math-and-meta

[sand epoch]

There really are only 2 options for any configuration.. manifold or balancer. Has to be one or the other.

[unique cypress]

Lmao no.

There's plenty of shit you can build that is neither

[amber umbra]

Broadly this is terminology discussion which needs quite crisp definitions. So say what your definitions are if continuing,

[vapid gorge]

if something isnts evenly feeding a system like a load balancer? it's just a manifold

could be a weird manifold. But it's a manifold

[amber umbra]

Manifold to me is just any belt stuff that isn’t a single belt or specific balancers. It’s very catch all.

[vapid gorge]

direct feeding into a machine can be technically described as a load balancer as you're evenly feeding exactly what you need into the machine, and not relying on overflow

[unique cypress]

So y'all would call a belt limiter a manifold?

[vapid gorge]

a stupid one yes

unless yo'ure using it to evenly balance out feeds to many machiens?

if the machines at the other end are getting evenly fed what they need at a constant rate?

load balancer

rely on overflow down a belt?

manifold

[unique cypress]

If I built a limiter to prevent a factory from making more than I designed it for?

[vapid gorge]

making the items isn't a consideration for if a system is a load balanced system or manifold

"if the machines at the other end are getting evenly fed what they need at a constant rate?

load balancer

rely on overflow down a belt?

manifold

1 blocked message — Hide"

[brisk smelt]

what? how can a factory produce more than you designed it for...

[vapid gorge]

if you limit flow it'll stutter the production line

[sand epoch]

How would it make more than you designed it for?? You literally tell it what to make :/

[unique cypress]

By not underclocking the machines

[vapid gorge]

same as if you were building 500 parts per min and using a mk4 belt that can only move 480 pm.

that limits production

[unique cypress]

It has more production capacity than I want, and I don't need it

So I can use a belt limiter so it makes a specific amount

[vapid gorge]

its about as bad an argument as someone who shant be named said was a use for valves. Intentionally mis clocking your machines

[brisk smelt]

a machine produces rhe same amount of items from 1% to 100% uptime given a constant input...

[vapid gorge]

yeah don't think about it too hard. They're blocked because of the many many hot takes they spout out at a consistent rate. Much like how you clock a machine to produce a certain amount of items pm

[unique cypress]

Another question. What is this:

[sand epoch]

🍿

[sand epoch]

A 0 context picture

[unique cypress]

You don't need any more context to answer this question

Or this

[unique cypress]

What if input can supply more production than I want

[sand epoch]

Then your input needs work :/

[unique cypress]

I'm not discussing the functionality of my factory

I'm asking what is a belt limiter according to your stupid fucking definitions

A balancer or a manifold?

I put it on a belt to limit its throughput

That's it

What fucking is it?

[sand epoch]

Yea, you are regulating a manifold that doesn't need it :/

[unique cypress]

What is a belt limiter? A balancer or a manifold

[vapid gorge]

you mean because the consumers would also back up production if they didn't consume it all?

[vapid gorge]

neither. It depends how the machines are receiving the items

[unique cypress]

Answer the question if your definitions are sooo good that they cover every single possible belt contraption

[vapid gorge]

is the belt limiter then feeding into a system that relies on over flow?
manifold

balanced feed?
LB

[unique cypress]

It feeds a container

[sand epoch]

Thus context 🙂

[unique cypress]

Like what does it matter what it's connected to

[vapid gorge]

I feel like this is like when people confuse Communism as a form of government rather than an economic system

a belt compressor is not a method of feeding machines

[unique cypress]

I show you a picture of a belt limiter, you answer what it is

Not what it's used for
Is it that hard

[unique cypress]

What is this then

[vapid gorge]

something being a manifold or a load balancer is intrinsically linked to how they feed their destinations

you cannot decouple this idea

[unique cypress]

The definition for a balancer does not include what it's connected to

Why tf would it

When I paste a blueprint, why would it change what it is depending on what I connect it to?

[vapid gorge]

because by definition a load balancer system is one thats designed to evenly feed their destinations at a constant rate .

[unique cypress]

That's load balancing

[vapid gorge]

is the design in the image meant to put the same amount of copper sheets on each of hte 3 belts to 3 destinations ?

[unique cypress]

Not a balancer

Balancing is an action

Balancer is an object

[unique cypress]

Can be. Doesn't have to be. Sometimes is. Usually isn't. Depends where I paste it

[vapid gorge]

anyway, enough bashing my brain into a brick wall.
How are you today?

[sand epoch]

Existing. Dreading the end of the long weekend. :/

[vapid gorge]

big oof :\

[brisk smelt]

so you're limited by your end machine anyways

[jolly badge]

hey, anyone here able to explain a Load Balancing Shenannigan to me? using a load balance calculator and something just isnt making sense to me

[brisk smelt]

all of that is conpletely irrelevant

unless you're that person that was in here a year ago that wanted a completely flat power graph

that did unholy shenanigans

[vapid gorge]

And just in case you look kyo a handy dandy diagram

it doesn't matter what happens in the middle. A manifold or load balancer is JUST the way the machines are fed.

it cares not for whatever bullshit you have in the middle

[jolly badge]

How on earth is this getting 360 from 300? im struggling to understand how the backfeed works out.

[vapid gorge]

it looks like you have inputs from the side

[jolly badge]

ill grab a full SS 2s

[stable lynx]

Yea was about to say the left spiltter merges back into the 360 and since the 120 is only using 60 other 60 goes back into the top

[vapid gorge]

my image still stands? you have 2x 30 inputs coming in on the side of yoru first image

[jolly badge]

yeah see the point is im struggling to understand how

i dont get how it gets 120 evenly.

this isnt an "it works trust" situation, im looking for explanation

[stable lynx]

Lowkey I see wym now

I highkey see what you mean now

[vapid gorge]

it isn't representing the number flow correctly is why

[stable lynx]

It’s assuming ur belts are fully loaded probably

Cuz the math isn’t mathing

[vapid gorge]

wait, no it is

HA no it isn't

[stable lynx]

LMAO

[vapid gorge]

what program is this? so I can warn people away from it?

[stable lynx]

Like it makes sense then you REALLY think and you see the problem

[vapid gorge]

it's creating 60 ppm from thin air xD

just the name is fine 🙂

[stable lynx]

Cobalt you know any websites like these so I can my math out like this

[jolly badge]

icemoonmagic's Satisfactory Splitter Calculator - here's the input permutations

Split Smaller First seems to be the problem i think

[vapid gorge]

no the main issue looks like it's reating 60 ppm from nothing

I wouldn't use this program anymore. This looks like a fatal flaw

oh wait no I'm wrong. DAMN this is a bad user interface

ok you want to ignore the splitter numbers and just look at the outputs as it's very confusing

[jolly badge]

ok so it sends 300 downwards, sure. but thats assuming you have 3 120's each splitting into 2 60s? My assumption is actual behaviour is splitting 300 into 3 100s, then sending 50 back, and does that slowly back up to the 360/m over time?

[vapid gorge]

Ignore the splitter numbers.

that first section is just a 1:5 load balancer

[unique cypress]

We were discussing what is a balancer and what is a manifold.

Some dumbass claimed that everything is always either a balancer or a manifold

Anyway, they still haven't answered what is a belt limiter in that case. Or a belt compressor

[vapid gorge]

I even drew you a diagram of what a load balancer or manifold was xD

[jolly badge]

AHH okay i think i see, its not the 1:5 im used to which normally ends up as a 3x out and a 2x out from two splitters like this one

[unique cypress]

Cool story bro, now give me a definition of what it is, not what it's used for

How is it built?

[jolly badge]

lots of clicking Left Mouse Button

[vapid gorge]

doesn't matter how it's built

only the end results. Somethign yo ucan't seem to grasp

[unique cypress]

It does matter how its built

The way its built gives it its properties

[brisk smelt]

what??

[vapid gorge]

what you're talking about lands in the boxes labled 'shit that doesn't matter' to LBs or manifolds

[unique cypress]

Omfg you're so fucking dumb

[vapid gorge]

you could make the belts go through a roller coaster if you want, and it wouldn't change the way it's fed

[unique cypress]

The part in the right is a balancer or a manifold

The shit in the middle is fucking neither

[vapid gorge]

well the top one is a 1:2 load balancer. As labeled
the bottom one is a simple manifold

as labeled. I thought 'man' and 'LB' would be enough considering there's only 2 options

[vapid gorge]

apologies if that wasn't clear

[dense cave]

really aint worth it to do load balancing

[unique cypress]

These are balancer and manifold

[dense cave]

just do a manifold, youll be fine

[unique cypress]

Wtf is the shit in the green

[vapid gorge]

eh, if you find it fun, sure? And some do

[unique cypress]

It's not a part of either

[dense cave]

I started at one point, but it was just messy and used too much space

manifolds in satisfactory work just as well and makes it much cleaner

[brisk smelt]

nuclear red bubble

[vapid gorge]

oh yeah, load balancers are there for the aesthetics and challenge 🙂 not really my cup of tea

[brisk smelt]

manifold is a shit idea for 100+npp

[vapid gorge]

eh, I don't mind waiting.

[unique cypress]

Did that several times. Doesn't matter

[brisk smelt]

although, not strictly a load balancer cuz you can fit all possible rods on a mk1 belt

[brisk smelt]

radiation zone on map

[unique cypress]

And?

[dense cave]

npp?

[vapid gorge]

no that doesn't impact it being a LB or not

[vapid gorge]

nice big warm spot 🙂

[brisk smelt]

half lb

as in, you dont overflow the belts

[dense cave]

if you let it run, the system will saturate and work just fine with a manifold

[vapid gorge]

is it evenly feeding all the machines ? it's a load balancer.

no halves about it 🙂

doesn't matter if only 0.0001 parts pm go down the belt

[brisk smelt]

long long lines of nuclear rods

just my preference

[dense cave]

i get it. Mine was to pipe all that stuff under the floor. Made my nuclear plant so clean looking 😛

[orchid brook]

so i did some math and if i wanna use evry single drop of oil in the crater biome and turn that into rocket fule i have to build 990 fule gen fully overclocked

change of plans i am only useng 600 oil and i still have to build 99 of them

srry i meant 576 if not overclocked (still 600 oil)

[heavy gust]

Try nitro rocket fuel

Thats a Lot more genrators

Or is it?
I fel like i used more than 99 on my 609 oil

[vapid gorge]

yeah sounds awful.
build 58 nuclear gens instead

same power

[heavy gust]

Fuel is set abd forget

[hoary oar]

nitro is slightly more efficient on oil yeah.
you can get 2400 rocketfuel out of 600 oil
where as with the normal rocketfuel you only get 2222.222
but you need almost double the amount of sulfur and 1.5x nitrogen for nitro

honestly, optimizing rocketfuel for oil usage isn't something i would worry about.
the main reason you would want to use nitro is because of the simplicity, its 3 steps in total, incredibly easy.
20 HOR refineries, 16 Diluted Fuel blenders and 16 Rocket Fuel blenders

where as the more resource efficient base recipe uses 71 refineries alone for the turbofuel
along with some nitric acid stuff as well as compacted coal.

[orchid brook]

i am using it

look this is my plan

before that i wanted to use 2400 oil butttt it got way out of hand

576 total
144 for each pipe
do the blueprint (4 fuel gens) 36 times for each pipe

[hoary oar]

yeah the main downside to rocketfuel is just the sheer amount of fuel generators you need to build, lol
it can very quickly get out of hand

[orchid brook]

its eazy math just a lot of clickin and tbh i am starting one pice soooo

[orchid brook]

i am way to scared to try nucluar mabey in another playthrow but for now

[hoary oar]

might i make a small suggestion?
pretty sure rocket fuel is made at 200/min in the blender
instead of hooking 3 of them together for a 600 pipe, i'd do only 2 of them for a 400 pipe
that way you can be more or less guaranteed to never run in to any issues with throughput

[orchid brook]

i am ok with 177 thousand MW

[hoary oar]

oh wait no its 150/min

[orchid brook]

ya

its 150 i am ok with my plan just a lot of clicling and the good thing weauto connect wichh saves a lof of more clicking

[hoary oar]

i mean could do 300 pipes in mk2, but maybe thats a bit to much
or OC to 150%, and also OC the diluted fuel to 150% as they are just a 1 to 1 with the fuel

idk, up to you, 600 pipes can work, just usually safer to not use them whenever its an easy thing to avoid

[orchid brook]

idk why but i dont like OC for some reason mabey cuz i dont wanna explore or something but i dont like it

idk it sounds stupid like the only thing i OC is miners

[hoary oar]

nothing wrong with not wanting to overclock

you primarily use it to save space or to make certain ratios between machines easier

[heavy gust]

Ah i used a 600 output, not 600 input.
Thats why the numbers are different to my setup

[orchid brook]

oh ok

i guess i am going to get hard drives now a lot cuz i need a lot of recipes

[twin valve]

Question how far is 960 copper ingots per minute and 240 copper sheets per minute gonnna take me? is that like a mid game production amount or what?

or is that still like transition from early to mid game

[frosty owl]

It depends on your own preferences.
Some people like to have "a lot" of stuff aviable, others don't. Eg: some might finish the game with 100+ GW of power, others with barely 20; their productions will scale accordingly

[hoary oar]

for mid game that should be a somewhat reasonable amount
copper really starts to scale towards tier 8 and 9

[frosty owl]

The alt recipes you choose also have a big influence on this. You could use much more or much less Copper than just using standard recipes 🤷‍♂️

[hoary oar]

yeah, iron wire is a great way to not have to use copper
specially when you don't have any nearby, but have spare iron
and on the opposite, copper can be used to heavily increase quickwire output

[vapid gorge]

yeah no real way to tell yo usorry, becaues there's different recipes and you can choose to make dif amounts it's all up in the air

basically why it's pointless to future proof

just get your way through the tiers and get to the sand box stage : )

[wind spade]

Don't make things in advance, male what you need now

[orchid brook]

well this sucks

realy badly

i have to do phase 3 to unlock blenders

i thought it was in tier 2

damn it

now i have to make a temp setup for normal fuel

[vapid gorge]

use diluted packaged fuel

uses refineries

[orchid brook]

i wanted to make rocket fuel

now i have to make diluted packaged fuel or normal fuel until i get tier 7

[tiny leaf]

honestly

if you want it simple

just use coal power and a small fuel set up for now

then when you get blenders you can focus on a larger build it makes it extremely easy

[orchid brook]

that is excatly my plan like whats going threw my head

[hoary oar]

can also do turbofuel with plans to upgrade/expand in to rocket fuel later

[orchid brook]

i am sad cuz i wannted to do rocket fuel staright away so i can make phase 2 stuff

nah

its not worth it

[vapid gorge]

not having rocket fuel doesn't stop you in any way from making phase 2 things >.>

[orchid brook]

i will just make a small fuel setup with diluted packaged fuel until i get blenders

[orchid brook]

i didnt mean that like my plan WAS to get phase 2 and make rocket fuel in phase 2 so i dont have to worry about power again for phase 3 and 4

and mabey in phase 5 i can do nucluer or expand rocket fuel

idk yet

[vapid gorge]

you can easily do a 30gw diluted fuel set up and it'll get you through tier 5 pretty easy

double it w/o much effort if you want leeway

[orchid brook]

like at the end of the day how much power i am gone be using in my phase 3 factory is the deciding factor

[wind spade]

Go diluted and then nuclear 🙂

[vapid gorge]

depends how big you want to go. But 30gw is very easily doable.

I was a bit skint doing 30gw for phase 5 but wasn't starving for power

[silent shoal]

I'm trying to set input for the Blenders to 600 HOR from the "side" to get a calculation of what is left for the refineries in the image to produce. How can I do that?

[vapid gorge]

what d oyou mean?

if this is a 'how do I work modeler' you're probably better off in their discord

[silent shoal]

I meant something like that but I got by, thanks
I'll look for their Discord

[spare kernel]

is this enough for phase 4 or should i build more for the later stages?

[vapid gorge]

It’s fine, just keep unlocking stuff

[visual ocean]

Does this work to priorize water from the right side? Left is water extractors but i need priority for the recycled water

[vapid gorge]

can't see much but seems unlikely

direct feeding waste into fresh is essentially the least reliable method

[visual ocean]

The two pipe coming from the right side are the waste water. I placed a valve to make sure is one directional.
I do have water exxtractors with the exact remainder amound filling the rest

The two systems are then connecting to the manifold

[vapid gorge]

valves don't stop back flow, and as mentioned, direct feeding waste into fresh with valves is incrediblue unreliable

and theres no mechanism here to make it a priority

[wind spade]

yeah, I wouldn't recommend using valves

[visual ocean]

What can i do here?

[vapid gorge]

keep the fresh and waste water split , don't mix them

[wind spade]

not mix fresh and byproduct water

[vapid gorge]

Blue line is fresh, red is waste

[visual ocean]

So i separate the manifold

[wind spade]

see the images we sent

[vapid gorge]

basically. You clock some machines to only use the waste water

and some machiens to only use fresh.

[visual ocean]

Gotcha. I gotta do some changes then, the straight line method for the aluminia solution is not gonna cut it

[vapid gorge]

straight line?

oh you can still do a direct feed if you clock things right

my example image uses the lower numbers here

and they direct feed into the scrap machines in front

that diagram is using Sloppy solution and Electrode scrap

[visual ocean]

it was fairly easy to change

underclock one refinery and OC another

split the water, and made a mini manifold for the solution on the 3 left machines

I dont wanna mess with the OC at the scrap machines due to belts

[oblique hollow]

Dont put valves on the pipe that carries byprosuct water, only put it on the freshwater line if needes

Valve on the byproduct line would deprioritize it

[visual ocean]

i removed the valves altogether

since i split the water

[oblique hollow]

Also good, but for future reference: valves have less priority than pipelines with pumps on them

So valves on any byproduct line is more disruptive than helpful

[visual ocean]

yeah my initial question was about exacly prioritization.
They gave me a pretty easy solution tbf.
But in the future, removing pumps and valves from the equation, height dictates priority right?

[crimson moat]

unfortunately not, stuff like the amount of pipe/connection objects between A and B has a huge effect

[visual ocean]

So, if spam junctions i can decrease a priority

[crimson moat]

yeah

it's a bit janky and difficult to predict though

[visual ocean]

That's good to know. Could be useful.
Ngl pipes in this game separate players

Now, all i need to make the setup perfect is mk6

[vapid gorge]

noooot quite. You can build a VIP junction but the yare fiddly

and don't work with gas

[visual ocean]

"but the yare fiddly" - whats does this mean?

[vapid gorge]

they don't always work

[crimson moat]

It's difficult to reliably build liquid priority systems

[vapid gorge]

you can seemingly build them completely right, but they could just not work.

[crimson moat]

with the exception of an overflow junction (liquid flows to X when Y is full, otherwise doesn't flow)

but even then, you have to keep in mind to use a horizontal and NOT vertical junction, because those are bugged in a way that interferes with overflow junctions

[visual ocean]

Oh. Well everything was made by someone, so I just need to find someone that did something similar and replicate

[visual ocean]

I thought that was mod stuff. Like AND / OR switches

[vapid gorge]

no it's not that. They rely on weird fluid mechanics behaviours

you can replicate VIPs exactly, like I said, and sometimes they just don't work.

it's effectively an exploit

[crimson moat]

The problem is that you can't replicate it really unless you literally copy every detail identically, so basically a blueprint with a very specific input and output. Making any modification whatsoever can change the behavior in an undesired or unexpected way.

[crimson moat]

Nah, it's a relatively simple consequence of gravity. Liquid won't flow uphill if it can go or stay down

[vapid gorge]

that's why splitting fresh and waste water is recommended as it's the most reliable method to manage the waste

[crimson moat]

The classic VIP junction unintentionally abuses a bug with vertical junction connections being calculated at incorrect heights, and it only works with a vertical junction which is rotated in 2 of the 4 possible rotations (because the bug is incorrect in a different way when it's rotated differently).

One of many examples of something that seems like a minor or inconsequential detail making or breaking the function of a pipe system.

---

this is a very easy one to do accidentally

especially if one pipe goes further than the others, for example if you try to input at the middle and ends of a manifold, you might need 2 pipes in a row to reach the end while the middle connection is easily done with 1 pipe

but the result is that the section with fewer pipes gets a larger % of the flow, all else being the same

exactly how much difference is difficult to predict so it's best just minimised as much as possible

[oblique hollow]

I gotta test that with hydrostatic pressure

It seems like that might be different

[crimson moat]

I think it's just a consequence of simulating without order and with limited tick rate

we can't sim A1 then A2 then A3 then A4 within a single tick to propagate flow because we would have to define which order to sim in, if you simmed it backwards then it would give different results.

defining an order to sim pipes in would be AFAIK impossible with the constraints that are ingame

and the tick rate is low enough that moving from A1 to A2 on one tick, then A2 to A3 on the next tick, then A3 to A4 on the next tick etc behaves quite differently than if A1/A2/A3/A4 were all the same pipe.

Factorio's system used to have this issue too and it doesn't any more, but the one that they're using now doesn't support some of the verticality / headlift / overflow junction type stuff that Satis has.

I can't think of a fix to this part which preserves the behavior that we want and doesn't take way more computational power.

[oblique hollow]

Probably why we have a more realistic system in the first place

[crimson moat]

this problem could be greatly reduced by merging pipes and connectors into 1 entity where possible

like in my picture above, the right side could be merged down from 5 pipes into just 1 before simulation

they all have the same height, so it doesn't sacrifice any of the verticality behavior. It's possible to specifically hit that case where it works, and filter out cases where it doesn't.

It would more than likely save CPU time too.

The main issue with merging is just complexity, if you only want to merge sometimes (factorio always merges everything between A and B, so they don't have to figure out what to merge or not merge).

[mossy ibex]

I'm doing a sloppy alumina / electrode scrap closed loop, wish me luck

(speaking of pipe bullshit)

[brisk smelt]

closed loop? as in you sloop the electrodes to make infinite water?

i did that once it was funny lmao

[mossy ibex]

no just doing an ill advised alumina solution -> water -> repeat loop with a supplemental water pump also feeding in

I don't love having tyo use black magic, but to be honest I don't get why simply providing the exactly right amount of water wouldn't just work. I know it's a feedback loop thing, but intuitively, my heart doesn't believe it

[oblique hollow]

system stability theory

more things want to destabilize it than there are things that want to stabilize it

[wind spade]

the thing is - if everything works perfectly, your way will work just fine. The reason why we recommend separating fresh and recycled water (or other ways) is because it's almost guaranteed that something won't work perfectly, either now or later. You may run into some game bug, you may accidentally disconnect something, or dismantle a wire, or missclick with something, or power goes down or whatever. And then your system can break and would need some manual work to restart (instead of it being able to restart itself)

[orchid brook]

forget about dark matter we can make a doggo farm

just needs a lot of them... a lot

[brisk smelt]

mathematics and physics are best friends in theory but not in application

[normal latch]

ok so i have a question about screws

seems like balancing the recipe isnt sufficient since screws take longer to load into the machine

for instance, im making reinforced iron plates

[wind spade]

what do you mean by "balancing the recipe"?

[normal latch]

idk like i have the right amount of screws being made and pushed in

maybe the issue was slow conveyor

[wind spade]

do you have fast enough conveyors? are you using manifolds?

[normal latch]

how fast we talkin lol

i think the issue was mk1 conveyors

[wind spade]

enough to carry the amount you need

[normal latch]

yea i can carry the items

it was my first "big" setup

so maybe now i'll be able to revise it and fix it

oh i remember now

ok i remember, yea the problem was i was merging all the screws back into a single belt (not fast enough), then manifolding them

nevermind, i think i know what to do next time (im making a new, bigger setup for reinforced iron plates soon)

[wind spade]

yeah, screws are generally recommended to be made 1:1 in front of the machine

[normal latch]

that makes sense, glad i learned the hard way (-:

really drives home the idea

btw this game is too good, the exploration has been amazing, loving my parachute and ladder lol

[brisk smelt]

i think i had 20 mk6's full of screws on my last factory lmao

but yes match the ratios for screws ^

[wind thunder]

how do i have fun in satisfactory

[wind spade]

well, only you can answer that

[normal latch]

depends on you, really
the best thing is that there isnt a time limit in the game, resources dont decay or anything

so you cant really "mess up", so experiment, explore, building, rebuild, whatever

[wind thunder]

thanks Harb

good night everyone :)

[normal latch]

gnite (-:

[vivid tide]

is there an endgame?

is the game still continued, in development, any big updates/small updates, any timeline?

[frosty owl]

#announcements

[oblique hollow]

engame = quantum magic chaos

[dusky dust]

There is an explicit goal you're working towards (ie: finishing all Space Elevator deliveries), and there are story/plot points related to that task, and to general exploration on the map. Once you complete the last elevator delivery, there are some Things What Happen™, and you get an actual end credits roll. You are quite welcome to continue playing afterwards, though, and I suspect most people would still have a fair bit of stuff left to do, should they want to, even after "finishing" the game like that.

The story/plot is a pretty light touch, and doesn't really get in the way of playing the game at all

[jovial wren]

can i ask a tier 9 related question here?

i am making ||ficsonium|| for a power plant and im a bit confused by how much energy it makes... do all nuclear fuel types make the same energy per building or do they vary?

[unique cypress]

all generators make the same amount of power, regardless of the fuel inside them

different fuels just last a different amount of time

[oblique hollow]

Power per generator is the same if the clock speed between them is the same

[brisk urchin]

endgame = start of the fun

[dusky dust]

Expanding slightly on the answers you've got: Ficsonium lasts a lot less time than the other options, so it's far less energy-efficient than either Uranium or Plutonium. It is still net-power-positive (you get more power out than you put into making the Ficsonium in the first place), but it is definitely by far the least efficient of the nuclear power options

Ficsonium's only really worth it if you want both of: 1) Burning Plutonium Rods, plus 2) Still having "clean" nuclear

If you've got personal wiggle room on either of those conditions, then Ficsonium's pretty unattractive.

[brisk urchin]

real lol 😂

[dusky dust]

(I suppose there's technically also "3) Wanting to automate literally everything in the game") :)

[jovial wren]

i calculated that i needed 20 powerplants for the uranium. so at the point i get to ficsonium how many power plants will i need? and how much more % power will i get in between just doing uranium / using the waste to make plutonium and then ficsonium?

i feel like i asked the question badly i can reformulate it

[dusky dust]

I'll leave it to you to math it out; can use calculators like sftools.com to figure that out. (Note that you need to supply, for instance, "Uranium Waste" as an "Input" -- nuclear power plants don't have recipes, so you need to calculate each step separately. Once you plug in how much waste you're generating, you can choose "maximize" for your "plutonium fuel rod" output, for instance)

How much Plutonium you get out of your Uranium Waste will depend on what recipes you decide to use

[jovial wren]

i'm using all basic recipes for the "main" radioactive parts

let me try the website

[brisk urchin]

😭

[dusky dust]

For example, btw -- 20 NPPs burning Uranium will give you 200/min Uranium Waste (each NPP at 100% is 10/min), so maximizing for Plutonium Fuel Rods with vanilla recipes will get you: https://www.satisfactorytools.com/1.0/production?share=lNAECJCijkw8Ry70s0Vs (will need to click over to the new tab once it's loaded in)

[jovial wren]

ok i found it, 4 uranium fuel rods per minute, 1 plutonium fuel rod per minute, 5 ficsonium fuel rods per minutes

@dusky dust

and i wana sloop the very end twice so i can get 20 ficsonium (at the cost of 8 sommersloops). sho how many megawats does that give me?

[dusky dust]

Oh, and you're also at a point then to know how much power you'll get out of it. As I say, Ficsonium's the least-efficient; you use about 66% of the power produced by burning Ficsonium into just processing Pu Waste -> Fi Rods

I'm not sure what the efficiency of vanilla-recipe Plutonium is, but it'll be far, far better than that

[dusky dust]

I wouldn't recommend slooping Ficsonium itself, btw

The power efficiency is just bad. If you're gonna sloop one step of your rod production, Uranium's probably your most attractive target

(slooping Ficsonium rods would improve Ficsonium's power efficiency, of course, but even with the slooping it'll be far worse than the other steps)

Ficsonium really is just the conjunction of "I want to burn Plutonium" with "I want clean nuclear." (With an optional smattering of "I just want to automate all possible things")

[jovial wren]

WHAT

[jovial wren]

i like the automation part but im a bit surprised cause i really expected it to be the best power in the game (given its description.....)

[dusky dust]

I should say that personally I'm quite fond of Ficsonium and IMO it's quite worth it. I'm in the "I want to burn Plutonium but also I want clean nuclear" camp, so Ficsonium's great for that

[jovial wren]

ok peak

[dusky dust]

But, as I say, if either of those two prerequisites don't apply to you, then Ficsonium's not really worth it

[jovial wren]

naw naw i wana

[dusky dust]

Yeah, its presentation ingame just from descriptions are probably not ideal; they set up that kind of preconception

[jovial wren]

weh

[dusky dust]

When really Ficsonium was only ever meant to be a bone thrown to people who want to burn Plutonium but also have clean nuclear

[jovial wren]

so how much power is 5 fi rods?

[dusky dust]

Clicking on the icon on the NPP's input buffer will show you the processing rates for all the fuel types it supports

A single NPP at 100% is always 2.5GW -- the different fuel types just give you different runtimes

The wiki's also got those lists, of course

[wind spade]

7.5 TJ

[dusky dust]

!wikisearch npp

[brisk shore]

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

[jovial wren]

tj 😭😭😭

[wind spade]

yeah

[jovial wren]

i see,,,, i calculated that i would need 20 + 10 + 5 power plants. which equals to 35 orrrr if i sloop the ficsite twice i get 20 + 10 + 20 which means 50 or 150% of the original production

and the extra work required somewhat is negligible

[dusky dust]

As I say, you'd be better off slooping an earlier rod step. The power efficiency of Ficsonium makes it just not worth it

[jovial wren]

unless i calculated something wrong

[dusky dust]

Ficsonium's a Plutonium Waste handler which happens to be slightly power-positive

[jovial wren]

yeah but then it means double (or quadruple) processing for alllllll the next steps :<

[dusky dust]

You'd be better off putting the sloops into Augmenters, IMO

Though, of course, it's your save! Do whatever you like with it. :)

(Gotta run, bye!)

[jovial wren]

8 sloops = 8% more power with 400MW (instead of 50% more power ((given that the rest of my power grid is going to be belittled by the nuclear power plants)) )

[unique cypress]

The easiest thing would be to not make any Ficsonium in the first place

[jovial wren]

i enjoyed the chat a lot thank you

[jovial wren]

but i dont understand why not if my calculations are accurate

[unique cypress]

If we're talking about effort per MW, Ficsonium would be close to the very bottom of the list

It's mostly a way to get rid of Plutonium waste

But it's much easier to just store it

[jovial wren]

oh?

but what about radiation!!!!!!!!

[unique cypress]

And it's still easier to not make plutonium waste at all

[jovial wren]

hmm,,,,

[unique cypress]

Dump it in the corner of the map somewhere

[jovial wren]

im kind of set on this project just for the flex now ehehehehehe

[unique cypress]

I mean if you just want to make Ficsonium, then the effort or power output don't matter much

[jovial wren]

i didnt realise it at the time i guess but ive already seen that its very possible so might as well go full throttle on this decision :>>

i mean for comparison what does the best fuel type make in terms of power?

[mystic hawk]

Yeah i have that question too

[unique cypress]

that question is impossible to answer without more details

best in terms of what?

and all fuels can make basically any amount of power you want to make

like up to a TW at least

[brisk smelt]

biofuel

noooo emoji embeds dont work here

[plucky tusk]

Leaves the best fuel imo

😏

[wind spade]

embeds should work here just fine

[brisk smelt]

:sholthink:

uhhhh

[wind spade]

ah, you mean external emojis?

yeah those were disabled due to abuse

[brisk smelt]

oh nvm my clients acting up

[jovial wren]

ever tried using biocoal vrochacho?

[brisk smelt]

yeaaa lol

https://cdn.discordapp.com/emojis/894340116288524320.webp?size=64&name=sholthink

oh it works now

[unique cypress]

Nobody asked for it but here are probability distributions of the average, minimum and maximum output and the amplitude of fluctuations of 1-31 geothermal generators

[plucky tusk]

I didnt ask for it but my soul did. Thx bruv

I really need to learn more about statistics lol

[cosmic zinc]

is this good for tier 4

[main thicket]

anyone know how can i fix this issue? basically both extractors produce 300 water but for some reason the left one fills up and then the right one keeps working making me only 300 water instead of the 600 needed.

[wind spade]

first of, I'd remove the valve

[main thicket]

let me try

i think that fixed it

only problem is that there are another 200 extractos all with valves

[wind spade]

(well, the general suggestion is to never use valves 🙂 )

[main thicket]

i can see why now

[noble timber]

Touchy subject these days greeny

[main thicket]

thanks

[noble timber]

Last time I saw someone recommend no valves about 10 people were arguing the opposite

[wind spade]

there's ways to make use of them, but in general (especially if you're new or inexperienced), they are usually a trap

[unique cypress]

if anything, there's even more reason not to use valves than ever. we've discovered another valve bug

[noble timber]

You don't need to tell me

I have forever been an avid valve hater lol

[unique cypress]

they may not be completely useless, but they're never necessary

[wind spade]

people that argue for valves are usually those who don't understand that "works in my setup" is not equal to "works everytime for everyone"

[noble timber]

I'm sure the argument I saw was something along the lines of "if you cannot make them work then you can't build pipes correctly"

[wind spade]

they build one setup where adding a valve "magically fixed it" (usually the fix was that it filled up or stabilised and valve had nothing to do with it) and then they think that valves are fix-all magic buildable

[unique cypress]

at least valves now can be used to limit flow properly

not that that's useful, but you at least can

[main thicket]

are floorholes and still a bug?

[noble timber]

Yeah I must say I have never understood why people want to limit flows... everything will balance out if you have built it right

[noble timber]

I'm sure that was fixed a while ago but not 100% sure, I don't tend to use them

You talking about the headlift bug?

[main thicket]

yeah

[noble timber]

Yeah they fixed that

[main thicket]

that good

one less thing to worry about

[normal latch]

any good numbers to aim for on tier 4 to start my space elevator track (phase 2)?

[wind spade]

42

[normal latch]

i was thinking 10 per minute of each space elevator part (there are 3)

[unique cypress]

0

[normal latch]

i would somerslop it too, so 20 per minute total

[wind spade]

honestly space elevator parts numbers are just:

• how fast you want to finish the phase
• how many tickets you want after you finish the phase

[unique cypress]

handfeed them

[normal latch]

i could handfeed

how do tickets factor in, greeny?

you mean like excess (after phase) can be sunk?

[wind spade]

well I assume you'd sink them after the phase is done

as there's no reason to dismantle the factory

[normal latch]

yea my brain had to catch up heh

well i love tickets

i even put a ticket in my sink, and it gave me an award lol

i put at least one of everything in that beautiful sink

[unique cypress]

if you don't sink them, there's very little reason to build a full factory in the first place

[normal latch]

except mercer and somer

[noble timber]

Depends how much you want to build. Think for phase 2 I did enough to complete the elevator in an hour and then let it overflow into a resource sink until I needed those resources for something eles

[normal latch]

im an explorer so i have lots of tickets already (like 40+) from my protein things

[normal latch]

60 minutes in an hour, 20 per minute = 1200 produced (excess)

ok, i have my plan then

can you sink a somersloop and mercer sphere?

good lol i think it would only be a mistake

i think also those items shouldnt be delete-able

well, lemme sink one of each, and then cut it off lol

[noble timber]

Phase 3 I did the same but have since dismantled that project, I think my phase 2 one is still running actaully

[normal latch]

how many tix you got?

[noble timber]

Phase 4 will be handfed (or at least a crude setup) and I will dedicate most of the remaining worlds resources for phase 5

[noble timber]

No idea, i've unlocked everything apart from the trophies - on holiday right now so can't check

[normal latch]

holidays where?

[noble timber]

Germany

[tiny leaf]

does this type of set up work? and does it need valves to prevent backflow?

my pipes are having throughput issues and its very frustrating

[wind spade]

valves are never needed and don't prevent backflow

[tiny leaf]

oh really? dang

[tiny leaf]

would this system be fine though?

[silent shoal]

Yes, with overclocking or underclocking to avoid exceeding the pipe capacity.

[tiny leaf]

well 5 pumps at 120/min is 600

so should be fine i hope

[silent shoal]

I know valves and pumps prevent backflow, are you sure?

[silent shoal]

You'll don't worry

[unique cypress]

they prevent backward flow from flowing through them, yes

[wind spade]

I am sure. see also

[unique cypress]

that's useless, though, because the backflow just reflects from them

[wind spade]

they do prevent backflow from one end of valve to another, yes. But any pipe section can (and will) still have backflow

[silent shoal]

Thanks

[oblique hollow]

Serial valves kill head lift.
Never have more than 1 valve after another

If you want stability, use mk 1 pipes for all extractor outputs and merge mk 1 pipes until you exceed 300/min, then use mk 2 pipes for the main line

[silent shoal]

Nice catch

[tiny leaf]

regarding this
in the manual you wrote, it said machines will always try to dump out liquids at max flowrate so wouldn't using mk1 pipes make that slower?

[honest grove]

few machines will output more than 300m3 at once, so mk1 pipes wont really be a bottleneck, the point of this setup is to keep pipes full so that "work pressure" (max flow rate as a function of pipe fullness) is maximized

[tiny leaf]

ah okay thanks

[stoic gorge]

How can I remove a specific amount of a production? For example right now I have a production of encased industrial beam thats producing 20 per min, and I want to remove 7 per min to redirect to another production, how can I do that?

[deft lichen]

assuming default recipe, have assemblers producing 6+1 and 6+6+1 (or overclock 6 to 7)

well, same principle for the alt

just group machines to produce exactly what you need

[vapid gorge]

you could also use a smart splitter to over flow the parts you need depending on the situation you're in

[unique cypress]

As long as that production only consumes 7/min and no more, then you can just send all of it over there, and it'll only consume 7, leaving the other 13 to overflow somewhere else

[vapid gorge]

or let it self balance out like a regular manifold would.

(assuming one end isn't a sink)

[stoic gorge]

thank you very much guys

[normal latch]

where do photos get saved on windows?

[wind spade]

#faq

[normal latch]

also, im stuck, i have mk3 conveyors and 270 iron ore on one belt + 270 coal on another

i pump those into foundrys to make 270 steel ingots and try to merge them back all onto a single belt

but it slows down even though they are being consumed at a speed of 270

[deft lichen]

go along the belt and watch where it pauses and where it becomes partially empty

most likely a lower mk belt somewhere

[proper dragon]

How do I setup this block signal? It's a 2-way railrooad and I want the trains to wait if there's already one at the station

[wind spade]

never put signals on two-way segments

[proper dragon]

I see what you mean, so how do I do it then?

I;ve never used rails maybe I ought to see a guide

[deft lichen]

please make a #1038092680493801533 and draw how you intend trains to run on your railway

[hoary oar]

put one on the other side as well
so you have one pointing in to the station and one pointing away from the station

[proper dragon]

I kinda hve no plans yet I am just testing it out

If I want both a load and an unload at a same loaction, do I need two stations?

[agile junco]

(24*11+180*5-105*3+40*5+600)/3 Why aren't my three pipes of water enough I wonder...

Wait... how is this possible?

[vapid gorge]

Wait, were your 3 merging pipes before a waste management system?

[agile junco]

what about waste management?

[agile junco]

you mean the byproduct of the scrap?

Oh interesting... the timing is just weird with the production of Alumina Solution and I forgot there's a decent waiting period afterwards.

I guess I actually need a small fluid buffer, wow.

[unique cypress]

Hoverpack?

[vapid gorge]

Yeah the waste water. And avoid buffers here at all cost

[agile junco]

No, I need them I'm pretty sure. This is actually all because I have 5 solution producers making more than I consume, but the rates sometimes line up so I consume more than I have in the pipes, thus I run out even though I should be making enough.

Or that's my current theory and it makes sense I think.

[agile junco]

I tested w/o moving and w/o the hoverpack.

It just fills up quickly when all the alumina solution machines output at the same time.

[vapid gorge]

Buffers fuck with flow. You don’t want them for waste

[agile junco]

No, not buffering the byproduct.

Buffering the input, which was running out.

[vapid gorge]

They fuck with all flow with a system. At best they do nothing. At worst the cause or hide problems

[agile junco]

I mean, you also need them with trains sometimes.

That's just a very simplified view of them.

[vapid gorge]

Trains are the only place

[agile junco]

I'm still pretty sure this is also a case where it's needed.

But I could be wrong.

I may just need to feed in the middle or something.

You seem to have been right, buffer didn't help.

I guess we should be underclocking the alumina production so that the it matches the consumption rate exactly...

Still idling. I'm out of ideas lol.

The weirdest part I think was that when I added a buffer at the end of the production before consumption. It filled up and yet still the pipe going upstairs wasn't getting a full 600.

[vapid gorge]

Because buffers dont do that

[agile junco]

Lame

[vapid gorge]

As for the idle in the picture - wearing a hover pack around machines when you use power switches stutters them briefly

[agile junco]

I'll keep that in mind.

Even when you aren't moving I guess.

[vapid gorge]

But in general if you pour waste water into fresh you have to be very careful. It’s not a very reliable method

[agile junco]

That part seems to be going swimingly... but out of curiosity, how else do you do it?

[vapid gorge]

Keep it split.

Have some refineries run only on fresh, some only on waste

Unbreakable method

[agile junco]

My numbers are too tight for that and I don't want to pipe in new water if it's working. But I'll keep that in mind.

[vapid gorge]

Can you direct feed? Sure

It can however just fall over on its face though and requires manual flushing and other things to get going quite often if flow stops even for a moment

Split system? Will just start up again

[vapid gorge]

Those are just ratios, you can oc them

[agile junco]

Oh I see... that diagram makes a lot of sense.

[vapid gorge]

For example the image with the machines is processing 780 bauxite on with sloppy+electrod

I could reduce that unit to 5 refs, but I like direct feeding

[agile junco]

That's similar to my build

[vapid gorge]

Actually, you could compress my group to 4 refs if you want

But you couldn’t direct feed anymore

[agile junco]

I'm using 5 refineries of buaxite.

I didn't want to overclock much in this factory.

Trying to get this whole thing running before I expand my power again.

[vapid gorge]

OCing is purely aesthetic/space saving in any case 🙂

[agile junco]

Seems like the hoverpack was the issue though, not idling again so far.

[vapid gorge]

Unless you’ve designed yourself into a bad place with pipes I suppose

[vapid gorge]

You can get rid of power switches and it won’t happen

[agile junco]

I have one or two machines per group OC'd sometimes just to avoid the headache, but it's minimal.

[agile junco]

I'll consider it, though I like the ability to control the factories easily.

They should really fix that one >.<

[dusky dust]

Yeah, it'd be nice to have it fixed, for sure

I ended up just not using switches anywhere

(Though to be fair, I wasn't actually relying on switches for anything, so Not Using Them wasn't a hard decision)

[agile junco]

I plan on using them to control power stations at least.

[vapid gorge]

Yeah long running issue, but it won’t affect factories unless you’re doing extremely fancy stuff

[agile junco]

OK new confusion... I have a pipe going straight through a junction with no branches (the junction is just to extend the pipe, this issue was also happening when it was two pipes connected together. The input side reads 0/s the output side is somehow reading 600/s

[dusky bronze]

@wind spade sorry for the ping, but i've got all the recipes/machines selected and there should be enough resources for this (only thing im concered about is sam)

is there something im missing or do i have to shoot lower

[hoary oar]

need to manually input plutonium waste

same for uranium waste

[dusky bronze]

ahh

[vapid gorge]

Show?

[agile junco]

This is where they are connected. It's a solo junction. I confired by deleting it and recreating it.

[agile junco]

Pipes sometimes confuse me. Like train tracks.

[vapid gorge]

Did you rebuild the pipe connections to it? If it’s not splitting anything why have it?

[agile junco]

I sure did

Just asthetic.

like I said when it was two connected bare pipes it did the same thing.

[vapid gorge]

On the bus atm and can’t really see the whole thing. Are the machines starving?

[agile junco]

No

[vapid gorge]

So the flow is fine?

[agile junco]

Yea, the 600 does in fact apear to be going somewhere.

[vapid gorge]

Visual issue then I guess. You could just try clipping the pipe through the junction

[agile junco]

?

The junction is not related to this.

[vapid gorge]

Then I’m confused xD

[agile junco]

It's all because the pipe length is too long so it needs two pipes and they are acting weird next to each other.

[vapid gorge]

But even though the readout says zero it’s flowing?

[agile junco]

Yes

With no other inputs to that line in between.

The middle set.

[vapid gorge]

Well, I’d offer to look at in in game but won’t be home for 30hours. At least it’s just visual

[agile junco]

I'll test deleting that pipe tomorrow and seeing what happens to everything... Maybe later if you want to hop in I'll be working on this after work more this week.

[crimson moat]

All junctions need to be flat (horizontal) otherwise they behave in inconsistent and unexpected ways. There's one here tilted up which will do that

[agile junco]

That one is completely separate from this. And I have all my refineries like that with absolutely no issues with them.

[crimson moat]

Ok. Just a general tip

[agile jay]

Can someone tell me what’s wrong with this?

[sand epoch]

Change the graphics mode...

[proper dragon]

Why am I unable to rotate this path signal?

[proper dragon]

When I place the BP and the signals afterwards, they all say 'Signal loops on itself'

[oblique hollow]

Rail BPs kinda have that issue atm i believe

They just dont work right

[proper dragon]

Any idea why the signals still don't work even when I place them independently from the BP?

[oblique hollow]

rebuild the rails, they might be causing trouble too

Like you can have the signals causing issues and the rails themselves can cause issues

Its all kinda just messy atm

Rebuild everything until it works basically

[proper dragon]

😭 After two hours of head scratching

[brisk urchin]

the rails are to close, trains would collide so signals think its one track

[proper dragon]

When I tried to separate them it would sa the turns are too sharp lmao

[brisk urchin]

the 3x3 foundation turn is a clean one

and exactly 1 foundation between the tracks is a good enough distance

[proper dragon]

Should I include foundations in my final BPs? I usually don't for buildnigs

[brisk urchin]

no

just for measuring

[proper dragon]

Yup that's what I was told but seems I ignored that advice 😭

[brisk urchin]

lmao

[proper dragon]

Wait but how do I make a 3x3 turn if my grid is 5x5 and I need a space of 1 foundation between rails
That's 3x2 max

LOL

Got this just from trying to make this BP 😭

[brisk urchin]

its just not possible in your blueprint

try it without

[proper dragon]

I was trying to make a BP to speed things up

I could've build a network across the entire map in t his time ☠️

WELP that's on me for not listening to others

[hoary oar]

you don't need a full foundation between rails

idk the exact minimum, but i usually place the rails on opposite edges of a foundation
so in the middle there's like.. half a foundation ish?

[frigid maple]

Oof

[brisk urchin]

yeah dont make rail blueprints, they are either always to big for the designer or are glitched and dont work when applied in your network (means you gotta rebuild it manualy anyways)

atleast intersections

[frozen bolt]

What are the 4 lines representitive of? 50, 100, 200, 500 what?

[brisk urchin]

fuel types

[wind spade]

no

[wind spade]

stack sizes

[frozen bolt]

Aha that makes more sense, thanks

[brisk urchin]

yeh that does make more sense

[mossy ibex]

heat fused frame seems tempting but dubious with the addition of fuel, am I missing something? Is it one of those highly situational alts?

[dusky bronze]

after deciding ficsonium wasnt worth it this is the next big project i think

7.5 BWDs, 10 AI expansion servers, 6.25 pasta, 20 biochemical sculptors

[simple rampart]

one can only imagine what this looks like without ouposts

[dusky bronze]

horrendous

already producing them tho so its all good i think

[amber igloo]

how can i calculate how long my manifolds will take to fully start up

[dusky bronze]

probably just find the total amount of resources you need (1 stack per machine; however much one stack is * amount of machines) and then divide that but how much/min you're making

[unique cypress]

it's complicated lol

there's a calculator tho

https://satisfactory.greeny.dev/machine-fill

[clear fulcrum]

i need some help with some math. i have 120 iron ore/m, (120 ingots/m), how many modular frames is it possible to make with no alt recipe?

[plucky tusk]

Do you have underclocking?

[clear fulcrum]

yup

[plucky tusk]

I just did one a bit ago it was like 80 ish iron for 1 production line so you should be able to just 1.5x it

[clear fulcrum]

80ish to 1 normal assembler? so the standard 2/m?

[plucky tusk]

I think so im afk so i cant really run the numbers on it

[clear fulcrum]

absolute legend

can you do me one for rotors too, again 120/m, no alts?

[unique cypress]

also, https://www.satisfactorytools.com/1.0/production

[plucky tusk]

Generally when i plan stuff ill start at the top of the production line then go down find out my resource limitations then just multiply to whatever i need

[clear fulcrum]

i find a place i want to build it on, good nodes, etc, then look at what i can comfortably ge tout of i

this iron factory has 3 normal nodes, 3 mk2 miners

[plucky tusk]

Oh yeah its different if you go around buildin little factories

[clear fulcrum]

and is beign used for RIP, mod frames, rotors

[plucky tusk]

When you do the cube strat you can go all out

[clear fulcrum]

yeah, i like having multiple around, but i also like building

[brisk urchin]

bless you, i could never build pretty

[clear fulcrum]

i cant make coal plants pretty

but i made it tolerable, my other factories are to my liking, im sure i could make them better tho

[brisk urchin]

my average build looks like this

[plucky tusk]

I Do 4-1.5 for coal it fits in a nice little blockand can be pasted a bunch of times

[brisk urchin]

i think i never ever built some factory diffrent than this

or even anything

[clear fulcrum]

i got 4 normal nodes, so i did 4 8:3 setups

2.4 gigawatt is serving me well

[plucky tusk]

Pretty sure all my coal gens have been converted to steel or diamonds at this point

[brisk urchin]

u use coal diamonds?

[clear fulcrum]

had a tiny iron factory, lil copper one, lil concrete one but now ive got a proper copper one up, making a 2nd iron factory, bigger concrete one cuz i build with concrete foundations alot, then its steel time

[brisk urchin]

wet concreet i hope?

[clear fulcrum]

i do indeed have plans to do wet concrete

6 normal nodes, water is a bit further out cuz thats fine i can do a long pipe

safe to say ill have concrete to ship out too lol

[brisk urchin]

my goal is computer at the moment

[brisk urchin]

i cant even finish this factory because i have way to little

but i need plastic for computer

but i neeed computers for the farm

AAAAH

[clear fulcrum]

platics always made me mald

though that was prior to me actually learning hwot o properly deal with liquids

i got it down now

[brisk urchin]

ye the first ever learning curve in satis is liquids and buggy pipes

[plucky tusk]

I use all the alts tbh

[brisk urchin]

the 2nd one is train signals lol

[brisk urchin]

hm, alr

[dusky dust]

(pipes are not technically buggy, they just operate in ways which are often quite unintuitive for players. Semantics, I know, but I am a pedant! :D)

[brisk urchin]

i agree whilst disagreeing

there are some pipe issues where if you dont look closely and or dont understand the mechanics, they just dont work or work way less efficient

[plucky tusk]

You gotta do the pipe ritual on the pipe altar so the pipe gods will bless your pipes

[brisk urchin]

especialy head lift

[brisk urchin]

piping

[still blade]

so ive started to actually put things down in my new "main base"... and then I realized I dont have enough space for every production line. I could expand it, but that would be tedious, especially since it's using about as much space as it can in the Blue Crater without disturbing the fuel production I have set up.

so now it'll be a giant smelting tower for every resource's basic refinement (iron ingots, concrete, black powder, etc) and I'll either truck or train everything out into their own little factories

[noble timber]

Not sure how headlift could be made much clearer, the game shows you where the headlift you have runs out which pumps also automatically snap to

[amber igloo]

is there any way to import a factory from that part of the website

[wind spade]

wdym "import a factory"?

[normal latch]

is that url from our legendary chat member greeny!? @wind spade (-:

[amber igloo]

the factory calculator on that website

can i put it into the manifold calc in any quick way

[unique cypress]

DO NOT use anything other than the manifold calculator on that website

Everything else is like 5 years out of date

[amber igloo]

is that not satisfactory tool?

did i read it wrong

yep i read it wrong it’s okay 😎

[wind spade]

no, it's not SFTools

[agile junco]

Whelp, I've got a high level plan

[deft lichen]

You'd have much cleaner amounts of machines if you used multiples/fractions of 45

Change 5 to 4.5 and 10 to 9 and see how it changes

[unique cypress]

or just multiples of what 1 machine produces

[deft lichen]

Not necessarily

[unique cypress]

?

[wind spade]

that's discrimination of decimals 🙁

[unique cypress]

if you make a multiple of one machine produces, you'll have a full number of machines

if an item is used for something other than output, you just have to add that

[wind spade]

of that step, sure
not of all steps

[unique cypress]

fair

I just never care about any steps other than the final ones

[deft lichen]

The 45-81 rule generally applies to the entire production line or at least most of it

[unique cypress]

they'll sort themselves out automatically

[wind spade]

afaik it's no longer working (or at least not in all cases) in 1.0

[deft lichen]

Ah that would be a shame

[wind spade]

as it was made with pre-1.0 recipes

and many of the 1.0 changes made some recipes not follow that rule

but hard to check, I doubt Sev has done any math regarding that

[deft lichen]

On that note, we should finally gather around for the alt analysis project

[wind spade]

was it decided how it should work/look/etc?

[dusky dust]

Yeah, I've been meaning to start crunching that sort of number for awhile now (re: 45-81), 'cause I'd been curious about the 1.0 recipe changes too

[unique cypress]

oh, I'm in

I can be the SF Optimzier Operator lol

[deft lichen]

McGalleon and me had fairly different ideas

My idea was to avoid huge number crunching and instead focus on making it approachable and easy to understand

Of course we would still crunch the numbers to be able to build upon something

[wind spade]

I guess the first question is - what is the expected role that the analysis will fulfil? I mean for the user using it?

(because imo it shouldn't really provide much "numbers", as that depends on tons of factor and is better done in a planner)

[deft lichen]

Explain the benefits or drawbacks of using it compared to other recipes for the same product and list relevant pairings

[wind spade]

I'd also avoid "benefit" and "drawback" and replace it with simple neutral statements

[deft lichen]

E.g. Encased Industrial Pipe, you'd say that it needs 50% more assemblers (and thus power) but saves on steel

It should be formatted as plain facts without much opinion, although we can't avoid opinions entirely

[wind spade]

I mean if it's hand-picked descriptions, it's basically opinionated guide anyway

[deft lichen]

Yeah pretty much

You can still frame the facts to hint towards a certain conclusion

[wind spade]

but you really can't do anything much better if you want it to be useful (and not just math)

[wind spade]

as for this, my idea is to give users not conclusions, but enough information to make their own conclusions

[deft lichen]

As another example, Alclad Casing is a pretty terrible recipe imo, but how do you make that sound neutral

Eats a huge amount of copper for a negligible increase in the output, needs to deal with assemblers instead of constructors

[agile junco]

It's fine, because I plan on tweaking the amounts. I have more than enough supply, and the build isn't using overclocking to determain the number of buildings (much).

[wind spade]

but way less of them 🤷

it doesn't sound that bad if you want to save bauxite imo

[unique cypress]

I basically never use default casing

Wherever I need aluminium, I need copper anyway

And Bauxite is pretty scarce

And I don't care about space or power

[deft lichen]

It changes 3 to 2 (base) to 4 to 3, which is okay, but you need 50% of the total aluminum in copper

[wind spade]

I'd just say "uses copper to save on alu cost (can include number of saved ingots per copper ingot or whatever, as that's plain fact not affected by any other recipe choice), uses assembler instead of constructor, outputs more per minute than default"

that's pretty much neutral and leaves user to decide if that's worth or not

[deft lichen]

I also used the alt pretty often, but the math doesn't work out at all

[brisk smelt]

just clock for the output

it does use copper which is arguably just as scarce as bauxite if you're making a shit ton of pasta

[deft lichen]

No I mean, all things considered it's just not worth consuming a huge amount of copper and deal with 2-input machines for such a little increase in output

Like a really ridiculous amount of copper

[wind spade]

which is fine as personal opinion, but should be avoided in context of recipe analysis

[unique cypress]

Unless all you care about is the bauxite efficiency 🤷‍♂️

[deft lichen]

Of course, what I'm saying here is entirely my opinion

[brisk smelt]

bauxite doesn't really exist in a vacuum

[deft lichen]

The analysis will just state the facts

[brisk smelt]

chances are if you max out bauxite copper is maxed out as wwell

[unique cypress]

I have never come even close to running out of copper

[wind spade]

I guess we changed topic somewhere in that convo above and I didn't notice 🤔 mb then

[unique cypress]

Bauxite on the other hand, I've been forced to use default ingot instead of pure on 2 different saves to get that 30% extra

[agile junco]

I'm so organized

[deft lichen]

"Need to supplement 1 copper for every 2 aluminum, uses assemblers instead of constructors but outputs faster per each machine"

[unique cypress]

Do you not use the different tabs in tools

[deft lichen]

I got carried away

[brisk smelt]

that's a ridiculous amount of quartz lol

[wind spade]

yeah that's basically what I said above 🙂 #math-and-meta message

[agile junco]

I will now. I wanted to make sure the whole thing was viable first, since they all interact with each other in some way.

[brisk smelt]

you can plug the spelevator parts into calculator and just work your way down that's probably easier

[unique cypress]

What's a man supposed to do when there's only 10k bauxite on the map and the only way to get more aluminium is to use default ingot?

[brisk smelt]

sam conversions or slooping

[unique cypress]

Both of the saves in question were before 1.0

[brisk smelt]

thats valid then

[wind spade]

the biggest problem I have with this (and any analysis basically) is "what are you comparing to?"

because for sure you can make the argument to compare against default recipe (and then have issues when there's 0 or multiple), but how would the user compare between two different alt recipes? if both say "cheaper in iron than default", how do you know which one is cheaper on iron? (just an example, this is simple to calculate, but some people may have issues with it, and more complex calculations/parameters would be harder for people to deal with)

afaik this is the only "bottleneck" that prevents me/us from starting the project

[deft lichen]

You have to compare against all recipes that produce the item

At once

Sometimes the default recipe is remarkable, sometimes it isn't

[wind spade]

well then counterpoint - diamond recipes

there's a lot of them and it's basically impossible to compare anything relevant there 🤔

(also, I'd say the project shouldn't be "alt recipe analysis", but "recipe analysis")

[deft lichen]

Being unable to compare one part doesn't invalidate the process for other parts

[urban fern]

is there anyone who can report bugs to the dev team or deal with bugs in general? I opened a thread before, and while i was chatting with one guy we found 2 bugs related to pipes

[brisk shore]

Satisfactory Questions

You can send Questions, Feedback, Suggestions, and Bug Reports
https://questions.satisfactorygame.com
<3 @unique cypress

[wind spade]

well sure, my point is that if you compare between all recipes, you get very limited in what you can actually compare... 🤔

[deft lichen]

I mean yeah you can just summarize diamonds as that you should just use whatever you have available nearby, by tier 9 there's no need to babysit the reasoning for this

[wind spade]

and I personally don't really have a good solution for this 🙁

[urban fern]

oh, thanks

[unique cypress]

You can compare all recipes that use coal by the amount of coal they use, you can compare oil and petroleum on the amount of oil they use, etc

[deft lichen]

Sounds like your doubts could be resolved if we just put something together to get started

[wind spade]

well, the only idea was to not compare anything and have automatically generated comparison table that scales all production to 1 (and/or 1/min) to see the differences. But then that also leads to questions about how would the thing be presented

[deft lichen]

Oh yeah definitely not that

[wind spade]

well... it doesn't sound as bad, I actually like that idea quite a lot

[deft lichen]

How can you compare something that uses totally different inputs if you can't go beyond depth 1

[wind spade]

it solves the "comparison problem" and leaves the writing to be related to recipe usefulness and so

[wind spade]

well you can't do that in text either 🤷

[deft lichen]

You can, just "uses additional sulphur" "does not need nitrogen"

[wind spade]

(but if the whole thing was dynamic, you could "pick a recipe for ingredient" and expand the table that way 🤔 )

[wind spade]

well yeah, but the same info will be available in the table format

[deft lichen]

I'm pretty sure we discussed that such a table would be impossible

[wind spade]

it would have one row per recipe, very much possible 🤔

we discussed possibility of table that shows all possible production chains 🙂

[agile junco]

I found a pipe bug last night too but ended up reworking that section anyway and it went away it seems.

[unique cypress]

Another issue with those comparisons is that I would not consider steel rotor a good recipe at all if not for iron pipe and iron wire. The ability to make motors from not just 2 ingredients, but out of only iron is amazing.

But that's assuming that those recipes are available. With default wire and pipes, steel rotor kinda sux

And how do you compare steel rotor to copper rotor? You could compare their iron/copper/steel usage, but it all completely depends on the recipe choices for the ingredients. In a vacuum, you can only compare the output per machine, which is basically pointless

[urban fern]

im reporting my bug thing in the forums now, because it might be bigger that it seems imo

like vertical floorholes with 2m foundations are completely broken

tilted pipe stands too

[wind spade]

there will be section of "common pairings" or "interesting pairings"

that's basically just hand-picked interesting/common combinations with text-based description of what it does and offers

[wind spade]

(but also, the point of the comparison isn't to tell you what is "good" or "bad")

[unique cypress]

Yeah, but what are you comparing in steel rotor vs copper rotor? They have no ingredients in common

And those ingredients can have vastly different production chains

[wind spade]

well that's exactly why my suggestion goes around that

and doesn't compare anything, apart from the autogenerated table which you could expand with selected recipes

[unique cypress]

You could build that into New Tools 🤔

[wind spade]

there's even a prototype of this built into old tools (not published or anything, not even halfway working 😄 )

Tools are great contender in terms of where to put it

[urban fern]

can i post the link of the discord thread related to the bug im reporting in the forums?

[unique cypress]

But yeah, my only 2 ideas are either a comparison table with hard numbers or a collection of multiple players' opinions on each recipe

Both would be useful to some people

[wind spade]

collection of multiple players' opinions on each recipe
this I do not like since it's basically popularity contest (and already exists anyway)

[unique cypress]

And yet that's something that a lot of people come here for

[deft lichen]

How would you decide in-game yourself? I'd personally decide based on which resources are available nearby and which other recipes it pairs well with

Pairings apply to ingredients, dependant items as well as hand picked relevant items (stators and rotors for example)

[wind spade]

they are free to use the online website that basically has statistics on how often people would pick a given recipe if given in a choice 🤷

our project is not for that. It's for people who want information that they can use to decide themselves

[deft lichen]

I mean this should really just be the factors we actually use to choose alts ourselves

Yeah greeny ik you don't play the game

[wind spade]

I don't care if 99% people would use a recipe, I'm not using it if it doesn't make sense for me

[deft lichen]

Yeah I'm a pure copper hater even if people like it

[wind spade]

I'm a cast screw hater (and no, not all screws or screw recipes)

[unique cypress]

I don't decide in-game, I decide entirely in SFTools. I generally optimize for lowest effort to build. Which means enabling all recipes and then ticking off things I don't vibe with. Like cast plate if it's the only thing that uses coal. Or coated plate if it's the only thing that uses oil. Or something that uses a ton of a single resource and the second most WP efficient recipe uses a bit of 2 different resources. Or switching to a recipe that saves a lot of machines or beltwork at the cost of an insignificant amount of resources. Or switching off one of the recipes if tools decided to make something 2 different ways

[unique cypress]

My issue with that website is that there's no reason given for why a recipe is ranked the way it is

[wind spade]

most people wouldn't give you a good enough reason for that either. Many just follow "tips" from youtubers, guides, whatever and don't really think about why they are using something

and then their reasoning is either "I only use X" or "Y told me X is good"

[wind spade]

which is completely fair, but then I guess you aren't in target group for the project, since you're not looking for what a recipe can give you on paper, but in specific setup (which is imo the better way to do it, but if people thought that way, we wouldn't be making this project lol)

[deft lichen]

That's what I meant, "how do you decide when playing the game". That approach is entirely valid, I guess I'm trying to deconstruct what those "lowest effort to build" vibes are. I mean surely you factor location and thus which resources are available

[unique cypress]

After getting to hypertubes, I don't have the concept of "local" resources. The entire map is available. I just build the factory in a place where it makes sense to build it the most (i.e. all required resources are on average closer than in any other spot I could find

[deft lichen]

But you still have to pick a location

[agile junco]

Oh good, quick search can do exponents

[deft lichen]

And that location won't have all resources available

[deft lichen]

Even fractional exponents for nth root if you wanted for some reason lul

[unique cypress]

Aside from nuclear, I can always find a suitable location that has everything within 1km

[agile junco]

what about fractional bases for roots?

[unique cypress]

And that's my belting distance limit

[deft lichen]

Use brackets and see what you get

[unique cypress]

Sqrt is just ^1/2

[agile junco]

true!

[deft lichen]

Uhh what's base in this context

[agile junco]

I know that, but I always type sqrt first, and low and behold, it worked.

[deft lichen]

1/2 is a fractional exponent, not base, right?

[unique cypress]

And for nuclear, I built it near a ton of water, and completely ignore other resources (they'll have to be trained in anyway)

[deft lichen]

Can you try if log and log2 work?

[agile junco]

And yea. I'm sorry. Not base.

it's all base 10.

I'm talking out my ass.

[unique cypress]

Logarithms have a base

[agile junco]

correct lol

[unique cypress]

Exponents have... an exponent

[deft lichen]

How do you call the number that is being subjected to power?

[deft lichen]

like, what's x in x^a (genuine question)

[agile junco]

IDK why my dumb brain told me roots had a base.

The base, right? Now I'm confusing myself.

Which makes what I said even stupider.

[deft lichen]

Ahh it is

[unique cypress]

According to calculator.net/exponent-calculator it's called a base

Didn't know that tbh

[deft lichen]

Yeah checked Wikipedia too

I don't know the terms because English isn't my native tongue

[agile junco]

Anyway. Roots are really just inverse exponentiation, but that wasn't one word, so I said base like a tard.

[unique cypress]

Hmm same with roots

It's called an n-th root

But what is n called

[agile junco]

The base!

[urban fern]

was your bug linked to pipe floorholes and/or pipe stands?

[agile junco]

no no no

[deft lichen]

Degree

That one I know

[agile junco]

Nope, it was a connected pipe reading 0/min even though it was flowing into a 600/min pipe.

[urban fern]

ah, my bug is different then

[agile junco]

Not the order?

I always get order and degree confused.

[urban fern]

welp, i created the post, hope it gets fixed soon haha

[unique cypress]

From Wikipedia

The positive integer n is called the index or degree

Can't say I've ever heard either of these

[agile junco]

I've never run into issues with those yet.

I think I'm thinking of the order of a polynomial.

Which is the value of it's largest degree.

[urban fern]

the guy i was talking to said that those bugs werent a thing before

[brisk smelt]

no the degree is the value of the largest exponent

[agile junco]

oh

[urban fern]

im kinda new here so i dont know if its true or not

[agile junco]

what the fuck is an order!?

[unique cypress]

Pretty sure that the degree and order are both names for the highest power

[agile junco]

There's a lot of rumors around pipes TBH.

[brisk smelt]

i

ive never heard order used for it tbh

[unique cypress]

There's also a lot of issues

[agile junco]

haha yes

[unique cypress]

Actual issues as well as skill issues

[urban fern]

true, but i didnt find any post in the forum similar to mine

[agile junco]

hence the validated speculation. Because they are also just more complicated than belts.

[urban fern]

but we'll see

[brisk smelt]

ah no wait the order is the more generalized term for a degree that can also include other types of more specific orders of polynomials

too much theoretical math lol

[agile junco]

That sounds right.

The most useful thing I know about orders, is if you know Order-1 values for a function, then you can fit it reasonibly.

[vapid gorge]

What’s your issue?

[urban fern]

there's my thread in the server help and suggestion threads

at the end of i posted some photos to show the bugs

[vapid gorge]

Link?

[agile junco]

There should really be a conventional syntax for writing math expressions with comments in them like ((26#manufacturers*3 ^2)^(1/2) + (36#assemblers*2.25)^(1/2)) / 2 #floors

[brisk smelt]

we have that in latex

[fierce ruin]

need 2500 vers framework
5 assemblers, need 625 each, so divide 2500 by 4 gives 625 needed from each assembler

sloop x 2, creates 4 (per assembler)
so for 4, you need
1 modular frame
12 steel beam

how many beams and frames per

[pulsar notch]

better to think in rates/min

so you're looking to make 25/min (50 after sloop)

that's going to need 150 beams/min and 12.5 modular frames/min

Without shards, that's going to be 6 machines making frames, meaning 18/min RIPs and 60/min iron rods with default recipes (I don't have all alts.)

[unique cypress]

When making project parts, it is, in fact not better to think in parts per minute

[fierce ruin]

why can't I calculate total needed?

[unique cypress]

They need 2500 VF total. Period

[unique cypress]

You can use the in-game todo list

[fierce ruin]

say i have 2 containers behind ever assembler and i manually add parts

[unique cypress]

And add half of what each assembler is supposed to produce (half because sloops)

[pulsar notch]

eh, I find the math is simpler if I work in per minute as that's what all the machines work in, and determines how many machines I need.

Also, don't you want to retain your VF because you need them for EM rods later anyhow?

[unique cypress]

The todo list will automatically add in 2s, so you just keep adding until you get over 312.5 (so 314) and it'll tell you how many items total you need

[unique cypress]

The /min rate of machines making project parts does not matter at all when handfeeding them that'll only determine how fast the phase is done

[fierce ruin]

im sao confused

[unique cypress]

What matters is how many ingredients total you need to handfeed

[pulsar notch]

I'm not sure you can add VF to the to do list since you can't make them manually

[unique cypress]

You can add any recipe

You just need to do that from the codex

[pulsar notch]

ah, TIL

okay, so 1250 modular frames, and 15000 steel beams, though alt reccipes will drastically affect the costs of those.

(well, 625 and 7500 if you sloop)

[unique cypress]

Go into the codex (O), search for versatile framework, add it to the todo list. Then keep adding until the number added to the list is over half of what you want to make

I think you can hold ctrl or shift to add 10 at a time

Or go into the list and type in the number?

Not sure if that works for anything other than buildings

[pulsar notch]

yeah, I added it, exited codex, tabbed, and chose "edit to do" to set the quantity

[unique cypress]

The point of handfeeding project parts is that you have all the other ingredients automated already and you just pull them out from storage

[pulsar notch]

I guess, though if you don't have automated wiring, well, automated...

so it depends on how you've got everything structured

[unique cypress]

As far as I am concerned, the only reason to fully automate project parts is either because you just want to or because you want to sink them for points

If you only care about getting phases unlocked, it's just faster and easier to handfeed everything

[fierce ruin]

ai helped, nws lol

To produce 2500 Versatile Frameworks using 5 Assemblers (each producing 625), you need:1562.5 Modular Frames
9375 Steel Beams

[unique cypress]

2500/5=500, not 625

Also, due to rounding and the assembler producing 4 at a time, you'll likely be short a couple if you put in the exact amount basic math would suggest