math-and-meta

[ember fractal]

if it's the 2nd, don't worry too much about efficiency, just get a quick and dirty setup going

[opal locust]

That's the problem

[ember fractal]

once you have mk5 belts, redo it to be a proper facility

[opal locust]

even a "quick and dirty" setup is confusing me

[swift robin]

get the bauxite there first

then worry about the next part

[vapid gorge]

are you feeling a bit overwhelmed atm in general? something about lifts doesn't gel with you atm?

[opal locust]

see that facility to the east? that's my Quartz facility and I had to belt it several hundred meters, I hated doing that.

[swift robin]

if you hate belts so much you could build a ramp and use vehicles to drive up and down the cliff...

[opal locust]

not to mention running power all the way out there

[frosty owl]

Just to add a totally different opinion: why not go the extra mile and make a railway for one of the farther Baux spots that might have all the resources you need to set up shop there (concrete, ores/fluids to process the baux) and ship back the products via a totally-not-too-short rail?

Later on, you can easily expand to use any node along the railway too, for future factories.

TLDR: Take the chance to push your train lines into the Northern/Eeastern parts of the map

[opal locust]

I hate vehicles even more. I setup a temporary facility to build fabric/smokeless powder/packaged fuel and setup a truck station for the first time

[ember fractal]

if you're using sloppy alumina alt + electrode scrap
your first step is to bring the bauxite down from the cliff to sea level.
even 1 node to start is good
because there's a 200 some meter difference there, running a train is a bad idea
the quickest and easiest is conveyer lifts

[vapid gorge]

well if you DO want to make a train up there this person goes into detail on how to make a train spiral up that exact spot you're talking about ? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjcwNBvNW2M&t=11s

[opal locust]

it took me a couple of hours just to get the right autopath saved.

[vapid gorge]

trains are in some ways simpler than trucks

[swift robin]

well if the only thing you dont hate is trains, then i guess time to make a bauxite train 🤷

[opal locust]

The hard part is when I have to do really tall lift chains

[frosty owl]

I feel you. The learning curve isn't assisted much in that regard (yet) :/

Buuuut it does become pretty nice once you get the hang of it

[swift robin]

all the options CAN work, but i was just suggesting the easiest one to do

[opal locust]

100+ meters of lifts where 1 pixel means the difference in getting it right and having to start over

[ember fractal]

lol, dealing with elevation is one of the challenges in this game.
if the world was completely flat, it would take away that aspect of figuring out logistics across difficult landscape

[vapid gorge]

solution for that - build a foundation then a wall straight up

yo ucan have intervals where you can place foundations and lift holes.

[ember fractal]

yah, build foundation from the top of the cliff that overhangs and has a direct drop down to sea level

[frosty owl]

Add frame pillars between foundations. Big ones can hold 1 lift without clipping inside ^^

[opal locust]

I just don't know which Bauxite node to use as there seems to be no good one for me.

[frosty owl]

Ops, wrong answer

[pseudo raptor]

Sounds like the best solution for you here is just build a castle in the sky

[swift robin]

the two closest bauxite nodes are the easy options

[ember fractal]

if you don't mind dealing with wildlife, you can try setting up bauxite in the swamp on the east side of the map
there's multiple bauxite nodes at sea level, and there's an oil resource well there too

[frosty owl]

I'd say to look into the ones in the NE/E direction ^^
I'm trying to avoid spoilers, but you can just check on SCIM for spots having Bauxite and Oil (possibly copper too)

[ember fractal]

good place for some starter aluminum

[opal locust]

why do people keep telling me to go northeast when I'm in the southwest part of the map

[frosty owl]

Because there's plenty of good spots to be encountered along the way (which you can easily expand upon later if you have a rail passing closeby)

[merry crane]

Just go northeast bro

Trust

[vapid gorge]

I think people are trying to get around the problems you seem frustrated about.

but you can also jsut do the spot you're on

[opal locust]

you want me to go this far

[vapid gorge]

some people also have definite ideas on how to do things

[ember fractal]

hm.... the pioneers gave you lots of suggestions, some easy, some more challenging
but all you've done is provide excuses
if you don't feel like playing, take a break, or work on another factory
but sitting here and whining, it's not gonna do much for ya

[merry crane]

That's not even that far?

[vapid gorge]

shhh everyone has different preferences and ways the ywant to build

[frosty owl]

Yes, that's an opinion too xD (which I share, appropriate distance to set a proper train line for)

[merry crane]

True

[opal locust]

Forget it

[ember fractal]

🤷‍♂️

[opal locust]

I'm done trying to figure this out for now

[frosty owl]

Sleep over it, don't burn yourself over it~

[ember fractal]

best place to figure things out is in game, not in discord

[opal locust]

All I've done is piss people off

[merry crane]

Alls chill

[vapid gorge]

nah nah, just a lot of people with various ideas - nothing you did

[frosty owl]

I beg to differ. Their combination is powerful if used at its best :)

[opal locust]

I've been sitting here, for the last several days trying to figure out how to manage Bauxite and someone or something tells me it won't work.

[vapid gorge]

Well it's less that it won't work and more I think that most people think train for it would be very complex and time consuming

[vapid gorge]

but you do sound like you need a break

[frosty owl]

I don't think anyone said or implied that...

[ember fractal]

true, what I meant is that just talking about it and not trying it out by hand, it's not going to result in much

[frosty owl]

Fair point. But I think this one is worth talking over some more ^^

[merry crane]

I like trying to plot it on graph paper, changing the medium helps my brain see new angles

[opal locust]

"Measure Twice, Cut Once"

[ember fractal]

true true

[merry crane]

There are some nice online tools as well if pen and papers not your thing

[ember fractal]

didn't mean to attack you on a personal level or anything.

[opal locust]

It's just, I get a solution in my head, then I run into another road block

[merry crane]

Imo thats the fun of games like these

Always a problem to solve

[frosty owl]

Warning: beware of not looping step (1) over and over

[ember fractal]

mistakes are bound to happen regardless of how many times we measure though
those mistakes are usually great learning lessons

[vapid gorge]

Take a break.
If you're on in a little while and feel like you can focus I can screen share some things with you that might help

[opal locust]

But up to this point in the game, I've been able to figure things out with enough looking at the interactive map and the production planner

[ember fractal]

no doubt, you'll figure this one out as well

[opal locust]

But I look at Bauxite and I'm simply baffled

[ember fractal]

i'm still bamboozled by nuclear and recycling uranium waste
but i'll get there when I get there

[opal locust]

I'm getting tired of the solution being "well with enough foundation, lifts, and belts, anything is possible"

I should be using better solutions than that

[frosty owl]

I say: consider setting up an "ugly" railway/lift/belt to get bauxite in base temporarily and making a small factory for it.

You'll get some experience with the recipes and, once you'll be rethinking your next Gen alu production (with proper bauxite input or whatnot) you'll be already piling up materials to unlock and use MK5 belts

[opal locust]

Again, that's the problem, I can't even get to the solution for a temporary facility

Plus I can't even use the oil wells in the swamp yet because I don't have the milestone for pressurizers

[frosty owl]

First, you start bringing in the ores you need. Set up the machines, connect them, make mistakes, correct them.... And eventually turn it on and move on to the "next Gen" of production

[frosty owl]

I meant just bringing in whichever baux node is closest to you to whichever location you find convenient. An "ugly" solution, for the shortest time possible to factory-making

[merry crane]

I hate to say this but I can't think of better wording, you might have to just do it, just start and when something is stuck or not working then you have one solid issue to work on and not a nebulas "build this all at once"

[frosty owl]

👆

That's the charm of first times, really~

[merry crane]

Trying to have a entire plan in my head makes me want to alt f4, just start doing something with it and you'll get there or you'll find what you need to do exactly next

[merry crane]

Truly

It's how you learn why you are doing what you are doing not just repeating what the chart tells you to build

[frosty owl]

I totally tend to hoard plans in my head
Taking notes is tedious

[merry crane]

Yeah it just hurts me emotionally sometimes though lol

[opal locust]

and then I have to involve copper at some point

[merry crane]

Worry about that once you need it

[opal locust]

you mean the literal next step to turn ingots into cases and sheets?

[merry crane]

Then get copper

[frosty owl]

Why not just set up the factory and deal with the inputs later?
Wrapping your head around the production line should be the priority imo ^^

Once you set up the machines and make the numbers work out, it all comes down to "need X/min of this ore/fluid, Y/min of that one..."

[opal locust]

I just can't figure it out

[frosty owl]

Math isn't real, it cannot hurt you.

Math in Satisfactory:

[frosty owl]

Are you in-game? ^^

[opal locust]

No

[merry crane]

Factorio space exploration called

[frosty owl]

Then I think you have a better way to try and figure it out 🧑‍🏭

[opal locust]

No, I don't know.

I ran around and scouted all the bauxite locations and couldn't come up with a solution.

[frosty owl]

None of that involved building the production line to process said bauxite though

[opal locust]

And when I did come up with one everyone here told me that won't work

[merry crane]

We just said the trains are a bad idea with the huge elevation change

It's doable just a lot more work

[frosty owl]

There's plenty who like train spirals ^^

[merry crane]

Some might say they enjoy them

[vapid gorge]

I think you had a lot of different voices and it didn’t help your frustration

I’m running a memory check now but I’d be Will to help you through it in like 20min ?

[opal locust]

I couldn't find a good enough place to even setup refineries for the bauxite.

[vapid gorge]

Maybe 30min.

[merry crane]

Sky factory time

[frosty owl]

We don't use the F word here
||I haven't played it 🤷‍♂️||

[merry crane]

I can love both ok!!!

[frosty owl]

What about anywhere inside/close to your base?
That's what I meant when suggesting to make a temporary belt or train to the closest possible

[merry crane]

Just one recipe for end game

[opal locust]

none of them are "close"

even if they're nearby horizontally, it's several hundred meters vertically

[frosty owl]

My point stands ^^

[merry crane]

This is to make armor lmao, sorry for the pic spam

[ember fractal]

i dunno what to say
maybe sleep on it for a day

[frosty owl]

Or a night

[opal locust]

I've been working on this for at least 3 days now.

[ember fractal]

like thinking about it?

[opal locust]

Yes

[frosty owl]

Have you ever tried building a setup for it, even just a "mock" one?

[opal locust]

No

The facility itself isn't the hard part

It's the location of all the required parts that's throwing me off

Example, I could build on top of that lake above the waterfall and have a small facility there, but what do I do with the ingots? Lift them several hundred meters down and then train them north/south along the beach to the nearest copper node?

[vapid gorge]

Sure.
Or make a spiral train if you want, would take longer though

There pros and cons to most things

[opal locust]

which means I'd have to make a train network go that far northwest just to get the ingots turned into sheets and cases

And my head just cannot comprehend that I have to do that much work just for the most basic aluminum materials

[vapid gorge]

You could make a train that brings in the copper to the same place you bring down alum ingots?

But yeah there are very few spots where bauxite is next to copper

Maybe just 1 actually

But several times I’ve processed pure al ingots on site then shipped those out to my more main factories

[ember fractal]

on average, the later in the progression you are, the harder the logistics problems become
bauxite processing is tier 7, which is the 2nd last tier
it's bound to be harder than what you've done previously
in this case, the node locations are working against you

[opal locust]

It makes me want to quit playing

[ember fractal]

this should be fairly easy
that top bauxite node, use a few conveyer lifts to bring it down
then it's a pretty short distance out on the water (easy flat platforms with belt)
bring one oil node up to the water
and build out on water, it's all flat

you can get this done in under 2 hours

especially if you have jetpack or hoverpack

zip line is another alternative

once you have the aluminum ingots, either transport them by train to the closest copper node
or transport copper ingots from the closest copper node by train to your aluminum plant

this pure copper, you can bring up the ingots. the train track will be very easy to build
that whole coastline is pretty flat

[opal locust]

I have a truck going through there with an autopath

I would have to dismantle my fabric/fuel/smokeless powder facility to train to that copper ore

[ember fractal]

yah, whatever works.
don't worry about the copper yet
just get the aluminum ingots going

there's no real perfect spot for aluminum, it all requires a bit of transportation
but the idea I showed above I think is the least effort for your situation

[opal locust]

I'm too tired and frustrated to try building this anytime soon.

Sorry for wasting everyone's time

[ember fractal]

hmm ok
i think you're overthinking it in your head
it's not that big or complex of a project
i'm sure that once you get going with it, it won't seem as daunting as you think it is

[vapid gorge]

It’s ok - take a break for a day or two, I think you’ve just twisted your thoughts around so much nothing can be sorted.

[ember fractal]

i usually take breaks between builds to avoid burnout

and it's nice to come back to a save after a week and look at some of your factories and be like "daaamn, i built this? not bad, not bad"

or if you 🍝 and 📎 , it's more like "daaamn, this is a freakin mess"

[signal vigil]

i make them come with conveyors to the water, i made a facility there(bottom part of the picture)

and i carry them to my "mainish" factory with trucks and merge them with silicas and other stuff

also you dont need to overclock them,
for they are already fast enough with mk2 miners

this is where are all the scraps and ingots are made

[opal locust]

You already have facilities established on the northern half of the map to make that work, how does that help me?

[signal vigil]

i meant, make a facility closest to yours, and carry the parts with trucks

i carry half a map iron-steel stuff from my starting point

[opal locust]

I've already posted my current layout, the "closest" nodes are next to sheer cliffs to all of my bases.

[delicate chasm]

Has anyone calculated (and published) the precise number of points needed to purchase one each of every item in the AWESOME shop?
Preferably excepting the stuff you can get without using the shop.

[deft lichen]

Is it not listed on the wiki?

[delicate chasm]

I have to admit I didn't double check; I hadn't seen it when I visited that page prior and Fandom eviscerates my ISP (HughesNet).

[oblique hollow]

Fandom moment

[green scaffold]

Fandom made me aware of how thirsty McCaffee antivirus was when having to deal with streamed video. Mostly the browser extension.

Anyways, what's the better way to make fuel for generators ? Crude to "Heavy Oil Residue" To "Diluted Fuel" ?

[median heath]

Hard to tell you "better" if you list only one option 🤷‍♂️

[delicate chasm]

Fuel for generators specifically? The lowest total building count option is 'best' in that case, rather than a specific recipe. Speaking extremely broadly, if your need is just to put a resource into energy generation, then achieving that input number with the lowest possible electricity consumption is the best policy. That means either underclocked processing built extremely wide or the highest output recipe available to you running on the fewest number of machines, which is less effective but more sane to build casually.

[median heath]

The lowest total building count option is 'best' in that case

This is untrue.

Lowest building count may be best for you if that is the metric you care about.

[oblique hollow]

Best option is to go nuclear instead

[delicate chasm]

Air quotes are included specifically to preclude you taking it as a hard statement.

[median heath]

For people who do not care about building count, it's an irrelevant comparison metric.

I go for the highest conversion rate, which is a specific recipe.

[delicate chasm]

I mean you could have just specified that that was your justification and answered the person's question then?

No need to turn everything into semantical debate.

[median heath]

They didn't say "best", they said "better".

Better requires multiple things to be contrasted and ranked.
Can't do that when they list only 1 method.

[delicate chasm]

No need to turn everything into semantical debate.

[median heath]

Either mute me or get used to how I speak 🤷‍♂️ I do not care.
I am not debating semantics. I am looking at what was actually said and replying to it.

If the individual did not mean what they said, that is not my issue.

[delicate chasm]

Given more than 1 option for how to perform an action, and listing one possibility, asking what is the 'better' option colloquially is understood to mean a comparison between all options, including those not stated.

There is truly no need for this.

[cinder silo]

It all went pop @sand epoch

[sand epoch]

I'll have to build one and send you the file. It works for me :/

[cinder silo]

The only thing that remained online was the switch.

[cinder silo]

Second experiment, eliminated the hoverpack as a variable, both sides still went bang.

[vapid gorge]

what are you trying to show / do

[cinder silo]

Actually to disprove an assertation that the power switch works as a breaker.

[vapid gorge]

who said they would?

[cinder silo]

Zediscious, though he saw for himself after building a similar test that it isn't the case, probably an observational error from the past.

Got another test up, it is making packaged liquid biofuel from fresh air.

[vapid gorge]

ah well it'd be cool if you COULD set it as a break, like Connection A has priority shut down ect ect, leaves the power station up

[cinder silo]

So the infinite resource glitch is confirmed.

[vapid gorge]

doubt it'll make it past U8

[cinder silo]

I'll set a proper exploit based test bed and observe after the update.

It is really weird seeing a packager take in nothing at all, but spit out containers and liquid biofuel, then the next one takes those in and makes packaged fuel.

[cinder silo]

@prisma kraken here's the exploit fuel factory.

[prisma kraken]

chuckles

[cinder silo]

Producing 400 cans of liquid biofuel per minute with 0 inputs.

I'll setup overflow sinks and leave it running just to see if update 8 fixes it.

[prisma kraken]

i set up a couple of packagers just to figure out how to make it work with fluids, but like its just so stupid broken that i stopped before i got carried away and started doing slugs & dna caps

[cinder silo]

Man if I copy pasted like that in to my bio shaker tower I'd have like , yeah broken.

[prisma kraken]

i mean you go farther than just testing out the bug, you really will ruin the game for yourself

[cinder silo]

It's why I picked liquid biofuel as the experiment, I don't use it.

[prisma kraken]

i made a couple of stacks of packaged fuel, that's about it

i'm really hoping they patch that in U8

[cinder silo]

I'll leave the experiment up complete with sink and will check when update 8 drops.

[prisma kraken]

the only positive thing about the bug is that it actually gives use to the beacon recipe, lol

(as just a cheap way to get a manufacturer running)

[cinder silo]

Imagine the sink points from spammed thermal propulsion rockets.

[prisma kraken]

yeah, several speedruns have like done golden nut in < 7 hrs at this point

[cinder silo]

600 canisters of liquid biofuel from nothing is nuts, people can totally trivialise power generation for one.

I'm not surprised, I had to see for myself, now I have, just well, this needs fixing pronto.

I'm seeing it, but I am having a hard time believing it.

[prisma kraken]

i mean, what people are doing in speed running is just going biomass -> nuclear

[cinder silo]

I can definitely see how with this production line just with packagers.

One packager produces both the cans and the fuel, the other is making packaged fuel, wtf, no inputs, how the hell is an oversight like that made.

[prisma kraken]

i'm sure it accidentally happened when the c&p was introduced in u5 or u6

[cinder silo]

If people want to ruin their game by doing this I guess it's on them, this huge bug nukes from orbit the entire gameplay loop.

I can just see it now, a sea of fuel generators fed mouth to mouth by a packager spewing fuel and the cans generated from nothing going in to a sink.

All you need is a coupon, buy some packaged turbo fuel and go wild 🤦‍♂️

[prisma kraken]

well, technically all you need is packaged water, lol

[delicate chasm]

Infinite duplication glitch?

[cinder silo]

Yeah, I made an exploit factory based off comments and it produces 600 packaged biofuel with no inputs.

[delicate chasm]

Yuck. I like struggling for resources in a world of infinite resources while aware of the irony of my situation, thanks.

Hope they squish it in U8! 🤞

Good on you for confirming the bug, also. Not a complaint about your thing. ^

[cinder silo]

Likewise, I'm leaving the place up for now and will check it again after U8 hits, if it isn't squished I'll be raising a AQ with the video as proof.

It's why I used liquid biofuel for the test, it is something I don't use.

[delicate chasm]

Is it already in the tracker?

[cinder silo]

Probably, it is why I'm waiting on U8.

[ember fractal]

[delicate chasm]

It's worth confirming that CSS is aware of something that big. That destroys the game loop, like you said. 🤔

[cinder silo]

It is a serious bug that I'm sure people are exploiting to the hilt.

[cinder silo]

In case you hadn't scrolled back, here it is again, no way something like this should stay, it needs killing asap.

[snow dove]

i have so many questions

[vapid gorge]

free resource exploit

[snow dove]

mod based or fully vanilla?

[vapid gorge]

vanilla

hence exploit 😄

I'm sure there's half a dozen free resource mods

[snow dove]

interesting

[vapid gorge]

I doubt it'll last long.

[snow dove]

yeah, how does it work tho?

[cinder silo]

Something to do with the copy paste state on an active machine causes it to draw no resources when producing.

Copy and paste the unconfigured state in to a running machine, then pick a recipe and it just produces with 0 input.

Want unlimited uranium fuel rods, you got it, spam thermal propulsion rockets, yup.

Simplified packaged fuel factory 🤦‍♂️

[ember fractal]

sus af

[cinder silo]

Tell me about it, so damned trivial to set off as well.

[cinder silo]

Here is just how trivial it is to cause the bug.

[ember fractal]

weiiird

[cinder silo]

I'll leave the exploit factory up and check it again after update 8 to see if the bug gets fixed.

[cinder silo]

Power shards for all!

And the bug isn't sensitive to power outs, I cut the power to the exploity machine and upon restoring it, it carries on producing with 0 inputs.

So now there is a tower in the dunes producing 31.25 power shards per minute.

[prisma kraken]

still having fun with it, eh?

[cinder silo]

Surprisingly resilient bug.

I tidied the exploit factories up and left them be, here's hoping update 8 fixes it.

[prisma kraken]

yeah, the really broken comes with the DNA capsules

[cinder silo]

Why DNA capsules, you could just leave a manufacturer spewing rockets.

[prisma kraken]

the capsules scale a lot slower than regular points

[cinder silo]

I've never sunk them so I wouldn't know, got more than 3k coupons from regular crap still in the sink however.

[prisma kraken]

but being able to do that in a constructor for 4 mw is pretty stupid, lol

[cinder silo]

🤣

[prisma kraken]

yeah, well, lol

you have a lot more factory than me

[cinder silo]

Curious now if I can get a particle accelerator doing this 🤣

[prisma kraken]

can't say i'm doing too badly considering i've barely gotten FMF's automated:

(point rates should be higher than they are atm, but i'm waiting for concrete manifolds to refill atm

[cinder silo]

Yep you can definitely exploit a particle accelerator.

[prisma kraken]

yep

[cinder silo]

Nuclear pasta with no inputs, totally messed up.

[prisma kraken]

even copper powder

[cinder silo]

Yeah about the copper powder, to exploit the particle accelerator I had to exploit a constructor 1st 🤣 .

[prisma kraken]

yeah

[cinder silo]

With all the spare power I have, I could have 150 particle accelerators just spewing pasta for coupons, completely useless to me but doable.

[cinder silo]

Yeah this shouldn't happen 🤣

[vapid gorge]

need to change the world max item production of every item to ♾️

[cinder silo]

I had to see if the particle accelerator could be broke like everything else ~ it can.

[vapid gorge]

beautiful

[cinder silo]

So yeah my badly incomplete SE facility is spewing pasta, good thing I've already done phase 4 🤦‍♂️

On the upside, I do finally have two of the SE display cases filled.

[mystic verge]

so i need a bit of help

i have 44 fuel generators set up and they are having issues all getting the fuel they need

[median heath]

Step 1, delete the buffer.

[mystic verge]

is that really it?

[median heath]

Yes, that is really step 1.

Once that is done we can evaluate what step 2 might be.

[mystic verge]

its like 44.3 generators wouldnt I want a buffer of some sort?

[median heath]

Buffers never help.

[cinder silo]

Buffers in general often mask or cause issues, in-line buffers are worse!

[mystic verge]

how does one make a non in-line buffer?

[median heath]

Why is one forcing themselves to have a buffer?

[mystic verge]

well if the power went out for any reason (and its liable to its a dedicated server shit breaks when it shouldnt) wouldnt having backup fuel be good so i can get the grid back on?

[median heath]

Ok, next time LEAD WITH THAT.

Because when "thing is not working" is the issue "I AM ON A DEDICATED SERVER" is a massive piece of information.

[cinder silo]

This! ^^

[mystic verge]

well the issue i was having wasnt with pipes refusing to carry fluid it was just the fluid wasnt reaching all the gens

my supply and demand is at least on paper good, ( have less demand than supply of fuel)

[median heath]

Yes, but knowing the full scope means we can advise differently..

Things to keep in mind:
Never try to make a mk2 carry the full 600.
Not happening on a dedi.
If you're going to use the buffer for back-up, the way you do that is by putting it to the side of the line, letting it fill most of the way first, then deleting the pipe that feeds it and connecting the generators.
Once the gens are all running you can reconnect the buffer to the system.

Example:

Build the black lines.
Then build the RED line, fill the buffer like 80%.
Delete RED line.
Build GREEN line.
Allow generators to fill.
Build BLUE line.
Build RED line.

[mystic verge]

ive had issues trying to push the full 600 on a mk2 in my own solo so no worries there but i can try this method and check back in a few hours when everything saturates

[median heath]

For saturating:
Turn the first generator in each row off completely. As the rows fill turn them back on one at a time.

[mystic verge]

im not too great with fluid manifolds especially when they get big so im a little out of my depth

[median heath]

Once you have turned the first ones back on, that's when you reconnect the buffer to the system.

[mystic verge]

so not the whole row just the first ones in each row?

[median heath]

I mean you can turn them ALL off and just turn each gen on one at a time if you really want to 🤷‍♂️
But 1 per row is good enough to make it saturate at a decent pace.

[mystic verge]

okie

[whole heron]

Working on a big oil factory as well. Off-hand, what is a safe rate for a pipe while ensuring stability? I'm thinking of going with 571.5 because the numbers line up nicely by the end.

[median heath]

That will be fine.

[mystic verge]

so

[mystic verge]

i hooked the buffer up using the method you showed

and its uhh

not working so smoothly

[median heath]

Buff should have been filled before any power was being generated from this system.
Then buffer disconnected entirely while system filled.
Then only once system was full should buffer have been reconnected.

Buffer should have no actual effect on the system and purely be there for "oops" moments.

[mystic verge]

it seems to be evening out now but

like

what you said makes perfect sense

and thats exactly what i did

the buffer was full

the pipe system was full

could it just be the pipes i built to connect the buffer filling?

[median heath]

I mean the buffer will fill the pipes you connect to it, then everything will stabilize.

If it isn't, we're back to "Multiplayer Broken. Plz Fix."

[mystic verge]

i seem to have answered my own question here

its stable now

[median heath]

👍

[mystic verge]

i cant say it will stay that way since dedicated serves sometimes have issues with pipes forgetting how to work

[median heath]

And they will be much worse once U8 hits.

[mystic verge]

oh im sure thats why im keeping the server on 7 as long as i can

[median heath]

That's why I don't do dedicated for this game 🤷‍♂️

[mystic verge]

it wasnt my idea but it was the only way to work on projects with people on the other side of the country

[median heath]

Ew, multiplayer.

😭 Why? 😭

[snow maple]

i suppose it would be a bit more hassle but you could play save-file shuffle via discord or something. locally hosted multiplayer seems to be at least marginally more stable than dedicated

[visual cove]

There is already a question for it on q.s.c

[mystic verge]

so uhmmm

its broken somehow

the buffer is draining and im not sure why

[cinder silo]

It'll soon be rehashed if the bug is still thee come U8.

That's why I said I'm leaving the exploit factory up until then.

[visual cove]

does it need an entire factory? you really just need one machine making power shards or wire or something

we've had lots of fun with it for the last 10 days, and the speedrun times are just getting silly now, but we're all having race this weekend so we'll see what the final best package%, 2package%, 3package% and 4package% times are after then 🙂

and then we'll go back to the normal ways

[cinder silo]

You could glitch a group of machines to make everything.

[visual cove]

that's pretty much what we do

[cinder silo]

I experimented with it and it is dead reliable, so I'm documenting it all and capturing video, then I'll wait.

Reliable enough that I even got the original glitch slightly wrong, copy-pasting twice and it still produced with 0 inputs.

[visual cove]

sure. Epiphane has released a video on it as well, as has other speedrunners, and IIRC the original question has a bunch of replication videos showing how to do it and the other associated glitches.

[cinder silo]

Unsure, I tried to look up videos and kept getting such BS returns like using cheat/trainer shite and all sorts of sketchy stuff.

Interesting, good news is it isn't a perma thing, reloading makes things work as they should, good to know.

[visual cove]

I'm looking at several of them in my youtube watch history, but it'll sort it self out quick enough when they're not in feature freeze

[ember fractal]

The new meta is produce stuff from nothing. Because ficsit doesn't waste.

[snow dove]

Gotta love when the game goes so meta we start making something from nothing

[quartz violet]

Ficsit rule 42a, we do not violate the laws of thermodynamics

[whole heron]

Except with conveyer belts. Where does the power for those come from, anyway?

[oblique hollow]

space

[placid oyster]

Ficsit has wireless power transfer from orbit

Never forget it

[ember fractal]

The power is transmitted wirelessly from the food court

They harvest the energy released as gas up there and use it to power your conveyer belts

[quartz violet]

Better question, how does a pump use 50,000,000 watts

Even if it's moving 600m3 of crude oil, that's a lot of watts

[whole heron]

I was thinking the other day that batteries are too good and fuel isn't good enough if everything were to reflect the real world.

[snow dove]

ficsit steals some of the energy used

[snow dove]

batteries don't produce power tho

it's actually accurate IRL, biomass is kinda mid, coal is meh, fuel is better, nuclear is best

[whole heron]

True. But you can put both in a truck.

And the truck uses a couple gallons in a few minutes.

Really badly designed trucks.

[snow dove]

it's big af

[quartz violet]

You can put literal plutonium fuel rods in a truck with the horsepower of a ride-on lawnmower

[snow dove]

the tractor has more horsepower than a ride-on lawnmower

same with explorer

[quartz violet]

Eh

[whole heron]

Modded lawnmowers are fast.

[cinder silo]

Without a proper reactor, that fuel rod would only work like an rtg (stretching credibility a bit I know) and those don't out a lot of power.

[snow dove]

wdym? you don't use nuclear fuel rods in your internal combustion engine car?

[whole heron]

It's diesel, it can run on anything.

[snow dove]

more or less true

you could prolly get it to run on cow shit if you tried hard enough

[cinder silo]

radiothermic generator, basically just an electic car with a radioisotope heat source to make power.

[whole heron]

Anyway, I think this is just a natural consequence of the game needing a progression.

[snow dove]

but oil, gas, diesel, jet fuel, kerosene, all work

[cinder silo]

and batteries ..

Who knows, maybe they have two inputs under the hood, actual burning fuel and electric but it is really weird.

[whole heron]

If Aluminum were simpler to create, it'd probably be in the tier before oil.

[cinder silo]

At least aluminium in this game doesn't result in vast red lakes of poisonous tailings like it does for reals.

[whole heron]

But I think this is the first material level where feedback loops/liquid removal whatever are needed.

[oblique hollow]

sadly. But thankfully that can be modded

[whole heron]

I've been getting rid of excess plant material by turning it into Solid Biofuel and shoving it in my Explorer. Am I looking at this right that the Biocoal and Charcoal recipes are actually more efficient power-wise?

[quartz violet]

Discord did a dumb and didn't make this a reply so I edited it and reposted the message ad a reply

[snow dove]

max incline is 180 degrees if you try hard enough

[quartz violet]

I did research, and the max incline for a rideable lawnmower is 15 degrees, while the max incline on a sugarcube tractor is 9 degrees

[snow dove]

weight

[whole heron]

We still can't find anyone willing to drive an F1 car upside-down.

[quartz violet]

I guarantee redbull will sponsor it if you do

[snow dove]

f-1 might not work great, a little too close to the ground

[quartz violet]

It's not actually that dumb of an idea

[whole heron]

It's one of those things that makes perfect sense in a world of spherical cows, but you'd probably have to custom design a car for it in reality.

[quartz violet]

They already have all kinds of insane aerodynamics to force the wheels into whatever they are driving on

[snow dove]

technically with enough downforce it's possible

[quartz violet]

Or broken enough physics

Just open up a few hundred hrome tabs on the universe's gaming rig and the lag from that just might do it

[cinder silo]

Imagine if we had coal mine tailings like the days of old, satisfactory version of the Aberfan disaster ...

[oblique hollow]

Im already having enough fun with Bauxite residue in my playthrough

[cinder silo]

Not stuff to store by the millions of tons in buffers is it? (I can't type today)

[oblique hollow]

Replaces Silica, outputted very fast and cant be sunk. So you end up with a flood of red stuff on belts that you need to process

[whole heron]

Why does Electrode - Aluminum Scrap require petroleum coke?

[oblique hollow]

because it does

Electrodes are made from coke, usually

https://www.mindat.org/glossary/Soderberg_electrode

its basically a Soderberg electrode, directly made inside the refinery

[whole heron]

I did not know that. Interesting.

[cinder silo]

My place doesn't use electrode because it is miles away from an oil source but not far from coal reserves.

[oblique hollow]

...IRL?

😆

[cinder silo]

I'm hardly going to be processing bauxite IRL, not sure all that would fit in my home.

[quartz violet]

selling home-made raw aluminum on Craigslist wouldn't be a bad side hustle

[cinder silo]

Better off policing the streets to collect discarded aluminium cans and sell to a scrapper than trying to home make raw aluminium 😛

[placid oyster]

It replicates the real world bayer + electrode process

[placid oyster]

Aluminum is notoriously costly to produce

Those electrodes are very power hungry

[oblique hollow]

isnt it the damn alumimun oxide thats so power hungry because you literally need MegaWatts for the Hall-Héroult process?

[placid oyster]

Its both I think

The electrodes consume around 25MW last time I read on it

Everything around aluminium is power hungry

[queen rivet]

College Chemistry professor had the question "How is bauxite turned into aluminum?" and one student answered "Zap the bejesus out of it" and got full score.

[placid oyster]

Technically correct, the best kind of correct

[queen rivet]

One of those "I wish I had thought of that" moments.

[vapid gorge]

I mean, I’m the 18th century alum was the most expensive material on the planet.

But then someone discovered zapping it

[queen rivet]

We're lucky that after putting that effort into turning it into metal, it likes to stay that way.

[placid oyster]

Thanks bauxite, very cool

[oblique hollow]

And its even kind enough to put on a protective coating

[queen rivet]

We should probably stop anthropomorphizing it in case it gets mad.

[placid oyster]

Why? Aluminium is cute >w<

Ok Ill stop

[cinder silo]

@snow dove Both the test cannons side by side.

Compact cannon throw distance.

Spaced cannon throw distance.

The spaced, using the same number of entrances threw more than triple the distance.

[snow dove]

so it requires the same space, and less boosters for greater performance?

[cinder silo]

The same number of boosters, but spread them out, 2 boosters per foundation instead of the 4 shown in your initial setup.

You could cut boosters some and get similar results but using less power.

[snow dove]

ah

[quartz violet]

I've found that if you have a big enough gap and enough speed, you bonk into the entrance and a few fractions of a second later the game sends you through the entrance with none of your momentum

[snow dove]

i prefer the space saving to power saving

i have damn near 40GW to spare

[cinder silo]

I'm dead serious when it comes to cannon trials, I have a dedicated cannon yard for it.

[quartz violet]

Wow

[cinder silo]

But the rule of thumb is two entrances per foundation tile.

[quartz violet]

Will 2 spaced entrances be as fast as 4 crammed ones though

And when is it more effective to use spaced out entrances if you have a limited build area

[cinder silo]

You see the throw distance above, the spaced & compact cannons have the same number of entrances but the spaced throws 3x the distance.

[snow dove]

wait the spaced takes 2x the space but provides 3x the performance???

[cinder silo]

Here is a physics failure from an early incarnation of the cannon yard.

[cinder silo]

Something to do with momentum as you're thrown from one section to the next, in a compact setup, that momentum isn't really there so you get far less acceleration.

[quartz violet]

In like 2 platforms you could fit 8 crammed and 4 spaced, so would the spaced still be faster in 2 platforms or would it be the same speed / less

[snow dove]

so the numbers i said were right?

[cinder silo]

You can see the distance in the above screenshots, 3x the throw distance is actually a conservative estimate.

[snow dove]

time to change all my hypertube boosters

[cinder silo]

The amount of cannon experiments I've run is crazy, here is the old 166 still under construction.

Tip: don't use 166 entrances, this happens.

[quartz violet]

Yeah I would kind of expect that to happen

[cinder silo]

74 did this 🤣

I'll repeat my throw tests in order to get a better distance measurement.

[placid oyster]

Spaced cannon will output you at the last entrance if you come from a closed loop

Will the compact cannon also do that?

Or will it clip you to a side/to the first entrance?

[cinder silo]

My experiments with loops in general are limited because my save is huge, the processor lag makes physics go wonky so I'd get no good data either way,

[placid oyster]

Allright dont worry Ill check myself when I get to rebuilding my cannon network

I was mainly wondering because its annoying to get sucked back into the cannon you were just exiting

[cinder silo]

Avoiding that and not going the wrong way down a cannon is why I use a brake built in a specific manner as shown here, the entrance at the end culls your velocity, the second entrance and bare support stop you going backwards.

[whole heron]

Unrelated: An empty cannister takes half a plastic to make, half a plastic takes half a fuel to make, so a cannister full of fuel for an explorer basically cost you 1.5 fuel?

[cinder silo]

Probably why 4 get made at a time, scale the thing up enough though and it won't matter 😄

[whole heron]

Personal fuel doesn't matter in the long run since you use so much less than your machines do, but I'm just thinking.

[placid oyster]

Looks interesting

How did you integrate this into a cannon launcher?

Do you just add a reverse entrance at the end?

[cinder silo]

I had to create the brake because this happened otherwise:

[placid oyster]

Ah, so it isnt for bidirectional cannons

Now I understand

[cinder silo]

Trouble with going against the direction of construction down a tube is that stupid camera bob issue.

[primal flicker]

If I'm reading this right, deleting every other entrance from my compact cannons will result in ~50% launch velocity increase?
Nuts.

[cinder silo]

I'm rebuilding the throw distance experiment to better document my results, the original was on in an ad-hoc manner upon request at the time.

Also making it a permanent addition to the cannonyard lab.

[supple belfry]

I'm trying to do my (hopefully last) aluminum project on my save, and plan to pull in ~2200 units of Bauxite from the three westernmost nodes and process them at the lake. The Instant Scrap recipe is calling to me--I'm happy to avoid the finnicky fluid feedback loops, and I don't think it's that big of a deal to just dump a single pure node's worth of sulfur into it to save me the trouble. (I don't have aspirations towards a max nuclear build, and my I'm producing plenty of batteries for my needs.) Is there something I'm missing about the Instant Scrap alt? I know it's not maximally efficient in terms of bauxite usage, but I won't be approaching anywhere near max usage, so I'm not too worried.

Other perspectives?

[median heath]

Um... it is max efficiency.

Who told you otherwise?

[wind spade]

if you like a recipe, go for it. There's no generic "good/bad" distinction between recipes, only what you do or don't like

[supple belfry]

Sorry--it's not the optimal recipe for making the most of the bauxite.

[median heath]

Um... it is optimal.
Who told you otherwise?

[supple belfry]

Guess I'm wondering if I'm just under-estimating my sulfur usage late in the game. Again, no plans for any major nuclear operation.

[median heath]

What are you thinking is better/more optimal/more efficient than Instant?

And where did you get said information?

[primal flicker]

I thought sloppy/electrode was 🥇

[median heath]

Incorrect. But also I am asking them, specifically.

[primal flicker]

In terms of bauxite in, ingots out

[median heath]

That is not a valid comparison, but we can return to why not once they answer the question.

[median heath]

@supple belfry

[supple belfry]

Right. I guess I might have gotten wires crossed in my numbers with comparing the alumina solution to the instant recipe.

Baux in > ingots out was my initial thinking.

[median heath]

Baux > Ingots isn't a valid comparison as you're mixing 2 completely separate chains of things.

Baux > Scrap is comparison A.

Where you have 2 "optimal" solutions.

Instant
Sloppy + Electrode

Both have the same conversion rate.

[wind spade]

bauxite->aluminum ingots (without pure ingots, they just decrease them all by the same rate anyway)
vanilla: 100->100
electrode: 90->100
instant: 75->100
sloppy: 83.33->100
sloppy+electrode: 75->100

[supple belfry]

OK, thanks for that clarification.

[median heath]

After you have your Scrap, by whatever method you can then look at Ingots. And decide if you want base or Pure.
But your Ingot decision has absolutely nothing to do with your Scrap decision.

@primal flicker

[supple belfry]

Am I underestimating anything in late game sulfur?

[median heath]

No. You can do max nuke and ALL Aluminium via Instant and still have enough Sulfur for hundreds of Batteries per minute.

[supple belfry]

Great. Thanks for your help!

[cinder silo]

Oops, going to be a bit of a data collection delay because I screwed up the compact cannon for the throw tests 🤦‍♂️

[cinder silo]

Nope, the cannon was built correctly, problem is the compact form stopped working on my oversized save so I can't collect data with it, meh, demolition project.

[oblique hollow]

Nice to see some Instant Scrap Enjoyers above

[willow yoke]

Having some issues with a Powerplant I built and was hoping to get some insight as to why fuel isn't being distributed properly.
I'm using the 2 Pure nodes of oil on the West Beaches and have the Oil extractor pulling 300m3/min each, total of 600. I have this fed into 10 Refineries each consuming 60m3/min, and this all seems to be working, no overflow before. When I try to pump this fuel to the generators through, I run into issues. 400m3/min required me to run 13 maxed out Fuel Gens need 30m3/min and 1 gen underclocked to use 10m3/min, so 13x30 = 390 + 10 = 400. But some gens toward the end keep running out of fuel. To combat this, after each intersection that feeds 2 gens, I put a valve since I have been warned about fluid mechanics and that they can flow backwards, but the issue isn't solved. Any ideas?

[delicate chasm]

Flow direction is based on where the existing fluid is. All pipes will draw from all connected pipes that have a higher fill percentage. If you walk up and examine a pipe it will show you a tank with the liquid in it in the UI. If the level in that tank is lower than the level in the pipe FURTHER down the line, the pipe FURTHER down the line will drain back into the one you are looking at.

Your pipeline is trying to fill, and it is spilling liquid into the next pipe segment only to have its own value zeroed out by the generator that is also pulling from that segment.

There are 2 solutions: Fill from both sides (loop the pipe so there are 2 equal paths the liquid is traveling along), which will feed the generators in the center last. This will stabilize much faster.

Or flood the entire system and then turn the generators on one at a time. If your pipeline does not have any chokepoints, this will remain stable.

[willow yoke]

Let me give that a try

[delicate chasm]

You can probably just leave the generators at the far end online and turn on another gen each time you are about to fill the last, if all off at once would cripple your power grid btw.

[willow yoke]

Nah, I have a factory I can turn off nearby to keep things stable. It only produces Plastic and Rubber which it has already been overflowed into Sink, so turning it off is no loss

I might have found a separate issue

[delicate chasm]

What's going on now?

[willow yoke]

Turns out there is a slight supply issue with the Fuel Refining, I accidentally deleted a tube at some point

[delicate chasm]

Ayy, that will definitely do it. Can relate.

[wind spade]

heavily recommended to not use valves

[willow yoke]

Oh? Any reason in particular?

[wind spade]

• they can only handle 255 different values despite what it says in UI
• while they prevent backflow, they only do so from one end of valve to another, so any connected section of pipe can still have backflow (and therefore you won't get rid of backflow ever)
• there's no reason to prevent backflow anyway, much better is to loop the pipe, so that backflow doesn't matter

[willow yoke]

Fair enough

[wind spade]

another thing is that majority of issues with fluids that we encounter here are resolved by removing valves, so statistically you're more likely to have issues if you use valves 😛

[willow yoke]

Well that hurts XD

[primal flicker]

Got a smaller save? Would be more stable for that kind of testing I guess. Or write up the test for someone else to conduct.

[cinder silo]

I'll need to do some building in my northern forest save, going to be an almighty trek to the dunes though (and some tech progress needed) to build the cannon test yard there.

[primal flicker]

Could use the canyon as a test location? It's pretty straight anyway.

[median heath]

The sole use for Valves at the moment is when you're building VOPs.

[noble timber]

They are still useable if done correctly however they come with a whole load of issues so outside of VOPs it's just not worth using them

[wind spade]

they don't give much benefit anyway

[noble timber]

Yeah... kibz has a massive balancer using them but they just aren't needed. Biggest waste of time on valves i've seen

[wind spade]

personally I'd not follow kibitz's style and I don't really like his videos anyway

[noble timber]

I enjoy his videos but the way he does some stuff baffles me

And I am willing to bet all his crises are heavily scripted, for example, how the hell does he forget he put caterium into his nuclear waste processing?

[wind spade]

I'm fine with him playing the game he wants, but as soon as he starts showing that off, we'll get tons of people doing it as well and then confused why it doesn't work (or what approach is better)

[noble timber]

He even said in the recent video that valves kill headlift 🤦‍♂️

[twilit zephyr]

which one is going to be better long term? I dont really have a problem with any of them so I cant tell

[noble timber]

What do you need the most now?

[twilit zephyr]

I have no clue

[wind spade]

better is very subjective

pick whatever you like, if you don't know, pick one at random and move on

[noble timber]

Do you need a lot of cheap rubber? Or screws?

[twilit zephyr]

alright fair enough

[whole heron]

You could just grab more drives.

[noble timber]

Pick what you think you can best use now as you can always pick them all up

[twilit zephyr]

Ive only just got into oil so I dont know, Ill probably just do the rubber one

[wind spade]

you can always get all recipes unless you lose hard drives

[whole heron]

And even then you can save edit.

[noble timber]

Recycled rubber and plastic are very good recipes if you need a lot of them

[twilit zephyr]

Got the rubber one thanks

[noble timber]

Yeah if you combine them with diluted fuel and the heavy oil residue alt it's the most oil efficient way to make plastic and rubber

[noble timber]

I also don't appreciate him basically saying fluid trains are useless

For liquids at least, they are just as good as packaging the liquid and using a regular freight car

[teal oasis]

Does light intensity of floodlights etc influence power consumption?

[median heath]

No.

[quartz violet]

They are awesome background noise though

[astral moth]

I made this math in order to make 1350 alum ingots. Is anything wrong with them?

[deft lichen]

why not use a production planner https://u6.satisfactorytools.com/production

[sand epoch]

We have carbon?

[deft lichen]

coal

[astral moth]

it should be coal, but i don't speak english haha

[astral moth]

the thing is, i have three fluid buffers that fulls up. I don't know why

[median heath]

I'm more confused about "chat alum"

Is that like... people who graduated from Twitch?

[deft lichen]

buffers are never the solution

[median heath]

Alcohol is a solution!

[deft lichen]

if anything, buffers just delay a problem rather than solving

[deft lichen]

occasionally

[median heath]

According to chemistry... always 😉

[astral moth]

i realize. I have them to organize this section, but now i'm using it to see how much extra water per minute is in the system

straight 30 mins taking notes

[whole heron]

Off-hand, how accurate are the MJ amounts on the fandom wiki?

[snow dove]

accurate

[willow yoke]

@wind spade @delicate chasm Thanks guys. Removed the valves and looped the fuelline, power is now completely stable. Time to continue building trains

[snow maple]

like in terms of MJ/item? pretty accurate as long as the recipe is still accurate

[median heath]

@grand pagoda
Yellow = Use for Power, just run a cable back to your base.
Red = Use for Steel. Recommended tractor route outlined for you.

If you're by the 3 copper, there are 6 irons.

[grand pagoda]

yeah that looks quite right

[median heath]

The bottom-most iron in the second screenshot is the hidden one.
You can snap a miner to it and it works fine, but you have to know it is there.

[grand pagoda]

i got 2 miners for iron up and running rn but working on the third

and im trying to get the vehiclular transport rn so i can get quicker to the coal

idk if thats smart

[median heath]

Do not make a super long belt to either of those locations.
Just use a tractor to deliver the finished steel product back to your base.
Like... at Red, you should be making both Beams and Pipes, and just ship those back to yourself.

[grand pagoda]

Yeah im just getting the things for the tractor rn

[grand pagoda]

you got some beginner tips btw?

[median heath]

Uh...

"If power is a factor in your decision-making, you're building power wrong."
Is a big one.

Fluid Buffers should only ever be built in conjunction with Trains.
Valves are only for VOPs.

Trains are not an upgrade to trucks, they are different. Both are better than the other in their respective niches.
Optimal logistics is using all 3 vehicular methods where applicable.

Try to solve your own puzzles instead of just asking us to solve them for you, because the game is teaching you mechanics you will need for later and if you don't learn them, you will just be right back here asking use to solve everything again later.

[cinder silo]

Oh crap I just noticed those coal mines, I have them tapped, bah! , going to need another source or I'll just be making coke steel there.

[grand pagoda]

Thanks

[twilit zephyr]

FInally made a factory after 50 hours of playtime on steam, I usually give up and restart before I get to this point

accidently made it too efficient though so now I dont have any wires going to storage

[umbral terrace]

SAME

I ALWAYS RESTART

I have terrible OCD so if anything goes wrong I end up making a new save 😭

[twilit zephyr]

All the production lines get too complicated and I restart in a new game lmao but im trying to force myself to redo all my shit and stick with it

[frosty owl]

I know it can be hard/annoying to deal with it, but I think it's worth trying to make it as neat as possible before restarting (if you still wish to): the experience is what allows you to make even better things later, don't miss on it by repeating the steps before you get to the "meat and potatoes" so to speak, or you'll restart a needless amount of times ^^

[snow dove]

@cinder silo So i ran the tests, repeated each one 5 times to make sure i wasn't changing the results somehow, below is the findings and 1 video example of how the test was run for each cannon type
Spaced Cannon 16x Entrances: 427m
Compact Cannon 16x Entrances: 122m

so the spaced cannon is 3.5 times better

[deft lichen]

spaced is each entrance 4m apart, tube segment 2m long?

[snow dove]

the compact cannon might be pushed out further by 1m due to a different in set up

[deft lichen]

if you have the testing track set up, could you check if dismantling the supports at the end of each segment has any effect?

[snow dove]

the exact setup for both

[snow dove]

And yeah sure, though only the space one terminates in a support

(Terminus of both)

i can rerun the spaced cannon one twice to see if removing the final support does anything

then imma remove all the secondary supports and see if it does anything

[deft lichen]

yeah, the spaced setup is how I build it, without the trailing supports

[snow dove]

it's significantly better

it takes 2x the space for the number of entrances, but provides 3.5x the performance

[deft lichen]

I label the compact one entirely incorrect, it's a waste of power and underperforms

can't see the benefit of ever building one

[snow dove]

so terminating support does little to nothing

maybe like .25m difference

i'll still run it without any secondary support tho cause i'm curious

[vagrant shell]

thats below error rate I would say

[snow dove]

yeah it's more likely to be human error than anything else

.25 is .0585% of 427, so that's absolutely miniscule

[young coyote]

What about adding a 45-degree upturn at the end? I have a 12 or 13 entrance cannon with an upturn and it launches me from the spire coast down to the big arch in Grassy Fields. It started with 16, but it shot me clear out of the map boundary.

[snow dove]

oh we're just testing the efficiency of the cannons in this experiment, a 45 degree upturn would probably be directly related to the efficiency

[young coyote]

I get that you're just doing a comparison between the two methods, it's just hard for me to visualize what the practical impact of each would be, since you seldom use a cannon for a flat trajectory.

[deft lichen]

the upturn allows the cannon to cross the entire map, that'd be pretty hard to measure

[snow dove]

also there's kinda forest in the way, so i'd have to raise and redo the setup

[vagrant shell]

the relative increase in distance still would be linear to the flat comparision

[deft lichen]

that'd easily go over

[placid oyster]

Its all about speed

[young coyote]

I thought it was all about family.

[vagrant shell]

So if the flat has a 25% increase relative it still would be a 25% increase on the one with the upturn. The scale might change but the relative gain would be as said linear.

[snow dove]

negligible change as well

now imma try the cannon even further spread out

cause i'm curious

[placid oyster]

Turns out the best cannon setup is 2 entrances one map diagonal apart

[deft lichen]

so removing trailing supports has been a hoax all this time

[snow dove]

seems like it

i can run it and record it if you'd like

[deft lichen]

no need, if you measure it enough times for it to be certain

[eager stone]

how am I supposed to split that?

[snow dove]

i've ran it twice, i'll prolly run it 3 more times just to be certain

[snow dove]

one splitter

[deft lichen]

1 splitter, it'll sort™️ itself out

[eager stone]

ah ok

thx

[snow dove]

basically the one requiring less, will take what it needs, then the internal buffer of the machine(s) will fill, and push any extra to the other side

[deft lichen]

the oversupplied machine will fill up, back up all the way to the splitter and then everything will go where it should

[snow dove]

JINX!

[deft lichen]

[fast vault]

use mods i recommended counter limit

[snow dove]

or don't, cause it's entirely useless?

[deft lichen]

🤦

[fast vault]

i don't know i like mods

[wind spade]

why would you want to use mods for something you can do in vanilla with one splitter? 😛

[deft lichen]

because mods make you play the game 'wrong'

"let's take the game's intended design challenges and just remove them entirely"

[placid oyster]

Hey, mods that add new challenges are fine

[snow dove]

all mods are fine...

all just personal preference

[deft lichen]

yeah, I meant the ones that are meant to "solve" the "issues" the game has

[fast vault]

not really, why combine when you can use a mod that fixes one thing very quickly and you do not have to bother with filling up another machine, you fire up the limit and go on, with the rest for larger buildings it works too well

[fast vault]

yep

[deft lichen]

I mean play with whatever mods you want, I just wouldn't suggest others to try to solve problems that way

[fast vault]

i add new mod mk 7 to last phase because minner 3 have 1200 item/pm

[snow dove]

So uhm... i ran that Spaced Cannon without secondary supports two more times, and they both showed a slight drop in efficiency so imma run it a couple more times to be certain

[wind spade]

I highly doubt you have run out of resources to need that

[fast vault]

did not run out, but if you can crank up the machine to this degree then you should be able to use it

[snow dove]

well now i'm getting inconsistent results

[deft lichen]

remember that how fast you walk into the cannon matters

[snow dove]

ik

[fast vault]

I think so and I do so, I do not impose on anyone to do the same, this game is supposed to be a pleasure for you not for me

[snow dove]

i'm walking from the same line every time, centered as best i can, and unpressing W the very second the cannon catches me

though that does introduce some level of human error, hence the multiple tests

[deft lichen]

try building a mk3 belt that goes into the canon

that should remove human error

[snow dove]

Ooh good idea

I'll do that

imma have to rerun with the supports too then

[wind spade]

that's why they will be resolving the issue in future update, most likely by reducing things

[fast vault]

I doubt it, it is not a difficult change to make, it would be better to add faster belts, but I do not follow the planned changes, also I will not comment

just writing what I think would be better

[snow dove]

floating point errors is what i believe it's called, basically you can't full achieve the max throughput of belts

[wind spade]

you can't just add more belts

there is a reason why we don't have mk6

and it's not "devs are lazy"

[deft lichen]

I think the issues are more caused by the game having to handle items moving machine to belt and belt segment to belt segment

you have only so many frames in which you can do stuff

[fast vault]

Moderators can add extra belts normally, game developers can't do it
XD

PLS

[snow dove]

Makes sense

[snow dove]

do you not understand how developing games works?

[deft lichen]

sure, do they keep up with their advertised throughput?

[wind spade]

have you checked how reliable the added belts from mods are?

[deft lichen]

there was a lights mod in the game before the lights update, but guess what that did to the framerate

developers have to make sure the game...works

mod developers should but ultimately don't. they're not selling anything, if the mod is bad, people will just not use it, or more often tolerate it, because it's a mod

[fast vault]

OFFFF ok ok i understand now, But they can still do it, it's just that the limitations of the engine can make the game run worse

[snow dove]

and they don't want to hinder the performance of the game if they can help it

[rapid panther]

its a lot harder for a dev to add something

sometimes it messes with some game files and the fix is much harder than it seems

[wind spade]

mk6+ belts from mods most likely don't run at their advertised speed and have issues with throughput keeping

[fast vault]

I'll get to it at some point probably and I'll have to check it out because the most important pillars of my last factory are based on this also and I'll check it out anyway

[rapid panther]

i think its nicer to be limited tho, then u have to get innovative with ur splits etc

[snow dove]

@deft lichen Ran the test 6 more times with the mk3 belt for consistency, all produced the exact same result as the original, with secondary supports, test

[deft lichen]

👍

[snow dove]

@cinder silo @deft lichen and here's all the info i've tested and compiled along with screenshots and videos
Compact Cannon (2m): 122m
4m Spaced Cannon: 427m
4m Spaced Cannon (without Secondary Supports): 427m
Hybrid Cannon: 424m

[deft lichen]

excellent, tyvm

[snow dove]

(Videos)

Hybrid cannon is the most efficient for the space

it's the same design as the compact cannon, but with a 1m gap between segments

[snow dove]

so i came up with an equation that ballparks it (idk how to find or even see if it follows a proper equation)

X being number of Hypertube entrances with the Hybrid design, Y being distance with my experimentation setup

[whole heron]

What's the verdict on a tube that starts from above and you jump down into it?

[median heath]

This game isn't about math though

[snow dove]

i wasn't experimenting with that

[delicate chasm]

Falling is another way of accelerating. I strongly suspect that there is no practical difference between a vertical and horizontal insertion beyond the segment of tube immediately after the entrance. Tubing in a downward direction and certain turn angles affect speed differently than horizontal so there's that to consider.

[snow dove]

probably just increases speed due to the decrease in elevation

[cinder silo]

Greatly appreciated, so the distance ratio is even greater than I estimated at 3x from my earlier trial before everything broke down, good to see the hard footage too ❤️

[snow dove]

Happy to help!

[primal flicker]

Looking at making all the building materials and I think I'm overdoing it on a few of them at least.
I started with 1 stack every 5 minutes for everything, then tweaked numbers to round to the nearest whole machine (no underclocking).
How can I balance this output in a way that feels less arbitrary and more practical? The intent is for central storage/dedicated building supply depot.

[fierce ruin]

hey guys, kind of a long question/situation.

Im starting a new world and I would like to make an auto sorting storage but im facing one main problem, imagine im producing 10 rods and with those 10 rods I produce 40 screws, I want to storage BOTH rods and screws, but they are connected so last world I did a belt per item based storage and it worked fine, I would split the belt transporting rods, and screws would go 50% efficiency until rods storage was full, from then until screws storage was full it would run 100% efficiency and at the end the whole system would stop.

However with the smart splitter into sink system this just wouldn't work, the sink would make it impossible to fill the rods and the screws would permanently run 50% efficiency. Obviously rods and screws are a basic example, but if I wanted to storage every item I would just have a half-working world. Is there any way to make it like I explained with the belt per item system without making a "storage filler factory" for each item. I mean, I would need the splitter to detect that storage is full and stop splitting.

thx for reading and sorry if I didnt explain myself really good T_T

[placid oyster]

I think if you have the following it will work:

Item input ----> Smart splitter --overflow--> Production line ----> Smart splitter --overflow--> Sink
                         |                                                |
                         |any                                             |any
                         |                                                |
                      Storage                                          Storage

[prisma kraken]

you have a few choices for how to do it...

[fierce ruin]

oh fuck thats actually a pretty clever one

[prisma kraken]

but i think lino sorta nailed it with the ascii art 🙂

[placid oyster]

with your example, the iron rod storage would fill up, then it would start producing screws, then the screw storage would fill up, and then it sinks screws only

[placid oyster]

thanks took me a bit to get right lol

[placid oyster]

(generally speaking, the more you process something the more points it gives, so sinking the last item of complex production chains is almost always worth it outside of a few alts iirc)

[prisma kraken]

yeah, there's a few recipes where the components are worth more than the output

[fierce ruin]

ty guys ^^

[prisma kraken]

cough automated miner cough

[placid oyster]

for those you could shortcircuit the sink line by removing the last smart splitter and adding another overflow line to the first one (and setting the production output to any)

but it would make the chain run at 50% until the storage is full

probably not worth it tbh

[prisma kraken]

i tend to just output everything on a sushi line and smart split it at storage on the way to a sink, with machines making space elevator stuff btw storage and the sink

[fierce ruin]

hahahaha

[prisma kraken]

that's a bit of a simplification, but from 1000 ft up, that's kind of the structure of my factory

[fierce ruin]

i stopped playing last world bc i didnt plan the last elevator tier to be automated and then i tried making it through the storage and i made like 1/min

too overwhelming

[prisma kraken]

hehe

none of the elevator parts are too bad to make except for the ADS's

[fierce ruin]

those were the one that made me quit T_T

[prisma kraken]

yeah, they just need tons of autowire

but the components for the ACU's aren't a joke either

[fierce ruin]

how much would you say is a reasonable number as a goal for new world, i planned 10/m NP, 10/m TPR, 40/m MG and 10/m ADS, planning something like 800 hours world¿? tell me what you think abt this

bc i dont know if its too much

[prisma kraken]

it isn't an insane goal

[fierce ruin]

good to know

[prisma kraken]

i mean i'm shooting for 64-72 ADS

[fierce ruin]

my god

how is lag situation for mega factories rn? it used to be a pain in update 3 and so

[prisma kraken]

the game has gotten a lot quicker

but its still a good idea to decentralize as much as possible

[fierce ruin]

yeee im for sure going for a modular design in this run

[prisma kraken]

kind of where i end up in playthroughs is around 4-5 big factories

its kinda like HMF, computers, oil, alumnium and oscillators

with motors & possibly hsc's as their own thing

when building nuclear, i kinda just treat that as its own thing on the side

[fierce ruin]

yup i kinda messed up with nuclear last run as some items are also used in last space elevator items

[prisma kraken]

yeah, imho, you kinda build as part of nuclear the supply chain for the build, and if it outputs any excess, yay

[fierce ruin]

for sure the way to go

[prisma kraken]

really there's only a few things that I've encountered as surplus items i'd think of exporting: ECR's, heatsinks & possibly HSC's

[fierce ruin]

and also, another main issue that i had last world was like those "reciprocal" systems, for example a refinery that needs water and produces alumina solution and gives that alumina solution to another refinery which produces aluminum scrap and water, giving that water to the first refinery

idk why but they always ended up clogged with water

[prisma kraken]

nuclear is kinda funny, because i'm so adamite that it be separate supply chain, i just write the swamp off as being for nuclear, and don't really care about using the best recipes for things as long as its self-contained

[fierce ruin]

hahahaha

[prisma kraken]

yeah, aluminum is a bit tricky to get balanced

if you don't have the balance perfect, it will lock up on you

[fierce ruin]

i ended up simply not balancing it, the water from the aluminum scrap refinery would go to coke and sink and i would overcompensate the water needed in the first refinery

[prisma kraken]

nod

I know how to balance the scrap production out correctly, and generally don't have problems with that

[whole heron]

It's got a feedback and a feed forward unless you go the Sloppy Alumina route.

[prisma kraken]

if i'm using liquid (default) battery, i've had some experiences with that locking even when balanced

i've taken to just using the waste water there for coal power

[fierce ruin]

im for sure not even gonna try to understand why that shit was clogging too much time spent

[whole heron]

What's more valuable, 40 Bauxite or 100 Silica?

[fierce ruin]

like in the sink or abstract value?

[whole heron]

Either way.

[prisma kraken]

not sure of the context for the question (sink value, utility, etc)

[fierce ruin]

i'd say silica but havent done the maths

[prisma kraken]

but i'd actually say 100 silica

because it could be used to make circuit boards or HSC's

and is a more refined product than raw bauxite

plus it is useful in building windows

no idea what the sink values are w/o looking it up

[whole heron]

Lessee, using base recipe for Aluminum ingot, it's 30 Quartz, 30 Coal, 60 Bauxite.

Sloppy, it's 45 Quartz, 30 Coal, 50 Bauxite.

[prisma kraken]

you're kind of doing apples & oranges comparisons

anyway, i gave my opinion, think i'm going to nap for a bit, tc all

[whole heron]

No, I'm doing a comparison to see how much you get of one thing if you drop another.

[fierce ruin]

lmao kinda offtopic but didnt know that was said like that in english

[whole heron]

Pure + Sloppy, it's 0 Quartz, 40 Coal, 66.67 Bauxite.

Sloppy vs all Base values 1 Bauxite at 1.5 Quartz.

I'm just rambling.

Base + Pure is 0 Quartz, 40 Coal, 80 Bauxite, 33.33 Silica (Equivalent to +20 Quartz),

[fierce ruin]

10 rotors per min, t1 machines, 120 iron is okay?

[noble timber]

50 rods
250 Screws => 62.5 rods
= 112.5 Rods/min and rods are 1:1 with Iron

(Base recipes)

[vapid gorge]

do you have a use for either of those more at that location? Cause sloppy recipe is pretty great

if you happen to have a factory that makes silica from base bauxite and NEEDS that silica, that's pretty convenient since it saves you from having to import it

You can kinda treat bauxite nodes as both bauxite and crystal like that

[fierce ruin]

how is this possible to do with mk3 belts?

[wind spade]

the lines do not represent belts

[fierce ruin]

yeah but the max items/min of the mk3 belt is 270

[wind spade]

and?

the lines do not represent belts

how you connect machines is up to you

[fierce ruin]

i know

[wind spade]

so why is it a problem that you have only mk3?

[fierce ruin]

but idk how can i transport 340 copper ingots into the constructors when the limit of mk3 belt is 270

[wind spade]

multiple belts?

[fierce ruin]

well i don't have smart splitter

[wind spade]

you don't need it?

why would you need a smart splitter anyway?

[fierce ruin]

nvm i know how i can do it

[vapid gorge]

is it 2 belts?

[fierce ruin]

9 smelters = 30 ingots = 270 ingots and 3 more smelters 1 of which will make 10 ingots but the last 3 will move on a different line

[vapid gorge]

sounds like you'll still need 2 belts if you are moving more thant 270

[wind spade]

or each smelter split into two constructors 😛

or any other way to do this, it's really up to you

[fierce ruin]

yeah

[fierce ruin]

im doing it on 2 floors

i would've done that if it was on 1 floor

[wind spade]

next time consider logistics before putting things on different floors 😛

[fierce ruin]

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/680566466684387382/894356378397843466/image0-6_1.gif

[wind spade]

like 99% of issues people have with logistics happen because they build machines first and then start to think how to connect them, instead of thinking how to connect them before building them 😛

[fierce ruin]

😛

[fierce ruin]

i think how to connect them first but there's always a miscalculation 🫠

[oblique hollow]

make a test build

if you are going to have multiple "sets" of machines that are similar, build one and see if it works

[fast vault]

I checked it carefully now and the defined speed is exactly the same as it should be in, of course within the limits of calculation error because I myself pressed start and stop on the stopwatch

[wind spade]

how did you measure throughput on a stopwatch? 🤔

and how many segments?

[fast vault]

one minute 1500 concrete
one segments
that's enough for me because I'll be splitting it up later

[wind spade]

one segment is pointless test, the issue is about belt to belt connections

[vapid gorge]

now I'm curious of the b2b issue fixes wouldn't get applied to moded belts

or if the speed of them causes new issues

[snow dove]

speed probably causes new issues

[fast vault]

10 belts one minute 1420 I think it's the fault of the time that has to pass from connection to output

still that's enough for me

[wind spade]

what are you even measuring? 🤔

[fast vault]

.
How much cement per minute will move mk 7

[wind spade]

I mean how

[fast vault]

one minute and i look storage

[wind spade]

very unreliable measurement 🤔

record a video of the output storage, record for at least 10 minutes of filling, then time 10 minutes in the footage and calculate how many items were inputted

[quiet gorge]

Noob question here - how do you guys deal with nonstandard quantities of materials? Whenever i try and plan out some production using satisfactory tools, it often gives some horrible not integer quantities and weird splitting ratios

[vapid gorge]

lots of ways.

I prefer managing them through machine clocking

[wind spade]

splitting ratios - just single splitter, it'll sort itself out
decimal machines - underclock

[vapid gorge]

you could always use Micro Manage mod to connect a miner directly to a splitter and use vanilla belts for it too

[wind spade]

also, you don't need to merge it in the first place, you can just dedicate X machines to one belt and Y machines to other belt, so that each belt has exactly as much as you want

the arrows in SFTools don't mean you need to have one belt with exactly that much. They just show how much resources need to flow from one set of machines to another. How you deal with it is up to you

[fast vault]

micro manage works in u7?

[vapid gorge]

Yup

[frosty owl]

Easier way to measure ( @wind spade too): have a machine MAKING the amount you wish/min, then send that to the test setup (belt+sink); you can then check for pile-ups in the producer's inventory (or a smart splitter set within 1 belt segment from the producer sending items to a storage) and more accurately judge how much the loss is.
You can also add burners for power and use the amount of fuel you provide them as "timer" for the producer

[frosty owl]

An ISC might be convenient too

[wind spade]

hard to have a machine making 1500/min 😛

well, I guess 1500/min is still fine (biomass), but yeah

[frosty owl]

Or you could add a modded machine. Or output 2 machines in 1 ISC (1 belt segment each) and go MK6 from there.

[wind spade]

well sure, but another question is if modded machines reach the throughput 😛

[edgy ridge]

im building a favtory for adaptive control units currently as i am on that phase and was wondering if 10 a minute is good cause it took 1500 cable to work

[wind spade]

will you make use of having 10/min?

[primal flicker]

I mean, you need 8000 to complete the ADSs for phase 4...

[edgy ridge]

im just currious if its a good number to have

[wind spade]

you're the only one that can answer that question 😛

[frosty owl]

I think they can, but don't know if anybody tested that

[cinder silo]

@frosty owl I'm finally moving forward with that mixed space elevator mess I had planned months ago, here's the end product half of the plan, the rest comes under basics, plan is one big mixed building.

[frosty owl]

Technically speaking, it might be as easy as "make 1500 every second". Not like "make 1 every 0.00..."

[frosty owl]

💪
Are you providing items in exact rates or by long-range transport (or full storages)?
If the prior, there's some possibilities for SIS in the plating/engine productions ^^

[cinder silo]

the drone towers move ever so slightly above the required advanced parts, stuff made on site with the exception of control rods will be as close to exact as I can get it, the whole thing overflows under the se parts warehouse so I have some wiggle room of ratios are off and I clock up.

[frosty owl]

Yeah, best to keep it all sushifolds. One input belt makes for plenty of flexibility in how you can set up the logistics

[cinder silo]

I had to split the plan up in to multiple parts because it was an overwhelming mess.

[frosty owl]

I know what you mean
I just can't be bothered to organize it that well, given I can't save the position of nodes (which is a big part of organization). Splitting stuff is too much of a headache, considering it's all for one factory anyway...
https://u6.satisfactorytools.com/production?share=5kGZbUfr5ujx06zea6G4

[wind spade]

given I can't save the position of nodes
one of the things I hope to add to new tools in a few months 😛

[frosty owl]

Are you starting teasing season now?

[wind spade]

nah it would be too early and I'd end up the same as CSS

[dense haven]

It is a very sad day today... Steve the confusing creature despawned after I logged off last night.

[west cedar]

Is there a good blueprint system or youtube video of a factory for personal equipment? (all types of ammo, gas and radiation protection etc)

[wind spade]

not too hard to build yourself. Won't fit into a blueprint anyway

[west cedar]

I mean i know i can build it myself, but I am trying to avoid the math of it all lol

[wind spade]

there are online production planners, which help you avoid all the math 😛

[west cedar]

I get that. I was just checking for a resource someone who already did all that may have made. I’m not sure why that’s a problem?

[wind spade]

it's not much a problem, but by copying others' setups instead of building your own, you won't learn much 😛

[median heath]

Buys factory builder.
Tries to avoid math.

[ember fractal]

[vapid nest]

My head is exploding from all the math

[snow dove]

yeah that happens

writing it down helps, or a spreadsheet

i specifically don't mix lines for that reason

[true junco]

If the math in satisfactory is hard... then you are doing it wrong.

[delicate chasm]

Math is never hard, only sometimes tedious.
If you don't know how to calculate something at all though, it's still not hard; it's impossible. 😁 👍

[whole heron]

This is pretty low level math though. There is definitely hard math in this world even if it's not in this game (Not denying that it can get tedious).

[wind spade]

Some of the math can get pretty hard tho

[vapid gorge]

Tell that to people trying to calculate the full time of a manifold

[frosty owl]

Or making beautifully perfect sushi on big scales

[true junco]

Its pretty much all basic arithmatic tho.

It can be very tedious, because there is a lot to keep track of, but its not "hard" math.

Though I suppose you could "make it harder" for yourself somehow.

[vapid nest]

Of course it's not "hard" if you see that people can calculate space and quantum stuff, but it's just very tedious.

[wind spade]

I wonder how is linear optimisation basic arithmetic

[warm wren]

Anyone got a common way to do arrays of manufacturers. I tend to do a two teir system... one set of splitters runnung just in front of the inputs, one set running just behind, then below that I repeat... I mean it works, there's a lot of clean ways to do it, but after doing it the same way this long I wonder what other people do.

[true junco]

I would argue, that might fall under "making things harder" for most players. And if not, then it falls into the remainder left over outside of the bounds of "pretty much all"

[vapid gorge]

You can run sushi belts?

[vapid gorge]

Or if you want to hide them run 4 belts under the machine and clip the belts

[cinder silo]

Sushi works very well ❤️

[wind spade]

"what is the most oil efficient way of producing X" is very common question (replacing oil with any other raw resource). Those questions very often require complex math to answer. Not sure why that would be "making things harder"

[warm wren]

Oh I didn't know that this had a name, yeah I did "sushi belts" a long, long time ago... In fact, at the time people seemed to think it was a bad idea.

[wind spade]

it was harder to do back in the days

splitters had duplicating bugs and belts weren't great at keeping througput

and even earlier we didn't have sinks

so many people remember "sushi = bad" from times when it really was bad

nowdays it's acceptable and can result in a nice factory if you know what you're doing

(same as hatred for screws - that also is irrelevant now)

[warm wren]

Yeah here's a screen shot from 2020! I remember doing this.

[wind spade]

still isn't a technique that I'd recommend to beginners, but if you want, nobody will stop you 🙂

[cinder silo]

Sushi is probably the only thing that's making my current project possible without horrendous clipping.

[warm wren]

I called them "smart arrays" back then

[warm wren]

Yeah I was doing that in 2020, didn't know it became a common thing

[snow dove]

i wouldn’t say common

but defo not rare

[warm wren]

Well at the time I think it was bad practice, maybe due to bugs and other issues like somebody mentioned. I hadn't realized it got sorted out in the meantime, I guess 3 years changes things.

[fickle cedar]

Thats cool. Never even thought of that

[true junco]

I suppose my thought on that is that doing proper linear optimization of everything in SF is a choice that is made by the player. I think its a great idea to do, but i dont think its actually necessary to do. It becomes necessary as a result of player choice.

Similarly, you can use a lot of trigonometry when designing factories in this game if you want to, but you certainly dont need to.

Tho i apologize for my imprecise language.

When i said "pretty much all" in regards to the math being just arithmatic. I meant >90%

And the last 10% i am convinced less than 1% of players even consider doing.

[wind spade]

for calculating production lines with known recipes, it's indeed "simpler" math (tho definitely not simple, loops and feedback are not easy)

but for choosing recipes (which I think a lot of people do, apart from the few that play only with base recipes), you need to consider a lot of variables. Many of those considerations were already done by others and shared on wiki or similar site, but it still required some complex math to do

[true junco]

What do you consider complex math?

To me, if they taught it before high-school, its not complex. And everything in this game that would be considered highschool level, is mostly just ways to do pre highschool math faster and bigger and better.

I certainly havent seen anyone bring up calculus in a serious manner.

[wind spade]

things like calculating loops and feedback I do consider complex

e.g. "how much water do you have to feed into aluminum scrap setup if you want to recycle water as well"

[fickle cedar]

80 water per alu scrap refinary. Not very big brain. You add a valve and up it by 80 for every alu refinary you add

[wind spade]

valves don't work that reliably

also you'd be surprised how many people can't do this type of math

[fickle cedar]

Works good enough if you have enough water at the source. A fluid buffer and or a pump helps.

My setup has been runing smooth for 50 hours now no issues

[wind spade]

also, it's 120 per refinery 😛

[fickle cedar]

Correct. My bad

[wind spade]

see, not that easy math 😄

(and I messed it up as well)

[wind spade]

both fluid buffers and valves do more harm than good. It's more surprising that it works for you (or maybe you accidentally built something like VIP junction)

[snow dove]

valves have use in VOP’s

[wind spade]

and even there they aren't mandatory

[vapid gorge]

in almost every pipe system buffers and and valves will not provide benefit - they will, at best, do nothing. At worst fuck everything up or HIDE problems.
Do what you want though

[snow dove]

or fuck up everything, and hide the issue, so you don’t realize till your whole power grid shuts down

[vapid gorge]

Sorry yes, there is that 3rd option

[snow dove]

defo the worst too

cause it always breaks when you aren’t looking at it

[fickle cedar]

How then do you prevent water from accumulating up over time in your alu refinaries?

[snow dove]

exact values

or a VIP

also how would a buffer help with that?

[wind spade]

process the waste water somewhere else, e.g. coal gens or pure recipes
or use priority junctions like Iroh said

[vapid gorge]

on top of what the others said

[vapid gorge]

and when Iron says 'exact values' it's feeding back into the main system - best to use a pump rather than a valve

[fickle cedar]

What iron?

[wind spade]

iroh

[fickle cedar]

Oh

[wind spade]

typo I guess

[vapid gorge]

type n actually

the diagram up there is pretty simple and doesn't require other resources if you want something reliable

[frosty owl]

Nowdays, the "extreme" isn't mixing stuff on a belt, but not unmixing before feeding a machine

[frosty owl]

When you have to do a basic operation a lot of time, things become complex to handle. Even just the sheer size of some calculations (even if made up of simple operations) can make resolving them a complex task

[delicate chasm]

The fun of math is that the answer IS the question. It can be tedious to interpret but the only hard thing about math is coming up with that question to begin with.

Complex calculations are the ones you do in order to figure out how to shorten the process so you can repeat it without tedium.

You can prove F=MA in a number of ways, but finding force is utterly simple. It's one of the most basic forms of arithmetic after all; I expect that a first grade student can tell me what the force of a thrown ball is, given its mass and acceleration and a defined point at which to calculate the force.

They may need to have the equation explained to them first depending on region, but the ability to calculate that should exist in a 6 year old child. Y'know?

Contrast that against throwing the ball at them and asking 'How hard was that? Give me a number in Newtons.' -> they are going to cry, because I threw a ball at them AND because they don't know.

[true junco]

I wouldnt consider that complex math. Voluminous, and tedious as hell, and frequently difficult to keep track of. But the math itself is easy.

[delicate chasm]

I always think of words like 'daunting' and 'tedious' rather than 'difficult' when it comes to numbers or things that are purely objective. It's not like attempting to add 5+5 only results in 10 when you have practiced that equation - your ability is 0 or 1, not an array, and success is also binary. You either did or did not solve it correctly.

A result of 9 or 11 is not better than a result of 8 or 12; they are EQUALLY wrong, and so level of proficiency is an inappropriate consideration.

[frosty owl]

Fair enough~

[mystic moon]

@delicate chasm
Fistly
Pipe systems are almost never 2 dimensional, so why ignore the third dimension?

Secondly, everything I'm saying is applicable to the overall flow of pipes

[delicate chasm]

Firstly because

Now you understand everything you need to understand for 2D pipes.
To gain understanding of 3D you need to do more than what I outlined, and I would never state otherwise.

[wind spade]

why would you talk about 2D pipes in a 3D game

[delicate chasm]

Because an understanding of how fluid works in this game can be achieved through testing the various aspects of the system independently of one another, so that your variables are isolated and the data is in smaller, easier to parse chunks?

[wind spade]

so you'll gain knowledge that would be basically pointless once you start doing 3D 🤔

[rapid panther]

not if u add the knowledge together

they wouldnt teach you calculus 3 if you dont understand calculus 1 or 2

[wind spade]

but the way fluid behaves in 3D is very different from 2D

[rapid panther]

i have no idea what this argument is about anyway :DDD

[noble timber]

Meh, apples to oranges comparison there

[unreal spire]

Step 1: valves everywhere
Step 2: ???
Step 3: profit

[noble timber]

[wind spade]

step 2: realise your mistake and remove all valves and buffers

[topaz sable]

Step 4: no head lift

Lol

[unreal spire]

Head lift is solved by making all factories at equal altitude, giving head lift from source. Just a bunch of floating rectangles in the sky

[topaz sable]

Modern problems require floating boxes

Haha

[unreal spire]

I mean, isn't that basically what trees do?

[mystic moon]

Or you could
A. Dead the piping manual
B. Experiment with actual systems in the game and see how it behaves in relation to practical usage, not just an isolated network with no inputs or outputs
C. Ask questions about how it works. The community has done extensive testing to reach the conclusions we have about how piping works

[whole heron]

If you make a pipe that goes straight up 1 km and keep attaching pumps to provide headlift, will everything break at some point or are you fine as long as you have pumps every 50m?

[mystic moon]

It would work
If you're moving fluid that high you should probably be packaging it though

[frosty owl]

Some piping systems are pretty much just layers of horizontal piping (manifolds) connected by vertical or horizontal segments

[delicate chasm]

Yeah, doesn't matter though. The original context here was that to understand what pipes are doing with no other consideration, you can make a model to test with 3 pipe segments that are not connected to any inputs or outputs.

3D is a whole different conversation that we weren't having.

[unreal spire]

You can even hold ctrl to make sure you snap exactly at the 50m mark for easy building maths

[whole heron]

Well, I'm not actually building 1 km up. But now that you say it's possible, maybe I should.

[deft lichen]

there is a certain point after which it becomes more power-efficient to package

it depends on how fast can packagers handle the fluid, so it's the best for water