math-and-meta

[true fog]

Then that's what you do 😁

[sacred orbit]

absolutely is a ton of work, especially when you get things like quickwire. had to mess with speeds there.

same with Rotors. @median heath knows all about my fight with rotors

[vapid gorge]

if smart splitters and sinks work with your goal that could also help

[true fog]

Aaaand I crashed my game

750 minute session, bound to happen

[sacred orbit]

this was Sev's design. it requires 45 ingots input. that doesn't cleanly fit with the production outputs of 30, 60, and 120. through my arguing with sev, he made it clear that rotors will always take 45 ingot input, at least using the base recipe.

these last two crafters should allow me to pump 270 along the MK3 belts

[median heath]

That is how math works, yes. 😁

[true fog]

Overclocking, on a constructor? :o

[median heath]

Literally ALL the machine lights in my latest build are blue/white.

[true fog]

While I absolutely won’t say you’re playing the game wrong, we deffo aren’t playing the same game. lmao

If there was a light to show underclocked machines, I think almost all my machines would have it.

[median heath]

To the above: yes, because OC allows you to fit Rotors into a 3x4 space.

[true fog]

Except for extractors (not water). :p

[prisma kraken]

i'm just going to play devil's advocate here with you for a sec and try to understand what you're doing... the base concrete recipe takes 45 limestone/min, and you seem to be on mk3 belt tech, so why not just split a 270 line into 6 outputs of 45?

[true fog]

Can't expand that manifold easily though?

[sacred orbit]

... i just facepalmed...

[prisma kraken]

i mean, it really is as simple as doing a 2-way and 3-way split

[sacred orbit]

up to the 240 used 16 units of this. the extra two to reach 270 made it 18... 18/3 input belts...

6 machines per belt

ugh

[prisma kraken]

if you want to get fancy with making concrete, do an 8-way split in a blueprint and underclock the machines to make 90/8 = 11.25 concrete/min

[sacred orbit]

now im confused

[true fog]

Waterpipes with Mk2's are still kinda buggy aren't they? So better to do BP's with Mk1 over Mk2 pipes?

[prisma kraken]

i'm just saying if you absolutely want to be fancier about making concrete do something that underclocks an 8-way split of 270 which can then be fed later by higher tiered belts without OC'ing the constructors

none of the ratios for concrete really work well for it, but my point isn't that, its that concrete is an easy 6-way split for an input of 270 limestone

[sacred orbit]

yeah... i just realized that after you said it...

[true fog]

That'd require filling the 270 entirely though. Are you able to do it with your nodes?

[prisma kraken]

we sometimes get manifold-itis and try to make more complicated designs than what things need to be

[true fog]

🤔
I think we've already been over that come to think of it.

[true fog]

Can confirm this, hard. Spent 3 hours earlier today on some tiny thing for manufacturers.

[prisma kraken]

i'm a big proponent of using both manifolds and even splitting in builds... have both in you toolbox and use whichever makes the belting easier

[true fog]

End of the day, it's just math

[prisma kraken]

well, its whatever gets the job done that makes it less of a chore

one of the things right now that i've been noodling is that i have a bunch of 780 manifolds for solid steel, and i'm just really unhappy with the amount of time it takes for them to spin up

[true fog]

Currently working on a blueprint for refineries I can use to make steel and the likes. Not looking forwards to that right there tbh...

[prisma kraken]

so at least a few times in a session i lay out new geometries trying to force it into being an even split instead of being dominated by 13

for refineries, i kind of just use the same bp of 3 refineries with the pipes laid and switch up the recipe on them

there's not too much specially different you need to do for any refinery build, so just getting the pipes into a bp with the power saves me enough time

[true fog]

Seems like I'm going to wind up with 2 BP's, one with 2R's and then an endcap with just 1.

[prisma kraken]

i also have a 1 refinery version of the same to deal with making a row of refineries that isn't a multiple of 3

i could make a 2 refinery version, but that only saves me from connecting a single pipe in a build, so meh

[true fog]

I'm doing one with two because it'll fit better in with the current design I'm doing. Are recipies usually more 3-based?

[prisma kraken]

kinda hard to answer that, there's not a lot of refinery builds

i have a fairly large world, and a lot of stuff going on

but for oil processing, its really one of two builds, a recycled loop for rubber/plastic/fuel or a turbofuel build

the bottom half of all of those builds is exactly the same, 300 oil->400 hor + 100 rubber

the top halfs are slightly different, but they all are a block of 4 blenders and some belting mojo

outside of that, the other refinery builds are aluminum and the 'pure' recipes

[true fog]

Hmm, I see...

[prisma kraken]

all the pure recipes are essentially the same, pipe a manifold from a miner into a line of refineries & supply somewhere between 300 and 780 water

and the number of refineries you need is dependent on the recipe and miner output

you probably could do a nice split for caterium & copper for 600 ore input - 24/min for caterium and 15/min for copper go evenly into 600

actually i lie, copper... 600/24 = 25, so you'd need to OC the machines to 125 or 250 to get a good split

grrr, meant caterium

even then you can't get a good split, lol that would only take one 5 out of the 25

[true fog]

Yeah. Could underclock and make more machines though.

[prisma kraken]

yeah, pure recipes just want to be manifolded

doing a pure build for a 780 node is pretty sizeable as-is

for copper, its 52 refineries & caterium, 32.5

[true fog]

Pure builds are always my goal. So... this'll be fun.

Somewhere up in my head, mentally, there's this little voice telling me I'm wasting soooo many resources not going for pures.

[prisma kraken]

wet concrete iirc goes with 5 refineries for 600 or 6.5 for 780

we're leaving out steamed copper sheet, and that's 22.5 per refinery

[true fog]

Ah man, just realized I'm going to need to make some BP's for proper trainlines before I really get this going

Just for the sheer volume of resources

[prisma kraken]

i hate doing the pure builds because they're really all the same over & over

plus a little piece of me cringes at the power demands

[true fog]

I don't want to think about the power demands.

I just don't.

[prisma kraken]

but getting back to the question... the only other real refinery build is aluminum

what i've taken to doing for that rather than tuning the build to the recipes is i just use 4 refineries on the alumina solution direct piped into 4 refineries for the scrap

[true fog]

I'll be honest. I have 1.3k hours in the game, and I never completed phase 3.

[prisma kraken]

its easier for me to just use a standardized build for it all and as i get the recipes switch it over to sloppy+electro

thisis my standard aluminum

you'll note there isn't a VIP, and i'm using mk1 pipes

[true fog]

VIP being?

[prisma kraken]

its a device that uses an artifact of headlift simulation to prioritize one input over another

no valves, no buffers, just an extractor pumping in the water needed to satisfy the need for new water in the system

you technically can do sloppy+electro with 3+4 refineries and a crossbar manifold connecting them, but i think it better to just direct-pipe the alumina solution btw the refineries

there's really not a lot of builds that you can do with refineries that vary from what i've listed

[true fog]

Going to be a lot to explore once I finally reach that stage

[prisma kraken]

yeah, aluminum is its own thing, it takes a while to figure it out

the only other build i can think of is 'intro oil' which is a temporary thing for phase 3

that's just making 100 rubber + 100 plastic and 450 coke with the hor to get some rubber & plastic going for the hub unlocks

[true fog]

Oh well, judging from the amount of time I'm spending making these BP's, it'll still be some while. So I don't need to stress up quiitee yet

[prisma kraken]

also, something i'll point out that i'm guilty of at times myself, is blueprinting something that you're going to build once is a real waste of time

you'll laugh a bit at this... my most useful blueprint is just 8 constructors for making concrete 🙂

[true fog]

No, no that sounds about right. Constructors are quite commonly used :p

[prisma kraken]

i just drop it on a nearby limestone node when i'm building

just saves so many resupply trips 🙂

[lime wadi]

Pre U8 my most useful blueprint was signs flipped on their sides..

[true fog]

Okay, that one you'll need to explain. I'm intrigued.

[prisma kraken]

yeah, that sort of stuff when you're doing design work is great

it was very time-consuming to orient signs in differing directions before u8

[lime wadi]

Take a 4m Label Sign, aim it at a wall and scroll. It turns now.

In U7 and earlier, you would've had to use beams to get them to rotate

Which, if youre doing a lot of it... gets... repetitive.

[prisma kraken]

yeah, you used to somehow figure out how to get a horizontal pillar where you needed the pivot point

[lime wadi]

Funnily enough still one of my more useful blueprints is just a vertical Pipeline Junction

[prisma kraken]

that's a really good idea!

[lime wadi]

I'm a bit OCD and like to snap things to the grid, so.

That blueprint saved me from having to place, delete support, snap junction on the end

[prisma kraken]

well for stuff like running water down from the desert mesa, that would be pretty useful

that's a project if you've ever done so

[lime wadi]

Hehe yeah

[prisma kraken]

getting the mounting holes or supports in the right place for those long vertical pipe continuations... not hard, but time-consuming

plus i get OCD about pipes too

[true fog]

Don't think I ever used signs in U7 or earlier to run into the issue. Always ran real bare.

[vapid gorge]

no you just need to lay them out right

[oblique hollow]

Mk 2s are fine below the limit, but at their limit there are a few rules to make them work

[prisma kraken]

i'm starting to think that the problem with the mk2's at limit might not be a floating point precision thing, but instead fluids moving in the wrong direction and the pipe not having capacity to level out

i don't have a firm reason for thinking that, but it just seems weird that you only see problems with them at capacity

[vapid gorge]

Yeah I've had issues with mk2 at 570 similar to running at 600, both fixed with loops

it really feels like longer manifolds with large volumes of fluid sucked out per minute causes the issue

I also overclock things a LOT so that might just show up the problems more?

[prisma kraken]

i feel like there's just something bugged in the pipe simulation generally

if you've designed a manifold to expect a flow in one direction of 600/min, any flow backward in the pipe due to what we call sloshing will take away the transfer capacity

[vapid gorge]

Even if not at 600 right? If a back flow ever stutters the production suddenly you’re not feeding the machines enough

[prisma kraken]

i guess? without sitting in a debugger with the code, who knows?

but when you loop the pipe, you're effectively doubling its capacacity, so that's probably why you find it works so well

where i've actually observed the flow issues with the mk2's, i've had 1) the pipe at capacity and 2) things consuming from the feed on different cycles (coke & fuel), and i think that may also be a contributing factor to it

then again, i've heard people say they've had reactors exhibit problems as well 🤷

one wish i have is that CSS would just sit down with the code and figure it out and give a little info so we can stop speculating 🙂

[oblique hollow]

bigger manifold = more junctions

And the layout matters too

for mk 2 at max flow, ive considered having the input NOT at the first junction but simply at the second or somewhere in the middle

cause that is in effect the same as a loop but probably more stable

(actually not really like a loop, its a big forking manifold, but whatever)

[vapid gorge]

Wdym by ‘input not at the first junction?

[oblique hollow]

just connect the input pipe not to the end of the manifold, but somewhere more towards the middle

[vapid gorge]

that does shorten the effective manifold - which still might lead into the 'many big suckers causing issues along the length'

[oblique hollow]

only way to find out: more tests

[ashen stirrup]

Does anything weird happen when you connect mk1 pipes to mk2 pipes?

[oblique hollow]

depends

on a junction with 1 pipe input and 2 pipe output? yes

you get a flow split that is 1 to 2

Mk 2 Input at 600 and mk 1 and mk 2 output ?
You get 200 in the mk 1 and 400 in the mk 2

[ashen stirrup]

Ok, that's not too weird

[oblique hollow]

Still unexpected if you first use pipes

You'd probably expect 50/50

[ashen stirrup]

Yeah. If you're working with full pipes, though, it shouldn't matter, right?

[vapid gorge]

it shouldn't no

one of the many reasons for flooding systems

[oblique hollow]

the flow split will still be 1 : 2 if fluid doesnt need to flow back

[primal flicker]

Perfect for something that needs a 2-3 flow balance.

[ashen stirrup]

So does this not work if pipes and machines are prefilled?

[oblique hollow]

sure it does. but this will rely on backflow

the initial fluid split will be 200 / 400, then it switches to 300/ 300

the mk 2 pipe here will likely exhibit oscillating behaviour - flow rate ramping up to 600 or so before dying down again.

but thats pretty normal

[delicate chasm]

Mm-hmm. This is what I thought when I showed up, too. It's deductive reasoning from knowing related concepts in programming and having decades of video game playing under the belt. There's something simple going on here; the mechanics line up with the errors and it doesn't take heavy CPU load or dozens of instances to replicate the issue - a true rounding error this profound should be making other things in the system break, if that were all it were.

Still though nothing to say that there is a singular issue unrelated to the others. I have NFI what's up with buffers and can't even replicate most of the known issues with them in tests (but they do cause issues eventually, usually...mysteriously not being full all of a sudden and refusing to top off chief among them).

I'd love to hear some details on what is known internally about it but it wouldn't do any good as I'm not going to be able to fix it, so... 🤷‍♂️

My only guess is buffers are actually given some kind of internal priority, so they supply before they take, and then they can't maintain flow rate because they aren't full enough to supply or take.

[oblique hollow]

That is one of the prime reasons why mk 2 manifolds have issues

The pipe manual covers that

[wind spade]

loop "solves" that usually

[oblique hollow]

usually

in U8, i tried a loop on a not quite even mk 2 manifold and that failed spectacularly

Dont let the valve part distract you, these flow reversals happen in every dead end pipe

and a machine input pipe is nothing but a momentary dead end

[wind spade]

even if the looping pipe is above the main pipe?

[oblique hollow]

above? why would that affect it. Because its overflow?

[wind spade]

side view:

   |
   V
   |
+--+-----------------+
|                    |
+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+

the +s in bottom row are splits to machine
this way the loop keeps the pipes full and slooshing shouldn't be an issue (theoretically, I'm just asking whether this has been tried, because from logical point of view this should work)

[oblique hollow]

Oh so the input is on the loop

this technically should improve things

though i have to try how uneven pipe heights affect this

[slim matrix]

which one? i suppose pure copper ingot?

[wind spade]

see #math-and-meta message

[oblique hollow]

and in turn, this page: https://satisfactory.wiki.gg/wiki/Tutorial:Picking_an_alternate_recipe

[wind spade]

it's already linked in the message 🙂

[oblique hollow]

I just remembered

[slim matrix]

yeah but thats not helpful

[oblique hollow]

If you need a short summary for all 3:

1. Most steel efficent recipe for encased beams, but the numbers can be considered odd
2. Decent wire recipe, if you can afford to spend caterium
3. Increases copper yield at the cost of space , power and water

[slim matrix]

i see

[wind spade]

how is it not helpful? how can we make either the message or the article more helpful?

[slim matrix]

hmm

[oblique hollow]

But the link on the wiki tells you this anyway

as the wiki allows you to compare other recipes

What i wrote here is a recap from the wiki info

[slim matrix]

what @oblique hollow just replied was helpful, ofc the article cant cover every recipe

i was just asking as a newbie basically

[wind spade]

the article covers how to get the info yourself

[oblique hollow]

That article was supposed to help newbies, so of course we are invested in why it failed

[slim matrix]

i was thinking pure ingot for flexibility, but now that mcgalleon mentioned 1) is most efficient im debating haha

[oblique hollow]

If you need the steel, thats the point

[slim matrix]

yeah yeah i understand dont worry

[wind spade]

(and there's much more info about each recipe you can gather from wiki or looking at them ingame/in codex)
the main point is that every recipe has advantages and disadvantages, and by looking at it yourself, you value the advantages and disadvantages based on your preferences

which is why we try to not give you "pick X recipe" answer, but rather give you tools and hints on how to make your own informed decision

(and there's no "pick X recipe" definitive answer anyway, since any recipe can be useful or not useful based on your preferences and situation)

[oblique hollow]

Would a short summary like what i just gave you help more if similar summaries were on every recipe on the wiki?

[slim matrix]

is there an index with all the recipes?

[wind spade]

wiki 🙂

[oblique hollow]

yep

The article i posted links to it

at the very bottom

[wind spade]

or some other third party tool if you want to use that (usually some calculators have codexes)

f.e. my tool (Satisfactory Tools) has a relatively decent overview of all recipes when looking at recipe list in production tool

[slim matrix]

would be nice if every recipe page had a quick summary like galleon did for me

like i just wanna get some context about how the recipe does in the meta without having to go deep into numbers

maybe its asking too much, but just my opinon

[deft lichen]

we would like to implement that on the wiki, but it's a much bigger feat than it seems at first

[slim matrix]

ill take a look next time

[oblique hollow]

No no, its a fair point

A few pages like the wire and cable pages have such similar summaries

But not all pages yet

[wind spade]

we've recently did a lot of discussion about how to implement this and there's some preparation for making something similar to what you're saying, but for now all we have is the article and the message I've linked you at the start.

The main problem is that pretty much every person is looking at the recipes from slightly different angle, so we need to cover all of that and ideally in a way that doesn't make it sound like "you need to always pick this recipe" or "you should never pick this recipe", but rather leave it up to the person to decide if it's worth or not

[oblique hollow]

Providing quick and easy info without too much bias is the short of it

[wind spade]

and another very important thing is to also mention things like combinations with other recipes or other recipes that can make the same item, because otherwise we're just comparing the recipes in vacuum, which isn't ideal

so yeah, it's a big project 🙃

(it's also the reason why we wanted to know why you didn't find all the provided info helpful, because that is also new and we want to improve it as much as possible)

[slim matrix]

i mean i think you got the important point across very well, there is no best recipe, its all situational

but as a newbie there are probably some recipes that might be a better pick than others, idk. either from being easier to use or just making things easier

[primal flicker]

And every situation has different combinations of recipes based in different optimization priorities.

[oblique hollow]

That "probably better recipe" depends on where your priorities are. Like if you just found a hard drive at tier 3 and you are given the option of pure copper, that useless to you right now as you need Tier 5 to use it

[wind spade]

there sure are... if you tell us your preferences and game stage 🙂
(e.g. "I'm at tier 2, aiming to start steel production soon, I prefer resource efficiency over power/space efficiency and I want to reduce amount of recipes to minimum")

[oblique hollow]

Hence why the most important thing in picking a recipe is finding out your personal priorities

[wind spade]

and why you're the person that should do the picking, even if you're new 🙂

[oblique hollow]

In effect, pure copper and caterium wire could both do the same thing: make wires cheaper (replaces the material or reduce the cost of it)

Encased Steel Pipe is the only alt for encased beams and its cheaper on the steel.
Usually worth a pick unless the numbers are a bit too odd for you and the concrete cost is too high

[slim matrix]

personally i dont pick things based on what im going to do, but what i could do with them that would seem like easier routes, casted screws is probably the best example

in the future i probably would

[oblique hollow]

Fair. Fun thing about casts screws is they arent even the peak of screw making

they just cut out one step

but the other alt for them, while initially more complex, is ridiculously compact and cheap

[wind spade]

(and that step can be instead upgraded for resource efficiency, which is why they are not "always better")

[slim matrix]

yeah but the caterium probably requires more work to do logistics and the encased steel pipes probably complicates the math a little bit, so i went with pure ingot cause i imagine its the one i most likely could make use of it i wanted to

[oblique hollow]

Caterium is situational

if you found it or have it near you, it can offload some of the burden from your copper

like, if you need copper sheets

then the caterium can be used for cheap and compact wire making

and in turn cables

The Pure Copper Recipe is indeed good, but being in Refineries means you have this big bulky machine thats power hungry and needs water.

If you need copper ingots directly and don't have caterium but DO have access to water and power, then it can indeed be decent

[slim matrix]

for now my brain strictly compartmentalizes ores with its own products to learn the basics and get a sense of everything in general before trying "new" things

so caterium was pretty much discarded from the get go

[oblique hollow]

i guess thats fair. Compartmentalize your local area resources too however

Locality is a big factor in factory planning

[wind spade]

also, try not to think about it as "what can I do with nearby resources", but rather "where can I build factory that produces what I need" 🙂

[oblique hollow]

If you haave a recipe that can turn one ore type "into another ore type's items", then you can pretend that node belongs with the others

[slim matrix]

yeah i guess thats true

[oblique hollow]

But do take these things at your own pace

If youd rather keep them seperate for now, then do so

Later on you are forced to mix some anyway

[slim matrix]

oh im a turtle, my symmetry ocd goes wild in this game i kinda love it

[oblique hollow]

Too bad the later machines are asymmetric i guess

Foundry is already a contender

Symmetric inputs, asymmetric outputs

[slim matrix]

yeah i just mirror everything so i keep some kind of balance

[oblique hollow]

might need to start with some shifted symmetric setups soon

where the machines are arranged symmetrically but the belts and pipes are no longer mirror-images for each side

or vice versa: symmetric belts and pipes but asymmetric machine lines

[true fog]

Mirror-versions of machines when..

[prisma kraken]

in general just giving you some guidance, the pure recipes are late-game ways of increasing yield at very high energy cost, or to stretch resources farther at a specific factory location with a limited supply of an ore. As such, pure iron is very unuseful, pure copper is useful only if the 2x yield you get from copper alloy isn't enough of a gain and you wish to pay the refinery tax to get a 2.5x yield. Of the other two recipes, cat wire can make a lot of wire in a very power friendly footprint at the cost of a pretty rare resource (that also has better alts), and encased pipe, which is the one i would pick reduces the amount of steel you need to make to make EIB's, and trades a bit of production density (and as a result, power) for the increased resource efficiency. Of the three, i believe EIP to be the best of the 3 recipes, but as others have stated, best is relative to your immediate demand

[slim matrix]

yeah, appreciated, EIP also seemed the best to me (after whta galleon told me) but pure copper ingots seemed something interesting to get into at some point

[prisma kraken]

i wouldn't so much mind the foundry's assymetry, if it weren't for the fact that the output interferes with the input when running belts perpendicular to the machine

[prisma kraken]

i've done a lot of iterations on world sized factory plans, pure copper really isn't needed in any world-sized build until you start looking at trying to max out nuclear pasta production

there's ~29000 copper ore extractable on the map, doubling that with copper alloy to 58000 ingots is really more than sufficient for any build that isn't trying to hit +16 pasta/min

the one asterisk next to that is that when you use pure copper & pure caterium together to make cat & copper ingots, the ore requirements for each end up being 1:1 for fused quickwire, but that's a very late game consideration

i generally recommend that you use pure recipes sparingly until you are primarily generating power from fuel and are in phase 4

incidentally, because the term is over-loaded, i mean 'pure' recipes to be the ore+water ones with the additions of wet concrete (though it is more reasonable than the rest), steamed copper sheet, and cheap silica

'pure aluminum ingot' even though its name would suggest otherwise I exclude from the umbrella term

[delicate chasm]

Am late, sorry, but yes! Fluid settling seems to be the step that has the greatest priority, and this kind of design is what I've been using in all of my piping lately. A very long vertical pipe going straight down from an otherwise horizontal manifold also is largely immune to issues caused by flow reversal.

The junction needs to be vertically aligned too though so there is no horizontal part of the pipe going down.

[prisma kraken]

btw, chiming in on the flow stuff quickly (i have to run in a few), a week or 3 ago, i was experimenting with a different configuration for a recycled loop

[woven yacht]

Hello, hopefully this is the correct channel for this:
I'm trying to create a 5:3 balancer for my screws > reinforced iron plate production to meet the demand of creating the tier 2 metal cubes.
However, I've run into a snag of unable to create a balancer with the limited conveyor management you can make. I've managed to create this, but it's biased towards the middle which might break things
https://imgur.com/a/OakQHkO (Link to a balancer concept I drew in mspaint, it's unfortunately not balanced)
Is there something I'm missing I could be doing to make it balanced?

Oor are balancers not as important in this game?

Here's what I usually do when all the inputs are under the belt's max speed capacity, where I just make it all share the same belt

[prisma kraken]

and i was trying to pipe the 1000 h20 needed in through 2 500 pipes instead of the configuration i normally use with 2 400 pipes + a 200 pipe for the resi rubber... because the blenders for the loop were at a lower altitude than the resi rubber refineries, they were always getting starved, seemed the blenders were always gulping water from the pipe before the resi rubber could get its turn, most likely due to gravity prioritizing backflow down to the blenders

[prisma kraken]

balanced splitting isn't as favored in SF because manifolds are generally simpler to build

[woven yacht]

So this entire time it's pointless to worry about balancing outputs equally?

[prisma kraken]

i still try to do so when it is an easy thing to build, but most kind of poo-poo the concept

hey, if you want to wait for a production manifold to warm up to see if it's working, instead of doing a balanced split, its a free world

there's pluses and minuses to each method of distribution

[woven yacht]

🤷‍♂️ Honestly I've been doing the second belt all this time, but on a high output belt such as this where I'm expecting 180 screws per minute, I need to make sure there's no holdups

[prisma kraken]

i personally am all-for more resources on balancing to keep people thinking of it as a option

[woven yacht]

Do you happen to have a solution to the 5:3 problem?

[prisma kraken]

i know how to

i've built a 4:3 balancer recently, its a matter of adding another belt to it

literally just anothe belt on top of this

each fork of the 3-way split is merged down into a single line with something like this:

[woven yacht]

Impressive

Looks way cleaner than my setups

[prisma kraken]

5:3 is weird because your inputs can exceed the outputs by a lot

in any event, true balancers like that really aren't needed in SF

if you're thinking you need one, you're probably trying to solve the wrong problem

i personally just find them fun to belt up 🙂

they're all little geometry problems and figuring it out is sort of a thing i enjoy

gtg for a bit

[woven yacht]

Thank you for the explanation, I come from over 800 hours of factorio in which I've been hardwired to balance everything

[ocean cosmos]

Hi guys i just wanna ask simple question, can we restrict conveyor speed like mk1 conveyor is carrying 60 but i want 15 or 12 something like that ?

[snow dove]

a splitter and some patience

[ocean cosmos]

how we do that

i will use on my storage system outputs

[oblique hollow]

storage system outputs?

Storages should not output anything

[prisma kraken]

the other alternative is to push a steady rate of something like 48/min of another item down a mk1 belt to fix its capacity; care with that needs to be taken involving the merge priority

[prisma kraken]

often times you don't need to do this because consumers only take from a belt what they need after their buffers fill... a belt taking 12/min to a modular frame assembler, for instance, won't transfer more than 12 items to the assembler after the machine's buffer is full

[prisma kraken]

that's a lot of storage 😛

[ocean cosmos]

yeah

i need to draw this i think

[prisma kraken]

also since you opened the door on it, hoarding items in SF is generally bad, because resources are effectively limitless, there's no point in keeping them

in SF, its better to sink your excess product

[ocean cosmos]

i think i need to that

[prisma kraken]

there can be a case made to cache some for bursting production (specifically of elevator parts), but generally lean manufacturing is the way to go

[ocean cosmos]

I combined different products according to the speeds I needed, for example, I combined 180 cables and 300 screws according to the mark 4 conveyor and sent them back to the storage system because it would be unlimited, so I took care of it with 1 conveyor, but what I didn't think about was the problem that unlimited arrival would restrict the arrival

[prisma kraken]

i've found anything more than a single container's worth of a product is just excess that i'll never yuse

yeah, also screws aren't needing storage, the only building that requires them is the awesome shop

they feel really important in the early game, but they're really not that useful 😛

(unless your goal is to handcraft 10k chainsaws or something silly)

[ocean cosmos]

This is just an example. The screws in my system come in at 1440 per minute, so nothing can filter them, so I take them directly to production.

[ocean cosmos]

ahah yeah you right

[prisma kraken]

gtg for now

[ocean cosmos]

now I have to bring about 20 products separately

[proud harbor]

lool my setup is still all over the place. i should pick a day and just built in the sky so everything is nice and flat

[woven yacht]

Here's the end result of 10 modular frames per second, all of it balanced

[proud harbor]

what the ff

[random charm]

5:3 is most simple, cos 3 is exactly output from splitter. So merge all 5 outputs(if belt is capable to hold 5xproduction) and send it to splitter. Each output from splitter connect to one machine. Splitter will split them equally to 3 parts

Anyway, my advice is always manifold, but in such easy setup like this, you can simple use balanced input

[prisma kraken]

when you're speaking of full balancers, it usually is in the context of a volume that exceeds belt capacity

but you are correct that a single splitted on an aggregated input line can perform a 3-way split 😉

[random charm]

I mention it, if belt is capable to keep 5x production(maybe translation issue, my english is not very good). And based on his picture, it is, anyway i warned him 🙂

[prisma kraken]

what's interesting is that if doing something like this, keeping the splitter there is actually better:

[random charm]

To be honest, i did not checked, what he will produce where. I supposed, there will be equal demand on all 3 machines, in that case he can balance it. If there is different demand per minute, of course, manifold is right option.

[woven yacht]

It's for automating Heavy Modular Frames

[wind spade]

@ruby imp see #math-and-meta message for alt recipe choices

value of recipes depends purely on you

[tired tinsel]

I wonder if 1km of storage with mk4 belt transfer item much faster than single mk4 belt stretching 1km

[median heath]

Why would speed be relevant?

[primal flicker]

Factories run on steady state rates. Not start/stop times for individual items.

[ashen stirrup]

I have definitely had a 2-player save where an ISC of steel beams was not enough storage for steel beams. granted, making a bigger steel factory would've fixed that, but adding a second ISC also fixed it

[magic island]

items can move instantly from the input of a storage to the output, so yes, each item would zip along a chain of storages much faster than on a belt

but there's no practical application because speed and distance don't matter, only rate

[ruby imp]

what now:

also yes ik preference but

[wind spade]

same answer, read that message

[ruby imp]

i still cant decide

[oblique hollow]

literally uncomparable

[wind spade]

also there's still third recipe?

[oblique hollow]

you gotta look around your factory if one of them seems useful

[ruby imp]

yeah but biocoal thing

[mossy flint]

caterium wire seems useful to me

[timber valve]

Do you have caterium in your base?

[wind spade]

all recipes are useful

[mossy flint]

steel rod as well

[oblique hollow]

if you cant decide between these 2, pick at random

[ruby imp]

define base

[mossy flint]

steel rod gives you a lot of rods

[wind spade]

if you don't see any as useful, just pick one at random

[ruby imp]

hmm okay ty

[timber valve]

Within 150 foundations of your main smelting area

[wind spade]

you can get all recipes anyway

[wind spade]

what is "main smelting area"? smelting is done at nodes

[oblique hollow]

sometimes the choices are pretty equal so at that point you just have to pick withever one seems ok enough

[timber valve]

Sounds quite resource-inefficient

[wind spade]

why?

[timber valve]

Are you really putting down refineries at every node?

[wind spade]

well, in every factory

(and why refineries?)

[timber valve]

Because of the alt recipe

[wind spade]

there's two alts and base recipe. I use whichever seems best for given location (and given product)

(if talking about iron or copper)

[timber valve]

Yea, that's fine if you don't care about max resource efficiency 😛

[wind spade]

I don't because there's no way I'm using all of the world

[oblique hollow]

sound pretty unimportant unless you strangle the map

[wind spade]

if you're using the whole map, then your pc is probably on fire

[timber valve]

Can confirm from experience

[median heath]

Not everyone does.

[timber valve]

I didn't say everyone does (.)

[wind spade]

I do care about resource efficiency and it's the main property I want to optimise towards. But that doesn't mean that I'm locked to only use the most resource optimal recipes (which are those anyway? how you define resource efficiency if you have multiple resources?)

[median heath]

Weighted Points

[mossy flint]

There is no right or wrong answer. I like alt recipes that make the footprint smaller. I like alt recipes that make the most out of resources

It's a trade off

[true junco]

I wonder if using all map resources is viable if we utilize alts that maximize inputs instead of maximizing outputs.

If we favor high consumption, and low building count recipes, can we consume all resources in production chains (assuming only sinking the most complex parts we can manage from all production lines) without melting the CPU?

[wind spade]

like using worst resource efficiency? 😄

[true junco]

Prettymuch. If consuming all global resources using worst resource efficiency recipes isnt even viable without most people's CPU melting down, or hitting the UObject limit, then that would imo render all discussions on global resource efficiency utterly pointless.

[wind spade]

UObject limit I'm pretty sure is doable even with most resource efficient recipes... if you don't build things like foundations and reduce belt lengths to minimum

[true junco]

I could see that. It wouldnt leave much wiggle room for aesthetics.

[fair island]

I need help with my coal plant, one side is working while the other side isn't when it's pretty much just a mirror image

[lunar marlin]

water starved on the left side of your pic?

[fair island]

on the right side

[wind spade]

what is "not working"?

[fair island]

2 of the coal generators aren't getting enough water in the bottom right

[wind spade]

did you prefill it?

[fair island]

What do you mean?

[wind spade]

fill all pipes and machines with the fluid before turning it on

[lunar marlin]

are the first 1-2 generators seeded with coal and water?

[fair island]

seeded?

[lunar marlin]

full on water and coal.
greeny was right on letting the pumps build up before turning on your generators

alternatively, you can turn on your generators one at a time

[fair island]

Oh I thought it would just balance itself out over time

[wind spade]

it will but full pipes are happy pipes and you should always prefill

[lunar marlin]

yup

[fair island]

Oh then am I able to just use one pipeline instead of just splitting it halfway for all 8 on each side?

[wind spade]

you still need to transport 360 water through pipe that can only handle 300

so you still need to do "two pipes"

[lunar marlin]

I've found that distributing the 3 pumps as evenly as possible lets me get away with "1" pipe fed from 3 sources

[wind spade]

  G  G  G  G
E-+--+--+--+
E-+
E-+--+--+--+
  G  G  G  G

or any other variation, all should work equal as long as no pipe segment carries more than 300

[fair island]

Oh so I basically need to tear down the whole thing and restart

[wind spade]

no

your thing will work

just prefill it and then run it

if it breaks after that, there's probably an issue with piping or something

[lunar marlin]

If you choose not to prefill the coal:

let the pumps run for bit, then start the gen closest to the coal input, once its full start the next one

[fair island]

The reason i said I need to tear it down is because I have one extractor trying to power 3 generators without it being overclocked

[lunar marlin]

underfed gens would be a problem, but no need to tear it down...just turn off the ones that wont get enough

[fair island]

Thanks for the help 😄

[lunar marlin]

that way when you have the resources/OC to feed them its just a switch, or faster belts needed

[scarlet path]

do i need pipeline pumps to boost manifolds that go upwards? using a logistics floor and i'm not sure if i have to use the pumps, it's a 6 meter floor btw

[snow dove]

depends on if you need the headlift

[scarlet path]

i'm not really sure if i do
by default they are capable of going 10 meters up right?

[snow dove]

mhm

[scarlet path]

alright, then i think i'll be fine for now

thanks

just tested it, it does work without any pumps

[near hatch]

guys, I have an issue, I'm dealing with an input of 46.666... (lets say 46.5 to rounds things up) and I have to split it into 4 outputs of 18, 10, 6 and 12.5. Do you have any methods or pattern you apply when dealing with precise item flow like this one ? Or do you I need to wait until the programmable splitters (which is pretty far from where I am in the game currently) ?

[snow dove]

poggers don’t help with that

[median heath]

Manifold.

[snow dove]

manifold it and move on with life

[median heath]

Also 46.5 is a round down from 46.666

[near hatch]

what's manifold xd ?

[median heath]

!wikisearch Manifold

[brisk shore]

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

[near hatch]

yeah indeed

that would be cringe to use this in my current factory lol, everything is perfect atm

[scarlet mural]

is worth it make screws direct from ingots ?
instead make them from rod

[wind spade]

it's the same iron cost per screw if you don't have any other alt recipes

[scarlet mural]

wut is the "best" for screws ?

[wind spade]

that depends on how you define best

there's basically 4 possible ways of going ingot -> screw:

• iron ingot -> iron rod -> screw
• iron ingot -> screw (needs Cast Screws)
• steel ingot -> screw (needs Steel Screws)
• steel ingot -> steel rod -> screw (needs Steel Rods)

each one has different advantages and disadvantages

[scarlet mural]

isnt steel expenssive than others ? since u need more power and "higher" cost ?
specially if i'm aiming for something like 10k screws

[wind spade]

it also makes shitton of screws per ingot

steel screws make 13 screws per ingot, steel rod makes 16

[scarlet mural]

so in a basis, if aim for simplicity i will get a "advantage" on eletricity
if made by steel i got more per ingot

[wind spade]

in comparison, iron ingots are 4 screws per iron ingot

[scarlet mural]

bit more than 3x and 4x
🤔

[wind spade]

essentially. Though steel screws are more power efficient than cast screws iirc

[wind spade]

there's no 3x, both normal and cast screws from iron make 4x

[scarlet mural]

i think i cant expand my actual steel production to aim for 10k screws, i'm kinda in shortage of coal around here

so i will stick with ingots > screws, arigathanx for answers

[wind spade]

maybe the question to ask first is "why doing 10k screws?"

[true junco]

Steel screws are also very logistically effective. 1 beam makes 52 screws. And 1 constructor can make up to 650/min when overclocked to 250%.

So it can pretty much make every recipe that requires screws very simple to feed.

[scarlet mural]

i wanna product 10/m heavy modular frame

[true junco]

Designing my factory to maximize screws as an intermediate...

(Not intentionally, its just working out that way. Lol)

[wind spade]

that definitely does not need 10k screws

[scarlet mural]

modular isnt the only thing i will product, so i need more screws

[wind spade]

at most needs 1900, alt recipes can put that down even more

can even do it completely screwless

[true junco]

HMFs can def be made without a single screw...

Or if you use bolted plates, bolted frames, heavy flex frames. 10HMFs will need 3690 screws...

[median heath]

Slightly related: Am interested to see if Heavy Flexible is one of the recipes that changes.

[true junco]

Kind of curious about that myself. Im planning out a factory that uses Heavy Flex Frames...

[median heath]

Screw part will probably be adjusted because it is one of the only recipes you cannot OC to 250%.

[true junco]

Yep. 200% OC brings the screw consumption to 780 exactly.

[median heath]

If you're on #TeamDoubleOutput for mk3 miners, that needs to be fixed.
People on #TeamMk6Belt see it differently.

[true fog]

Mergers/Splitters connected directly to inputs/outputs when

[median heath]

Hopefully never.

[true junco]

At least its a round number of shards. And it still gives a higher max HMFs per manufacturer than the other alts at 250%

[true fog]

I have been told that supposedly wonks with trains/vehicles, but I don't quite see why?

[vapid gorge]

because you could lock a merger on their inputs and feed 3 belts into one slot

[sacred orbit]

what difference does the Bolted Frame recipe offer to the standard Modular Frame recipe? if i'm inputting 30 RIP/min, i'm still getting 20 Frames/min out of the machines...

[true fog]

You can make screws instead of steel pipes.

[sacred orbit]

the only REAL difference i can find is that Bolted Frames would need less assemblers for the frames...

[wind spade]

you put in same amount of RIPs, slighlty more rods (converted to screws) and get same amount of frames
one machine works 2.5 times faster than normal frames tho

[sacred orbit]

so the benefit is a higher output rate at the cost of using slightly more iron.

[wind spade]

indeed

[sacred orbit]

standard mod frames use rods, not pipes

[wind spade]

(well, not higher output rate, but higher recipe speed / shorter craft time)

[sacred orbit]

aka parts being made faster.

because the machine is working faster

[wind spade]

output rate is often connected to "rate between ingredients and products", so I clarified

[true junco]

Bolted plates and bolted frames are just space efficient vs base recipes.

I use them a lot because iron is so abundant that conserving iron is silly.

[wind spade]

well local availabilty is something else than global 🤷‍♂️

[sacred orbit]

building in the speedrunner spot.

[true junco]

Basically, i will happily shove in just a little bit more steel to save a lot of space and reduce my own manhours setting up the factory.

As for local availability... I wouldnt try to make a huge amount of iron products somewhere that iron is scarce...

[scarlet path]

any ways to fix this fluctuating capacity? running 8 coal gens with 3 extractors, water is not an issue

[amber umbra]

@scarlet path The tip I've seen/used is you fully fill the water line and coal line and coal plants while coal plants are toggled off. Then manually turn on the coal plants.

[scarlet path]

i did that, but it just burned through all the coal

right after i turned them on

it worked for about 10 minutes

so i'm most likely doing something wrong

[amber umbra]

Idk, sounds like too slow of inputs then. Ala slow belt, miner.

Or your piping has bottlenecks.

[scarlet path]

maybe i should underclock them?

[scarlet path]

Mk. I miner in a pure coal node, so the miner isn't the issue

[craggy gulch]

Is it the conveyor belts?

[scarlet path]

probably

[craggy gulch]

What type are they?

Mk 1 2 or 3?

[scarlet path]

they're running fine though

[scarlet path]

Mk. I for the entrance

wait actually, yeah all of it is just Mk. I belts

[craggy gulch]

Entrance to the coal generators im guessing?

Yeah u needa upgrade those

[scarlet path]

not to the generators themselves, but to the splitter

[scarlet path]

the ones in the manifold? or everything

[craggy gulch]

Mk 1 belts can rlly only do up to 4 generators on their own unless you got 2 nodes

[craggy gulch]

Depends on how much coal is being extracted per minute

Mk 1 belts can only extract 60/min

Mk 2 i believe is 120

And mk 3 is 270

[scarlet path]

i haven't unlocked Mk. III belts yet

so the max is II

[craggy gulch]

Have you unlocked the production of steel?

[scarlet path]

yeah, but i haven't messed with that just yet, finishing moving my factory

[craggy gulch]

Ok for now id upgrade your belts to mk ii, but try to work on steel as soon as u can

This just me tho

[scarlet path]

understood, what part of the setup though?

these ones?

[craggy gulch]

Is your miner mk 1 or 2

[scarlet path]

1

[craggy gulch]

Pure, normal, or impure?

[scarlet path]

pure

[craggy gulch]

Ok good, i would just replace the first conveyor belt extracting the coal feom the miner to a mk 2

[scarlet path]

i think i did

[craggy gulch]

If you are splitting it immediately then the rest of them should be able to be mk 1

[scarlet path]

uhhh let me show you what i did

it's a bit of a weird thing

[amber umbra]

Checking your numbers on the wiki is good. You need 120 coal/minute. So miner needs 120 coal/minute and belt transfer needs 120 coal/minute (mk 2 belt).

[craggy gulch]

^

[amber umbra]

Just basic fundamentals. Do it, easy peazy.

[craggy gulch]

Gens only need 15 coal per minute, one pure node can power 8 coal generators with a mk 1 miner

[scarlet path]

all of the belts are Mk 2 until a specific point

[craggy gulch]

From there just do mafs

[scarlet path]

as soon as they enter the transport line, they all become Mk 1

[craggy gulch]

When do you split them?

[scarlet path]

at the end of the line

[craggy gulch]

I assume all the belts up to that point are mk 2?

[scarlet path]

nope, mk 1

[craggy gulch]

Theres your problem

[scarlet path]

that's probably the main issue

[craggy gulch]

Some point is bottlenecking your coal to 60/minute

Belts gotta be mk 2 until you split them, then they can be mk 1

[scarlet path]

then it's this part

i don't have enough reinforced plates to upgrade the entire line though

[craggy gulch]

So wait…in the first image did you just go from a mk 2 to a mk 1?

[scarlet path]

exactly

[craggy gulch]

You could try to split them earlier if thats not too much of a hassle

[scarlet path]

i just realized i messed it up

[scarlet path]

it's quite the hassle

[craggy gulch]

Yikes…

Images are a little hard. I would try to hop on a call but I cant do that rn cuz i gotta study for finals 😭

[scarlet path]

it goes from right to left

that's why it's a problem to upgrade every single belt

[craggy gulch]

Yeah thats an issue… rlly only solutions is to either upgrade all the belts or split the conveyor sooner

[scarlet path]

i think splitting it is the best idea

doesn't sound too hard

[craggy gulch]

This is why this game is great, you always run into problems and always try to solve them!

[scarlet path]

yes

came for the basebuilding, stayed for the math

[sacred orbit]

why in the WORLD did you not use the lakes right by them?

[scarlet path]

i wanted to "have my generators close by"

but i realized how bad of a mistake that is after i finished

[sacred orbit]

XD

[polar ridge]

its a heart monitor

[wheat olive]

I'm extremely bad at math and feeling shameful but I have a whole piece of paper scralled with notes trying to figure out if it's better to run a refinery just producing "fuel" or if it's better to produce heavy oil residue and then make residual oil. I THINK my math is showing directly making fuel is a way better oil to fuel process. Am I right?

[barren elm]

You should consider Diluted Packaged Fuel before going further with this

Assuming your goal is power

Tho not to be confused with the similarly named "Diluted Fuel" recipe that you won't get until much later in the game

[wheat olive]

Just for my own sake can someone make sure my math is right. I tried to convert everything back into their per-unit oil cost. Direct fuel takes 60 oil to make 40 fuel, meaning a 1.5 oil cost per fuel.
Residue costs 30 oil to make 40 residue meaning a 0.75 oil per heavy fuel residue (and some resin I don't need)
Residual fuel turns 60 residue into 40 fuel. Meaning it costs 1.5 residue to make one unit of fuel. So the same the direct recipe. Now wait... that would mean the extra step produces a bit more right? Because residue is only worth .75 oil. So it's a 25% bonus? Am I doing this right?

Man it seems so obvious now. Both residual fuel and normal fuel give 40 fuel for 60 of a precurser chemical. In one case it's oil, in the other case it's heavy oil residue. Heavy oil residue is produced from 30 oil turning into 40 residue. So you're getting a little bonus.

And you're getting resin out of it

[prisma kraken]

as a picture, updated:

had some messiness with the dpf number including 600 compacted coal in my original image

the turbofuel numbers in the comparison are calculated as-if you have 600 coal & sulfur to spend and whatever isn't turned into TF is burned in coal gens

do pay attention to the 'power used' number in the calculations, it isn't exact due to variations in how you'd clock water extractors and miners, etc, but gives you a good indication of what the realistic yield from each build would be

[scarlet path]

finally, consistency

[prisma kraken]

what i want to point out is that there's a real quantum leap in power output between the default/residual fuel base recipes and where dilluted and turbofuel get you

also, that default fuel has the highest %yield and lowest entry cost for fuel power

i think most people on their first playthrough tend to build power on-demand rather than understanding that it's good in the early game to overbuild coal power, and that low entry cost for default fuel power comes more into play

i'll also note, the numbers i presented are for 900 oil, as if you were doing a late-game power build, the numbers are easily cut down to 1/3 of the size for 300 oil for most any of the fuel builds and should be accurate if you just divide-by-3

also worth noting because it is omited from the table, 600 compacted coal in coal generators will provide 6.3 gw

(i don't feel that's really ever a good idea to invest in building, but i'm adding the data for completeness)

[wheat olive]

Well I don't know if all my math worked out, but I ended up with this. 2 new refineries on the right converting a single shitty oil deposit into residual heavy oil, sinking the resin, and using the rest to expand my existing residual fuel operation that was otherwise fed entirely from my rubber and plastic. Managed to do 9 fuel power plants.

I also have one sad little refinery operating at like 5% just to make coke to fuel up the local trucks

I also did a pathetic "you tried" attempt at not obliterating the local water ecosystem by putting the whole facility on alternating concrete foundations so the water can flow between everything

[polar ridge]

i just watched a video about byproduct management and yes, the extra step gets more production

[ashen stirrup]

For the default turbofuel panel, is that assuming diluted fuel as an intermediate?

[prisma kraken]

yes, and uncoverted DF is burned

those are the numbers laid out as a comparison for me to see based on how i'd think to use the resources

[ashen stirrup]

It's still a useful comparison, though

[prisma kraken]

i did it as a 'how you'd really build it' rather than theoretical

the winners in it are without a doubt diluted fuel and blended tf in my mind

[ashen stirrup]

Definitely, with the tradeoff being that they're locked behind blenders

[prisma kraken]

i don't find either build very different in terms of construction

the blender thing is pretty moot for me, i'm not getting to fuel power until very late in phase 3 or early phase 4

[ashen stirrup]

Yeah, I figure it's moot for you. It explains generally why those paths get to be so much better though.

[prisma kraken]

i've been avoiding building very much in phase 3 in my past few runs

4 normal nodes on coal power is enough to get aluminum bootstrapped in early phase 4 which gives you the blenders, doubles the power on the coal nodes, and gives you a bit of breather room to just whack the power problem pretty good with a big df or blended tf build

what i'm unsure of and i keep thinking about is whether it is better to get a motor factory running in phase 3 or wait for the mk3 miner & mk5 belt

if you build it with the nice recipes, everything pretty much stays under mk4 belt speed

you have to play some games with the belting of the fused wire for stators and the steel screw for rotors, but outside of that, you can build a pretty good sized motor plant on mk4 tech

the question is whether you'd want to build it in grass fields or dune desert, so you could do normal nodes at 300/min with mk2 miners, and then switch the input in phase 4 to mk3 miners on impure nodes... i'm not sure of whether that's a great idea or not

the other issue with that is that copper rotor requires steamed sheet to be at all efficient, and i'm not sure its worth paying the refinery tax for that in phase 3

if i start another world before whatever rebalance patch comes to the game, i'll give that a try and tell ya how it turns out

what i can say is that doing motors in phase 3 as a non-box build for some sort of bigger-than-a-machine yield, is actually preferable than just making them as a temporary thing off of other production lines

i've done that both ways, and i really like having the steady supply of rotors/motors/stators going into phase 4

[wind spade]

@fervent carbon there's no best alternate recipe

see #math-and-meta message for more info about picking alt recipes

(and personal opinion is that Cast Screws are kinda pointless for most of the game so I wouldn't bother with them)

[hard tendon]

Guys i'm trying to understand something. If you can help me i really appreciate.

Miner 60/m
MK1 Conveyor> Smelter Overclocked 60/m usage out 20 Caterium ignot
Mk1 Conveyor > Constructor Overcloked usage 20 ignot out 100 quickwire mk2> output

What I normally expect is for the machines to run continuously without ever timing out. So mathematically this is what should happen. But for some reason the machines are filling up with input material. By the way, it is not about the container limit. I'm trying to understand whether this has something to do with the game mechanics or whether I'm making a mistake. It's not really something to worry about, but I like how the machines work 1:1 like this.

[wind spade]

I see a yellow light on the rightmost machine, is it not running at all time?

[hard tendon]

there is another machine there

[wind spade]

ah I see

what are the clock speeds?

[wind spade]

they all seem to be running at 100% 🤔

and I don't see anything filled except for the caterium ingots but they are not filled in the smelter, so it may be just a backup from when you turned it on?

[hard tendon]

The machines are working. Just wondering why the input material keeps getting stuck inside? What I mean is, if I produce 1 product and burn 1 product, I shouldn't have extra product, right?

[wind spade]

(also I'd put the 133.3333% as 133.3334%, since you need 133.333 repeating)

[hard tendon]

I take it the material to see if it would fill again.

[wind spade]

maybe you turned it on one by one? or changed clock speeds as it was running?

[hard tendon]

Yes i did but Then I took the materials inside the machine. This system has been working here for a long time. I'm just trying to understand the logic inside. Before build big factory 😛

[hard tendon]

I overclock to adjust the input/output values. To avoid getting materials with numbers like 17/18

Is the overclock x% value more important than the output value?

[wind spade]

yes, the output value is ignored and the clock % is used

and the clock % has only 4 decimals

so it's usually recommended to round up so you have very slightly more speed than you need, rather than very slightly less

(it's most likely not causing your issue, but still a good practice)

[hard tendon]

oh make sense

It seems like it would be better to use x% non decimals value instead of output value

Thank you

[wind spade]

the output value is just calculated from clock speed (and rounded, so it may not be 100% accurate)

[median heath]

For a good while, % was the only thing that was even shown on the UI.

People complained incessantly, so they added ppm to make them feel better even though nothing in the game actually cares about ppm.

[hard tendon]

It would be logical to make overclocking values not only with x% value but also with input/output values.

[median heath]

Explain.

[hard tendon]

As a result, all interconnected values and mathematical calculations. It shouldn't be that hard to do this

Oh i mean we are using overclock rate atm right?

x% value

[median heath]

Ok, but dial it back one level.

Remove the very concept of overclocking.
How are you making a Constructor function at a basic level?

How does it operate? What does the game do, specifically, in your "more logical" version of things?

[hard tendon]

but we can write the value into the input/output ratio. For example, when the machine is at 100%, it takes 10 materials. I want it to be 15. When I type 15 into the input value, the machine can overclock itself by x%.

[median heath]

That does not answer my question.

[hard tendon]

I didn't mention removing overclocking content. I talked about making the current version more usable. I think you misunderstood

[median heath]

I think you didn't answer my question.

[hard tendon]

Language barrier. i'm trying to understand sorry 🙂

[wind spade]

the problem here is that the ouput sometimes can't be expressed in clock speed % with 4 decimals max

for example if machine was 15 and you wanted 10, the clock speed for that is 66.666 repeating, which is not possible to be 4 decimals max

[hard tendon]

I understand what you mean.

There was the same logic in a construction game whose name I cannot remember. Input/output values and x% overclocking rate can be adjusted anywhere on the machines. That's why I thought something similar could be done here. When you adjusted the overclock value, the input/output value changed, but when you needed a certain amount of input/output, we adjusted the input/output value and the x% overclock machine calculated itself.

But Satisfactory math working different so satisfactory cant do that i gues bla bla bla

[wind spade]

well this works in Satisfactory too. You can change the output per minute in the overclock menu and it will calculate the clock %. However it just rounds the result to 4 decimals, so if you need more than 4 decimals, then it's not 100% accurate

[median heath]

Which is why I asked how machines work.

[wind spade]

and I'm pretty sure that the game you were talking about had the same issues. There's only so much precision you can have with decimal numbers, so at some point it's not accurate anymore

[median heath]

Make game that uses only integers. Problem solved.

[wind spade]

at the very least, you'll need a decimal for frame time 🤷‍♂️

[hard tendon]

I remember these numbers being rounded. When it is greater than 0.5xx, it is moved to the next number, if it is smaller, it is moved to the lower number.

[median heath]

🤦‍♂️

[hard tendon]

sorry 😄

[median heath]

1 Frame per Second. 🙂

[wind spade]

seconds per frame is better unit

[median heath]

1 Unit per Unit

[hard tendon]

It seems fun to chat here 😄

[wind spade]

wait until someone asks what is the best recipe

[hard tendon]

I read it on wiki. I had the same question in my mind For now, I'm choosing the things that I think will be most beneficial to me

The best experience is to try :D.

[wind spade]

you're a rare species then. Pretty much everybody else thinks that there's some tier list for recipes or that some recipes are just always good

(which is not true, every recipe can be useful)

[hard tendon]

I think this depends on what kind of build the player wants to make. I guess I like producing ridiculous amounts of screws in the game for no reason. last time i did 3k screw with iron road a min for HMF

I just found a new HMF recipe and I'm planning to make it.

this one

[true junco]

If you use bolted plates, bolted frames, and heavy flexible frames, you can make 10HMF per minute with over 3000 screws per minute as an intermediate item. Lmfao

[median heath]

Bolted Frame ftw

[real condor]

Screws really aren't too bad if you can feed the screws directly from constructor -> assembler / manufacturer. With steel screws, the logistics are really just moving a small number of steel ingots around, rather than thousands of screws.

[true junco]

I pretty much always use bolted RIPs and Bolted Modular frames now. And i always use Steel Screws now too.

[frosty owl]

Which machines are filling up what and (roughly) how fast?

[ashen stirrup]

This is why I'm such a fan of solid steel ingot. With it, foundries feed 1:1 for steel beam or 1:2 for steel pipe.

[primal flicker]

Everything is 1:1 with silly enough clock speeds (/j)

[wind spade]

I wonder if it's possible to find pair of recipes that have no clock speed pair that would be 1:1 (due to 4 decimals precision limit)

[prisma kraken]

where i'd look for that is silicon cb and cheap silica

that being said, what is displayed in the gui as 4 decimal places is just an approximation of the actual value

[wind spade]

the clock speed is exact

[prisma kraken]

if you take a constructor for concrete

[wind spade]

and other things are displayed with 3 decimal places 🙂

which is fine, given you want to do the math with clock speed anyway, not with any other values

[prisma kraken]

and enter the rate of 13.3333333333333333333333/min into it, you will end up with 88.8333% as the clockspeed, if you instead enter 88.88888888888888% as the clockspeed, you stilll end up more correctly with 13.3333/min

[wind spade]

well the rate isn't saved at all. It's just used to calculate clock speed and that is saved

and since it rounds to 4 decimals, then obviously some rates will result in same clock speed

[prisma kraken]

the point is that 2 rates that were indentically displayed had different clock speeds

the game just has a bit more precision in its internal representation than we can see

[wind spade]

which is why you once again should use clock speed for math, not any other displayed value

game doesn't really do X/min anyway, that's just calculated value from clock speed + recipe time

[prisma kraken]

i believe you are correct, but i'm not sure if it is that simple

i'm specifically thinking of the mk3 miner

its clock cycle is so stupid short, i'd be surprised if they don't do something to optimize that

[wind spade]

well it is 🙂

a machine has:

• set recipe
• set clock speed
• % progress on current production (a decimal)

every tick it:

• calculates how much time has passed since last tick
• calculates how much should the % progress bar move (based on recipe speed and machine speed/clock)
• moves the % bar
• if it's 100 or higher, it produces items into output slot and removes 100 from the progress

[wind spade]

it's 13/s

ticks are either 30 or 60/s

so it's still pretty long compared to game ticks

[prisma kraken]

then again, you always see the miners at 780 having full output buffers

[wind spade]

floating point math, the issue can be anywhere 😄

[prisma kraken]

i think the tick for the miners is for each ore, so 1/13th of a sec, right?

[wind spade]

13 ticks/s or 13 ore/s, yeah

but there's (iirc) 60 ticks in a second, so it's basically every 4th tick to produce

not sure how would you optimise that 🤔

if it was something happening several times in one tick, sure, that'd make sense. But something that only happens every 4th tick is kinda hard to optimise for

[prisma kraken]

i've been seeing the miner's over producing and stuff getting stuck in their buffers

[wind spade]

I mean it can be basically anything 🤷‍♂️

[prisma kraken]

i think its just trying to tick 1/13th of a second and the duration of the tick is rounded down

[wind spade]

the machine doesn't do it's own ticks tho imo

the whole world ticks at steady rate and it propagates to machines

[prisma kraken]

i think from a performance perspective css was pretty dumb to use 13 for the max speed

[wind spade]

and the tick "duration" may be different each time, hence why all calculations are based on delta time

[prisma kraken]

i like how it causes all the math to be dirty and messy, but they didn't make it that way to make the game fast 😄

i can definitely say that i'm seeing cases where 780 belts aren't carrying a full 780

that seems largely tied to fps lag

[wind spade]

which can be belt issue (wouldn't be first 😛 ), not miner issue

[prisma kraken]

even in a non laggy situation though, you set up a miner to drop 780/min into a sink, you'll see the miner's buffer fill slowly if you watch its screen

i find that a tad bit strange

i think that's a different issue than the mk5's missing items, but you start looking closely at things you start noticing a lot of funny stuff

[slim matrix]

arguably bolted iron plate the best one no?

[wind spade]

same answer as always - whatever you find most useful is "best" for you

[slim matrix]

i think sometimes an argument can be made

[wind spade]

bolted plates is fast but cost more iron
wire is slower but uses iron instead of copper
copper rotor can be very resource efficient if using steamed sheets (and is just rotor recipe with different ingredients)

it's impossible to compare these, so again, pick one that you like most

[true junco]

I have become a very big fan of Bolted plates and Bolted frames because i see iron as abundant enough to waste a little to achieve my goals.

Copper Rotors, are part of the "Bolted" family imo. But its actually very resource efficient.

[wind spade]

I wonder though... stitched plates are very close in terms of saving space and power to bolted iirc, why not use those?

[true junco]

Final answer is go get more HDs and get all 3 of those recipes. I like them all for similar but different reasons.

[true junco]

Ive done stitched plates before. The bolted combos are just way better for making compact BP modules imo.

[wind spade]

fair, just wanted to know 🙂

[slim matrix]

cause its 33% space efficient?

you get 5 per min while bolted is 15 per min which is a massive upgrade

[true junco]

1 bolted plate assembler directly feeds 2 bolted frame assemblers with all machines at thr same clock rate.

[wind spade]

stitched don't make 5

[wind spade]

5.625

[slim matrix]

ok bro

[wind spade]

but you need to consider power up to ores, not just for the recipe itself

[true junco]

Stitched plates do make for denser factories vs default and adhered of course. But bolted is just so compact when combined with steel screws.

I made a nice compact BP that makes beams, RIPs and MFs

The above fits pretty well in a BP since i OC all the machines to 250% except for the 2 steel screw constructors.

[wind spade]

for 60/min RIPs:

base - 468 MW, 84 machines (12 assemblers, 48 constructors, 24 smelters), 720 iron ore
bolted - 403 MW, 91 machines (4 assemblers, 60 constructors, 27 smelters), 790 iron ore
bolted + cast - 316 MW, 69 machines (4 assemblers, 38 constructors, 27 smelters), 790 iron ore
bolted + steel - 250 MW, 48 machines (4 assemblers, 24 constructors, 2 foundries, 18 smelters), 617 iron ore, 77 coal
stitched - 318 MW, 52 machines (11 assemblers, 24 constructors, 17 smelters), 300 iron ore, 200 copper ore
stitched + iron wire - 338 MW, 57 machines (11 assemblers, 28 constructors, 18 smelters), 522 iron ore

[slim matrix]

power is free, its just the time it takes to set up

[wind spade]

stitched is very close to bolted, the big gain is steel screws, not bolted 🙂

[wind spade]

power costs resources/min

[slim matrix]

well everything is free you could argue

[true junco]

Well. Steel screws has been my favorite recipe for a while now for a reason.

[wind spade]

yeah, just saying that without them bolted would be very bad imo

(and it's a great example of why recipe comparisons shouldn't just compare recipes in vacuum)

[slim matrix]

no it wouldnt

[true junco]

Agreed. Im well aware that the viability of "Bolted" RIPS and Frames is entirely dependant on the Steel Screw recipe. Interesting to see that steel screw bolted plates is both the least buildings and the lowest power consumption tho.

[slim matrix]

you still get a shit ton more per min

nvm

[wind spade]

which is irrelevant since you can just build more machines

and the comparison I've made is 60/min RIPs from all sources

[true junco]

Bolted takes slightly more input per item to need many less machines per item.

Its a choice.

[slim matrix]

well it isnt in my opinon but i was refering to the efficiency in general, but your comparison was made for 60 per min so nvm

building more machines is kind of a pain for me

everything needs to be perfect

[true junco]

Efficiency must be defined in terms of something. If you define it in terms of output per input. Bolted is strictly worse than default.

Its when saving space and power comes in that bolted alts shine imo. Which is why i use them.

[wind spade]

I'm not sure I would use slightly only on one side of that sentence
either on both or on none

resources are (bolted vs stitched + iron wire) 150%
power is (stitched + iron wire vs bolted + steel) 135%

so the resource increase/saving is technically more % than the power saving/increase, so putting "slightly" on the resource side of sentence seems weird 😄

(and yeah I'm aware that I'm comparing different sets of recipes each time, but that's just so that I don't have to deal with "how much coal equals to one iron" thingy. If you have better idea how to compare this then I'm all ears)

[true junco]

Id have to think about it.

But i generally dont think about iron and steel much anymore since we can make rediculous amounts of both ingots, and so many recipes exist that also reduce how much iron and steel we need. The set of "value added petrochemicals" recipes having a few strong examples: coated iron plate and steel coated plate being pretty big ones that i like to use.

[median heath]

"efficiency in general" is automatically in terms of one's opinion.

[slim matrix]

thats true but i think making power is easier than everything else

[median heath]

That implies anything is difficult to make.

[wind spade]

yeah, obviously there's like 1000 more possible combinations to reach RIPs (not all make sense, but w/e), so finding all options is kinda... pointless 😄 hence why I just showed a few that I thought were often used

(and also this is why making the analysis/stuff about alt recipes is just SOOOO hard)

[true junco]

Efficiency is an objectively calculated thing. The choice of which one to care about is subjective.

Ie: the ratio of output per input is an objective thing. So is output per MW, and so is output per machine, etc. But the choice of which to optimize for is entirely subjective.

[true junco]

Well. Unfortunately i enjoy this sort of thing... lol

[wind spade]

I do as well... until I find out that something I want to calculate won't fit into 100 TB drive

[true junco]

Well.... there is that. 😆

[primal flicker]

I can't believe packaged water is only -10 sink value vs rotors or fabric 😵‍💫

[slim matrix]

has belt mk3 always been 270?

[wind spade]

yes

[true junco]

Yeah. But how much fabric can you make out of crude and water vs how many packaged waters?

Also... it might matter which is the most sink point efficient recipe for empty containers... i wonder...

[wind spade]

the problem is that you can't really decide "most sink point efficient recipe for X", because you need to decide everything at the same time, a.k.a. "most sink point efficient way to do X"

[primal flicker]

The iron/copper alt for containers, I think.

IF going strictly by WP (which is cumbersome and not 1 size fits all)

The more I dig into it, the more I realize it's irrelevant once you reach turbo pressure motors.

[prisma kraken]

the alt container recipes probably have a negative point value that rivals automated miner

(its not that bad, but they're pretty bad)

[true junco]

Nope. Alt container recipes have huge boosts in sink value... because my dumbass just calculated them. 😆

2 plastic to make 4 containers
2×75pts to make 4×60pts
240/150 = 8:5 = 160% conversion

2 ironplate and 1 coppersheet to make 4 containers
2×6pts + 24pts to make 4×60pts
240/36 = 20:3 = 666.6667% conversion

3 steel to make 2 containers
3×8pts = 2×60pts
120/24 = 5:1 = 500% conversion

[prisma kraken]

huh, never realized they were that much of an increase

they're still pretty bad recipes, but for sinking points, i guess if that's your thing

[slim matrix]

does industrial fluid buffer require pump into a packager in the same level?

there is no way

[median heath]

Don't use buffers.

Problem solved.

[slim matrix]

hahahaha ill keep that in mind, im just testing things tho

[wind spade]

buffers have 0 use apart from buffering a train station for load/unload

[median heath]

Buffers have been tested thoroughly.
That is why the conclusion is "do not use them."

[prisma kraken]

i think you need a pump on an industrial buffer's input to get it completely full, but really a problem you shouldn't be having 😛

[true junco]

Buffers have several fantastic uses to make your fluid system unstable on purpose "for funsies" 😆

[prisma kraken]

they also look prety spiffy

[delicate chasm]

Hey guys, I was looking at power consumption and with the imminent recipe balance pass in mind, and looking over the QA site for posts on power use, I feel like it might be a good time to talk about power a little from the perspective of game progression.

Even if we don't conclude anything new right now, I feel it's not mentioned often but I'm not sure that power is in a good place right now.

[wind spade]

maybe a thread for that?

[delicate chasm]

Yeah, good idea!

[wind spade]

I have some suggestions for power as well, but let's hear your first 🙂

[slim matrix]

lol technology parts without any metal at all

its like wire+wire into cable without any plastic at all

[true junco]

Well. Irl power transmission cables are rarely insulated and the main use of cables in SF is to connect power.

But yes. The in game item definitely looks like it has an insulator, so it is funny. Not as funny as amorphous empty canisters that change shape, material and transparency according to the fluid poured into them. 😆

[slim matrix]

hmm good point i guess

the only reason to package heavy oil residue is to process is somewhere else no?

or can it be sinked

[vapid gorge]

turn it to coke to sink it

but it's basically like packaged anything else

[viral ravine]

burn coke in coal gens

or make hor into fuel

[vapid gorge]

meh, make permanent dedicated power stations, don't rely on garbage power from crappy oil byproduct

good for early points is sinking coke

[viral ravine]

i mean, if you make it right the stream of coke is never changing

i wouldnt consider any amount of power made as a defacto by product to be crap

[true junco]

I dont think there is any direct use for packaged oil or packaged HOR. They both have energy values tho, so i think one or both might technically run a vehicle.

Just checked. Both crude and HOR packaged can run vehicles. And neither can be fed into any recipe other than unpackaging.

[viral ravine]

both

[vapid gorge]

first oil factories use poor recipes to throw some rubber and plastic around and become terrible quickly - no sense in having power coming from it.

either you have a good buffer for power in the first place and it won't do anything before you take it down or youre playing games when you want to change up the plastic/rubber situation

[delicate chasm]

I mean, it is kind of crap, but you can have net positive power from your initial oil products with it so...eh.

[vapid gorge]

poooooiiinnnnnnttttssssss

[viral ravine]

Sure it takes 25 coke / min in a coal gen but like

you make pet coke in sizeable quantities

[vapid gorge]

if your'e making that much waste hor that early that's on you. You generally need very little oil products before you get to the point where you have better recipes

[viral ravine]

im talking about the fact that base pet coke ratio is 120/min

[true junco]

Petroleum Coke is 💪 because it is so easy to make in huge quantities.

It may be less potent on a 1 to 1 basis with coal. But you only need a bit over 900 crude oil to process all the bauxite on the map (tied for the best conversion with instant scrap) of each of the paths to make steel, coke steel can produce the most globally (all other paths run out of coal or sulfur)
And you can run a hell of a lot of coal generators with coke. And a stack of coke lasts longer in a vehicle than coal does because of the stack size.

[slim matrix]

interesting

[delicate chasm]

And you should make it from the HOR alt directly in all of those cases, and not burn it for power (because when you are doing those things, you can make fuel instead)

[true junco]

Oops. Correction: need just over 900 crude oil to make the coke to process all the bauxite on the map

[vapid gorge]

978

[true junco]

I pretty much only burned coke as an overflow protection from very early petrochemical production lines.

[slim matrix]

yeah it should be good to offset the costs of plastics

[true junco]

Thats it. There are a few spots with Crude near the middle of the map where the band of bauxite is centered where there is more than enough oil to handle all the aluminum productionand still make tons of plastics and rubber for manufacturing.

[slim matrix]

would make sense why the refineries take so much power

[true junco]

Refineries are definitely power hungry. The hurdle of Initial oil processing is definitely helped by burning coke.

[slim matrix]

also the jetpack burns fuel pretty fast lol

[real condor]

Yeah I pretty often get 4-5 fuel gens set up alongside my very first oil production, converting HOR into fuel. Helps get over a short-term power shortage prior to setting up my first "proper" fuel power station.

[true junco]

Packaged crude and packaged HOR for jetpack when? 😆

[real condor]

You could do it with HOR -> coke -> coal power instead... but it's just easier imo to make fuel from the HOR

[true junco]

Its been so long. Do we get fuel gens with the first oil processing unlocks?

[vapid gorge]

yeah but crummy output before diluted fuel

or at least so quickly after oil unlocks I never noticed

[real condor]

no, it's a bit further along and of course you need a few computers to build each one (can usually handcraft them if needed for a small number of fuel gens tho)

[real condor]

true, but i don't really care for a temporary setup that just needs to hold me over until the glorious dillute fuel power plant is built

[vapid gorge]

just coal power until then. 3-4 nodes of it will do you for ages

[real condor]

yeah also viable. i just don't tend to build more than a couple GW of coal power throughout a play through. I am always thinking I'm going to want the coal for steel 😄

[vapid gorge]

using distant coal for power is perfect that way. only need to drag a cable back, leaves nearby coal for tons of steel :d

[sacred orbit]

how do you get petroleum coke?

[slim matrix]

with refinery from crude oil nodes

[viral ravine]

From heavy oil residue*

[slim matrix]

its on tier 5

[viral ravine]

Hor is either obtained as a byproduct of oil refinement or can be produced directly from crude oil as an alt recepie

[sacred orbit]

so basically you can make circuit boards straight out of oil

[viral ravine]

Yes

[sacred orbit]

can petroleum coke be used in coal generators?

[median heath]

Yes

[viral ravine]

Yes

[sacred orbit]

ooh baby

[median heath]

25/min

[viral ravine]

25/min

Oh cmon

[median heath]

Stop copying me.

[viral ravine]

Im not copying you, you just type faster

😭

[median heath]

Im not copying you, you just type faster

😭

[viral ravine]

HEY stop being mean

[median heath]

❤️

[sacred orbit]

what are sushi manifolds?

[wind spade]

manifolds with sushi belts

[sacred orbit]

meaning?

[wind spade]

which of the two you don't know?

[sacred orbit]

sushi belt

[wind spade]

sushi belt = belt that has mixed items on it feeding machines

[sacred orbit]

that's smart

[median heath]

Thank you.

[wind spade]

yeah, it's not normal splitter

[sacred orbit]

smart splitter

[viral ravine]

Programmable even

[wind spade]

did you also try one input only sushi?

[sacred orbit]

don't programmable require power?

[wind spade]

no

[median heath]

No.

[viral ravine]

No

[median heath]

No. That is Ven's domain.

[wind spade]

ah

[median heath]

You also don't need poggers for sushi manifolds. Smarts work just fine.

[sacred orbit]

does anyone else use Pulse Nobelisks to bomb jump around their world?

[viral ravine]

I do

[sacred orbit]

how many have you been able to set down at once?

i can only get two to boost me

[viral ravine]

I donno, most i done was 8

And smacked them with a basher so they explode all at once

[sacred orbit]

AH

that's what i've been missing!

[viral ravine]

Too many will kill you though

[sacred orbit]

this was seven pulses at once

we FLYING now boys!!

[prisma kraken]

yeah, 6-7 pulse nobs will get you pretty much anywhere 🙂

i wish oscillators were a little earlier of an unlock to be able to make the pulse nobs

[viral ravine]

They are the hyper cannons without needing to make tubes

[sacred orbit]

i still need to make hyper tubes

do you guys find it worth it to use belt splitters for the last machine in a manifold?

[arctic willow]

usually i don't but it makes it marginally easier to expand it later

[spice egret]

^ That and just your personal preference of looks are really all that matters. They don’t add any real functionality. I tend to use them because it looks better to me and it’s not like splitters are expensive to build

[rustic patio]

have any of yall been working with this?
https://youtu.be/w8rLQwU5L4Q?si=kdoyY4ibNVkYiGqh

[wind spade]

to make it look nicer. I don't expand my manifolds, but it's generally easier to just do consistent things rather than having exceptions

[sacred orbit]

i mean, functionality could be seen in changing belt speeds.

[spice egret]

Not sure what you mean there

[sacred orbit]

manifold speed MK2
input speed to machines MK1

[wind spade]

that actually increases the time it takes for manifold to start working at 100%. I recommend building everything from highest tier possible (if you care about time till 100%)

[spice egret]

You would have that same thing by just running a MK1 belt from the last splitter to the last machine, if you didn’t have that splitter

[sacred orbit]

i do it for all machines

[spice egret]

I’m just not sure what you meant by it adds functionality. It’s all appearance, you don’t gain anything in that moment

[delicate chasm]

I also include the final splitter even though it's not needed. I've done without it before when building in natural wall-having areas, to avoid clipping.

[spice egret]

Manifolds yes. But specifically when it comes to whether or not to use a splitter on the last machine

[sacred orbit]

all of these machines are 100%. if i overclock them all equally, will the ratios still work out?

[spice egret]

I believe so, yes. The overclocking is a percentage of inputs and outputs. Power, however, isn’t consistent. So having 2 machines at 100% and 50% use less power than a machine at 150%

[mystic moon]

Yes, as long as you don't max a belt

[sacred orbit]

i got up to MK3, so im good there

[prisma kraken]

i've got to do a few starts in grass fields and dune desert to figure out the 3 most accessible HD's in those biomes... it hurts me to see people build with the default screw recipe 😄

[wind spade]

it hurts me to see people using cast screws 😛

[prisma kraken]

works great in phase1 for the few hours you run builds with it while you're out grabbing drives for solid steel and steel screw

[wind spade]

well for reinforced plates I just go stitched

[prisma kraken]

really the recipe is more useful than that, but it is an early game recipe, as is stitched

[wind spade]

stitched just does everything better

(for me)

[prisma kraken]

i use cast screw for the initial rotor build and stitched for the initial rip & mf build (if you could call a belt from a plate & wire box a build)

really at that stage i've been keeping things as power efficient as possible to hang out on biomass until grabbing the steel recipes

if you avoid unlocking coal, solid steel will be 9th or 10th hd you research

cast screw & stitched plate are guaranteed in the 1st 5 hd's if you don't unlock part assembly too early

altogether, i've been tightening the routes and figuring out the sequencing to hit all the unlocks for it all in about 2 hrs from start of the tutorial

at some point i need to figure out what the hd routes would look like for a gf or dd start

but for rd or nf, i think i pretty much have that solved

i've not been working too hard on the rocky desert start because it really is just 'run to speed runners bluff doing half of the 3rd hd expedition along the way'

you can actually set up shop on the bay coal instead since there is enough there to get things going with the pure iron & normal copper node there, but its still slower b/c you need to get mk2 belts to double the miner output from the iron

i suspect the gf start's hd route is a little bit slower and there would be a fair amount of travel

these aren't new ideas, people have been over these things many times in the speedrunning circles, but what is new in update8 is that there's 5 free hard drives in the spire coast region and the parachute makes a lot of transit early much quicker

those changes change things enough that its worth doing what i'm doing

[true junco]

I can see that. And its not hard to get to the spire coast from the Dune desert either.

[prisma kraken]

i'm sure if someone wants to chip at that problem, that there's some nice routes through the desert

the real issue with dune desert is that nothing is incredibly close to anything else, and you just spend a lot of time in the early game running btw containers for build stuff before you have the tractor to centralize it

you have the same sort of issue in GF, but cleverly placing the hub next to one of the coal nodes there saves a lot of time

if anyone is interested, these are the first two routes i follow:

the 'X' in the first one is to grab some mycelia in the cave there to make a parachute

something i'm experimenting with on the first route is stopping by the black powder crash site to gather the mod frames there for the basic steel unlock

right now it makes sense to do, but as timings tighten for me, that may become unnecessary

it isn't stuff that is useful if you're trying to speedrun, for that you're making other choices to shorten the time for the first elevator delivery, this is more along the lines of completely draining the research pool as quickly as possible to quickly establish things and position yourself nicely for a mid game

what i'm finding is that without breaking any land-speed records on making it through the tutorial, i finish that around the half hr mark, and have enough of a production line set up with logistics & field research unlocked at about the hr mark to do the first trip and then the clock on the 10 minute timer for the research starts

the recipes i really want out of the first trip for 3 drives are cast screw & stitched plate, with a luck i can also nab copper alloy. after the second trip, those are guaranteed, along with iron wire & the inventory expansion at which point the 50 smart for package 1 is at least being made if not getting delivered, and by shortly after the 2hr mark, package 1 is done and steel is unlocked and i'm ready for the 3rd hd trip into rocky desert for all of its drives, which gets all of the steel recipes

[sacred orbit]

Anyone have solutions for mass item storage? Talking MILLIONS of concrete here

Please ping if you have an answer, I’m going to bed.

[oblique hollow]

For 1 million of concrete i'd just get 42 industrial storage containers.

But it really depends on what your plan is. If you need that much concrete fast, just get 15 wet concrete refineries making 1200 per minute

Whatever you plan that needs you to store millions of concrete it seems really odd without more context

[vapid gorge]

yeah you can make more concrete pm than you can realistically use pretty easily - just do that

[wind spade]

usually if you want tons of items, it's better to just get some production and start using them, if you have enough production, by the time you used what you had, it got produced back again

[true junco]

Those shouldnt be to hard to reach if you follow this gap thru the DMP.

[main dirge]

Are you like trying to carpet the entire map or something

[sacred orbit]

Basically. XD that’s a lot of what I’ve done so far

[sacred orbit]

Death mountain pass?

[true junco]

Lol... DMP = Desert Mountain Plateaus. its the name of the region on the biome map. Oddly its color coded as part of Spire coast and not the Dune desert.

[versed violet]

What happens with materials if you clear blueprint designer while its storage box is full?

[ashen stirrup]

!wikisearch blueprint designer

[brisk shore]

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

[ashen stirrup]

It goes to your inventory. If that's full, it makes a crate.

[versed violet]

and the crate is supposed to appear under the designer bench?

[ashen stirrup]

Dunno, check the wiki

or just test it

[versed violet]

did test, box appeared under the machine 😕

Testing is much easier when you know what result you expect ™️

[static zenith]

whats the math meta for foundry making steel then constructors making beams then full conveyor lines.

its such a mess lol annoying af. ive got 12 foundry to 9 constructor making 135 beams and i can go up by 90 output but its never divisable by 60,120,240..

i think im just gonna make 20 foundry to 15 constructor for 225 output 450 input .. annoying but hey

[wind spade]

don't make it divisable by 60 then 😛

[static zenith]

but i want full belts >.>

to optimize versitle frames into full belts i think i worked out i need 480 beams per min ;] maybe ill try to hit that target xD

omg but thats divisible . fml

make extra and sink ok

but i still cant divide it down to fill my belts ffs

[wind spade]

that's usually source of issues

[rotund sedge]

Question. What is the least amount of urainum needed to fuel 168 fully overclocked reactors if we are also recycling waste and using it as fuel.

[wind spade]

that's a weirdly specific question

[rotund sedge]

I have made several attempts to solve it myself but any tool I can use fails to even make an awnser

[wind spade]

which ones you used? 🤔

[rotund sedge]

Satisfactory calculator

And trying to solve it myself

[wind spade]

I mean normal tools won't solve this anyway

since it's optimisation problem, not just solving problem

[rotund sedge]

I mean. The number is already over the maximum amount of urainum that can be produced in a minute

Hence why to run the terawatt project at all we need to stockpile fuel

[wind spade]

uh what?

1.19 TW is possible to make from uranium

[rotund sedge]

Wiki only says theres like 3k/min useable uranium

Ish

[wind spade]

there's 2100

[rotund sedge]

We need 8400/min if it's burning all uranium unless I'm that far off

For 1.05

This is not using alternate recipes bc I cannot account for them yet

[wind spade]

2100 uranium can feed 252 uranium plants and 224 plutonium plants, which produce 1.19 TW (with alts)

[rotund sedge]

Huh?!

Hold on

That dosent make sence.

If one uranium nuclear plant is using 0.5 rods per minute

And producing 25 waste a minute

[wind spade]

I mean even wiki says that
https://satisfactory.wiki.gg/wiki/Plutonium_Fuel_Rod#Trivia

The most Plutonium Fuel Rods that can be made per minute is 30.54 alongside 22.91 Uranium Fuel Rods.[2] However, this does not yield the most power. Producing 22.4 Plutonium Fuel Rods alongside 50.4 Uranium Fuel Rods does,[3] sustaining a total of 476 Nuclear Power Plants producing exactly 1,190,000 MW (or 1.19 TW) of power.

[rotund sedge]

Wait

I saw a number in the wiki saying the limit is 673 or so Gw

Hold on.

[wind spade]

that's uranium only

[rotund sedge]

How the fuck we produce plutonium

[wind spade]

from uranium waste

[rotund sedge]

Hold on

Means all my math I did was conetelt wrong

[wind spade]

https://www.satisfactorytools.com/production?share=HuBVPwPdZGAGgQPmUQa6

[vapid gorge]

Did you do all the math if you were asking how much uranium X number of gens needed?

[sacred orbit]

I’m very mad.

Yesterday while playing I found a much simpler way to make RIP with 120 ore/min using cast screws and slight overclocking. Slightly tweaking the speed of the cast screw recipe gives 15 ingots -> 60 screws. Base RIP recipe uses 30 plates and 60 screws per minute. If you double that speed or use two assemblers, then you can use three constructors at base speed for plates to make the 60 plates/min and two constructors slightly tweaked for cast screws to make the 120 screws/min you need. In total, that’s 90 ingots for plates and 30 for screws, or exactly 120 ore input.

This upsets me because the original modular unit I used looked cooler and had stuff moving all around, but it’s much bigger…