math-and-meta

[fickle scaffold]

Too bad satisfactory calculator doesn't have this

[thorny onyx]

The wiki has the numbers

[crimson summit]

Assuming no hidden variables... that should be 0.14 generators per compacted coal.
Thus 120 compacted coal = 120 x 0.14 = 16.8 generators.

[plush gulch]

There is a cheeky way to avoid pumps

When they are all connected together by junctions for example only 1 pipe needs to be above your target height and every other pipe will have enough pressure

[tired valve]

Wait really lol - actually now that you mention it, when i was placing them the blue ping that would show headlift it was splitting off at all the junctions and i wondered why

so essentially there isnt really a "throughput" limit to what it can do in terms of total volume connected with junctions to a system

[vapid gorge]

you spelt 'pointless' really weirdly there

[pallid knoll]

how do i need to organise this with block and path signals?

edit:

[fickle scaffold]

Thanks

This combines and evenly distributes water from 6.3 extractors, right?

[vast mist]

okay the separate water system is up and running

I've tried shutting off the bauxite supply, the coke supply, and the scrap sinks
and turning them back on to see if the system recovers (these are 3 separate tests, not at the same time)

[oblique hollow]

Aaaaand? Did it manage to recover?

[vast mist]

yep, everything works

[oblique hollow]

Neat!

[vast mist]

one thing I could still try is shutting off the water supply, but I don't think I have the patience

[oblique hollow]

If you shut off freshwater then i can already tell you that the system will NOT waterlog xd

[vast mist]

it takes absolutely forever to get the waste water refineries up and running, so to kickstart the system I have an extra pump, which I shut off once the system is full enough

which is fine by me, I always babysit my factories until they run the way I want
(rather than leaving and hoping it'll sort itself out)

anyway I'm very happy with how it turned out

I suppose I better get to making the next floor: smelters and constructors
as for the heavy modular frames and nitrogen, those will come in via drone ports on the roof

[oblique hollow]

Glad to hear its working as intended

[tame moon]

Built a flowchart of my old save for a new map. Did a bit of optimization and tried to group as much by "production zone", consolidating production where possible. Note: "To Zone(s)" isn't always accurate.

Nuclear power isn't at max, just enough to get 2 uranium nuclear power plants working. Everything else is designed to be at the minimum needed to complete the chain with a small overproduction sometimes.

No alternative recipes or overclocking is used. Sharing in case it's useful for anyone else.

[amber umbra]

That’s a lot

[vast mist]

I love a good flowchart

[unborn dome]

Ballpark, how much of a 200-stack item could a drone deliver if it's travelling around 1/4 of the map? Like are we talking 50/min max? 100/min max? 500/min max?

[vapid gorge]

afaik this doesn't take into account drone speeds though #math-and-meta message

[vapid gorge]

you effectively can't balance fluids but if you flood the system it might still work. Though in general you shouldn't do big merge/splits like this

[unborn dome]

Thanks! So if I'm reading that right, a 200-stack item over ~3km tops out at ~500/min

And I assume that graph is assuming pre-multifuel-battery-only speed

[vapid gorge]

for 1 drone yeah but you can have 2 drones between 2 ports

I'm not sure if anyone has any idea if drones were slower or faster before 1.0.

like maybe batteries were max speed pre 1.0 and they slowed everything down with only a couple fuels keeping to hte top? or maybe drones are just faster now with the faster fuels

[unborn dome]

Hmm that's a good point

I'd assumed battery-powered drones were identical, with new speeds added above and below that baseline, but you could be right too.

[amber umbra]

From my testing:
"Drone Throughput one-way for cross map (6:21 round trip time). ~1.8 stacks/(drone)"

But generally the UI on the drone port does a nice job of showing the throughput stats once a drone makes one trip. Easier to just directly test it with a janked in setup.

[unborn dome]

That more-or-less correlates with the graph @vapid gorge linked to

[unborn dome]

With what fuel were you using for this?

[amber umbra]

Batteries.

There were some reddit posts showing throughput vs fuel type near 1.0 release btw.

@unborn dome You know about the "many-to-one" style setups for drones right?

[unborn dome]

Vaguely, I've unlocked them but haven't built any yet (on account of not having automated aluminum yet, current project).

It's when you have a single drone port, like at a battery factory, and send drones from all the other locations to a single one to pick up fuel?

[amber umbra]

Yup. The whole "a drone port can only have one drone assigned to it" naturally pushes towards that setup. Definitely try it out if you're getting into drones.

[vapid gorge]

if you're thinking about having more than 2 drones deliver to a port you have to be v careful as the landing sequence takes up a LOT of time

[unborn dome]

My current plan is to build a battery factory in the red forest, with 1-2 ports, and have a port at every other location that has a drone homed there that flies to the battery factory whenever the remote fuel supply gets low.

Or perhaps I'll just combine the battery and aluminum factories so drones collecting aluminum casings can refuel at the same time

[vapid gorge]

don't do that

[amber umbra]

The nice thing with the "many-to-one" style setups is that it functions for any item. The phase 4 intermediates like HMF that have only a few downstream consumers work well with it.

[vapid gorge]

if you're trading continuous items between two points with drones then both items will need to be consumed as delivered.

or sunk. which will be a massive battery waste

[unborn dome]

Oh true, or one backing up will stop the flow of the other one

[opaque quartz]

The only place in my drone network where I do something like that is shipping aluminum ingots to my rocket fuel factory inbound, which then gets turned into tanks to be packaged which is then shipped back outbound as fuel for my whole drone network

[versed violet]

Do stingers have regional/biome variations? This one looks bluish-shiny.
[arachnophobia warning]

[tardy aspen]

how many nuclear facilitys can i make? (somehow i got 5000 uranium per min)

[wary rapids]

you want plutium power or to sink and use for drones?

[vapid gorge]

that's incredibly dependent on what recipes you use and how you clock them. Use satisfactory tools to figure it out. Also the base amount of uranium is 2100 and is way more than you'll need on it's own

[final glen]

😦 limits of single car push pull double lane.... need to redesign entire train system.

I didn't know the train ignored traffic

all those trains attempting to supply this.

[wary rapids]

I Have been doing allot of analysis on the entire fuel cycles recently 600-1200 uranium should be feasible and will supply 360,000 mW uranium power. and up to 270,000Mw plutonium power at the price off 108 plutonium waste per minute.

[gray trail]

My previous set-up was 1200 uranium input and 135 plutonium waste output

[opaque quartz]

From a single normal uranium node I’m using 540/min, doing the full nuclear chain: 60 GW from uranium NPPs, 100 GW from plutonium, and 50 GW from ficsonium with 2 plutonium rods/min leftover for drones and sinking

I suppose I could OC one of my uranium rod and plutonium rod modules to consume that last 60/min of uranium (I used the fertile alt which takes uranium+waste for plutonium rods)

[final glen]

My AI chat bot said to decentralize my nuclear plant.

[vapid gorge]

I mean, it's not an impossible thing to do, but you should absolutely avoid listening to an ai chat bot

they are designed to sound right

[vast mist]

progress on the FMF factory: the scrap -> ingots -> casings floor is up and running, and I've done some decorating

next up I'll need to build 12 blenders, 3 drone ports for importing HMF / packaged nitrogen / batteries, and perhaps another 3 drone ports for exporting to future factories

[vapid gorge]

@crystal kestrel would have to see the whole layout but it looks like your pipes are very messy so not surprising you have flow issues

[crystal kestrel]

first play through

[vapid gorge]

oh yeah that's fair, but would need to see the whole layout still

[crystal kestrel]

may try to do a video tour of my facility or msot of it

so sprawled out now

[vapid gorge]

probably should re do it at that point. Don't move fluids further than you have to, process the steps next to each other

[crystal kestrel]

mostof my waters from Lake right by hub

its the oil that has to travel but I may move once I can SOME of that further back to source.

msotly for power

[vapid gorge]

burn the oil where you extract it

[crystal kestrel]

only one may stay is one where fuels a byproduct of a byproduct of another refinary

[vapid gorge]

...what?

[crystal kestrel]

so one I am producing I beleive rubber, which byproduct is a purple residue, which then goes to be turned to fuel

which then goes to power a generator

[vapid gorge]

suuuure

[crystal kestrel]

atm I am drowning in rubber and plastic manfacturing

just dont have much that needs it that I am producing

[vapid gorge]

that still doesn't explain why you can't process all hte oil on locaiton so you don't have to move it far

[crystal kestrel]

oh as i said I am likely to being moving some stuff back there

I'll just have to convayer or learn trains to move other stuff made by it to main base for use

[vapid gorge]

conveyors are fine for early learning

[crystal kestrel]

just got level 5 ones anyways

[fading talon]

is there any way to get rid of these icons, or make them smaller??

[lone galleon]

Hey, I am doing something unorthodox and there are no guides to help me, but does anyone know how to pull off a multi line bus with splitters so that the first line is always full without needing 50 splitters and mergers every time I want to pull off a line?

[opaque quartz]

Watch the 1.0 playthrough by Nilaus, he did a main bus design https://youtu.be/bCBYkCsinbI?si=kEiCOWiTSfTgMC4u

[lone galleon]

are you talking about the thing he does at 21:40? b/c thats not really helpful b/c I have several lines of the same thing, not different things

[opaque quartz]

His approach is to stack all resources vertically so they are all the same lane

[lone galleon]

OK so like, say I have 24 lines of iron. I want to pull off this bus, but I want the overflow to continue. But after each pull, I want to make sure I'm not feeding in an overflow line that isn't full to the next branch. So I either have to load balance at every branch or do all 24 lines then load balance them? I was thinking at first I could run a line of smart splitters across and they would just balance themselves, but that doesn't work

[opaque quartz]

maybe post a screenshot of your design? I’m having a hard time visualizing what you are describing

[lone galleon]

here is 6 lines, one is smart split off, but the overflow keeps going

[opaque quartz]

yeah idk what the best approach for this design would be. I like what Nilaus did with vertical stacking and then blueprinting the branch off

[lone galleon]

OK but he isnt doing the same thing, he is just branching off 1 belt

I think having each line run out and then merge what is left is the right answer TBH

The lines are too close to do the smart splitter thing without it looking like a clipping mess

[opaque quartz]

Yeah. Might have more luck stacking the belts but it’s gonna be challenging regardless because of how big the splitters/mergers are

[lone galleon]

I'll just make a line balancer after using all the belts I guess. The issue is I am going to do this with everything so I wanted to hash out the issue now

[opaque quartz]

Yeah definitely want to have your plan dialed in before scaling it out

[lone galleon]

this is what I get for trying to use factorio plans

[oblique hollow]

Yeah factorio playstyle doesnt translate well to this game

Just cause they share a genre doesnt mean you can play both the same way and get the same mileage out of it

[lone galleon]

but.... BUS

[fading talon]

imagine doing perfect ratio in factorio

[lone galleon]

imagine noclip in factorio

[oblique hollow]

Bus usually falls flat in this game because our fastest belt is slower than the slowest belt in factorio.

Aaand because the resources never run out. so centralization also has no main benefit

[fading talon]

and i dont mean it in the sarcastic way, i mean literally imagine it, it would be nightmarish lol

[oblique hollow]

Afaik our ratios are a lot simpler and neater than most of the ratios in factorio

[lone galleon]

yes but a train can't be faster than a belt

[fading talon]

yeah but a train is not a bus... heh.... heh

[lone galleon]

an infinite source doesn't have a speed

just a rate

[oblique hollow]

Yeah

The main benefit of trains is bidirectional transport and it is a bit easy to expand and reuse

You can of course just belt everything

Thats your decision

[lone galleon]

I've been on cosmetic build mode for the last 4 years so, I'm not really trying to GET places in the game

[oblique hollow]

Main reason to use anything in the game is aesthetics tbh

Train can be cool.

And I personally do not like huge swarms of belts runnung around

[lone galleon]

I have seen the show cased mega bases and stuff and they add some life to a factory, but I just love the waterfall of items on a bus too much

a nice clean belt system looks so amazing though

its the difference between looking like this

[oblique hollow]

I have different preferences

[lone galleon]

mmmm belts

[lone galleon]

What's the best min/max output recipe for Reinforced Iron Plates? I use to make stitched Iron with iron wire. But I can't find my calculations

[oblique hollow]

Min input for max output?
Adhered iron plate
downside is its not fast

If you want pure speed, theres bolted iron plate

[naive anvil]

Is this a good phase 1 factory?

Wire: 120 / min
Iron Plate: 80 / min
Cable: 60 / min
Iron Rod: 30 / min
Concrete: 20 / min
Screw: 10 / min
Reinforced Iron Plate: 10 / min
Smart Plating: 5 / min
Rotor: 5 / min

[oblique hollow]

probably.

its only good if its enough for your needs

[pseudo plank]

im currently trying to make aluminum. the alumina solution wont fill the pipes out of the refinerys for some reason

[oblique hollow]

flush the pipe network and then see if it fills it then

make sure you didnt accidentally connect the pipes wrongly, like having them be supplied with water elsewhere

[pseudo plank]

o wow. yea i guess maybe a little water got in there (somehow, not sure how that even happened)

there it goes

[oblique hollow]

speaking of aluminum, make sure you dont fall for the beginners trap when recycling the water

[pseudo plank]

this was the only thing i could find when i tried to google this

i assume cycleing the half of water you get back is a poor idea

[opaque quartz]

It is possible to set up recycle loops that mix fresh and recycled water, but it’s tricky. Safer bet is to keep your waste and fresh water separate

ie you have refineries that do one or the other

[pseudo plank]

i have a wet cement factory next door that will use the water just fine

[unborn ermine]

I mean, its only tricky if you make it that way.
Though its a bit of voodoo with and without a VIP junction.

[gaunt plover]

I managed just fine with some buffers, and the extra water extractors for startup on a power switch

Flushing a buffer is also easy for troubleshooting purposes

And of course a valve after the buffer

[unborn ermine]

those are 2 key words to have your pipe masters lash out

[naive anvil]

How can I achieve this with mk2 belts?

[opaque quartz]

Do you have three iron nodes you can tap for at least ~200/min ore each? Feed that into three groups of smelters with three separate mk2 belts

3 belts can do 360 total

[naive anvil]

I've got 3 nodes, two on 120 and 1 on 115

[opaque quartz]

Yeah so you’ll want to do 4 smelters for each node

I would just round up to 360 to make it math easier

[naive anvil]

hmm, I see what ur saying

[wind spade]

Arrows do not represent belts

[naive anvil]

What do you mean?

[wind spade]

The arrow just says "you need to move X resources from this group of machines to that group of machines"

It doesn't mean it has to be just one belt

[naive anvil]

Oh yeah I knew that.

Just missing some splitters and mergers

[gaunt plover]

I use buffers and valves quite a bit. 100% efficiency, so 🤷‍♂️

[unborn ermine]

wow, a day where greeny overlooks valves and buffers

its a ficsmas miracle

[gaunt plover]

I can keep at it if you want 😉

[fallow vector]

I have been too busy to play Satisfactory today because apparently 1.0 has infinities involved 🤷‍♂️

[fallow vector]

🤦‍♂️ I'm getting infinities because my planner says "if you want compacted coal, get it from rocket fuel"

[grave prism]

You may want to disable sam recipe. It lets ya do wonky conversions like that

[empty thistle]

4 miners connected, mark 2 for all, last two still struggling...

[vapid gorge]

ok now are the miners clogged?

[empty thistle]

no

[vapid gorge]

look at their lights, are they yellow sometimes/

[empty thistle]

i see them doing 54, 53, 54

[vapid gorge]

just stare at them for 30 seconds

[empty thistle]

sometimes

wait

[vapid gorge]

ok you have a flow issue. Look at the belts. Are they stuttering ?

[empty thistle]

no they are all green

maybe it just caught up????

yes it did...

YALL IM DUMB

[dapper drum]

not dumb at all. you just aren't used to this game's mechanics

[empty thistle]

1st in math for academic decathlon and wow...

yeah, u right

[vapid gorge]

what was the issue in the end?

[dapper drum]

it sounds to me like the manifold was still manifolding

[vapid gorge]

hopefully

[empty thistle]

yeah its producing the exact right amount

ty tho

[void zinc]

apparently If u put max 250% Oil extractors in all of the North oil deposits, and use all the oil for turbofuel, then use all of it for fuel gens
If u compute how many fuel gens needed or how many crude oil needed or how many turbofuel needed, it will all come out as 1916.66666666 or 63866.66666666

[fallow vector]

nah, by the time I found out what the problem was I had implemented support for infinity in the calculation part of it (the UI doesn't display the infinity, but at least it doesn't crash any more)

now having to add special attention for power shards because they moved parent type between update 8 & 1.0

[grave prism]

Gotcha, i hate when they move definitions around -_-

[fickle scaffold]

Will this split evenly water from 14.2 extractors? I'm powering 37.8 generators

[amber umbra]

Please no.

[fickle scaffold]

I don't understand how to work with fluids 😦

I need 1701 water per minute, I'm not exactly sure of the correct way of gathering all the water to redistribute it, i need to put it into 6 pipes for transportation

[gaunt plover]

Split it up in groups, don’t try to connect everything in a single run

[wind spade]

Hook them to one (or more) pipes and don't try to force fluids to do anything

[versed violet]

This should not be ahppening anymore, should it?
I loaded path to truck, then it just phased away to somehwre. now I see one in 0,0,0

I am confused. Tried driving it away (it was on the ground) then stepped out for a moment and it just sunk through the ground. After reload its not at 0,0 anymore, I see something nearby base whwre the original path was. It fixed itself?

[hollow sigil]

i'm sure some one has talked about this at some point before because fluids in this game are nutzo. but i was wondering if any one could help me understand why sulfuric acid backs up in my nuclear facility. i have 2 refineries making 90 sulfuric acid p/m feeding 3 blinders ( that make encased uranium cells ) using 96 sulfuric acid per minute and outputing 24 per minute. the output goes to another blinder for the recycling portion of my plant. that blender uses 18. off the input to that blender i have a valve set to 6 to send that six back to the beginning to combine with the 90 to give the first 3 blenders their 96. for some reason the pipe connecting the output from the 3 blenders making the uranium cells to the recycling blender clogs up eventually. i was just wondering if that's just a bug or is it a feature?

[oblique hollow]

1. valves are inaccurate, they dont precisely limit fluids to the value you set, so you cannot use them for precise limiting in feedback loops.
2. Just so i understood: all the sulfuric acid is still merged in the same pipe network (fresh and recycled), correct?

Also, why use a valve to begin with?

[hollow sigil]

becuase i was just following a walkthrough i saw online

[oblique hollow]

or, if you do use one, just dont set a limit

valves are pressure sensitive. That usually just means they react to how full the input pipe is

[hollow sigil]

thats what it looks liek when the out put of the recyclling blender comes back to the 3 blenders

[oblique hollow]

So if you set a valve to 6/min, your pipe needs to be COMPLETELY FULL before it starts to output those 6/min in any way

[hollow sigil]

i have the 2 valves on the right to wide open

[oblique hollow]

the valves into the blenders are completely useless

they can only be detrimental in fact

[hollow sigil]

oh.. so if i just go upen that valve that's set 2 6 it should still work.. the blenders will just take what they can?

[wind spade]

my personal recommendation would be to never use valves

and take every online guide with a grain of salt, I see weird or straight up wrong advices regularly

[oblique hollow]

Machines usually always run better if you just feed them with full force.
they will take what they need

[hollow sigil]

yeah i've been struggling for weeks with just this one issue

[oblique hollow]

If you do use valves, 90% of the time, its better to not touch their limit

[hollow sigil]

okay i'll open the valves and see what it does.

[oblique hollow]

The last part of this is what i tend to call the "beginners trap for recycling"
Its the same deal with aluminum byproduct water

merging fresh and byproduct water (or acid in this case) is almost always a trap

The system wants to dealock because that is in fact the most stable state

[hollow sigil]

i don't use any valves in aluminum. i just idle down 2 of the 3 refineries. and the whole aluminum making works smoothly

[oblique hollow]

Idle down?

[hollow sigil]

turn down from 100%

sorry wrong wording

[oblique hollow]

do you keep the water cycles seperate in aluminum?

or do you also merge byproduct water with fresh water

[hollow sigil]

i have 3 refineries, the first 2, 1 of them is at 100 clocks speed making aluminum solution and taking in it's own fresh water. the 2nd one is taking in water from the 3rd refinery making the scrap. and i think i have it turned down to like 60% or something.. can't remember

i'd go look but i'm miles away from my aluminum factory

[oblique hollow]

so the alumina refineries have seperate pipes.
One refinery gets fresh water and the other one only gets water from the scrap refineries?

[hollow sigil]

yeah

[oblique hollow]

Congrats, you avoided the issue there then

Wise decision

[hollow sigil]

also followed a walk through on that too.. that one worked out though.

[oblique hollow]

Uranium Cell blenders are a bit more complicated there due to them being a single machine

and they make and use the fluid in one go

But still, its better to do the same there and keep fresh acid supply seperated from byproduct acid

[hollow sigil]

mathmaticly it all makes sense.. but fluid acts weird in this game

[oblique hollow]

It doesnt come down to mathematics in most cases

[wind spade]

tbh, if all you do is copy walkthroughs, you won't really learn much 😦 I'd personally recommend playing the game yourself and learning it from playing (the game does a good job in pushing you towards the "desired" direction, while giving you enough freedom to explore the game)

[oblique hollow]

It comes down to system design

[hollow sigil]

i guess not

would could one do with the little bit of acid coming out of the recyaling blender then?

[oblique hollow]

You feed it to that one blender still, but that one blender also gets its own acid output fed back in

you can clock that one blender so that it uses its own output acid as well as all the acid from the 3 blenders

just clock it to 80%, like the other 3

that makes it use 32 acid and produce 8
it gets 24 from the other 3, and 24 + 8 = 32

[hollow sigil]

then i would have to underclock my one manufacture making the uranium cells too

[oblique hollow]

more like overclock

your 1 seperate blender is currently at 60%

i want you to clock it up to 80%

[hollow sigil]

these 3 are at 80

[oblique hollow]

3 at 80 one at 60, is it not?

[hollow sigil]

the ones making encased uranium are at 80 and the recycling one is at 120

so that it matches the input of the partical excelerator

[oblique hollow]

well that doesnt work out

oh wait i see

the non-fissile uranium

you did a combined setup

[hollow sigil]

and the partical accelerator is set at 60%

wish i could get a good arial view for ya

each manufacture feeds 2 nuclear plants. and the plants get their fuel a babies breath away from running out.. practicly last second. which is fun to watch some times

time will tell if opening the valve set to 6 and the 3 valves to the 3 blenders that were set to 32 will work.. it backs up so slowly

seems to be working so far though.

https://www.satisfactorytips.com/layouts/no-nuclear-waste-nuclear-layout

that is the "plan" i followed

[oblique hollow]

yeah i think i remember that setup

[wind spade]

fyi pretty much all of those plans are outdated in 1.0

[oblique hollow]

outdated from what i remember

[wind spade]

(Total even told me to shut down the website, I just didn't get to it yet 😦 )

[hollow sigil]

all the numbers still match up on the inputs and outputs

[oblique hollow]

the accelerator is at 60%?
what recipe, normal plutonium pellet recipe

[hollow sigil]

i mean every thing goes smooth except for the acid

yeah

[oblique hollow]

yeah theres the issue

the 3 blenders make 24/min acid, but the one non-fissile blender only uses 18

if i trace the numbers back

one accelerator at 60% uses 60/min non-fissile

[hollow sigil]

and then the left over 6 goes back around and combines with the 90 to make the 96 that the 3 blenders need

[oblique hollow]

yeah and thats the step you should avoid

i can tell you how to reconfigure the blenders so its seperated

that does mean the non-fissile blender will need its own acid supply though
its own acid refinery

[hollow sigil]

you can try lol.. i'm not great with numbers hince why i used some one elses plans

oh..

[oblique hollow]

that first step is easy:
give that blender its own refinery making 18/min acid

[hollow sigil]

huh.. then what to do with the output from the 3 blinders?

[oblique hollow]

we will recycle the other acid in the first step

[hollow sigil]

can just make the 24 sulfuric acid go away?

[oblique hollow]

yes, like magic

the 3rd uranium cell blender will eat it

you just gotta adjust the pipes

only the first 2 blenders get fresh acid.
the 3rd uranium cell blender gets only byproduct acid

including its own acid

i might have to check numbers though, give me a moment

[hollow sigil]

right now it's taking in 32 p/m and out puting 8

at 80% clock speed

would it make it any easier for you if you joined in on my game to take a first hand look at things?

[oblique hollow]

no i already understood the setup

[hollow sigil]

ok

[oblique hollow]

i just need to check the math because its hard to do it

[hollow sigil]

i agree lol

[oblique hollow]

basically:
I know that you can usually just have 3 blenders running at 100% feeding a 4th blender at 100%

but now i need to consider that

1. you have only 3 blenders
2. you want 60/min output, not 100/min

oh wait, got it

[hollow sigil]

would i also have to turn down the clock speed of the 3 manufactures they feed?

[oblique hollow]

nope

[hollow sigil]

ok.

[oblique hollow]

i got it now:
the first 2 blenders need to be at 120%, and the 3rd one at 80%

uh wait

damn it that doesnt fix it

ok, got it now i think
its 90%, 90% and 60%

so no overclocking

just a bit of shuffling around the clock speed

ok yeah those numbers work out

2 blenders at 90%, one at 60%

first 2 get fresh acid, last one only gets byproduct acid

[hollow sigil]

i have to rearrange my conveyor belts some so that each blender isn't feeading it's own manufacture

[oblique hollow]

yeah if thats the case

[robust notch]

Is it reasonable to use all of the alt recipes in the online satisfactory modeler

From a viewpoint in time saving

[hollow sigil]

i don't have many unlocked.

[robust notch]

Im also doing a megabase, so bringing everything to one place is inevitable

[wind spade]

not sure wdym by "reasonable"

modeller afaik doesn't do any optimisation for you, so it just uses whatever you select (not ideal imo)

[wind spade]

also, my recommendation is to not do megabase

[oblique hollow]

not all alts save time if thats what you mean
And just praying / accepting that the calc will output something nice and workable is a bit too much faith in the calc
If its a calc and not in fact Satisfactory Modeler.

[hollow sigil]

okay got that all figured out i think and for the reycling blender it just gets fresh acid then?

[oblique hollow]

yeah the one that makes non-fissile uranium gets fresh acid

[robust notch]

Ya I couldn't think of the name for it lol
I meant the calc

I mean what it's spat out so far has conserved so much resources

[oblique hollow]

If you are willing to accept anything the calc spits out then yeah you can just enable all.
But the downside is that the calc will also do some whacky stuff like ore conversion if thats left enabled

[robust notch]

I'll only use one pure iron node for all the phase three items

[oblique hollow]

It tries to conserve resources but the output is not always something reasonable in terms of complexity

[robust notch]

It does look like a mess I'm ngl

[wind spade]

well, it finds the mathematically optimal solution

whether the constraints are set correctly is up to the user

[oblique hollow]

If no constraints are set it just spits out whatever it calculates to be efficient

which is likely gonna be the case here

I prefer something reasonable to build vs something super efficient

[robust notch]

What I'll probably do is end up separating at least ingot production and a few other things

[oblique hollow]

Its why i hate pure recipes for the most part

[robust notch]

Just so I have more to spend

[wind spade]

I never claim that the "optimised" solution by Tools is the one that you should use. In the end, it's like a calculator - if you input wrong numbers, you get wrong result. And if you input right numbers, you may still not like the result 🙂

[robust notch]

Tbh the numbers is all i care about

I just wanna be able to do more with less

We'll see how I feel once I start building tho lmfao

[hollow sigil]

okay, time to go turn it all back on and see how she chooches

[oblique hollow]

usually when you keep fluids seperate like that it tends to run much smoother

especially cause the 3rd blender can usually only ever have not enough acid instead of too much

[hollow sigil]

@oblique hollow so far every machine is running at 100% effeniency

[oblique hollow]

well lets hope the acid doesnt build up.
It really shouldnt

[hollow sigil]

i appreciate the help . i was really hitting a road block with that acid

[oblique hollow]

if you ever have some kind of process where you need to recycle fluids (believe me, it will come back up) then try to keep fresh and byproduct fluid seperate

that usually avoids all issues

[hollow sigil]

that's so weird.. i feel like that shouldn't h ave to be a thing but i guess it is in this game.

but i will remember that from now on. learned something new today.

[oblique hollow]

It really comes down to process and system design theory.
If you ignore the math and instead view it from that perspective, it is an unstable system

Every single condition that could go wrong would lead to the system filling itself with acid and locking up

so if the system ever encounters a slight issue, that problem will in fact multiply and get worse

[hollow sigil]

well again i really do appreciate the help. i had never thought to do this. of course i didn't know that golden rule of keeping the fresh seperate from the byproduct.

which is why my aluminum production works and i just never made the connection

[oblique hollow]

If it was according to a guide, then they probably designed the system with that in mind

but do try to not just follow guides.
understand them

the limited bit of math you probably do know is usually enough for most of these things.

[pine gazelle]

i'm trying to do 20 warp drives/min, I should've done energy calculations beforehand...

[versed violet]

Troubleshooting continued - the truck teleported to 0,0 again after some time, and if I enter and drive it then exit, it sinks through the ground (looks like nanybots phasing), then after restart the truck is back in my base. Again, phasing into somehwere. managed to catch it and tried to disable autopilot and delete the path, but got a fancy crash. is this truck route borked?

Unhandled Exception: EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION reading address 0x0000000000000380

FactoryGameEGS_FactoryGame_Win64_Shipping!UFGSplinePathMovementComponent::TickComponent() [C:\BuildAgent2\work\9fc8da665efb5ffd\UE4\FactoryGame\Source\FactoryGame\Private\WheeledVehicles\FGSplinePathMovementComponent.cpp:90]
FactoryGameEGS_Engine_Win64_Shipping!FActorComponentTickFunction::ExecuteTickHelper<`FActorComponentTickFunction::ExecuteTick'::`2'::<lambda_1> >() [C:\BuildAgent2\work\9fc8da665efb5ffd\UE4\Engine\Source\Runtime\Engine\Classes\GameFramework\Actor.h:4554]
FactoryGameEGS_Engine_Win64_Shipping!FActorComponentTickFunction::ExecuteTick() [C:\BuildAgent2\work\9fc8da665efb5ffd\UE4\Engine\Source\Runtime\Engine\Private\Components\ActorComponent.cpp:1092]
FactoryGameEGS_Engine_Win64_Shipping!FTickFunctionTask::DoTask() [C:\BuildAgent2\work\9fc8da665efb5ffd\UE4\Engine\Source\Runtime\Engine\Private\TickTaskManager.cpp:280]
FactoryGameEGS_Engine_Win64_Shipping!TGraphTask<FTickFunctionTask>::ExecuteTask() [C:\BuildAgent2\work\9fc8da665efb5ffd\UE4\Engine\Source\Runtime\Core\Public\Async\TaskGraphInterfaces.h:1270]
FactoryGameEGS_Core_Win64_Shipping!FNamedTaskThread::ProcessTasksUntilQuit() ```

[pine gazelle]

guys if i need the maximum quantity of rubber from one oil node, what's the correct proportion of rubber/recycled rubber? I have all the alt recipes

[naive anvil]

how would I split 145 iron rods into one lane of 95 and another of 50, I have 9 producing 15 rods a minute and 1 producing 10. I'm losing my mind

[vapid gorge]

what is your fastest belt?

[wind spade]

make three groups of constructors, one making 95/min, one making 30/min and one making 50/min

[fickle scaffold]

Is there a limit to horizontal distance fluid travels before applying headlift?

[wind spade]

headlift doesn't affect horizontal travel

[fickle scaffold]

Yeah but like if I place a pump and then go 20 meters horizontally before actually going up will it apply headlift from pump after those 20 meters?

[wind spade]

headlift is only vertical, so it doesn't care about horizontal travel

[naive anvil]

mk2

[naive anvil]

30 is done, I'll get started on the other 2 groups

[fickle scaffold]

2 of my coal generators are starved of water adn i don't know why, I provide even more than i need at this point

The pipe goes up to it, but even for this I installed a pump in the back

And the pipe is almost full too, although flow rate is unstable

It's a manifold, but I think all other branches are already full so it shouldn't be doing this

[crimson summit]

I feel like beams are more important than pipes...

[vapid gorge]

you need overhead shots , these are nearly useless

[vapid gorge]

eh, depends on everything else you use. You can basically cut out beams from your world if you get the Encased Pipe recipe

[crimson summit]

Please elaborate. thought beams are important (although, I'm at Mk.3 belts. So...)

[wind spade]

Very much depends on other recipe choices

[vapid gorge]

you surpringly don't wait long for mk4 belts tbh. so you don't need many actual beams.

and if you get encased pipes you can use that for the mk4 belts

[vast mist]

encased pipe is easier to make, costs less steel and less limestone, and only slightly more assemblers, which is more than made up for by the reduced number of constructors to feed them
as far as I'm concerned it's a straight upgrade over the standard recipe

as for the molded recipes I haven't used either, never felt the need

[amber umbra]

@pine gazelle The recycled rubber/plastic alts convert fuel into rubber/plastic. Pair with the heavy oil residue -> diluted fuel alts for max rubber/plastic.

I personally just sink the resin and use separate loops for rubber and plastic output for simplicity.

[pine gazelle]

Well yes, but to maximize rubber production, how much has to go to the normal recipe and how much into the recycled rubber alt, assuming limited oil.

[amber umbra]

The recycled rubber/plastic setup paired with HOR, diluted is by far the most resource efficient recipe method.

Residual rubber the resin although merging it properly can potentially be tricky (maybe).

[pine gazelle]

I found this image online, it requires you to jumpstart the cycle using either plastic or rubber but I think this would be the maximum rubber possible from a fixed amount of oil, would you agree?

[vapid gorge]

yes pretty much, check out the link https://www.satisfactorytools.com/1.0/production?share=suVbLwmKbN237oMFTodh

[pine gazelle]

How interesting, you would produce the same (1800) of rubber and plastic when maximizing each one, truly wonderful.

[vapid gorge]

effectively the recipe chain just means you can create a total of 3 plubber per 1 oil

[pine gazelle]

plubber, haha

thank you

[amber umbra]

If you look at the relative numbers in that pic, the recycled loop gives 8x the rubber of the resin. Hence my choice to just sink the resin.

[vapid gorge]

just use it as the feeder stock easy peasy

[amber umbra]

Using it as the starter adds complexity imo. Just manually add a stack allows omitting the feed belts, machines. But fair enough to want to utilize it. I just heavily emphasize simplification in builds.

[vapid gorge]

just a few refineries. much less complex than repeatedly processing plstic to rubber, that rubber to plastic ect

[amber umbra]

Huh, I’m not sure what you mean.

We are talking about the production line setup where you have a looped belt of both rubber and plastic recycling?

One feeds the other with the extra priority splitter taken off.

[vapid gorge]

you don't actually need to loop it

Resin -> residual rubber

res rub -> plastic ->rubber -> plastic ect

Just keep expanding it

for example, no loops here, just expansion

[amber umbra]

I see. Idk the looped style seems the way to go.

[vapid gorge]

I think people do that because they see it on sftool, while that's just really teh only way to display it since it only does 1 bubble per resource

much less complicated just expanding it out

[amber umbra]

All good doing different styles.

[pallid knoll]

How would you divide this in modular factory's?

It is for modular engine

https://www.satisfactorytools.com/1.0/production?share=zNhN4kbL9zpqfW0dXQob

[vapid gorge]

I'd swap out the steel recipe for coke steel, tha tway you can cut out coal, use iron wire instead of copper wire so you just need iron and oil.

then you could build it in one spot very easily

[pallid knoll]

I don't have that recipe available

I already have the rubber at once place

[vapid gorge]

ah, well a good recipe hunt would serve you well 😄

not iron wire either?

[pallid knoll]

nope haha

I want to setup the spaceparts production first before I go exploring

[vapid gorge]

really? temporary space parts fabrication tends to do you , since you need a finite number of them

in any case if you want it all in one spot I'd probably use SCIM to search for a good spot for those resources

[pallid knoll]

I will use a modular factory for the Iron since I need a lot of that, rotor and smart plating on the train and build a motor and modular engine at another factory

[vapid gorge]

sure. lots of ways to do it 🙂

[raven slate]

@vapid gorge

[vapid gorge]

oh yeah you're doing a lot of bottom feeding.

how much fluid pm in those fuel pipes?

[vapid gorge]

and I take it your fuel gens are occasionally starving?

[raven slate]

Something like that.

My guess is its sloshing so the bottom pipe gets full and wont flow the right way.

[vapid gorge]

can you double check and make sure youre fuel producers are occasionally clogged with fuel? that would indicate strongly it's a flow issue

[raven slate]

they are.

[vapid gorge]

yeah ok, so how much do you care about having this system run at 100%?

cause a big fuel station is a pretty common spot for people to first cut their teeth on pipe flow issues

[raven slate]

I would like it to work, but I'm ready to just say fluids are to clever for their own good.

And I know you mean well, but good grief does annoyed brain read that as way to condescending/patronzing... Sorry.

[vapid gorge]

ah just to clarify it's absolutely not. I was trying to make you feel better as this is the place where most people run into problems

like you'll get people running into issues with the bare basics with coal power
and then everyone else basically will be having trouble geting their fuel station up and running at 100%

[raven slate]

this isn't my first time with this same headache.

[vapid gorge]

Well I could definitely help point out some places to start off with but you do sound tired and you said it was midnight so might not be the best head space to tackle this

probably will look less daunting with a bit of rest

[raven slate]

theres a 600 instead of 2700 hybrid oil that behaves fine when split into 2 300 pipes, but if the crude oil pipes are combined nto one 600 pipe breaks.

Most likely the two big things are basically sloshing because of the long below pipe, and PC being not beef enough as that seems to be what makes full 600 pipes break on me.

[vapid gorge]

well, I'll be a little busy over the next couple days but if you want I could dive into your save at some point and go through some things and help troubleshoot? Most of what I do on the server is help people with pipes xD

[raven slate]

it's alright. I just wish it was consistent on "shorter under made trouble" since the furthest south is constantly starving, but one in, despite being like 20m longer, is just fine

[vapid gorge]

it's surprising how small differences can really wonk up a fluid system.

one guy a while back couldn't figure out why his fuel system kept stuttering even with a loop

Went in the save and turned out 1 side of the fuel gens along the manifold was 0.5m higher up than the other

fluids do not like elevation changes or feeding from a lower elevation xD

[raven slate]

yes, which is why I tend to feed like the purple normally. who knows, maybe doing that stupidity will make them behave (I doubt it)

[vapid gorge]

often times, even when feeding significantly less than 600 down a pipe you'll want a loop like so

but in any case it sounds like you need to rest your brain. Having some fam over for a couple days for the holidays but I'd be happy to go through your save more thoroughly after

[raven slate]

🤷 Surprisingly, I've found that did dick and all

or I guess if less tired, jack diddly would be how I usually say it.

[vapid gorge]

no stress 🙂 one of the positives about having your fuel station be less than 100% is that having a bit less power doesn't really hamper building other things in the mean time

sometimes people show up with much much worse situations and it has to be a choice between how many hours they are willing to re pipe a whole thing or just learn from basic mistakes and plan differently next time

[raven slate]

Maybe. in this case its... "what do I build?" because good grief figuring out a satisfying way to do trains makes me implode because no.

[vapid gorge]

yours doesn't look too bad

What's the train issue you're having?

just layout?

[raven slate]

Starting.

[vapid gorge]

is it a layout issue you're having of the actual rail? stations? everything?

[raven slate]

As in I have never built trains before properly and blueprints make me want to scream.

(mostly because they don't play nice with water extractors at all)

[vapid gorge]

well I can walk you through some of that now if you want, it's less finicky than pipes, but you do sound tired

[raven slate]

yeah, it is to late today for doing that.

nearing 5 PM... that's what... Hawaiii?

[vapid gorge]

Australia 🙂

mostly chilling and prepping hte house for guests and taking care of all the animals

[raven slate]

...

If I had a nickle for every Cobalt from Australia I knew, I'd have 2 Nickels.

[vapid gorge]

that's not a lot but it's weird it's 2

if it helps I was born in the US and grew up in Canada

[raven slate]

Hmm. I guess that drops it a bit.

[vapid gorge]

been here ages though xD never moving back

[raven slate]

cant say I blame ya.

[night brook]

Hello there, I'm new to this server and I was wondering if someone could double check my math/build? The calculators I've tried are either difficult to use or need a specific number of units as your goal instead of just the optimal amount.

[raven slate]

define optimal

[night brook]

whatever I can make work given the resources I intend to put into the build

[vapid gorge]

sure you can show us what you're working on

[raven slate]

You can always input "make 1 per minute" then divide the amount you have by the amount that needs

[wind spade]

We generally recommend to calculate from end product

[night brook]

Thank you. So I have two Pure Crude Oil Extractors, overclocked to 250%, making 1200 m3/min, being carried with Mk. 2 Pipelines to two sets of ten Refineries making 800 m3/min of Fuel. My intention is to make Turbofuel with them. My math has it going to thirty-two Refineries with the equation of 800/25 m3 (even though the number needed is 22.5, I want to make a little extra for Packaged Turbofuel on the side). Then since a Fuel-Powered Generator will consume 7.5 m3/min of Turbofuel, and Turbofuel is made at a rate of 18.75 m3/min so 18.75/7.5 = 2.5 FPGs per Refinery = a total of 80 FPGs possible?

[vapid gorge]

are you using the basic turbo fuel recipe?

[raven slate]

I would highly recommend you go hard drive hunting first.

[night brook]

yes, Fuel + Compacted Coal

[raven slate]

To find the heavy oil residue and diluted fuel recipes as that goes from like .66 fuel per oil to 2.66 fuel per oil

[vapid gorge]

this should be what you're lookign for https://www.satisfactorytools.com/1.0/production?share=AVYe0m8IrBpBnjTvsy5A

were you trying to use SCIM before?

[night brook]

this is my first playthrough, and even though this might sound cringe, I kinda want to use the default recipes first to see what a "default" factory setup looks like

[night brook]

I tried this one and no matter how I entered all of my data, the website still said something was missing

[vapid gorge]

likely you were just missing the turbo fuel recipe and compacted coal recipes. You have to actively check both of them in the alternative recipe section

try this link, it doesn't have any repeating decimals https://www.satisfactorytools.com/1.0/production?share=ZUK6WxFr9yBGDo9XNY36

[raven slate]

One annoying thing you have to do is turn off 90% of the converter recipes, most of the recipes with a ( in them

[vapid gorge]

if you just turn off SAM ore it does the same thing, but that means not using most of the alien recipes

but it's more convenient for earlier game stuff

[raven slate]

(I don't like the alchemy recipes personally XD to much decision paralysis and I have other crap to spend SAM on)

[vapid gorge]

yeah, just simpler using the ores you have on hand. I don't use them either

[raven slate]

To answer the original question

Without alternative recipes you can make 666.6667 turbofuel/min with 1200 crude oil.

Sticking with basic Turbofuel, but using Heavy Oil Residue and Diluted fuel we can jump that number up to 2666.6667

[unborn ermine]

The machine toggle is great for that, can get as simple as "screw refineries run" doing the least with them as you can

[raven slate]

Finally we can use the Turbo Blend Fuel alt (when we get blenders) to produce 1,600 from that much crude, but at the cost of 0 coal and about 63% the sulfur

[crimson summit]

The 3 blue groups can be separate or one big factory.
Needs some Alt recipies (Iron wire & Iron pipes to simplify production chain)

PS: I used Satisfactory Modeler (on Steam) instead of SatisfactoryTools

[night brook]

Thank you. My math is wrong then. Time to go back to the drawing board and figure out how many Refineries I'm going to need and how much Compacted Coal too

[raven slate]

.8 compacted coal per turbofuel iirc

[night brook]

Well, I guess one of each Pure Sulfur and Coal Miner Mk. 2 overclocked to 250% and Mk. 4 Conveyors simply isn't going to cut it then 😦

[vapid gorge]

did you click the links I shared?

[night brook]

Yes, they also show my math is wrong.

[raven slate]

If you're just doing it for power, I'd just use normal fuel (though made ideally through the two alt recipes I keep saying) at least until blenders.

With Blenders, the Turbo Blend and Rocket Blend alt recipes become available which are both much more sulfur and coal effecient if memory serves.

[night brook]

not necessarily for power, I mostly want the Packaged Turbofuel, but I figured I might as well make power while I'm at it. I already have 30 FPGs running with normal Fuel making me 7500 MW

[raven slate]

if you're making it for jetpack use, just like a single refinery's worth is plenty

[night brook]

I wanna get this last production line nailed down before I move on to Phase 4 too

[wind spade]

Just disable converter machine

[vapid gorge]

there's other production recipes other than conversions from it though right/

[wind spade]

Yeah but that comes very late in the game

[raven slate]

Normal use: Excited Photonics Matter, Dark Matter Residue, Ficsite Ingots, Time Crystals, Pink Diamonds, Dark-Ion Fuel

[sand epoch]

Or.. keep 2 black tabs for cloning.. one with the converter stuff on and one with it off so you aren't clicking them all..

[raven slate]

I do think the Alchemy recipes should be disabled by default myself, but it's your program so 🤷

[wind spade]

There's no easy way to detect which of the recipes are the converter ones unfortunately

(Assuming the dataset can change, obviously I can hardcode them for this one)

[raven slate]

I suppose that's a fair issue.

If not turn them off, set them to only get called if all normal resources used or somesuch? I dunno,

[wind spade]

Yeah that's not as easy either 🙂

And I don't want to spend much time on current tools since I'm working on new ones

[remote flame]

depending on what calculator you use, you can just type in 'ore' in the base recipe list and disable the entire list that pops up. That turns off all ore conversions in the converter 🙂

[fickle scaffold]

This is my coal plant, I'm supplying exactly what I need, exactly 1701 m³ of water per min. Is this just fluids being weird?

20 mw dips, exactly how much 1 water extractor consumes

[vapid gorge]

it'll probably self balance

[oblique hollow]

you have 37.8 coal generators?

[fickle scaffold]

Yes

36 with 4 being OCd to 145, so i can group them into 4 sections

[gaunt plover]

so 4 pipes running to 4 sets of 9? should be easy enough. Just supply the correct amount of water,

[fickle scaffold]

6 pipes

[gaunt plover]

go with 4 pipes

[fickle scaffold]

I have mk1s

[gaunt plover]

then make it 8 pipes

4x4 and 4x5

[fickle scaffold]

6 pipes is what I need

They even out

[gaunt plover]

by overcomplicating things mostl likely

or make 6 groups of 6, and overclock the last 1 in each line

[fickle scaffold]

Overcomplicating would be adding not needed pipes

I really hope that adding pipe isn't the solution

[gaunt plover]

no, splitting and using valves overcomplicates things 😄

[fickle scaffold]

I calculated it specifically

[gaunt plover]

especially if you end up feeding from 2 sides

[fickle scaffold]

To transport 1701 water you need 5.5~ pipes, so 6

[gaunt plover]

yep, so connect 6 generators to each pipe

and overclock the last generator in each set of 6

[fickle scaffold]

That's what I did

[gaunt plover]

you said you overclocked 4 of them

[fickle scaffold]

Yeah, I split them into sections, I supposed to have 37.8 generators, I installed 36 and divided the load of that 1.8 between 4 generators

By overclocking

[gaunt plover]

divide that 1.8 over 6 generators

so you have 6 identical sets

makes stuff a lot easier to troubleshoot

[fickle scaffold]

Will try

[gaunt plover]

then fill up the pipes completely, before you start adding coal

so 1 pipe feeds 6 generators directly, no loops/connections between the sets of 6

[wind spade]

Overcomplicating is not building in groups of 8 gens 🙂

[gaunt plover]

8 gens, 4 water extractors, easy life

[charred saffron]

3 extractors, even

[gaunt plover]

time enough to complicate things with turbo/rocket fuel 😄

[gaunt plover]

nah 4 is much easier

I know you can do it with 3, but that's more complicated

[charred saffron]

Fair

It's not much worse, but yeah just splitting every extractor over 2 gens is more simplistic

[gaunt plover]

and 4 gens with 2 extractors are nice with a single mk1 pipe

[wind spade]

3 is easy

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

[gaunt plover]

4 is easier

[charred saffron]

Nah Greeny is up to smth with this one

[gaunt plover]

especially for new people

[wind spade]

Need more materials and underclock. Deffo not easier

[gaunt plover]

depends on the definition of easier I guess. Materials are infinite

[charred saffron]

Well, time to redo all my coal plant piping because I sure as hecc didn't think of this

[wind spade]

Early game they are scarce

[gaunt plover]

for a single extra extractor? I would say that's stretching it

[charred saffron]

setting up coal power is expensive, especially if you don't want to spend half your early game farming wood and leaves for biofuel

[wind spade]

Single extractor per 8 gens

[charred saffron]

Also, for coal power 16 to 24 gens are not unreasonable, that's a solid 2 or 3 extra extractors

[gaunt plover]

more power efficient too

[wind spade]

If you want more power efficient, do 1:1 or even 4:1

[north mauve]

What's the resource simplest way to make supercomputers?

Fewest different resource nodes

[oblique hollow]

Silicon CB + Silicon HSC + Plastic AI Limiter + default Supercomputer i think

as for computer, probably Caterium Computer

Results in oil + Caterium + Quartz + Copper

If you go for Caterium CB, you can cut out copper too

oh wait, default HSC and computer work too if you use Caterium Wire or Quickwire Cable

sooooo just Oil and Caterium then best case

yeah if you go for anything with Caterium in the name you can basically just do Oil + Caterium

[north mauve]

Okay so that looks a little bit like a nightmare in the planner

Wait maybe not

[oblique hollow]

its just a whole bunch of plastic and quickwire going everywhere

drag it around a bit and its not that complicated

[amber umbra]

The caterium alts let you make computers with just oil, caterium afaik. I used fused quick wire (add copper) for supercomputers although the item rates get very high for quick wire.

Satisfactory Tools codex/item page has a nice interface for comparing alt recipes especially if the goal is simplifying the raw resources needed. Pretty quick to check what things need and are used in.

@north mauve

[charred saffron]

Yeah.
caterium circuit board (quickwire + plastic) or electrode circuit board (petroleum coke + rubber)
into either standard recipe(circuit board, cable, and plastic) or caterium computer (circuit board, quickwire, plastic)

Either way you're only on oil and caterium

[fallow siren]

is 500GW nuclear plant possible with 2.1k uranium?

[wind spade]

Even 1.5 TW

[north mauve]

Eesh

[wind spade]

Clock speed to the rescue

[north mauve]

This only makes 5 supercomps, too

[amber umbra]

Supercomputers just take a lot of resources.

The fused quickwire ratios are quite tidy. Something to look into for sure. Usually there's a copper node near caterium.

[fading talon]

how do you do ratios like this? 75 split from outputs of 30 divided equally into 5 belts?

[remote flame]

Since you're using smelters which output at 30/min each, hook 4 together and send them to the iron plate constructors (120/min)
Then, hook 5 together which makes 150/min, use a splitter to get a nice 75/min on two belts 🙂

This avoids overflow issues completely

[charred saffron]

Or, to avoid having to use higher level belts, group 2 and 2 and split another one between both sets of two

[fading talon]

i wana avoid overflow or manifold and just do straight ratio

[remote flame]

If you want to have just one output belt from the smelters, you'll have to do quite a bit of fiddling around in a proper fledged load balancer. So highly recommend the first option!

If you're curious, to balance 270/min on one belt to what you want, it'd look like this w. Splitters

[opaque quartz]

you can over/underlock your machines to get them paired up if you don't want to manifold

i would just do a manifold, personally

[fading talon]

many do, but i do everything ratio

[wind spade]

Have three groups of smelters, each one making the separate amount

[fading talon]

I think I'm gona do a proper load balancer

[wind spade]

🤢

[fading talon]

the engineering challenge is more fun than just manifolding everything

[remote flame]

Each to their own of course! Personally I'm a manifold person since it speeds up the process significantly (at the expense of waiting for the system to charge up),

So for the load balancing method of 75/min to your 6 cast screw constructors, you just need to split 75 in to 2, then those 2 belts go in to their own splitter feeding 3 constructors 12.5 each 🙂

Iron rod, its a bit convoluted haha. You need feedback merger at the start to take 75+15=90, then split 90 in half to get 2x 45. Split both of those 3 times to get 15/min. Feed back one of the 15/min back in to the merger at the start:)

As for iron plates, pretty easy to do 🙂

[livid turret]

That seems like a lot of caterium, using some alts I'm only using 160 caterium ore to produce 2.5 supercomputers and 2.5 HS-connectors

On the downside, I had to use quartz and silica but reduced the use of plastic

[fading talon]

of course, every style is valid. I just really like the perfect ratios and consumption rates

[fading talon]

btw, what tool do you use to make those charts?

[livid turret]

Draw.io could help if you want to do it manually

[remote flame]

Oh it's a little github project that does balancing for satisfactory https://icemoonmagic.github.io/Satisfactory-Splitter-Calculator/

Because I prefer sanity then hand working out load balancing haha

[fading talon]

what a beautiful tool, thank you!

[idle drum]

I'm starting to build my first mega base, what are some things i should keep in mind?

[wind spade]

first recommendation: don't build megabase

[idle drum]

how come

[wind spade]

megabases are eaters of FPS, as well as big logistical challenges that are usually only viable if you have the whole game planned from start to finish (and even then it's kinda meh approach, and separated factories all over the map are much better solution)

[idle drum]

ah fair enough

[idle drum]

how many items should the smaller bases make?

[oblique hollow]

however many you want

[wind spade]

as many as you need

[oblique hollow]

you can make "smaller" bases that make like 5/min ... idk... motors?
or factories that make 60/min

the only difference really is that they only make a certain dedicated product (or a small group of products)

megabase is usually what we call an "everything factory"

where every single bit of production is inside some giant complex factory

[north mauve]

I wanted to see how reasonable it would be to use nothing but one ore

[weak plinth]

hey sooo... do any of you know if you can make a conveyor lock that locks if another belt is EMPTY?

I know how to make one that locks if another one is locked, but cant find a way to do the opposite basically.

[raven slate]

well, I commited the pipe sin of using (open) valves and for whatever reason the sloshing proplems immediately stopped

[livid turret]

Valves are not the devil, the issue is that they need an update on the flow limiter code to be able to input exact numbers and also better documentation on liquids/gasses

But more often than not, you are better without valves and buffers

[raven slate]

yeah... for whatever reason, just slapping a valve on the upper part of a u-bend in my fuel power plant seems to have resolved the sloshing issue entirely, at least it hasnt broken yet

[wind spade]

my bet is on the second option

[wind spade]

that's just one of many issues

[raven slate]

Well, it went from issues even if I tried to fill the pipes to fixing it all on its own and is remaining stable when not rendered so... (open) valves are now my new best friend

[wind spade]

just loop the pipe

[raven slate]

And break it again? Nah

[wind spade]

no, learn to build it properly 🙂

[raven slate]

Given its working, I'd say I did.

[wind spade]

given how valves are not recommended, I'd say you didn't

[crimson summit]

Have the production chain start at the mine. But all chains converge towards a central location.

[wind spade]

that's called "central storage", not "megafactory" 🙂

[crimson summit]

Depends, if you need item A and B to make C, and the closest point of convergence is near the centre.... guess where the last step of production happens.

[wind spade]

megafactory is "all production in single place", so what you described isn't one

[crimson summit]

Fair. But it is more centralised than what you described.

[wind spade]

well in my case if a factory needs some item, it makes said item itself

is much easier to work with imo

[crimson summit]

🤣 lets take that to the extreme.
A late game factory needs ALL the items. So it will make ALL the items in a single place.

[wind spade]

why would lategame factory need all items?

there's no single product that needs all of the intermediates

[plush gulch]

Especially with Alts you can remove an ore completely from the list

[crimson summit]

"All" is hyperboly.
But Assembly Director Systems factory is going to be quite BIG if its entire production chain is localised.

[wind spade]

yeah but it's still only production of intermediates

and only intermediates for that

any intermediates (even same type of intermediates) for anything else are made elsewhere

so at least you have X factories where X is amount of final products you make

[raven slate]

Youre wasting your breathe, Greeny has a very particular view of how things are to be done and what things mean and will adamantly stand by their arbitrary stances of them until your blue in the face.

[wind spade]

or I'm just recommending a way that I personally believe in and some people think I'm forcing someone

[opaque quartz]

greeny will come to your house and kick down your door and forcibly decentralize your megabase

[near zodiac]

now we're talking

no more power crysis

this bad boy of a powerplant is producing 15k MW of energy

[raven slate]

:D

[wind spade]

<@&387163995947270144>

No idea why bot didn't kill discord link

[dark badge]

ty

and unsure - dyno prob having an issue yet again

[wind spade]

It's also in other channels

[dark badge]

ya im looking now for em

[cold kayak]

hello i am planning to build a fully optimized nuclear powerplant, and i am on issue. the sam ore needed to make the dark matter residut to make the ficsonium is about 27 720/min exceed the all map capacity that is, by my calculs 10 200/min is any one have an idea what i can do ?

[wind spade]

not build that much 😄

[cold kayak]

yea it's probabely a good idea 😅 but im trying and it's a bit frustrating that the only thing that stuck me is that sam ore

and i am a bit advenced :/

[livid turret]

Never late to stop

[cold kayak]

nah stop is not for me 🗿

[vapid gorge]

🏆 congrats, that's the worst modeler image I've sen yet

[cold kayak]

LMFAO

i'm bad at making my models compreensiv to others XD

[opaque quartz]

SAM is the one resource you can't do anything about. the limit is what it is

[vapid gorge]

that's why you use sftools and make a sensible plan in 20 seconds instead of doing each bubble individually https://www.satisfactorytools.com/1.0/production?share=HqKuHS2jTD3MycKmJ5iV

instead of the half assed tool that got popular only because it went on steam

[cold kayak]

i don't think so.

I think it give you a real freedom to what you want to do and it is way easier to use for me

[crimson summit]

That's a great modeler image.
It is neat. Well organised. And is only as big as it needs to be by compressing sub-components down to factory icons (but still shows the important info)

[remote flame]

so I've seen it done by people where they use sloops to double the output of all Sam ore into Reanimated SAM.
(a 250% constructor needs 300 SAM/min to make 75x2 Reanimated (Slooped)). So over 10,200 Sam ore, you need 34 Sloops/constructors at 250%
it still doesn't quite hit the number you desire, but getting 5100 Reanimated SAM/min is still pretty hefty 🙂

[vapid gorge]

it's obscene and poorly organised and far far worse than any other planner

[remote flame]

each to their own I suppose, but I absolutelyyy prefer this kind of layout rather than trying to slap the entire production chain in one go. (breaking the factory in to modules), just easy to read haha

[vapid gorge]

you can easily break down tools plans by having whatever you want as a seperate plan as an 'input'

and have that as a different plan

which you also create in 3 seconds

[remote flame]

yeah the current favorite I use lets you do it, makes the factory flowcharts so much better 🙂

[gray trail]

This, and you can sink the rest of the plut rods you don't have the SAM for @cold kayak

[chilly narwhal]

how would i get a conveyor to be 72 or etc to match

[livid turret]

You create a manifold
!wikisearch manifold

[chilly narwhal]

so it would be 4 splitters then over flow to next line

[livid turret]

You take your concrete line and add a splitter per machine letting it overflow, take some minutes to saturate, you can speed the process by manually adding concrete if you have some in reserve

More quick and easier to expand than a balancer

[chilly narwhal]

i wouldnt need a smart splitter?

[livid turret]

Nop

When a machine saturates, excess will go to the next one. Splitters divide the input belt evenly among outputs unless one or more output are saturated

[chilly narwhal]

so it will have 72 then feed off to the other line when needed

[livid turret]

With the manifold, usually the first machine will fill first and then the next one and so on and so forth

Yep, once the machine is saturated it will only consume the amount needed

Letting the overflow through

With any material this means that for the last machine to have 100% efficiency, all the other machines must have a full stack in their buffer

[chilly narwhal]

okay i understand now thank you

[remote flame]

So as said above, manifolds and letting it 'overflow' in to the next area is the simplest. another little trick to speed up the factory boot-up if you do not want to wait that long, is seeing that the concrete goes 72/min one way, and 149 another, where 149 is close to 72x2=144. So you could take that one belt of 221 or so, put it through one splitter into 3 different belts, and merge 2 of those belts together. You'll end up with 73.8 roughly one way, and 147.5 the other. then it will be far quicker to initially fire up, and will balance out at the very end once it floods 🙂

personally though, manifolding the whole lot and having a smart splitter at the very start set to 'overflow' for your 15 concrete personal use is quick and simple too 🙂 doing it this way allows you belt in more limestone too, and will prioritise feeding the factory to 100% first 🙂

[raven slate]

@vapid gorge Wanna know the really stupid thing that fixed all the problems with my fuel pipes yesterday?

[unborn ermine]

sleep and a fresh set of eyes?

[raven slate]

The answer for how to make a ubend (yes, I should've tried a different thing) stop being stupid: ||open valve.||

[unborn ermine]

aha the one thing people say to avoid (well number 1 of 2) when making pipes

and tbh they can be fine, its just like this case, one more thing to overlook

[raven slate]

My suspicion for why is they stop the back flow from going back into the bottom-most pipes, thus letting the blenders properly extract, keeping everything flowing nicely.

Now if only the two pure nodes didnt constantly fail to actually produce 600 oil/min >~>

[vapid gorge]

sure 🙂

eh, I think it's still extremely likely it was something else as those things don't actually stop back flow but I'm glad it's working

[raven slate]

Given that is the only thing I changed and it went from pipes being stupid to pipes behaving perfectly...

like, I didn't even have to go and try to fiddle with pre filling pipes or anything, I added the valves, twiddled my thumbs on something else for 5 minutes and then theyre all full

[vapid gorge]

I wouldn't make relying on them in general a thing, valve junctions/solutions tend to be extremely finicky

[young coyote]

Old adage: If you have a pipe problem that you fix with a valve, you now have 2 pipe problems.

[raven slate]

Oh, for sure, it's just hilarious to me that the devil was the savior

like, I've been doing ficsmas for the past 6hours, check the grid and still smooth as silk

[vapid gorge]

I seem to remembe ra lot of vertical changes and bottom feeding too. Next time you're planning a big system give me a shout, can probably head off layout issues before they develop

like, its possible to bottom feed, but I don't recommend it

[raven slate]

As I said, for sure, I should've done something different for my stupid idea for why I wanted them like I had them

[vapid gorge]

I mean I'll help you bottom feed too if yout want. It's all I do with my pipes

I just don't recomend it to people xD as they can be a pain

[raven slate]

quietly retreats to my dirt house

Yes, those are very pretty

[vapid gorge]

gotta be pretty strict with the rest of your piping to reliably bottom feed

I liked the loop of bottom feeding so I kept banging away at developing a moderately consistent method of doing it

I think I've gotten down pat now

[raven slate]

I wish I had the energy to gain the experience to make such

[vapid gorge]

it takes a lot of free time. And late nights >.>

but I've done the trial and error, you could do that pretty easily with a bit of help

I was just pretty proud of the whole thing because all those pipes are either at or near 600pm while bottom feeding

[raven slate]

Near?

[vapid gorge]

like 590 or 580 pm flow, if not 600

not all my systems run at 600

I do a lot of belt management through strict clocking so I'll have weird numbers to put the right number of items on a belt

[raven slate]

Ah

Mind if I ask ya something in DMs?

[vapid gorge]

msged you

[lyric veldt]

mine 30k but i suffer a lot with the turbo fuel and the alter recipe of fuel and all the oil products

[frosty owl]

This sentence would sound very weird if taken out of context without the word "feed"

[opaque quartz]

Does the short belt between that last merger and first splitter have enough capacity to handle all of the total output from the refineries?

[heady galleon]

lmao i hope

i have to get everything over and underclocked still

[opaque quartz]

What are you producing here?

[heady galleon]

aluminum ingots

200/min

[opaque quartz]

Ah, good times

Using default recipes?

[visual lava]

fr fixes everything

[cold kayak]

my god !! i didn't think about that XD .
and by changing the fisconium ingot from iron to aluminum i achieve to take it down to 15 750/min so with the Somersloop i am at 7 875 sam ore / min that is way lower than the map limit !
thank you again bro !

[hushed trellis]

man i love balancers

[gusty shale]

I hate that so much, but by god do I love it

[fallow siren]

automating hmf is not fun, this is not even 50% done yet

[livid turret]

How many per minute? o.O

[uneven burrow]

hey is max consum like what if all buildings were overclocked to 100%

cuz my consumption is 6k and max cons is 11k

[fallow siren]

not much, only 24/min and already gave me an headache

[fallow siren]

max consumption is when all of ur machines running at the same time

[uneven burrow]

i checked every factory i got and its all running at 100%

[fallow siren]

if ur factory are all 100%, ur consumption should be at 11k, not 6k

[uneven burrow]

yeah

i dunno where 5k is going

[oblique hollow]

Any fancy buildings like train stations, particle accelerators, converters, etc?

[hushed trellis]

you can't make me use manifolds !!

[uneven burrow]

gulp

[oblique hollow]

Trains alone can account for thousands of MW, depensing on train station size

[uneven burrow]

most of my train stations are just the station and 1 cargo thingy

actually yeah i dont have a single train with 2 cargo thingys

[fallow siren]

almost done with hmf factory, just need to connect all the belt from nodes and im done

took a while

[uneven burrow]

nice

im not even 20% in :D

[scenic pawn]

does anyone have the time and brain power to spare to help me figure out why one of my factories isn't 100%?

[hushed trellis]

ye why not :v

[scenic pawn]

i mean i warn you now

its terrible

but i cant see why it idles

[hushed trellis]

buddy im a manifold hater it cant be more terrible than my factories

[scenic pawn]

well

you might be in for a treat because its almost 100% manifolds

[gaunt plover]

Do what you enjoy regardless of what others say 🙂 I personally like buffers and valves

my alu scrap for example

[hushed trellis]

ooh thats pretty cool looking :o

[unborn dome]

Has anyone ever run a train down this not-quite-a-hill from the red forest into the titan forest? It looks potentially doable, but also kinda sketchy.

[gaunt plover]

can always add a nice descending loop

ah well, no image 🙂

[hollow sigil]

@oblique hollow just a little update, every thing is working great. producing 30k Megawatts. 60k megawatts for both of my nuclear power plants.

[oblique hollow]

neat! Soooo all problems resolved then

[hollow sigil]

yup. had to make another acid refinery to pipe the byproduct water from the recycling blender to

i've been watching it and so far nothing looks like it's attempting to back up

[wind spade]

30k megawatts
30 gigawatts

[hollow sigil]

potato potato

😄

[wind spade]

SI units are there for a reason 🤷

[hollow sigil]

i was just saying what it says on the plant 5,000 MW

[wind spade]

yeah but the k means kilo 🙂

[hollow sigil]

i'm not saying you're wrong

ah

to me k always meant a thousand

or is it a capital K that means a thousand

[wind spade]

well kilo is SI prefix for 1000

[hollow sigil]

what is SI?

[wind spade]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_System_of_Units

[hollow sigil]

okay learning new stuff

[wind spade]

the thing that defines units and their prefixes to be used globally

this is taught at most schools

(apart from US as I've found out)

[hollow sigil]

didn't learn that 20+ years ago

[wind spade]

because US doesn't recognise metric units

[hollow sigil]

yeah, we'll kinda measure any thing with any thing except metric lol

[wind spade]

basically the unit is Watt and MW is megawatt, so it already has a prefix. So by adding k to it, you add second prefix, which is not how it works, and should instead use GW

(but also, you already know how this works, even if you don't realise it - computer memory is often done with kB, MB, GB, that's the same thing, just unit is different - B = byte)

[oblique hollow]

just like theres no inchfeet or feetyard or yardmiles

each is their own little respecive range of sizes

enough inch form feet, enough yards form miles

[hollow sigil]

yeah i do know how storage on a computer works.

[oblique hollow]

same deal with power and such

its just a different range of power once you go above Mega

[hollow sigil]

yet you all knew what i meant lol

but i'll be sure to use it correctly from now on

[wind spade]

definitely, just trying to teach you how it should be done 🙂

[hollow sigil]

i know and i'm not upset that you're trying to help

[wind spade]

some people are, unfortunately. I got some weird reactions over time when I was trying to help

[hollow sigil]

i bet.

[unborn dome]

@wind spade I just noticed, this is saying I only need 225 water/min, but the recipe is actually 200 water/min each.

[wind spade]

there's another arrow recycling water from next step

[unborn dome]

OH

Sorry, you're right

First time doing a recycling loop 😅

[hollow sigil]

thats what mine looks like

[oblique hollow]

yeah there we go, seperate loop, as you described last time

[random sierra]

I should probably make more power right?

[random sierra]

@calm egret

See

[hollow sigil]

yup. i'll more than likely never understand why that's the only way fluids work like that but i'll except it.

[oblique hollow]

its not about fluids really. Its about everything else

Its just bad system design to make it a loop where fresh and byproduct fluid merge

the pipes themselves are not the main issue here

[hollow sigil]

the part i'm still not understanding is the math made sense.

this math also makes sense that i'm using now for it

[oblique hollow]

im pretty sure if a similar system were build with belts, it could also clog

even if the math made sense.
the part here is that it only works correctly if everything else works flawlessly

[hollow sigil]

is it because one set of blenders were making the fluid faster then the other blender was using it?

i've never had an issue with belts clogging

[oblique hollow]

If one really took a close look at such a failing system for a long time, im sure one could find SOME explaination

one thing about belts that i can think of with belts is that when you merge 2 different belts, the slower speed wins out over the fast one

[hollow sigil]

maybe the creators of the game 😄

i stared at the pipes every weekend and no light bulb went off in my head

[oblique hollow]

The only answer we ever got from the devs is "when they build with pipes they dont encounter any issues because they funamentally build differently"

[hollow sigil]

that's a long way of saying we're not using the pipes correctly?

[oblique hollow]

for the most part yes

Mk 2 pipes at 600/min is the case where that phrase specifically was said

because apparently, that system also isnt really bugged

well apart from some of the actual bugs that exist in other places

[gaunt plover]

I don't agree, works great in my aluminum scrap factory with some buffers and valves 🙂

[wind spade]

well... it isn't bugged 🙂

[wind spade]

this has like 3 words that you shouldn't ever use with fluids 😄

[oblique hollow]

Getting a bad system to work doesnt make it any less bad of a system.
Bad systems can work

[hollow sigil]

but for how long

[gaunt plover]

It's not a bad system, works great, and has been running 100% efficient for ages

[hollow sigil]

my bad system worked for a week or more before cloging up on sulfuric acid

[oblique hollow]

Its bad in the sense of "theres a lot of conditions to it, and you are actually in the minority for getting it right AND consistent"

[wind spade]

^

[oblique hollow]

systems with LESS conditions are prefered because they are harder to screw up

[gaunt plover]

maybe if people weren't so afraid of buffers and valves...

[oblique hollow]

people dont get them

[gaunt plover]

there are no conditions. If anything, the buffers take out a condition

[hollow sigil]

i have a phobia of them.. it's not my fault

[wind spade]

we're not afraid. We know that they don't do anything reasonable to use them

[hollow sigil]

and i don't understand them.

[oblique hollow]

That being?

[gaunt plover]

I don't agree. They work perfectly reasonable to me

[wind spade]

exception from a rule doesn't make the rule obsolete

[gaunt plover]

not clogging up if you get a surge of multiple machines outputting loads of fluid at the same time

[gaunt plover]

opinion, not rule, but hey 🙂

[wind spade]

if such a clog happens, the whole system will resolve it

if not, it's badly built system

[gaunt plover]

eventually yes, I prefer to not have any hickups

and the buffer smooths those out

[wind spade]

but once it's resolved, it will never happen again

[oblique hollow]

if multiple machines output at the same time, then the pipe just hits max flow for some time.
The buffer cant really accept or output fluid faster than a normal pipe

[gaunt plover]

with my plant, it doesn't happen to begin with

[gaunt plover]

obviously, pipes can't transport more than 600

[oblique hollow]

of course. But even then, surges of 600/min for some time dont matter much when the system, on average, only does like 400/min or 500/min or any other number really

[wind spade]

buffer is just a large pipe. In normal systems, the pipes' internal buffers are enough to smooth out any irregularities

[oblique hollow]

it always has enough flow capacity to catch up

[gaunt plover]

anyways, my factory works great with buffers and some valves. Just have to figure out how they work (and not expecting them to work like they would IRL)

[oblique hollow]

getting people to not apply real life fluid dynamics is the goal, yes

[gaunt plover]

great tip for new players? perhaps not. But I think the aversion to them in here is extreme

[oblique hollow]

Many misuse valves in cases where they arent serving the best purpose.
Many valves in series, all with limits set, is usually a root for problems.
As well as trying to hit precise limits.
Valves really should only ever be set to "approximately this much"

[gaunt plover]

yep

but for mixing byproduct and fresh water, they're nice

[oblique hollow]

But then that simply loses purpose to most people beause they WANT a precise limit but cant

on mixing fluids, a pump would do as much as a valve

(except for limiting flow of course)

depends on where you place it

[gaunt plover]

I mostly use them as non-return valves except in some specific situations

[oblique hollow]

in the case of recycling, feedback is always mixed when it comes to successfully doing a merged loop

[gaunt plover]

which is where for me the buffer comes in.

process water into buffer -> valve -> mixed pipe with extractors feeding from the other end

[wind spade]

even if it was the case, why recommend something that has like 1% of working (across players), when you can recommend thing that works in 99% cases?

[gaunt plover]

the buffers might not be needed anymore now, but I still feel better having them there

[oblique hollow]

the thing is that whenever i inspected mixed loops, the flaw was ultimately always something that would lock the system after enough time.
A buffer would probably buy time, but not prevent it.
Like for example not having enough coal to feed the scrap refineries

[gaunt plover]

if done well, it'll work 100% of the time. Just telling people to avoid buffers/valves entirely takes away a couple of tools from their toolcase to play with, so takes away something from the game in my opinion

[oblique hollow]

that will ultimately lead to too much alumina not being processed.
which means the water will fill up everything

[gaunt plover]

playing with the tools you have is part of the fun/charm of the game

[wind spade]

"if done well" is the main problem with anything. And people suck at building pipes well

[oblique hollow]

at least on one end. if the scrap refineries that still get some coal keep running they will fill up the other end

[gaunt plover]

so, you're basically telling them 'do not bother', instead of letting them figure it out and learning something in the process?

[wind spade]

by all means, go use all the "forbidden" things. But please do not recommend it, especially to newer players.

[wind spade]

no, I'm tired of people coming here with "my setup doesn't work" and the fix is "remove valves and buffers"

[oblique hollow]

Ultimately, getting all conditions right and keeping it that way is the harder option.
And many actually dont wanna fiddle with it for possibly a few hours.
they wanna get their aluminum production going and keep progressing

[gaunt plover]

by all means, give people tips, but don't tell them things are forbidden, especially to newer players.

[wind spade]

I don't tell them that things are forbidden

I tell them how to fix their broken systems

[vapid gorge]

people who build unreliable set ups like that tend to have a very specific order and layout that might work for them pretty reliably but then just say 'make a junction that looks like this' and you get tons of people going 'why doesn't this work'. And then there's really no direct way to trouble shoot them.

hence - don't recommend it to people

[oblique hollow]

Its not forbidden, the main issue is that telling people to rip out the valves or buffers the wrongly used in their system usually resolves the issue.
And telling them what to do from there is harder.

"So i failed to use a valve and a buffer. How do i NOT do that in the future?"

[gaunt plover]

sure, it's easier

[oblique hollow]

Im not sure exactly what to tell them when they ask me "how SHOULD i use a buffer or valve"

[vapid gorge]

its easier because there isn't a clear method to fix the issues. It's essentially 'fuck around with it until it works or you give up'

[oblique hollow]

Ultimately its up to THEM if they wanna do things the hard way

Guess we can call this "natural game difficulty options"

[gaunt plover]

yep, if people want a quick fix and rebuild their entire setup, that's fine. I just find it surprising that many people in here seem to be completely allergic to buffers/valves.

[oblique hollow]

opt in or opt out of hard mode?
Many wanna opt out

[oblique hollow]

Its that second part
"How do i properly use a valve or a buffer"
and
"WHERE do i use a valve or a buffer?"

There has been no clear answer on when or how to use either.
I have like.... 2? niche uses for them, both are aesthetics in a way.

Flow equalizers

[gaunt plover]

here's my simple example; #math-and-meta message

[vapid gorge]

well it was very very clearly explained, in multiple ways, that buffers and valves are involved in unreliable solutions that may or may not work and have no proper steps to trouble shoot.

not being able to understand or properly fix an automated system you make is bad. I don't know how else to try to convey this.

[wind spade]

unless you're lucky, the valve won't be limited exactly as you wanted

[oblique hollow]

I got that.
But again, thats the option of "yes i wanna do recycling the hard way"

[wind spade]

since valves have only 255 unique limitation values

[gaunt plover]

as I stated before, I use them mostly as return valves (one way flow valves).

[vapid gorge]

yeah they aren't good for that either

[gaunt plover]

they're great for that for me

[wind spade]

a pump does the same thing and also gives you headlift

[gaunt plover]

pump is big/ugly, and I don't need headlift

[vapid gorge]

correlation =/= causation

[gaunt plover]

Correct, you understand. Usage of buffers and valves is not the cause 😉

[wind spade]

for you

[gaunt plover]

yep

[vapid gorge]

in general you should very rarely need directionality , and if you do in those cases? powered pump

[oblique hollow]

Keep in mind that your own experience does not reflect everyone elses.
And speaking of that, the fluid dynamics can sometimes react unintuitively to identical setups

[gaunt plover]

Look, I'm not saying everyone should be using buffers and valves, I'm just saying that 'avoid them at all cost' is overshooting the mark

[wind spade]

we don't claim that your setup is broken

we claim that 99% of people will build them wrong, without clear way of getting it right (apart from "remove them")

hence statistically it doesn't make sense to recommend them

[vapid gorge]

yes thats what we're saying , the valves in this case are not the cause of the pipes working.

[wind spade]

it's "avoid them until you are ready to explore them yourself"

[gaunt plover]

yep, that's good advise

[wind spade]

but generally I leave out the second part because people will do whatever they want when they want, so I just tell them to ignore valves and they will use them when they want

[oblique hollow]

For most the second part never really comes around.
And i will admit that i dont really tell people to experiment as much.
Most are frustrated enough by the fluid system and just wanna get it over with.
So when i can sense that someone is fed up, i dont bother mentioning that

Essentially, it just boils down to:
Get accustomed with how pipes and pumps and junctions act, once you are comfortable, then try buffers and valves

[wind spade]

yeah and in most cases the people that come here are like "I've been doing this for 10 hours and can't get it to work please help"

the last thing I want to tell them is "hey spend 20 more hours messing with valves until you find out the one specific setup where they will actually not break your system and have enough experience to be able to properly test and troubleshoot a fluid system so that you know the valve won't actually break things in future"

[oblique hollow]

It is very much possible that you yourself just happen to be quite far on the skill curve for pipes.
Most others probably arent at that stage yet

[gaunt plover]

figuring out how stuff works is the main charm of factory games to me

[wind spade]

not to mention that from logical standpoint, there's not much use for buffers and valves in the first place (no matter the implementation)

[gaunt plover]

I mostly started using buffers for troubleshooting purposes, and it evolved from there

[oblique hollow]

It is a good mindset, good for wiki people and people who further "meta" stuff.
But from what i saw it is not the average player mindset

[wind spade]

buffers don't resolve any problems btw, they just hide them/move them elsewhere

[oblique hollow]

as inteded. Buffers buy time. Useful for trains, definitely

Other uses are a bit less clear cut

[wind spade]

since buffers are essentially just large pipes, adding a buffer is pratically equal to adding a few random pipes

[gaunt plover]

in my case, I found that buffers visualize issues very nicely, and a quick flush of a buffer is a nice simple reset to me after I made a change

[oblique hollow]

Buffers as "dead end consumers" for testing flow is one use for them, can confirm

add a buffer somewhere, watch the flow on the pipe

[gaunt plover]

and I've found them especially useful in getting recycling loops stable very fast