math-and-meta

[flint crystal]

I can always tear some rocket fuel stuff down

[viral sparrow]

like apocalyptech said you generally wont run out of sulfur unless you REALLY try to

[flint crystal]

Yeah not gonna happen, it's more likely that I start a new save eventually

I've made some dumb ass decisions

[vapid gorge]

https://tenor.com/view/simpsons-burns-yes-gif-25229025

[flint crystal]

Planned to build one mega factory until I didn't - only used 6-7 pipes 😄

[lunar stag]

Actual yellow light stall

but it was infrequent enough that it would generally get back up to 100% before it would happen again, and none of the generators had even started to starve twelve hours later.

[vapid gorge]

hmmm let it go for a day, see how it goes

if it starts starving again:

rebuild your hub next to your power station
send me the save. I can look at it in person

[lunar stag]

will do, though for the moment it's looking like rounding error territory. At this point I'm chasing fractions of a percent.

[sterile shard]

what is this calculator ?

[vapid gorge]

it's called modeler, it's more of a layout tool as you have to make everything manually

[heady sun]

is there a better way to offload all these train stations towards the bottom left than how im doing it

[hollow rover]

how do you guys deal with percentages with repeating decimals? Trying to get 100% efficiency here for all 6 assemblers (modular frame). But the last two machines in the manifold are not reaching 100%

reinforced iron plate is at 88.8889%

modular frames are at 83.333%

reinforced iron plates are at 100% efficiency, the problem lies with the modular frames though

[vapid gorge]

you could route the belts under?

[flint crystal]

I just use these.. Other option is making more items and sink overflow

Maybe there's a third option but I have no idea

[hollow rover]

I am so stupid. The reason its not 100% efficient is because of the conveyer distance. Forgot about that

[flint crystal]

Ah, manifold.. Yeah, that will just take a long time to reach 100% uptime as it'll fill up the first machines in the manifold first

[flint crystal]

How does that matter though ? 30 items per minute is 30 items per minute, no matter if it's a 5 meter or 3km belt

I think it's just the way the manifold works really

If you make 30 items per min and each machine requires 6

First machine gets 15
Second gets 7.5
Third gets 3,75
Fourth + fifth gets 1,875

[hollow rover]

cause I filled up the front four with stiched iron plates. Looked at the last 2, once a full cycle of frames gets done, the backlog of stiched iron plates in the last two machines keeps decreasing

[flint crystal]

If you want to really fix it quickly just load balance it, it's 6 machines

Splitter into 2 splitters and you're done

Belt distance will not make any difference

[lime rose]

Is there a point in making 750 units of Nitro Rocket Fuel a minute in a single blender when the pipes max out at 600? Wondering if I should be aiming at using 600 or 750.

[vapid gorge]

well the pipe can only move 600 pm. Maybe avoid slooping

[silk coral]

Hey, how do I split this evenly

[hushed silo]

underclock machines

and it will work

[silk coral]

Perfect, So all 4 smelters into a MK2 Merger Manifold, into a splitter manifold going up the line of constructors?

[hushed silo]

ye

manifold will balance itself out eventualy in this game

[silk coral]

Absolutely perfect
Cheers mate

Sorry one quick thing
where the rods turn into screws, 30 come away to the modular frame assembler
How do I split 22.5 iron rods into the constructors, then have 30 go to the assembler

im assuming its going to be a manifold then all excess feeding into the assembler

[hushed silo]

u can just split them by two and it will sort itself out

u will have 26.25 going both ways but once the the 22.5 machine will be full the excess will start going to the 30 line

so just one splitter will work

or a manifold

[vapid gorge]

if you have a fast enough belt you can just also use 1 splitter, it'll self balance

[silk coral]

Got it working
Thanks for the advice guys

[wind spade]

Manifold, or build separate groups

[lunar stag]

purple zone is the affected fuel refineries, orange zone is the starved generators, black zone is the HOR refineries that show intermittent difficulty discharging

I suspect the root cause to be in the block C HOR refinery group

[lime rose]

I was just confirming I wasn't missing something. Thanks.

[oblique hollow]

HOR is a pain in the ass to get running right at 600 /min because of the recipe numbers.

If you can, avoid doing it

Loops may work fine

[lunar stag]

Noted.

I'm very quickly arriving at that conclusion myself.

unrelated question, does the math and meta channel have any tables nobody's using? I may need to flip one.

[oblique hollow]

Only math tables

[lunar stag]

yeah pivoting those doesn't have the same effect

[oblique hollow]

Best thing you can do for the HOR is just drag a second line and make it a giant loop

Instead of just a loop at one set of machines

Effectively giving it 2 pipes to move to the fuel refineries

[lunar stag]

tried that, actually

got sloshing in a different area of the same system

[oblique hollow]

Sloshing shouldnt matter if its not hitting max flow

Its 1200/min throughput

[lunar stag]

it would hit max flow in the middle of the refinery outfeed group

[oblique hollow]

Both pipes should be 50/50 on average

[lunar stag]

refineries would go down in the middle of the cluster rather than the tailing end

[oblique hollow]

Did you add any pumps

At the far ends

[lunar stag]

between the HOR and packaged fuel, yes

but at the HOR pipeline headers? No.

would static pressure towers work as an alternative?

I'm trying to keep the system below 7.1Gw

[oblique hollow]

You need to pump it up there anyway

So just use the pump.
Its 4 MW

Being stingy with them is worse than going over some power budget

[lunar stag]

yeah you'd think that

but my power budget at this site is limited by geothermal

it's a multiplayer server

business constraints are a bit different

[oblique hollow]

Cant you siphon some of the fuel for a fuel gen

[lunar stag]

I mean there's goofelry I can do with some of the spare oil in the area, sure...

but if there's some configuration I can use that will reduce outfeed blockages caused by sloshing, I'd like to at least try and hit it

though at this point I'm just about halfway to running three T1 pipelines at 200 each and calling it a day

[oblique hollow]

You are bottom feeding the refineries, right?

[lunar stag]

infeed loop is a 600/min crude oil loop suspended 4m above the fluid intake port

T2 loop, T1 infeed bridge

[oblique hollow]

I mean HOR to fuel

[lunar stag]

HOR outfeeds are on a 600/min T2 line to a T1 pump, which connects to another T2 loop suspended 4m above the Diluted Packaged Fuel fluid intake port

again, T2 loop, T1 infeed bridge

same basic layout on both refinery blocks

[oblique hollow]

But it is 2 seperate loops essentially ? one loop at HOR refinery output, one at fuel refinery input?

At that point you could probably cut a pipe connection near the HOR refineries and make it 2 seperate pipes

Like cut a pipe connection halfway down the HOR refinery output line

[lunar stag]

tried that, same problem, different location.

[oblique hollow]

Than can only be junction orientation then or whatever

[lunar stag]

every configuration seems to have this issue with pipe runs of this length

it's maddening

[oblique hollow]

How'd you construct the junctions

Snap them only a horizontally spanned pipe ?

Or onto vertical pipe stubs

[lunar stag]

horizontal pipe for precision alignment, then stripped and re-piped with a new T2 line

[oblique hollow]

Do you perhaps have a mk 1 wedged somewhere in there by accident

[lunar stag]

I can re-check the lines, but given the number of times I've gone over them the last few days it's unlikely.

the seized outflow also moves

not indicative of a bottleneck

[oblique hollow]

I'd once again suggest you try running 2 seperate lines so you can fix them independantly

[lunar stag]

yeah I'm just about there.

[oblique hollow]

Check what happens and maybe just move the existing pumps from the Fuel refinery feed line to HOR output line

make sure its as flat and low as possible there initially

[lunar stag]

honestly I'm seriously considering re-rigging the whole system with underclocked spare refineries and doing a compartmentalized pipeline instead of a single T2

I get that this is intended behavior from the developers, but if making a robust design takes this much work to diagnose and stabilize, I don't see a point to using T2 at all.

challenging mechanical depth is one thing

arcane design constraints are another

[oblique hollow]

Yeah no i made a report on it already

[lunar stag]

I'll upvote that

[oblique hollow]

It might be intentionally but that intentionally is broken in a fundamental way.
The pipes gain energy with speed

[lunar stag]

yeah, not a fan of this design choice.

T2 pipes are un-fun

[oblique hollow]

https://questions.satisfactorygame.com/post/68b22be2dbe2e46a549b0664

Theres a few test saves there too

Some quite simple, all fail due to pretty much one reason

The suggested change fixes them

[lunar stag]

after six months though?

like trust me, boss, I want it fixed too, but...

:/

[wind spade]

I mean we didn't have any new release in past six months

[lunar stag]

fair

[river anchor]

I just run at 95% capacity. Max pipes hate working reasonably unless gas, or perfectly downhill and short

[wind spade]

(and we also don't know if they want to go this way in terms of "fixing" the pipes)

[lunar stag]

The current behavior is really opaque though. In a game about building and consistency, these kinds of intermittent behaviors can't be part of the design intent, can they?

[wind spade]

big part of these issues is players assuming pipes work just like belts though

[oblique hollow]

Whatever the intent was, im sure it was meant well but i think they kinda messed something up

Cuz like... the equation is messed up

It looks right if you squint

[wind spade]

what if it's intentionally there as effect that SAM has on your fluids

they can make it a feature that way

[oblique hollow]

Sam globally messes up your liquids?

[wind spade]

yeah, small antigravitational fields

[oblique hollow]

Feature or not, it's not good game design

[lunar stag]

someone tell me greeny's joking

[oblique hollow]

imo

New flow rate = Old flow rate + (gravity pressure + velocity pressure) * time - Friction * time or something

The problem is the velocity pressure term

[wind spade]

I mean it depends on how they want their fluids/pipes
if realistic, they only need to tweak it a little, but it's pretty good already
if dumb, they can go the factorio 2.0 way and just make it covered belt
if something in between, they can do whatever (f.e. the suggestion you posted)

[river anchor]

Water flowing back with gravity vs a massive pump is silly

[oblique hollow]

Honestly they dont need to go full factorio

[wind spade]

pump doesn't push fluids iirc, it only adds headlift

[oblique hollow]

The gravity is not the problem

[river anchor]

You do understand what head is in fluids right?

[wind spade]

I'm not a fan of that either

[wind spade]

ingame or irl?

[river anchor]

Irl

[oblique hollow]

As for the water extractor thing
Looks like its a high flow low pressure pump

[wind spade]

well there's a difference what it is irl and ingame 🙂

[river anchor]

I'm saying if they're modeling a massive pressure differential of 50m , gravity stands no chance, but these pipes love to backflow if you build vertical close to 600m3

[lunar stag]

please do not make me do fluid dynamics math in satisfactory, I get enough of that at work

[oblique hollow]

That has a different reason

Gravity is kinda fine, but they added dynamic pressure and that stuff is misconfigured

It just adds way too much energy

And it does get worse the faster the pipe because its the square of flow velocity

It shouldn't be there at all because things that go fast don't make themselves go faster by going fast

The beat way to avoid that problem right now is sadly not using mk 2 pipes at max capacity or not using them at all

Or employing tricks to force them to not change pressure too much

[river anchor]

I have a vertical plastic/rubber recycler. The heavy oil (300m3) has no problem going up the entire pipe. The water (600) struggles at the top and puts my blender at 90% uptime which somehow leads to 80% output on my plastic lol

[oblique hollow]

Likely is not gravity but the junction that splits the flow up into the machines

That causes this 90% uptime behaviour most of the time

If it had no splits at all i guarantee that mk 2 wouldn't have trouble flowing at 600/min

But the moment you involve junctions flow rate has to change rapidly and that causes trouble due to this velocity based energy term

[wind spade]

this setup is very stable for manifolding pipes btw

[oblique hollow]

And it exists to circumvent that junction (or rather that splitting flow) issue

[somber sedge]

i just let the pipes overflow first then turn everything on

one by one

is that smart

[wind spade]

yeah, full pipes are often happy pipes

though I'd recommend the loop for most if not all fluid manifolds. It can't really hurt and very often helps

[somber sedge]

also unrelated question but do u guys build walls or let your factories be open

ive been thinking of adding walls but i find the default wall texture very ugly

[wind spade]

there's several walls (and also colors and finishes), pick what you like most 😉

[somber sedge]

one good thing about this game is its all about factories

and factories usually are very ugly irl

[oblique hollow]

I always try to decorate if possible

[lunar stag]

Circular factories are my jam

[river anchor]

Mmm I don't know is adding a 200m tall parallel pipe will solve anything. Piles that are level are fairly calm. But filling junctions vertically the game hates full pipe

[lunar stag]

If only I could do that and actually produce stuff at the same time

When your motor output is 5/min but looks fresh af

[river anchor]

But yes you can always go ABOVE the pipe manifold/junctions and gravity fill. Which I imagine is what helps stabilize the flow in that picture

[oblique hollow]

You mean a tower of machines?

[river anchor]

Ya I have a tower, I wanted to get pipes to work vertically

[oblique hollow]

Best i can think of is the classic fuel gen tower.
Bottom to top is absolutely horrid to work with

Top to bottom only

[river anchor]

HOR flow is 300m up and 100m aside . Water is 600m ups. HOR no problem, water doesn't like the last floor

[oblique hollow]

Yeah thats just towers and mk 2 flow splitting in a nutshell

Mk 2 has issues being split at max flow and also towers are really hard on pipes in their current state

Bottom feeding in general works badly because of dynamic pressure

It always circles back around to that

[river anchor]

Yeah it's fine below max flow

I'm not bothered, I have multiple fixes but it's how I wanted it to look

[oblique hollow]

https://questions.satisfactorygame.com/post/68b22be2dbe2e46a549b0664
check out the mod linked here and try it if you want.

[river anchor]

Console

[oblique hollow]

Ah right

[river anchor]

It's an easy fix and I'm not worried about 100% input and output matching

Balancing some of the various recipes is a disaster to try to do so I just build slightly over my needs and overflow dump.

[wind spade]

<@&387163995947270144>

[outer parcel]

tack

[wind spade]

@proud lintel (re: #screenshots )

1. don't ask in a channel where we can't type
2. there's no "better", all recipes are useful in one way or another and it's up to you to decide which one you want to use for which cases. You can get all recipes anyway

see also https://discordapp.com/channels/370472939054956546/558721941410807812/1127628303696670851

[proud lintel]

most of the time people use reactions when something like this is asked so i thought its ok

[wind spade]

so you want random people with no knowledge about your preferences and playstyle to tell you what to do? 🤔

the reactions are as good as rolling a dice. Basically random input

[vapid gorge]

it's not wrong but the info is random/bad enough you might as well flip a coin

[wind spade]

well I'd argue that #screenshots isn't for questions anyway

[vapid gorge]

it's not a great option no, but it's also not a crime

[wind spade]

Post beautiful ingame screenshots here! Not for conversation, text messages will be removed.
🤷

[vapid gorge]

yeah pure text things. No matter how people use it it's not going to clog up the channel or anything, the 1min timer makes sure of that

[wind spade]

well yeah, my point is more about the "beautiful ingame screenshots" 🙂

we have other channels for conversation/questions

[dusky dust]

supposing someone finds the recipe-selection dialog beautiful!

[orchid brook]

Just to make sure, best place for the sloops is in SAM production,right?

[wind spade]

best place is usually final product

[raw pike]

Alien Protein and DNA Capsule, Shards (early game), Space Elevator Parts

[orchid brook]

Oh ya

[obtuse hawk]

Noob question, but if I want to split a belt with an odd number of parts per minute, how does the game determine which side gets the extra? Say for example I have a belt with 5 parts per minute, and I want to split that into 2 and 3. Can I control which side gets 3 parts per minute, or will it fluctuate?

[lunar stag]

It’s going to alternate per part

So left, middle, center, repeat.

If you want to do three parts to the left and two parts to the right, you can either load balance and do some loopback/splitter division, or let one side fill up until the excess starts going out the other side

So split into six belts, loop one belt back upstream with a priority merger, then merge three together and two together

That’s really the only reliable way to control ratios

Though there are options with smart splitters and belt speed limits that can help simplify it depending on the ratio you want

[obtuse hawk]

I am currently in the very early game (just unlocked coal) and I'm trying to control the output of my reinforced iron plates. The Reinforced plates assembler outputs 5 per minute. The Smart Plate assembler needs 2 per minute and the Modular Frame assembler needs 3 per minute. So if I could control how they're split, that would be perfect. But I'm pretty limited on options since there's a lot of logistics tools I haven't unlocked yet

For the methods you just described, does that require parts that I haven't unlocked? Are "priority merger" and "smart splitter" a game term or a specific buildable object?

[mint coral]

A simple manifold is a the easiest way. once the first machine fills the next machine gets what it needs

[lunar stag]

This is doable with what you have

But beefalo’s manifold suggestion is simpler

I’d recommend doing it that way and letting the system backfill

[obtuse hawk]

I guess so. But with numbers this small, it would take a very long time for them to fill up. Plus, I just generally prefer balancers. It makes my brain happy lol

[lunar stag]

If that’s the approach you’d rather take, you’ll need three mergers and three splitters

That’s all

[cedar folio]

If you split it into 3 lines and merge 2 of them, 5 should always split to 3 and 2.

But you're gonna grow beyond that pretty fast, it maybe not worth the time to focus on.

[obtuse hawk]

that's fair. Right now, my "factory" is mostly open air machines where ever they fit. I just recently finished the coal power plant, and freed up a lot of space by deconstructing the biofuel one. So my next big project is to try and reorganize the area around my base. I was thinking that rebalancing some of my machines would help with that, but its not very growth minded

[lunar stag]

Load balancers aren’t great for expandability, for sure.

But if you’re still just throwing down foundations and fitting production wherever you can, it’s not a bad idea to try it out

[wind spade]

you can also have two separate machines, one making 2/min and one making 3/min

[obtuse hawk]

That has to do with clock speed right? I learned about that when looking some stuff up the other day, but haven't actually done it in game yet. Is it something you need to unlock? The panel where I saw it in screen shots is locked on my machines

[obtuse hawk]

Speaking of expandability, are buses a thing in this game? I played a bit of factorio a few years ago (never beat it), so I forgot about that technique until now

[outer vale]

it's unlockable in the MAM. Good habit to get into, checking what you can research, there's some very useful stuff in there

[outer vale]

not really, though that doesn't stop some people trying it anyway

[obtuse hawk]

Is there a reason its less useful in this game compared to factorio?

[outer vale]

someone more familiar with Factorio'd be able to give a better answer. I believe part of it's just down to belt speed being much slower here, and that Satisfactory in general is more aimed at matching your production and consumption numbers up

[obtuse hawk]

I guess that sort of makes sense. Like I said, I haven't really thought about this until just now, but my natural tendency with this game has been to attach smelters and constructors directly to miners, and then send finished products back to base, where as in factorio, I'd collect all my ore in one place them smelt it all together, then use the bars as needed.

[wind spade]

Factorio has variable production (miners run out, productivity bonus, ...) and variable consumption (science, mall). It also naturally leads to building centralised production

Satisfactory on the other hand has fixed production (miners are infinite), and fixed consumption (it's very common that overflow from production gets put into sink), as well as pushing you towards expanding and building factories all over the map

[outer vale]

that natural tendency is mostly a good one (though you won't need to send all your final products to one storage place once you've done a lil more tech research)

[wind spade]

yeah basically, this, although:

and then send finished products back to base
we don't usually even do this, we use dimensional depots

[obtuse hawk]

Just by the name "dimensional depot" I can kinda assume that's a late game feature

[outer vale]

surprisingly, no

and it's such a nice QoL

[wind spade]

no, it's like T3 at most, possibly earlier if you rush it

it's basically cloud storage accessible from anywhere (though only for building things and manual withdrawal, not for automated teleportation of resources for factories)

[outer vale]

it's another one of those useful MAM researches, so again, very good idea to look into those as you go

[wind spade]

in general, the two games (SF and Factorio) share very little common things gameplay-wise

my top tip for Factorio player going to Satisfactory would be "forget everything you're used to do in Factorio"

obviously some soft skills like factory calculations are transferrable, but gameplay style is pretty much not

[obtuse hawk]

I only have about 20 hours in that game, and the last time I played was over 2 years ago, so that's not hard for me 🤣

[main thicket]

can really big belt manifolds cause issues? i have refineries making ingots the math checks out all the belts are correct and yet after some time my machines empty. but we are talking for 40 plus machines of manifold

[wind spade]

no, they will eventually fill up and work just fine

[mint coral]

As long as your math is right and your belt support the throughput you require you are goodd

[main thicket]

alright thanks guys

[obtuse hawk]

Generally speaking, is it better to have everything on the same power grid, or section things off? I just built my first coal power plant, so I have a pure node with a Mk1 miner producing 120 coal per min, feeding 8 generators. Should I combine all 8 of those generators into one power line and feed everything through that, or send specific machines to specific generators?

[wind spade]

there's no real gain from multiple grids, unless you fancy stuff like that

[obtuse hawk]

I guess my main concern is if a fuse blows, it would take the whole factory offline

[wind spade]

priority power switches can solve that

[obtuse hawk]

When do you unlock priority power switches?

[celest rune]

Caterium tree i think

[wind spade]

@cunning musk (re: #screenshots ):

1. don't ask in a channel where we can't answer
2. pick whatever you want or flip a coin. All recipes are useful in some way and you can get them all anyway

[tacit tulip]

Is there a way to do 1:1.5 or should I just do 2:3

My brain is short circuiting right now lmao

[wind spade]

clock to 150% or build two and clock to 75%

[tacit tulip]

I need a 100% constuctor(iron rods) into a 100% and 50% constructor(screws)

[tacit tulip]

Ah, this may help

[tacit tulip]

Thank you

[mint coral]

@wind spade the other day someone was saying you don't play satisfactory. This true. I can't imagine you never playing

[wind spade]

that was probably me saying that. I have only ~50 hours, out of which only ~30 is actual playing, and I last played the game in May 2019

[tacit tulip]

Dang lmao

[mint coral]

Cool cool. Ty

[tacit tulip]

I am trying to load balance 3:5, would it just be easier to manifold?

[mint coral]

Usually is.

[tacit tulip]

Alrighty, i'll try it and see how it works

I am automating Modular Frames :)

[mint coral]

Take line one. Feed machine until near empty then merge remainder into lane two and repeat

[lunar stag]

The tool goat don’t even play and still nails the website seven years later

[tacit tulip]

Ima be real, this confused me.

idk if its the lack of sleep or something else

Are you just explaining a manifold?

[hoary rapids]

ideally producing for phase 2 ofthe elevator, how many versatile framework/ smart plating should i aim for per min? the total seems like a long wait but making a bigger factory wouldnt make any sense as it would be teared down later

[wind spade]

[total amount you need] / [how many minutes you want to wait maximum] = [minimal production per minute]

[lime rose]

I am almost certainly wrong, but it's driving me crazy so I have to ask and embarrass myself.

Wouldn't it be better to remove the "uplink" loop at the bottom left of the loop? So you're not trying to stuff leftover liquid into the system, letting it just accumulate and make a natural push-back?

Like I said, probably 100% wrong, but someone's gotta ask the obvious questions to make everyone else look smarter. 😉

[wind spade]

not sure what do you mean, but the loop is there to make sure that backflow doesn't hurt your manifold

[vapid gorge]

yeah unsure of what you're tryign to say, sorry :\

[obtuse hawk]

I literally just did this in my game as well. I used a 60-40 load balancer. Modular Frames take 3 Reinforced Plates, and Smart Plates take 2, so you can load balance the 5/min output of a reinforced plate assembler for a perfect ratio

[wind spade]

why not make 60 and 40 separately? 😛

or 2 and 3

[obtuse hawk]

I’ll get there eventually, but that’s like 20x the production I currently have in my whole factory

[wind spade]

no I mean instead of balancing 5 to 2 and 3, you make 2 and 3 separately and don't need to balance anything

[obtuse hawk]

Oh I haven’t unlocked the ability to change clock speed yet

[wind spade]

you should, it's most powerful logistical tool we have

[mint coral]

Don't sleep on the mam. It's full of good stuffs

[obtuse hawk]

Yep, I’m working on it. I didn’t know how until earlier today

[river anchor]

Wait... you don't play ?

[river peak]

Aight, I think I need some guidance on how to mentally regard turbofuel.

[vapid gorge]

wdym?

[river peak]

I was in mathing upgrading my butt-simple oil-to-fuel processing plant which had a dedicated input of 1140/min of crude.
Assuming I'm getting a constant 480/min sulfur from the two pure sulfur half-way across the map, I'm still only looking at an output of 600 turbo/min, but that also includes a fuel output of 2320/min.

Sulfur being the obvious bottleneck.

[vapid gorge]

sulfur is usually awkward in most spots. There's like 1 spot on the map where sulfur coal and oil are right next to each other

[river peak]

But that brings to curiosity: turbo doesn't seem to be the pure replacement I thought it was, but rather a potent supplement atop the regular fuel workhorse.

[vapid gorge]

turbo fuel is entirely skipable

as a power source

oil > heavy residue alt > diluted fuel , can easily get you through phase 5

[vapid gorge]

you can basically think of every step of fuel production like this

every time you process fuel to a new fuel, all you do is use other resources AS oil to pad out the fuel. Because you can always just make more diluted fuel

[river peak]

Oh I still need to unlock tier 7. 😔

[vapid gorge]

diluted packaged fuel is tier 5

make a blueprint of Packager > refinery > unpackager, poor man's blender

[river peak]

Oh, I'm aware. Already got those alts unlocked.
I saw "diluted fuel" and thought the blender recipe.

[vapid gorge]

they are effectively the same recipe. Diluted package I think take a touch more power

[river peak]

I would assume that regular fuel never gets truly replaced aside from possibly nuclear. Everything else looks more like stuff you can produce in smaller quantities.

[vapid gorge]

really just opinion and what you like

imo if you want lots of power you go nuclear because instead of 2000 fuel generators, you can put down 200 nuclear

and nuclear isn't veyr complex

[paper sage]

so far all I have done is die to spicy rocks trying to get mercer spheres on occasion, I will harness nuclear energy soon... I have to, consumption = production...good thing I installed batteries before my newest additions

[vapid gorge]

you get radiation gear at teh same time so it becomes a non issue

[river peak]

Cat-crunching-on-uranium.gif

[vapid gorge]

just automate filters into a depot

[crystal wave]

how to get a smart splitter to take 2 inputs and split them into 2 outputs

like a merger into a splitter but in one building

nvm i was able to fit the merg into spliter desighn in

[lunar stag]

So I’ve been over the math every way I can think of, and honestly I think the best thing I could do is just… run the last three HOR refineries to a T1 pipe that feeds the first four diluted fuel refineries

It’s stupid

I hate it

[lunar stag]

But all this testing has accomplished is made me distrust T2 pipes

[vapid gorge]

I’m out of the house for a day or so, sorry

Probably be home again in 36hrs or so to have a look :/

[lunar stag]

All good boss, didn’t mean to sound like I was rushing you. By all means take your time.

[somber sedge]

can anyon explain to me why trains are more efficient than a bus

[lunar stag]

Look into Swiss public transit

Nah, in all seriousness it’s more about centralized vs decentralized production. A main bus sounds like a great plan on paper, but structuring a whole facility around it costs a lot of time and space when a train can divide up materials across facilities all over the map and then collect the finished goods for transport to facilities constructed around the resources needed for the next stage of assembly

It’s possible to centralize, sure, but then the efficiency gained by belting things short distances is lost as the facility becomes so large that belt routing and logistics takes up a more sizable footprint

A well managed train system can deliver nearly belt-speed performance, as long as you’re setting up station inputs and outputs properly

[wind spade]

No

[wind spade]

Train and bus are two completely different things

Trains transport things between two (or more) points
Busses handle distribution of things inside a factory

You can't really compare them

[frosty owl]

You might be remembering the "professional player" jests

[oblique hollow]

25% of my playtime probably is watching pipes

30% is standing around doing nothing while i do some other stuff outside the game like writing spreadsheets or whatever

[long bridge]

is doing 1:1:1 that much easier than 8:8:8 to max out mk4 belts?

[oblique hollow]

Yes because it uses less canisters.

8:8:8 to me implies you merge all their belts somehow

[long bridge]

maybe i explained badly, if you do 1:1:1 wouldnt you need a storage container for all 32 packager/refiners?

whereas if you group them in 8s, you only need 4 industrial containers

[oblique hollow]

No.
1:1:1 needs 0 storage containers

You include the canisters in the machines, in the blueprint

Once you build the blueprint, the canisters will be used too and they will be places in the machine

[long bridge]

blueprints all you to put items in the machines?

[oblique hollow]

You loop a single belt per packager + refinery + packager combo

[long bridge]

and set recipes?

[oblique hollow]

Yes

Any recipe set in a blueprint machine will be present when you build the blueprint

[long bridge]

is that a newish update? or did i just miss that when the blueprints came out

[oblique hollow]

Has been around since they released i think?

It even saves clock speed and power shards used

[long bridge]

okay, i must have just missed that, i think ive set recipes, but never put items in them

how many containers should the system have

like 100 empty 100 water

per 1:1:1?

[oblique hollow]

If the belt is fast enough and short enough you can make do with 25 or 50 empty

No need to add packaged water, only empty canisters

[long bridge]

okay, ill be doing 100 i think. id rather have too many than have to add them in after the fact

im not to oil on this save, but i always do dpf on the north coast, so i was curious

you cant fit all of it on one blueprint tho, right? not with mk1 atleast, can you fit a packager and refiner in the same bp?

and do you typically include the HOR in the 1:1:1? or do you combine those into big pipes

[mint coral]

Ignore me siphoning fuel for persal use but this is the idea. Two packages one refinery in a closed loop

Hard to see but there is a second packager behind the refinery directly feeding packaged water

[long bridge]

oh i see

where are you getting your HOR from? HOR alt in the back?

[mint coral]

Ya. I got those refineries in grouping as well to keep it simple

Whatever 300 oil equals in hor divided by three.

Then I fed three banks of refineries and packagers as seen above.

This lets you trouble shoot easier and allows for smoother upgrades as you can shut down one section at a time

I'd send you better screen shots but Im only on lunch at work.

[obtuse hawk]

How much do you folks rely on the dimensional depot? Is it something you build your infrastructure around? I haven’t unlocked it yet, but it’s my goal for my next play session. I’m currently sending a ton of unused materials to storage containers, and I was kinda under the impression the depot was supposed to replace that. But after looking up the actual mechanics of it online, it seems far more limited than I expected. Especially given the fact that I need to use a finite resource to produce one. So should I just keep doing what I’m doing with the storage containers, and treat the dimensional depot as more of just a luxury?

[outer vale]

there are enough spheres on the map to build more depots than you'll ever need

so yes, very much a thing to use on ~any storage setup

if the "limit" you're referring to is the relatively small stack size within the depot itself, that's not much of a concern. You can have a buffer of as many storage containers as you like between the production line and the depot, and can have multiple depots for the same resource if the upload speed is a concern (only for certain build materials like concrete, usually)

[obtuse hawk]

I’m mostly concerned about having enough depots. I expect that I’ll at least have to start out with just 1 or 2 until I can explore more of the map. And it seems impractical to try and feed more than one item type into the same depot. So I guess I’ll just have to pick which items are the most important to have depot access for, and use the rest like normal, until I find more spheres

[outer vale]

I'd need to check the numbers but I thiiiink you can afford something like 200 depots in the end

201, close enough

no moderately sane (even by Satisfactory player standards) build is likely to approach anywhere near that

[obtuse hawk]

I get that, but those are end game numbers. Where I am in the game right now, I've only found 1 mercer sphere so far, and I already have like 7 or 8 items that I'd theoretically want to store. I'm just wondering if I should keep doing a "central storage" strategy for now, or if I should start planning my infrastructure around the promise of more depots in the future

[outer vale]

they're not incompatible

you can just do a regular storage container array, then slap a depot on top of the last one

don't have the depot yet, then just leave the array as-is til you do

(or go explore - spheres aren't the only worthwhile thing out there, so taking a lil break every so often to go hunting and see the beautiful world is a good idea)

[obtuse hawk]

I guess that makes sense. I was thinking the depots would mean I don't have to funnel things back to a central base. I was imaging it more like pocket factories dotted across the map. But I could see how using them as part of a central storage array would be just as effective and be more flexible for future growth

[outer vale]

I mean, pocket factories is the way really

but if you don't have the spheres yet and aren't planning to go get them right now, then either you just build your storage in-place and manually trek between factories as needed until you do, or you do the central storage thing. I usually do the former, but each to their own

I'm guessing you're in T3/T4, so you wouldn't be spread out toooo far across the map yet

so ziplining over to other factories, filling your inventory, ziplining back, dumping stuff in crates is totally fine

and if that sounds like a lot of time, then you could instead use that time to go exploring 😛

[obtuse hawk]

Yeah, I'm in T3. My next goal is to unlock steel, which I need to build the depot

[outer vale]

an option there then might be to get your basic steel production up and running (beams, pipes, maybe encased beams), then go explore, let that build up in the background for a bit, then come back and slap depots on 'em

while you're exploring you might find some alt recipes that'll make for a better steel factory (though up to you whether you leave the existing one in place or upgrade it)

[obtuse hawk]

Yeah, that’s more or less what I intend to do

[outer vale]

I had a look at my save and apparently I had 85 depots by the end

[obtuse hawk]

So, I think this conversation is also making me realize one of the flaws with a playstyle choice I've been doing up until now. For example, last night I built this: #screenshots message

There are 4 normal iron nodes right next to each other, so 240 ore with Mk 1 miners. I am using this to produce both Smart Plating, and Modular Frames, but there was some iron left over from that process, so I turned that into Reinforced Iron Plates. So for this one factory alone, I'd need 3 dimensional depots. If I instead specialized the factory to produce only 1 thing, then I'd only need 1 depot

[outer vale]

tbf smart plating isn't something that needs depoting generally, so that cuts one off. As for the others, that's one way to look at it, but if they're making as much as you need, then it doesn't matter where they were built, they'd still need a depot each

(and again, enough spheres around for that sorta setup to be viable)

[obtuse hawk]

hmmm..... fair enough, yeah

[limpid vapor]

For a little while, to get you started, a single uploader for each material already helps a lot, it gets much easier to find more spheres and stuff once you have the jetpack, seriously, you will find that a lot of them are like 30 seconds apart from each other, or less

[river anchor]

Me and my friend didn't find SAM until tier 8/9. The value of dimensional depot in early/mid game is vastly overstated

It's nice when you're dropping blueprints that want 1000s of material. All you need is plates and concrete typically. And you can carry quite a bit even a few slots on your character will help build out a new spot

[whole chasm]

how could i get 110/min splitted into 80/min and 30/min

[outer vale]

the simple option is "don't, just hook it all together and it'll eventually balance itself"
second option is "make the 80 and 30 from separate machine groups and don't merge them in the first place"

and the third one tailored to this specific case: split into 10s, merge 8 for the 80, 3 for the 30, send the last 10 back to merge with the input

(some of those splits'll be redundant as you'd just remerge, but that's the principle)

[cedar burrow]

Hey, I'm trying to make a Heavy Oil Residue sink for a megafactory and I'm not quite able to figure out the math
I have a target quantity of Heavy Oil Residue that I want to use up, which we'll say is 𝓷 m³/min
This is being sent through the following HOR → [Residual Fuel] → [Recycled Rubber] │ │ ↑ ↓ │ └────────→ [Recycled Plastic] → [Empty Canister] │ ↓ └──────────────────────────────→ [Packaged Heavy Oil Residue]Obviously, because I'm using the Heavy Oil Residue to make the canisters and fill them my output won't be 𝓷 units/min, but I couldn't quite manage to figure out what that ratio will be. satisfactory-calculator.com doesn't seem to support the rubber/plastic cycle, and satisfactorytools.com says the ratio is 4𝓷/7. Can anyone confirm if that's correct?

[wind spade]

SFTools should be correct, SCIM indeed doesn't support loops and byproduct (hence why it's not very recommended for math issues)

[cedar burrow]

Got it
So far I've been using SCIM for everything, since I only discovered SFTools when I checked this channel's pinned messages. Is there a strong argument to transfer everything over, or does SCIM work just fine for most factory planning?

For reference, here's the planning spreadsheet I've been working on ("Extraction" hasn't been updated for recent changes but everything else is pretty much good)
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1r89ntT8gH7nyNCTaGAIyvEsr0qZiSbvdUDp0HrwR1Vg/edit?usp=sharing

[wind spade]

well, as said, SCIM can't do loops or byproducts, so like 50% of the game is impossible/very hard to plan in it

obviously you can use whatever you one, but I for one don't really recommend it for factory planning. The map is cool though

[cedar burrow]

Got it; I'll try moving things over, then, and see if it makes stuff easier

[cedar burrow]

I have concluded that, given how far along I am already, and given the specific nature of the factories I'm building, SCIM works just fine (there aren't really any loops and I've already been attentively accounting for byproducts), and I can just use SFTools if something comes up that SCIM can't handle. The biggest advantage for my particular application is the increased numerical precision, but I was already ensuring I'm at-or-exceeding requirements every step of the way so that shouldn't be an issue for implementation

[wind spade]

wdym "increased numerical precision"?

[cedar burrow]

SCIM's network visualizer only displays to 2 decimal places (and often sticks with 1) for belt items, and frequently avoids decimals entirely for fluids. In my case, I've just been manually determining the sufficient decimal value to the nearest 0.1 units/min

[swift portal]

Compacted vs solid steel?

[wind spade]

two different recipes
use one that makes sense in given situation

[candid fossil]

guys i know its always my decision but i just wanna be sure i dont waste my time.... is this alright.

[dusky dust]

I find Modeller graphs basically totally impenetrable personally, so I couldn't comment on the specific graph. But so long as it's producing what you want it to produce, why wouldn't it be fine?

[candid fossil]

idk man im struggling to find the will to build 50 refineries 😭 and i cant find any ways to get out of it reasonably

[dusky dust]

There's no "best" recipes, if that's what you're worried about. There can be a "best" recipe if you constrain your question in various ways ("I want to use as little caterium as possible" or "I want a plan which works given these specific very limited resources") but all recipes are at least situationally useful

Heh, yeah, at some point in the game, if you're building at any sort of scale, it's inevitably sort of Refinery Simulator 3000™ for awhile. :D

Blueprints + blueprint-autoconnect can help quite a bit

Remember that blueprints will also remember recipe + clock (+ sloop) settings, etc.

[candid fossil]

yeah, also takes a lot of space and i HATE making big big builds look nice

alright ty ill take that to account i usually forget abt the blueprinter

[dusky dust]

It's a gamechanger for sure once you're used to working with it

[candid fossil]

im not the best at planning when it comes to blueprints with machines, usually involves.

me making a blueprint

placing it, then when i need to connect conveyors i realize i need to remake the blueprint

and then repeat like 2 times over lol

[dusky dust]

You can't fit a lot of refineries in there, but you can at least get a few, with all your desired manifold hookups and such (it'll also remember customizer settings, so feel free to color-code pipes and such), and autoconnect can make setting up larger manifolds a breeze

Yeah, blueprint design is basically always an iterative process

I'll often keep a blueprinter construced nearby with the blueprint that I'm working on still loaded in, so I can make quick tweaks easily

And of course blueprint-dismantle mode is a great help

[candid fossil]

alright ill try it out.. ty 😄

ill spend a good bit making a refinery bp ig

[dusky dust]

Good luck, enjoy! :)

[orchid brook]

Here me out just for the fun of it, do i use Uranium Fuel Rod to power my drones?

cuz like i dont wanna use any oil and i am not going to do nucluar soooo

i dont have to go with the most efficient way

[lunar stag]

I think you may be confused on what ’math and meta’ means

The #satisfactory channel is probably where you would want to ask that question

[bronze silo]

slugs and sloops, lol

[vast timber]

Hey I was going to build an aluminium facility for which I was thinking about transporting 600 bauxite using trains so is that a good idea I mean because of this amount would I face any throughput issue ?

[wind spade]

anything that is fun is a good idea

trains can reach practically unlimited throughputs

[vast timber]

Ohk

[south shuttle]

drones > trains

[wind spade]

in what sense?

[south shuttle]

in my arrogant opinion, they are more flexible and easier to maintain. Build a battery production in the swamp and a few drone nests at the points where you need them.

[wind spade]

sure, but they can't really match trains in reasonable throughput

and as always, they each solve a different problem, so you can't really compare them like that anyway

[south shuttle]

trains are good if you need massive amounts of raw resources at a single point, if you build smaller, more modular factories at the basic resource nodes, drones can easily transport the more advanced resources

[wind spade]

I do not transport advanced resources, since they are made to depot anyway 🤷

[wary rapids]

id say what the game does with geo thermal is give you an average of your nodes then gives a sine curve of 10 or minus 10 percent of that average.

which makes it a very reliable 6k power without a single battery.

[wind spade]

have you actually tested it on per-geyser approach?

[wary rapids]

a single geyser does what it says. multiple geysers dont vary much.

thiers some funny math even where 2 geysers meet.

I am certainly less certain about what happens in between sense i only made sense of what happening after i grabed all the power. However i was observing the graph as I was collecting them. and it was not adding up.

doing a per geyser experment would take allot of time. sence you would have to wait 5-10 minutes on each node and write down your min and max values.

i wouldnt be doing that unless it was for content online.

[lunar stag]

Yeah uh

That’s not accurate at all

Geysers go from 1/3 to full output on a 60 second cycle.

If you line up the geyser construction timing properly, you can match the peak of one with the trough of another and reduce or even outright remove the variance

All geysers together average an output of 7.1Gw

So long as you’ve got enough battery power to cover half the variance from peak to trough you can rely on that 7.1Gw delivery

If you don’t want to add batteries, just make sure you’re building geothermal generators on opposing 30 second intervals

[heady sun]

the ever-present and malicious docking time:

[wary rapids]

at any time you will never get 10 k power for all geysers

[heady sun]

or just make batteries

[lunar stag]

See also:

[lunar stag]

Why would you?

[wary rapids]

and you will never get less then 6k from all geysers.

[wind spade]

*power storages

[wary rapids]

then reson you dont ever get that is all geyser are not in the same sine curve

[lunar stag]

Did-

Did you actually read what I wrote…?

You can phase shift them

[wary rapids]

in order for total power to vary by that degree all geyser would have to be in the same postion in all thier cycles

and thats not what the game does under the hood

[lunar stag]

Why do people come to this channel if they’re not going to read stuff?

[wary rapids]

you would get 10k power becuase that is what the addied power in the chart says ever

@lunar stag

[heady sun]

i see duracell i say duracell

[lunar stag]

I have neither the patience nor the crayons to explain the part you’re missing here, boss. Enjoy the game.

[wary rapids]

this number is wrong thats the point but you can make 35 batties of you like thier no harm in it

you wil get 7100 mw either way

[wind spade]

the number is for cases where all the geysers are in perfect sync

[lunar stag]

I don’t think they realize the geothermal cycle is determined by player action. They’re just assuming all sessions have the same geyser timing theirs does.

Which, y’know, with a sample size of one makes perfect sense!

[wind spade]

afaik they changed it to "offset is randomly generated at the start", rather than "offset depends on player placing event"
tho not sure

[lunar stag]

I’m sure that’s in a changelog somewhere

Yeah, assigned randomly at build now

But you can still reroll them

[warped tendon]

Somehow my gen starving issue swapped from the end of the line to the middle of the line after I added the top pipes to loop the fuel back bruh

Atp I might just let them barely run.. 150k is enough for me

[meager kettle]

try place a pump at start of each manifold, then a second in the middle of the manifold

[delicate schooner]

heres mine

[warped tendon]

Man this rocket fuel was doing just fine when I was only making half as much as I am now

I srsly don’t know what keeps breaking it. I added the loop back, I let the pipes fill, I’m making enough per minute, it’s gas so no headlift matters, either way the gens are all the same height none are high or anything

So odd

I’m gonna add an unpowered pump at the start of each loop so it can’t pass RF through the top loop but not the bottom line until it hits the end of the bottom line

[delicate schooner]

have you tried removeing end pipe spliters

[meager kettle]

adding the pumps in my fuel gen, fixed it for me. no loopback or anything. just a straight line of 60 fuel gens each

[delicate schooner]

they seem to mess things up for me

like remove these and just conect it directly

[meager kettle]

840 fuel gens, split among 14 rocket fuel pipes. all running fine

[delicate schooner]

wtf

[meager kettle]

had issues with the last 4 in each manifold not really running well. placed a pump at the start of the manifolds and then one in the middle (between 15th and 16th pair) and then it started running 100%

[long bridge]

How do you phase shift the geysers? Turn them on in the troughs?

[long bridge]

That ring is amazing looking. I want to make stuff look like that. I didnt know you could have the machines placed circulars like that

[lunar stag]

It used to work that way, but apparently there’s been a change and now their position in the cycle is randomized on place

[long bridge]

Ah, so just use batteries then. How much battery is enough to stabilize the geothermal?

[lunar stag]

You can reroll them until you get something close to the phase offset you want, but it’s not perfect

[meager kettle]

machines align to the direction of the foundations its placed on

[mint coral]

Its a pain. But circles and curves are a option.

The is a mod to make it easier.

Im stubborn and im still playing vanilla.

[long bridge]

I suppose enough is relative... but is 1 battery per vent enough, 4?? 10?

[lunar stag]

So it depends on a few things

One battery for every two impure, one to one for normal

And two for every pure

[long bridge]

Im vanilla too, but that looks sooooooo nice if I need a mod to do that then I might (that said I suck at building so it probably ends up a weird octagon

[lunar stag]

That’ll cover the absolute maximum range

But really once you’re done placing them, just take the difference from the peak to the trough, divide by two, and round up to the nearest 100

[mint coral]

Easy curves does exactly what it sounds like. You can set your angle and just build.

[lunar stag]

If you’re bouncing from 6450 to 7750, use 7 batteries

[long bridge]

So it should be around 32 ish, I normally build a huge battery box for safety reasons

[long bridge]

Okay i shall get that. Thank you.

[lunar stag]

When it comes to geothermal, I do a full bank of 7200

[mint coral]

I just don't use power storage at all. I over build my power facilities then segregate my facilities using power priority switches

[long bridge]

Alright

[meager kettle]

i didnt use a mod to make that. I just made a foundation ring, where i used 3 foundations, 5 degree turn, 3 more, 5 degree etc. (cause fuel gens are 3 foundations wide). Made some blueprints, 1 for the outer bit, and two for the inner i alternated. Made it rather easy to build

[lunar stag]

That gives me around an hour to figure out which of my multiplayer teammates is screwing with the geothermal grid

[long bridge]

Well ill DEFINATELY have my power systems on priority switches once I get them

[mint coral]

In #welcome there is a link to the moding discord. I havent done any mods yet but I lurk for the day I do

[long bridge]

I dont know how to rotate 5 degree

[mint coral]

They are pretty easy to get to in the mam

[long bridge]

Im in there from a long time ago

[long bridge]

I just finished phase 2 to unlock t5/6

[meager kettle]

lots of ways, i would recommend to find a youtube video explaining it. much easier to see than reading a how-to

[long bridge]

Alright I appreciate it ❤️

[mint coral]

I hate myself so I do it all manually

#design-and-architecture message

[long bridge]

Those arches are beutiful

You have any tutorials you recommend?

[mint coral]

Not really. Im self taught mostly.

[long bridge]

I just do square boxes and yall out here like Michelangelo

[mint coral]

Ive watched lots of gaming with doc and totalxclips but niether have in depth curve tutorials

[frosty owl]

Home-schooling with ADA really is the best.
I totally didn't develop confidence issues after it

[long bridge]

I dont even do boxes. Most are just planes of foundations

[mint coral]

Its the ass end of my river crocodile train station.

[mint coral]

I think satisfactory would be a good learning aid for math and such.

[silver sand]

the water dont go up someone can help me?

[frosty owl]

Hey, boxes can be sexy!
You do need to apply some creativity though... or steal from others' designs like I do #screenshots message

[wind spade]

add pumps

or just feed from above

[meager kettle]

you need pumps

[mint coral]

Pumps to pump water up.

Always pump it higher then your inputs

[wind spade]

also don't make such interconnected setups

[meager kettle]

yea, that setup prob gonna struggle

even with pumps

[lavish tree]

Because this is a maths channel I will do maths. 5 + 12 = 17

[silver sand]

Wym Always pump it higher then your inputs

[lavish tree]

So gravity will assist in feeding the fluids I assume

[mint coral]

My current pure iron ingot facility is driving me nuts. I have four iron nodes. Each go to there own identical refinery set (four refineries) each with a dedicated water extractor.
They are all identical

3 work flawlessly the fourth keeps choking. Water rubs fine then stop randomly halfway through the pipes. I shut it down. Rebuild the pipes. The pipes fill just fine. Everything boots up then 30 minutes later the water just stops reaching the refineries. Lol

I figured I was just tired and turned it off.

I gotta take care of that after work

[wind spade]

not funny and also offtopic

[lavish tree]

Apologies

[meager kettle]

i'm a big advocate of having pumps flat when going into a lift and coming out of it. Just works every time for me.

[silver sand]

the water just dont go up

[lavish tree]

Yeah same happened to me with my turbofuel plant. I ended up just pumping in more oil than what it should need, but fluids are so unpredictable in this game

[meager kettle]

you placed the pumps too high

[mint coral]

All four setups are identical. This is my first time i came across a copy and paste setup that didn't consistently work.

Usually when it breaks its because I didn't follow my fluid rules

[wind spade]

feed from above, not below

[celest rune]

Wait whats the rules?

[silver sand]

me?

[wind spade]

well, everyone

but yeah, you as well

[silver sand]

The water just won't get in.

[lavish tree]

I think I saw a Kibitz video once where for his starter coal plants would split the fluids so half comes in one side of the manifold and the other half from the other side, not sure if that's relevant or if it would help but that's what I always do for fluid manifolds

[mint coral]

Loop inputs to reduce sloshing

Always fill inputs from above

Never use buffers outside of train hubs

Prefill pipes

Prey to the machine spirit

Keep it simple stupid

[mint coral]

I avoid large manifolds where possible. If I need more then 400 fluid in a pipe I just start another pipe

[lavish tree]

Fair enough

[wind spade]

because feeding from below isn't easy to do

you don't seem to have enough headlift anyway

[silver sand]

bro

how i feed above

[celest rune]

OK. So. Lets say im using 32 fuel gens. Fully overclocked to take 600 turbofuel a min, what do I do to have it work easier?

[silver sand]

the water is on down

[wind spade]

you take the pipe above, and feed from above

view from side

from the left: extractor, pump, climb up (possible other pump if you run out of headlift), then a vertical loop). The circles on bottom pipe are junctions to machines

[lavish tree]

How much difference does it make if the main input manifold for the fluids is the same level as all the input holes. Because I sometimes see the main manifold slightly higher with each pipe feeding the machines going down slightly

[mint coral]

Run three lines of 200 to start. Loop enough refineries of turbo together to make 200.

You are going to have to split it anyways to feed the fuel refineries.

So why not just not mix them.

[silver sand]

where i put the generator?

[wind spade]

in order of "ease to do reliably", it's "feed from above", then "feed from level" and lastly "feed from below".

anything can work, but the higher you put the main pipe, the easier job you'll have, as gravity will help you

[wind spade]

which generator?

[long bridge]

You're right... sexy

[celest rune]

Loop refineries?

Im confused-

[lavish tree]

Noted

[mint coral]

So you are making 600 turbo fuel. I would not try to shove that all in one pipe. I like to leave room in the pip to over fill.

[silver sand]

the coal

[wind spade]

well, in the image they are at the circles

[frosty owl]

It's literally just "fancy" boxes though, at the end of the day 😅
No curves anywhere, as I dare not even try...

[meager kettle]

3 extractors to 8 coal gens. 1,5 extractors per pipe (each go to 4 gens).

[mint coral]

Looks like the text book ^-^

[celest rune]

So... leave 300 turbofuel in one pipe. And bring that to 16 generators. And loop that? How do I feed it from above?

[mint coral]

Well it depends on you. You can just run the pipe a few meters above the inputs and us junctions to feed the refineries

[meager kettle]

this is feeding from above

[celest rune]

If I do this, im blueprinting it.

[mint coral]

Thats what I do. Its the easiest. If you dont connect the power outputs of the generators they will fill and stay in standby mode.

Fill all your pipes and generator before connecting the power

[mint coral]

Thats what I do.

[celest rune]

Cause I need 9 rows of 32 gens. + 14 gens and 1 gen underclocked to take 4.1666666 turbofuel a min. All those gens are fully overclocked too. So I might build the 9 rows of 32. But split the pipes to have 300 go to the first set of 16. And 300 to the next set. This way I keep my 9 rows of 32. And its all able to be fed properly

[mint coral]

On a mark 2 blueprinter place four generators so two inputs are kissing. You should have two sets of two kissing eachother.

Connect the inputs with a pipe then place a junction on the pipe so one of the Empty junction inputs is facing up. Do the same for the other set. Then run a pipe above the junctions. Place more junctions in line with the lower ones. Then connect

[celest rune]

Or should I just build 18 rows of 16 :P

[celest rune]

I luckily have mega blueprinters, so if I go to vanilla, ill do this trick

[mint coral]

Nice. Im still in vanilla. Ill go modded eventually.... just not yet. Maybe at 2000 hours

[celest rune]

Can I have a visual demonstration of this-? Sorry if you cant-

[mint coral]

Up to you. But the way I look at it is why merge pipes just to split them again.

My own rule is

Keep it simple stupid

[mint coral]

At work still. I have a simple version somewhere in this discord. Maybe I can find it

[mint coral]

This is a simple version not fed from above for a console player. In this case he only needed 12 generators and was new so I didn't want to over load him/her

[celest rune]

Keep it wha-?

[mint coral]

So im proposing for you is instead of the junctions laying horizontal you turn the vertical. The run your through pipe above by a few meters and feed the junctions below from it

This forces fluids down into your machine using gravity.

[celest rune]

So run a straight pipe through the generators. And use junctions to have it go down and into the gens?

And then loop the gens?? Or am I getting it wrong :P

[mint coral]

I actually can turn on my laptop give me ten and ill mock something up

[celest rune]

Aight

[silver sand]

can you give the pic front of gen

[celest rune]

OOHHHH ok

[mint coral]

to be clear my previous design as shown above with the blue pipes i had little issues with. I ran a 2400/min rocket fuel plant with no issues

i had 8 lines of 300/min rock fuel with no issues.

I changed it to the orange pipe one recently when a came across a issue randomly

[mint coral]

i havent reached turbo or rocket fuel with the redesign as im still in phase 3 and do not need that kind of power yet. Im holding out for nuclear this run

[mint coral]

any issues?

[meager kettle]

nope

4x45 in each pipe

[mint coral]

have you thought about loops ??

#math-and-meta message

[meager kettle]

I never do loops

i think they look bad

and if you do the math correctly you dont need em

[mint coral]

often the remove the issues by reducing sloshing

[meager kettle]

if they work for you, go for it. I've never used them, never had issues that couldnt be solved in other ways

[mint coral]

youll get no arguement from me. I am a believer of "if it works dont touch it"

[meager kettle]

i've also not had issues feeding from below, my entire plastic/rubber plant does that

[wind spade]

but they make pipes stable

[meager kettle]

making like 3200 rubber and 4800 plastic with all refineries fed undernearth, no issues

[meager kettle]

not had issues with pipe stability

[wind spade]

I mean anything can work

but whether or not is it recommended is another story

[wary rapids]

@silver sand I hope you found the soultion to your fluid issue for reference. https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/satisfactory_gamepedia_en/images/3/39/Pipeline_Manual.pdf

[meager kettle]

that pipeline manual is very outdated

[wary rapids]

have they made changes sence then or is ther a better manual

[wind spade]

it's not

[meager kettle]

theres no better

its from update 6, its outdated cause things have changed since then

[wind spade]

fluid stuff didn't change since then

[meager kettle]

they absolutely have

[wind spade]

what changed?

[wary rapids]

i think its been said they will make more changes in 1.2 so maybee things like bottom feeding will work at that time.

[meager kettle]

pumps effect flow rate. fluids dont travel in pipes, they're near instant. the pipe ui is very misleading to what actually goes on

[wind spade]

none of that changed recommended build styles and such

the manual is still very much valid

[meager kettle]

its still like 80% accurate

but its not the end all be all

[wary rapids]

i wasnt aware anything change in update 7 fluid wise

[celest rune]

Should I loop this? Ill need 300 turbofuel a min for it

[wary rapids]

i had a old fluid problem being caused by adding up sources in a oil extractor into a single 600m pipe.

resolved it by making a poinless looking loop at the soruce.

in general you dont have to make loops in 300 per min systems.

where you do in 600/

[celest rune]

Ah aight, good to know

[wary rapids]

hopefully in 1.2 you wont need the loops

[meager kettle]

you dont need them now :p

[wind spade]

you don't need them

they are just recommended to players as a "quick and simple way to make pipes work for sure"

[meager kettle]

you can replace loops with a pump or two depending on manifold size.

[wind spade]

long mk2 manifolds close to pipe limit usually don't work with that

[meager kettle]

my fuel plant begs to differ

[wind spade]

usually

[wary rapids]

im very intersted in how you use pumps can you show some examples.

[wind spade]

you have to understand that for every person that has no issues with pipes, there's 100s that do. Your experience is more unique than the "pipes no work" experience. It may be because of your build style, build order, or anything else, but it's usually something that other people do not do, and to those we direct our recommendations about looping, and it's also those we talk about with "usually" and "often"

[river anchor]

Pipes all flowing 600 m3?

[meager kettle]

the fuel pipes are 400 since thats how much each stack of refiners use

rest is 600

[wind spade]

(and there's also difference between "works" and "works". Some people (not saying it's you) are pretty bad at spotting out issues, or don't care about occasional pause in production. So sometimes you hear "my pipes work", but then if we get the save or something, it's a system that breaks often and the person just didn't notice)

[wary rapids]

people often develop thier own modus operandi and aren't aware of fluid issues until they attempt bigger projects. if you keep all you pipe systems small and modular you could encounter zero issues.

[river anchor]

So how are you resolving the issue of moving water/hor/fuel vertically 1-200m without inefficiency at full rate? I can't seemingly find a way for the game to accept 600m pumped vertically and feeding

[meager kettle]

fuel plant have 14 pipes of 600 rocketfuel each. Each pipe connect to 60 fuel gens clocked to 240% (10 rocket fuel/min) in 30 pairs. i placed a pump before the first set of gens then another pump after the 15th pair (30 gens). Theres no loop or anything, just a straight (well slightly curved) manifold times 14. I did try changing pumps to valves to see if that worked same, but it didnt, the last 4 would starve on fuel without the two pumps.

[meager kettle]

I place a pump horizontally before lifting, and then another horizontally when lift is done. works 100% of the time for me

[river anchor]

2 pumps move it how far? <50m?

Or you staircase the flow?

[meager kettle]

2 or more, like: #math-and-meta message

[river anchor]

So never more than 50m vertically at a time

[meager kettle]

no can use however many pumps you need in the middle to lift it

i just start and end with flat ones

[river anchor]

Yes but your vertical sections , are 50m or less?

[meager kettle]

yes, 50m or less, thats the max headlift on a mk2 pump

[wary rapids]

that's very cool but isnt rocket fuel a gas?

[meager kettle]

yes, rocket fuel doesnt need headlift. but the pumps still affect flowrate to some extent

[wary rapids]

and you need the pumps to get 600m flow rate?

[meager kettle]

i needed the pumps to make the gas reach the end of the manifold

[river anchor]

Like this is my setup. The game hates the vertical only, even with pumps every 35m.

[meager kettle]

theres 600/min in the start, but the last 4 in the manifold would not run 100% without the pumps

[wary rapids]

i see.

[meager kettle]

could prob done it with a loop, but i dont like using loops, so pumps fixed it for me

[wary rapids]

i made a very high 4 high manifold for rocket fuel but is was not trying to push 600 m down the line.

[river anchor]

Just trying to see if any vertical only full flow solution exists or the background #s just do not allow it

[meager kettle]

i would prob try place the pumps under the junctions not above

[river anchor]

I could try. Haven't messed with it in a minute since it's outputting 80% (even though uptime is 90%, fun math there). on the top and rest 100% . Building rest of factory

I can fix it just by splitting off the bottom pipe so it's not doing 600 and it works fine, but that's not the goal

[wary rapids]

im glad that rocket fuel build works as intended looks cool af.

[meager kettle]

i'm quite happy with it, just missing the aluminium flasks to turn the last 2 rocket fuel pipes into bottled ionized fuel for some drones

i also managed to perfectly center it ontop of the thermal vent in the middle of the lake :p

[vapid gorge]

Show an image if what you’re trying to do

[vapid gorge]

Oh right thr vertical fluid manifolds you 1000% shouldn’t be doing

[river anchor]

it's not a question of should

[vapid gorge]

You’re not feeding from the top?

[river anchor]

No that would require 2 pipes

[vapid gorge]

It would just require 1 longer one

[river anchor]

The goal is 1 pipe, vertical manifold, max flow rate. Make the game accept it

Pipe up, U bend, pipe down, that's 2 pipes to me.

[vapid gorge]

Ok make the fluid above it initially then

You’re already using a ton more pipe than a horizontal manifold, don’t see why it being longer is a problem

[river anchor]

Horizontal uses a ton more footprint. It's a tradeoff

Aesthetically, I want one pipe.

[vapid gorge]

You can build the next step above the first foot print reusing it

[river anchor]

So the attempt is to understand how the game wants fluids pumped vertically and filled

[wary rapids]

i dont think you can argue with circle that big rule of cool says if you can do you it. it is right.

[vapid gorge]

They prefer moving down so when there’s a gap from being sucked in by a machine, the top fluid flows down and blocks flow

Stuttering the producer
Thats it. No big mystery

[meager kettle]

i would try place the first pump flat on the ground, then place pumps under each junction, and a valve above to prevent backflow. Should work.

[river anchor]

I was told here valves do literally nothing

[meager kettle]

someone was very misinformed then

[vapid gorge]

They don’t prevent backflow in any way that matters

People who think others wise have no idea

[meager kettle]

they're literally one way flow. you cannot have liquid flow backwards thru a valve

[river anchor]

There's actually 4 pumps under the platform. I wanted the pipe to stabilize so I overfilled the 600mk2 with 4 extractors to minimize flow fluctuation.

Which helped... a little.

[lunar stag]

No, but backpressure can block flow on one side of the valve

[wary rapids]

i haven't touched values sence they dont work they way one thinks they should. they dont regulated flow they take a percentage of flow.

[meager kettle]

lol

[lunar stag]

For all intents and purposes, the pressure will propagate back through the valve because it can’t empty through the valve

[meager kettle]

my aluminium plant uses valves to recycle the waste water. works flawlessly

[vapid gorge]

while they stop individual UNITS of fluid from crossing over, they allow knock back through the pipe, so no they don't stop back flow

[vapid gorge]

it is an unreliable method that can work - but is basically a house of cards

a pump would be slightly more reliable in those situations

but not by much

[river anchor]

Well in this case, the output side is never more than the input

[wind spade]

they don't do nothing

they just are pointless to use

[vapid gorge]

they can cause problems. That's a thing.

[vapid gorge]

hell, I've seen people get direct feed waste water into a system without a valve or pump. Just unreliable as balls

[wary rapids]

I was considering a water recycling system. because i can make the system more verticle. i could do the same process on modules but it would not be as cool.

[vapid gorge]

how so?

[lunar stag]

Trust me when I say: reliable engineering has zero respect for what’s cool

[meager kettle]

i used up all 12300 bauxite on the map into one aluminium plant, having 41 blenders all using valved recycle, being fed by two water pipes. worked flawlessly. Valves work just fine.

[lunar stag]

Or what looks good

[wary rapids]

this is cool

[river anchor]

The HOR is only 300/600 needed, has zero issues filling the top. The water is 600/600 and the top starves down to 80% output.

So it's not a fluid going up issue, but it seems to not function when I hit max flow required , that's the main oddity.

[vapid gorge]

ok? we're talking about reliability and taking into account of years of people making systems and having tons of data about how they are unreliable.

as an example
in the US , if your school didn't have a school shooting while you were there , that doesn't mean the US doesn't have a school shooting problem

[river anchor]

I'll try valves

[wary rapids]

just be warned valves may not behave the way you want or expect them to.

[vapid gorge]

they're already doing a vertical manifolds fed from the bottom.

[lunar stag]

That works even worse in real life fluid dynamics

[vapid gorge]

btw, send me a new copy of your save, that way if I fix it in this one you won't have lost progress

[river anchor]

Which works perfectly fine... up until max flow rate

It's not like some forbidden jutsu

[lunar stag]

I branched it and continued development

[vapid gorge]

honestly people are bad at noticing stutters, even if you were doing it at like 400 I'd expect stutters

[lunar stag]

By all means, boss

[river anchor]

I stared at it for 15 minutes

I have conveyor lasers setup and reset it a dozen times

[lunar stag]

Be my guest, make a mess

[vapid gorge]

so ... you're just using 2 dif maps now?

[lunar stag]

I think I’ve got four parallel designs stress testing in different container instances?

Whichever performs best gets rebuilt in the trunk

Virtualization is lovely like that.

[vapid gorge]

riiiight ok so the save is basically a test world ok, I'll have a bit of a peek later

[lunar stag]

For the moment the trunk running on the live environment is stable-ish?

If you’ve seen the people I’m playing with, trust me…

…they will not notice the wobble

It’s been a week and they still haven’t started their first nuclear reactor up

[vapid gorge]

nuclear can be some effort when you're not practiced

[lunar stag]

Yep, and that’s why I’m letting them learn

And staying out of the way so I don’t ruin the fun

[vapid gorge]

mostly planning the logistics and location.

a good location simplifies things a lot

and drones. Drones just really simplify it

some people like having uranium trains though

[river anchor]

You mean 400 in/out having stutters?

The HOR is 300 in/out and 100 to petro coke. It stays pegged at 50/6.

I will find the answer and report back! It's easy to avoid it, but I'd rather find what combination of pipe design makes the game behave to accept it , instead of feed all refineries from 10m above etc etc.

[lunar stag]

They picked the bay right between the spire coast and the rocky desert

Which is my usual spot for it

[river anchor]

Do floor hole pipes behave differently?

[lunar stag]

But they’re belting everything

[vapid gorge]

really? I guess it's got most of what you're looking for around there

[lunar stag]

It’s not as good as it used to be

[wary rapids]

they do black. your dont get full flow from a not full pipe.

[lunar stag]

I haven’t looked for a better spot since 1.0

[vapid gorge]

well swamp is just fairly convenient for anything depending on the volumes you want

[lunar stag]

And nobody wants to be in the swamp

[vapid gorge]

and even after they removed the crystal from speed runner cliff it's very solid

I'm going to make a big project there xD

[meager kettle]

you do, the ingame ui is misleading. If you actually calculate the total pipe volume, and time with a stop watch, you have almost instantly full flow.

[lunar stag]

I mean there’s good stuff out there, I’d build there

Only place I refuse to build is spider Japan

[vapid gorge]

blargh, ok chore time. Good luck to everyone not building vertical fluid manifolds

not out of maliciousness, just because it won't help 😛

[meager kettle]

yea thats wrong :p

tried it the other day with a pure oil node, 600/min then times how fast it filled a buffer + the pipe to it. the total volume at 600/min should've taken 270s to fill. when times with a stopwatch, it took 277s (the 7 seconds being the actual start up time of the extractor). but watching the buffer, it took 90 seconds to hit 598/min flow, once the buffer was half full, the flow rate dropped to 50/min, then slowly climbed to 602/min. If the ui reported correctly, it should've taken like 400+s to fill, but it only took 7s over max rate.

[wind spade]

well since the flow is a running average, it's indeed not possible to take it at a face value

[meager kettle]

repeating that test with a 300 normal node. it took 547s, 7 seconds off the calculated max rate

[river anchor]

They work fine, just not at max consumption. Like I said the HOR has 0 issues up the column.

There is a solution and I'll figure it out. I already have several solutions that work somewhat aesthetically. Splitting the first pipe off, junctioning above the first input etc etc.

I'd rather explore options to stabilize the behavior at the end of the pipe than just go and say "well I'll only design on flat ground or top to bottom."

[meager kettle]

its best way to learn, experiment, see what works, see what doesnt work.

dunno how many times people told me what i build shouldn't work, but it does anyway.

[wind spade]

it's not "shouldn't work"
it's "more likely to break in one way or another"

[meager kettle]

and yet they havnt :p in hundreds of hours :D

[wind spade]

your sample size is 1 person and 1 save
my sample size is people on this discord

[vapid gorge]

greeny, didn't you know?
If problems don't happen to them it doesn't exist.

[meager kettle]

more than one save, and i've had issues, but found solutions to them. and i have changed how i build pipes and such since well before update 6 rather than mindlessly following others ideas

[vapid gorge]

for example as a white guy I've never experienced systemic racism. Thus, it doesn't exist

flawless logic

[river anchor]

Neko just saying, don't accept a solution doesn't exist just because someone Says so. Yes there's are best practices to minimize design issues, but it doesn't mean solutions don't exist outside of that

[vapid gorge]

I never said you couldn't use a valve for direct waste water feed?
I in fact said it's entirely possible

Just that it's also an extremely unreliable solution.

Some people just see 'unreliable' and translate it as 'impossible'. And that's super weird

[river anchor]

Maybe my design constraint is I want a vertical building because that's how I want to cosmetically do it and maybe I discover my maximum output is 92% and I just scale my modular design with that understanding

[vapid gorge]

people can make stupid things work with pipes all the time.

[wind spade]

we never said that other solutions don't exist

we're just staying that purely statistically the presented solutions are very unreliable

whether it's player issue or game issue or something else doesn't matter.

statistically, you're far more likely to run into issues when bottom feeding than top feeding.

Some people don't run into issues when bottom feeding, but that doesn't make bottom feeding same reliability as top feeding

[vapid gorge]

also it's often very hard to replicate systems like that

like VIP junctions - sometimes you build them and they just don't work, even if you seemingly build it exactly like the last

and, because lots of people play the game, sometimes you'll get people saying 'I've built 1000 of them and they all work fine'
and maybe they're right. They were pretty lucky. Or very bad at noticing stutters. That happens a lot

and it's fine to want to build a vertical manifold. If you're enjoying the process, have fun with it

But I'm certainly not going to tell people to build one like that and spend days/weeks on something that may or may not work for them

[river anchor]

I guess I should frame this differently because I think people's expectation when they look at it is different than mine. Mine is how can I maximize this design using the endgame mechanics?

In game

The question is no will. This design have 100% up time but rather what is the maximum of time and doesn't reach a steady state for output

I know a lot of people try to match inputs and outputs along the entire process chain in order to consider it a proper or successful design

[vapid gorge]

I mean sure. But even if you do get a bottom fed 600 flow vertical manifolds - the chances it can be regularlly replicated is low

hell, having a 1 pipe 600 flow pipe horizontal generally doesn't work and it doesn't have to fight gravity

[river anchor]

Ya so maybe the pipes being <600 is the answer. Design with a slosh factor and do 3 floors instead of 4

[vapid gorge]

Shorter manifolds and lower flow manifolds are a lot more leeway it's true

you can do nearly anything you want with 300 flow mk1 pipes

the effects of back flow are reduced with those traits

[river anchor]

The stability of a vertical design clearly has more restrictions I acknowledge that fully

[lunar stag]

Honestly, arguing the behavior and approach ain’t nearly as important as arguing against the design choice to make Mk.2 pipes this arcane and unreliable

We can argue the finer points of the way the system works until we’re blue in the face

[vapid gorge]

it's not mk2 pipes, it's just you get more and more back flow management the higher the flow

and there's thigns that reduce and increase backflow management

[lunar stag]

The fact that it’s this divisive and frustrating seems like an opportunity for design improvement

[vapid gorge]

For example:

600 flow pipe fed to 3 machines using 200pm each - almost never any flow issues you need to manage

[river anchor]

Like... could I make a staircase design go as high as I wanted? Do short horizontal sections stabilize design etc

[vapid gorge]

you would essentially have to turn them into belts as there's only like... 2 rules in pipes that give them this behaviour. And you can very simply make mk2 pipe systems

[river anchor]

I'm not trying to be divisive, just wanna figure out the goofiness within the sandbox options

[vapid gorge]

you wan tto keep manifolds flat

[river anchor]

I mean for transporting fluids very high. Does it help to go up and over repeatedly vs up up up up

[vapid gorge]

oh, that, no not really

[river anchor]

Only matters once you start using fluid in the system?

[vapid gorge]

I'd just put mk2 pumps every 45m up to stay under the headlift as a precaution

[vapid gorge]

basically

[vapid gorge]

at worst if youre doing that and your piping is a little wonky, a powered pump just before the start of the manifold can help stabalise it?

but that's a tweak, not a fix all solution

but once you've started the feed line you really do want to keep the manifold flat.

One time I was helping this guy with his fuel generators and we just could NOT get the looped manifold working

had to get his file and when I was in there I noticed one side of the generators were 0.5m higher than the other and were thus bottom fed.

lowered them, everything worked

[river anchor]

Yeah mass printing them they float a little

It's weird, gotta blueprint them

[vapid gorge]

actually I think they'd just ctrl snapped non bp fuel gens jsut a little high somehow, It was a fairly small system

[meager kettle]

its usually if something is below inside the foundation machines sometimes wanna be build slightly elevated, and if you hold ctrl and spam, several can end up elevated cause like a rock is inside a foundation and a pixel poke thru. you can typically just place it slightly to the side and then nudge it in place.

[silver sand]

how fix?

[vapid gorge]

make a post in #1038092680493801533 but paste the text of the crash log, easier to search

while you wait for more tech savvy people to see it you could try verifying your files on steam first

[silver sand]

bro

where i can find nivida ngx?

[vapid gorge]

Don't know what you mean sorry

[silver sand]

i find

guys wha i need do?

[vapid gorge]

make a post in #1038092680493801533 , more people will see it and it won't disapear in the chat

[vapid gorge]

@trail forum

blue line is fresh water, red is waste

lower refs are solution, top are scrap

[midnight hill]

Whats the water difference?

I just run it back into itself

[vapid gorge]

this method is basically unbreakable and the most stable set up you can do

[trail forum]

thank you so much

[vapid gorge]

direct feeding waste liquids into a system is doable, just not as reliable and more prone to falling over if there's a fluctuation

[trail forum]

gotcha gotcha

[vapid gorge]

the clockings change depending on your bauxite volume and the recipes you use, but it's very easy maths

[midnight hill]

then run it through a water buffer to hold extra water and be able to send out water evenly

[vapid gorge]

buffers just add flow problems

avoid them and valves

[trail forum]

great to know

[vapid gorge]

if you are going to direct feed just have a powered pump. Or a VIP junction

[wind spade]

don't use buffers like that

[vapid gorge]

I don't recommend either option though

[midnight hill]

I use valves on every single factory i made

[trail forum]

i have like 2 valves in my current setup

[vapid gorge]

yup. Valves and buffers either do nothing or cause issues

[midnight hill]

I use it to combine 2 water souces

[vapid gorge]

"direct feeding waste liquids into a system is doable, just not as reliable and more prone to falling over if there's a fluctuation" I have covered this

[trail forum]

is their only "use" that water tower 'exploit'?

[wind spade]

that should never be done, just use pumps lol

[midnight hill]

I have backup extractors, how would it fail?

[vapid gorge]

I don't know how back up extractors would help.

[trail forum]

ok haha

[vapid gorge]

liquid trains 🙂

[trail forum]

that sounds like an awful time trying to setup liquid trains

are they annoying?

[vapid gorge]

not any more so than normal trains

[trail forum]

oh ok

[vapid gorge]

#design-and-architecture message

or

#design-and-architecture message

pick one of these buffers and replicate them exactly. Maybe in a BP and you're good

It's not that these are the only designs that work - but they have been tested and reliable

[trail forum]

bet thank you

[vapid gorge]

just easier giving people a working design

no sweat, maybe save the msg links in a word doc for later. Including the bauxite images from earlier

good to keep notes

[vast timber]

Hey for the fused modular frame what's the best option the basic recipe or the alt heat fused frames ?

[vapid gorge]

again, like every single time you ask , it depends what you're aiming for xD

are you looking for simpler?
trying to save on a specific resource?

[vast timber]

I looked up the recipe the alt seems more complicated but produces more

[vapid gorge]

ignore the per minute part, harder to compare

look at the base resource uses

[vast timber]

I want it to be simpler but should produce enough to not keep running out

[tropic hazel]

theres no such thing as a recipe thats "better" than another one. Every recipe has its uses. It depends on what you want to do.

[vapid gorge]

well simpler is definitely the base recipe.
doesn't need oil products and you don't have to turn Gas to Acid

[vast timber]

Yeah the alt needs more stuff like nitric acid or something

[vapid gorge]

effectively the alt recipes makes it more complicated by making acid (iron plates) , oil (fuel) but saves you on bauxite

so add some oil and a bit more iron to save on bauxite but also more complex

[vast timber]

Exactly I wanted to go with that but yeah the bauxite consumption had me doubting it

[vapid gorge]

the alt is a pretty big bauxite savings

I think it's like about 33% savings?

[tropic hazel]

i personally would save on the bauxite

thats jusit my personal choice though

[vapid gorge]

then you'll need to pad it out with oil and complexity

or you can just make more bauxite. There's a ton on the map

[vast timber]

I think I will go with the basic one

[vapid gorge]

it's a fine choice

[vast timber]

I am already making more than enough aluminium ingots and sheets and casing

I can rerout some for that

[vapid gorge]

later on, when you're making your own factories instead of just going up milestones you might find that you're already using oil near a factory you want to make fused frames, and may save on bauxite then 🙂

[vast timber]

Huh

[meager kettle]

standard recipe could be worth for saving on nitrogen gas. it tends to be more limited than bauxite

[vapid gorge]

it barely takes up more gas and .... it's a bit of a trash resource. It's not used on much and there's heaps on the map

especially considering how few fHMF you'll be making pm

[tropic hazel]

@tribal spade

also, have you heard of manifolds

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUbNdBT3zPo
@tribal spade

[tribal spade]

This is what I meant

[tropic hazel]

yeah its saying you need to figuew out a way to split it into those numbers if you want it to be balanced perfectly

[tropic hazel]

but also if you just split it evenly, once the machines fill up they will back up the conveyors and it will self balance to give everything the right amount

its kinda hard to explain over text

[tribal spade]

Pretty sure I got it

This game can be so complicated I love it

[wind spade]

fyi, I wouldn't recommend that calculator, it cannot do loops and byproducts and the "realistic" view is pretty bad

[tribal spade]

Which one would you recommend then because I'm having a hard time finding a good one

[tropic hazel]

id reccomend not using one and doing it yourself tbh

[mint coral]

Try tools pinned here

[wind spade]

most people use either Satisfactory Tools (web app for calculations), or Modeler (steam app, mostly for logistics/layout planning). Using both together may also be interesting.

[mint coral]

I booted up the game thinking

Arg time to tackle this water issue.

Works first attempt. Didn't even change anything

[obtuse hawk]

How does load balancing work if a machine requires input that isn't a whole number? For example, Steel Beams need 2.5 Modular Frames per minute. If I wanted to feed that from a load balancer, would splitting a belt with 5 ppm work?

[outer vale]

5/2=2.5, yes

for perfect splitting it's the ratios that matter, not the exact numbers

[obtuse hawk]

Obviously I know this on paper. I was just asking because I wasn't sure what would happen in game since you can't actually have 0.5 of an item. The way I understand it is that the belt would alternate between 2ppm and 3ppm, so that it averages 2.5. I just wanted to make sure that would still mean the assembler runs without interruption

[outer vale]

a splitter will split items evenly among all outputs, round-robin (until stuff starts backing up)

it'll only matter for the initial warmup

5 per minute just means 1 per 12s, 2.5 per minute just means 1 per 24s

[dusky dust]

Keep in mind that the "per minute" numbers are a bit of a lie. They're generally the most useful way to think about numbers in terms of planning, but you're right that at no point the game consumes 0.5 of an item. Rather, every x seconds the machine will consume a certain quantity of input material and output a certain quantity of output material. That happens to work out mathwise to having decimal per-minute values, but in the end everything's technically whole numbers

But yeah, it'll even out. :)

[obtuse hawk]

That makes sense then. Thanks. I'm definitely making things harder on myself by avoiding manifolds, but load balancers just make my brain happy lmao

[outer vale]

you will likely succumb eventually

it just becomes far simpler on some setups to manifold

[obtuse hawk]

Yeah, I know you're probably right

[outer vale]

I say this as a certified perfect split enjoyer

[viscid python]

What's the alternative to a manifold called

[outer vale]

the community term is load balancing, though I dislike it

[obtuse hawk]

I've heard that some people do balancer only challenge runs. While that concept does interest me, I'm not going to lock myself into something like that for my first playthrough

[outer vale]

some people do worse than that... sushi

[viscid python]

Sushi?

[outer vale]

roughly, mixing inputs onto one belt

[celest rune]

I only load balance when dealing with nuclear

[viscid python]

Oh Jesus

[outer vale]

there's more nuance that I'm frankly uninterested in lol

[celest rune]

This is the only time I dont manifold. As I need everything to run at once. Or my system will shut down

[outer vale]

I don't only do it here, but yeah given the loooooong time it'd take to manifold, and how easy it is to split perfectly, it just makes sense

[viscid python]

So like mixing the inputs on the belt in the right ratio to create the things. That seems awesome and awful at the same time

[obtuse hawk]

The term comes from those sushi restaurants where its served on a conveyer belt. The idea is that you put everything on one single belt and have it loop in a circle, siphoning off things as you need it.

[viscid python]

Huh

[celest rune]

And when you need the generators to run perfectly, the fuel rods to be created perfectly...

Load balancers are needed

[viscid python]

Interesting ty for explaining

[outer vale]

eh, the waste comes out in enough bulk that that's not much of a concern

personally, I try to do perfect splits if it's not much effort. Powers of 2 and 3? sure. 5-way? Yeah okay. Much more than that though, probably not

[dusky dust]

Eh, "sushi" doesn't imply looping stuff in a circle, nor does it require you to put everything on a single belt