods sorta wasteful

[wind spade]

there's no best

[frail light]

there is best for current objectives and rescources available

[wind spade]

sure, but that is different for every player

[prisma kraken]

but i spend most of that stage doing the mam research and working down the hd pool

[frail light]

for example if I am building my oil then the best is just about any oil recipe

[frail light]

the issue is early game power is a pain to keep running so its easier to save on that

[noble timber]

HOR and Diluted Fuel looking pleadfully in the distance

[wind spade]

more complexity 🤷‍♂️

[noble timber]

True but still, they are undeniably the best alts in the game

[wind spade]

no, they are best from meta point of view 😛

but generic "best" recipes don't exist 😛

[oblique notch]

Yes, but what I'm saying is that the time spent in early game is miniscule vs the time spent in the rest of the game.

You spend a couple dozen hours (maybe a couple hundred if you're really taking your time) teching up, then you spend 10, 20, 30x that amount building perm factories.

So by perception, I apologize. It's not a play time factor. It is one of "do I bother worrying about this starter factory being super efficient before I've even unlocked refineries or do I just push through and get to have all my tools available.

It's the primary reason if I'm starting a new world I just unlock everything with Scim. I build the end game. The journey to get there was nice the first time. Having to wait on mk2 belts for a couple dozen hours is not fun

[prisma kraken]

i'd say, that best alt in the game is actually copper alloy

[frail light]

not really they add one step but eliminate most of the waste to deal with that you struggle with with base recipes

[prisma kraken]

but its a little subjective

[wind spade]

they literally add one step and have one waste (same as base recipe), not much change there. So yeah, more complexity

[prisma kraken]

i personally like thinking of things as not best or worst

[wind spade]

and yeah, it's all subjective. You can have your own "best" recipe that you value the most, but that doesn't mean it's objectively the best. Objectively best is impossible to define anyway due to different preferences. Objectively best in terms of how much fuel you make out of oil? sure. But not generally best

[prisma kraken]

hor + dilluted (packaged) fuel is defo top tier

as is copper alloy, pure caterium, crystal computer, rigor motor and recipes like that

[frail light]

the issue is the pipes and building as you have three separate products that requrie you to loop back/sideways to make it work vs with hor you just add a step that makes everything have one flow of direction

[noble timber]

If you're going for pure simplicity, it really doesn't get easier than Oil -> Fuel

But yeah, if you want to max your fuel output then HOR + Diluted fuel is the best you can go for. However, it's more complex and takes up more space

[wind spade]

we're talking about one product tho? we're talking about fuel

with standard fuel recipe:

• oil -> fuel (+ polymer resin that can be sinked)
  vs
• oil -> hor (+ polymer resin that can be sinked) -> diluted fuel (blenders, so very late) or diluted packaged fuel (a lot of complexity from packaging/unpackaging)

first option is just way simpler

[prisma kraken]

i'd say why bother with making power with oil->fuel, the yield is so low on that unless you're building to upgrade at some point

[noble timber]

It works well if you have no alts at all

[frail light]

yes but no because I atleast don't turn all the oil in a spot to fuel

[noble timber]

the resin can go into plastic/rubber production

[wind spade]

that's a you thing, not everyone does that

[prisma kraken]

seriously, its very uncompelling for me to do for like the 3-6 gw you'll get

[noble timber]

Although, I prefer oil to plastic/rubber then residual fuel

[wind spade]

because it's a nice quick way to make fuel? not everyone plays in a way that they need tons of fuel

[prisma kraken]

i'd rather make that sort of yeild with coal

[wind spade]

(I'm not saying I would do it in some way, I'm saying that all ways have their pros and cons)

[noble timber]

Nothing is stopping you from doing that

[prisma kraken]

yeah, i'm just sharing my viewpoint, not arguing

i think using nearby oil to make plastic & rubber makes more sense to do for a number of reasons

[frail light]

not everyone plays the game either objectively from base materials needed to complexity and power requirements to power generated HOR and diluted fuel are better in time invested to what you get out compared to just about any base recipe you have in game.

[prisma kraken]

any sort of power plant is sort of a build it and forget about it thing

[noble timber]

Turn the oil into fuel and use the fuel for plastic and rubber

[wind spade]

I don't argue against that. I say you ignore the disadvantage of more complexity, which is objective disadvantage (but some people may ignore it or not care about it)

[noble timber]

And spare fuel can go into gens

[wind spade]

and as soon as a recipe has one disadvantage, then it can't be objectively best

[prisma kraken]

i'm not crazy about mixing production and power generation in the same line

when i do so there's always a few ohfa moments when i realize something is backed up because i'm moving belts around in central storage or something random

or oops, i shouldn't have removed that awesome sink yet, etc

[frail light]

Objectively it can be best even if it has one disadvantage. The trade off just must be worth it for example car a costs 36,000 dollars gets 86kpg and has heated seats but car b cost 42,000 dollars gets 92kpg and has heated seats which is better?

the 92kpg right?

[prisma kraken]

depends on how much you drive per day, the grade of gas the car takes, whether it will be highway or city driving

reliability of the car, etc

[wind spade]

how do you compare "1 MW less" to "less complexity"? how do you even objectively define complexity?

[frail light]

time spent

[wind spade]

which is subjective per player

some build slower, some faster

[prisma kraken]

or another metric is 'how easy is it to break'

[frail light]

all things equal except for the kpg

[wind spade]

but in SF example not all things are equal

[prisma kraken]

its still a function of how much you drive

[wind spade]

indeed, never a clear option

[frail light]

yes but each player isn't going to speed up and then slow down in construction speed unless an outside factor changes so that is a mute m=point

[prisma kraken]

like i don't want to get off topic with this, but there's a break even point on that over time

you might exceed your use of the car before hitting the break even point

[frail light]

it really is amatter of how long it takes you to spend 8,000 dollars saved on fuel or electricity i guess

[wind spade]

one player can see certain recipes as "best for them" and it will be true
one recipe can't be "best" for all players
simple as that

[prisma kraken]

yes, and that will be different

and sometimes the answer is 'whatever you enjoy best' 🙂

[frail light]

objectively taking the subjective person out of it as that is the only way to compare anything

if we leave everything subjective there is no way to compare...

it becomes my truth is and that makes your truth worthless

[wind spade]

which is exactly the point we're trying to make

everybody has different preferences, requirements and goals

so everybody will have different "truth" about "best" recipes

[frail light]

and I continuously stated objectivly in my statements

[wind spade]

yes, some recipes are objectively best for some parameter (e.g. alt HOR is part of chain that makes most oil-based product out of single oil)

but that doesn't mean it's objectively best for everyone and everywhere

[frail light]

which means arguing a subjective truth vs an objective truth is saying that because i believe something it must be true vs no you can't fly even with the superman cape

[median heath]

Birds aren't real.
Earth is flat.

Sacking of Rome was an inside job.
Moon landing was staged.

[frail light]

women aren't real?

[median heath]

We live in a simulation.

[frail light]

i can change the objective to make it so that biomass is the best power in the game subjectively but objectively that isn't true

[prisma kraken]

or situationally provide a condition for that to be the truth

...biomass power is pretty good in phase 1 😉

[wind spade]

objectively there's no way to define which power is best

[frail light]

cost to output as well as time put into construction as sevrahn has stated multiple times

[wind spade]

how do you compare that?

also what's "cost to output"?

(and biomass wins in time put into construction 😛 )

[prisma kraken]

cough geotherm cough

[wind spade]

biomass can be put anywhere, geothermal (on average) needs some time to get to place where you can put it down 😛

(also yeah I'm aware this is stupid generalisation but it's what you must do when you are comparing things that can't be compared 😛 )

[prisma kraken]

is it possible to unlock the tech for geotherm in phase 1?

[frail light]

power and resource cost to manufacture fuel needed than time to construct set up to wattage output from said resources and time spent playing on world

[frail light]

yes? i believe you can if you spend time as their should be enough supercomputers at crash sites

[wind spade]

is 1 MW more or less than one iron ore?
is copper iron ore more or less than one coal?

how do you generalise these? there's no objective way of doing that

(and as long as you include time spent, it fails completely due to different players having different times to build thing)

[prisma kraken]

no, you can't because you can't get the hmf or computer recipe that early

[frosty owl]

You can find those at crash sites

[median heath]

Handcrafting > All Alts. 😉

[frail light]

compare straight across or you can use the resource extraction rate for cost ie 780p to 30mw

[wind spade]

that ignores resource rarity

[prisma kraken]

what's the formula that sftools uses? just sort of a weight based on resource ubiquity?

[wind spade]

also resource extraction cost differ based on purity and clock speed

[prisma kraken]

belt and miner tech too

[frail light]

maximum extraction of all resources for denominator on bottom and maximum for that resource on top for weighted points

then multiply it all my 10,000

it says so on their page

[wind spade]

weighted resources, if iron is three times as common as copper, then copper weights three times as much (and therefore 2.5 iron is "better" than one copper)

I don't claim it's objective, but it's (imo) good enough to suggest decent recipes in terms of resource optimisation

[wind spade]

that's wiki's algorithm

not SFTools'

[frail light]

and that's where I have been pulling my data from

[prisma kraken]

yeah, for that sorta thing you're kinda just punting at how to measure it

[wind spade]

moonchild asked for what algorithm SFTools uses though

[frail light]

there you can compare how much mw goes into making fuel vs compacted coal to see which gives you more bang for your buck

[wind spade]

but the MW changes based on miner tier, node purity, node overclocking and recipes used

[frail light]

well they don't have it written anywhere on their page so only someone who helped make it would know how they do their math

[wind spade]

"they" is me as I made those, so that's why they asked me 😛

[frail light]

you do a flat comparison at each level then 4

[prisma kraken]

its not so much what you pick as the yardstick, but having it be a consistent comparison

[frail light]

is it better to do coal power or compacted coal and look straight at mk1 miners then at mk2 then at mk3

[wind spade]

and then for every clock speed from 1 to 250%? and for every node purity?

[prisma kraken]

they aren't easy problems

[wind spade]

indeed

[frail light]

no need as the clock speed at 250 is a ratio of the 100 percent so it doesn't change the total and as long as you keep the same purity level for each it doesn't matter

[prisma kraken]

something i'd find useful is to be able to adjust that rating based on tech level

[wind spade]

it does when you have different amount of miners for compacted coal vs fuel

[frail light]

you are making it more complex than it needs to be yeah max out both at same purity level and then look at cost in mw to output in mw maxing it out then go what is the difference....

or make them both at 100 percent and look then

[wind spade]

the difference is that you're assuming something that the player may not do and therefore the comparison you make is useless for that player's case

[oblique hollow]

whats this about?

[wind spade]

objectively best recipes

[prisma kraken]

we're just noodling on that subject

[wind spade]

or rather, WTNewman thinks there are such recipes and we're saying there aren't

[median heath]

There is only 1...

[wind spade]

and now we're talking about how you compare what is best

[wind spade]

there's none

[oblique hollow]

ah. assumption that recipe math requires vertical thinking instead of lateral thinking

[median heath]

Everything else is situational.

[frail light]

if you are making an objective comparison once again than you eliminate as many variables as possible so as to do a comparison

so make everything that you can the same....

[wind spade]

if you eliminate variables, it's no longer objective

[oblique hollow]

you can try and make such an analaysis, maybe you are the one who magically can do it

you wouldnt be the first to try

[wind spade]

(and fail 😄 )

[prisma kraken]

yep

[frail light]

no because comparing an apple orchard of 26 acres to an orange field of 360 acres is not an fair comparison

they would need to both be grown in the same size orchard before you can make comparisons

[wind spade]

indeed. Which is why you can't compare two recipes unless they have everything but one property equal

[frail light]

so saying an mk3 miner vs an mk1 miner is the same thing

[oblique hollow]

Alt recipe discussion in a nutshell:
Team "There must be one best recipe"
vs
Team "There is no one best recipe"

[frail light]

that is eliminating a variable

[prisma kraken]

i think cast screw and EIP are the only ones simple enough to draw a comparison

[wind spade]

no, they have two different properties - power cost and production multiplier.

[prisma kraken]

and that turns into a tradeoff easy to understand

[frail light]

exactly so you make them the same to eliminate the variance in the variables

therefore eliminating them from the consideration

[wind spade]

which means you're no longer objective...

[oblique hollow]

how do you possibly equate those two

[wind spade]

neither are.
cast screws skip step which means they also skip gains you get from that step
EIB is slightly harder to justify, but still need different resources, so a point could be made about "I already have these as input so I don't like the other one"

[frail light]

i dont think you know how an objective study works.... you take two similar sample sizes and compare

you dont draw 100,000 of one sample and only 20 of another

[wind spade]

I'm perfectly aware. But that's not what you're doing here

[prisma kraken]

i'm just saying they're the only ones you can simply compare as you just did, and arguing about the accuracy of your comparison is a fool's errand

[oblique hollow]

For a given input, there is a best recipe. However, that recipe is never in isolation

So its not just one recipe, its a set of recipes

[frail light]

If we are comparing two things whatever they may be objectively you eliminate as many things that are the same from your consideration so why are you making it more difficult by changing the parameters for one to make it different than the other

[oblique hollow]

you could now of course brute force all paths and rule out "yeah, this recipe appears the most in all combos so it must be the best for the product it makes"

But thats probabilistic, not absolute

[prisma kraken]

out of curiosity, have people done the 'max out every component producible' calculation? like i know its been done for max turbomotor & ads's in isolation, but everything all at once?

[frail light]

i have and it uses all the pure recipes

[wind spade]

yeah, but the things you eliminate must make sense

you can't eliminate "does a person have mk3 or mk1 miners" because every miner needs different amount of MW. And if you're comparing setup with 10 miners and 2 miners, it matters if it's 10 MW vs 50 MW or 60 MW vs 300 MW

[oblique hollow]

everything all at once results in a local maximum. And you may not even need maximum Turbomotors

[wind spade]

there's "max sink points" which is basically what you want

unless you want to max everything you want to produce equally

[prisma kraken]

i'm not even sure how i'd define that problem, tbh

[oblique hollow]

Once you have your 4000 and 1000 of each elevator part, they effectively become useless

[wind spade]

max sink points is indeed solved. And if you define your problem, it usually is simple enough to solve

[frail light]

you eliminate as many as possible so it is a 1 to 1 comparison so you dont have 10 miners vs 2 miners you have 2 miners vs 1 miner as you need a miner for sulfer and coal vs just for coal

so you have 1 compacted coal vs i coal energy cost to energy production

[prisma kraken]

has it truly been solved, or was the assumption being 'max ADS's and that's your answer?

[wind spade]

it was a random number example. But it still matters and can't be eliminated

[oblique hollow]

the math for compacted coal for coal power nets you different results if you assume "more power for less coal" or "less power for more things"

[frail light]

it can by once again doing a direct comparison of 1 compacted coal to 1 coal energy required to make the product at the same clock speed

[wind spade]

this is maxed sink points + power needed for it + 100 GW extra for things like trains and stuff #math-and-meta message

[frosty owl]

If you want to maximize all items, you can just literally do that in SFTools adding each one as a "maximized" production goal
The tool outputs the solution that makes the most of each, with each at the same rate

[frail light]

or just look at the wiki where it states cost to make in mw and then how much mw it produces

[wind spade]

example (random numbers, not exactly your example):

• production line A needs 20 MW + 4 miners
• production line B needs 40 MW + 1 miner
  you want to compare those two

with mk1 miners (5 MW): A = 20+4x5 = 40 MW; B = 40+1x5 = 45 MW; A is cheaper
with mk3 miners (30 MW): A = 20+4x30 = 140 MW; B = 40+1x30 = 70 MW; B is cheaper

see why miner mk matters?

[oblique hollow]

Is this for compacted coal vs coal in coal power plants?

[prisma kraken]

i'm not sure that it can be done with a greedy algorithm

[wind spade]

the cost to make on wiki is average when you tap the whole map and overclock everything, so is subjective (as not all players overclock everything and tap whole map)

[frail light]

yes but stop swapping mk in that use the same at each mk level and see oh at mk1 this is better at mk2 this is better and at mk3 this is better

[frail light]

not in the box where it states at 60p/m

[wind spade]

whole wiki algorithm is based on subjective basis, you can't use it for your objective comparison

that's why it's getting removed anyway

[oblique hollow]

we put that stuff on the wiki and found nobody really cares about it anyway

[prisma kraken]

and comparing WP btw wiki and sftools isn't a great idea

[frail light]

yes

[frail light]

i haven't used sf tool for any of these calculations

[wind spade]

I'm using the same mk for each case

I'm just saying that based on which same mk I use, I get different results

[frail light]

for comparison sakes at mk2 when you unlock fuel power then do you calculations then

[prisma kraken]

they just use different calculations as baselines, you shouldn't compare the metrics together

[oblique hollow]

#1084202981639061594 message
Compacted coal math

[frail light]

i haven't

[wind spade]

and that's already subjective because you picked an option 🤷‍♂️

[frail light]

arguably since the oil extractors are mk1 therefore you must use mk1 miners for all comparisons with oil

[wind spade]

lol no

[frail light]

its only fair to keep it at the same level

[oblique hollow]

Oil extractor Mk 2 is the Resource Well Extractor

[wind spade]

that's assuming that they even have levels (which they don't) and that equal levels of machines are equal in all parameters (which they aren't)

[frail light]

then do it at all levels a oil extractor vs mk1 mk2 and mk3 and see what it looks like

[wind spade]

exactly. Then also vs 1-250% clock speed and vs different purities

and you get into a rabbit hole of gazillions of options which all can have different outcome

[frail light]

as then you get the full scope and realize that mw input to output nuclear is the best

[wind spade]

best in mw input to output. Not just best

so it's not objectively best. It's just objectively best in one caregory

[oblique hollow]

nuclear is "best" because its less machines than 100 fuel gens.
But some people simply hate waste and the complexity of nuclear and the time investment

[frail light]

not really as they are ratios for mw in over and underclocking so you only need to do each calculation at 100 to 150 percent

then you have your ratios and can use that

[wind spade]

the ratios use exponential formula. It's not possible to generalise based on part of it. Not to mention that 100 to 150 is already 500000 options (4 decimals)

[frail light]

yeah and if you can find 2 point on a parobolic formula you can find the formula

[wind spade]

the formula is known

but you still need to apply it to all cases

[frail light]

then why bother doing all the calcualtions at each overclocking level you can graph it and see the overlap

[wind spade]

the calculations are applying the formula

[frail light]

input into a graphing calculator and see the 2 lines

[wind spade]

it's not two lines tho

how do you graph "complexity"?

[frail light]

it is for a comparison of 2 items

[frail light]

time per a building average

[wind spade]

that's subjective

[oblique hollow]

thats a terrible metric

[frail light]

its a great metric

[oblique hollow]

because it shows "least time wasted on building a machine" ?

[frail light]

compexity can be simply number of inputs and building

[wind spade]

again, subjective

[oblique hollow]

so i can "optimize for least time spent doing stuff in a video game" ?

[deft lichen]

both chess and Satisfactory alternate recipes are a solved game if you're sufficiently insane

[frail light]

because it is subjective to each persons building speed

[wind spade]

(anything you pick is subjective btw, all answers are wrong, it's a trick question. Complexity is defined by the player, so it can't be taken into account; so any analysis you make is by definition not objective as it doesn't include complexity)

[median heath]

I think we should remove build speed as a variable so we can make an objective comparison. 😁

[oblique hollow]

and how do you properly convey to people what the numbers mean?
just tell them "lowest is best"?

[frail light]

we aren't playing golf

[oblique hollow]

Then how do you properly apply the metric of "time per building average"

[frail light]

pick a building constructed count objects placed and then divide by time and do this for all construcion completed so far and tada

[oblique hollow]

and now in english please

i understood none of that

[frail light]

or just really look at objects in game and hours played and solution

[wind spade]

(not to mention any of that isn't objective)

[frail light]

i did say it was a subjective measurement

[wind spade]

if you apply subjective measurement to something, then the result can no longer be objective 🤔

[frail light]

its complexity it is subjective by default

[wind spade]

and given that this discussion was based on "X is objectively best recipe", I find it weird to use a subjective metric to prove that

[frail light]

hence why i was keeping it out of my objective analysis

[wind spade]

which is a subjective decision

[oblique hollow]

i think you should follow through on your analysis and then show some results.
Disussing data is easier than the theory behind it

[wind spade]

aka - "if we ignore this, X is best"

[frail light]

no because in order to have objective data you can't have subjective ideas in it so from a purely mw and resources used standpoint as you can't say that oil is complicated or not for any one person as some people struggle with biomass burners and that is all subjective

[frail light]

yeah if we remove the human element from this wow we can do a proper analysis

[median heath]

The fact you have to clarify the standpoint at the beginning of the comparison inherently makes the result subjective.

The fact you can't see that, means for the past couple hours you haven't understood what subjective means.
Which in turn indicates this has all been a giant waste of time 😂

[frail light]

those are the only objective things you can measure

everything else is subjective

[wind spade]

so...
"if we remove human preferences, we can tell what is best for humans"? 😛

[frail light]

bow to your ai overlords

[oblique hollow]

too bad that the subjective things have a lot of weight.
So the objective analysis is done in an abstract vacuum

[frail light]

humans enjoy alcohol as a whole and yet objectivly it is bad for us....

[prisma kraken]

All hail ADA

[frail light]

which is why you can hate or love recipes even if objectively they are better

[oblique hollow]

If you maximize your hydric acid intake then it is also objectively bad for you

[deft lichen]

if it was objective then you can't say it's better

because the concept of better is in itself subjective

plus an entirely objective analysis is useless, I play the game subjectively, so I need an analysis that caters to my subjective POV

[wind spade]

the only "objectively better" recipe could be:

• same machine
• same input materials (and same /min values)
• same product (but more /min than base)

(or variations on this)

[frail light]

how objectively if something outperforms in every category then subjectively you can like it or not but objectively it is better. if it doesn't perform better in every catagory then it becomes subjective

[wind spade]

(and even there you could argue that having less /min fits nicely into a different recipe or something)

[deft lichen]

yeah but there's no such recipe so what's the point

[wind spade]

it outpreforms in every category from category list that you picked, excluding those you ignored

[wind spade]

see here

[frail light]

you can't have a objective list with subjective things inside.... that's like saying that obviously humans are better than aliens because you don't see any aliens

[oblique hollow]

cast screw is objectively better than default, given that you posses literally no other alt recipes and never will

which doesnt apply to most of the players

[deft lichen]

even the evidently superior alt recipes are only superior because of a good subjective tradeoff, such as encased pipes or solid steel

[oblique hollow]

because screws are hideous enough to scare away anyone who uses them

[wind spade]

yeah but ignoring things is subjective on it's own, because you chose to ignore them, so the resulting list is no longer objective

[deft lichen]

brb going to centralize 40k screws/min

[frail light]

it is objectively better than default

[wind spade]

and that's another problem - comparing recipes in vacuum

[oblique hollow]

until you get steel rod alt

[wind spade]

in vacuum maybe. Not ingame

[deft lichen]

looks like you have no idea what objective means, no need to waste time discussing this any longer

[median heath]

That's 2 of us who have now drawn this conclusion.

[frail light]

objective quote "(of a person or their judgment) not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts." IE things that are immutable

[wind spade]

objectively better means:

• no matter what parameter you pick, A gets better results than B
• parameters can be e.g. power consumption, per minute production, ratio between input and output, relevance for given place on the map (based on that place's resources), relevance for player's goals (what they want to produce and in which amounts), complexity of the build, player's preference to exclude some resources from production lines, etc, etc.

[frail light]

so you can't have subjective things like how fast you build included in any objective list

[wind spade]

list isn't objective if you decide what goes on it

[prisma kraken]

those numbers are really tricky to arrive at, like your inventory size alone affects the speed of building, as does your experience level, whether you follow no-clip build rules, etc

[frail light]

if i include for example number of building on the list that isn't complexity and it is objective but some people think that isn't enough even though to add more is subjective

[oblique hollow]

"personal feelings or opinions...."
not actions. like "time taken to build"

[frail light]

that was about complexity

as a catagory used earlier

[wind spade]

if you decide what goes on the list, then the list is subjective, as it is (by your definition) influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts

[frail light]

if I include every non subjective element on the list then what more would you like.... for me to include political opinions as well?

[wind spade]

if you want to compare things objectively, you need to include everything

(which obviously is impossible to do)

[frail light]

then we would need some form of polling for every subjective item

like how hard do you find building with manufacures on a scale of 100 to 1

[wind spade]

f.e. some people may fear the purple HOR color, so HOR isn't best fuel path for them

[oblique hollow]

which is funny

[prisma kraken]

is that really a thing????

[wind spade]

I mean I learn about a new phobia like every day, I wouldn't be surprised that fear of given color is a thing

[frail light]

or they build with the non visible pipes

[wind spade]

you still see the icon in recipe picking and opening machine/pipe UI

[frail light]

Porphyrophobia is an extreme fear of the color purple. It's a type of chromophobia, which is a fear of colors. People with porphyrophobia may experience severe anxiety when they see or think of purple in any form, or it might be a reaction to specific shades of purple.

[oblique hollow]

In that case they may never even pass oil production

[frail light]

but you only need to do it once...

[oblique hollow]

oh wait... default fuel recipe

[wind spade]

indeed

[oblique hollow]

than one only makes orange fuel and blue resin

[wind spade]

for some people that may be one more time than they can handle 🤷‍♂️

[frail light]

wait they might see it in their periphery and be unable to open any refinory

[wind spade]

(and it was just a random example, but it was to show that you just can't make objective claims about something so subjective)

[prisma kraken]

or just build in the monochromactic swamp

[wind spade]

f.e. I've recently found there's a "fear of items with holes"

[frail light]

because everything humans experience is subjective you can take anything and make it subjective regardless of it objectively being true for example the sky is blue but people who are blue green colorblind would never know that except if told

[prisma kraken]

there's a sexist joke in there somewhere 😉

[frail light]

peg boards my nemesis

[oblique hollow]

If objectivity is so easy why haven't we found the objectively best energy source IRL yet ( sarcasm )

[frail light]

objectively it is nuclear power so far. Subjectively to many people have to many fears about the what if it goes bad so we go based off of subjective opinion

[wind spade]

it's not objectively. Some people hate storing waste

or don't want to deal with super complex processes

[frail light]

IRL.....

[oblique hollow]

IRL nuclear is NOT objectively best.

[frail light]

where we go down to bedrock and encase it in so much material the planet will die before we see any waste

[frail light]

for anything i can think of.... so if you have something i am not aware of please share

[wind spade]

how can a non-renewable power source be objectively best? 🤔

[oblique hollow]

the best source would be the sun itself

[frail light]

fair but that is nuclear power

[prisma kraken]

dyson sphere!!!

[oblique hollow]

i see nuclear i assume fission, pardon

[frail light]

because nothing is truly renewable due to entropy

[wind spade]

well sure, but we're assuming "renewable" as "doesn't rely on finite material"

[frail light]

energy is finite so one could argue it is a finite material..... as we have shown materials can be converted into energy and back

by we i mean it royally i was not a part of that expirement

[wind spade]

this is just arguing for the sake of arguing, you're very much aware what I am talking about

current uranium reserves are expected to be depleted by the end of the century, hard to justify a power source that will only last 70 years as best

[oblique hollow]

Sun is expected to outlast civilization afaik

[frail light]

it is a pet peeve of mine when people argue for renewable energy saying things like its better for the environment and there is no harmful impact of it at all and while you may have not said that I may have let that irritation show

According to the NEA, identified uranium resources total 5.5 million metric tons, and an additional 10.5 million metric tons remain undiscovered—a roughly 230-year supply at today's consumption rate in total.Jan 26, 2009

[wind spade]

I'm not saying any power source is best, as each has drawbacks and advantages

I'm just saying that if you want to mark one as best (even subjectively), it probably should be some that will last more than a hundred years

[frail light]

not if humans have anything to say about that we will take the sun with us

[oblique hollow]

how

[wind spade]

"undiscovered uranium sources" sounds weird

how do we know about them if they are undiscovered 😛

[frail light]

technically with a breeder reactor we can outlast the sun...

[frail light]

well extrapolating based off of current mines and certain radioactive areas

[frail light]

throw asteroids and the planet into the star would work

[oblique hollow]

do you know how many asteroids and planets are needed to annihilate the sun itself

[frail light]

one or or two depending on heavy metal content for planets and the whole Oort cloud if we only threw asteroids. we don't need to annihalate it just ruin its ratio and start making it fuse iron

so don't throw Jupiter at the sun that will just make it stronger

[wind spade]

this is getting very much #off-topic-general

[frail light]

at best im private off topic

[ember fractal]

Plutonium fuel rods are best

[wind spade]

best how? 😛

[median heath]

Bionuclear Fuel Rod when?

[frail light]

they create the most radiation of all fuel rodsso they win there

[sand epoch]

🍿

[vapid gorge]

Please tell me this isn’t the same convo I scrolled passed 3hrs ago?

[median heath]

It is 😂

But thankfully it is over.

[prisma kraken]

does anyone know off the top of their head the sequence of steps needed to unlock charcoal & biocoal w/o selecting the alt recipes?

do those come free with the compact coal unlock?

[ember fractal]

i don't remember

[weak raft]

what im gonna do?

the tractor its not even here

sometime this game sucks

[frosty owl]

We can parse with somewhat decent accuracy the general distribution/amounts of materials within the planet

Eg: earth is X kg; it has about Y kg of this well known element, so we can infer that there is at least Z amount of element the other element decades from.
Once you have a solid enough starting point, you can make pretty accurate guesses

[weak raft]

can someone help me i have problem with this for months

i dont want to delete my world for this

[frosty owl]

We don't know how to help with unknown issues. Don't ask to ask, ask :)

[weak raft]

cant you se?

the vehicles its front of me on the map but its not there

[frosty owl]

Ah, multi-channel questioning...
Please let's leave the convo to a single channel ^^

[weak raft]

but where shall i uplink the picture then? its only here

[oblique notch]

Screenshots.

Anyways, load your save onto SCIM. Find the tuck, right click and change pos. And change it's z Value to somewhere high up (or check thr z value of your player and go a bit above that)

Resave and download and load that version up and your truck will be back

[frosty owl]

#1038092680493801533 is the "main" channel for questions and, appropriately, allows to add images

[noble timber]

We have reactors that can run on material other than Uranium as well though. For example, Thorium salt reactors which are both more fuel-efficient than Uranium and we also have more Thorium in the earth to use. That 90 years until depleted Uranium also doesn't take into account re-enriching the fuel. Also, if we get Fusion to work we will basically never run out of fuel for as long as we will be around.

Also doesn't take into account stockpiles held by countries as well - the UK has enough plutonium on hand to power to country for 20 years

[fair mica]

Uranium is like 12.% of all energy produced(including ships planes and cars)

Most of the things are hydrocarbonates

[maiden arch]

i'm having a stroke for about 30 min already....trying to figure out how to split and merge one line of 5 RPlates and one line of 2.5 RPlates into 2 lines of 3 RPlates and one line of 1.5 RPlates.....so basically turn 2 line 7.5 items into 3 line 7.5 items.....only if i could split/divide by 10......anyone willing to help me?

[noble timber]

What are you splitting them for?

If they are to go into machines you are better off just manifolding

[wind spade]

you can just do a manifold

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

[maiden arch]

they are going into three assemblers which are gonna make modular frames, one of them will be underclocked to 50%

[wind spade]

yeah, then manifold

[maiden arch]

okay, it will ofc startup slow, but at least i don't have to do crazy math now

[wind spade]

yeah it's almost never worth it

[frosty owl]

"Easy" way to split into any number N (N=13 in example, a very "nasty" number to split into)

1. Split to the closest biggest multiple of 2 or 3 (2x2x2x2 = 16)
2. Merge all "excess" back on the original input belt (before the first splitter). For the example, merge 3 outputs back (16-3=13)
3. Make sure the belt between the merger and the first splitter can handle the extra throughput you've added
4. Optimize the beltwork if you wish. Otherwise you're done

[true junco]

With that few machines involved it wont start slow if the RIP making machines are turned on and fill their output buffers while you build the machines for the SMFs.

[delicate chasm]

In the current build, is it more efficient or the same efficiency, between the two options?
A. 2x water extractors @ 75%
B. 1x water extractor @ 150%

[wind spade]

power efficiency: A
space efficiency: B
any other efficiency: equal

[delicate chasm]

+1 internet, thank you for that. Exactly what I needed to know. :)

[terse stone]

Working on a location optimization for factory planning. Here is a test showing best locations for a factory that needs 1200/min Iron (darker is better). Combinations of pure, normal, impure to add up to 1200/min have been taking into consideration. "Best" is ranked by lowest cumulative sum of distances to nearest resource nodes that add up >= to the desired rate.

[wind spade]

I wonder if it would give even better results if you somehow made it so that if it has more resources nearby or even other types of resources, it's counted as a negative

that way you won't "waste" the great places to build for just iron things

[terse stone]

You could keep track of things as a cost function, where proximity to iron lowers cost, and proximity to other resources increases the cost. And then plot the heatmap based on cast value. That seems pretty doable.

[wind spade]

yeah, I just wonder how good would those results be

[terse stone]

Here's a test looking for best spots for 12,000/min Iron. No surprise it favors the desert. Next I'm going to add search parameters for multiple resource types for factory planning.

[oblique hollow]

Iron Alloy vs Pure Iron vs Default will be interesting

[terse stone]

You bring up a good point about factoring in proximity to water as a resource input (i.e. Pure Iron recipe). This is currently not setup to handle water

[terse stone]

Location optimization test for a 240/min Motor factory. Darker area are better in terms of proximity to copper, iron, coal nodes for the requirement resource rates.

Best selected location:
[-148000, 343000]

193    -110588    -135153    iron    pure    780
120    -47085    -141055    iron    pure    780
16    -44869    -139480    iron    pure    780
26    -37614    -142250    iron    pure    780
17    -43382    -136820    iron    pure    780
262    -186902    -118340    iron    normal    600
202    -190787    -117690    iron    normal    600
263    -187933    -114624    iron    normal    600
274    -227411    -118862    iron    pure    780
252    -250080    -126363    iron    pure    780
264    -163354    -192097    copper    normal    600
195    -96801    -135276    copper    normal    600
251    -166357    -129628    copper    normal    600
411    -26898    -145469    copper    pure    780
192    -99604    -146823    coal    normal    600
50    -102630    -140320    coal    normal    600
51    -107739    -130640    coal    normal    600
49    -110109    -129160    coal    normal    600```

[median heath]

Isn't this entirely subjective to which recipes you select?

[terse stone]

Absolutely, this was a test targeting a "real use case" of planning for a specific 240/m Motor factory (using the basic recipe). The script here takes in a list of resource types and corresponding resource rates that you need and it scans the map for best placement to the nodes that you need.

[obtuse fable]

Does anyone have a spreadsheet/database they use for working out materials needed for buildings?

[oblique hollow]

the ingame to-do list

for machines that is

foundations, walls etc.... i always just guesstimate that because designs can vary as you build

[median heath]

Yeah, going to the build menu and just telling it how many of each building you want will give you an exact list of all needed materials and amounts.

[deft lichen]

SFTools tell you how many buildings you need to build a given factory, just copy that over to the to-do-list

[oblique notch]

OK this is a cool tool

Especially if you can adjust what resources/parts/amounts you are using

[deft lichen]

I've been waiting for a tool like this one. Global resource costs aren't valuable for players who don't plan on utilizing 100% of a given resource, local resource cost is much more important

[oblique notch]

Yeah
Is @pulsar stratus on here? Let's get this integrated lol

[oblique notch]

What did you write this in? Love to take a look at the source

[median heath]

English 😉

[deft lichen]

you can't know that

[median heath]

"Location optimization test for a..."
Seems all English to me

[deft lichen]

that's not the source

[median heath]

I have to do coding projects today but I am procrastinating 😭

[deft lichen]

currently doing educated guesswork in GDScript

[pulsar stratus]

🙂

[deft lichen]

sounds like a 'yes' to me

[median heath]

Guesswork? In coding?
Are you insane?

😛

Jace certainly has never guessed when coding anything for Satis.
Ever.

[nocturne ridge]

if you write code by changing things until you get the desired result that's considered bad practice, but if you write a program to change things for you until you get the desired result that's called machine learning and pays triple

[deft lichen]

tbf I tried and it just worked first try, so I may or may not be insane

[median heath]

Not to get too #off-topic-general in here, but my least favorite part of coding is when the compiler throws zero errors but the program isn't working...
Because it means everything I wrote was legal, but somehow I now have to figure out which part of it is "wrong" 😭

[terse stone]

I wrote this in python in a Jupyter notebook. More than happy to clean up the notebook to share (calling all data science geeks to make the code more efficient than a bunch of for loops 😁). Also thank you to @pulsar stratus for providing the raw json list of resource node data!

[oblique notch]

Yeeees. Yes

[oblique notch]

Uuugh I hate Jupyter 😜
But even. If you don't want to clean it up and just send it to me raw I'd be fine with that

(And nothing against anyone using Jupyter, I'm just a dev snob 😅 )

And if you really want it efficient... you don't want a data scientist to clean it up :p you want a dev to 😏

[terse stone]

Sure, DM me and I'll send it over when I get a chance

[vapid gorge]

Tut tut 😛

[flat loom]

is the alt recipe Instant scrap better than the normal way?

[placid oyster]

yeah its more bauxite efficient

instant scrap or electrode scrap + sloppy are tied for most efficient on bauxite

so if thats what you need go for that, otherwise default is a lot simpler

[vapid gorge]

Like lino said - but depending on location and how much bauxite you’re doing sloppy+ electrode is simpler

[gray flower]

lovelyy alumin

[placid oyster]

yeah alt recipes are all about tradeoffs and your enviroment

you might want more efficiency, faster output, less buildings, fewer resource types, etc

you can mix and match alts to achieve your desired results

[median heath]

Scrap has 2 methods that are tied for "best".

[ember fractal]

I have 2 pipes of oil - one is carrying 300, the other is carrying 600
I have two factories consuming 450 oil each
what's the best way for me to feed those factories?

Is this a good way to do it?
Arrow in the middle is a valve

[wind spade]

Best way would be to have one factory consume 600 and other one 300

Second best is what you built but without valve

[median heath]

Yeah, scrap the valve.

[ember fractal]

hmm... what issues do you foresee the valve causing?

[mystic moon]

Valves can only be set to 256 possible values

[ember fractal]

it won't be set to anything, i just want to prevent flow from the 300 line to the 600 line

could use unpowered pump i guess

[wind spade]

why tho?

that's resolved by the 600 line having 600

fluids in general work best if you let them flow wherever they want

and just loop pipes at the end

[ember fractal]

hmm ok

will give it a try

[wind spade]

but again, best is to just not mix the two

if you have X on belt/in pipe, make a factory that uses X

[ember fractal]

aesthetics tho
need symmetrical factories

[wind spade]

3 modules at 300

[ember fractal]

even numbers tho

[wind spade]

or just separate the two modules so that they no longer are connected

[true junco]

300 is an even number tho... lol

[vapid gorge]

Set one side to clock at 200?
Continue the manifold on the 600 pipe in front of the 300 manifold and even it out?
You have many options

[unreal spire]

The valves are supposed to work intuitively, but they tend to act 'wonky' or so I've heard. I've never personally experienced this, and I use them occasionally, but the general consensus is to avoid them.

[median heath]

All? 😛

[warm wren]

So a VOP to sink excess water to concrete made water back up... Any suggestions?

[vapid gorge]

without images impossible to tell

[warm wren]

[vapid gorge]

are there supposed to be valves on it?

my understanding is you're best off copying the VOP or VIP from the manual precisely

[warm wren]

It's presently humming along perfectly... but I left it alone and it backed up I just rebuilt the whole pipe system juuuust in case I did something strange by mistake...

[wind spade]

Shouldn't that work without VOP? Just all byproduct water is put to concrete

[warm wren]

Wasteful! But yeah I may do that if this doesn't work.

[vapid gorge]

Wait - are you just sending waste water out or you've attached this to a system that's consuming waste water?

[warm wren]

I have byproduct water going to back around to the sulfuric acid, but I produce too much water, so the extra goes to concrete

[wind spade]

How is it wasteful? There's no difference between byproduct water and normal water, if some other setup needs water, it doesn't matter if you give it byproduct or fresh water

[vapid gorge]

is the byproduct from the sulfur being consumed in a nuclear set up? Cause that should be the same consumed as produced right?

[warm wren]

Nope, the fert uranium step is producing water byproduct which I'm using to bring back around to the sulfuric

[vapid gorge]

... what's the sulfuric feeding?

[warm wren]

It's a loop, sulfuric is feeding the fert uranium, fert uranium is making water that comes back around

[vapid gorge]

you're doing nitric acid somewhere else?

[warm wren]

Nope, nitric is over here too

[vapid gorge]

I'm looking at sulfuric acid and nitric acid in that combo and I'm pretty sure together they use the same as the waste?

3 water per 3 nitric
5 water per 5 sulfuric

fertile uranium uses 3 nitric and 5 sulfuric and outputs 8 water

[warm wren]

Okay then

14.4 machines producing fert uranium produces 576 water. Sulfuric acid takes 360 water, I have 216 water left over which I am sinking via VOP into concrete, it keeps backing up and I can't figure out why it was doing that.

[vapid gorge]

use it for nitric?

[oblique hollow]

you can set the valve limit higher if needed

so more water can pass through in a big wave

[warm wren]

Shouldn't need to do that, but maybe set it to 230ish.

[vapid gorge]

fluid transport is AVERGAGING.

if you ever dip below the max then on avg you will back up right?

[oblique hollow]

you should consider it, to account for possible delays of the mk 2 pipe switching direction

[warm wren]

230 it is then Just gotta turn up the concrete machine slightly

[vapid gorge]

and fluid comes out in chunks with production cycles.

[vapid gorge]

if it only outputs what the acid doesn't use set it to 600

[warm wren]

When I did that, the acide got starved for water

[oblique hollow]

funny

[vapid gorge]

problem with the build then?

Like I said, I would avoid using VOP or VIP if at all possible, use the excess water for the nitric in a perfect cycle

[oblique hollow]

that means the VOP wasnt tall enough whatever to act as overflow junction

[warm wren]

Screen shots above, should I build it up another level?

[oblique hollow]

you can if you want

if the lower exit of this thing (the one going to acid) goes up vertically, that makes the fluid swell up inside the VOP aswell

lowering the threshold until fluid moves to the overflow side

[warm wren]

It seems to be working since I rebuilt it... maybe I had a wrong pipe somewhere or something silly...

[frosty owl]

Yeah, that's a neat spin on the usual 1:1 fluid loop, a 1:2 fluid loop ^^

[vapid gorge]

Weird but cool!

[frosty owl]

Tbf, it's more challenging than it might sound.
You have to make sure that there'll be enough water to keep at least one of the fluid productions happy, or the byproduct water will stop completely due to only one Acid receiving water and being made while the other production keeps on starving

[oblique hollow]

hence why using fresh water and recycled water is so important

if you have one fresh source for stuff, it can kickstart itself again if it runs dry

[frosty owl]

But then you have to either deal with prioritization or deal with some of the by-water separately
I think this is just a good usecase for buffers (give enough fresh water to start off and the system won't ever lack fluid; add enough empty buffer space and the by-water won't even pile up to machines)

[terse stone]

Another test, factory location optimization for resources needed for 480/min Aluminum Plates (default recipe). Darker is closer to the copper, quartz, bauxite, coal nodes. Highlighted spots are the best (closest grouped) nodes found.

[placid oyster]

ohhh, you said thats a jupyter notebook, right?

[terse stone]

Yes it is

[placid oyster]

Could you share it? It seems like a useful tool

[vapid gorge]

That is so overcomplicated

while at the same time doesn't take into account other productions you might need next to it

[placid oyster]

If you already know which production lines you need close then you can build close to that

[vapid gorge]

I doubt it takes into account changes in terrain that makes building or logistic annoying by the pattern of hte colour too

[placid oyster]

It looks great to have a general guess

I take half an hour looking at the map at least

[vapid gorge]

.. Just use SCIM. Show the resources you need

[placid oyster]

Yeah, but you still have to do this what-is-closest-to-everything work in your head

This serves like a good first guess

[vapid gorge]

I'm looking at the dark spots on that example and most of the 'optimal' suggestions are on terrain that would be a giant pain in the ass.

you can literally just turn on the resources you need on SCIM and go 'oh there's the three nodes I need close together'

[placid oyster]

You can use the dark spot as a first guess, and look for suitable terrain near

[terse stone]

Working to clean it up and share it with Anthor as well. DM me so I don't forget.

[placid oyster]

sure thanks

[terse stone]

I've found it's sometimes hard to review the SCIM map if you turn on 4/5 resource nodes of all purity types. This tool gives the user a location to start looking in as well as the specific nodes that we ranked "best" to consider.

[primal flicker]

Which alts are the "worst" by WP standards?
And do they ever shine in a particular production niche?

[frosty owl]

That's the thing: imagine being able to overlap "heat maps" generated on request to the map on SCIM.
Eg: heatmap for X iron plates/min; then heatmap for Wire/min and so on at preference

One has limited use, but being able to toggle and edit them could offer quite some interesting data

[wind spade]

WP is very subjective metric 🤔

[primal flicker]

I mean, the calculator automatically chooses the lowest WP recipes, right? Just wondering what the opposite extreme looks like....

[wind spade]

calculator doesn't use the same WP algorithm as wiki, but similar one indeed

[mossy crest]

So, I've got a nice recipe for a computers factory that generates a lot of fuel as a byproduct. Decided to make a fuel/turbofuel factory out of it and came up with this idea.

With the amount of Turbofuel I have here, I could power a whopping 36 Fuel Generators. But I was wondering, would it be possible to package all the turbofuel and feed it through a smart splitter where one end converts it back to liquid for the generators and the overflow unpackages it into a storage container? That would be awesome.

Actually I could probably smart split the regular fuel to do that too, so anytime I'm not capped out on power I'll be saving the excess packaged fuel/turbofuel.

[oblique hollow]

fuel is a byproduct because you manually entered it and likely just maximized for packaged turbo?

[mossy crest]

Yes, I played around with the calculator for a long time to get a Computers recipe I liked.

[oblique hollow]

ah.. default rubber and plastic

[mossy crest]

I feel like that's incredibly efficient given the inputs and the total number of output/buildings/power.

[oblique hollow]

yeah those tends to output a lot of heavy oil

[deft lichen]

you're getting ugly numbers in the entire setup, is that intentional?

[mossy crest]

Yes, that's intentional. I could maybe round up if I wanted, but I usually just underclock each of the machines slightly.

[oblique hollow]

30.938 computers is odd

but then again caterium computer is usually best used in groups of 4 manufacturers

[mossy crest]

My strategy was to start with this in the calculator and then work backwards.

[oblique hollow]

could just use 8 manufacturers and thats it

7.5 assembly director systems only need 15 computers/min

[mossy crest]

After playing around with this endgame recipe a bit to make it as efficient as possible, the total number of computers I ended up needing is 30.938.

The threshold for those endgame recipes is to finish the final phase in 8 hours.

[oblique hollow]

if i trace all paths... you only need 18.75 computers total for all that

[mossy crest]

Using slightly different alternate recipes I presume?

I went through and disabled all the F tier ones from this analysis:
https://www.reddit.com/r/SatisfactoryGame/comments/xutbq3/phase_4_alternate_recipes_ranking_w_spreadsheet/

Except I left the residual oil/plastic/rubber I think.

[oblique hollow]

disabling recycled plastic and rubber because some list thinks they suck?

those 2 recipes easily cut down your oil demand because you basically turn heavy oil directly into rubber and plastic

[mossy crest]

No I didn't disable them. And that's one of the many reasons why.

[oblique hollow]

lmao that analysis puts coated cable of all things above insulated and quickwire cable

[mossy crest]

Well the reasoning is all there. Occasionally I still switch things out to simplify a factory design.

Coated Cable still D tier too.

[oblique hollow]

the path they chose in that analysis is one of many

since you are nowhere near the numbers they set, you have a lot more leeway

[mossy crest]

Yes I don't stick to their recommendations 100%. More of a guideline.

I adjust based on resource locations or to make simpler recipes all the time.

[wind spade]

heavily recommended to never follow any online "tier list". They are all very subjective and usually don't agree much between themselves. Not to mention that all recipes are subjective and some people may like different recipes

[mossy crest]

It's more the analysis with this one I prefer. It's not entirely subjective because of the metrics established in the introduction.

[oblique hollow]

either way: if you wanna really make a use of that heavy oil, i would just use it to make some plastic/rubber

[mossy crest]

Why plastic? Fuel byproducts sink for more points and can be used for power pretty much anywhere.

[oblique hollow]

fuel byproducts sink for more points... what?

[wind spade]

the analysis is very much flawed. How do you compare "raw resources needed" for every combination of recipes?

(there's 2^150 combinations, roughly... so around 45 zeroes 😄 )

[formal lynx]

pure copper in f tier?? i love that recipe

[mossy crest]

https://satisfactory.fandom.com/wiki/AWESOME_Sink
Rubber sinks for 60, plastic for 75, packaged fuel for 270.

[oblique hollow]

you need like 300 plastic. you can make all of that from just the heavy oil byproduct that you get from rubber

theres better things to sink than packaged fuel of all things

and as for power: you can just burn the fuel on the spot

and transport the power via cable

[wind spade]

(and yeah there's a lot of combinations that are impossible to use, but even if it was just 1/1000 of combinations that are legit... you're still beyond realms of possible analysis of all options... not to mention that you can use multiple recipes per item in pretty much any ratio)

[mossy crest]

Again, I adjust recipes all the time for various reasons. I just needed a simple outline from start->finish and that was the one I chose for endgame goals, and I work backwards from there trying to hit the phase 4 in 8 hours threshold.

[oblique hollow]

tbh then just build 28 fuel gens and keep the rest of the fuel for jetpack or whatever

the power is far more valuable

you dont need any conveyor splitter stuff to overflow fluids

[mossy crest]

That's precisely why I started this conversation by mentioning the package->smart splitter->unpackage idea so that I can have all the extra fuel that isn't consumed for power.

[oblique hollow]

just build a fluid overflow junction

[mossy crest]

That'd work too TBH, thank you.

[oblique hollow]

use mk 2 pipes for the fuel

then you have around 50-ish fuel overflow

which you can then package

[wind spade]

speaking about manual... shouldn't valves be removed from VOP (or at least said to be set to 100%?)

now that we know how bad they are and how little values they can actually have?

[oblique hollow]

if you wanna precisely or sorta precisely limit output at each stage... no

you can do whatever you want with those valves

i just set them to something a bit above what the machines on the other end need and it works fine

[wind spade]

but if manual recommends "set them to what you consume there", then there's a high chance that the actual value set in the game will be lower due to 255 possible values of valves 🤔

[oblique hollow]

i never say "set to what you consume"

i say "Set to desired Flow per Pipe"

[wind spade]

well that translates to what I said in most cases 🤔

[oblique hollow]

what you desire is up to interpretation 😛

[wind spade]

(or add a page about valves being bad 😄 )

is the valve even required in the VOP? from pure logical point of view it seems it would work without them

[oblique hollow]

can be whatever you want it to be

[spring apex]

mr.plumber can you fix my pipes please 🙂

[oblique hollow]

no but i can help you fix them yourself

[spring apex]

sounds good

I've rebuilt the entire pipe(s)

rebuilt all pumps

removed buffers

head lift is good on every pump

all water extractors have power

[wind spade]

removed valves? pipes looped at the end?

[spring apex]

5 extractors -> mk2 pipe -> feeding 6 blenders

do I have to remove every valve?

[wind spade]

no reason to use valves

unless you're doing some weird things like VOP junctions

[oblique hollow]

so then whats the issue

[spring apex]

the blenders are not getting enough water

extractors produce 600 p/m and the blenders need 100 each

so it's right on the limit

[nocturne ridge]

are the junctions going to the blenders below the blenders?

[spring apex]

yes

[nocturne ridge]

this might be the problem

when one blender fills itself it takes all the fluid it needs at once and lowers the fluid level in the whole pipeline so no other blender can get fluid until the pipe refills to the top

[wind spade]

feeding from above is usually more stable

[nocturne ridge]

or so they say

[wind spade]

(and looping the pipe)

[median heath]

Greeny thinks bottom-feeders are unstable.

[wind spade]

that's not what I said tho

[nocturne ridge]

i have had one bottom feeder that was unstable, seems i fixed it with pumps but not really sure what the problem or solution was

[spring apex]

like this lol ?

erectionmanifold

[nocturne ridge]

that would be ok as far as i understand it

[spring apex]

looks like it's working hahaha

[deft lichen]

the upper pipe looks cool with the angled junctions

[nocturne ridge]

not sure i totally wrap my head around the concept. one machine takes all the fluid it wants and lowers the pipe level. but now other machines cant take from the pipe for a while? how did the first machine take the level so low then?

[deft lichen]

if you have a long pipe manifold, you should feed it from both ends

that should help improve the flow

[oblique hollow]

yeah, split it and feed from this side and the other side

[unreal spire]

It mostly works just like a splitter manifold. Just starve the blenders of dry goods to prefill it all, then put the blenders on standby while you fill with dry goods.

[primal flicker]

No, like this
#screenshots message

[spring apex]

still having issues

now it pumps loads of water and then it stops

looks like the water is going the wrong way in the pipe

[nocturne ridge]

did you try the loop trick that was suggested?

could be multiple issues, bottom feeding, and using a full 600

[oblique hollow]

change the connection between blender and juction to mk 1 pipes. improves stability

[noble timber]

Those 2 things shouldn't be causing issues if the rest of the pipe network is set up correctly

[noble timber]

make use of some unpowered pumps at any major intersections, they will stop any backflow and ^^^ use mk1's into machines

[oblique hollow]

no, dont use unpowered pumps

even if mk 1 pumps are bugged right now, you do NOT want to kill head lift by leaving the pump unpowered

[noble timber]

I should said if you don't need the headlift, yeah

[delicate chasm]

Hmm? Unpowered pumps do something?
I pre-built 3 extractors and piped them but haven't done anything with them for hours since - anything I should know?

[oblique hollow]

unpowered pumps reset head lift to 0 m

thats it. thats all that changes

[delicate chasm]

So you'd need to find water at 2 different elevations and you can save yourself building a pump or two and that's about it?

Am I understanding correctly?

[noble timber]

i use them to stop backflow

[delicate chasm]

Or are we talking building junctions on a cliff-climbing pipe and attaching floating unpowered pumps every 9m?

[noble timber]

powered pumps do as well but they use power obviously

all my pipe networks are flat however so I use them unpowered

[oblique hollow]

if you have 0 m head lift, you cant move liquid up at all

[delicate chasm]

I just realized I was thinking about extractors and called them pumps above. I get it now. Editing.

[oblique hollow]

if you leave a pump unpowered, you cripple the pipe on the exit side

because that thing can no longer move up

[noble timber]

Yeah you can't bottom feed if you use them, but they work for me because all my pipes are flat

[delicate chasm]

Makes sense - a tiny buffer is something I'd like for my belts AND pipes.

[noble timber]

I only do it because I am paranoid about backflow and I refuse to use valves outside of a VOP

[noble timber]

What do you mean?

[delicate chasm]

In the case of pipes, anti-backflow or a small reservoir (which doesn't backflow).
In the case of belts, a tiny storage buffer.

[noble timber]

Storage containers?

[wind spade]

backflow is easier to deal with if you just loop the pipe

then you can ignore backflow completely

[frosty owl]

Mumbles about flow becoming unreadable

[delicate chasm]

Yes but smol.

[noble timber]

Stack them then

[delicate chasm]

...that makes them larger.

[ember fractal]

Sloshing

[noble timber]

Oh sorry I thought you were complaining that they were small 😂

[delicate chasm]

Lol, nah, they're chef's kiss sized IMO. I do additionally want a splitter/merge-sized unit with maybe 4 slots, just to have them. Be useful for a short time in progression too if you're doing the auto-as-you-go type of playstyle.

That and a 4-way splitter that loads from the top or bottom via direct lift connection - but such a thing would require new code to be written for adding a lift that attaches vertically so I won't hold my breath for that.

[wind spade]

4 way splitter would be pretty much pointless anyway imo, manifolds solve 99% of cases 😄

[delicate chasm]

Most things you can build are pointless and most layouts that work at 100% efficiency are overengineered as a result. 🤷‍♂️ But that's more a point for #design-and-architecture to be fair. You aren't wrong.

[oblique notch]

probably never going to see it tho because why spend dev time on a new buildable that already is covered by 2 of the existing. 🤷 tis life

[ember fractal]

What's the absolute maximum power that can be produced on the map, excluding biofuel?
Using the most optimal combination of coal, oil, nuclear, geo.

[vapid gorge]

more than a TW just from Uranium Plutonium

[median heath]

Max Nuke is 1.19 TW.
Max total power I think is shy of 2 TW iirc.

[ember fractal]

interesting

[prisma kraken]

whats the max wattage you can draw before your pc melts?

[true junco]

Depends on your power supply...

[prisma kraken]

it was meant as a funny

[true junco]

Better luck next time. 😆

[prisma kraken]

i actually am curious as to what the max power that people actually use is

[ember fractal]

real world watts for PC? or in game?

[prisma kraken]

in game

like i know some people have some stupid big worlds

[ember fractal]

oh, I use about 22 GW

[true junco]

Idk. Im up to 42GW production. But max possible usage is in the 50s...

[ember fractal]

what about actual usage?

[true junco]

Depends. Right now probably 20GW... but a lot of lines are stalled out due to full outputs waiting on the tie ins to the next line.

[ember fractal]

i see

[prisma kraken]

i'm in like a 20/40ish range atm

max in any playthrough i've drawn is probably in the 150 gw range shrug

you can draw a lot when you OC particle accelerators

[ember fractal]

not bad

150 GW is respectable usage

[median heath]

I think my HMF outpost by itself is like 34 GW 😂

[ember fractal]

oh man

[median heath]

100+ per minute ain't cheap.

[prime orchid]

Disagree. You’re either creating backflow by fluid passing machines, up the end, then hopefully flowing back down or you’re splitting the fluid and sending to the end which in turn also creates backflow 🤷‍♂️ but if that fluid continues to flow back around to the beginning then it will just block the extractor from being able to input fluid into the network. that’s why it always kills me to see you guys suggest that as a fix to backflow

At most all the extra pipe does is create an extra pathway and buffer for fluid which could be said about the fluid buffers everyone suggests against.

It might eliminate the symptom but doesn’t eliminate the root problem

[true junco]

I can believe it. How many HMFs are you making?

[prime orchid]

I actually don’t think I’ve ever even seen backflow in a fluid manifold except in cases where there is inputs flowing towards each other, in which case if the correct amount is being input, and caution is taken to only allow excess to flow where it needs to go, then it should never even be an issue

I’ve only ever seen fluid struggle to properly flow all the way down a manifold, in which case again, caution and proper setup can avoid this issue by just not doing that, and instead making smaller manifolds and pipe networks

[median heath]

Which run? 😛

[random flare]

I think this might be the room for me: are there any known issues with long output manifolds backing up? Like I have a 20-machine chain making steel pipe with a total output of only around 400, and outputs are chained together with 10 mergers all the way down. The machines at the start seem to have trouble draining even though everything is using mk1 lifts into a mk5 bus that all the mergers are on.

[prime orchid]

Have you tried upgrading your mk.1 belts to mk.5?

[random flare]

The outputs of the individual machines are sub-60, so I didn't imagine mk5 would be necessary; is there some funny merging logic for mismatched belt speeds?

[prime orchid]

If that doesn’t work maybe try splitting the manifold and merging the two back together at the end

[prime orchid]

Um yeah I think it might have something to do with merger speed. I remember it used to be an issue that was supposedly related to max belt speed not being fast enough but then they fixed that. So idk if mergers also need fixing or have been already? Maybe inputting mk.1 is slowing them down? Idk tbh. So just try in that order. Upgrade all to mk.5, if that doesn’t work then cut the manifold in half and merge the halves at the end. If that doesn’t work then maybe mergers are just still too slow for 780. In which case you’ll have to split the entire network in half and not try to send it all on 1 belt

[random flare]

Appreciate the thoughts

[prime orchid]

But keep in mind this is only if the belts are actually backing up to the point of machines not being able to empty. It is natural for the manifold to sort of “backup” without actually causing an issue

[random flare]

I'm getting 28% efficiency because the output is so backed up

[prime orchid]

Lol wow

That’s worse than expected

Are you sure there isn’t a different issue?

[random flare]

Yeah, we'll see if things clear up with mk5s everywhere

[prime orchid]

It should be around 98% if it was the issue I was talking about

[random flare]

Yes, the machines taking pipe are underperforming because they're not getting it, and the machines generating pipe can't output it fast enough

[prime orchid]

That sounds much more severe

[random flare]

It's looking very possible I just rip it all out and start over... it's just 9.6 uranium rods per minute... 😢

[prime orchid]

Make a thread in #1038092680493801533 and post screenshots and details of setup

[vapid gorge]

Just as a thing if you're looking at the machine UI 'efficiency' meter don't trust it.

[prime orchid]

I mean if all his shit is backed up I don’t think there’s a reason to doubt it

[random flare]

I moved to on-floor instead of under-floor and everything's working fine even without mk5s on every output

See #screenshots message

So now something about my through-floor setup must be causing things to fail

How irksome

[vapid gorge]

it's very inaccurate even if things aren't backed up. Things can be running at 100% for ages and not show it.

Thus 'don't trust it'

and if the thing is backed up you don't need a meter to tell you it's not working right

[random flare]

I mean, I'm also sitting here and watching it, seeing it idle every few cycles because output is full

Everybody's right

[vapid gorge]

that's the best way tbh. Look at the lights.

[prime orchid]

nah cause just like i said belts especially in the case of manifolds can be completely filled with items, and still be running at 100%

[vapid gorge]

hence... look at the lights ... >.> and if the whole manifold is stuttering chances are the producers are stuttering and getting full

[prime orchid]

ok but are you going to sit there for 20 minutes and try to look for a yellow blip or just look at the efficiency meter and see that it says 99%? you do you

[random flare]

Por que no los dos? 😛

Since this is nuclear setup I need it to be 100% foolproof, so I'm spending way too much monitoring every little bit

[prime orchid]

it's also pretty common as i said for manifolds to be backed up and "stuttering" because of the way mergers work.. one input has to wait while if there are other inputs moving items in. it's natural. machine efficiency is based on average run-time over a certain time frame. maybe you think it's real time? is that why you have such a distrust in them? lol

[random flare]

Well... surface-merging and then routing it to the underground for the downstream modules suddenly works perfectly

[prime orchid]

[random flare]

Going to let it run and make sure, then consider if I want to blow my brains out retrying the original setup

Thanks folks

[vapid gorge]

once you've flooded the system only takes a couple minutes. And then you can come back and look at it, and it'll still be more accurate than the meter saying 98% when it's been 100% for agse

[prime orchid]

i don't even know what you're saying anymore i feel like you have an unhealthy distrust of the efficiency meter based on misunderstanding how it works and when it would show a problem. unless it's obviously wrong, then it's probably right

[vapid gorge]

I have never seen it 'correct', never seen it show 100% when I had watched it for ages to know it was 100% for ages.

If you cannot trust the meter then there's no point looking at it thus need to do observations anyway.

[prime orchid]

you've never seen it show 100%? lol ur game messed up bruh

[vapid gorge]

Bruh - the efficiency meters are notorious for being unreliable. I don't know why you want to rely on them.

[prime orchid]

Bugged sure but incorrect? Never seen it happen

It’s always been correct for me except for the one example I gave when it bugged

You just said you’ve never seen a machine say 100%. I’ve never heard anyone else say that. That’s not notoriously incorrect that’s just your game broke my dude. Mine works fine

[prime orchid]

I would have loved to see your exact setup before and after you fixed it to theorize and test why it happened

[random flare]

For a description: machines in two rows facing in towards each other, conveyor floor holes for each output, mk1 lifts attached to conveyor holes from top and bottom, merged into mk5 belt underneath (mk1 lift to mk1 belt to merger onto mk5 belt). Total of 20 machines in the case I was talking about here. I had to convert over a similar chain with 26 machines that was built the same way.

After was simply no lifts/conveyor holes, just belted outputs to mergers to mk5 belt

[wind spade]

if they are bugged they are by definition incorrect lol

and there's been tons of reports of the meters showing 99% or even 1% for machines that run at 100%

[prime orchid]

No I was saying if they are incorrect then it’s due to bugging out from what I’ve seen. I’ve never seen them just be incorrect

[wind spade]

obviously if they show incorrect numbers, there is some bug that causes that 🤷‍♂️

[prime orchid]

…I know?

That is not lost on me lol

[wind spade]

but what's the point of saying that? you're arguing about the cause of incorrectness

but it's incorrect no matter what

[random flare]

Incorrect due to a bug and simply incorrect are different cases, technically; pretty sure the insinuation is that you should be able to trust the metrics unless there's something else very wrong with your save/install

[wind spade]

what else could cause it's incorrectness if not a bug? 🤔

[random flare]

e.g. "default" should be "trust"

[random flare]

That's his point

[wind spade]

then what is "just incorrect"?

[random flare]

You shouldn't assume the game has a bug, so you shouldn't assume the numbers can just be incorrect

[prime orchid]

No we assume the game has bugs.

We know. Lol

[random flare]

Not my argument anyway, haha

I'm heading to bed. Let me know if you had any thoughts on my setup causing issues, Spence, and thanks again

[prime orchid]

Not an argument at all just a conversation. We keep it chill here

[wind spade]

I just don't understand the "They are incorrect because of a bug, I never seen them just be incorrect"... because if they will be "just incorrect", it would still be because of a bug

[prime orchid]

What I meant was that as far as I know the bugged numbers are like either 0% or stuck at 99% (which personally I’ve never had one stuck on 99). But the machines don’t just randomly report like 28.. it’s pretty safe to assume those kinds of reports are correct IMO. But in any case you should watch it and verify that it has constant input and output with no delays on either side. It’s just an indicator tool not a guarantee

[wind spade]

the machines don’t just randomly report like 28
I've seen even those reports.

[prime orchid]

And we’re sure that the person reporting this actually knew how to verify everything properly to say it was definitely bugged?

[wind spade]

pretty sure yeah (as there were multiple)

iirc there was some fixing done recently to make it more stable, but it's still not 100%

[prime orchid]

Ok cause my next question was how long ago were these reports and have they died down recently because I hadn’t heard of any like that

The only ones I’ve heard of have actually been able to find and fix a problem

[prime orchid]

In any case I feel like we were trying to solve an obvious issue where things were backed up with machines reporting 28% and cobalt was just like “don’t trust the percentages”. But I guess if none of my machines ever showed 100% I’d be saying the same thing 🤷‍♂️ all I was trying to say is I don’t think there is a massive problem with everyone’s efficiencies always reporting incorrectly. And if something feels off about the percentage then just check it out yourself that’s all. The alternative advice to sit around watching hundreds of machines and hoping you’ll catch one turn yellow for a split second is just seems silly. I wonder if the light bars are bug-less 🤔 nah there’s no way 😜

[prisma kraken]

catching up on the convo, I believe the numbers reported by machines can still be a little off

I don't think i've properly seen it in U7 since it went EA, but I do know where to look

I see it all the time in a sloppy + electroscrap 4+3 config where the wastewater is recycled... the numbers when you first enter render distance are most times '0%' and sometimes do get 'stuck' (for lack of a better word) at ~98-99% after a short while of watching

my suspicion is that its more of a display artifact bug than some sort of simulation bug, and i suspect further it is more likely to be noticed when your fps drops too low

(by the time i hit a need for a mega-aluminum build, the game is hurting my pc :P)

i also think a possible cause is a lengthy autosave pause

[prime orchid]

Interesting. The wiki says the non-generator machines are literally just calculated by on/off time which shouldn’t be too complex. So maybe it’s possible the calculation is being affected by things like save freezing. Has it been tested by disabling auto save? But tbh that should only be a problem if the calculation is over a period longer than auto-save intervals. So it would change

[prisma kraken]

I've not scienced or measured it

[frosty owl]

Note: lights reale to what can be seen (from anywhere) using this Power Draw graph 😉
The latter is, objectively, the most reliable and quick way to check for efficiency if one can isolate the power grid of interest.

[prime orchid]

Also I have a question and a bit of a sour gripe.. I’m watching kibitz first play through and see the MAM is inside the HUB.. WHYYY did they change it? I think that’s so much cooolerrrrr

[prisma kraken]

so you can build it while hd hunting

[prime orchid]

I actually am lost on the first part of your message. Say that again?

[prisma kraken]

i think it was also just sorta pulled out so that the hub upgrades would be all tutorial and for balance, an early phase 1 unlockable

[prime orchid]

So, laziness? :/ I think having to bring things back to the hub to research makes more sense and actually gives a purpose to the room inside the hub instead of just being for memes and arcade game. I was

[frosty owl]

Lights *relate to
Just a moment, catching up on chat

[prime orchid]

Granted it is very nice to be able to clear up inventory space by researching things on the fly when you’ve got a bunch of crap on you but still

[prisma kraken]

it was a choice... keeping the 10 minute research time and allowing you to continue exploring

[prime orchid]

But why not just decrease research time if that’s the issue

[prisma kraken]

to encourage you to go on expeditions

[prime orchid]

Decreasing research time wouldn’t change the fact that you still have to go hunt them all down

And it’s kinda nuts that it takes a minimum of like 17 hours to research them all

[prisma kraken]

seems short compared to the time it takes to build a nuclear plant

[frosty owl]

I'd like to point one thing out: most of the people you're talking in this channel, have been around here for years. I'm not saying this to make a weird flex, just to point out that many reports and conversations have been made in the channel in the meanwhile, so there's a quite big data pool to pull from, collectively.

With that said, they have recently improved on the efficiency meter code. Whole it's definetly true that it used to be almost completely unreliable before as @vapid gorge said (even an autosave could lead to wild results, lag lead to machines never showing 100 and so on...), I'm not sure how true that is now... So I don't think it's fair to ignore meter without any research on it now.

But even then, I still think that the best way (as in: most convenient and with 100% reliability) to check for the efficiency of many machines is watching the power draw graph. Machines running at 100% produce a flat power draw line. Any up and down corresponds to a production inefficiency to be found (exception being vehicles, sinks and particle accelerators, which one can just put on a different grid or isolate a factory's grid for troubleshooting)

Note: before the UI efficiency patching, saying to trust what it said was very much a bad suggestion; wether that's still the case or not has not been verified properly

[prisma kraken]

yep, well said

i would really like to see them add some sort of efficiency checking tool rather than needing to rely on proxy measurements at some point, however

[prime orchid]

How would it be different?

[frosty owl]

Example of what you can do now and couldn't when the MAM was in the HUB: You find a "rare resource", annalize it on the fly, unlock the tech for node scanning and you can already place a miner or the node before going back to HUB for resupply. By the time you get back there's enough ore to go through the basic research already~
(Also yes, good way to overlap HD unlocking and exploration)

[prisma kraken]

being able to put some sort of item counter on a belt would imho be way helpful in verifying you, for instance, are actually making 900 plastic out of a recycled 300->900 build

that's kind of tricky to measure

[frosty owl]

Yeah...

I'm not to keen on anything more complex than the power draw system tbh... Maybe just something that does the same but with simpler steps

[prisma kraken]

i'd just like something that tells me if i'm missing a belt somewhere 🙂

[frosty owl]

Stuff backing up :P

[prisma kraken]

hard to tell just by visual inspection on a long manifold

along the same lines, i'd like some minor modifications to machine models to move the status indicator for all of them moved into a location that is within their hard clearance boundary and visible from 180 degrees from the front or back centerpoint

[frosty owl]

Depends on how you set it up.
If output = input, it shouldn't back up
If there's overflow, it still shouldn't back up if you extract the overflow from the end of the line

[prisma kraken]

the assembler light always clipping through the ceiling and the foundry light being visible from only one side are examples

[frosty owl]

Tbf, you decide the height of ceilings and which side of machines is shown to which part of the factory ^^

[prisma kraken]

i do, and actually do design with that intent

but that light on top of the assembler really peeves me

[frosty owl]

Eg: I plan floors so that, from the entrance, all lights or most lights can be seen. Eg: turning machines around, placing blenders after Manufacturers after assemblers...

[prisma kraken]

like either make the bpm a bit taller or move the light, lol

[frosty owl]

I am a strong defender of 4+ walls high floors ^^

[prime orchid]

Tbf researching HDDs on the go isn’t much of a selling point if the alternative doesn’t present an issue requiring that in the first place lol

If they changed it to 1 minute each that would still be over 1.5 hours of research time

[frosty owl]

There is no alternative (yet).
All MAM research used to take time. Now only HD research does. It wasn't the other way around ^^

[prime orchid]

And most people tend to spend a lot of time in-between trying to decide which recipe they want to choose so that adds on a huge amount of time to the total

[prisma kraken]

i mean, that's the least of my problems in time consuming tasks of the game

you're implying that you cannot multitask while an hd is researched and drop a mam when its completed

[prime orchid]

Oh I didn’t know that. I actually found it really silly that it takes 3 seconds to research things. Why have research time at all at that point? I think 1 minute for everything would be fine

Never did

[prisma kraken]

its 3 seconds because they made a simple change to make it almost instantaneous for non-hd items

[prime orchid]

However it isn’t completely idle time. You can’t just leave your computer on for 17 hours while it researches them all. You do have to be active at least every 10 minutes

[frosty owl]

Iirc, only "base" researches required 3s, like node scanning. Everything else ranged from 2 to 10 minutes iirc, with many being at 5

[prisma kraken]

all are now 3s except for HD's

[prime orchid]

And being active every 10 minutes for 17 hours felt pretty tedious, especially when it comes to replaying. Just going out and getting them all is quite the task

[frosty owl]

You might be surprised, but I did hear some complaint over the waiting time going away ^^

[prisma kraken]

i mean, like 17 hrs is NOT unreasonable for all the research items in the game

given that there's only about 60 that are worth grabbing

[frosty owl]

Since I can't even recall the exact reasoning, though, I reckon those complaints weren't frequent or with compelling points

[prisma kraken]

and that properly playing through the game without cheating takes at like rip-roaring pace ~17-18 hrs

[prime orchid]

Lol well no I’m actually not surprised I understand the importance of putting arbitrary limits on things for the purpose of challenge and reward, but it’s a balancing act

[prisma kraken]

the long pole in the game isn't hd research

its making enough wire for ADS's

[frosty owl]

I think it wants to not let the player feel like they can unlock everything anytime. Some things take time, let's find something else to do in the meanwhile (like while waiting for SE deliveries to fill up)

There's also how time adds to the mistery of choice...

[prisma kraken]

if anything needs rebalancing with the hd research, i would cast my eye to which hub unlocks add what research items to the recipe lottery pool

[frosty owl]

That's an obvious one ^^

[prisma kraken]

like i mean complaining about something that takes a theoretical minimum of 17 hrs as mostly a background task in a game that's meant to be enjoyed for +24 hrs, it just doesn't seem like a very strong point to be making

[frosty owl]

As someone who ends up using "unlock all" most of the time, I won't comment on that...

[prisma kraken]

like i mean you're essentially complaining that 'i can't stop sitting on my butt and doing research for 17 hrs'

[frosty owl]

I think it's more like "I don't even have to sit here and wait, why make it a wait at all, what does it add, how does it make the gameplay better". Just my interpretation

[prisma kraken]

i personally really enjoy the hd hunting and exploration aspect of the game

so every play through i do end up collecting all the drives and doing the research

when i'm sick of building, i go on an exploration, once or twice per phase

and i get quite a bit of enjoyment out of that part of the game

i understand that isn't for everyone

but if it isn't, then just edit your save and unlock stuff, as Sushified said, lol

[prime orchid]

So you’re saying the difference between 1 minute timers and 10 minutes timers is that people won’t sit at the mam.. I totally agree, but also I kinda still did that with 10 minute timers cause I just wanted to watch YouTube in bed and research them whenever I heard the sound. I feel like if I put the effort in to retrieve all the HDD’s, I shouldn’t also have to spend 17 hours clicking a button every 10 minutes to get the rewards from them. And let’s be real about the “reward” it’s not like game breaking to just unlock an alternative recipe in 3 minutes vs 10 minutes. When there’s 90 something it adds up. As for “unlock all”.. the game REALLY makes me want to use it, but I personally don’t enjoy cheating. It would also ruin the whole incentive to go around collecting them which I don’t have any issue with

[frosty owl]

My rule is: if I've done it already, I can cheat it

[prisma kraken]

yeah, really my point is that when i'm sitting in the game, i'm not waiting for an hd to research, i'm building things or exploring or doing something besides watching the mam

[prime orchid]

Yeah that’s fair @frosty owl

[prisma kraken]

there's a few times when i'm gated looking for a specific recipe

but it isn't very often

[median heath]

spawns in entire ISC of golden mugs

[frosty owl]

Assuming I ever bought an entire ISC of golden cups, sure, I might ^^

[median heath]

I mean, I've achieved 8 of them, so I could just do that 😁

[frosty owl]

Btw, I was being short, but I don't refute your point, I was just adding a note/comment on the cheating part

[prime orchid]

but if you're building while researching something that's gonna have you tear it all down and re-build it.. then is it even worth doing while you wait? it felt pointless to me to do anything until i unlocked them all.. that's while i just quit and watched youtube until they were all done

but i can understand the joy of building things, unlocking a new recipe, changing up your factory, rinse repeat..

[prisma kraken]

if you know the alts and have a plan

[prime orchid]

no you're totally fine dude very valid

[prisma kraken]

you can build and retool without tearing down

but i will concede, not everyone has all the alts committed to memory

[prime orchid]

i just think the mam in the hub had a certain charm to it

[prime orchid]

you don't have to concede you're allowed to have an opinion

[prisma kraken]

i'll agree there

[prime orchid]

not everyone plays the game the same way and everyone's on different skill levels with different amounts of time to dedicate to playing

[prisma kraken]

i will say there's two things that i feel the research does sort of gate you on building

one is getting the 'good' steel recipes (solid steel, EIP, encased HMF)

and the other is the 'easy' aluminum recipes (sloppy+pure ingot)

I could make a case that hor+dpf could fall into that category as well

its not that you need any one of those recipes to build, but the combos of them really do help you

and like the more recipes you need to 'form voltron', the more of a drag the research aspect becomes

[prime orchid]

i was gonna say diluted fuel but honestly that doesn't really feel like a gate.. upgrading fuel generators isn't much the same as changing your entire factory. it's really fun actually i enjoy doing that

[prisma kraken]

yeah, for me personally, i really dislike anything surrounding fuel power, but that's personal taste... kind of a more you can't build really interesting looking fuel power plants because their size is so unwieldy

[prime orchid]

but either way gating wasn't really what discouraged me, it was the fact that i wanted to start from scratch and re-build "the perfect factory" with all the recipes unlocked and until i did that it felt like a waste of time building factories just to turn around and destroy them

[prisma kraken]

well i mean, cheesing out some materials from the shop to defer building to get over a hump is something i'll do

i.e. buy some steel beams to unlock the bpm before starting on a steel plant

[noble timber]

You can build interesting looking buildings to put them in though 😉

[prime orchid]

i've never bought materials. probably great for fast-tracking but it's just the principle of it i don't like. why give tickets to company for things you're literally there to make FOR them.. lol

[prisma kraken]

well yeah, but i'm talking about personal tastes 🙂

[prime orchid]

just make them yourself for freee

[prisma kraken]

i always end up buying a few stacks of beams, hmfs, computers, supercomputers, and turbomotors along the way

really getting a couple of miners upgraded to mk3 before you can make the parts for them is pretty useful

[prime orchid]

ngl i usually just forget i can even do that before i get stuff automated and start sinking things in the first place

[prisma kraken]

in one save, i was sinking so much that i honestly just bought all the turbomotors i needed, lol

like what else are you going to do with the tickets after you have the statues?

[frosty owl]

Before U7 I bought more rifle ammo than I built

[prisma kraken]

does anyone know if the 'maximum stacks/min' readout on a drone port is an accurate number?

[prime orchid]

i don't blame you on that one actually

[frosty owl]

Tbh, I also rarely used the Rifle as I preferred the Basher :P (more DPS)

[prime orchid]

probably has bugs just like the machine efficiency numbers but probably correct in general.. although it's probably less precise since it's vehicles hauling stacks of items and the arrival and departure times can vary right?

i'm just guessing since i haven't used vehicle transport

[prisma kraken]

its telling me that it can pass a max of 2.71 stacks/min, or 271 sulfur/min

seems a little low

[vapid gorge]

I've heard you can get 300ish parts pm to drones depending on the stack sizes, seems reasonable.

I've also still yet to try it but apparently you can set drones to 'fetch' items instead of sending items off? you'd need to double check. if the drone waited until there was space might have more parts waiting for pick up by the time it gets back

[prisma kraken]

i know i'm on the hairy edge of the limits with that

[vapid gorge]

how accurate the thingo is though is up in the air ofc

[prisma kraken]

but i thought i'd be honestly on the other side of the edge