math-and-meta

[orchid brook]

oh god why did i think of this

u can duple all the sam in the world with the sloops

now i need 45 sloops as well as all the SAM whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy did i think of this

[mint girder]

yo idk if you remember the other day i was tryna get all my pipes and stuff for my oil fixed, its finally done 🥳

[vapid gorge]

I'm glad 🙂

I mean, you always have hte option to use full proof methods

[mint girder]

i rlly appreciate the help 🫡 i can finally get back to saving the kittens

[stoic gorge]

automatic trains cant reverse?

[brisk urchin]

no you would need a second locomotive facing the other way for that

most people with a train network just use one lovomotive tho

[stoic gorge]

I did this, it works too right?

[brisk urchin]

yep thats what i meant

this is a monorail system what you are making tho

[vapid gorge]

Your platform is in front of the station

[brisk urchin]

so dont consider a 2nd train unless you want to change that system

[vapid gorge]

Needs to be behind it

[brisk urchin]

you also just hungry to help ppl

[stoic gorge]

why?

it seens to be working well

but idk

[brisk urchin]

is your locomotive also behind the cargo?

[stoic gorge]

thats what I love in this server people never fail to help

[brisk urchin]

isnt it pulling it insead of pushing

[stoic gorge]

actually I didnt start the storage transfer system

[brisk urchin]

so there isnt a train yet on this track?

[stoic gorge]

at first the station was showing "unreacheable"

[brisk urchin]

yes exactly

[stoic gorge]

when I did this loop this stopped showing up

[brisk urchin]

this is the reason

well now when the train stops at the station

the train will enter from the right side

and the cargo will not be on the platform

[stoic gorge]

ohh I get it

[brisk urchin]

so it will try to dock without being able to

the stations are directional, the arrow helps you with that

[vapid gorge]

Also platforms arent attached to stations if in front

[stoic gorge]

so like, the train will only stop when It already passed the freight platform?

[brisk urchin]

no it stops anyways

just the cargo wont be doing much

to be exact, nothing

[stoic gorge]

lol

ok I ll see here, thanks for the help

but because of the loop the train will first get here, so in the end it doesnt make difference, right?

the station will be behind the platform

@brisk urchin @vapid gorge sorry for the ping

[brisk urchin]

np

if you need some station ideas here you go

and here a more advanced one

(those need signals)

[stoic gorge]

thank you mman

Is this manifold correct? I never did the two way way

[brisk urchin]

if these are all the generators you need then its correct

[stoic gorge]

and I can expand it to the side with no problem too right?

[mint girder]

how many drones do i need to move 780 ore/minute? about 1500 meters

[unique cypress]

2 or 3 probably?

depends on the fuel too

[agile junco]

I needed to know how much to OC each machine to get to a specific number of effective machines. Simple equation.
[(needed - actual) / number of OC) + 1] * 100. Set number of OC to be whatever you want, just as long as the result is below 250.

This always tripped me up in my head because I forgot to do the +1.

[vapid gorge]

you may have flow issues as it's not looped and fluids often don't like branched manifolds

[brisk urchin]

if you dont runn out of flow rate in your pipe then yes

[worthy copper]

Reinstalled on new pc and have to remake my blueprints
the game froze for like 2s when pasting half this bp
60 constructors in a brick

now to do it again for all the other crafters

[brisk urchin]

i think 20 assemblers is the max in a vanilla mk3

or 25 never tried it out

[worthy copper]

probably. Will find out once I remake, and will probably be a little bit less for setting up I/O connections

[worthy copper]

huh, the stutters are noticeable even with smaller builds, wonder if theres a way to fix that Fixed itself after a crash. Interesting.

[stoic gorge]

how can I calculate how many freights I need?

[brisk urchin]

freight carts?

[stoic gorge]

yes

[brisk urchin]

after 4 carts the train gets slower

so i guess 4 and more trains when needed

[stoic gorge]

in this video the platform is before the station

[unique cypress]

that's how it should be

[brisk urchin]

after

sorry before

[unique cypress]

locomotive(s) first, wagons after

[stoic gorge]

bro

I was told the opposite

thats why the train isnt loading

damn

[unique cypress]

the image is correct

[stoic gorge]

no I wasnt

im just dumb asf

each platform needs its freight car?

[limpid vapor]

Ya

[stoic gorge]

thank you

[limpid vapor]

Amount of cars * 32 * stack size / rate of consumption, this will tell you how long what you transport will last you

An example from one of my factories (I tend to transport small amounts mostly): source provides 600 ore per minute, I use 8 cars, that's 25600 ore, which, at the same consumption rate will last 42 minutes and 40 seconds. If I set my train to leave when fully loaded/unloaded, that's the amount of time my train has to complete it's round trip (loading and unloading time included)

I only do A to B trains carrying a single type of product

More cars means less frequent trips

[stoic gorge]

so to confirm you need to time the entire traject?

[limpid vapor]

Not really, there are multiple ways to go about it, you could ballpark it and have enough cars to not have to worry about it, or just wing it, and add an extra train later if the first one isn't enough

In my case, the trips are nowhere near 42 minutes, more like 3 minutes

[stoic gorge]

so overkill is a good option

ok

[limpid vapor]

It works

[stoic gorge]

damn trains are harder than I thought

[limpid vapor]

I have a lot of trains that do infrequent trips

Not really, once you get a couple going, you will get it

[stoic gorge]

i need 480 iron ores so this means I ll need another freight car?

[unique cypress]

you definitely need to give it time for it to give you an accurate number

[stoic gorge]

oh ok

yeah its going up

[unique cypress]

if after a train unloads there, the value only changes by 1 or 2, it's probably close to accurate

[stoic gorge]

great tip

trains are just a more material economic alternative to belts right?

or im missing something

[limpid vapor]

Rail is great because you can reuse the network to transport multiple things without having to create much new infrastructure

Also the best tool for high throughput over long distance

[thorny heron]

in theory belts would always be superior to anything cause they are the most consistent but rails are much easier to setup with rails being able to be used by more than 1 train

and the fact nobody wants to build km worth of belts to transport something

[swift rose]

Do y'all think 8GWh is enough power storage to start up a fuel/turbofuel hybrid plant that draws ~5GW or should I add more as a safety precaution?

[thorny heron]

Assuming you dont constantly use 3 Gwh+ of power it should be fine enough to start that new power plant and you can always just slowly start it by only turning on some parts until it generates enough power to run itself

[swift rose]

Aight good

[normal latch]

why does this have that train line on the left (inside the station rectangular area)? it seems redundant since trains entering the area will do so because they are going to a station inside it, so why would there ever need to be that left side point? i get that its trying to be a way to let a train flow through, perhaps if the stations are full, but wouldn't the same effect be achieved by simply not having that there to begin with? or am i missing something? thanks, trying to learn as im starting to use trains in my run

[normal latch]

is it always that ratio? like 1 to 4, 2 to 8, etc? for train to freight ratio

[brisk urchin]

no i dont think that adding locomotives will change anything, not sure tho never tried

[brisk smelt]

your blocks will just get really long for no reason, js split it up

[unique cypress]

all locomotives in a train will add power

also, that 1:4 ratio is just general advice

it's not strictly required

[brisk urchin]

this is optional, i just add this "bypassing rail" on every station i build because on normal occasions the trains can not turn when they need to, only on roundabouts, and if they would want to turn on a station then i dont want the train to occupy a station

[brisk urchin]

so even at 3 cargos it struggles a litle already?

[normal latch]

oh i see, it makes the station double as a turning around point for any trains in the overall system

plus as you pointed out, keeps the stations clear

[brisk urchin]

exactly, for ensuring the smoothnes of the trains

[brisk urchin]

yep

[unique cypress]

trains are pretty realistic. the more locomotives you have the faster it'll accelerate. it's just capped to 120 km/h by friction and air resistance

for a very steep slope, 1:4 wouldn't be enough

[normal latch]

so i could make a super long train with X locos and Y freights?

that goes at 120 km/h

[brisk urchin]

multiple trains would be smarter i believe

[unique cypress]

and without slopes, even like 1:10 or more would work, it'd just speed up slowly

[visual yarrow]

as a general train network tip, it helps to try to avoid situations where trains need to turn around via part of the main railway (like a roundabout)

[brisk smelt]

you can always just use grade seperation no big deal

[normal latch]

yeah i will try to keep that in mind

[normal latch]

what's grade separation?

[brisk urchin]

ofcorse, but needing to plan your whole network upfront seems a litle to big of a headace for me honestly

[unique cypress]

if it's a well designed intersection, it'll work fine

[visual yarrow]

yes that is true. but I find that you can take it to another level no pun intended by organizing your timetables smartly

[normal latch]

smarter? yea for sure, but i might wanna make a super long train for fun at some point heh, i wanna know what my options are (-:

[brisk urchin]

adding intersections to an already existing one seems easier

[normal latch]

well the station itself would have an intersection so the train input can always take the direct route back that it came from

which is presumably the fastest route possible to begin with

hence no need for roundabouts etc in the system

[visual yarrow]

grade separation is this sort of nonsense

[brisk urchin]

i see, way more space needs to be wasted

[visual yarrow]

this is sort of what I mean, actually

[normal latch]

oh i see, funny i studied civil engineering but didnt remember that concept by name lol

then again, i worked as a software engineer and never as a civil engineer, just got that degree

[visual yarrow]

if you design your railway in like... "loops", you can have trains that always are flowing, say, clockwise, or counterclockwise

it's just something to consider for larger train networks

[normal latch]

so i just wanna know now, in terms of "can it be done" not "should it be done", the super long train is a possibility with enough locos to move the giant number of freights, that on a relatively straight path, it will go 120 km/h?

[brisk urchin]

anything is possible!

[normal latch]

awesome, then i know what to do early on with my setups, and i have a long term endgame goal (when i eventually make it there) as well (-:

[visual yarrow]

the main issue with super long trains is that they will cause more slowdowns due to other trains being present because they'll occupy more blocks

[brisk urchin]

(and if you struggle to keep it that way, then look into mods LOL)

[normal latch]

trains are awesome

[visual yarrow]

well

okay, no, the main issue is that the stations need to be so obnoxiously long

[normal latch]

oh, they will be long

[brisk urchin]

REAL LOL

[brisk urchin]

btw how smooth would you rate this

[visual yarrow]

my limit is a two locomotive eight wagon train

[normal latch]

how are you making those images ?

[brisk urchin]

its a mod, it adds structures of any type to your map

[visual yarrow]

uhh i usually hold windows + shift + S

oh

[brisk urchin]

its so amazing i can not live without it anymore

[visual yarrow]

right side or left side signals?

[brisk urchin]

right side

they drive in on the inside

[normal latch]

as it should be heh

[brisk urchin]

real, england traffic is overrated anyways

[visual yarrow]

i would say that the entrance is quite smooth, but the fact that every station exits onto the same, linear route, might be a problem. one thing you could do is uh

let me ms paint

[thorny heron]

lowk pretty smooth nice turns

but as sprout is saying exiting all on one path is kinda bad

[normal latch]

is there a reason the stations arent in parallel?

like couldn't you bump up the left side stations to align with the right side?

[thorny heron]

maybe space or just purely for the design

[brisk urchin]

oh yeah i planed this on a previous multiplayer where ive built a 20 800 iron ingot per minute factory and i expected that i needed this much trains to cover the output

[brisk urchin]

no reason specificaly, i guess i thought about i needed the maximum ammount of branches in a straight line

[brisk urchin]

o ma god rly?

[thorny heron]

im pretty sure the way satisfactory trains work they will always take the short path

[brisk urchin]

imo this would look worse

[visual yarrow]

oh, I forgot something

[unique cypress]

i was about to suggest the exact same thing

[brisk urchin]

yeah alright but that would only change the design, not like the flow of the trains

[stoic gorge]

can i make a belt that makes this items split evenly? one limestone, one coal

[thorny heron]

smart splitter might eventually pile up its smarter to put it into different carts

[brisk urchin]

imo mine looks better because the stations are also not aligned in a square

[brisk urchin]

smart splitter

[normal latch]

i prefer square asthetic personally

[stoic gorge]

yeah I figure it out too late

[unique cypress]

though I'm not sure if the return line that doesn't pass any stations is necessary

[normal latch]

i like symmetry

[visual yarrow]

i was just adapting what was already there

[stoic gorge]

it will make go 100 slimestone then a 100 coal

[normal latch]

how do items priotize coming out of storage?

[unique cypress]

don't mix items

[visual yarrow]

last stacks first

[normal latch]

ah cool

[visual yarrow]

or LIFO

[normal latch]

i wonder if that can be used

[brisk urchin]

yeah not mixing items is always the better option

[stoic gorge]

I guess I can fix it

[visual yarrow]

the only time you should mix items is when you KNOW that you can clear the inventory and keep the belt flowing before a new shipment arrives

[normal latch]

i've always heard that as First In Last Out heh

[brisk urchin]

[visual yarrow]

which really only applies to low-volume materials that you would be mixing because of variety

[visual yarrow]

that probably is more accurate, since in is the first action that takes place

[thorny heron]

i have a question do you guys color code pipes or is that just me?

[visual yarrow]

i sometimes do. but lately i've been finding I just really prefer the metal finishes for pipes

[brisk urchin]

in factories i have a color for every liquid

[visual yarrow]

i don't really have issues keeping track of what's where, though

[brisk urchin]

but on normal busses or else i just couldnt care less

[crimson moat]

Got any of the math for that?

When i put a bunch of locomotives on my trains they didn't really seem to accelerate any faster, they would just idle a lot more?

[visual yarrow]

sometimes if I feel like putting in the work, i'll do actual IRLesque pipe label signs

[hoary oar]

i've been using the copper finish for water pipes and either chrome or unpainted for most of the other stuff
not to big of a fan of having rainbow pipe spaghetti, specially around blenders

[thorny heron]

in this scenario why dont you use clean pipes imo the orange from the fuel kinda ruins it

[visual yarrow]

OH, really important train tip: signal spacing is very important

[brisk urchin]

duh

[visual yarrow]

ehh, i'll chalk this up to having different tastes

[thorny heron]

this probably is

[visual yarrow]

let me be more specific, then

[unique cypress]

it's on the wiki. though ig trains only apply full power up to a certain speed. not sure what happens after that, maybe they target a specific acceleration

[thorny heron]

for context there are my pipes

[visual yarrow]

signal spacing is particularily important when it comes to path signals

[brisk urchin]

so do i

[brisk urchin]

talk more, cant imagine a scenario

[thorny heron]

dont trains need to come to a full stop almost before being able to use a path signal?

atleast when entering a block the goes into a path signal i almost always see trains slowing down a ton

[brisk urchin]

not realy

[visual yarrow]

you need to take into account how fast trains are approaching a path junction because of when the path reservation happens

[brisk urchin]

o yeah that

[unique cypress]

wrong signal placement can deadlock a train. a singular train, without even a second one

[visual yarrow]

they will slow down if they aren't sure if they can reserve a path, until they enter the preceding block, and if the path is free, they'll continue freely

[brisk urchin]

never happened to me but sure, might in the future

[brisk urchin]

yeah i kept seeing that here

[unique cypress]

it's pretty hard to make it happen, but it is possible

[brisk urchin]

when he came from the right and wanted to enter the ststion

[brisk urchin]

very smal lime things are on the track, those are signals

[hoary oar]

no, trains braking before a path signal is because you placed a block signal very close, in front of the path signal
train's see path signals as occupied block signals until they can reserve the path by entering the block in front of it.
so if you have a close block signal, the train just thinks the intersection is blocked and it has to stop

[brisk urchin]

thats the fool proffing of the path signals, genius coding

[visual yarrow]

(i measure my rail length via 10 foundation long blocks, but I find this to be too small a block size for path junctions. but then I forget to trim the signals. whoops)

my biggest issue with trains is that I am obsessive over making the rails look nice, have smooth curves and ascents, and so it takes forever to build them

meanwhile, the actual trains:

[crimson moat]

They only apply full power to 60km/h

but what i am looking for is like..

You have 4 full train carts. What's the 0-60 time with 1 locomotive? 2? 3? Is it even different?

[visual yarrow]

okay here's a good example. the one on the right. I can just tell that it's going to be a hassle because it's a slow, gradual curve with a mild incline

[visual yarrow]

i don't know any exact details, but i have never had issues with 1 locomotive per 4 wagons

[mossy ibex]

ok pipe question, edge case. Suppose I have a vertical run of pipe that's 60m tall, say. The final pipe section at the top is a horizontal to vertical so it's straight up for half of it andd horizontal once it reaches the top. I add pump to the bottom of the vertical run, and it pushes the head lift up by 50, to a total of 55m, so that the head lift stops in the middle of the final pipe, and doesn't quite reach the apex.

Question is, does the liquid make it all the way to the top horizontal or not? the liquid is reaching the top pipe, but not the top of the top pipe. Do I need another pump or not?

[crimson moat]

Me neither, i'm just wondering if they can be made much faster (and more consistently at speed) with a second locomotive.

[visual yarrow]

i believe most of the difference relates to how well they scale inclines?

[visual yarrow]

my understanding is that the top of the pipe is the target you want to reach for head lift, but I am not 100% sure

[unique cypress]

yeah, I've had trains drop to 80-90 km/h on inclines

[crimson moat]

@mossy ibex

The final pipe section at the top is a horizontal to vertical so it's straight up for half of it andd horizontal once it reaches the top.

This doesn't actually exist, it's just a cosmetic thing.

All pipes in the game simulation are straight lines from connection point A to point B

[visual yarrow]

why would you edit that before I can make my joke

[crimson moat]

which joke 😄

[visual yarrow]

actually, are you sure about this? like, don't pipes spanning the same distance using horizontal to vertical end up costing more and having more capacity??

[crimson moat]

I'm positive, and yeah they do not. Not unless you make 2 different pipes, then you can have one horizontal and 1 vertical pipe.

[visual yarrow]

something about some pipes swinging the other way.

[visual yarrow]

well either way, you do still have a "top" of the pipe based on your two endpoints

[crimson moat]

yeah, you can just make two pipes which are visually identical but have one pipe with 50m3 capacity that won't fill for lack of headlift, while the other has 70m3 capacity and fills halfway before it ascends at all.

[visual yarrow]

so my understanding has always been that when headlift is generated, it generates starting from the bottom of the pipe output that generates it. pipes are 2m wide. so i've always taken that into account

sorry im not making much sense, my ice cream is melting because i am typing too much

[crimson moat]

@mossy ibex for the actual question, yes you do need the pump

[visual yarrow]

hrm. ive spent a lot of time planning out a large caterium aquisition, and now suddenly feel like... it isn't actually being needed in very large quantities compared to the other resources i'd need for the recipes i'm looking at.

i blame the tragedy of caterium circuit boards

or.. i guess caterium computers. i don't know which is the tragic one because the circuit boards cause the problem, but the computers were the ones that were changed in a way that make them no longer create a solution to that problem

im still not sure which computer recipe I want to use. the default is nice, but it just uses up too much plastic for what i'm currently working with. caterium computers are one option. crystal computers have some appeal since I kinda need oscilltors too, except oscillators are kind of a pain to make in bulk

and also I came here for a specific question to ask but I seem to have forgotten it the moment I saw discussion of trains

okay I remembered!

i want to know how well understood the mechanics behind creature respawning are. because I have trouble finding consistency to it, and I would very much like to "secure" areas that I want to work in with a bit more confidence

i've always envisioned it as being sort of like radioactivity, but originating from factory machines that are powered. but I also suspect this is probably wrong

[unique cypress]

https://satisfactory.wiki.gg/wiki/Combat#Creature_respawn_mechanism

[visual yarrow]

i'm working in that cave in the swamp with the three caterium nodes, and I want to ensure that it stays... unoccupied.

[visual yarrow]

i have not been relying on that because I am under the impression it is outdated, and it contradicts some of what I observe

[dusky bronze]

it seems to be just that building on/near the node will stop things from spawning on it

a miner definitely stops things from spawning and im assuming other machines would too, but foundations seem to be incosistent

[visual yarrow]

i guess I also just would prefer some more exact numbers

like I have... do I have a screenshot

[dusky bronze]

what are you making?

[visual yarrow]

yeah. so in this example, that foundation has a few places on it where hogs will respawn, on top of the foundation

[dusky bronze]

interesting

shouldnt be a problem once you get machines on there

[visual yarrow]

in that case, yes

but what i'm currently building is... i kind of don't know. it's probably going to just be a mine and a train station

there's also a few spawn points that are very close to my phase 5 half-assed temporary quantum part production that still respawn

and... geothermal is just inconsistent in the strangest ways

[dusky bronze]

yeah its not the best source of power

[visual yarrow]

not what i meant. i meant in terms of disabling spawns.

whoops

[dusky bronze]

ahh

[visual yarrow]

the cave im working in covers a lot of horizontal distance, is the thing. so I don't know if the whole place is covered

[dusky bronze]

yeah im not really sure whats happening

[visual yarrow]

and honestly if it isnt i dont really know how to secure the rest of it. it's sort of like how the quartz cave under the rocky desert, the main room with the nodes and miners- it's all fine there, but there's a cluster of small stingers that always spawns when I head to those nodes, next to the belts

[dusky bronze]

i usually just kill anything thats where i want to build and then they dont respawn when im done building

ive noticed that hatchers are probably the least "forgiving" in that they spawn very close to things you've built where other things dont

[visual yarrow]

yes I can concur with that actually

i do like how there are some parts of the map that just have a ridiculous number of lizard doggos in linked spawns

i want to chase them and teach them fear. but they forget about me about four seconds afterwards.

[low spruce]

i didn’t know the methods because using pipes one after the other had always worked for me in the past 😔

[mossy ibex]

whhat happens if I mix fluid in a pipe? Like make a junction between water and oil for example?

[queen slate]

Pipe lets only one of fuel types in.

[oblique hollow]

it wont let you

[queen slate]

You'll have to "Flush the whole system" to let the other liquid/gas in.

There is/was also a slightly funny "feature" of connecting a pipe and Hypertube at Hypertube junction, leads nowhere, of course.

AFK Pioneer packager when

[visual yarrow]

After the doggo packager. They need to get the scared whimpers and cries for help down just right.

[queen slate]

Oh, get me non-lethal doggo packager for easy transport!

[visual yarrow]

In other news, anyone else know that feeling where you have absolutely no idea what you're doing, other than the fact that you're doing something?

...You know, I could totally put this in a blueprint.

The circle, at least. Easy lining up of rail intersections.

[queen slate]

you have absolutely no idea what you're doing
Only in other games. This, though... Could become a turntable-like looking roundabout.

[visual yarrow]

I'm not super fond of roundabounds in Satisfactory, unless they're really big.

Although... now i'm wondering if a three way roundabout and a three way at-grade intersection actually would have any differences in collision points.

I think, putting aside the ability to do a u-turn, each potential direction trains could come from would have the same conflicts in either design?

...In any case. I think I was just trying to see the angle of each direction I wanted to go in, but it's REALLY hard to stop building circles once you start.

[queen slate]

I wonder a bit... What gives you the most worries about circles? For copypasta adjustmemt purposes

[visual yarrow]

I don't think I have worries?

Or wait, do you mean roundabouts?

[queen slate]

All kinds of buildable circles, be it roundabouts or other stuff.

[visual yarrow]

I guess that'd be two separate things. For circles in general, I don't like the amount of clipping needed to get something actually round, and the limitations of the length of walls and foundations and such constraining the build. Pre-curved belts were also kind of a nightmare to get looking decent.

As for roundabouts, if a train is going to make a u-turn, I want them to do it before rejoining the main line, not to do it while on the main line.

The main advantage that I think they have is something you can only really take advantage of when they're large enough, which is in cases when you have an intersection of more than 4 converging tracks.

There's probably also some interesting use cases for more local transport, in a similar manner to how a roundtable would be used, probably with bidirectional trains, but those cases would probably also end up being based around a circular something or other, anyways.

I guess one other thing i'll say is that I do kinda wish I could use circles more comfortably. For roads in particular. It's not so much that I don't know how to make curved roads, it's moreso that they end up not having clean patterns. And they're also an absolute migraine if you want to do curves that are also inclined.

Rails are actually possible to do smooth curved inclines with, but they take either a lot of trial and error or math to get looking right. And it's not super easy or quick to figure out the route you want to use before you actually start building it.

But I suppose that's the cost of not building sky trains.

[queen slate]

Yeah, hopefully the convenient circles will be there one day.

[fierce ruin]

morning, pioneers

[visual yarrow]

Whenever I look at the node distribution in the dune desert, I just... feel sad.

Or perhaps node density is the term i'm looking for.

[vapid gorge]

Because there’s so many in the area?

[visual yarrow]

So many, most of them high purity. Most of them iron.

[vapid gorge]

The most reliable method is splitting fresh abd waste machines 🙂 don’t mix them and you ever have problems

[visual yarrow]

It's like... there's so much space that I don't feel like I know how to use, because I cannot possibly fathom anything i'd ever use that much iron on.

But I hate the idea of just ignoring resources that are there.

So it kind of leads itself to building way above the terrain rather than along with it, which is not... really my preference.

[vapid gorge]

You can’t use all the resources on the map anyway

And you don’t have to build sky infrastructure

Just build multiple floors

[visual yarrow]

No, but I want to use the space that's there, and that requires either leaving room for miners, covering up the nodes, or building above the miners, which isn't really my preference.

[vapid gorge]

Multiple floors

Miners in the foundations of the building

[visual yarrow]

Yeah, I don't like doing that.

...plus, most of the nodes there are very slanty because of the dunes, and that just ends up looking weird.

[vapid gorge]

If you only build flat you can’t complain about it

And

[visual yarrow]

...er, wait, this is math and meta. I posted this in the wrong channel.

[vapid gorge]

You can have buildings at various heights

But if you’re locking yourself into circuit boards , yeah you’ll have problems

Honestly I don’t know how you haven’t had massive problems with that already

[visual yarrow]

Uh, what? Circuit boards?

[vapid gorge]

1 floor completely flat factories

[visual yarrow]

Never said I did that.

[vapid gorge]

Then what was your issue with multiple floors before?

[visual yarrow]

I don't have an issue with multiple floors. What I don't like is having miners underneath layers of foundation- but that's only one reason.

[vapid gorge]

They’re just on the lowest floor?

[visual yarrow]

Okay, let me try this from a different perspective. I don't want my miners to be part of a factory floor. I want them to look like they're in mines.

Usually, open-pit mines with, say, scaffolding along the terrain.

[vapid gorge]

Relax your view of them all being like that or waste a bunch of nodes and suck it up

Your options laid out

[visual yarrow]

Yeah, like I said, I meant to post this in design and architecture.

[vapid gorge]

There’s lots of nodes there anyway

[visual yarrow]

Yep. I just don't get the logic behind it.

Too many to use, too dense to easily use them without encroaching on others. Hard to fit stuff like trains in.

Iron is a very bulky resource that tends to multiply in volume when it's processed, until you start making actual parts from it.

AND the nodes are all slanty!!

If nothing else, it's probably the one area i'd actually use recipes like iron wire and iron pipe.

...And I guess this is a very minor point, but the sheer quantity of nodes also kinda makes them look very homogenous and I find it somewhat hard to tell similar-looking nodes (mainly copper) apart.

On the map, that is.

On a similar note.... Is it just me, or does it feel like a lot of the more obscure/harder to reach/find SAM nodes are impure?

Particularly the ones that are in well-hidden caves.

Hrm... I'm in that "between phase" between projects where I have a lot of things I could look into doing, but nothing definitive, and it's hard to figure out how I want to approach things when many of these potential projects are... well, kind of interdependant on one another.

I'm just not really sure how to approach the macro side of the plan. I can handle things once I have a production plan laid out.... it's getting one put together i'm happy with that's a problem.

Like, I was planning on refining a whole bunch of caterium to use for things, except then I ended up finding that I kind of don't need a lot of caterium for the recipes i'm looking at. Or, at least, the limiting factor is other resources.

Mm, i'm starting to ramble a bit. I'll just keep at it, I guess.

Not rambling, to be clear. Planning builds and trying to get started on one.

[vapid gorge]

you can very very easily use it w/o your personal restrictions

remember, everyone is not you

[visual yarrow]

I'm putting aside a philosophy joke about the problem of the sense of self, but, just to be clear: i'm only speaking for my own perspective.

I'm just explaining why it bothers me.

[vapid gorge]

sure but "Yep. I just don't get the logic behind it." goes away real quick when it's an easy solution

[visual yarrow]

The logic behind the design of it, on the development end.

I just find it odd.

[vapid gorge]

a nice even spread of nodes easily used?

big ol desert with lots of iron. Where I plan on making 1600 hmf pm

[visual yarrow]

Yeah, I just see it differently. Infinite resource nodes has shaped the way the game is balanced and the map was designed. Dune desert's smoregasboard is just curiously different to me.

I can certainly see the usefulness for people who are making really, really massive factories, don't get me wrong.

When I say I don't get the logic behind it, all i'm doing is acknowledging that it's not something that works with my playstyle, really.

It kind of reminds me of Factorio's ore distribution, in some ways, just without the depletion of resources. It just changes how one views it because of the game's resource design.

[brisk smelt]

16... hundred?

is that even possible

[visual yarrow]

On a DIFFERENT note! I've expressed confusion a few times in the past about why foundations ctrl rotate in 5 degree increments, and I finally figured out how to ask the question I had been meaning to ask about that.

[unique cypress]

Double that is possible

[visual yarrow]

Nevermind, I figured it out on my own.

According to satisfactorytools, the maximum number of HMFs you can make per minute is approximately 3550/m.

It relies heavily on aluminum's ability to be converted into steel beams, among other things.

It also uses literally every single resource in the world other than nitrogen and uranium, so not really feasible in actual gameplay. But 1,600/m sounds entirely plausible.

Apparently, you could make 5,059,700 screws/m with all the world's resources. if you really, really hated yourself.

[agile junco]

That would probably break my computer.

[charred gulch]

If the input at my "load" truck station matches the output at my "unload" truck station, the belt flow should remain constant, right? As long as no inventories max out on the truck or the loading depots.

[dusky bronze]

the input/output just tells you exactly that

the truck/train will take whatever items there are from the station and then drop them off at the unload station

you should worry about filling/emptying the stations as quickly as possible to increase throughput/keep it constant

so put buffers on both unloading/loading stations connected to both input/output holes for the station

beltflow through stations will only be constant if you can empty a station at the same time it gets filled up

[vapid gorge]

you can do more than 2000 as of 1.0

iirc

[dusky bronze]

i can see like 15-1600 with sloops but idk about 2k

maybe im just underestimating the power of using 106 sloops in one factory

[vapid gorge]

w/o sloops 3500 https://www.satisfactorytools.com/1.0/production?share=SXRv1kK45HQU1zM6VP9R

pre 1.0 it used to sit around 1850 I think

[dusky bronze]

is every single resource on the map worth it

[vapid gorge]

oh I mean probalby not, but aiming for half of that 🙂

[dusky bronze]

what are you even using that many for lmao

[vapid gorge]

for shits and giggles, my friend. Shits and giggles

[dusky bronze]

fair enough

[vapid gorge]

also it'll be fun. I got some fun recipe compbos I want to use

Plus I'm going to bring back Steel Coated Iron Plates from the dead

[dusky bronze]

if i ever do something big and stupid like that i'll probably have to go for BWDs ngl

[vapid gorge]

there's memes about 300hmf pm being the equivalent to Dyson sphere.

gonna blow that out of the water

[dusky bronze]

like the entirety of the dyson sphere game

i havent played it

[vapid gorge]

I've yet to xD but it looks good

[dusky bronze]

ye

i need to get my fun out of satisfactory and factorio before trying other factory games first tho

[vapid gorge]

eh, I've got several thousand more hours of satisfactory before that happens. Will have to take breaks

[dusky bronze]

im still not sure what my plans for this game are

definitely want to finish phase 5, definitely want to make a ficsonium power plant, probably going to use the entire map to make one thing

how long that takes im not sure

[vapid gorge]

make a power system then sort out an overall plan. I'd definitely nix ficsonium

[dusky bronze]

i'll do it in a separate save

uses too much sam to be in my main save

just want to do it to do everything in the game

[vapid gorge]

I mean ficsonium was probably dumped in there to quell the people bitching about plutnonium waste because they couldn't stop themselves from burning plu rods

[dusky bronze]

yeah, im pretty sure it was just to get rid of plutonium waste too

it certainly isnt for power

it would be nice if they made it a little cheaper in terms of resources and maybe rebalanced the power usage for t5 machines in the future

or made it so that ficsonium fuel rods burned a lot slower

[vapid gorge]

I mean, like I said, you never eve rneed to burn plutonium rods

[dusky bronze]

true

[vapid gorge]

P rods were introduced so people could mess with the nuclear mechanics and not have permanent waste

unless they then actively chose to have permanent waste by burning hte p rods

[dusky bronze]

the 630GW you get from uranium should be more than enough even with insane slooping/overclocking

[vapid gorge]

yup

honestly 1.0 didn't really introduce anything for me. It was pretty disapointing. Nice having another tier to make some new items? bout it though

[dusky bronze]

yeah

phase 5 parts are fun, if a little difficult at times

[vapid gorge]

they really aren't so bad. Just an extra step or two of processing past the tier 8

[dusky bronze]

some dlc would be nice but im not sure if the devs are focusing on that rn, i feel like at least the main area of the game is already pretty full

would be nice if we went to different parts of the planet or to space or something

maybe if we went to space we'd find out whats going on with earth

[vapid gorge]

I'd be surprised if you ever see it

and I

doubt you'll see earth stuff since they dramatically cut out the story for 1.0

down to bare bones

Mostly I'm just expecting them to turn pipes into covered belts because people can't be bothered to learn a few basics

[dusky bronze]

yeah

i do wonder what their plans for the future of satisfactory are

[vapid gorge]

probably not much tbh

[dusky bronze]

theres still a lot i could see happening but maybe they want to go on to new games

i do wonder how some people have so much trouble with pipes

[vapid gorge]

thye mostly treat them like belts

and/or try to do fancy things w/o knowing hte basics

[dusky bronze]

outside of really long manifolds i havent had any problems that werent caused by me forgetting a pump somewhere or not producing enough for a full pipe and i just build them like i do with belts

and im assuming that pipes that arent full having inconsistent flow rates is just because of the production times and doesnt have anything to do with "weird pipe stuff"

[woeful zenith]

This... I read chat and everyday there is someone having pipe issues. And I'm over here like... bro my pipes are working just fine. Anytime they don't is when I made an error myself. Which I pretty much always find and resolve cuz you just need to backtrack till you find it. I really have no idea why people struggle with it that much. There was only one case where the pipes actually glitched out on me

[vapid gorge]

A lot of peeps are bad at trouble shooting

[fierce ruin]

afternoon, pioneers

[wind spade]

Just another case of game getting easier compared to beta 🙂

[deft lichen]

I'm not at all for reducing the intended difficulty of pipes, only for removing the unintuitive and unexplained mechanics

[vapid gorge]

Create a wiki page on basic set ups.

point A to B , no bottom feeding. Avoid 600 pipes unless you feel you can keep things very neat. ect

it's not something you can put as an ingame tutorial

[visual ocean]

Why should people avoid the 600 pipes?

[vapid gorge]

it's more difficult to get consistent flow
if you're careful and know the basics it's not bad, but peopel often treat them like belts

[visual ocean]

I've been using 600 pipes since I got them.
My issues have been being dumb and not reading the water pdf.
I do kinda stick to a formula and hope everything goes wrong if I don't

However I've been helping a player and I've seen some atrocities. Like having 3 oil nodes going into a buffer, then using pump every 5 meters or minor increase in height just to fuel 12 gens

[eager dragon]

Did somebody say, Plutonium?

[vapid gorge]

people perform a lot of pipe crimes it's true

[deft lichen]

Do you think that creating a complicated unintuitive gameplay mechanic that relies on external sources to be understood to do just about anything is good game design?

See previous discussion #satisfactory message

[unique cypress]

I still don't understand the idea for Ficsonium. Like yeah, I can see what it is, but is that what it's supposed to be? And even if it is, why?

Like I don't see many people complaining if such an endgame, complicated and expensive power source was OP. It would be extremely satisfying to get a shit ton of power for your efforts, even if you don't need it at all

And like the milestone is called "Peak Efficiency" when Ficsonium is, for all intents and purposes, Rock Bottom Efficiency.

[vapid gorge]

know a few basics
everything is pretty simple

and yes, there's any number of games which really need a wiki to clarify complex mechanics in details and how to apply them. This is not by any means new territory in gaming unless you've only used mobile phones for them previously

This is, at it's core, a problem solving and design game. If you think having to think and look around for sources to really nail it down is too much maybe consider a different genre

hell, everyone on this server uses tons of 3rd party software to plan and manage things and I don't see anyone bitching about that being a massive crutch

[wind spade]

See minecraft, where 99% of content isn't explained ingame

[vapid gorge]

honestly probably most games at this point. I can't recall the last game I played that didn't really benefit from wikis and guides

[unique cypress]

Man I'd love to know how long a blind playthrough of Minecraft would take

[oblique hollow]

pipes are literally fixable

manifolds, bottom feeding - all of it

perfectly fixable without taking away from the normal behaviour of fluids

[hoary oar]

there's a guy called About Oliver, on youtube. he did a full blind playthrough on stream, no help from chat or wiki or anything.

[vapid gorge]

I know you said it didn't turn them into belts, but how hard do you have to twist the 'fixed' pipes to get non monodirectional behaviour?

[oblique hollow]

i dont think you can twist them hard enough to get monidirectional behaviour

it either stops working completely or it just works

you cant remove that bidirectional aspect

[vapid gorge]

what stops them from working then?

[oblique hollow]

if you tweak the variables hard enough you kill all pressure and they literally never start flowing

[normal latch]

is the water/pipes pdf from 3 years ago still valid today?

[oblique hollow]

or they just accelerate so slowly that they become unusable

[vapid gorge]

no I mean after you've done the tweak to fix it. What layouts of pipes kill flow?

[normal latch]

or have pipes changed in any significant way?

[oblique hollow]

pretty much still usable

[wind spade]

Goal being beating ender dragon?

[normal latch]

nothing is new then about how pipes and fluids work from then?

[vapid gorge]

nope

[oblique hollow]

After the fix, for liquids, i couldnt find any layouts that actually "kill flow"
minus some junction weirdness but thats just how junctions work right now

Gasses struggle a bit more with manifolds but like not TOO bad

[vapid gorge]

that sounds like effectively having them be mono directional.

Technically bi, but effectively mono

[oblique hollow]

why

why do you expect flow to break in certain cases

[vapid gorge]

if you can't generate situations where they'll flow against the direction you want?

[oblique hollow]

thats an integral part of fluids. Its baked into them.
you can still have "counterflow" but you know - pressure always existed

the only thing this fix does is reduce how fast liquids accelerate when they are already flowing fast.
nothing else changes

[vapid gorge]

I know that mechanically, it is always possible for fluids be be bidirectional. But you're describing the tweaks meaning you can't accidentally backflow and stutter a system if designed poorly. Or am I misreading that

[oblique hollow]

The question is really if whatever system was built actually counts as "poorly designed" and if it should just not work.

I can only say that systems that were not designed poorly but just not up to the highest 1000h of pipe experience, worked fine

Its not that piss poor designs magically work

If its designed that - logically and numerically - should work fine actually work fine.

It doesnt magically fix aluminum clogging itself though

Thats process design

If you merge fluids back that always has risks

[vapid gorge]

ah. But assuming you don't have any reintroduced fluids, you could probably just slap them around anyhow you like?

split manifolds, to multiple floors ect and all that?

[oblique hollow]

I found that yes, vertical manifolds actually worked

[vapid gorge]

yeah that's far too belt like. :\

I like that there's some design restrictions and needing to put some thought to these things

[oblique hollow]

opinion of if fluids should be restricting imo

The game is about freedom of building and honestly vertical manifolds should work according to what the game tells you

even something as simple as "going 2 m below the floor and then back up"

the system still sloshes around for a long time until its filled and what not

[vapid gorge]

I've seen people do drop vertical manifolds? they seeeem to work but no idea how consistent on all systems

[oblique hollow]

drop vertical manifolds?

[vapid gorge]

top down

[oblique hollow]

So just manifold from above

[vapid gorge]

but vertical.

I've never been interesting in building like that so never tested it out

[oblique hollow]

i dont get it tbh. Need an image

Only thing i can think of:
you know the "fuel gen tower design" ?

[oblique hollow]

where you have a central feed pipe that goes up through the floors and splits off at each floor to the generators?

[vapid gorge]

yeah usually see them with fuel gens

but seen them with refineries a few times too

[oblique hollow]

yeah that design.
Vanilla has issues with that because of flow fluctuations - a mechanic the game doesnt explain.
Ive tested exactly one design and i found that it worked - bottom to top and top to bottom.

If you pump up from below or let it drop down that should honestly be up to you.
What matters is that fluids still need to fill stuff to build up pressure and you still need pumps and whatnot

[vapid gorge]

bottom to top? I'm impressed

[oblique hollow]

The 3:8 coal gen design is still inherently bidirectional

[vapid gorge]

yeah, in my experience you tend to have fewer issues with fresh water or crude oil.

[oblique hollow]

so you never lose the fact that you can like.... have fluids go in and out from multiple points

[vapid gorge]

I've had less than reliable systems using secondary fluids

more finicky

[oblique hollow]

that bidirectional fluid design remains if you design the system bidirectional.
if you design a system that is - for all purposes - "monodirectional" and you use pumps, then it doesnt have much choice than to flow one way once full.
Vanilla just has SOME cases where if you use the wrong pipe mark or have the pipe go the wrong way, it doesnt work.

However, vertical manifolds still are subject to counterflow
if refinery number 3 in the middle of the manifold sucks out fluid then the refineries near it monemtarily get less flow.

[vapid gorge]

I tried vert manifolds aaaaages ago but couldn't get it to work. But that was sa long time ago. Before I dug into pipes much

[oblique hollow]

I tested a factory with manfolds that feed up from below and they just worked with that tweak.
the fluids still act like fluids but in an actually comprehensible way.

Even secondary fluid manifolds worked fine. 600/min manifolds

The way the system is designed, pressure is what dictates direction.
and stuff that makes fluids just has a higher pressure so fluid just tends to go from source to sink

if you design the pipe system linear, then pressure is linear

if its branching or circular, then its of course a bit more complex but still has a "gradient" so to speak

[vapid gorge]

yeah, to me that just takes away design challenges. Which can be almost no challenge if you deal with it right. :\

[oblique hollow]

Honestly, the design challenges are still all there. All the ones the game openly tells you about.
what gets removed here is that one invisible detail that upset absolutely everyone.

The one "rule" the game never really tells you about. The one that kinda has to be learned by either playing with pipes for hundreds (or more like 1000s) of hours or by consulting some obscure guides and manuals online.

[unique cypress]

Besides, it's not really much of a challenge when you have to try random shit until it works and then you still don't know why it worked

[oblique hollow]

yeah unless you have guidance from online, understanding the system on your own and why it sometimes doesnt work in these edge cases just isnt a thing really.
Many just conclude "ok, mk 2 / pipe system broken, dont use" and thats it

[vapid gorge]

and it boils down to the fact that having look look into a game mechanic that's not added in in detail within the game isn't an issue and common

if the only concern here having to go outside the game then it's equaly fixed by having a dumb pop up page that tells you about it like a wiki page, but inside the game

[oblique hollow]

If pipes had a tutorial i kinda question what the devs would really wanna teach you

perhaps they wanna teach to you balance all fluids lol

and "manifold bad"

[vapid gorge]

oof

[oblique hollow]

every system so far was designed so you could, theoretically, just play with it and understand it.
Belts are dead simple.

Pipes already have the whole fullness, bidirectionality and gravity thing.

honestly, if you are already a pipe pro, this fix doesnt change much.
if you are less than a pro - you can get away with designs where anyone could conclude "ok the numbers check out, this should work"

Without someone popping in with a gotcha

[vapid gorge]

this still reeks of 'if you have to look outside the game to understand a mechanic the game is bad'

which would include just about every game for hte last decade

[oblique hollow]

No honestly, that part isnt as bad. i know not everyone has time to learn and understand on their own

but after having worked with this system since its literal inception - yeah that little fluctuation is honestly just "feels bad and like bullshit"

it doesnt feel like it adds any actual depth

it feels like you need an actual fluid dynamics degree to understand

and honestly, after having seen why it happens - yes you kinda do need one to understand it

[vapid gorge]

sure but it's easily avoidable with the barest info? Having some design mechanics that you have to work around is good imo. Beyond deciding about mixing waste/fresh. And even then with the tweak it sounds like direct feed with a pump would be fine since the sink points would just let it flow that way

[oblique hollow]

You already have 3 mechanics to work around with.
"If pipe empty you dont get pressure and you cant go up"
And "machine can only push up a certain height"
and "fluid can go both ways"

Honestly, lets just agree this is a matter of taste

Like Cilantro

[vapid gorge]

you really don't have to think about any of those with the tweak you described

except for putting pumps down and headlift is ... a nothing

[oblique hollow]

they all still exist

why dont you just try it

tell me pipes no longer feel like pipes

[vapid gorge]

I may at some point but everything you've described sounds like there's essentially nothing to design around

those 3 mechanics may still exist but if they never rear their head do they really exist?

(except for headlift ofc)

[oblique hollow]

Considering 99% of the time the mk 2 fix is literally just "add a loop somewhere because of some reason"
Is it really a deep mechanic then?

[vapid gorge]

more to high flow pipes than just loop if you want to get fancier, like splitting manifolds, doing it over floors, bottom feeding.

you can make them very simple and avoid almost any issue. Which I always thought played well with satisfactory. As most things in the game are only as difficult as you choose them to be

Even now you could run 300 flow pipes and do nearly anything you want I think

not quite tweak amount of 'anything' , but a lot

You can have very complex trains - or very simple ones

[oblique hollow]

If mk 2 feels bad to use people just ditch it.
is that successful design

you can literally always just say "yes just build 2 pipes"

[vapid gorge]

most people ditch bidi train systems. Is that successful design?

it's more complex and you have to put more thought into it.

[oblique hollow]

this is honestly just skillcurve talki think
your opinion is that mk 2 should have a much higher skill floor

[vapid gorge]

mk2 can still have a very low skill curve if you keep them simple

like you said, a simple mk2 with a loop ? yeah done

[oblique hollow]

sure - if you never go for 600/min you can avoid anything

[vapid gorge]

even 600 flow mk2s if you keep them very simple are pretty easy

[oblique hollow]

except that - no. Some systems below 600/min also dont work as ive found

[vapid gorge]

1 branch, fed at level, loop.

[oblique hollow]

because they ramp up to 600/min for some damn reason

[vapid gorge]

yeah 400+ if you start doing weird things

300 flow it seems like you can slap them most ways

but with just a couple things you can pretty reliably get 600 flow pipes down w/o issues. As long as you're wanting to keep them simple. Like simple trains

I put in the effort to make 600 bottom feeding. But that was a personal choice

I still don't tell people to do it. Though if they want to try I give them my designs

[oblique hollow]

keeping it simple for troubleshooting purposes is still required.
big complex systems will actually have weird flow rates and whatnot

[brisk urchin]

yo can someone help me in my pool

[vapid gorge]

mostly I find if you don't interlink big fluid systems the trouble shooting isn't bad.

[oblique hollow]

yes - thats still the case

some recipes use a lot of fluid at once though

like aluminum

like this: should this work in vanilla?
720/min piped down into 2 mk 2 pipes which later gets pipes up into 4 scrap refineries

besides - in a dev interview, G2 talked about the bug where buffers endlessly trade fluid with each other

believe it or not - that is due to this flow acceleration

its way too high. Unless they rework the way buffers work or they change the variables, i dont see a way how they would stop that

[deft lichen]

In that case I have a different question, do you disagree with what I said in the linked message?

[vapid gorge]

it sounds like you think that basically all the things that could happen to fluids that you'd have to design things around should be removed. And that they'll work like belts.

sorry, essentially just work like belts

[oblique hollow]

due to machine timing, sometimes systems still dont always work quite flawlessly 100%. So thats where you are forced to sit there and watch it and find out whats wrong.
And that part can just take away from gameplay imo

if you like endlessly troubleshooting fluids - good for you.
however, theres more to the game than dealing with pipes

honestly, i still believe you are preoccupied with how you think they will act with these tweaks rather than how they will actually work

give it a go - you can directly criticize it then before you do more theorizing based on our subjective descriptions of a complex system

[vapid gorge]

I haven't opened the game in a long while tbh. What's hte mod called?

[oblique hollow]

PipeTuner

[vapid gorge]

I'll have a look

[oblique hollow]

theres some mod specific game settings when you loaded into a save

you are looking for the mods "Hydrostatic" preset

that one will change them to act "less jumpy"

some systems can still break because of the way junctions and valves interact with pressure

[vapid gorge]

what did you set hydrostatic to for reference?

[orchid brook]

2h looking as why i didint have the right amount

[oblique hollow]

hydrostatic is a preset - you can see all values that change once you click apply

vanilla preset are the game's vanilla values

but for brevity:
vanilla: density 0.57 - gravity 9.8
hydrostatic: density 0.133 - gravity 300 (or 100 - also works fine)

yes this does just mean fluids effectively become 7 x "heavier"

doesnt affect head lift from pumps though

if you dislike the mk 2 volume increase, set the volume multiplier to 1 instead of 1.6

[woeful zenith]

Lmfao! How can someone cram so much redundancy into one spot

If you find stuff like that take a picture so I can laugh at it 😹

[crimson moat]

The dynamic pressure system on pipes is very broken rn.

It's probably designed and added to simulate more realistic behavior, but it successfully makes some things slightly more realistic while unsuccessfully making others extremely unrealistic and problematic.

For example.. if you take a completely stable pipe system with water sitting at the bottom of it and then turn on the vanilla dynamic flow, it will suddenly throw itself up a vertical pipe without any prompt, any actual energy input or any flow in or out of the system. 500 tons of water will go up the pipe, fall back down, then bounce back up the vertical pipe even higher than it went before. This will climb to a certain amplitude and then repeat indefinitely.

That's because the dynamic pressure system is injecting a ridiculous amount of phantom energy. It doesn't just overcome friction (which would already break a whole lot of stuff - fluid flow should dampen out to zero over time in a closed system, not accelerate faster and faster and faster), it actually goes far beyond that and causes water that was previously in a steady state to throw itself up a vertical pipe for no reason, leaving empty pipes below it. It amplifies those waves to the flow rate limit and sustains them there forever.

It must be a mistake/oversight as it's behavior which is both extremely unrealistic and problematic.

With the current state of the dynamic pressure system, just turning off dynamic pressure entirely makes pipes both more realistic and easier to work with. Having a dynamic pressure system does allow for more realism in some areas, but if it's mis-tuned as it currently is then the realism harms are far greater than the gains.

[oblique hollow]

it also breaks gas unfortunately so fully turning it off isnt possible yet

[crimson moat]

From what i understood it should be an easy fix for someone who can modify source code (only gas adds X amount of a variable used for static pressure, just crank that addition up to counterbalanace the other variable change, and gas behaves the same as it does now)

As that value isn't a variable, it's difficult to access for a mod. The values which are variables and affect gas also affect liquid, which forces you to make an unneccesary compromise between their function - but with code access, that could be fixed

[visual ocean]

He told me he had some issues with pipes and i looged in to check. It was crazy..
Like he had only 10k power so i thought we was on coal only. Noope..

There was like 10 powerplants or more
Also the spaghetti is abismal

[old zephyr]

is bringing crude oil to power plant via train viable

or should I just prepare some mega piping

[deft lichen]

why wouldn't it be viable

[old zephyr]

trains scare me!

[deft lichen]

ok fair

[old zephyr]

(have heard some issues with transporting liquid via train)

and this facility will need 5400 crude oil a min

[deft lichen]

trains currently have some buggy signal placement, fluids should be fine

I guess the question is why move the oil in the first place?

can you not burn it where you mine it

[old zephyr]

i want to create a mega power plant making 100k mws with 400 fuel gens

[deft lichen]

that doesn't answer my question

[old zephyr]

you mean turn it into fuel then ship the fuel?

[deft lichen]

no, just make the fuel where you mine the oil

ship the other (solid) resources which I assume there will be less of

[unique cypress]

why? just make and burn the fuel where the oil is

[deft lichen]

that's what I'm saying 😭

[old zephyr]

yeah but is there that much oil somewhere 😭

like in one place

[deft lichen]

spire coast

ok uhhh maybe not 5400

[unique cypress]

you only need 3k oil

[old zephyr]

doing turbofuel

[unique cypress]

spire coast has 3.5k by my count

so enough

[deft lichen]

3450 in the spire coast + 900 in the canyon = 4350

mind you that's an absolutely huge project

are you sure you don't want to wait for rocket fuel

[unique cypress]

not that bad

[old zephyr]

oh I hadnt even consiodered the heavy oil residue method

[deft lichen]

^ needs blenders at which point RF is available

[unique cypress]

DPF then

[deft lichen]

that's even MORE buildings

[unique cypress]

same efficiency

[deft lichen]

nope, slightly less

[unique cypress]

BP and it's fine

[deft lichen]

now do rocket fuel

for the same power

[unique cypress]

either or

[deft lichen]

that's at least 10x smaller right

[unique cypress]

the 400 gens is gonna be much bigger anyway

[deft lichen]

that still counts

[tough viper]

I would do two, the numbers are wayyy nicer with nitro

[visual ocean]

package at source. You can transport a lot more this way

[random creek]

so i wanted to see if i could automate 60 nuclear pasta per minute

[unique cypress]

you can

theoretically at least

[random creek]

all them refineries tho

[unique cypress]

automate shards and OC them all

[random creek]

thats still 384 refineries lol

[unique cypress]

eh, I've built more

[brisk smelt]

build modules of 1200 ingots and copy paste

with megaprints shouldnt be too hard

or build copper powder modules, thats what i do

[random creek]

im a long ways from it

[mighty storm]

does anyone have a modular frame blueprint from 120/240 iron per minute?

[random creek]

im still working on expanding the basics. i have made a 20k iron ingot factory so far(not at full capacity till i get mk6 belts) and am working on my steel ingot facility that takes some of those ingots. and i still have to go to the swamp and turn all that aluminium into ingots there

[mighty storm]

imkibtiz is working to that in his current playthrough, if i remember you need like 72k raw copper per minute

[unique cypress]

nah 28800 ore is enough

72k ingots

[mighty storm]

something like that

[visual ocean]

How can I check a train average route time?
It's saying 16 items per minute but this it what i dropped in 1 of the 4 platforms

Im going to need like 320 a minute

[unique cypress]

measure it with a stopwatch

but like... 1 train with 1 wagon can handle 320 casing/min at up to 20 min RTT

[visual ocean]

Im using 4 xD

i was just finding it weird the value in the platform

Okay, afterthe second loading it went up to 217

Im tripping i swear..
These machines are getting idle midway prodcution

for like a second or 2

[unique cypress]

you have the hoverpack equipped?

[visual ocean]

yeah

well damn

[unique cypress]

any power switches nearby?

[visual ocean]

like around 10 foundations close

but loads of power

[unique cypress]

well, there's a bug interaction between a hoverpack and a power switch

whenever the hoverpack switches connections and it switches between the 2 sides of a switch, all machines connected to the switch go idle

I don't think it doesn't even have to switch connections across the switch itself, as long as it switches between girds, the bug happens

[visual ocean]

Yeah then its def that

my hoverpack was connecting to the loop and to a rail track outside the loop

[stoic gorge]

what are the best machines to overclock?

[deft lichen]

Miners, nuclear power plants and slooped buildings

But beware the power draw when overclocking slooped buildings

[unique cypress]

miners, oil extractors and well pressurizers for sure

[visual ocean]

You can also just use overclock to save space, for example oil powerplants

[unique cypress]

slooped machines too, allows you to get more out of your sloops

[stoic gorge]

pipes never need pumps in horizontal, right?

bro all of sudden my fuel plant started oscilating after hours working normallly

[unique cypress]

only when moving them vertically

though they sometimes help even on horizontal ones

[stoic gorge]

why is this happening

idle while having the resource

wtf

[unique cypress]

machines always idle for at least a few seconds, even if they get the resources immediately after they start idling

[oblique hollow]

if it doesnt have 12 by the end of the cycle, it will stall

machine MUST have 2 x the minimum amount of items in them by the end of the production cycle

[stoic gorge]

but why would my fuel plant only oscilate now after hours of working normally

[oblique hollow]

could be because you filled everything up and only now do the flow rate issues of the source pipe show

[stoic gorge]

is there any visible problem here?

[oblique hollow]

classic mk 2 problem

connect the oil extractor pipe to the middle junctions

that circumvents the problem

[stoic gorge]

only in mk2?

[oblique hollow]

yes

[stoic gorge]

why?

[oblique hollow]

very complicated reason

[unique cypress]

because a lunatic wrote the pipe code

[stoic gorge]

lol

ok thank you a lot

[oblique hollow]

has to do with how pipes were coded and only mk 2 is affected by this

[stoic gorge]

so pipes always middle on manifold?

[oblique hollow]

its better for mk 2, yes

and also to use mk 1 pipes when flow rate is 300/min or less

[stoic gorge]

ok ok

[stoic gorge]

it solved my problem thank you

[brisk smelt]

or more generally, keep the theoretical flow rate on any given segment of pipe below 600

well like except the pipes coming out of a 2x water gen

[quiet wasp]

13.143 heavy modular frames/min. probably way more than i need rn lmao considering that i'm still in early phase 3.

[stoic gorge]

nice man

very organized

[stoic gorge]

what is this photo mode?

[quiet wasp]

yeah it's the detached mode or whatever it's called. i just took a screenshot of photo mode lol

[quiet wasp]

yeah it took me a while to figure out how exactly i wanted this laid out

[elfin oasis]

wtf

[old zephyr]

I need some help understanding how to divivde some material

I am making 1000 aluminum ingots a min -> 16 foundrys making 60 p/min with one overclocked to do 100 p/min

I have two sides facing each other, one side with 480 p/min and one side with 520 p/min. I have access to 780 belts, and I need to get two seperate lines, one with 300 a min and one with 700 a min.

But I just dont fully understand how to get these together

[crimson moat]

2 pipes connected to buffer, max flow is 600x2

[crimson moat]

The easiest way is to make a group of forges that output 700, and a different group that outputs 300

[old zephyr]

ok I think I can do that by adding 1 refinery and underclocking

I'll just have to be smart because my belt cant exceed 780

[crimson moat]

but if you must bandaid later on without changing the design or clocks at all:

• Connect two smart splitters sequentially after the 480 side's output

• Set one of them to output Any into a mk.2 belt, and overflow onwards.

• Set the next to output Any into a mk.1 belt, and overflow onwards.

Merge your mk.1 and mk.2 belts into the 520 side

that will take 180 from the 480, so you have 300 + 700

In some cases you might be able to take 2 prio belts out of a single smart splitter

[old zephyr]

oh my genius

[vapid gorge]

buffers can fill from both sides.
Unless that's from a train platform you shouldn't be using them anyway

[normal latch]

quick question to make sure i understand pipes and fluids now

lets say i have a setup that produces 200 heavy oil but only consumes 180 heavy oil. i need to manage that excess 20 heavy oil, so i turn it into coke and sink it. however, i want the 20 heavy oil to only convert to coke AFTER the other 180 heavy oil is used on the other processes, as in, i want it to be de-prioritized, yet still there to prevent overflowing of pipes (backing up the pipes, however you call it)

to achieve this, based on the pipe pdf, i make all the machines for the prioritized 180 heavy oil first on a flat horizontal plane, and then at the end, i have a pipe that goes up and then back down (within the limit of the head lift)

so that it will only get heavy oil AFTER the rest of the system is full

[dusky bronze]

it should do that automatically if you manifold it, although having extra oil i dont think would be a problem in the first place

[normal latch]

and from there, it will take out 20 heavy oil per minute, which should balance the system

[normal latch]

oh, hmm, maybe i overcomplicated my system then lol

[dusky bronze]

just setup however many machines you want and then if you want to get rid of the excess oil turn it into something you can sink at the end of the line

[dusky bronze]

a good rule of thumb with pipes is to keep it as simple as possible

[normal latch]

yea i realize now that i used a trick that i read about in the pdf, but i actually dont think i needed to do it here

[normal latch]

definitely agree

ok, well this was informative

[dusky bronze]

also with pipe manifolds make sure that all the pipes are filled before you get the machines/greater factory going

[normal latch]

yea im watching a video on the subject now, and it suggested that as well

to prevent sloshing etc

[crimson moat]

Yes that works, but like mentioned you don't need it

for an example of where you do, i have a recycler setup which converts fuel to plastic/rubber if they're being taken out of the belts, but otherwise it overflows to generators. There isn't enough fuel to do both simultaneously, so the overflow pipe dynamically balances it with 100% preference for the machines on the starting side of the pipe.

[dusky bronze]

another big thing to do with oil setups is to have some kind of backup in case it wants to stop for some reason

most of the time thats just sinks to get rid of plastic/rubber at the end of the production line, although you should be able to find a way to turn fluids into something you can either burn in a generator or sink in the form of wet concrete

[vapid gorge]

Just clock your machines to consume 180 and 20

[normal latch]

the funny thing is i already had done that lol

i basically solved a "problem" that didnt exist in my system

but at least i learned and now i have a cool idea from Aeryn as well for how to handle when belts back up on things like plastic/rubber production systems

so that it prioritizes the plastic/rubber, and uses the fuel for power whenever those plastic/rubber are backed up due to full output belts

something im learning about now from a video is that you can actually use packaged water with heavy oil to make even more fuel that usual

so next time i pop open the game, i'll give that a look

i hope the devs continue to iterate on the game, its so good

[vapid gorge]

just clock your groups of machines to the sections that need it.

production in satisfactory is static and you do not want sporadic fuel movement. Pipes tend to not like it and you want full pipes to help keep the system stable

besides sporadically getting more power is pointless, you'll never want to build over your minimum power output anyway

[brisk smelt]

plastic factory should never back up in the first place, output refineries should be segregated from recycling cycle

it's better to address the cause of the problem then to bandaid something

[vapid gorge]

yeah, keeping your power completely seperate from production is a solid move

[normal latch]

that all makes sense, i think the right approach then is to just sink any excess plastic/rubber, and have a closed system for production and a closed system for power

i could also convert the 20 heavy oil into fuel and underclock a refinery to consume it as well, increasing my production output, as pointed out

[slate crypt]

@vapid gorge

[vapid gorge]

oof your piping is a bit everywhere

[slate crypt]

all the refineries have 1 booster thing

[vapid gorge]

so how many gens do yo uahve and how much fuel are you making?

[slate crypt]

yeah before i had like 1 refinery for fuel to fuel plant but it wasnt working

so i used 3 refineries with merged pipes to all fuel plants also dont work

[vapid gorge]

ok so if you want your power plants to work, you need to do some basic arithmatic

[slate crypt]

3 fuel refineries from 6 plastic/rubber refineries

[vapid gorge]

are you sinking your plastic and rubber?

[slate crypt]

i have them into storage bins

[vapid gorge]

but no sink?

[slate crypt]

no

[vapid gorge]

so what do you think happens to your fuel when your machines can't produce rubber and plastic anymore since it relies on that process?

[slate crypt]

it like this on every refinery

[slate crypt]

it prob stops i googled it and researched the sink now and was gonna fix it

but for rn it dont even run

[vapid gorge]

ok so the technical term for all of this is a cluster frak.
and your layout makes it impossible to tell what is actually going on :\

can you show a pic of the console of one of your fuel producers?

[vapid gorge]

is the system disconnected from the rest of your factory world?

[slate crypt]

no

[vapid gorge]

do that first.

[slate crypt]

i connected it from 6 or 7 coal plants

k i did it

[vapid gorge]

disconnect your power system + coal gens from the rest of hte world

ok try turning it on again, the breaker

[slate crypt]

wait and coal gens

k hold on that will take a min

yeah really far

[vapid gorge]

ugh ok seperate off the coal gens

can you make some bio burners?

[slate crypt]

yeah

[vapid gorge]

how many refineries total is there there?

[slate crypt]

6 plastic/rubber
3 fuel
5 fuel plants

[agile junco]

Damn it, I need to overflow this 16/min off my single belt somehow.

[vapid gorge]

that would be a lot of bio burners. Ok connect them up to only the coal gens.

let me know when you're back

[vapid gorge]

smart splitter?

[agile junco]

It's more complicated than that.

I'm somewhat space constained atm

[vapid gorge]

better start clipping

yoiu probably have space at the first machine to overflow it

[agile junco]

Finally a time to use a priority merger to great effect!

[slate crypt]

k done

[slate crypt]

its coal power straight to refinery

nothing else

[agile junco]

Siphoned off 40 into a priority merger ❤️

[vapid gorge]

ok flip the switch and turn it on

[slate crypt]

it work now

[vapid gorge]

see how it goes. You might not have mathed it right.

and you likely when over your power limit which is why the whole thing crashed so you'll need more power

[slate crypt]

the pipe behind refinery is full one infront of gas refinery is empty

and the fuel refinery itself isnt even filling up with oil

[vapid gorge]

give it a min

fuel refs still not getting material?

[slate crypt]

it keeps going up than down but never actually filling up

[slate crypt]

yeah

[vapid gorge]

ok the easiest way to fix this is to rebuild all of this flat in a far less messy manner

pipes don't like a bunch of elevation changes so make it flat, rebuild with the refineries pointin to the next area the yare going and not having pipes everywhere.

[slate crypt]

ohhhh pipes actually react to elevation changes?

[vapid gorge]

gravity affects them yes

[slate crypt]

i didnt know that unless it was like straight up

[vapid gorge]

in this case though it's mostly because it's a mess that it's impossible to tell whats actually wrong

keep your pipes tidy and clean. Not only for good flow, but easy to figure out where the issues are at

shoudl only take a few minutes. I'ts like 8 refs right?

[slate crypt]

ye

[vapid gorge]

and just asking again, you did math this out right, right?

cause it sounded kinda like you were just slapping machines down

[slate crypt]

ngl, no

[vapid gorge]

don't expect fluid systems to work if you don't math it out.

especially if you're relying on waste products

demolish
math it out
rebuild in a neat way

[slate crypt]

whats the ideal refinery > fuel gen ratio

[vapid gorge]

there isn't one

there's lots of different recipes and most don't line up

so you have to use clocking.
do math. Really basic math

because if this is a road block for you the rest of hte game will be literal hell

look at the oil you want to use, look at teh plastic / rubber recipes and how yo uwant to split them

[slate crypt]

tbh most of it was just me being lazy and saying whatever

[slate crypt]

@vapid gorge better? it actually works now too lmao

full efficiency too

i'll run a sink thing behind

[vapid gorge]

I'm glad 🙂

and much better

[slate crypt]

i ran valves etc and added 6 more plants off 1 oil node

all is good now i was just lazy before

[vapid gorge]

remove the valves. A system that works with them will work without them and they have mechanics that can wreck flow

there's essentially never a situation where using valves couldn't use a more reliable method of maintaining flow

[slate crypt]

I noticed the front refineries were always max oil in pipes and back ones were low / 50% efficiency

so i thought this would force the oil to go down farther and make them all work good

[vapid gorge]

it generally just take time for a manifold to balance out. Valves won't let 100% of the flow through if the pipes aren't full full, and if the yare full full then the system should be working fine

[normal latch]

i have a plan for aluminum scrap

i'll fill it with water first, so i'll let the 2 water extractors in each group fill up the pipes first before turning on the other machines

the idea is to recycle the 120 water from the aluminum scraps back into its system

so its 2 water extractors (240 water) + 1 aluminum scrap refinery (120 water) which should handle the 2 alumina solution refineries (which need 360 water total)

scrap and silica will pop out

this should fill my 480 belt with 480 aluminum ingots once i add in 400 silica (from outside processes) and make the 8 foundry for aluminum ingots

any reason why this closed system wouldnt work?

the alternative is to have 3 water extractors per setup and then find a sink for the excess 240 water that comes out from the alumunim scrap refineries

[vapid gorge]

what are even the labels?

wheres the fresh water coming in?

[bright valley]

this...this just doesn't seem right

[vapid gorge]

what about it doesn't seem right?

[bright valley]

multiple disconnected rubber lines and cycling recycled rub/plastic in a loop

[vapid gorge]

nothing is disconnected, it's just using the recycled plastic/rubber cycle

[bright valley]

that's a thing?

[vapid gorge]

though for this littler amount of rubber/plastic I probably wouldn't boether

[vapid gorge]

yeah the most oil efficient plubber set upt is

oil > HOR > fuel > plastic then rubber then plastic , repeat until done

[plush glen]

Why did none of us think to use a locomotive in place of the freight car?

[bright valley]

repeat until done...like, it gets more resource-efficient the more times you cycle it? I gotta take a look at those recipes, that's counterintuitive

[plush glen]

Basically, by using fuel and recycled plastic + recycled rubber together, you can turn one crude oil into 3 of either rubber or plastic

[vapid gorge]

not more efficient but it goes like this

turn all oil into diluted fuel first

use the Resin to create Residual Rubber

Rubber + fuel = recycled plastic

recycled plastic + fuel = recycled rubber

[plush glen]

It's fairly complex to setup at scale but it's the most oil efficient way to make those products

[vapid gorge]

you can make it not very complex at all 🙂

[plush glen]

Well, it was fairly complex when I was trying to turn 1800 oil per min into equal parts plastic and rubber, I had to run like 38 pipes in every which way xD

[vapid gorge]

to make life simpler split it into 2 tabs in satisfactory tools.

1 tab for plastic , 1 for rubber as the end product.

then work backwards in your layout. Makes it super simple

trying to actually make it a loop is a pain in the ass

[plush glen]

I learned that the hard way lmao

[vapid gorge]

thats how I did my 3000 oil plubber loop https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/558721941410807812/1186868216648175656/big_r_1.jpg?ex=68bf9aa9&is=68be4929&hm=1d1ee3714ed9b32ea9097048a33429b35b25273cc6622ce21ffbe348746110fb&=&format=webp

[plush glen]

Next time I'm just gonna make a single unit tileable blueprint and paste it 800 times

[vapid gorge]

as long as the processes are split? real easy

[plush glen]

Big ol blueprint that turns fuel into rubber or plastic By Magic, black box it, then paste it over and over until it uses all the fuel

[vapid gorge]

works too

[plush glen]

I already have a print that goes straight from oil and water to diluted fuel

Then I just have to make another hundred of that and link them together lol

[normal latch]

W = Water Extractor
B = Bauxite (480)
C = Coal (240)
S = Silica (Output from Aluminum Scrap Refineries)
AS = Aluminum Scrap (Output from Aluminum Scrap Refineries)
The Alumina Solution is the output or R1 (Refineries for Alumina Solution) that goes directly into R2 (Refinery for Aluminum Scrap)

[vapid gorge]

how much bauxite pm are you processing with what recipes?

[normal latch]

all the default recipes

2 Refinery (Alumina Solution) + 2 Water Extractor
240 Water + 240 Bauxite = 240 Alumina Solution + 100 Silica

1 Refinery (Aluminum Scrap)
240 Alumina Solution + 120 Coal = 360 Aluminum Scrap + 120 Water

2 Refinery (Alumina Solution) + 2 Water Extractor
240 Water + 240 Bauxite = 240 Alumina Solution + 100 Silica

1 Refinery (Aluminum Scrap)
240 Alumina Solution + 120 Coal = 360 Aluminum Scrap + 120 Water

8 Foundry (Aluminum Ingot) + 400 Silica
720 Aluminum Scrap + 600 Silica = 480 Aluminum Ingot

That would be all the equipment

2 Refinery (Alumina Solution) + 2 Water Extractor + 1 Refinery (Aluminum Scrap)

[vapid gorge]

here, try this

[normal latch]

^ That's the basic idea, just printed twice

[vapid gorge]

2/3 of the solution refineries running off fresh water, 1/3 running off the waste, clock as needed

[normal latch]

i think the ratio should be 2 to 1 though

[vapid gorge]

... yes, 2/3 is 2x as much as 1/3

[normal latch]

what lol

why wouldnt my setup have the right proportions?

[vapid gorge]

I honestly cannot read your diagram properly.

I cannot tell you if it'll work

[normal latch]

4 alumina solution refineries + 2 aluminum scrap refineries + 4 water extractors

[vapid gorge]

and it looks like you're mixing your fresh and waste water?

[normal latch]

yea

[vapid gorge]

yeah that usually causes issues

[knotty hornet]

Yes, it should work the way you've set up as long as water is balanced correctly.

[vapid gorge]

hence the diagram above with waste and fresh split

even if you're very careful, pouring the waste water into the fresh often causes flow issues

[knotty hornet]

What i have done that works for me, is you basically just run a ring of pipes around the machine and hook input and output both into it, then you junction in a fresh water line that only has the difference on it (you will need slightly more water to get it filled and start it up)

Then you just let the machines "simmer"

[normal latch]

what does simmer mean?

[vapid gorge]

they mean 'pray'.

[knotty hornet]

They will output the waste water in to the loop, and consume from it, and the extractors add a little bit more over time, and everything cooks

And since water volume won't physically move against a valve, you can use them to direct waste water towards inputs on the loop.

(I'm bringing up valves cuz i know certain people hate them)

I've been doing this with my Instant Scrap blenders and it works phenomenally

[vapid gorge]

xD if you're direct feeding waste into fresh, use a powered pump. Valves don't stop back flow.

Nyaz routinely gives bad pipe advice

unreliable set ups that often don't work. eg - directly feeding waste into fresh with valves

[normal latch]

this is the basic idea, which i guess you understand by now lol

orange is alumina solution, blue is water

[normal latch]

ideally i can use a closed system because i like closed systems

[vapid gorge]

you need some fresh liquid to start the system

[knotty hornet]

Your first diagram was better, where the third refinery was turned around

[normal latch]

this diagram is just to show the water lines

the actual setup will be cleaner

[knotty hornet]

That way it can output directly into the other's input manifold.

[normal latch]

i just wanna understand the water

[knotty hornet]

Cuz that setup does work