math-and-meta

[deft lichen]

they prefer one output over the other depending on build order, it's pretty inconsistent

[onyx perch]

oof

[true junco]

And i think the build order is messed up/ignored/reset when you save and load...

[next pewter]

But if you build the outputs on the samue order and at the same locations, perhaps?

[next pewter]

Oh

[vapid gorge]

It looks like you’ve just got 1 belt split into 2?

[naive vessel]

alright so i need to send 10 rods p/m to each constructors on the blue line. but the constructors from the black line are producing 15 rods p/m each and i dont know what to do

[median heath]

Math. I would recommend doing math.

[naive vessel]

huh man

[median heath]

You laid out a math problem and said you don't know what to do.

I would recommend doing math.

[naive vessel]

i know

its just that i know what i need to do but i dont know how to do it

for the belt work

[lean schooner]

conect two of the 15 do a 30 and split them in 3 to do three 10

[naive vessel]

🤦‍♂️

[median heath]

If you have a mk2 just do it all on one belt as it can handle 80/min easily.

[naive vessel]

im so fucking dumb

[naive vessel]

i dont have enough plates

[median heath]

If only resources were infinite...

Oh wait.

[lean schooner]

and also you dont have enough rods you need 80 and you produce 75

[naive vessel]

no i dont one of them is at 50%

[lean schooner]

okay my bad

[naive vessel]

its okay i didnt metion it

mention

[lean schooner]

hope it help better than a guy telling you to do math

[naive vessel]

XD

everything is going to help me

[median heath]

Not like over half the game involves doing math or anything...

[lean schooner]

i think the guy now it does he just couldnt see how to solve that thing

you are just frustrating him buy telling him he "just should do math" like he is dumb

[median heath]

🤔

[round bridge]

underclock them (rod constructors) to 70% (they will make 10 each at 70%). Add in as many rod constructors at 70% as you need. Win-Win

[naive vessel]

oh its fine now @lean schooner helped me figuring out how to do it (mostly him XD)

[round bridge]

Yeah, sometimes its just easier if you need a specific amount and one machine produces just a bit too much you underclock to the amount you need it to send (for the future).

or you could go the complicated way and balance - but thats too much math for me 😛

[wind spade]

They will make more than 10 at 70%

[round bridge]

yeah, 10.5, thanks for the correction

66.6667% - anyway, since you can underclock by production rate or clock speed, you can easily figure out how to set it to 10/min

[wind spade]

Sure, just fyi, it still rounds to nearest 4 digit decimal clock speed, so setting it by production rate may be slightly off

[round bridge]

hence why I said 70% to begin with.

because it is rounding, and so was I. Its better to make 10.5 at 70% than maybe 10 or maybe 9 at 66.6667%

[wind spade]

66.6667% will make 10 tho

[round bridge]

so will 67%

[wind spade]

Yeah but it will stop more often

[round bridge]

I don't know why I am having this conversation at 4am

W/E man, you win. You are right. Thanks for correcting my estimation.

[gaunt kernel]

You can directly input 3/2 into the machine

[deft lichen]

it still ends up as 66.6667%

it evaluates the expression, rather than storing "3/2", so all clock speeds are strictly one number with 4 decimal places

[brittle kayak]

I came up with an issue that had me at a loss for a good while.

Scenario: Resource A is brought in at a rate of 780/min i.e. full Mk.5 belt. The belt feeds into a Smart Splitter that's set to feed a Manufacturer (requires: 300/min) to the left, and Overflow (480/min) to the right. The overflow output has a Mk.5 belt that feeds into another Smart Splitter which has a Mk.3 belt to the left feeding a Constructor (requires: 250/min), and a Mk.5 belt feeding an Awesome Sink (remaining 230/min).

Seems nice and all but the issue was that the Constructor was not getting 250 resources per minute, so it was occasionally shutting down and, obviously, running at less than 100% efficiency.

Anyone want to guess (or knows) why?

[vagrant adder]

not sure if it's still the case, but fully loaded 780 belts used to have issues with a few items disappearing when fully loaded due to the speed of them

[wide roost]

^

also you can do this with one smart splitter. left on [item], straight on [item] and right on [overflow]. that might even cure the issue

[vagrant adder]

think most people tend to limit them to 720 to avoid loss and keep easier splits

[brittle kayak]

Oh I solved it, this was just for a small brain puzzle in case anyone likes stuff like that (or comes across something similar and this might help them solve it, too). 🙂

I don't know about items disappearing and I realized there's (at least) two different ways I could fix it: 1. upgrade the Mk.3 belt to a Mk.5, or 2. remove the second splitter and take the output from the first one (which is the solution I ended up going with as it made things simpler EDIT: although this also required upgrading the belt so technically 1 is the only solution).

[wide roost]

oooooooh, yeah the MK3 belt didn't register in my head. the overflow belt into the sink was often more ready to accept new items hence it "stealing" them

[brittle kayak]

Here's what I think happened: It's about timing (and, possibly, smart splitter item buffer): the Mk.3 belt can only handle 270 items per minute which makes each item spend ~3.70 milliseconds inside the splitter. However, the Mk.5 belt going towards the Awesome Sink can accept a new item every 1.28 milliseconds which lead into an interesting situation where just when the Mk.3 belt was ready to accept a new item, that item had already been sent to the Mk.5 belt so the Mk.3 output had to wait for a new item to come in and when that happened, another couple items whizzed past through the Mk.5 output before the Mk.3 output could accept a new item.

[arctic willow]

yeah, i've realised with manifold overflow that you want the same belt speed all the way down the line

[brittle kayak]

As an end result, the amount of items available to the Mk.3 output dropped below 250/min.

Man I was baffled at first when I started debugging that.

So yeah, right-sizing belts can backfire when using splitters. Better to just use the same belt level on all outputs (unless it doesn't matter how many items are actually being sent to the lower level output).

[vapid gorge]

the lost thing doesn't happen anymore

[noble timber]

They also never disappeared, it was the throughput of the belt itself slowing down.

[vagrant adder]

I'm sure at one point there was a bug where they literally vanished, iirc someone did some testing with looped storage containers or something and some items were occasionally vanishing. Was a few years ago though so I may be fuzzy on the details

[vapid gorge]

There used to be an actual fluid loss but - but I've talked to the math nerds who were testing the belt to belt throughput bug - and some of them have played since the start. I'd be surprised as there wasn't even a glancing mention of that

I've only played since u4 myself

[vagrant adder]

might be mixing the two up then, as I said it was ages ago and I always just capped my belts at 720 to avoid any issues so can't really remember the details clearly :p

[vapid gorge]

yeah fair, especially if you were perusing Reddit for info - so much outdated or just straight up wrong things people talk about on there

there's a massive subthread in this channel dedicated to people running experiments on the b2b bug if you're curious about it

[thorny trench]

This is 4 constructor producing 560 wire, the left half is 300 but I need 20 more, how do I get that 20 from the right side ?
I thought of using a smart splitter that set to overflow on the right then merge to the leftbut I dont know if its gonna work

[vapid gorge]

is the right side set to use 260? then it should work fine as 20 will overflow

why not just run it in one manifold though if you have mk5 belts?

[thorny trench]

I dont have mk5 yet

[vapid gorge]

oh those looked like mk5s

also god damn that is a nightmare set of mergers and splitters

[vagrant adder]

ye I'm still trying to figure out this nuts merging action

looks cool though 👍

high quantity wires with mk 3 belts is never fun though 😦

but ye I don't see why a smart splitter wouldn't work as long as the belt is big enough to hold it all

[clear turtle]

²

[round bridge]

There is not enough information about this setup to help. If the left half is producing 300, then the right half is producing 260, why are they producing at different speeds? Why not just do a straight 140/140/140/140 split, instead of 150/150/130/130?

That will net you your 20 (never mind, you need 20 from the side only producing 260) - In that case, assuming 150 is the max the constructor can produce wire (again not much info given), you can add a constructor on the side with 300, and underclock 2 from the side producing 260 and split 20/150/150/ | 120/120 - netting you that 20

[thorny trench]

Oops there's a typo, there are 8 constructor. each have is for with 4 on the left side with 300 wires. The ratio is so wack because this is a motor factory and and using steel rotor.

[round bridge]

Send the output from 8 constructors (at 100%) to the steel rotors, and the rest to the stators

8 constructors = 30 wire/min **8 = 240 wire/min. 10.7 (sorry, 10.6667) * Constructors * 30 wire/min = 320 wire/min

[snow dove]

just one splitter

one output to stators, one output to steel rotor

[round bridge]

He doesnt have mk5 belts yet, so that wont work

[snow dove]

what mk belts does he have then

[thorny trench]

yeah exactly, with 4 constructor at maxium overclock, its only produce 300 wires. I cant use manifold so I have to resort to this terribleness

[snow dove]

what mk belts do you have

[thorny trench]

mk 4

[wide roost]

why can't you use manifold?

[round bridge]

You can use manifold, just do what I said - output from 8 constructors to rotors, and the output from the rest to stators

[wide roost]

manifold != singular manifold btw, you can have multiple

[snow dove]

800% for steel rotors

1066.6667% for the stators

[round bridge]

going to have to give more context for this

[snow dove]

however you want to achieve that with constructors

[snow dove]

clockspeed for the wire

[thorny trench]

welp the deed already been done long ago, I want to fix it have to tear down the 8 assembler and the downstair belt for pipe so.....

[snow dove]

if you want 8 constructors with 100% clockspeed or 16 with 50% it works the same

[round bridge]

but what does that have to do with the problem?

[snow dove]

it's the answer...

[round bridge]

ok

[wide roost]

i'm trying to understand what this is about

[snow dove]

it minds the limit of the belts, and simplifies it greatly

[thorny trench]

it split the input and output into two

[wide roost]

that's quite convoluted. the section you have all this on is 8 foundations wide. the 4 wire constructors need 2 mk4 belts. line up all the constructors, merge 4 wire into 2 belts (two mergers) then run them off to the assemblers

[brittle kayak]

Anyone know the exact speed you can travel when slide jumping along a Mk.5 belt? I know it's slightly faster than the train, so more than 120km/h but how much exactly? No real reason for asking, just curious.

[thorny trench]

throw everything out the window because the entire assembly line got dead lock because I forgot to turn the ingot into pipe

[wide roost]

https://tenor.com/view/dancing-coffin-coffin-dance-funeral-funny-farewell-gif-16737844

[wise marsh]

Does anyone have a full automation spreadsheet that includes pretty much everything needed?

as in how many of blank factories to make blank item at efficiency?

[uneven coyote]

You want a spreadsheet to play the game for you?

[wise marsh]

No I am going to make one otherwise

[mystic moon]

u6.satisfactorytools.com

[next pewter]

A spreadsheet indeed isnt the most flexible tool for this.

Could program a 2D autolayouter with minimal belts. 😅

Or 3D if you like optimisation and a huge searchspace

[wise marsh]

was more thinking like if in end game you want to make 300 widgets a minute you will need the following infrastructer... not so much how many factories but more the full parts break down all the way to raw materials... just trying to get an idea of how many screws I need to make a minute for example

[floral spade]

Even if you have a spread sheet tell you how many factory’s you need you will still need to find a node that is I’ll allow you to make that lvl of output

[wise marsh]

Ok now that i know how to use this. This is exactly what i wanted

[floral spade]

What kind of factory are you making?

[wise marsh]

@floral spade More Just trying to make sure I future proof... Dont want to make a small factory when later on ill need a huge factory for a specific item.

A great example is I made medium sized copper factory and I should have build one 4 times the size to keep up with demand... I am about to start rebuilding a bunch of the factories and i wanted a concept of the sizes i should need... I think i am going to use Nucluer pasta as my roadmap. It seems to include most of the factories ill need

[floral spade]

Remember that later factory’s will need mats from a bunch of different factory’s like iron and copper steel and copper steel

[wise marsh]

@floral spade Yah exactly why I wanted the road map... For example I never would have guessed i needed over 200 Copper smelters... That seems like allot but in order to make everything for 5 pasta a minute need 211... is 5 pasta a minute excessive?

[floral spade]

Depending on how many you have you are gonna need to be able to deal with that lvl of waste as well

[wise marsh]

I am not at that tier yet only just unlocked 7... but I want to start building the infrastructure now

I am trying to future proof in other words.. and i am using this as a roadmap

[bleak coral]

I think you're the first person to "future proof" correctly, as in set a goal for yourself in the future and see what you need rather than want a universally applicable number that doesn't exist

[wind spade]

Well that's not futureproofing then xD that's planning for future xD

[livid acorn]

12 hours when rush

[peak furnace]

How do I split 11.25 rods into 1.25 and 10?

or does it just want me to overclock it

[queen slate]

Split as 0.57 and 0.56 or however you like more.
2 machines with even-ish clock consume less power than 1 full + 1 underclocked, unless devs changed the scaling.

Another alternative: alt recipes that don't care about Screws+Rods. Adhered/Stitched Iron Plate, if you found them.

[peak furnace]

eh I'm just gonna overclock it a lil

the extra power doesnt matter much to me

[queen slate]

That works.

[vapid gorge]

Use a manifold. You can put it on the same line and just feed the rods down it.

basically have 1 line with all the rods go past all the machines that use them. They'll self balance over time

Though when doing that with screws/wire or anything with very large stack size I recommend hand filling at hte start

[golden smelt]

How do I future proof, like how do I prepare my factories to be used for bigger factories

I've never done this type of thing before, cause I always make everything I need for my production at that production line

[brittle kayak]

Several ways, I suppose, but one way is to separate production lines per item so that you have one facility making exactly one thing which is then either transported to some kind of a central storage facility, or immediately split to other facilities using that particular item.

As opposed to having a large base making everything, which would pretty much invariably result in a spaghetti mess.

[golden smelt]

I was thinking of doing a mega factory, where I make everything in one spot

I think it would be a cool idea, but a bitch to organize

[golden smelt]

my issue with separate production lines is that i forget how much of an item im making, while also how much of the item im currently using

[brittle kayak]

I go around that with signs. Kinda small and unreadable in this pic but it's the best one I have around rn. Shows the resource and production amount per minute (in this case: "Caterium 1200/min").

Belts have smaller signs with just the amount since you can easily see what resource we're talking about.

[golden smelt]

ok, so I should have references for the things I'm making to help me keep track

and when it comes to exporting resources I should have a reference saying like "300/1200 is currently being used"

[brittle kayak]

Not a must, but might help.

Just remember to update the signs whenever you make changes.

[golden smelt]

alright, im gonna keep my factories how they are for now, but when its mega base time ill be sure to have references for myself

[wind spade]

One splitter will do the job

[golden smelt]

one more question, when working a merged production line I should work from hard to craft materials to easier to craft, since the harder materials will require the easier ones, yeah?

[wind spade]

You should automate everything

But yeah, calculate from final product

[golden smelt]

the goal is to have every material automated and stored (besides the raw's and ingots)

[wind spade]

Well not everything needs to be stored

Many materials are not nreded for building

[golden smelt]

True

But I think it will be neat to see a mega complex of storage with all the items in it

[wind spade]

Only 32 items are needed, not counting consumables and ammo

[golden smelt]

so you're saying really only store building and space elevator materials

[wind spade]

Why store space elevator materials?

[golden smelt]

Well mainly the ones I need for the space elevator at that current moment

I'm on the last step of the elevator and I want to store those since I need them done to complete the elevator

Even though there is no point in doing so

[wind spade]

Why tho? Just funnel them to space elevator with overflow to sink

[median heath]

Non-consumable items worth storing:

Plate, RIP, Beam, EIB
Pipe, Rod, ECR
CSheet, ASheet, Plastic, Rubber
Frame, HMF, FMF
Wire, QW, Cable
Crystal, Osc
CB, HSC, AIL
Rotor, Motor, Turbo
Comp, RCU, Super
Casing, Cooling
Concrete, Silica

32 in total.

[wide roost]

what consumables would you guys store? i'm doing rifle ammo, nobelisks, packaged fuel, iodine filter

[brittle kayak]

Some inhalers for healing.

[wide roost]

i can't remember the last time i died lol

[median heath]

I don't store those. They stack 50 and I just have <50 in my hand slots and build more if needed to refill that slot.

[brittle kayak]

I've got a couple hundred stashed away and when I make more, well, I make a couple hundred. 🙂

[brittle kayak]

I do because I go seek trouble at the swamp. Those dang stingers.

[wide roost]

The cats are too easy to snipe. Sometimes I play with them, see how good they are at playing catch with nobelisks lol

[brittle kayak]

I nuke 'em (not from orbit, unfortunately).

[wide roost]

I’ll do a small container of nuke nobelisks when I get round to the nuclear power but it won’t be main storage

[brittle kayak]

Wish you could blow up a container filled with nukelisks. :>

[frosty owl]

Feature request: hitting a Storage Container with Nukelisks inside will cause them to detonate

[main dirge]

Personally just forgo nobelisk and rifle ammo and just use explosive rebar as the square hole for the circle peg

[placid oyster]

and make it have nuclear fallout if they have nuclear waste inside

[round bridge]

none, I just make the consumables as I go

[onyx perch]

same, other than fuel, obviously

[fierce ruin]

How much water is contained in one jug of water?

[true junco]

1m³ I believe. Which i think is the same for all liquids. (Nitrogen Gas is different)

[vale prawn]

Yea

And add t 45 from fallout

[fierce ruin]

So for this recipe, I would need to ship in twenty jugs of water every minute?

[median heath]

Yes.

As you need 4 per cycle. And the base cycle time is 12 seconds.

[ruby saddle]

ive got 16 refineries how do i go about distributing the 666.8m of heavy oil

🤔

[median heath]

Interesting HOR amount.

[onyx perch]

one MK 2 pipe for the 600, and a MK 1 with a valve for the 66.8, i dont know the exact values for fuel but thats how i would at least section it, or 3 mk 1 pipes

with valves

[ruby saddle]

hmmm i'll do some tests thanks

[onyx perch]

np

[wide roost]

one biiiiiiig loop

16 refineries in a line, that line has two ends. 666.8m3 > 600 which means two pipes. assuming the HOR refineries are in a line, they have two ends too

[ruby saddle]

new to this channel what does HOR mean ?

should i put them closer together ?

😂

[oblique hollow]

HOR = Heavy Oil Residue

[ruby saddle]

O ok

[ruby saddle]

https://tenor.com/view/oh-no-future-drake-life-is-good-high-off-life-gif-18160700

FIGURED OUT

[wide roost]

@keen stratus

[keen stratus]

So more about math and stuff, what is the best way to produce computers? (I have handcrafted over 300 of them by this point)

[brittle kayak]

Kinda depends on what you're already producing etc but Caterium Computer gives you the highest per minute production.

[wide roost]

i prefer "simplicity" so i would do something like this in a single purpose factory

[fading urchin]

Using mk2 pipes, put 8 of the refineries on one pipe, and the other 8 on another separate pipe. I would suggest against using valves as will most people here. You can then “inject” your second pipe into your next manifold.

[median heath]

Best is subjective.
Cat Comp and Crystal Comp are both great recipes.
Which both involve Circuit Boards that have their own alts that are good.
So then you have to decide which ones you want to pair together.

And the rabbit hole continues the further down the chain you go.
So basically just do what you feel is best, because there is no mathematically objective best answer to Computer production.

[ruby saddle]

Ooo thank you

[brittle kayak]

Re: valves: unpowered pumps work similarly to valves in that they only allow liquids to move in one direction. You won't be able to limit the flow, though, but at least they prevent sloshing.

[median heath]

Valves are for VOPs.
If you're not building a VOP, you don't need a valve.

[noble timber]

They also reset headlift

[oblique hollow]

a powered pump is also one-way

using unpowered pumos is generally not a very cash money move as they kill pressure

or rather, should. they are bugged and dont do this rn

[wind spade]

You don't need VOP 😛

[frosty owl]

If you need a VOP, you're building power wrong

[wind spade]

You are building power wrong

[frosty owl]

You are building power the wrong

[vapid estuary]

This conversation has been had but IMO the computers in an assembler recipe. Can OC the shit out of it

[oblique hollow]

caterium computer is good cause its simple and has decent numbers and ratios. pairs well with caterium circuit board.
crystal computer is very simple and effective, but you of course need quartz, which can be bothersome

if you decide to build your factory nowhere near quartz, honestly my choice would be either default (with steel screws and like.... quickwire cable) or caterium computer

[dusky zenith]

https://www.satisfactorytools.com/production?share=ZUuH1C9zTvqn5LLZ42t8
this is my plan for my computer factory, im going to use it as my wire/cable factory as well just to use up the extra copper to fully utilize a node. couldnt find anything to use the extra quickwire for so ill just leave it until i need it for something else in the future

[brittle kayak]

Pet peeve of the day: game client not telling the name of alt recipes.

[pulsar locust]

If I'm to build 60 nuclear power plants, 250% clock how many water extraction sites would I need at 250% clock, and how many mk3s would I need at 250%

[brittle kayak]

2 Water Extractors at 250% per reactor. It's quite straightforward in that sense.

A fully OC'd reactor wants 600/min of water.

"Mk3s" is a whole another animal because you need plenty of different kinds of resources and products before you can manufacture Uranium Fuel Rods.

[pulsar locust]

No I know I have them all lined up

[brittle kayak]

60 fully OC'd reactors will eat up 30 rods per minute.

[pulsar locust]

Now according to satisfactorytools.com 30 per min is impossible

[brittle kayak]

Not with alternate recipes it isn't.

[pulsar locust]

Oh god

No please god no

[true junco]

Caterium computers goes very well with default Supercomputers, fused quickwire and AI Limiters... 2Ms and 3As fit into one BP.

[pulsar locust]

What the fuckk...

[brittle kayak]

Note that satisfactorytools is giving you buildings at 100% clocks.

[pulsar locust]

Can I change?

[brittle kayak]

Not that I'm aware of.

Here's what satisfactory-calculator says, when using all possible alternate recipes and allowing overclocking:

[pulsar locust]

I currently only have 1200 uranium per/min so I can do 18 max. Standard recipe. So 36 overclocked.

[brittle kayak]

Note that that's just for producing the fuel rods, you'll still need tons more water extractors + the reactors.

[pulsar locust]

Turns out 12 uranium fuel rod per min is 1200 uranium per min

So I can only get 12 which would equal 24 nuclear reactors OC'd

150000 MW.

[ruby saddle]

is there a way to get the exact number i want from a splitter on a belt why isn't that an option for the smart splitter

[snow dove]

cause you don't need to

[ruby saddle]

I want a certain amount of mined material thats across the map if i can transport said material in bulk and just have the amount that i need

[snow dove]

and it would entirely remove the point of logistics in-game

[ruby saddle]

WTB more sulfur Q_Q

[pulsar locust]

Split them up using different conveyers

MK1 MK2 etc.

Use the resources transferred per minute to split them up

[next pewter]

Because it is a pull based system. The belts ask ata certain clock frequency if there is material available i the supply connection.

But indeed, if you really want it, theabove will work.

Or underclock the ore miner.

[ruby saddle]

Understandable sulfur is just a ways away I need 333.33 of it I only have level 2 miners atm I can use another miner to get the exact number I want i was just thinking up of an overflow system using storage and I can take out the exact amount I want to be efficient

Sounded alot better in my head

[next pewter]

Why being efficient w ore? Tgey are unlimited.

[deft lichen]

they aren't

[next pewter]

Just extract what you can, use what you need and overflow/sink or let the rest back up.

[deft lichen]

you can only get so much ore from a node, and there are only so many nodes

[next pewter]

You can jf you want, but it will require a whole lot of splits and merges

[next pewter]

True, the flow is, i mean. Not the supply.

[deft lichen]

wasting nearby nodes means you have to bring the resources from farther away, or build factories elsewhere

@ruby saddle you can get an exact amount by splitting to machines that consume exact amounts
easiest thing to do would be to clock miners though

[next pewter]

Not saying you wasteit. Justuse what you need, overflow for other factory. Or two way overflow ⇛normal splitter/manifold. Then both can use the sulfur if they need it.

[ruby saddle]

Yeah didn't think of using random sulfur productions to get what I want that would work

[vital charm]

im looking to get a stable rotor supply with a single 120 ores/m (if u recommend to use more please do). what would be my ideal setup?

[oblique hollow]

depend son what rotor recipee you wanna use

[vital charm]

standard one

i got a solid 50 hours in the game in total btw. just saying

[oblique hollow]

not quite 120/min but heres what 90 can do. just multiply everything by 1.333333

[vital charm]

i had this one. it was my plan to just round it off to 120

so 4 smelters, 8 constructors etc.

[oblique hollow]

10.666/min rotors for 120/min ore

you wont get cleaner numbers

[vital charm]

its good enough for now

so follow my ss and round it off?

[delicate chasm]

Hold up, I'm gone for 3-4 days and come back to rounding in #math-and-meta ?!

[true junco]

Cue "rounding in math? There always has been" meme... lol

[true junco]

Yeah. Hyper efficiency is great and all, and the practice isnt bad, but its ultimately inefficient to overly solve for efficiency when you still have a long way to go up the tech ladder imo.

This is 50% a response to you, and 50% a response to the others... 😆

[vital charm]

alright thanks guys!! :D

[pulsar locust]

If I was to split up 12 power rods between 24 nuclear reactors could I use just one mk5 conveyor and chuck splitters

Or how many conveyer belts would I need

[pulsar locust]

Im so aut. How would I split up 24 rods between 24 nuclear reactors.

[median heath]

You can do it with just 1 belt.
But nuclear is the place most people will do balancers.

[pulsar locust]

How would I do balancers

[median heath]

And 1 to 24 is simple.
Because you just 1:2 (half), and then 2:6 (thirds), 6:12 (half), 12:24 (half)

[pulsar locust]

So collect all nuclear power rods into one then just do this

[median heath]

Correct.

[pulsar locust]

Lemme make example so you can say yes or no

[median heath]

Bring all 12 to 1 belt and then do the above.

[round bridge]

Would it be more efficient to ship ore in, or to ship ingots in (assuming space is not an issue)

[bleak coral]

depends on the ore and the recipe

some of them compress needed throughput, some of them are the same, and some of them expand needed throughput

also they all can use water in making them, so that's also a factor if you're using water or not

[round bridge]

all the ore (making 10 Adaptive Control Units/min) so I need like 2500 of each (with 480 belts). I plan on shipping the Iron, Copper, Coal and Limestone to the oil nodes and building the manufacturing plant there.

[pulsar locust]

How would I make this any smaller

this is only hafl

[median heath]

You can't make balancers "smaller".
That's part of why most people prefer to manifold.

But keep in mind that in comparison to the size of NUCLEAR, this is relatively small.

[pulsar locust]

Okay well atlesst i know how to make the balancers now

Cause I still need to build the top of the nuclear farm then connect it up to the production area

This is gonna take a week.

[median heath]

This game has farming?

[pulsar locust]

Well you know what I mean.

[median heath]

No, I know what you said.

[pulsar locust]

Cheers for the help but no need to be a dick

[median heath]

?

[dense cave]

start thinking vertically to make it more compact, but honestly just avoid using balancers, its just a pain in the ass and pointless in the long run

[median heath]

Usually pointless, but as stated most people use them for nuclear.

[dense cave]

when you first start it, you usually have plenty of power. Just shut off what you don't need, a few hours later you will have plenty of stuff to fill the line so you need not worry about balancing

[median heath]

1. Assuming they, or anyone else wants to wait "a few hours" for a manifold to spool.
2. Manifolding nuclear maximizes the radiation zone area, which most people are trying to minimize - and balancers let you do that.

If it works and you're happy with it, that's what matters.

[pulsar locust]

Does it look good to you?

[median heath]

No, because I don't like blue. 🙃

If it works and you're happy with it, that's what matters.

[snow dove]

even if it clips?

[median heath]

Correct.

[snow dove]

glad to hear

[vapid gorge]

I'll dedicate my next masterpiece to you Sev

[median heath]

You and I spell "abomination" very differently.

[vapid gorge]

the marvels of the english language 😛

[dense cave]

you can also create a false floor under your plant on which to run and split all the belts

[vapid gorge]

Best method https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/932761153703149659/1122009149971103775/unknown_-_2022-10-16T144250.924.png

[pulsar locust]

Have one already 😊 but it’s not very tall

[pulsar locust]

My first base on my current play through looked like this

[vapid gorge]

xD I had a very compact set up and only 4m of hidden floor to deal with

It's ok if you hide the crimes

[pulsar locust]

I have like 2m height

[vapid gorge]

at that height the top of spliters/merger would poke through the floor a tiny bit

oh, that particular floor in the pic is 2m yeah sorry xD

I booped the splitters/mergers a little bit lower to not have them poke through

[median heath]

You can make it fit in a 2m space (4m with 1m on top and bottom) without it poking through if you know what you're doing.

[pulsar locust]

It doesn't

[median heath]

That's more than 2m

[pulsar locust]

Oh wait its 4

💀 My bad guys

[vapid gorge]

I guess in my 2m I include the top of the floor

so maybe 1m empty vertical space is more accurate

[median heath]

Oh I mean legit a 2m space.

Like I take a single wall height (4m) and I put a 1m foundation on the top and bottom to where you cannot see them.
Leaves you with 2m. And you can make it not show.

Like

[vapid gorge]

yup yup. probably should talk about empty vertical spae with this sort of thing

[median heath]

This line right here just looks structural and like a good split of the building.
But it's where 2-3 cross belts are because I couldn't fit them anywhere else.

And fitting it all in that 2m space between floor and ceiling means it doesn't really look like you have a hidden belt or 2 there.

[pulsar locust]

16 Power plants down out of 24

[median heath]

And I say "belt or 2" because I hate logistics floors.
This just literally could not be avoided on this particular structure given where the train is.

[true junco]

Ive seen the whole efficacy of railways as a function of distance when transporting solids, has anyone completed such an analysis for fluids?

[bleak coral]

like the max throughput stuff?

cause yeah sev did those two, even analysing it further for considering packaging with recycled packages vs fluid cars

[true junco]

I recall sev talking about it, but i dont recall seeing the analysis complete, or any graphs or equations worked out like ive seen for the solids.

[bleak coral]

last thing I remember was this: #math-and-meta message

which doesn't show the equations, just the result

I don't remember the equation exactly, but I'm pretty sure solids and fluids use the same equation you just use total capacity instead of stack size * car capacity

[true junco]

Yeah, thats the part I remember.

Just looking to get a jump on planning out a fluid railway network for funsies. Not being lazy, its just that my day job has been running me anywhere from 60 to 90 hours a week since last august. Lmfao.

[bleak coral]

ouch, time to be sick? (with satisfactory fever) 😛

as a side note, am I the only one bothered by the fact that we have a machine called a packager, the solid fluids are called "packed X", the recipes refer to unpackaging and packaged, but the empty containers are called canisters? like they're obviously empty packages right?

[true junco]

Except that the problem is the word package and its derivatives.

IRL youd never say you were "unpackaging" any liquid. The (most?) correct word is "decanting"

[bleak coral]

true, the solution is to change everything else:
"containment machine"
"contain X"
"contained X"
"X breaches containment"
😏

[true junco]

Lol

[oblique hollow]

#math-and-meta message

Sev added "fluid train" at the bottom

[median heath]

What McGalleon linked is the numbers for 1 car.
What Lund linked is how when you do 2 cars vs. 2 cars Fluid wins outright (in the context of liquid transport)

[pulsar locust]

Bro...

[vapid gorge]

SatisfactoryCalculator has really stupid ways of lableing things

[pulsar locust]

All to produce 12 uranium fuel rods per minute

Those are just the resources I need loll

oh my god I forgot uranium

[median heath]

Imagine not using Tools...

[median heath]

That would be a key ingredient 😉

[pulsar locust]

Will this cause problems in the future?

Or do I just push the other minerals forwards and place another wall for them to run across

[median heath]

How would it cause problems?

[pulsar locust]

Trying to run the other resources up to higher levels

But getting blocked by those conveyor belts

[median heath]

I would have to understand what exactly you're trying to accomplish.

But if you can visualize it, you can see the potential issues you might have and account for them.

I believe in you.

[pulsar locust]

Thanks man. I gotta make 12 uranium rods per minute. But then also recycle all the waste into plutionium rods and into the awesome sink

This gonna take forreva

[median heath]

Game isn't meant to be beaten in a day. Pace yourself.

[pulsar locust]

All for 150k mw.

[median heath]

Decent.

[pulsar locust]

Logistics floor time!

[vapid gorge]

are you trying to merge all your ores?

[pulsar locust]

No making 12 uranium rods per minute.

Then once that’s done i’ve gotta make plutonium

[pure vortex]

2400 crude oil to play with...here we go

[pulsar locust]

Guys If I have 1200 uranium waste per minute and I want to turn all into plutonium power rods. How many rods would I get per minute

[deft lichen]

Use SFTools in #welcome

[pulsar locust]

I've tried

I can't figure out how to

[vapid gorge]

under 'inputs' add 1200 uranium waste

look at the tabs and what's there

[versed violet]

and answer a question - do you want to maximize the amount of rods on expense of other materials, or just get rid of the waste at lowest cost and sink the rods?

[pulsar locust]

Sink the rods

[vapid gorge]

like so https://u6.satisfactorytools.com/production?share=WKxeZGhrvWTlmk1Fug4j

[versed violet]

then use default recipes, as they use up most waste

[pulsar locust]

The nuclear power plant makes 150k mw. this Uranium fuel rod, and Plutonium fuel rod eat up about 25k

[versed violet]

In fact, every set of 2xnon fissile uranium blender + plutonium pellet accelerator will use 100 waste. And 3 plutonium cell assembler + 2 plutonium rod manufacturer, so its easy building ratios throughout.

[vapid gorge]

takes power to make power

[vapid gorge]

you should be getting a lot more than 150GW from 1/2 the uranium on the map though

max waste pm is about 2500pm and gives like 600GW

if you have 1200 pm being made that's nearly half so about 300GW

[pulsar locust]

24 oc'd nuclear power plants, each eat up 0.5 rods per minute and I have 1200 uranium at my disposal right now.

No clue how much 24 oc'd makes

[vapid gorge]

you said "Guys If I have 1200 uranium waste per minute "

24 at 250% make 600 pm

and the plutonium plan suggests you can process the uranium waste for about 6GW so I think you're relaly overestimating how much it's costing in maintaining power. Did you actually run the numbers? https://u6.satisfactorytools.com/production?share=LdOYE824e7xw6enbmyXs

[pulsar locust]

Oh yeah right, but release 1200 in one chunk but you have 2 mins to process that so basically 600 yeahh

[vapid gorge]

always go off 'per min' and I think the waste gets gradually released as well as it burns? can't recall

[pulsar locust]

Ohhh yeah right it does

[vapid gorge]

doing things by 'cycle' will truly cock up calculations for stuff

[median heath]

?

All of my math is done per cycle because that's how the game actually works.

I just convert to per min for you guys because too many people don't grasp the reality of how machines function in Satis 🤷‍♂️

[oblique hollow]

not basing your math on cycles also works perfectly fine

its kinda like "potato potato"

[median heath]

Oh I'm not disputing that.

I'm disputing the claim that doing cycle math will "cock up calculations".

[oblique hollow]

its two sides of the same thing.
like doing a unit conversion

[median heath]

Precisely.

[oblique hollow]

one might seem more handy to a person than the other.
for you its cycles, for me its /min

[median heath]

I can keep giving you agreement responses if you want...
My point was disputing the specific claim I replied to.

[oblique hollow]

wait just to be clear, you do your math as in "this machine does x cycles per min and makes y stuff per cycle"

[median heath]

Stuff per cycle.

[oblique hollow]

right but you gotta keep track of the cycle time too, right?

[median heath]

I have both in the columns.

For an example of how it reads:

When you go to RIPs, it just says "Iron Plate 150%" because that's what the equation based on cycle output and time is designed to spit out.
You get the clock speed of the machine.

Which is the same result Tools gives you actually, just different equation to get to it.

[mild citrus]

has anyone figured out what the max number of thermal propulsion rockets is?

I've been working on this for 3 hours and I can't get the numbers to work

[bleak coral]

max thermal rockets, double checked to also be able to handle the energy with 20 uranium fuel rods: https://u6.satisfactorytools.com/production?share=pfiDj14i6jfRSpxXw59J

[mild citrus]

That number doesn't work. it over uses the availible nitrogen and crude oil at the very least, didn't check the rest

[wind spade]

it uses... exactly 100% of nitrogen 🤔

[bleak coral]

and it uses less than 100% of the oil

[wind spade]

and doesn't even use 100% of oil

[bleak coral]

you should double check your map resource maxes

[mild citrus]

I count 12,000 available gas and that uses 13624*

[wind spade]

it... doesn't?

[bleak coral]

and your tool pulls the recipe data from docs.json right?

[mild citrus]

looks like the calculator I am using is out of date, thats the only thing I can come up with

[wind spade]

which one is that?

[mild citrus]

satisfactory-calculator.com

[wind spade]

that one can't do loops or multiple recipes or optimise production

[bleak coral]

it's pretty unusable for map max stuff, even larger productions it's not great
I can't even get it to do the recycled loop

[mild citrus]

sounds like I need to use the site you recomend

[bleak coral]

https://u6.satisfactorytools.com/production, greeny is the creator

ignore the update 6 part, recipes haven't change since then

it's just a little off for power since it doesn't have the new clock speed changes

[wind spade]

it doesn't do clock speed anyway

[bleak coral]

I thought it underclocked the last machine when calculating total power?

[wind spade]

oh that, yea. Though with the change underclocking saves less, so it gives slightly more power, so not a big deal (and it's not very accurate anyway once you start putting in things like lights or pumps)

[bleak coral]

yeah it's always gonna be a rough estimate anyway cause of that

no way to predict logistics

[median heath]

This sounds like a challenge.

[bleak coral]

well since that's better read as "no way to predict the human decision making that creates different logistical systems", I think a nobel prize is more appropriate if you solve that than just improving a factory game's calculator

[median heath]

Well if you add more words like that the challenge changes.

[bleak coral]

it was what I intended with what I originally said, the problem being logistics is an arbitrary system that depends on a bunch decision making that's difficult to predict and not all based in logic, I just wasn't verbose the first time

[random saddle]

When trying to plan a 10/10/2.5/2.5 phase 4 with using certain alt recipes...would you still recommend satisfactorytools?

[vapid gorge]

everything runs on it's own cycle length - why would you want to calculate long chains of production having to convert cycles from one step to another when per min is done and works with everything?

it sounds like actively choosing to do 5x the work

with more opportunities to cock it up

[median heath]

Not when you just write an equation that does it for you 🤷‍♂️

[vapid gorge]

did you write a script that does it for you? xD

[median heath]

I wrote a Microsoft Excel that does it for me 🤷‍♂️

Getting gas then driving so don't ask me to link it atm.

[vapid gorge]

ok sure then - but why do that step in the first place? is there some benefit I'm not seeing?

[median heath]

Why do it? Because that's how the game actually functions.

When do it? Before they even added ppm to the UI and all we had to work with was outputs and cycle times. (Better times imo)

[vapid gorge]

it's a lot of translations that only isn't a pain in the butt if you have a computer do it for you though

and I'm not sure why having added ppm to hte ui would have made a big dif? someone would have almost instantly made a table of ppm to deal with things more easily

[median heath]

Because it leads to people believing things work that way, when they don't.

[vapid gorge]

It works both way. Its just if you do thing pm you don't have keep translating each step. And your spread sheet sounds like it's doing the ppm anyway

[pulsar locust]

When a conveyor lift extends does it mean it is connected?

[vapid gorge]

listen for the 'click' sound, that will tell you

[pulsar locust]

Have speakers off..

[vapid gorge]

that's a problem for this then - as far as I know the only way to properly confirm if 2 objects form a properly connection is the UI sound effect

other than turning it on and see if it works but that's a pain i nteh ass if you have a bunch of stuff not connected

[pulsar locust]

I don't have any of the ores, any power, and this is only start of a mega nuclear farm (idk what to call it so get off my dick sevrahn)

[vapid gorge]

better at least turn on the right sound bar in setting to hear the click then 🙂

Unless you're doing odd building styles or have things not set to set height differences in 1m chunks it should connect fine

I suppose you could set it all up and do more trouble shooting after?

you'll almost certainly find a few issues in each section testing it out

[pulsar locust]

Yes I've done that so I can still listen to music

[pulsar locust]

Everything is on grid and no clipping conveyor belts either 🙂

[narrow slate]

There's a click sound??

[next pewter]

Yeah
Makesa HUGE difference.
It "Clicks" when rotating and resizing a elevator, to indicate placing it there will make a valid connection.

[vapid gorge]

what simon said 😛

[vapid gorge]

if you go to move a lift to a machine spin it around in different directions. you'll hear a click when it faces the opening

[narrow slate]

I've played for around 100 hours and heard nothing

[vapid gorge]

you'll hear it with belts and stuff too

might have turned sound down too much. I can't recall which of the volumes its under in settings

[narrow slate]

Belts I do remember

[vapid gorge]

any logistic connection should do it

[narrow slate]

Everything is on default

[bleak coral]

it's a pretty subtle sound, would be easy to miss with low volume or music on or poor hearing or whatever

[narrow slate]

It's good to know

[bleak coral]

surprised it hasn't been added to the "directional" subtitles, though I guess that's been WIP for years

[vital charm]

what is a good way to split this

early game

a friend said to underclock and overclock so all good now! :D

[snow dove]

one splitter

and a little patience

[sand hare]

simple overflow once its filled it wil work fine you need patience

patience is virtue but i dont know what virtue is thats why i dont got no patience

[wind spade]

one splitter

[delicate chasm]

Hello, Pioneer! You are being linked to this message because you have asked the most meta question of all - 'Which alt should I pick?'. And we can't really answer that, for a few reasons:

• If you have more hard drives to scan, it's less important to take a recipe that you can use immediately over a recipe that requires another alt to be most useful, given that you can attempt to get the other alt (and have a powerful two-step combination) right away.
• The reason that you'd want to choose one recipe over another comes down to what's available and where you intend to build. You can go anywhere and we can't predict where you'll set up X factory or how large it will be.
• Some alts have niche purposes or imply a playstyle in some way. Biocoal as an example is used in exploration when you don't want to carry extra ammunition but will be exploring a hostile area near sulfur. Seems weirdly specific? Yes. Might be your exact situation? Yes.
• The math is balanced. Your incredulity over the increased input costs for the alts is largely because you haven't seen the entire picture yet.
• We don't talk about auto miner.

Here's a post that can be linked to people asking The Question.
If somebody has a suggestion for how it can be worded better, please let me know.
Unless you're going to say we talk about auto miner. You're lying. No we don't. Hush. It's hard enough to say 'every alt is good' with a straight face. Don't make this harder.

[median heath]

1. Biocoal is shit and needs to be removed from the game.
2. Autominer is a good recipe.
3. Banking on people knowing what "incredulity" means.

[wind spade]

I won't link to this if it still after "we can't decide for you" message insists on one alt being good/bad

either you want to go the "every alt is subjective way" or you don't, there's no middle ground

[delicate chasm]

Grass into gunpowder is good though. 😭

That's actually why I just said "we don't talk about auto miner" - usually we don't, and it's just sort of dropped if someone does bring it up after somebody says all alts are good.

[median heath]

What you have is a very wordy version of "best is subjective".

Which if they refuse to accept that, adding more words isn't going to magically change their mind.

[delicate chasm]

And there are evidently some people who don't think it's bad, so I just didn't say it.

Very wordy is how you soften the impact and make it not seem like you're hitting them for asking the question.
Like it or not, the way that the directly worded answer is received is consistently bad. Enough that it gets complained about OFTEN.

But greeny, can I rephrase that in some way that doesn't give you a reservation about linking it? I don't care about the line about auto miner and am willing to delete it.

[wind spade]

my attempt at similar message:

[some intro, TBD]

• you can take the skipped recipes later
• there is more hard drives than alt recipes, so you can get all recipes (so it doesn't matter much if you skip a recipe now)
• there is no objectively good or objectively bad recipe, all recipes are useful in some scenarios and it also depends a lot on player preferences
• recommended approach is to look at the recipes and figure out what would help you most. You can also go through codex to see how parts are made and compare how efficient a recipe is (resource/power/space/complexity/whatever you prefer)

[deft lichen]

I think a longer explanation wouldn't hurt, like a couple sentences

[delicate chasm]

It's there to defend against "one of the alts is bad! auto miner!", not to make the implication that auto miner is bad.

[deft lichen]

swap 1st and 2nd point, sounds good to me

[median heath]

Best is subjective.
You will unlock everything eventually.

There. A couple sentences 🙃

[delicate chasm]

That's actually a huge improvement, Sev. Not being sarcastic.

[wind spade]

1st point is to clear the "if I don't pick it now, can I get it later" question, which I see sometimes

but can be swapped ofc

[deft lichen]

I personally start by explicitly mentioning that there are more alts than drives, so they can unlock everything, then that the best is subjective

[median heath]

Best is subjective.
You will unlock everything eventually.
Being able to make your own choices is a life skill that you genuinely need to learn.

😉😉😉

[delicate chasm]

❌

[median heath]

That covers all the "how do I make this look better" people too 🙃

[deft lichen]

the "teach a man to fish" mentality works when you explain it nicely too
your statement is correct, but is it nice to hear?

[median heath]

This game has fishing? 👀

[deft lichen]

thank goodness not, but I hope you get my point

[median heath]

I do.
I also live on Earth where if you limit your ability to learn based on how something is said you will not learn much. 🤷‍♂️

[deft lichen]

if people were smart enough for that, they wouldn't be asking in the first place

[delicate chasm]

Hello, Pioneer! You are being linked to this message because you have asked the most meta question of all - 'Which alt should I pick?'. And we can't really answer that, for a few reasons:

• You should pick all of them. You can get more hard drives than exist alt recipes, and skipping a recipe now doesn't reduce its chances of coming back later.
• You may find one recipe immediately useful, or already have a recipe that combos well with one of your choices.
• The location and scale of your builds will determine which alts or what type of logistics is necessary for your factory, and that cannot be predicted by anyone else.
• The alts are themselves inherently neither good nor bad; they trade one kind of efficiency for another even if it is not immediately obvious. Some recipes that look expensive are not, once you consider that you will save resources at an earlier step in a production chain, for example.

[wind spade]

This message is to answer any "What recipe do I pick?" question.

Short answer:
Choose any recipe you want. Best is subjective and you can unlock every recipe anyway.

Long answer:
There are more hard drives on the map than the amount of alt recipes (including inventory slots), so you can get all recipes.
Pretty much all recipes are a tradeoff of some sort, e.g. you trade resource efficiency for less power needed, or you replace an ingredient with another, or you simplify your production line at the cost of more raw resources required, etc. Whether you like those values or not depends purely on you and your preferences. Look at the codex, look at the recipes, look at wiki or other sources, check whether you like the recipe or not and decide based on your own research. But most importantly - have fun!

Wiki article
There's also an article on wiki with more info, which you can read: https://satisfactory.wiki.gg/wiki/Tutorial:Picking_an_alternate_recipe

[gloomy ore]

The true answer: "C O M P L Y"

[delicate chasm]

The onus is shared between teacher and student. Both have a responsibility in the education process.

[deft lichen]

yep I like this

[delicate chasm]

If I start giving you good life advice but I deliver it orally and in Dutch while you have no access to a translator, I'm not really helping you and I know it.

If anything, I'm showing off my knowledge which is just boasting with an extra step. It's talking crap.

[median heath]

If you're trying to equate literally speaking a different language with "He didn't use nice-person words and make sure my feelings got coddled and that I was tucked in all warm and fuzzy" then.... I don't even know how to reply.

[delicate chasm]

I can see that. Yes, I am. Using the language that will be understood by your listener to have the meaning you intended to convey.

That is nuanced enough to include body language, tone, word choice in the mutually native tongue, et cetera.

In text, it's difficult to convey intent if you don't express it with phrasing.

Greetings. This is a message.
can just as easily be
Heya! I wrote a message for you.

[supple belfry]

One style is maximally accessible to the inexperienced user asking a question.

The other is not.

There’s generally a lot of snark in this channel; I stopped frequenting it after encountering a lot of veteran players being overly pedantic and generally standoffish to people asking questions in good faith.

In the short run, sure, it’s no big deal. Over a longer run—months or years—it contributes to a general vibe that is just not pleasant to engage with.

Snark should be reserved for the people who absolutely deserve it.

[delicate chasm]

That's also the third person whose name I have never seen before but who does not have a new user tag who has spoken up since this topic started in #satisfactory - I think it's safe to say this is a problem on this server.

Given that it was less than 30 minutes ago.

[median heath]

For every 1 person I have who states how much they absolutely hate me, I have 10 who thank me for helping.

So I very much take that as data indicating the problem lies on the end of the receiver. 🤷‍♂️

[delicate chasm]

Survivor bias: Discounting the people who ignore/refuse to engage with you after your initial response
Anecdotal evidence: Your personal experience is different from the norm being described by every other participant in this conversation.

I dunno what to tell you, man.

I don't think a single person I've attempted to help has ever become upset with me before, and I don't find that unusual given that my approach is not abrasive.

[median heath]

My approach is honest.
Some find it abrasive. Others do not.

Survivor bias it may be, but I have found that the truth has a very polarizing affect on people after the past couple decades, so 🤷‍♂️
I will always continue to be me.

[supple belfry]

Can you just be you…differently?

This isn’t a big ask, tbh.

[median heath]

Some people take it at the intended face value of "this is honesty"
Others take it as "WHY IS HE BEING MEAN" when the words said were the exact same and in the same manner.

So the receiver is what differs.

[median heath]

Can you be the same, differently?

I don't think you know how those words are defined.

[supple belfry]

Again, one style is accessible and maximally useful. The other is not.

If you’re incapable of reframing your responses in a more approachable way, then that’s on you. I don’t know what to tell you, but you can say the same thing differently. We do this all the time. You’re being stubborn here, and I suspect you realize it.

[median heath]

We do this all the time.

?

[delicate chasm]

Some people ignore your attitude - but I doubt you've got very many people who believe that what you are delivering is blunt honesty without personal bias or a condescending/elitist/gatekeeping tone.

It's the little things like when and where you add a shrug emoji that make or break the things you say. And you shrug after you say something that makes somebody look foolish, which is universally understood to be the equivalent of :sipstea:

So what is anybody supposed to think? It looks like you're dunking on them. It appears that you know it looks like you're dunking on them. The ball looks to be going through the hoop while you are airborne and pushing it downwards through the basket - so maybe you are dunking on people and getting called out for doing it, and maybe just maybe it's not a personality trait but an odious personal habit that isn't part of who you are.

And maybe you are acutely aware of all of this. Maybe not, and it's in good faith that you are NOT aware of this that I'm bothering to type this.

This is all I'm willing to say. I've spent more than enough time on this.

Whatever the case may be, we now have 2 posts to link people to when they ask the alts question and soon enough I think we'll make another for the other common questions.

[median heath]

but I doubt you've got very many people who believe that what you are delivering is blunt honesty without personal bias or a condescending/elitist/gatekeeping tone.

Wow.

[jade tusk]

Can we... like actually talk about math and meta? No offense I get someone doesn't need to be an ass for no reason or whatever, but I would like to actually talk about math n stuff

[delicate chasm]

Shouldn't be surprised after you rattled off the 10:1 from-thine-rectum ratio of people who were grateful:salty.

Yeah, sorry, this started as a community meta kind of thing, or at least that's why I posted over here. Will drop this immediately. o7

[jade tusk]

I wanted to come in here and find a bunch of cool math for splitters or something (I actually had a question) but coming into this kinda shell shocked me at 10am LOL

[median heath]

!wikisearch manifold

[brisk shore]

https://satisfactory.wiki.gg/index.php?search=manifold

[median heath]

^ Splitter math

[oblique hollow]

Gladly.
Anything you wanna know about in particular?

[jade tusk]

Thanks Mcgalleon

[delicate chasm]

Unless of course you want to design a load balancer for any reason because all reasons for wanting to do so are valid.

[jade tusk]

Ya, so I'm stuck on doing reinforced metal plates

Becuase I have done the 3-1-5(x2) to be 10 for the plates

and the metal sheets

but then I have a problem getting everything to 1- look good, but two- get everything to it's respective place

[jade tusk]

Yes I want it to be balanced, too

[oblique hollow]

3-1-5?

[median heath]

Becuase I have done the 3-1-5(x2)

Huh?

[jade tusk]

Sorry, should have explained better

The way to make it 100% efficient is I have 3 or both screws and 3 plates coming off of 2 miners

And the only way I could figure out how to split it into 10 is by going from 3 into 1 and then spitting that into 2 and then spitting each line into 5 to equal 10

if that makes any sense

[oblique hollow]

so 10/min reinforced plates?

[jade tusk]

50 a min reinfoced plates

[oblique hollow]

oh

[jade tusk]

because I have 10 assemblers

if my understanding is sound

[delicate chasm]

You'll have 3 constructors for screws per 10 RIPs, so what I'd do is merge the third screw constructor with the first of the next set of 3.

[jade tusk]

but I think merging into 1 from 3 is creating a bottle neck

[oblique hollow]

thats this x 5

[median heath]

If I may:

Just do this 10x

[jade tusk]

So jsut do a balanced merge from 3-2?

[oblique hollow]

merge 3, split in 2

you need mk 2 belts for that

[delicate chasm]

Yeah they spit out 40/min so you need to either split to 20/20 or merge onto Mk2 belts (80)...either way is fine, I'd simplify with the 80.

But for balancing on Mk1 belts you have to do the former.

[jade tusk]

ya I just unlocked mk 2 belts last night

[oblique hollow]

then the 3 screw constructors to 2 assemblers should work out

[jade tusk]

but it's already split into 3 because 3 constructors. I guess I'm confused

[oblique hollow]

its 3 constructors making screws for 2 assemblers

[jade tusk]

I thought it was 3 constructors was enough screws for all 10 assemblers :0

[delicate chasm]

Those 3 constructors can all feed into a merger that exits with a mk2 belt into a splitter, which only splits 2 ways (60/60).

[oblique hollow]

the easiest way would be either:

1. split one of them in half and then merge with the other 2 belts
2. merge all 3 and then split the belt in 2

both amounts to symmetric design

and its frankly just aesthetic choice which one you do

[jade tusk]

right. That makes sense. I thought it was 12 screws and 6 plates per reinforced iron plate, correct?

[oblique hollow]

yeah, but the per minute values are different

[jade tusk]

Damn. That's where I F'ed up

🤦‍♂️

[delicate chasm]

It cycles in 12s or 5 times per minute.

[oblique hollow]

its 6 and 12, yes

but thats per cycle

a cycle takes 12 seconds here

[jade tusk]

Right. which would equal 60 a min?

[oblique hollow]

yep

cause you get 5 cycles per minute for this recipe

5 x 12 = 60

[jade tusk]

Ok. clearly my factory is not ready for 10 assemblers, lol

I just thought I'd go ham

[oblique hollow]

start with 2 assemblers

[delicate chasm]

10/min is good easy numbers, 120 ore/min and only 2 assemblers.

[oblique hollow]

you can always expand this later on

[deft lichen]

won't 50 RIPs/min use an insane amount of iron at that point?

[delicate chasm]

Easy to expand too, as you can just split the miner and then copy it on the other side.

[jade tusk]

right. Which is the only iron I have setup rn other than my dedicated screws/rods/plates

[oblique hollow]

yep, 600/min iron for 50/min R.I.P

[jade tusk]

yes. I had a fundamental blemish in my understanding lol

I just wasn't thinking and I just got back into it after more than a year away lol

[deft lichen]

10/min is plenty, once you get to modular frames, make a separate line that makes RIPs specifically for them

it's very easy to get the scale wrong

[jade tusk]

Ahh. Makes sense.

[deft lichen]

you often need just like 5 or 10/min of a given part if it goes to storage, and then you make a dedicated line for it when it's used in a more complex part

so 5 modular frames/min for storage, and you'll make heavy frames using freshly made modular frames once you get to it

[jade tusk]

Right. I'm a far cry from that, lol

I'm playing with a newbie friend, so I'm trying to catch myself back up to speed so I can catch him up to speed

Thanks for the help @oblique hollow and @deft lichen

Now speaking of Meta. What map should I go for? (Single player)? I was thinking forrest because that one is just fun, but idk

[deft lichen]

it's the same map

so pick which one you want

[jade tusk]

right becuse they're hand-built

[naive vessel]

ahh yes rip's

[delicate chasm]

It's just a different zone on the same huge map.

[jade tusk]

IS it really>

I didnt know that

[oblique hollow]

yep

one loooorge map

[jade tusk]

I guess I haven't explored enough. Showing my noob-ness lol

[oblique hollow]

about 5 x 5 km of playable area or so

[deft lichen]

if you started in the grass fields, you can't really tell because those are separated

the other three zones border each other

[jade tusk]

Gotcha.

[naive vessel]

meanwhile in @naive vessel 's game: shit i need 2 more floors in hight

[jade tusk]

maybe hot take: I think the forrest is the best place to start because it helps with biomass early-on

[naive vessel]

man i have 4 pure iron nodes at my factory it IS in my opinion the best place to start

[jade tusk]

Yup. I think I'm in the same place then rn

with all the rock going overhead?

also that "harvest me" voice, can I turn that off or something?

it's right where I want to start and I cant find it lol

[true junco]

You can mute voices. But it also mutes the ADA that tells you about stuff you just unlocked in the HUB etc.

[young grove]

okay so my situation is i only have mk1 things so my miner emits 60 limestone per minute but the constructer needs 45 stone per minute and i think i need to load balance but idk how to do that can someone like just make a graph to show me or just tell me?

[median heath]

Set the miner to 75%.
Now you are producing 45 and consuming 45.

[young grove]

you can do that???

[median heath]

Managing clock speeds is a massive part of the game.

[young grove]

cool cuz i dont have that open just yet WOOT

[fading urchin]

Also it's not a huge loss if you are overfeeding your belts right now

[median heath]

Unlocked in the MAM under the Slug tree.

[fading urchin]

You will end up using faster belts very quickly

[median heath]

So it is available whenever you choose to make it available.

[young grove]

im just wanting to start this playthrough as efficiently as possible

[fading urchin]

Once you unlock faster belts you won't have to worry about it. Early on while you're learning the game I wouldn't focus too much on trying to load balance every resource. You can use something called a manifold which can be scaled up easily

[median heath]

Faster belt doesn't solve the 60 vs 45 problem.

So yes, they still have to worry about it.

[fading urchin]

That's fair, you're not losing efficiency with this situation right now

[young grove]

this is also why i rarely seek help from the discord of any game cuz people just tell you stuff you dont need or want to hear

[fading urchin]

Sure your miner isn't 100% efficient because the resource belt gets backed up, but all of your production is still getting everything it needs and will make it at 100% efficiency

I'm trying to help - I'm explaining that soon enough in the game you won't have the problem.

I'm not trying to contradict Sevrahn either.

[median heath]

When restricted to mk1s I would say underclock it to 75% so 45 = 45.
When you unlock mk2 belts you can overclock it to 150% and you'll be at 90 which feeds 2 Constructors. Still at 100% eff.

[young grove]

i wanna LOAD BALANCE thank you sevrahn tho at least you reminded me that i can do the mam research

[median heath]

👍

[fading urchin]

Well, sorry for trying to help. This is why I often don't give my input.

[young grove]

ok i will admit that i was kinda harsh just then sorry about that but i also wanna thank you because if i were much newer to the game then that totally woulda been helpful but because ive had other playthroughsi knew it wast that important i just wanted to challenge myself to make things as efficient as possible

[median heath]

Yellow lights are the work of Satan.

[young grove]

random but funny

[delicate chasm]

Who summons me?

[median heath]

Yellow lights on production machines indicate inefficiency.

[vast trench]

thats why you light everything up purple

or demon red

[median heath]

So if you're going for efficiency, all lights should be green or blue/white.

Green = Blue/White > Red >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Yellow

[delicate chasm]

You can split from the miner to a constructor and a merger. Do the same thing with 2 more limestone nodes and merge the three together to create 4 constructors.

But man what a PITA. I'd just not bother with more than 1:1 until overclock and higher belt speeds, same as these guys. 👆

Anyway off to make another whole yard of batch crafters with no automatic input, awaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!

[wintry agate]

lmaooo i am on the space elevator

[vast trench]

Gotta wonder what exactly it attaches to in orbit,obviously its a station of some sort of but is it storage...a ship of some sort possibly judging by the parts you make

well the parts you make and send up indicate a dyson swarm more than anything

lots of smaller ships with perculiar gravity manipulation,lots of power and other bits

[wintry agate]

Ive been trying it for like 3 hrs or something but this is the heighest I can go cuz hitbox of space elevator really weird and hypertubes are crashing my game if i go to high with it

[vast trench]

is versatile framework used aftter the phase(3?) initial 2500?

i only ask as i just kept the construction going into containers while i worked on other crap

[wintry agate]

wdym

[vast trench]

phase 3 needs 2500 vers framework

[wintry agate]

I know

[vast trench]

is it needed for another future phase?

as well

[wintry agate]

idk prob not

[vast trench]

I wish id kept the smart plating production up from phase 1,you need them in future to make uhh...modular engines i think

i turned the damn machine off

[wintry agate]

turn it on

or put it in the sink

[vast trench]

i just did recently lol,i got a few plates built up motors are also at the site now to get rubber there from my refinery....i decided to try make things look prettier this time with REAL buildings

[wintry agate]

nice

My friend is stuck on the elevator lol

[vast trench]

this area is not done yet,that building on the right is literally just fabric storage with 1 sink to keep the boxes full and lines running so i get polymer for some other shit

[wintry agate]

Nice

I fucked up my Tier 8 save

[vast trench]

thats why i restarted in the jungle,because my t8 save just became an ungodly mess especially my first factory area

this was the first "real" building i did just for some power storage

[wintry agate]

if you wonder how it was cuz i was fucking around too with hypertubes and I made a launcher that send me out of the map and it didnt really load so whenever I load up that save my game crashes

[vast trench]

oh wow you reallllly fucked it up

[wintry agate]

I know...

I had 240 hrs on that save

[fading urchin]

Do you not have a previous save file from before when you did that??

Like even an autosave or somethin?

[wintry agate]

wait

[vast trench]

lol

theres a reason this is set to autosave every 5 mins

[wintry agate]

i think u may have saved 240 hours of work lol @fading urchin

[fading urchin]

Lmao

Mine is set to save in 30min intervals because I have huge autosave times

[vast trench]

i have NEVER messed with hypertubes yet

[wintry agate]

I think it was every 5 min for me

[wintry agate]

yet 😳 ?

[fading urchin]

If it was every 5 then go to like the second or third most recent so you don't lose a whole lot of progress from what you were workin on

[wintry agate]

@fading urchin Yuppp it worked

[vast trench]

since ive got real buildings this save i might run hypertubes around

on my only t8 save i used trains to get about

[heavy mountain]

So, I seem to have difficulty planning "space" every playthrough I get better at it, but every time I build it just ends up being small and cramped.

Anyone have an ideas or a planning calculator for building space?

[fading urchin]

Now tone down that hyper cannon! Lmfao

[vast trench]

Whatever space you were going to use?,triple it

[wintry agate]

Lmao

[vast trench]

i ended up with shit way too cramped my first time playing and it ended up totally spaghettified with conveyers looping over and under stuff with me being able to find NOTHING

the map is HUGE,use that space and always put way more space between buildings than you think youll need

[heavy mountain]

Luckily I'm not that bad

Like I built a somewhat large 20HMF/min factory its just I can't seem to wrap my head around specific builds like computers or RCUs in terms of Size

[wintry agate]

I bought satisfactory late 2020 in the lockdown and played it for 30 hrs or something then never played again for 3 years lol

is there a way to make hypertubes faster cuz they suck

without a Cannon

[snow dove]

no

[main dirge]

Cannon into a tube

[snow dove]

make cannon, attach to normal hypertube, include hypertube brake at end

[fading urchin]

One thing you can do to estimate how much space you need is measure out how many foundations each array of machines will make. For example, constructors take up one whole foundation. If you need 35 constructors, build out 35 foundations then make a subjective decision on how much room you want/need to work in without feeling cramped. Also a strategy I always use is taking advantage of logistics/sandwich floors, I'm talking like 2-3 walls high of just empty space beneath your machines.

[main dirge]

Brake?

[wintry agate]

okay..

[vast trench]

Scrolling up and down seems to change my build hotkey menu (1-10) not rotate my build hologram,what did i screw up

[snow dove]

keeps you from phasing through solid matter at the end of a super fast tube

[main dirge]

Are you alt-tabbing out of the game? Alt key probs stuck on, tap alt

[wintry agate]

just a foundation in front i think

[fading urchin]

Press alt

[vast trench]

thx

Also TIL how to actually swap between the 1-10 menus i always wondereed

[heavy mountain]

This design is a cannon with 6 directions optional and is perfect for in-tube flights as well

[fading urchin]

I usually place down a hand rail a couple steps back from entry and exit points of hypertubes. Makes it so you don't get sucked in on accident walking by and stops you when you come out super fast without hurting you

[snow dove]

suboptimal cannon design tho

[heavy mountain]

How so?

[wintry agate]

I will try it one time

[heavy mountain]

17 entrances

[wintry agate]

lmao thats smart af

[snow dove]

this design is best

[heavy mountain]

Not as fancy, nor multi directional

[snow dove]

same efficiency per entrance, takes up less space

[wintry agate]

where is the golden cup?

Jk it will prob take me 1 year to get that lmao

[snow dove]

i haven’t finished the space elevator

i’m only around 480 hours in

[onyx perch]

i got it in 10 seconds :D i used SCIM lol

[restive timber]

I'm currently trying to create a graph for planing a mega factory to build essentially every item. but I'm having difficulties trying to render the graph. The best I have currently is in the picture (ideally view it in the browser). Does anyone have some ideas on how to visualize the data in a better way? I'm using graphviz currently to display the data and I use data extracted from the community resources. I probably could do a better job preparing the data. Sorry of this is the wrong pace to ask.

[wind spade]

there's only 32 items worth producing 😛

and none of the existing tools don't make nice graphs?

[median heath]

Use Tools.

[restive timber]

What would those be in your opinion?

[median heath]

Non-consumable items worth storing:

Plate, RIP, Beam, EIB
Pipe, Rod, ECR
CSheet, ASheet, Plastic, Rubber
Frame, HMF, FMF
Wire, QW, Cable
Crystal, Osc
CB, HSC, AIL
Rotor, Motor, Turbo
Comp, RCU, Super
Casing, Cooling
Concrete, Silica

32 in total.

[wind spade]

not opinion, fact 🙂 only 32 items that are used for building stuff

(well, 33 - there's also screws. But those are excluded given they are only used for building awesome shop of which you need exactly one 😄 )

[median heath]

Stator was removed from the list for the same reason Screws were.

So if you want to be hyper-technical, 34.
But 32 for what you need infinitely replenished.

[restive timber]

You need those for power storages though

[median heath]

Yes, and think about how often you're randomly building those...

Then think about why they got removed from the list.

[restive timber]

hmm

[wind spade]

power storages are pretty much pointless - they don't generate power, if you instead spend the same time building more power, you'll end up in much better place

[median heath]

Same category as AWESOME Shops.
When you're going to build them, you know how many you're building.

So it's very easy to take Pipes + Wire from storage in the exact amount needed, shove them into an Assembler at 250% speed, and have the precise number of Stators you need for the project.

Alternatively, treat them like Screws and just have a PSB filled with them at storage location, NOT an infinitely refilled ISC.

[bleak coral]

a personal storage can hold enough stators for 480 power storages, which is more than enough for any sane power storage usages

[median heath]

☝️

[restive timber]

Alright, thanks. Thank narrows the goal of the megafactory down by quite a bit

[bleak coral]

personally I still just make like 5 per minute extra on a motor factory cause it's easy to do, but it's overkill

I could definitely just shut it off now

[sand epoch]

make and store EVERYTHING. that is all

[median heath]

Let me just go to my ISC full of Leaves. 😁

Bionuclear Rod when?

[sand epoch]

you don't make leaves 😛

[median heath]

No, YOU don't make leaves.

<- Leaf Extractor Mk 1

[sand epoch]

exactly 🙂 they are collected, not made.

[median heath]

Store Iron Ingots then as those are made?

[sand epoch]

lol

[median heath]

But not Iron Ore, as that is collected.

So don't store Leaves, but DO store Biomass.

[sand epoch]

correct

[median heath]

😁

[bleak coral]

welcome to my storage, yes that is an ISC full of plutonium fuel rods, I see you're so impressed you need to take a nap!

[brittle kayak]

I decided to skip nuclear waste, so sinking the plutonium fuel rods... but I do have 3,000+ uranium fuel rods stashed up, waiting for my mega build to reach a stage where the reactors are needed.

Only got 6 reactors, though.

[winter blaze]

Where would one find THIS kind of information, a total amount of all nodes available e.g.
IRON NODES
Impure 33(7,920)
Normal 41(9,840)
Pure 46(22,080)
Total = 120(39,840)
"asking for a freind" that's planning a Mega Factory

[true junco]

The wiki

[pulsar locust]

max resource per second

[true junco]

Was about to say to get total resources from satisfactory tools.

[pulsar locust]

The nuclear power plant

Like 20% done

[golden smelt]

im trying to get into blueprints cause I know they will make my life easier, so what are some must have blueprints

[true junco]

Thats a tough one to answer. Because we can do a lot of different things with BPs. I have some that are just structural elements. Some that are meant to be strung together to make larger manifolds. Some that have multiple stages of production.

[golden smelt]

rn im working on basic manifolds for smelting and constructing

but it keeps crashing my game so I make no progress

but im just wondeirng if there is anything else I really need to do

[wind spade]

*per minute

[wind spade]

Heavily recommended to not do a megafactory

[vapid gorge]

u8?

[frail cedar]

I usually create blueprints as i go through each project. I have some general stuff i.e. load balancers, 4x4 platforms and 4x4 Walls. But production lines are created in a blueprint whenever i know the numbers and i am about to build them.

[golden smelt]

u7

[vapid gorge]

odd. MP or server?

mods?

[golden smelt]

no mods, but im hosting for a friend but he isnt on rn

[vapid gorge]

delete the bp machien and every object around , rebuild it elsewhere. See if that works

[golden smelt]

load balancers?

[wind spade]

Yeah why balance? 😛

[vapid gorge]

a way to split off different amounts on a belt

[golden smelt]

i got it working again after I deleted it

[vapid gorge]

manifolds are easier and more compact

[golden smelt]

i love manifolds

[frail cedar]

I use a combination of both.
Let's say i have 20 machines and the inputs allow me to build blocks of 5. So eventually i have 4 blocks of 5 machines. I split the lines into 4 equal ones and then use a manifold to feed the machines.

[wind spade]

You can manifold manifolds xD

Or merge the belts so that you have 4 with the proper amount from the start

[golden smelt]

so it evens out the conveyors?

[vapid gorge]

as long as you did the math right

and didn't cock up the building somehow like missing a belt connection or have the wrong mk belt

[vapid gorge]

My perfered option

[golden smelt]

how would I do a load balancer?

[wind spade]

you try, you realise it's complicated and pointless, you make manifolds

[fading urchin]

It takes a lot of math, and a lot of splitting and merging

[golden smelt]

does this work?

[vapid gorge]

Find a Tutorial- each load balancer has to be custom for the job

[golden smelt]

damn

i think im just gonna do manifolds

[oblique sorrel]

ah yes the infinite loop

[teal oasis]

Loops are fun. Friend & I put a motor on a loop to decorate our motor factory.

[pulsar locust]

Nuclear farm

To make sure it doesn’t melt down. If it melt down then u fuckkeedd

[wind spade]

wdym by melt down?

[pulsar locust]

Run out of fuel, Powergrid shuts down

[wind spade]

balancer won't help with that

well, there's no difference between manifold and balancer in that regard

[pulsar locust]

What’s a manifold

[wind spade]

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

[pulsar locust]

Well yes

You still have to split it though to make sure there’s the right resources to each of those “lines”

[deft lichen]

Nuclear power plants are the only valid usage of balancers

[wind spade]

no, you don't

[deft lichen]

Simply because the startup time is insanely long, and you can't prefill without waiting for hours for the rods to manufacture

[wind spade]

first machine overflows when it's full

you don't ever have to balance in satisfactory

[wind spade]

well you usually don't need full power when you build new plant anyway

[pulsar locust]

It takes a lot of resources to fill one machine

[wind spade]

see above

[deft lichen]

🤷 I think it's better to use a balancer in this specific case

[wind spade]

my point is that there's no "need". you can do it without, you don't have to balance lines

[brittle kayak]

Ye, the game balances itself out. Just takes time.

I have come across one or two rare exceptions where production amount = consumption amount meant that the last one or two machines didn't get enough resources while the belt was backing up with extra resources earlier on but that was strictly due to me right-sizing the belts i.e. always using the lowest level belts that had sufficient capacity for a specific connection.

Well, that, and turning all of the machines on at the same time.

Since they all wanted resources at exactly the same time it dropped the throughput to the last machines so low, due to low belt levels, that they only got a part of what they needed despite there being enough resources, on paper, to feed them all.

Think this particular setup had 12 Constructors organized in two rows and fed through a single belt with splitters in the middle.

Upgrading all belts to maximum available (EDIT: well, even one or two levels higher would've sufficed) fixed the situation.

[brittle kayak]

Gosh darn liquids. I've got two refineries, both wanting 390/min of water, so 780/min total. I've got water extractors producing 312/min of water + two more refineries producing 468/min of water as a by-product which I route back to the first refineries. That's 780/min of water required, and 780/min water produced. However, the water outputs of the latter refineries are constantly getting clogged up, and then the first refineries stop producing since they can't get enough water. sigh

Valve/unpowered pump or no, makes no difference. This fluid merging is a pita. :E

[vital charm]

should i use a 3-4 balancer here or is there a better way

[wide roost]

if you have mk2 belts just manifold out and manifold in

[vital charm]

elaborate please :)

im still around 70 hours playtime so 😅

[placid oyster]

|. |. |
M-M-M-S-S-S
|. |. |

[wide roost]

^ that

[placid oyster]

M are mergers, S are splitters

Inputs above outputs below

[vital charm]

ohh yeah i get it now thanks :D

this is how i did it rn

but now the last 2 machines get 15 each. the second one gets 30 and the first one gets 60. isnt that an issue?

or does it automatically distribute between the machines eventually

@wide roost @placid oyster

[placid oyster]

It will distribute itself eventually

If you want to speed it up you can manually fill the machines

And it will distribute itself faster

[vital charm]

alr ty bro

[median heath]

Always prefill your manifolds. 🎉

[opaque dirge]

I have tried to get into this game multiple times but I always get discouraged when I try and get some bigger stuff going. Am I supposed to make a full factory that takes raw ore and turns it into a final product or should I set up small factories for each material. But if I do it that way I'm never sure how to store all the excess materials or I don't have a enough being produced to feed into other factories and have some for construction. Should I build a big storage system that will store everything before it gets send out to other factories?

It is quite frustrating because it seems like there's so many different tiers of production so I need to somehow divide up my materials but I don't know how. Should I make a big plate factory for example that feeds into a storage system, and then from there have it go out to the factories? The problem is I still need to have plates not just turn all plates into other stuff

[median heath]

If I may recommend:

1. Don't ever have anything going OUT from storage. Storage is the end of the line. Final destination.
2. Make Plates for storage in the exact amount you want refilling storage. Say 20/min. Now if you want to make something else, you make MORE Plates in the amount that something else needs.
   You do not touch the 20/min amount dedicated to storage.
3. Doing one massive central factory is not recommended.
4. As for how to divide materials up. Don't solve forwards from ore. Pick your final target amount of things and solve backwards from there. This will tell you definitively how much of what you need where.

[opaque dirge]

So let's say I want reenforced plates. Should I build a new plate factory or just make my current one bigger?

I guess all that really changes there is the location lol

Should my reenforced plate factory be getting their own separate supply of regular plates?

[median heath]

Both options are valid.

If you have not been to T7-8 yet I recommend you just power through progression until you get there.

Being able to see the whole picture of the game will alter your perspective on how to do things as trivial as Plates and RIPs.

Also setting your end target goals cannot be done until you've actually been to the end.

@true junco are you proud of me? I referred to the beginning of the game as "the end".
BE PROUD OF ME.

[prisma kraken]

taking your example, plates are only really used for building materials and in the making of rip's, those in turn are really only used in modular frames, in turn those in hmf's, and those in fmf's and pcc's, so outside of the calculation of how many plates you need to make for pcc's and FMF's, just making 10/min plate for building material is pretty adequate. Of course each of those parts is in some way used to make space elevator deliveries, and you may want to target specific rates for that stuff, but really for 'how many plates do i need', you kind of just build them as you need them in other factories for higher level goods

at the phase 4 stage where just everything is bigger scale, you'll look at what you need to build and see that you need 200 plates/min or something, and be like 'ok, so i need to smelt half an iron node, that's 10 smelters & 10 constructors that need to be in the factory'

[opaque dirge]

Hmm interesting. I guess my problem is I'm not fully sure how much I need to be making. Like it seems like each thing is used for other stuff which is used for other stuff and it gets overwhelming very quickly

So should I have a plate factory that splits a bit off for storage, and then a reenforced plate factory that splits off a little bit for storage and so on?

[prisma kraken]

i'd not make either, tbh

[opaque dirge]

Wym?

[median heath]

This would be why I recommended just powering to T7-8.
Then you can get the idea of how much you want to make of each thing because you can see the whole picture.

[opaque dirge]

Ah I guess. So like once I'm to the high tier stuff what even is the point lol. It's like a lot of games. The fun only happens at end game, but then there isn't much left to do lol

[prisma kraken]

i build just enough for building (targeting a rate for rips/rotors/mf's of about 10/min), outside of that, i don't really build them until i need to make heavy modular frames

[opaque dirge]

So what do I make?

Are factories just for making stuff that is used for making other stuff?

What is the end lmao

[median heath]

No there very much still is a point at the higher tier.
Just your perspective changes so solving lower tier items is simpler.

[prisma kraken]

it stops at the phase 4 package delivery

[opaque dirge]

So like will I still need reenforced plates at end game or is it just because I need them to make other stuff?

[prisma kraken]

the latter

[median heath]

Both.

[opaque dirge]

Ah okay lol. This is where it gets overwhelming. Like assemblers are crazy

[prisma kraken]

i mean, you still need some to make constructors and assemblers and other buildables

[median heath]

You need them individually and you need them for other stuff.

[opaque dirge]

And how do I cleanly get 3 different things to feed into the same place like what

[median heath]

Belts do stack. 🙂

[prisma kraken]

search YT for a dude named 'DrLootCrate', he breaks down different means of feeding multiple input machines pretty nicely

[opaque dirge]

Sounds like what I need

[prisma kraken]

there's a bunch of different methods, but he covers the basics

[opaque dirge]

It's hard to organize stuff when you need these huge long assembly lines

[prisma kraken]

without getting into the astrophysics of perfect splitting of single line sushi belt input

pretty much you use the 3 dimensions to allow the inputs to be staggered along the z-axis

[opaque dirge]

Huuuh

I understand sushi belt but what the heck did you just say

[prisma kraken]

you can perfectly mix the right ration of items onto a belt and feed it directly into an assembler/manufacturer/blender from a single input

really time consuming and fragile to construct that sorta thing

[opaque dirge]

Yooo what

That's nuts

[prisma kraken]

like lets take smart plating as an exampe; it takes rips & rotors as a 1:1 ratio

you can merge 5/min of each onto a belt and just feed it directly into a single input of the machine and it'll work as long as everything stays stable from the supply side

but you delete a power cable somewhere that cuts production to rotors and it'll get all lopsided & you'll have to flush belts and deal with that sorta pain

if doing those sorts of designs is your thing, go right ahead and have fun with it, but i avoid that stuff because i know i'll eventually do something that upsets the fine balancing of it and just have a nightmare problem to resolve it

normal sushi isn't that way because unused stuff just overflows out the other end

[opaque dirge]

For a factory should I have iron being smelted in that factory or should I have a large smelting factory that ships it out to the other factories?

[fierce ruin]

I'm a fan of refining raw materials near the node, then bringing them where i need them

[snow dove]

iron being smelted in that factory

[prisma kraken]

it depends on your needs.... i make very little out of iron ingots except for steal ingots

and usually do the smelting with the steel foundries

all of the basic iron goods can be made more efficiently with steel 🙂

[opaque dirge]

Hmm this is complicated

[median heath]

Logistically it is better to ship the ore concerning iron and copper.

[prisma kraken]

that's a good point for copper at least

iron is pretty much 1:1 ore->ingot

[opaque dirge]

Like I'm watching a video about a modular frame factory rn. He starts from iron and goes to the frames

Is that good?

[median heath]

I can show you Frames in a single screenshot 🙂

[prisma kraken]

probably for making a logical production unit, that's a good size

i can show you all basic building materials with storage mall for them in 12x4 that's been blueprinted

[median heath]

Modular Frames:

[opaque dirge]

Cause like should it be a factory that just makes frames and ships in the needed materials or should it make those material for it self

[prisma kraken]

thats rips, rotors, mf's, cable, wire, plate & rod

[opaque dirge]

So like should each factory have a dedicated supply line from ore up to the thing?

[median heath]

That is your decision to make.

[opaque dirge]

Or should I have a smelting factory and a plate factory

[median heath]

People do both.

[opaque dirge]

Well I'm not sure this is so confusing

[prisma kraken]

make what makes sense to you at your point and don't get into analysis paralysis