math-and-meta

[prisma kraken]

since that's on the top of the cliff, i'd be inclined to see if a tractor can move it

i have a feeling that the terrain there may be a little too rough to really be able to maneuver a truck around

it is 2100 raw quartz, that's a bit much for a tractor if you're going any sort of distance

[unborn dome]

I only need around 200/min of it at least. Maybe I could build a nice little road?

Basically just need the pure node. The train tracks actually go right over top one of the two normal quartz nodes, only way I could get it to fit.

[prisma kraken]

could always run belts under the tracks

[unborn dome]

Yeah true, maybe find a nice way to attach belts to the underside of the track supports

[prisma kraken]

you probably do want those mining nodes though, consider getting creative with the rail tracks

[unborn dome]

Already had to get creative to get this far with smooth ground-hugging(ish) rails. Resigned to this normal quartz getting blocked to pass overhead.

Miner is too tall

But the pure and other normal should be more than enough

[prisma kraken]

i'd make your 'T' a large Delta and run around the mining spot

[unborn dome]

I'd thought about that, but the problem is there isn't enough flat space here for the intersection to be any wider.

Basically comes up the hill, level out for the T, and then starts going up again

My planned computer factory nearby only needs 197 quartz/min though, I only really need the pure node anyway

[prisma kraken]

i need to clean up this interesection, but no reason you need to make a 3-way uber-compact

[unborn dome]

I need an advanced "short miner" lol

[prisma kraken]

i don't know the terrain there too well, but my first thought is to run the rails like so

[unborn dome]

I had to run rails right over an impure oil node up on the northern coast a week or two ago too

Trying to do this. The spot just to the north is too close to the hill to flatten out.

[prisma kraken]

i guess you're dealing with trying to climb too, probably need to back the start of the climbing part of the rail back further

[unborn dome]

Yeah exactly, just barely enough room for the flat part

[prisma kraken]

you can use some runs of 2m ramps to get a little extra height too

for very short distances, you can even get a little more of a grad going than that

[unborn dome]

I think I recall someone sasying 3m was actually the max

Just harder to build that smoothly

[unborn ermine]

Yay im a somebody

[prisma kraken]

it's about that, probably more like 2.5

i think you can do a 2m, 2m, 4m pattern and that's the max

[unborn ermine]

what I remember looking up, you do some magic with beams to approximate the 3m incline.

[prisma kraken]

i guess that's 8m vert per 24m horiz = 3m ramp

this is why the game really needs a better mechanism for laying rails. it stinks, lol

[unborn ermine]

Speakin of rails, got my track down for here, though... still trying to figure out how to deliver 240/min rubber to the nodes here in the bottom middle.

[prisma kraken]

i'm still surprised they didn't decide to do another EA release to just focus on train building (and add monitoring)

[unborn dome]

It'd be cool if rails could be build with basic supports

That stuff snaps to

[prisma kraken]

yeah, i can think of a few possible solutions to it all

that's one such, some sort of autofill beneath the rail with a blueprint of sorts would work too

[unborn ermine]

Part of me wants to replace the tracks that go more northward to my wide set and use the conveyor belts in the middle to deliver the rubber south from the receiving station, and send HMF along that back up

[prisma kraken]

what i'm leaning towards as a more general solution would be the ability to lay foundation along a spline

from what i can figure, the core problem is that there's no way to define a curved ramp very well in the game

[prisma kraken]

i think you are probably better off sucking it up and using rails

[unborn ermine]

I got a decent curved downwards rail, but its not very pretty on the start

[prisma kraken]

if ever there is one item in the game that should be on a train, it is rubber

[unborn ermine]

How would I even plan out a second train to do that spot for 240/min

Then again I did make it really overshoot rubber.

[prisma kraken]

plastic too, but rubber is always the highest volume thing i end up moving around

[unborn ermine]

Im making 1300/min rubber, need 840/min to the north, 240/min to that southern spot.
So.
You think a second train station up north would be the least headache to make?

just plan 1300/min north and split off ~240/min

[prisma kraken]

i'd honestly just route 2 trains around a loop that hits both delivery points and let it all self-level like a manifold would

[unborn ermine]

Slightly terrifying

[prisma kraken]

i've embraced the design pattern

i have a pair of trains with 3600/min rubber that delivers to HMF, concrete, heatsink and then terminates at storage with 120/min leftover

[unborn ermine]

#math-and-meta message
So from here, maybe make a t-junction rhombus roughly following my power network?

[prisma kraken]

if you attempt something like that, you want to make sure every platform in a station is getting used at the same rate

[unborn ermine]

On the bright side, I am overshooting production at least, and there isnt any major elevation changes like my spiral for aluminum's copper.

[prisma kraken]

a theme you'll see in most factories in my world is that they're actually 4 independent product lines that make the same part

[unborn ermine]

So far so good and I dont hate it

Leaving foundations in place if I chicken out

[solid kindle]

anyone got a diagram for the best rubber farm? I've realised I am probably going to need a lot more than I am making rn, so I just want to know what it is. I'll try use the scim calculator rq

[amber umbra]

@solid kindle All the basic options are similar oil to rubber ratio. If you unlock all the alts, the recycled rubber/plastic recipes + heavy oil residue, diluted fuel gives a lot more rubber/plastic per oil.

150 oil to ~400 rubber/plastic

[solid kindle]

alr i'll just see how I go

[amber umbra]

Kinda fun to figure it out, so play around with it a bit before looking up how.

[fossil basalt]

300 oil turns into either 300fuel+300rubber+300plastic, or iirc 440 rubber and 440 plastic

[prisma kraken]

this is the basic design i use

if you were to use that, be very careful, the rubber output from the refineries exceeds mk4 belt speed

[amber umbra]

The cool is that the actual process is converting fuel into plastic or rubber in 1:1 ratio with resin byproduct. Requires a kinda unique catalyst loop setup thing. It’s cool.

[unborn ermine]

Yeah its a nice little system

[prisma kraken]

i kind of wonder if they really intended it to be used as we've learned to use it

i think when they designed it, they're goal was for it to boost the polymer resin alt

[amber umbra]

Seems like a very deliberate design to me. But I only have my thoughts on it as a source.

[prisma kraken]

yeah, i'm mixed in agreeing or disagreeing with you. they definitely did math it out, but i don't know if they foresaw the combo that could be done

[amber umbra]

“Recycled” brings to mind a loop. The paired rubber and plastic versions. Kinda fits intentional design.

[prisma kraken]

perhaps... i think maybe they thought of it as something to boost the prod with excess fuel, and what emerged was that you can max it all by going all-in on hor+dpf

the numbers are weirdly ugly on it all

[amber umbra]

Idk the numbers are clean if you treat resin as a byproduct. Just clean diluted fuel from HOR into plastic/rubber with resin byproduct that you sink sub optimally lol.

I will say, I don’t quite understand the lack of diversity in oil builds. Seems weird not to have competition for HOR. Like residual plastic, rubber feels like it should have a HOR type combo with it.

And the oil to lots of resin alt.

Conceptually, oil already has a lot going on for the player to learn (fluids, byproducts), so not having a huge amount of alt variety, complexity makes sense. The more alts you add, the more likely a newer player gets confused when tackling oil for first time.

[unborn ermine]

The rail line so far
I might leave a T-junction under where im hovering, to maybe go up this little hill path, absolutely no plans

fun fact about the northern forest if you dont cut down the trees...

[livid turret]

If you want to keep it simple but efficient you first need the alts for recycled rubber/plastic and the alts for diluted fuel and HOR, then for the recycled rubber/plastic just create a blueprint with 2 refineries facing one side producing plastic and another one facing the other direction producing rubber. Seed the rubber refinery with 30 plastic, connect the output to the plastic producers and then split the plastic to feed the rubber and to your destination. Connect all pipe inputs and you get a nice BP that takes 90 fuel and turns it into 90 plastic. For rubber just create the same BP with the opposite recipes and seed rubber.

[solid kindle]

Imma just do 1.2k oil p/m going into x40 HOR then into however many blenders making diluted fuel, then just make all the rubber/plastic using the recycled stuff then make the 2nd set feed into the 3rd and the 1st, and once jumpstarted it should work fine. I might even turn the resin into more, but idk atp. Should make me even more rubber to start tier 9. Almost done with phase 4 atm just need modular engines for the TPR, then nuclear pasta which I alr have most of the stuff for. Exciting stuff.

[jolly furnace]

are these pipes built correctly (ignore the red circle) for the 3:8 ratio? I follow the wiki guide for it, but every now and then a generator turns on and off due to low water

[prisma kraken]

looks like pretty much a textbook coal plant build

i haven't seen an issue with that specific pipe configuration (really ever), but if you find the generators kicking on & off due to lack of water, disconnect their power cables and let the pipes fill up before reconnecting the cables

[jagged harbor]

yeah in my experience any fill issues is almost 100% because of mass drainage on connection, having to pre-fill machines with fluids always makes starting up anything using them a bit of a pain

because until they're full their drain rate is like 10x their actual use rate

usually it can be fixed by just letting them fill up their output, but that doesn't exactly work for power plants, unless you just disconnect them from any power, but THAT defeats the purpose of a BP that lets you pre-connect them

[jagged harbor]

did you have your coal filling your generators before you hook up water?

[jolly furnace]

yes

I logged out ill log back in and show it from a better angle

[jagged harbor]

sounds like that might be your issue, cut off your coal line for a minute and let the generators run out of coal

that'll let them completely fill up the generator and pipes with water

once thats all pre-filled you should be more than fine to reconnect your coal with 0 changes

[jovial lake]

you'd be better off filling the buffers on coal generators before starting them in any case, both coals and waters alike

[golden smelt]

@amber umbra so after a few hours of the gens running, they started hiccupping again

[jagged harbor]

true but filling the buffers on generators can be a pain if you're using any form of blueprint

[jovial lake]

indeed

[jolly furnace]

ty this worked producing steady power no hiccups

[jovial lake]

btw... is it just me or does anyone else does math in object/s ?

[frosty owl]

Note: machines or buildables blueprinted with items inside will be built with items inside when deploying the blueprint (ie: prefilled machines will be prefilled when building the blueprint)

[jagged harbor]

right but you can't really pre-fill stuff like fuel gens with rocket fuel

[frosty owl]

No, as fluids don't go in inventory (one can work around that using packaged fluids, but still... XD)

[jagged harbor]

wait CAN fuel gens burn packaged fuel directly?

[frosty owl]

Nope :P

Basically the only way to "blueprint fuel" for generators is blueprinting a container with Packaged fuel connected to Packagers unpacking it...
Well, that and blueprinting the whole production line, ofc ahah

[unborn ermine]

The best we can do is fill the pipe, and have packagers feed from the end of the manifolds.

[vast jungle]

I just tend to switch off a few generators... let the whole setup run until all generators are full, then switch off a few full ones and reactivate the others until all are full

[carmine fox]

I'd like to make a factory where all the bauxite from all over the map is being used. I was thinking of using trains to bring the bauxite from all the nodes to the factory. Do you think that's doable?
I was thinking of using 12 freight cars since it's 12300 Bauxite in total but I am not sure if the trains would bring the bauxite fast enough

[vast jungle]

its more a matter of "full" belts... its relatively easy to get a full belt from a single train freight station... more can become a headache

[carmine fox]

I was thinking one full belt per freight station, hence the 12 freight platforms for 12300 items

So you say that shouldn't be much of a problem?

[vast jungle]

as long as you put an ISC (Industrial Storage Container) both on the sender and receiver stations it should work... not sure you need ONE train with 12 platforms... maybe having multiple smaller stations at the factory and one at each resource site would be easier

[carmine fox]

hmm interesting, yeah I didn't really think of that

[vast jungle]

with ONE train the travel time of the train can become an issue... multiple trains for different regions can shorten the time the train takes to take one round

[carmine fox]

I was thinking of using several 12 freight car trains for different stations, but each station would be way bigger than it has to be so your approach sounds nicer

[vast jungle]

I must admit I am not happy with my own current approach to train stations too...

I currently use 1-4 trains only... some factories have too many different output items, so they have 1-2 trains with 3-4 different items

which means that on some factories receiving stuff I need two train stations for 4 wagons... each only receiving ONE item ^^

I have been thinking about trying to experiment with 1-1 trains...

[carmine fox]

haha yeah that is a waste, but hey, as long as it works 😄

[vast jungle]

the problem is that often the train station is larger than the factory itself

and that is really not nice 😉

[carmine fox]

exactly, that is why I am happy with your suggestion to trim the trains down and build more train stations at the dropoff point

[vast jungle]

the problem with small stations is the "constant overhead" in space

e.g. the train locomotive station, the curces to get the rails towards the train track... all of them const a constant number of foundations in size regardless of the number of train cars

[carmine fox]

Yeah... It would be very easy to just set up a drone network for the bauxite but I wanted to use trains...

[vast jungle]

a 1-1 train station length is 3 (incoming 90° curve) + 2 (locomotive station) + 2 (freight station) + 3 (outgoing 90° curve) = 10 foundations long

[carmine fox]

But perhaps I will just use the trains somewhere else

[vast jungle]

a 1-4 station is only 6 foundations longer

[carmine fox]

and 3x4 foundations for a drone

or 6x4 since I will probably need two drones

[vast jungle]

and you need to deliver fuel on one side...

by train? by another drone (double fuel cost!)

[carmine fox]

I would just set up the fuel at the dropoff point, my factory

[vast jungle]

my issue is I don't have a central factory... I have a lot of distributed factories ^^

[past reef]

if you use drone network for bauxite the fuel cost is noticable even if you use the lowest per min transported recipe

[carmine fox]

yeah me too, but I could just send plutonium fuel rods to this specific factory

[vast jungle]

so my strategy (most likely) will be that I have a train delivering packaged Pocket Fuel ^^

[past reef]

specifically sloppy electrode can easily use 2 double droned port for coke and water

[carmine fox]

with plutonium fuel rods the cost for the drone network is not worth mentioning tbh

[past reef]

if you run all 10k bauxite into a place you have to train every single other resource like coke and quartz and copper and potentially rubber

[carmine fox]

I would use Sloppy Aluminum -> Aluminum Scrap -> Pure Aluminum Ingot

that way I only need Bauxite, Coal and Water

And some Limestone for keeping the system running but I don't need much of that

[jagged harbor]

What would y'all consider a good 'default' when building train stations? I'm debating between 2 and 4 to future-proof any deliveries.

[past reef]

nah don't skip electrode getting 1:1 yield for bauxite:ingot shouldn't be skipped

[vast jungle]

"Sloppy Aluminium => Electrode Scrap => Pure Aluminium Ingot" is also nice

[wind spade]

when I'm building a train station, I know what trains are gonna go there, so I never future proof

[past reef]

or do instant scrap sulfur isn't really forced in late game

[carmine fox]

But electrode would use a lot of oil

[jagged harbor]

its more so I don't have almost all my trains trying to use only the 1st train car

[past reef]

if you want to future proof mk3 miner do 2 station for a 5 minutes RTT train

[wind spade]

trains use first car?

[carmine fox]

1200 Oil just for the coke.... it hurts my heart but it's doable

[jagged harbor]

issue with that info is the first thing I'm trying to get future proofed is my rubber/plastic production xD

[carmine fox]

instead of 7300 Coal

[past reef]

you know that's more coal percentage than oil percentage?

[jagged harbor]

just finished using a pure oil node to create a ton of plastic

[jagged harbor]

I'm excluding the engine since its a default

[wind spade]

I don't understand what do you mean by "trains using first car"

[carmine fox]

Certainly, but making it easy to set up is also worth quite a bit and I still have a lot of unused oil on the map

[past reef]

it doesn't really matter since you will have a lot on hand but then many recipe favor 1:1 ingot yield like heat fused frame

[carmine fox]

Hmm drones is not a good way to transport bauxite

only 100 stacks and the node furthest away would only transport 2 stacks per minute

so it would need 6 drones for just one node, that seems excessive

[vast jungle]

and you can use a lot of Alumninium... so it WILL be high throughput

[oblique hollow]

Its actually more beneficial to transport packaged alumina than ingots lol

[vast jungle]

the "funny" thing about Aluminiumis that it doesn't reduce the amount of the resources through processing that much... you have lots of Bauxite input, you will have lots of Alu Casing output... 😄

[carmine fox]

but then I would need water where the nodes are, and there is no water where the nodes are 😄

[oblique hollow]

I think pacckaged alumina stacks higher?
No wait, theres sloppy

[oblique hollow]

Well then all you can do is use a train or belts

And bring that bauxite to water

[carmine fox]

yep, so trains it will be

[violet halo]

Drones are mostly good for low volume items, like the end of factory stuff.

[vast jungle]

yeah... Drone Ports are not small, but they introduce less buffer than train stations

and its easier to stack them tightly

[carmine fox]

32 stacks per freight car, if I use 2 freight cars I could transport 64 stacks, with 1200/min it would need 6 minutes per trip

But I think the train would need way longer

[violet halo]

It depends on what you think the round trip time will be.

[carmine fox]

Yeah I am building the track now and then I will just try it

[fossil basalt]

6 minutes is a long time

[carmine fox]

true but driving from the east of the map to the west of the map and back is a long track as well

[carmine fox]

Can I somehow see how long a train takes for a round trip?

for drones it shows in their info, but I can't see anything like it for trains

[wind spade]

not really, since it also depends on factors like fill amount, other trains intervening, etc.

[carmine fox]

Took 6 min 30 seconds for a round trip while the train was alone on the track, it will certainly take longer once the tracks are filled

so 2 freight cars is not enough... guess I will go with 4

[oblique hollow]

you better have enough locomotives for that else acceleration will suck

[carmine fox]

I was thinking of using 2, with 2m foundations in a row that they need to go up

[plain fossil]

15/min radio control unit factory building has begun

took a pretty long break from satisfactory (2 days)

[vast jungle]

Uhh... I hope I am not the only one that overlooked the "hidden" Cost multiplier when running Drones on Rocket Fuel? the consumtion is for Packaged Rocketfuel, which is created from 2 Rocketfuel each!

[analog meteor]

yeah i noticed that when i made a small jetpack fuel system. and also found out its a gas and that it uses aluminum instead of plastic containers

[vast jungle]

thats really annoying... I built 200/min Rocket Fuel for drones... and now its only 100/min fuel for drones 😉

[analog meteor]

i also almost had a huge issue but for a diferent issue.

i had tubro fuel for my jetpack being made next to the turbofuel power plant i made. and i used trucks to bring in sulfur.
and those trucks used the turbofuel for my jetpack bcs it was easier.

[vast jungle]

that sounds dangerous

[analog meteor]

but when i got ready to connect turbofuel to make rocket fuel i tried to use canisters to package rocketfuel and then i found out i f..d up

[analog meteor]

yeah so i had no fuel being made for trucks which are used for main power production for so long. i had to set up a whole drone port and feed it with fuel and stuffs. and the aluminum is being made on the other side of the map

[vast jungle]

powerplants depending on trucks or drones are easy to blackout

[analog meteor]

yeah but its figured out. also i had a whole industrial container full of turbofuel as a buffer and the trucks didnt burn through a stack of it during the whole time i tried to get aluminum canisters

[vast jungle]

hmm... is there a way to let a train wait in a station unless at least one of its wagon is completely unloaded?

[magic mango]

i thought there was a setting for it to wait until it fully loads / unloads

[vast jungle]

yes, but thats bad for trains different item types per wagon

[magic mango]

ahh gotcha

[fossil basalt]

Has someone mathed out how to turn the 2100 uranium on the map into the most amount of power? Not seeing anything in the wiki. I see the one line about 5:6 ratio if using all the alt recipes, should I start there?

[unborn ermine]

Just have to look in the search
in:#math-and-meta uranium ratio
its cropped up a number of times.

Its a bit of a read if you want the whole scope

[amber jacinth]

Pretty sure the pre-1.0 ratio is still the best. 50.4 uranium, and 22.4 or 12.6 plutonium rods

Converters can increase those numbers, however.
Also note that ficsonium is not worth it in terms of resource usage to power output

[unborn ermine]

That lines up with the search results

if you want more recent discussions to sift through, 50.4 is a good search term too

[amber jacinth]

However, doing 60 & 15 looks nicer with some uranium conversion

[wind spade]

afaik it's power positive

[amber jacinth]

It is, yes- but barely so. The SAM usage alone makes it extremely inefficient.

Trigon usage is nutty, and the 2x requirement of DMR to ficsonium-producing accelerators (needs 2 in for every 1 from the FFR encoder) means you have to get more DMR from somewhere

[wind spade]

I mean that's the cost of wasteless

[prisma kraken]

if you sloop the qencoders, you are doubling what you'd get from burning plut rods for power alone. that isn't a trivial amount of power, and it is net positive.

there's definitely more resource efficient means to create power in the game. That isn't the point of any sort of nuclear anymore

[wind spade]

yeah, but ficsonium's purpose isn't so much power generation as it is "wasteless plutonium"

[prisma kraken]

its to give you something to do after phase 5 is done

[latent seal]

so, i think i discovered that 30 pieces per minute with a power core in there

might not be 30

[prisma kraken]

?

[latent seal]

like if i put this guy at 30, itll be 30

but if there is another core in here, and i slide it back to 30

might not be 30

[prisma kraken]

then you're just wasting a power shard

[latent seal]

absolutely

but what was not anticipated was the fact that it was like 30.04

[prisma kraken]

not that that really matters, they litterally grow on trees 🙂

[latent seal]

at least, after watching this belt for hours and hours, im pretty sure thats what happened

i pulled the core and set this thing back to 30 it no longer stalls

it was at 30, so first i backed it down to like 29.5 and then built it back up in stages

after removing that core

[prisma kraken]

why not just math out what you need and set the clock rate to what you need?

[latent seal]

i did probably, with the sliders, and had that extra core in there

sorry let me rephrase, I did exactly that, and it kept stalling because of clogging

but it also had the extra core

and im pretty sure I used the slider, instead of setting numerically

[prisma kraken]

i think your problem lies elsewhere

[latent seal]

which I'm fairly certain led to an unmentioned infinitesimal floating point that caused my belt to clog

[prisma kraken]

rather certain that wouldn't be your issue

[latent seal]

that would be convenient but mathematics says its a problem especially when your slider is not at the same precision as your actual system

the clock slider is for the clock and therefore the units per minute

its either not telling you the actual units per minute with full precision

or its rounding it

[prisma kraken]

a small floating rounding error would accumulate roughly 1/1000th of an extra pipe per second. in order to even fill a single machine's buffer, that would take 200x1000 = 200,000 seconds, or about 2.3 days

[latent seal]

how long do you think my game stays on for 😄

[prisma kraken]

that's a single machine's buffer, not every buffer on a production line

[latent seal]

if its rounding it

the time it takes is even less

[prisma kraken]

i think you have a math error somewhere in your design and are looking to blame it on something you can't control 🙂

[latent seal]

i can control it, it just wasn't obvious

and it doesn't help when you leave power cores in there and then use the slider

[prisma kraken]

well, if your sure its fixed, bully to you!

[latent seal]

we'll find out in the next 2.3 days

😄

in case you wanted more context that should help

[oblique hollow]

the last time i checked, if you have the clock speed at something like 33.3333% instead of 33.3333333333....%
then it takes about 3 years of the game running for error accumulationto affect things in any real capacity

[latent seal]

thats not exactly the kind of difference

[oblique hollow]

if i use the input field to set the output i need instead of mathing out what i need, it usually rounds the last digit more harshly

[latent seal]

now we're getting somewhere

we're probably looking at a difference somewhere between 30 and 31, not purely a precision thing

[oblique hollow]

but its just 33.3334% vs 33.3333%, in my example

[latent seal]

like, screen says 30 units per minut

but its actually 30.49

or something along those lines

[oblique hollow]

hmm no it doesnt round this hashly

half units are displayed, defintely

but
something like 5.625 will be shown as 5.63

[latent seal]

right and so the slider moves in .1 increments

i mean at the end of the day all im trying to say is my machine was shitting out more pipes than it says it was

but thats not because the game is mathing wrong, its a computer program, it doesn't math wrong

it just wasn't showing allll the math 😛

[oblique hollow]

i tried to follow the convo above but its really not clear

how EXACTLY did this error occur again?

you put in a shard, set some value, pull out the shard?

[latent seal]

put in shard, crank it up, slide it back down to maximum preshard level (using slider), leave extra shard in
belt will overflow even though everything says the right units per minute

thats my hypothesis

[oblique hollow]

well if i play around with the slider, i can land on exatcly 100% again

slider seems to be in 1% increments

[latent seal]

or is it in .1 unit increments?

wait i said it myself, slider is for the clock

[oblique hollow]

the clock speed gets adjusted in 1% increments if i drag the slider

for more precision, actual text input is needed

[latent seal]

so in theory then if you slide your machine will either stall or overflow 😛

[oblique hollow]

if you do not match your numbers right, yes

if you need some value that needs less than a 1% increment

[latent seal]

well, matching units per minute is different than getting the clock speed correct

this guy is a good example:

[plain rivet]

your theory is that if you use the slider, it will show 100% exactly but be outputting 100.5% or something?

[latent seal]

basically yes

[plain rivet]

i'm skeptical

[oblique hollow]

yea you cannot get 50/min rods from 1% increments here

you'd get 104% clock speed or 105%

[latent seal]

but i can slide to 50 units per minute

[oblique hollow]

no you cant

[latent seal]

oh shoot

you right

[oblique hollow]

you can slide to 50.4 only

by moving to 105%

exactly 50 is not possible if you use only the slider

the precision in terms of units/min you get from the slider is just
base rate of the recipe at 100% / 100

for the iron plate recipe, thats just 0.2 u/min

[latent seal]

makes sense

anyways, i think my thing is running now 😛

[oblique hollow]

yeah just make sure to take a close look at your numbers next time

[latent seal]

well its confusing because everyone is like "BeLT MErGERS DON't WORK ADD A SiNk

but it works fine

think i just started second guessing

[brisk smelt]

mergers work perfectly fine

you need sinks for sushhi belt but

[latent seal]

what qualifies as a sushi belt? a belt with more than 1 item?

[brisk smelt]

yes

sometimes used to feed stuff with extremely low inputs

such as pressure conversion cubes

[latent seal]

understandable, but what causes the need for a sink? The merged belt should just unfold

im making rotors and feeding pipes to the stator machine

this shouldn't stop, and if it does, it should be calculable

[plain rivet]

you still sort of need sinks right? like if you don't and the rotors fill up, you would block the pipes going to the stators even if the stators weren't "full"

[unborn ermine]

Sink in that instance would be like, if the game had a hiccup due to lag and something goes down the wrong output.
At least thats the most plausible result if the "math and logic" are correct.

[plain rivet]

disregarding lag or bugs, even in normal play those lines have to have sinks somewhere or eventually one production line will fill and back up and block the other

[brisk smelt]

sink at the end of the production line

slightly inefficient but

:D

[plain rivet]

wherever it is. it is necessary when you have sushi

[magic island]

this game will teach you the hard way that "shouldn't fail" and "won't fail" are very different things

[oblique hollow]

Unless you got perfect input of items, its possible for one of the output to fill up
which then blocks the smart / programmable splitter

stopping the whole thing

[brisk smelt]

yeah, so much belt fold-back needed to get precise item/mins

[oblique hollow]

or adjust clock rates accordingly

[plain rivet]

it's not hard to get the rates exactly right, i'm just saying when you have sushi like that all lanes need to run infinitely, so all lanes require sinks to guarantee they wont' back up and block the others

[latent seal]

it needs to be within the tolerance of the minimum required to produce and the maximum the buffer can support

because you can set the input correctly, thats easy

but when you merge and unmerge products, then belt speed affects your ratios

so you can actually observe the products "sloshing" like they were water 😛

like it will always flow between a tolerance + or - 4 for instance, where i need 3 pipes to produce, sometimes that number falls to 3, sometimes it only drops to 4 every time we produce

[north lichen]

in terms of number of items on the sushi input line, yes. But as soon as one of the inputs' rate is slightly off, you start getting messed up. Say a train gets delayed for 5 min for whatever reason, a sink turns "your factory breaks" to "your factory slows down and eventually recovers"

[latent seal]

this anomaly i think i would credit to the belt speeds not being exactly the same as the production speed

yep, you got it

HOWEVER

it shouldn't indefinitely cause a clog, because it will always be within a certain threshold

and thats why people get so confused when they try stuff like this, they have a maxed out machine or buffer is full and it will break it

[north lichen]

yeah, even if 99.9% of the time the sink isn't being used, it still needs to be there

[latent seal]

noooooo it doesn't, unless an imbalance occurs

the minute an imbalance occurs, then you either need to manually intervene OR you need a sink

[magic island]

it can absolutely cause an indefinite clog

all it takes is for one item to be backed up all the way to the splitter input, and for another item to be starved

this means the oversaturated item can't get consumed and the clog will never resolve

[latent seal]

you said can

i don't disagree

what i said though was that it doesn't have to cause a clog
it ->>>> (the fact that belt speed is different than production speed) <-- it

[magic island]

the point people are making is to build things so they can't break

not just decide they "shouldn't break" and depend on the power of optimism

[north lichen]

I suppose this is true, but a) murphy's law: a disruption will occur, and b) manually intervening sucks. For the incredibly small setup and power cost, it always makes sense to use a sink

[latent seal]

but the imbalances don't create themselves

[magic island]

basically, if you don't want it to break and you don't want to use a sink, don't do it as sushi

[latent seal]

usually its because you set a number wrong

[magic island]

user-error is a valid issue to engineer against

it's good to idiot-proof your factories, because as you expand and modify them, sometimes it will turn out the idiot is you

[north lichen]

I mean, hoverpack reconnects, fixing pipe issues, train delays, output backup... There's lots of ways for a disruption to occur.

[latent seal]

yes, those are all the avenues i am talking about

and i set out today keyboard warrior ing to clear up the air

thats why the freaking sushi belt quit working

its not because the numbers don't add up

30 = 30 on BOTH SIDES OF THE BELT

and it all looks so neat when you sushi a -little bit- (wip)

[latent seal]

think i might put a sink in

my brain wouldn't let me do it until I settled the reason that I was adding it

😛

the reason I am adding it is so that I can work on the rest of the system without stalling this one 😛

[prisma kraken]

well, you almost always need a sink on sushi lines to allow one backed up production line from causing everything to grind to a stop

[latent seal]

no, you don't need a sink on a system you don't touch

you do need sinks on systems you intend to build/add/influence upstream or downstream in any way

they will stop otherwise

its very black and white now

so i am happy 😄

[prisma kraken]

trains jam. power lines get accidentally deleted. you blow a fuse. truck or drone runs out of fuel. hard to have an isolated system you don't 'touch'

[latent seal]

hard but not impossible

its in fact the goal

for me anyways 🙂

[prisma kraken]

something about engineering: you don't build things not to fail. you build things so that when they can and will fail, things don't cascade

nothing i've ever designed is perfect. it is hubris to think such things

i've been trying to isolate a problem with one of my aluminum factories for a few days now. Seems like a train that is carrying the output goods sometimes isn't quite quick enough (but only when i'm not looking)

[latent seal]

i guess its a train so its not a matter of re recording the route, so what do you do? can you shorten the distance?

[prisma kraken]

i've managed to mitigate the problem to the point where i'm having a hard time triggering it to happen again, but the problem is still there.

i'm not re-running several KM of rails, lol

[latent seal]

put in 5 big storage containers

over produce for a little while, then set it back down

you can watch it easier that way maybe

[prisma kraken]

the solution is to split the load between 2 trains and add more capacity. It's just taking me a while to do because i'm out of station space in one factory and having to add an extra station in the CB factory i'm just starting on building to compensate

[plain rivet]

if that system doesn't have a sink SOMEWHERE for each line, on line will EVENTUALLY fill and back up and block the other lines in your sushi

ALWAYS

no matter how perfect it is

[latent seal]

I think thats wrong

[plain rivet]

why?

your two lines that are going off to make rotors. what happens when your rotor storage fills?

[latent seal]

because 30 = 30 on both sides of the line, nothing can back up

we make motors and sink motors, of course

[prisma kraken]

about the only thing i'll sushi w/o a sink is exactly 20 rods + 100 screws going into a rotor assembler on an mk2 belt in the early game

[latent seal]

there is always one sink at the END of something

[plain rivet]

so you have SINKS

you need a sink at the end of everything when you have sushi

you don't need sinks at the end of everything if you don't have sushi

[latent seal]

thats a very strange thing to say and not accurate

resay it

[plain rivet]

stuff stalling doesn't block other things

[wind spade]

Not necesarily, you can have gens or other machines at the end

[latent seal]

having sushi doens't cause the need for a sink

[prisma kraken]

you can actually perfectly balance things on a sushi belt and do what Dad Gut is intending. I have to take his side on the fact that it is possible. Its just that you end up in a world of pain if ANYTHING EVER goes wrong

[latent seal]

all im trying to do is get the world to use better words when talking about the problems of merging products

its not because you did that, that you need to sink

[plain rivet]

no, whether the sink is literally an awesome sink or in greeny's case something else that infinitely consumes the products

you have to infinitely consume the products for sushi to not have issues eventually

[wind spade]

Not exactly true

[latent seal]

you have to infinitely consume the products for ANYTHING to not have issues eventually

[prisma kraken]

the thing is with any sushi line, it can never, ever stop moving. best way to accomplish that is to have a terminal sink

[latent seal]

an issue means, it stopped

right, and your buildings that are doing nothing

[wind spade]

You can have sushi without end sink/whatever, if you balance it perfectly

[latent seal]

are broken, because they do nothing 90% of the time

[prisma kraken]

the fact it stopped is both the root cause and symptom

[plain rivet]

but other things that could be working from working

are not being stopped by my machines tha tare full

they would be if it was sushi

[wind spade]

Example, you need two products in 1:2 ratio, so you merge 3 belts with one merger, two of one product, one of another. This never breaks

[plain rivet]

where are those products going?

[wind spade]

Machine(s)

[plain rivet]

ok. fair

[latent seal]

@plain rivet no one is arguing the necessity for us to use the material we produce.

the argument is about the necessessity of a mid production line sink due to the fact that you merged products (sushi'd)

you don't actually need this sink

it might be good to have this sink because you want to work on systems (not this one) that could influence this system

[plain rivet]

i didn't say mid production line.

[latent seal]

right, i was clarifying what we were trying to debate about 😛

[oblique hollow]

even if its not needed, who would complain about production safety?

safeguard is safeguard

[plain rivet]

you need sinks on any independent systems that are fed by suhi. whether it's at the end of each independent system or at the point of the sushi

[latent seal]

basically, if you sushi in your production line...

at all....

if you do anything to that system, causing a stop to the inputs or outputs

if there is no sink...

it will stop

but the necessity for the sink...

the root cause above....

is not the fact that you sushi'd really, its just because you affected your system in a way that brought it out of its healthy state

[plain rivet]

no, it's because you sushi

[wind spade]

but if you build it properly, it will start again once the output is cleared

[latent seal]

you added a pipe, changed a number, stole the material off elsewhere

[oblique hollow]

i generally do not expect any setup to work fine from the getgo
and i do not expect things to always run all the time if im doing work elsewhere and i might mess up

[latent seal]

no, thats wrong

[oblique hollow]

Its kinda the same deal like recycling water from aluminum in the same pipe that you put freshwater

[plain rivet]

I'm talking specifically about a scenario like yo uhave where items are merged together that are then split to feed two independent systems

[oblique hollow]

like sure, it can work
but if that system stalls due to not enough bauxite, insufficient coal or not enough scrap being consumed, it gets waterlogged

[plain rivet]

you HAVE to have sinks at the end of those systems or at the sushi

or one system will blcok the other

[wind spade]

that's not really sushi, that's just mixed belt

sushi generally refers to mixed belt feeding machines, not just merge and then split

[latent seal]

every system should sink/be used for production in another system) in the end, otherwise we're wasting our energy yeah?

so we're trying to make a good system, start to finish

[plain rivet]

you can debate whether or not my iron plate starter factory stalling when storage is full is bad. but when it's storage is full, it doesn't stop other production chains from running

it would if there was a mixed belt feedin it

[oblique hollow]

theres a reason i have an overflow sink for my mixed truck cargo

[latent seal]

yes this, i do have overflow for this

[oblique hollow]

it just gets very nasty if you let production chains lock up further and further upstream

[latent seal]

ore and encased beams come through here:

in theory that sink shouldn't have to get used

but its there 😛

[oblique hollow]

as for sushi, i would recommend to have a sink anyway because its nice to have a seatbelt, even if you think you are a good driver who will never need one

[plain rivet]

yeah, true. it's more stemming from their original system where they were explaining clogs as rounding errors or merging errors or something that wasn't true

[latent seal]

for sure, personally the dillemma for me is that I like to be very certain about the reasons I add things, and sinks are one of those things that everyone is like AHHH you need this, but that didn't entirely make sense, at least for the reasons they tried to explain

[oblique hollow]

from what i heard, upon save load, mergers and splitters have a chance to duplicate an item, which has the potential to lock a system up

[latent seal]

its not because sushi is inherently broken, its just that it is subject to different principles

[oblique hollow]

but i dunno if that was fixed

but either way, purely from a work safety standpoint and simply for your own comfort, having a sink is neat

you cannot completely rule out hiccups or mistakes on your or the game's part

[latent seal]

yeah so i don't have to fuss with it when i break my plastic ratios after i hook this all up to the modular engine machine

😛

thats literally THE reason 😛

[oblique hollow]

or when you accidentally delete that one power line

you know the one

[latent seal]

mhmm im looking at it

[plain rivet]

and the farther downstream you have your sinks from where the mixed belt was, the more variables and things you introduce that have to have perfect ratios and throughput in order for the mixed belt to never clog

[latent seal]

that is correct

might just need a better sushi belt though, you can keep it flowing just by creating a loop can you not? That way if one stops the others keep moving, and then you can sink overflow there instead of sinking out of the 3 lines unmerged toward the end

[plain rivet]

i don't think so, but I might not be visualizing what you are proposing

[latent seal]

if screws back up, or rods, or pipes...

instead of the sushi stopping, you create a loop for the material in that sushi belt, and add an overflow splitter to a sink.

Then I can sink once from the sushi, rather than sink off of each of the unmerged lines

actually ther emight not be enough splitter holes

for that to work right 😛

example:

this manifold brings a vertically stacked 5 layer sushi belt that surrounds 8 assemblers to a horizontal plane at the bottom where excess material from the sushi belts can overflow

There is one sink in this factory

to give you an idea I removed the wall, i call this factory tiramisu

[plain fossil]

Especially with daisy chain lmao

connecting every machine together, you delete one, whole factory breaks

[deep jacinth]

Im using the satisfactory-tools calc; I set the raw input to 2160, production is iron ingot maximized, but the tool is limited my iron ore input to 564 per minute... any idea why?

[wind spade]

do you use multiple maximise?

[deep jacinth]

Yes, there are a few other productions set to maximum

[wind spade]

if you have multiple, Tools will make equal amount of all products

and in general, I don't recommend using maximise

[deep jacinth]

Ah I see, I didn't realize that. Hey your the creator 🙂 great tool, btw.

So if I were stubbon, I would set maximize for each production in an individual tab?

[deep hornet]

AFAIK Machines that are not in use, don't consume power!

[wind spade]

you'd set maximise for one thing, copy the number and use it in items/min, then add another maximise and repeat the process

[deep jacinth]

hmm okay, thank you for the clarification!

Ah... and now I see why I shouldn't be stubborn.

[magic island]

maximizing one product can be (and often is) mutually-exclusive with maximizing another product

so the solver just assumes an equal split instead of trying to figure out what sort of ratio will be your favourite

[deep jacinth]

I was assuming by setting "maximize" for all of the end products in a factory it would prioritize efficient alt recipes and their production ratios to create as many as possible of each end item based on that prioritization

so if item A ratios more cleanly than item B, I'd get more A and less of B, but still be the most efficient answer for my given input constraints

[magic island]

it's the mutual exclusivity that prevents this

easy example, let's say you're making Copper and Iron ingots from a couple pure nodes, using the default and/or alloy recipes. that could end up being:

• 2400 copper ingots and 0 iron ingots (copper maximized, iron with nothing left over to use)
• 900 copper ingots and 2250 iron ingots (iron maximized, copper uses leftovers)
• 1440 of each

all of these outcomes are maximizations, but the solver has to settle on a ratio so it aims for equal

[deep jacinth]

and so to avoid making assumptions on part of the user it prefers equal production regardless if the inputs have remainder; that makes sense.

[north mauve]

I have a problem with my factory

After all this time, after a month working off and on, on a single large project

I'm not producing enough uranium waste

[wind spade]

maximise doesn't optimise for anything, one of the reasons why I recommend changing to items/min

[deep jacinth]

Completely understand; I've switch to items/min and am working through it. Thank you again 🙂

[prisma kraken]

give your doggos a raise then

[plush gulch]

Build more nuclear gennies

[north mauve]

I built exactly enough for the amount of uranium fuel rods T_T

[unborn ermine]

https://tenor.com/view/rookie-numbers-gif-26135237

[brittle hedge]

first time balancing had to split 500 into 375 and 125

[unborn dome]

Any thoughts on burning excess liquid biofuel in the fuel generator once I have a decent stack of packaged in my DD?

[past reef]

but you can splitter divide by 2 twice to make a 125 from 500?

[past reef]

you don't want to depend on the power gain from a manual inpot source, better to sink

[unborn dome]

I have 600 alien protein stocked up, and a full industrial buffer of the liquid fuel

I haven't done the math, but I feel like that'll probably run a generator for quite a while?

[brittle hedge]

i needed to balance the 375

[past reef]

as said you don't want to depend on like 1GW of power from liquid biofuel because when it runs out your fuse might blow

[violet halo]

It's too small of a reward for a finite resource.

[unborn dome]

Yeah true. Too bad there isn't some kind of transfer switch. Like run the trains off the biofuel, but if it ever runs out, cut over to an alternate source.

[past reef]

you can charge a couple hundreds of batteries on the liquid biofuel

[unborn dome]

Lol true, and then have them hooked up to two switches, one to cut in the biofuel generator, and a second to cut in the main grid

Too bad fuel generators don't switch to automatic ramp-up mode when they get fed liquid biofuel, like the biomass burners do.

It'd be nice to have something later in the game with that capability, for an emergency

[past reef]

you can put the battery place off on a priority switch then switch it on if fuse is blown

I'd like it to be a bit more convenient like I don't need to transfer the energy from packaged liquid biofuel to battery but it is what it is

[livid turret]

You can burn packaged biofuel in the biomass burners but you will need a lot of them and they will be set to use only if you exceed the other generators

Again, you are better sinking or forgetting biofuel unless you use it for the jetpack and in that case you won't need that much either

[unborn dome]

Oh wow, didn't realize the biomass burners could burn packaged

Yeah I've been using it as my primary jetpack fuel. Just seems like I've got more than a lifetime supply at the rate my jetpack consumes it.

[past reef]

biomass burner only works when there's demand and battery doesn't count

it still burns like 0.1 per min per burner if no demand so yeah just fuel generator

[unborn dome]

Yeah, that's what I was saying I wished the fuel generator did if you fed it liquid biofuel

[plucky tusk]

stuck between turbo electric motor or leached copper

[unborn ermine]

save leached recipes for when you want them, they are fairly niche in their uses.

kind of like tempered ingots, just more complicated.

[plucky tusk]

i grabbed leached iron so i could do some funny iron factories in the future

when we get converters and whatnot, can make anything out of iron

[wary rapids]

reposting for refrence.

[prisma kraken]

little late, but probably isn't worth the effort, it'll burn for a while and then you'll delete the setup rather than gathering more stuff to make fuel to run it for another couple of hours

what i might suggest as a late game project that can make use of that biomass is to turn it into coal to fuel converters to make everything you need for all ammo types with a little sam and hor

[unborn dome]

That's a great idea

[prisma kraken]

that's a thing i've been nibbling on as a project

[unborn dome]

I'm still kinda annoyed the homing ammo costs HSC, they're so expensive

[prisma kraken]

yeah, after it got nerfed in u8, i haven't even bothered with it, lol

[unborn dome]

What got nerfed with it?

[prisma kraken]

less damage

i didn't think it was great before being nerfed, honestly

ex rebar got nerfed as well, that was sort of wtf

[unborn dome]

It used to be more-powerful than nobelisk? I think it's equal now iirc

[prisma kraken]

the distance taper on damage falls off much quicker

if you shoot something right next to you, it does the same damage as nobelisks

if you try to kill a spooder out of aggro range, it takes like 20 shots, lol

[unborn dome]

Oh that's lame, that doesn't seem very realistic. It's not like the rebar shrinks as it flies

[prisma kraken]

shhh, the glycerin evaporates, mkay?

i fail to see how making late game weapons less powerful enhances gameplay

[unborn ermine]

I like nobelisks from the start.
Enemies (the big ones) inspect the blast site
making them easier to hit.

[unborn dome]

Yeah, not really impressed with the later-game weapons :/

[prisma kraken]

after 1000 hrs, you just want things dead when you want them dead

[unborn dome]

I'm not really feeling motivated to make anything beyond the regular rifle ammo. Maybe turbo ammo if I ever get around to making turbofuel.

[prisma kraken]

i'm not a fan

[unborn dome]

We need a laser rifle that runs on batteries or something

[unborn ermine]

honestly a slow trickle of ammo is better than anything, makes it cheap and you may spend hours scratching your bum building before you think to use any

[prisma kraken]

when you get into the extreme late game, the fauna stops being a challenge and is just sort of annoyingly surprising when it respawns

i'd seriously like some sort of BFG9000 that doesn't clear foliage and can one-shot anything

make the ammo take singularity cells as an ingredient or something... ya know?

[unborn dome]

That'd be pretty nice

Or even just a literal rocket launcher that does the same thing as explosive rebar except flies in a straight line

Probably not thematically-appropriate though

[unborn dome]

Black hole gun that runs on singularity cells and just sucks up everything that isn't rooted down

Maybe it also needs batteries to charge up between shots too

Like similar to how the jetpack needs to reload when you land

I want a Half Life gluon gun sort of thing, just beam of death you focus on target for a few seconds and it gibs. That seems very Satisfactory

LASERS??

[prisma kraken]

hehe

[amber jacinth]

We can kill it, we have the technology

[unborn dome]

It could even run on nuclear ammo we have to manufacture, like the gauss and gluon guns do in Half Life

Ammo is made out of ficsonium

[prisma kraken]

really the thing that's annoying is after a game update having the criter respawns in an area in which you've been building

[unborn dome]

Hopefully that's not a thing after 1.0 anymore, since I think the critters respawning were as a result of the map getting edited.

[prisma kraken]

if you've ever built near a rad hog or green spider spawning point, you'll know what i mean

[unborn dome]

Like how plants used to randomly reappear inside factories

[prisma kraken]

have a feeling we'll get a cameo of that fun with the ficsmas update, lol

[unborn dome]

There's a way to turn off Ficsmas, right? I'm not really interested in it.

[prisma kraken]

the 'disable seasonal events' checkbox in the preferences

i think it is sort of a fun little sidequest thing with some goodies to be had, but gets sort of old before its end

[unborn dome]

Yeah, like it sounds fun and all, but I'm going to keep focusing on finally getting an electronics factory built, rather than getting distracted by Ficsmas stuff showing up in the world

[prisma kraken]

the thing that makes it all really worth it is the snowballs

...cheap to make nobelisks that stack to 500!

my hope with it is that there's a gift of some sloops

[unborn dome]

Lol the snowballs explode?

[prisma kraken]

yeah, they're really just like nobelisks

there's also the fireworks, but i've never been bothered with them all

in any event, its kind of fun figuring out the production chain for the ficsmas stuff and like spending a night working it out as a quicky spaghetti build

some people have fun doing like a holiday village sort of thing in their world; i'm not that festive 😉

[unborn dome]

Yeah it sounds cool, I might do it next year. Just don't want the distraction atm.

[prisma kraken]

suit yourself, i recommend it though as a little thing to break up the serious building

[unborn ermine]

worst comes to worst, SCIM to unlock whatever ficmas brings

[light fox]

spaghetti tower

splits 360 (copper ingots) into 200, 140, and 20

my favorite part is the repeating merger tower in the 3rd floor

[sage wing]

math retard here...i'm trying to use all 24x smelter that I would have for 6x iron mine and came up with this one. at what value do i set the 6th constructor's cast screw output value so its outputing as 0.6? idk how to do the math here lol

[past reef]

you can hover on the node and see that you can do 5 normal constructor and 1 constructor at 0.6 or 60%

or type 30 in output per minute

[sage wing]

oh...60% ...fk that was a bit on the nose lmao...thanks

[vast jungle]

Under and overlooking is really useful in satisfactory

[keen moss]

i will never understand how people dont like this fella, he helped me to solve a simple problem in my coal factory

[wind spade]

Because it usually doesn't solve problems, just hide/delay them

[keen moss]

i guess he really loves me, bc it really solved it

[wind spade]

Or you didn't check well enough. It's very common for people to come here with "my buffer works just fine" and when we check their save, we see that it doesn't really work

[keen moss]

he is never full or empty, it only holds up when the pipe fills up too much, or empties more than normal

Does any1 know a good place to build a turbo fuel factory?

[fringe seal]

ik that many people swear by the Blue Crater
southeast corner of the map
though, you'll have to go through the swamp if you are starting from the Dunes

[keen moss]

where is the "Blue Crater"? i never heard of it

[fringe seal]

southeast corner

I actually have no idea where is a good spot near Dunes

[keen moss]

it does not have to be near dunes

[keen moss]

somewhere like this?

[fringe seal]

yeah just below the swamp

[keen moss]

ohhh, ty ty!

[fringe seal]

I actually did it on the west coast though

supplied the sulfur via train from coal lake

[keen moss]

oh hell nah

[fringe seal]

right now though it is a rocket fuel plant, and it (*the recipe I am using) uses so little sulfur that I can drone them in

and the recipe I am using, it does not use coal

[wind spade]

So your production isn't stable, which is your problem

[keen moss]

i mean, it is workink for like 100h+ so i decided that case closed!

[wind spade]

Then it would most likely work without the buffer as well

[keen moss]

How would producing water not be stable?

[wind spade]

If the buffer is filling and emptying over time as you said

[keen moss]

Maybe, but I'm not brave enough to test

[keen moss]

I expressed myself badly :c
the buffer sometimes goes to + or - 60 and goes down to + or - 30 / it goes back and forth

[keen moss]

it is never completely full or empty

[wind spade]

yeah then you don't need it at all

[prisma kraken]

here's a kind of stupid trick that probably isn't super useful - i'm testing some truck routes to make sure they're delivering ore at speed and needed a rate limiter on the belt going to a sink

[keen moss]

it is decorating

[wind spade]

and also fluid buffers are known to be problematic for your fluid network 🙂

[keen moss]

its just wata, it is working well with buffers.

[wind spade]

you've been warned 🤷

[keen moss]

Thank you <3

[prisma kraken]

listen to the greeny, he knows what's up 🙂

i wonder if you had a flow direction setting on buffer ports that could be switched to in/out/both if that would improve their utility

[keen moss]

I make my own rules 😎😼👊

[wind spade]

not really, would be similar to valves, where they only enforce direction from one end to another, but slosh happens anyway

[prisma kraken]

i'd be curious to see, don't think it is a super-good idea or anything

what WOULD be cool though is a priority junction for fluids

[past reef]

For uranium rod due to the burn rate maximum of 0.25 per min per machine, is there enough space to burn all the uranium in one place

[wind spade]

that still assumes flow direction 🙂

and priority junction is just vertical junction

[prisma kraken]

yep

[fringe seal]

the ocean I assume

[past reef]

Suppose a more concrete example, the southwest part of the map is large enough to use 50.4 uranium rod per min or not

[prisma kraken]

you're looking at some serious real-estate for the extractors. there's enough space for nuclear megabuilds on the E/W/N coastlines

in update 7, i got pretty far along on a max nuclear build, and was able to size out the space needed for 2100 uranium on the northern RD coastline

what gets a bit problematic is dumb stuff like finding space to make gobs of concrete and ECR's

silica and quickwire are also problematic

i say that because you need several belts worth of each and logistically pulling a high volume of belts to support the input requirements ends up being a big headache

[fringe seal]

I planned my nuke plants to be clocked @ 250%, I think this is a very bad idea given my luck with pipes

[past reef]

I suppose I'll need to make the rod elsewhere and move them to the west coast to try, if I consider the space for making the rod + burning that corner doesn't seem enough

1 km^2 of water space around that part doesn't seem enough for both the manufacturer and the plants

[fringe seal]

is this a bottomfeed?

and is this top feed?

[wind spade]

why are you asking?

[fringe seal]

preparing for the inevitable 600 failure

how tiny those drops / rises have to be for it to be considered the "opposite" of what it is?

[wind spade]

I don't think there's a line of "good/bad"

basically "feed from above" means that gravity helps you all the way through

it's not a guarantee of things working, but it helps a lot

[fringe seal]

look, given my luck with pipes I am paranoid about it

[wind spade]

just build it above and go down, don't do u-turns 😛

[fringe seal]

how, when the ocean is below

water tower? gotcha

[wind spade]

nah

pump -> rise -> feed pipe -> down

[fringe seal]

that's kinda the water tower, isn't it

[wind spade]

or pump -> rise -> pump -> feed pipe -> down
if having issues

no, water tower is abuse of game mechanics with extractor on top of a hill and it's highly not recommended

[fringe seal]

there's two conflicting definitions I see

[wind spade]

same as people call stacked belts "bus" 🤷

[fringe seal]

also, see, I want a guarantee of things working
not merely a high chance of things working
after all there is no RNG involved, is there?
it ought to be deterministic

if it is not a guarantee then it's a sign that what we understand vs what it actually is, is different

[prisma kraken]

there's no rng, but the way things are simulated is chaotic

[fringe seal]

and if they intended it to behave practically nondeterministically, because of some chaoticness or smth
......why? in a game so obsessed with efficiency

[wind spade]

it ought to be deterministic
yeah but people build differently

[prisma kraken]

well, the trick is to make builds that don't end up exhibiting chaotic behaviors

[fringe seal]

as I understand it, even loops are not free from what causes the chaoticness though?

that one magic bullet that are supposed to cure all illness

[prisma kraken]

there's no generalization of it all

[fringe seal]

do (planar) curves even matter in this simulation

[prisma kraken]

if you are familiar with the 3-body problem in physics/astronomy, some configurations of orbits are stable, others are chaotic

what makes one stable and another chaotic? well, that's phd level math

incidentally, some claim looping fixes all. I don't.

[fringe seal]

this comes back to determining what builds are chaotic and what aren't

[prisma kraken]

experience mostly, at least for me

[fringe seal]

I don't think they are releasing the technical document

[prisma kraken]

i can look at a pipe configuration and generally say 'that's going to be one to watch closely'

over time, you build a toolbox of stuff that works for you

[fringe seal]

I don't like it one bit
this genre of games should not depend on heuristics when it comes to logistics

[prisma kraken]

and you pick up tricks like pipes flowing down work better than pipes that have to be pumped up

well, yeah, i think it is somewhat a flaw in the game's design, but it actually is often the way engineering in the real world works as well

some things work on paper but not in practice

[fringe seal]

well we don't play games to constantly battle with the game's mechanics
atleast I don't

[prisma kraken]

i'll agree that it probably shouldn't be something you need to contend with in the game because it makes it more difficult

[fringe seal]

something tells me that they wanted it to feel like a slap in the face though.

[prisma kraken]

moreso, if the game is really about dealing with such problems, it should be a mechanic embraced and taught how to deal with properly

[fringe seal]

wholeheartedly agreed

maybe I just install a mod and be done with

[prisma kraken]

i personally would really like a factory builder where failures do happen and you have to design around it all, but i don't think that was ever intended as part of SF

[fringe seal]

but i don't think that was ever intended as part of SF
agreed as well

[prisma kraken]

so yeah, you can take the game as-is and realize that you can't design things perfectly because the game isn't perfect, or you can stop playing, or you can build in the game in ways that compensate for unintended side effects of the simulation's shortcomings

[fringe seal]

I'll probably install a mod to fix the imperfection

[prisma kraken]

idk if a mod exists to 'fix' pipes, lol

if it exists, i haven't seen it

[fringe seal]

the "halve all fluid requirements, but halve all fluid productions" type

https://ficsit.app/mod/HeavyFluids was what I was looking at

not a true fix I admit

[prisma kraken]

or you could just limit fluid flows to 300/min and use mk2 pipes when you see slosh 🤔

[fringe seal]

some demands 600 though

[prisma kraken]

only really one thing i can think of, and that's nuclear at 250%

[fringe seal]

pure oil node @ 250 too

[prisma kraken]

well, also oil extractors, but that's just split it in 2 mk1 pipes

[fringe seal]

I don't trust it

if the 600 backflow is supposed to happen at the first junction, shouldn't it not work?

[prisma kraken]

if oil is coming out of an extractor into a pipe passing into a junction, how will there ever be backflow?

[fringe seal]

"Full pipes are happy pipes" vs "full branches cause backflow"

[prisma kraken]

backflow happens when something along a manifold gobbles some of the volume out and gives the fluid a choice of which direction to flow

[fringe seal]

hmmm

ig I should refactor my setup and report back if it works

[prisma kraken]

not going to lie, i have to fuss with pipes at times to get them to work

usually the thing i suspect will work doesn't and i have a feeling that it's going to be iffy. when that happens, i change the build to sidestep the problem

[fringe seal]

~6km of extra pipeline, no biggie (it is)

[prisma kraken]

well, um

[fringe seal]

this is the cost of building megabuilds

this will be moderately painful I think

[prisma kraken]

yeah, i have no long range runs of stuff

[fringe seal]

ah

[prisma kraken]

except rails

[fringe seal]

maybe I should train all oil in

but distance is supposed to have no effect

[prisma kraken]

i'm not a fan of moving fluids via train

if i have a train on a closed loop w/o other traffic, so the circuit time is constant, different story

maybe if the capacity of the cars were more than 1600m^3, i'd use it more, but i just don't trust trains to get places deterministically

one thing that i'll insist you NOT ever do is move liquids on shared rails that are used in power generation

oops, my new iron factory train wasn't signalled properly... there goes the power grid, lol

i've seen a few youtubers make that mistake... strangely the episodes stop around that point 🙂

[fringe seal]

I did this to myself once, power banks saved me

[past reef]

just checked the layout, for nuclear plant I only need like 5x17 foundation for 400%/500% nuclear plant including water, the southwest part should be enough

think I can do a 7.2 uranium rod 1.8 pluto rod 9 ficsonium rod burning + making actually, the horizontal space should be enough for the bunch of manufacturer

will be forced to manifold the rods though, does it really matter to balance the nuclear plant

[dark star]

It will just take very long for all your plants to reach permanent uptime, but other than that manifold works finr

[latent anchor]

manifolds work when neither radiation or time to boot up matter, and as a benefit once it's full you can modify the source of the rods for a very long time before the plant finally shuts down

[prisma kraken]

be aware that the ocean near the kill border stops allowing water extraction placement a good bit before you start taking damage

[leaden cosmos]

You can use a smart manifold if you want a more controlled ramp up

[past reef]

yeah I had that when I do the west coast oil power, I already checked inside the foundations I laid out I can always place water

as in smart splitter always prioritizing the first ones?

[prisma kraken]

...it stops being water and is just void that looks like water - also, don't fall in out there 🙂

[past reef]

yeah I stopped expanding west when I saw that like halfway into the turbofuel place on the left it's just void

the boundary of the nuclear place I'm planning is like 500m from the edge of the SCIM map it should be fine all the way

[prisma kraken]

yeah, its a little annoying, i found that out as i was finishing a big power plant a few updates ago... nearly ruined the work i had put into it

now, i just place a sentinel extractor near the edge so that i know where it is 🙂

[past reef]

you can see the packager on the 3x3 place where it's supposed to be water extractor lol

[prisma kraken]

haha

[past reef]

I didn't know when I planned it, could have looked better

[prisma kraken]

its actually something you can exploit to run trains under the map, but still annoyingly surprising

[steel knot]

How would I remotely (relatively instaneously) shut off rocket fuel gens? I have a few buffers I’d like to keep full for when kicking the generators back on

I can shut off production pretty easily but want to shut off consumption

I basically want a powered valve 🙂

[fossil basalt]

An unpowered pump blocks all flow through a pipe

[unborn ermine]

not true

I use unpowered pumps to provide flow and reset headlift

[fossil basalt]

Hmm

Someone said that in the other channel like 5 minutes ago and I just assumed it was true,lol

[unborn ermine]

Backflow yeah

just keeps pushing the fluid through at whatever rate it can, just no headlift from that pump at all.

Its how im feeding my extractor water for my aluminum plant, using a recycle loop and feeding the zero headlift water from the bottom of the loop.

[hearty frost]

How many m^3 of Sulfuric Acid does a packaged version hold?

Is it just 1 m^3 per package?

[unborn ermine]

Liquids are always a 1-1 conversion.

gasses compress

[hearty frost]

So its 1 m^3 per package?

[unborn ermine]

I would assume so.

[fossil basalt]

Yes

You can see the gas package recipes are 60 in, 120 out or vice versa, the liquid ones are 60-60

[hearty frost]

Trying to determine how much storage density (relative to floor space usage) I can get by packaging sulfuric/nitric and storing it in industrial storages vs in fluid storages.

[unborn ermine]

Having a buffer of packaged + an overclocked packager will increase that density.

[steel knot]

The issue with rocket fuel is I can’t do head lift tricks though

Since it’s a gas

[unborn ermine]

Yeah... a loop can help, but thats just the feeding thing almost independent of headlift.
like in my rocket fuel gen setup, I have a sideways loop for feeding.

[leaden cosmos]

Have part of your plant on a packager loop. As long as the fuel gens are connected to a powered network they will be fine with no input

Rather than a buffer tank. You can store more in an industrial storage 🙂

[static crescent]

Should I slow down my sinking if I'm at the points cap?

[leaden cosmos]

It still gives you them. The ui just has a limit

[prisma kraken]

i don't think there is a points cap

at something like 2 billion points per minute (!!), the sink stops displaying the value correctly

[prisma kraken]

both sulfuric acid and nitric acid are liquids with a 1:1 packaging ratio... you can get 4800 m^3 into an ISC as such.

while that is twice the capacity of a large fluid buffer, i hardly consider storing liquids in massive volumes a game-winning strategy

[storm peak]

is there any way to make the belts pretty going towards my factory and not this spagetti?

[bronze bone]

utility highways is fairly common

[long lance]

I'm curious... how many ballistic warp drives is the cap with the amount of resources available.

[fringe pawn]

You can eke out 65 and then double them with 104 sloops if you don't research power augmenters.

[prisma kraken]

often the solution is trucks/tractors or trains

[jolly furnace]

i have the same problem again, I do not think Ifully understand how the water works. I have connected the 3 - 8 ratio for coal power plants. I have connected 2 water extractors to the end and one to the middle. I let the coal load in, then cut the power, let the water flow, then turn it on. and still the water is not enough and throttles it

[prisma kraken]

can you back up and take a picture of the full pipe network?

[vast oar]

honestly, if water isnt flowing where you want it to, put a few pumps on the pipes to force flow from the extractors to the coal generators

[prisma kraken]

i'm questioning what you have going on here

[jolly furnace]

my water extractor bending at an odd angle

[vast oar]

id place pumps on all three of those pipes to ensure that water flows up to your generators at the maximum rate they can

[prisma kraken]

i mean, the build looks generally corret. your extractors seem to be (hard to tell from your photo angles) close enough in height that 10m of headlift should be adequate. overally, it looks like a pretty textbook build

[jolly furnace]

ill try the pump thing

oh does elevation matter for water?

I had no idea this pump thing existed

[prisma kraken]

i think you may have a pipe that didn't connect right somewhere

[jolly furnace]

ill check again that might be it

[livid turret]

Yes, for every liquid

[prisma kraken]

yeah, it can only rise 10m w/o a pump - aproximately as high as the indicator light on the extractors

[jolly furnace]

this worked ty

[prisma kraken]

haha, yatzee

[vast oar]

id never rely on solely water extractor head lift. its inconsistent because the pumps act like "valves" so that the water can't backflow. pumps also ensure that the maximum flow of water occurs through a pipe up to their maximum headlift

[jolly furnace]

so ig that maybe it was 10 m too high?

ig I should keep my extractors level with my coal gens

[prisma kraken]

i think you were on the hairy edge

[vast oar]

you could also consider using a valve. that might help with potential backflow

satisfactory pipes simulate actual fluid dynamics, so there can be some really unpredictable behavior

[prisma kraken]

there's a little +/- leeway in how high fluids rise. its best to use pumps if you're in doubt

[jolly furnace]

is there a good video or resource I can use to learn about water flow and stuff

[livid turret]

Nah, this game requires verticality and working with headlift is a must

[vast oar]

im sure anything on YT could suffice

fluid pumps arent a huge power drain, so if you're ever confused why fluids arent flowing then id put a pump down

[prisma kraken]

check the pipe guide https://www.reddit.com/r/SatisfactoryGame/comments/obqjrd/ficsit_pipeline_plumbing_manual_first_edition/

[jolly furnace]

okat ty, I did some testing and it was specifically this one extractor

[prisma kraken]

which is weird, they should all be the same height 🤷

perhaps the little support on the rock just pushes the vertical a little out of the envelope

[jolly furnace]

is there a way to tell what height the pipes are at so iknow if I need a pump or not?

[jolly furnace]

yeah probably

[prisma kraken]

a few things i do for that: 1) run pipes horizontally or vertically, but not diagonally so you can tell their height by counting foundations

2. the pump's ui tells you the headlift they're creating

would be nice if the extractors listed similar, but they don't

[jolly furnace]

ah okay thanks

[neat crest]

The ratios for Caterium circuit board completely ruin the satisfaction of a 3 turbo electric motor factory. The ratio is 24/7. Why, coffee stain? Why must you punish me so?

This is actually making me mad it's so ugly there should not be 7x ratios in this game

[brisk smelt]

2,147,483,647, maximum number for a 32-bit signed integer :p

[plain fossil]

this thing is bringing me painnnn

allat for 4 manifacturers

[brisk smelt]

what are those making

[plain fossil]

15 radio control/min

sloppy alumina and pure aluminum is the only joy i can experience in this loathesome life

[brisk smelt]

that beltwork looks unnecessarily complicated...

[plain fossil]

although i know the water build up will make everything crash

thats just splitters

load balancing is a hobby

a masochistic hobby

[brisk smelt]

😭

[plain fossil]

fuck i need to get iron

:(((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((

1km away and im gonna use belts

[jolly furnace]

do you think Ican fit this entire vertical motor factory into the mk1 blueprint creator?

[past reef]

I really don't think you have enough space for constructor + assembler + 1 merge/split lane in a 4x4

I have done 18 stator no shard/45 stator with shard in a 5x5 but not sure how that'd go with rotor as I'm exclusively doing copper rotor for mass production

[jolly furnace]

okay thats fine, im early enough where idont think i need to build like this

[past reef]

I think it's possible to do motor like that as well and make the bp vertically stackable since the layout I'm on can stack 4 assemblers on the top floor which means I can do both steel rotor + stator. but would probably need shard to reach 5 motor per min per bp with only iron input

[plain fossil]

i love that my factories have the most thoughtful belt placement UNTIL i bring everything to a mani

but at least its not clipping

[neat crest]

Someone choose for me.
I have a plan for 3 turbo motors with inputs of:
66 silica, 219.33 copper ingot, 30 quartz crystal, 180 alu casing, 121 rubber, 19.166 Caterium ingot, 66.25 iron pipe, and 186 wire.

Should I scale this up 3x and make 9 turbo motors/min, or leave it at 3/min?

[brisk smelt]

mk3 maybe

[brisk smelt]

scale it up 9x to 27/min!

[neat crest]

I don't think I need quite that many

[brisk smelt]

then 9/min

whts ur t5 spelevator production goal

[neat crest]

I just started t5 and have only the first milestone so I don't know how many thermal propulsion rockets get used in the elevator parts

[wind spade]

if you can't decide, just roll a dice, has same effect as asking here

[neat crest]

I could look it up, but....

[prisma kraken]

i'd go a bit up from there, 15/min is kind of what i shoot for

[brisk smelt]

then however much u want doesnt really matter

unless you have a goal in mind

[prisma kraken]

really i think that you probably want to shoot for a rate that sustains one manufacturer making TPR's at the least

which turns out to be 1/min (had to look it up)

[neat crest]

TPR only needs 1/min tho. But I think 9 will work well and make all my ratios really even

ill go for nine thanks for the Input (lol)

[prisma kraken]

big fan on using good ratios if it isn't straining the world resources

excess ones are always nice to sink, and you can never have enough mk3 miners 🙂

[brisk smelt]

nooo i love my repeating decimals!

[prisma kraken]

well, you can say the non-repeating ones over and over

[neat crest]

I spent multiple hours planning this out by hand, I don't know why I don't just use a planner tool. there's no point

I really wish the base game had some sort of planner contained within. I hate having to use 3rd party tools & wikis to play games

[brisk smelt]

to-do list!

[neat crest]

here's the turbo chain. i think its nice. and i got all the values right too

[brisk smelt]

not really, imo using 3rd party tools is perfectly normal for games

[wind spade]

It's very much out of scope for the game

[brisk smelt]

games arent expected to teach you how to play it well

[neat crest]

i know its normal I just don't approve

just my opinion

[wind spade]

Also devs rarely know the "meta"

[neat crest]

i just noticed ur the guy who makes the calculator lmao. its nice. thanks

[jolly furnace]

im gonna build my first vert factory, any tips on orginazation?

im trying to achieve 10 motors per min, is it better to make a floor for every item like ingots and stuff, or just a floor for only major end components

[prisma kraken]

i tend to sort of make the ingots on a floor and pass them up to constructors and assemblers and pass them up to the next level of refinement until i have my end-product - nothing really rigidly defined, but generally I find it a pretty good starting point for a layout

[amber umbra]

@jolly furnace Technically anything can work. I like having each floor be identical. So I’d design a single “production column” with raw to motors then stack that multiple times. Helps with planning as you don’t end up with certain floors being much fewer machines.

[brisk smelt]

build a foundation of like 40x30 or something then expand up once u got no more space

put refineries, PA, tall buildings on one side with fewer floor

[amber umbra]

If you are trying to figure out vertical belt routing, playing with vertical smelter designs is a fast way to figure out the designs. Or maybe assemblers to maintain the complexity of multiple belts.

[jolly furnace]

okayt hanks for the advice guys 👍

do you guys also route logic on floors of their own? I see some people do it but idk how necessary it is

I dont think 10 motors per min even requires that much anyway

[amber umbra]

Logistic floors are personal preference mainly down to if you like seeing the belt routing or not. Logi floor = hide the belts.

I personally like seeing the clean belt routing, so no logistic floors for me.

[neat crest]

I like logistic floors if you're actually trying to build a factory you walk around inside....if you're like me and just build towers with no walk space, then I don't bother with logistic floors

it is good tho to build blueprints of constructors and smelters specifically with mergers and splitters routed underneath the machine. It'll save you a lot of space

With assemblers it becomes a bit unwieldy to put them underneath.

[amber umbra]

Yea logistic floors need proper walls, etc. on your vertical factory otherwise they look janky imo. If you omit them you can have open sided factories that look alright still.

[brisk smelt]

not really you can fit a motor factory in a mk3 bp lol

[prisma kraken]

i used to create separate logistics floors to keep things tidy, now with ficsit innovations like the conveyor ceiling mount™️, i just do most of my logistics on the ceiling of the floor underneath the machines

(don't laugh, the ceiling mount was introduced in update 7)

if i know i'm going to need a lot of belts and/or routing to/from a train station, yeah that stuff gets its own floor with ample space

[past reef]

tbf you can kinda make a walkable factory without logistics floor just lift all the belts/pipes up, though lifted pipe doesn't look good

[steel panther]

Guys I'm going crazy. I can't, for the life of me, figure out what's wrong with my conveyor belt setup.
I've been trying to fix it for more than 15 hours
Can anybody help me? I'll send a diagram of what I'm trying to accomplish

It goes on for a total of 10 machines. The idea is to always keep LINE 1 full (Mk. 3 = 270 res/min). LINE 2 always tries to direct as many resources as possible to LINE 1, and when it fills, it carries the overflow forward to the next Smart Splitter, and the cycle repeats.

Each machine consumes 45 res/min (Foundry making Steel Ingots). The Smart Splitter on LINE 1 always tries to keep the first machine full. When it's full, it carries the resources to the second machine and so on.

The way I understand it, I should be able to run at least 10.667 machines with this setup (240 * 2 / 45 = 10.667)

But, in practice, it can actually run only 7.667 machines! 7 first machines at 100% efficiency and the 8th at 66%. That's a consumption of ~345 res/min, while I'm feeding a total of 480!

The input lines are not running smoothly, they seem to be clogged or something, but I can't understand why.

Does anyone know why it's not working?

[deft lichen]

mergers aren't priority mergers

what is your max belt? are you using mk4s?

[past reef]

there's no priority on merging, you can do smart manifold like that but you have to merge line 2 when line 1 almost run out

[deft lichen]

the first merger is receiving 240+240 while it can only output 270, that means it will pause both lines 1 and 2, not only line 2

[past reef]

if you don't have mk4 belt yet, you can split line 2 evenly and merge 120 in after machine number 3 or so

[deft lichen]

pausing line 1 is what's causing you problems

[deft lichen]

either this, or just an injected manifold

[steel panther]

mk3

[deft lichen]

#math-and-meta message

your setup would require both priority splitters and mergers, but there are no priority mergers

[plain fossil]

i have let my monster loose

hopefully murphys law sits this one out

[steel panther]

@deft lichen
hold on, I'm not getting it very clearly yet. What do you mean with "priority merger"?

The way I'm thinking about it:

• The first Merger receives 240+240, but it outputs only 270, making the line coming from the first Smart Splitter "Any" port fill up.
• The first Smart Splitter would start sending the overflow, since the "Any" port would be filled
• The Smart Splitter that is connected to the machine would send 45 res/min, and that would clear the line that comes from the merger, allowing the cycle to continue

[deft lichen]

the merger pauses both lines 1 and 2 because it's oversupplied

it takes equal inputs from both lines, and blocks a line while it takes from the other

any smart splitter shenanigans on line 2 is not relevant because of this

[steel panther]

oh, you mean it'll take 50% from each belt that connects to it, right? That makes sense

[plain fossil]

Is this worth or do i go 5/min

2.5k crude oil 💀

[prisma kraken]

that all loots painful. specifically because you aren't using a recycled loop

the plan you've listed uses btw 900-1800 plastic. that's somewhere between 300 & 600 crude with recycled plastic

[woeful citrus]

Satisfactory calculator is not helping me right now

[prisma kraken]

sftools is considerably easier to read

[woeful citrus]

Yes but I need to know how to load balance it

And I can't tell it what resource nodes I'm using

[hearty frost]

That’s where the math comes in. I personally find it easiest to sit down with a pencil (so you can erase) and paper and draw it out.

[woeful citrus]

The biggest problem I'm facing is that 65 doesn't really have a good ratio to balance into 480

limited by belt speed

[hearty frost]

You can adjust your input/required output and always just have excess that you can either store, let it back up, or sink the excess.

[jolly furnace]

is therea better way to merge these 7 constructors?

[woeful citrus]

Just merger in front all all of them

[hearty frost]

You can manifold merge or load balance merge depending on your belt speed allowances, your output rate/min relative to those belts.

[jolly furnace]

ah okay, thank you

[prisma kraken]

technically, you can remove the last one on the manifold since it only is merging one belt 🙂

[woeful citrus]

I mean sure but mine is a blueprint for scalability

[prisma kraken]

but yeah, there's very little reason to not use a straight manifold for merging output

[woeful citrus]

Anyway I need to somehow balance a multiple of 65 into 480 per belt

[prisma kraken]

if you have a production line that backs up a whole lot, the merging of lines in series like is pictured can cause the machines to drain at an uneven rate. It is almost never an actual concern, but understanding that that causes the behavior is why i bring it up

[prisma kraken]

sounds like a job for a 780 belt; 780/65 = 12

[woeful citrus]

I haven't unlocked that tier yet

I haven't even got an oil refinery yet lol

[prisma kraken]

how i knew that so quickly is that both 780 and 65 are multiples of 13

[woeful citrus]

Not even close to getting to tier 7

Unfortunately

[prisma kraken]

i call 52, 65, and 780 'the 13's in drag'

i'm not 100% sure, but i think the only recipes that use those numbers at this point involve screws and pure iron which is designed to support making screws

[woeful citrus]

Pure iron is my headache rn

Mostly because of mk 4 belts being slow

[steel knot]

Load merge them into an industrial storage container and split from there?

[prisma kraken]

compare:

[steel knot]

I had to get 600 each and ended up shoving all inputs into an industrial and doing a mk2+ mk4

[prisma kraken]

there is only ONE item in the game you need iron ingots to make

[woeful citrus]

Huh

I use them for everything

[prisma kraken]

yeah, well, um, yeah. that's why pure iron is a trap

[woeful citrus]

Well anyway I have 60 refineries so 5/12 mergers is the ratio I was going for

[prisma kraken]

its a royal pain to build,lol

[amber umbra]

@steel panther Sharing in case it's useful for you.

I think this style setup will still stutter the inputs if you don't consume everything. Haven't thought in depth about it though since I just sunk the final extra bit I didn't need when testing.

[sly ether]

are tractors worth it or should i wait for trucks to do small-scale delivery?

[amber umbra]

Tractors delivering coal is pretty convenient pre-trucks. Throughput is high for both of them though.

[sly ether]

thank you, exactly the answer i needed!

[vast oar]

Also, if you set up tractors now, you can upgrade them to trucks later since you can just load the path

[north mauve]

Oh no

Hey how much waste does a uranium fuel rod produce per minute, no overclocks?

[spare jolt]

*insert obligatory recycled plastic/rubber loop reminder here*

[plain fossil]

lmao im going 3.75/min. Less decimals to wrap my head around

[fossil basalt]

10

50 per rod

[prisma kraken]

isn't that more of a belt compressor than anything?

[prisma kraken]

tractors generally are better than trucks. they're more maneuverable, have extra height clearance (often trucks get stuck when going under things), use less fuel, are easier to drive and the extra capacity of the truck is rarely useful. all together, prefer using tractors over trucks unless you really need the extra capacity

[sly ether]

huh, the more you know. thank you!