math-and-meta

[stable basin]

I didn't know about that but it seems much easier, I will use that from now on. thx :)

[vast jungle]

also, if you like balancers you can go with a "scalable" balancer... something small you only have to repeat multiple times to get any balancer you like

this is especially easy if your output is a power of 2

[wind spade]

how would you do that? (and don't say ISCs)

[vast jungle]

2 splitters and 2 mergers make a 2-2 balancer

[wind spade]

well yeah

[vast jungle]

a 4-4 balancer is just 4 2-2 balancers... balance two pairs, then balance two balanced outputs

8-8 is just two 4-4 balancers and four 2-2 balancers... so its three layers of each four 2-2 balancers

its just a matter of keeping track of the combinations...

I could easily (with enough time) build a 256-256 balancer ^^

(not that I would ever do so)

[river night]

of course it only really works with power of two or three, as thats the number of outputs you can use on a single splitter to make it easy

[wind spade]

I fail to see how that is "easy" 😛

[vast jungle]

you could also use power of three... so a 3-3 balancer would also be easy

so any output number that is a multiple of 2 and 3 should be easy to do (as a concept, it will still take work to build it)

balancers for other numbers need a feedback mechanism... if you want to balance to 5, you need a balancer to something greater than 5 and merge the rest back... as long as you keep attention to belt limits this gives you any balance number

[grim crane]

Guys, are here some balancing profis?

[frosty owl]

"Profis"?

Balancing goes well with some good OC/DC btw 😉

And nuclear rods of all kinds~

[glacial hemlock]

You have to tie the sink point calculation with nuclear power setup for the required power.

[vast jungle]

short question, long answer... maybe you want to extend your question a bit? 😉

[grim crane]

ehh yes, i want to balance 7,5 600 belts into 50 9 belts (going to merge some of them later)

[vast jungle]

so you have 7 belts with 600 input and 1 belt with 300 input?

and you want... 50 belts with each 9 items? or 9 belts with each 50 items? sounds like input and output don't match

[grim crane]

50 belts with 90 sorry

going to merge some of them later for better options, i dont realy want to use mods

[vast jungle]

I would split of 60 from each of the 600 belts... so you get 540, which you just have to divide by 6....

60*7 + 300 = 720... which you then divide by 8

(split of 60 with the help of a single splitter and a mk1 belt on one side)

"divide by 6" and "divide by 8" should be easy to do...

[grim crane]

ok

thanks

[vast jungle]

not sure you SHOULD do it, but I am looking forward to see the necessary spaghetti 😉

(maybe you can post a screenshot if you did it?)

[grim crane]

yes

going to be an mess

moment, i need space

[vast jungle]

you asked for something with 58 belts involved... 😉

[grim crane]

😄

my first idea was split everything down to 60 belts and then there some and then make it but

[vast jungle]

but I think it can be done quite sane... because its mainly lots of "perfect splits"... and you can easily join the 7x60+300 into a single belt

[grim crane]

Still an mess

[vast jungle]

so just one "redistributor" that goes from
7x600 + 1x300 to 7x540 + 1x720...

and then do the smaller splits where you need it

just... hmm... 7 splitters and 4 mergers for the redistribution... and then 21 splitters for the seven "divide by 6" and 7 splitters for the "divide by 8"

[grim crane]

i goint to only make the first bvalancing the splitting directly at the machines

Ok, it looks better then expected

Now to the last step

[vast jungle]

still, you might be the first person who asked about a splitter with 50 outputs 😉

[grim crane]

Yeah, can be. I need it for this, Silica is going to be the same Pain

[vast jungle]

I would just use a manifold for this... or multiple manifolds

[grim crane]

multiple yes 😄

idk how i got into this

[vast jungle]

you decided this will be fun to do this way

thats the best reason for doing something in this game 🙂

[grim crane]

yes

i am realy good in useless belts/pipes

i have 15 50 acid pipes

Because i was bored

[vast jungle]

LOL (saw it in screenshots)

I just ALWAYS use the highest level belt/pipe...

[grim crane]

😄

Yes

its an playtrough wwith cheats so i used mk2 pipes/pumps all the time

[frosty owl]

I would OC/DC the machines to get 15/20/30 or 60/min inputs, so you can make a manifold of smart splitters and balance each of these output with a single splitter (if it's not 60/min needed, so not even that!)

[grim crane]

i have 2 tiles between the smelter rows

Pain

i am bad at manifolds

[frosty owl]

That's why I'm suggesting this rather then trying to balance it without smart splitters or balance it OUTSIDE of the row ^^

[vast jungle]

more than enough space for a manifold... or a two-sided manifold

[grim crane]

i balanced it already

so now at the splitting

with 8 belts 😄

mhh

if i can make an bigger aluminium production to get my power grid bleeding

[vast jungle]

distribute the splitter over the line...

for the 720/8 splitter, have one 720/2, one 720/4 (and sometimes one 720/8) belt... this way you don't need get to 8 belts

[grim crane]

i hate it when i have in new areas no power for the hover pack

[upbeat tide]

Yea hovor pack is very nice, but very limiting too.

[vast jungle]

I noticed the hard way that Wires don't power the hoverpack... so when you have two powerpoles at maximum distance connected by a wire, you might fall down in the middle

[upbeat tide]

I tend to not add power to a new project until its built up unless I want to turn it on in stages or something

[upbeat tide]

Noticed that too. In my case hovoring over my highway’s power lines and...went into the south void

[vast jungle]

luckily railway lines also power the hoverpack

[upbeat tide]

Was a section that didnt have a railway yet. Was a build in progress

[vast jungle]

I always build a railway first... I like to travel by train 😉

[upbeat tide]

Ah well learn, dont do weird stuff

[grim crane]

Trains arent bad, i just spend an hole day last week to build an Bridge (Still waiting for an fly mod to get updated to get the pillars finished)

[vast jungle]

but as soon as I finish my Aluminium setup I will go back to my cargo terminal and build my "build train merger"... I want an automatically filled train (4 cars) with everything I need to build factories...

[vast jungle]

just add some powered powerlines and you can use the hoverpack

[grim crane]

I have used it for the one half, fly is more easy, I forgot my power lines and fall into my nuclear area

i have moved the storage after the accident

[vast jungle]

^^

[vast jungle]

looking at #screenshots I think I underestimated how much space some people allocate for beltwork 😉

[grim crane]

better lots of space for belts then an headache to make it compact

[vast jungle]

I normally have a 3m high crawling/belt space below every factory floor to hide some of the beltwork

[grim crane]

i used that in my last save in rhe main factory

to lazy

[vast jungle]

Looking forward to see my own aluminium setup done... Only 1.5k ingots, bit that should be enough for me for a long time

[grim crane]

yes

at my first i had around 1k or so

Was enough too

Then i realised i need more

now i have 2500 to much 😄

[vast jungle]

For me it's 2 pure nodes... So at first it will be "only" 1.2k... still not sure how I distribute the between sheets and casings

And batteries? (Not sure about recipe)

[grim crane]

i would had an unlimited batterie production would i used aluminium SOlution for Silica production

I was to lazy to expand my train system for Quarz

I just cheatet 2 Quarz nodes woth mods 😄

[vast jungle]

I already have ~500 quartz available in a train station 😀

[grim crane]

i had 500 avaible

Just need 1,8k more

i also used 6k belts from an mod

[vast jungle]

2 pure nodes distributed to put quartz and cheap silica

[grim crane]

mhh should i use the alternate casing recepie or the normal one?

[wind spade]

that's up to you

[vast jungle]

what do you need more... Bauxit or Copper?

[grim crane]

Mhh

Going to find the next coper node

[night jay]

your name gave me a small heart attack, why

[wind spade]

why not? 😛

[night jay]

true

[vast jungle]

sigh the moment of truth...

I have to decide how I split my Aluminium Ingots into Sheets, Casings (and maybe some fluid tanks)...

I have 4 belts, each with 150 Ingots...

I like the Alternate: Alclad Casing... because of the input number ^^

hmm... 2 belts for Alclad Casings (225), 1 belt for Alclad Sheets (150) and one belt for Fluid tanks (60)and more Casings (67.5?)

[proven sphinx]

i've got a question, i have 2x mk5 belts at 600 bauxide a min, 2x mk5 belts of 780 bauxide a min, and 1 belt of 300 bauxide a min, how do i balance those into 4x 765 (or close to equal) ?

[frosty owl]

Why a number with so few zeroes? 🤔

Alright, I get why...
I'd make it four 600 or 720 belts plus one with all the excess

[proven sphinx]

i have 4 train stations that i need to fill up "equally"

[frosty owl]

Well... If you ignore the "don't max out belts" advice it can be quite easy
Split 15 out of 780 belts and merge them to make the final 765 belt

[proven sphinx]

yea true

[frosty owl]

But if you DON'T wanna max out belts... (Heads to calculator)

Mhh... 480+270+15 to make a 765 belt... The 15 being the hard one to balance

[proven sphinx]

i mean .. i've calculated that the time the train takes trip and return, IF i get the belts filling up the wagons equally, the wagons will never fill up 100% , if not , i would have some full ones and some not so full , and i would not be able to use my train efficiently

ofcourse i could just put a overflow on the wagons that got full, but i wanna make it "balanced"

[frosty owl]

Loading a single belt per freight isn't the most efficient solution imo :P

[proven sphinx]

i load up a ISC then have 2 belts filling up the station

[frosty owl]

You can load "safely" (meaning you'd have considerable wiggle room in your timing) up to 900ish items/min. I usually do 2x480 since I don't like to bother about timings and I find it a nice number to work with

[frosty owl]

Yeah, but you have 1 belt feeding each ISC

[proven sphinx]

so use slower belts on the ones filling up faster and faster belts on the ones i need to get filled up and use overflow on the ones with the slow belts is a solution ? x)

[frosty owl]

In your case (using the 2x480 approach) I'd do:
Split the two 600 in 480 + 120 (results in 1 full freight, overflow of 240)
Split two 780 in 480 + 300 (another full freight, overflow of 600)
...I think you can imagine the rest 😆

Whenever I say "split 480 from X" I refer to a smart splitter outputting on a mk4 belt and an overflow belt btw

[proven sphinx]

yea, i think i'll do that..

yea i understood that xD

thanks

[frosty owl]

Most welcome, fun math 😆

[bleak coral]

Couldn't you do a 2:2 balancer using one 600 and one 780 belt twice? Then divide the 300 into 4 and merge with the new 690 lines?

That seems simpler

Could even place the balancers at the 780 miners so you minize the time spent on a full mk5 belt

if you're worried about that

[gusty nexus]

what do y'all do for the "leftover" residue with blenders making diluted fuel

because the blenders take 50 but you usually get 320 residue when using the alternate heavy oil residue recipe, right?

so what, make 7 blenders? overclock one?

maybe i'll just overclock 5 blenders at 120% each, i guess? but that would be pretty inefficient power-wise

[supple mural]

seven blenders with one downclocked is what i would do

that, or downclock one of the HOR producers

[gusty nexus]

underclocking scales the power demand downwards 1:1, right?

[supple mural]

nop

its not linear, downclocking a machine to 50% uses less than half the power

[gusty nexus]

because i noticed overclocking increases power demand proportionally MORE than output

[supple mural]

correct

[gusty nexus]

so underclocking reduces power, also proportionally MORE than it reduces output?

[supple mural]

ye

[gusty nexus]

ok so with "fraction" situations like this you always just make one more and underclock, due to power efficiency

[supple mural]

it would be more effective to underclock everything by the same amount, in terms of power

but thats a pain

not everyone has a macro that insta-pastes the settings in machines

[gusty nexus]

do manifold setups cause some issues with consistency if you're feeding power generators? it feels like it

[supple mural]

my coal gens powered by belts do fine

[gusty nexus]

or is it just like manifold setups for anything else, you just wait until everything starts overflowing correctly

[supple mural]

my fuel gens powered by pipe manifold are a pain unless im at least slightly overproducing

doesnt even need to be overproduction by a large amount, just overproduction

less than 1/min of overprduction will make sure your fuel gens are always fed properly

after waiting for them to fill up manifold style, anyway

[wary parcel]

I have no issues with large scale pipe manifolds, just let them warm up before relying on them. With the new way that power is generated always at 100% you'll have spikes until the inputs (pipes or belts) are feeding at 100% capacity. The easy solution is just to leave the generators off until the pipes and belts are backing up to their source.

[gusty nexus]

so if my math is correct, the 6.4-blender setup i mentioned earlier runs 53.33 generators?

[wary parcel]

Looks like 640 Fuel requires 53 generators at 100%, then one last generator at 33.33333%.

[gusty nexus]

i suppose i do need to account for the one pipeline i need to split off to feed a recycled plastic setup

[fringe crow]

I guess this is kinda meta related?

I'm going to use Reinforced Plates here as an example.

If I have three factories, with one being storage, one being for Reinforced Plates(And lets say Screws), and one being for Iron Plates / Rods.

Whats the best way to go about hooking things up to the storage room? Would it be better to do Iron Plates -> Reinforced Plates -> Storage -> Sink or Iron Plates -> Storage -> Reinforced Plates -> Sink.

Or would it just be better as a hole to aim for say, 60 Iron Plates/min for Storage, then just build another factory for do the pre-req requirements as part of the Reinforced factory?

[muted crypt]

I build them at the same spot and merge them together, then use a smart splitter to prioritize producing higher tier parts and let the excess flow to storage.

[fringe crow]

Hmmm, alright.

[bleak coral]

I like building new stuff for each factory instead of centralizing parts.

[upbeat veldt]

I'm just about to sink my teeth in the new update - I'm having trouble imagining what I would transport with the new drones - what resources make sense to transport with it?

[muted crypt]

I personally think I'll be using them to bring parts to my isolated home base / storage HUB

I kinda don't want to ruin the overall beauty of the crater lakes when I build my home there

[frosty owl]

How about this (for ease of expansion)
Plates factory has an overflow sink and an output
Connect the output to the reinf plates factory, which will have (again) an overflow sink and an output. From there funnel both to storage

Though my personal favorite is to bring the plates to reinf plates, output a mixed belt from the reinf plates with both plates and reinf plates, bring that to storage and sink the overflow there ^^

[icy sun]

could someone explain to a noob what the overflow method achieves?

[frosty owl]

Some refer to it as in "feed you machines more then they need" so you don't have to do much math ^^
"Overflow" by itself refers to the excess items you get from using such method (Eg: your machines need 60 ore/min. You feed them 120/min and have an overflow of 60/min you can use for other things or just let it sit there inefficient!)

[icy sun]

so it's designing from resources needed, rather than resources available. instead of going 'this node produces 120, so let's plan out 120 ore worth of machinery' you're going like 'I need 80 ore worth of machines here, so i'll overflow the rest for something else rather than underclocking the node'

[frosty owl]

Yeah, more or less. I think it's biggest convenience is the reduction of math needed ^^

[fierce ruin]

math--;

[frosty owl]

Though, I love to use it when I have fast enough belts to do sushi belts, since with overflow method I can (assuming the belts has a sink overflow output): eyeball how much excess I'm producing of things; redirect said excess to new production areas and merge the products back on the original belet; repeat :) @icy sun

Sushi belts = Belts with different kinds of items on them

[icy sun]

ty! that's very helpful. slowly learning everything. big damn game XD

[frosty owl]

That's one of the things that charmed me about it :)

[bleak coral]

Huh I've never actually seen that method you described. Most of the time when I see people say "overflow method" they mean manifold cause it relies on machines "overflowing"

@icy sun Another thing that people could mean when they say "overflow method": https://satisfactory.fandom.com/wiki/Manifold

which is just a way of delivering resources to machines, and can be applied to any design

[frosty owl]

I just didn't mention the feeding method, only how much you feed :P

... Is a balanced system that overflows stuff to other production/sink considered "overflow method"?

Eg: balance input for smelters, but still feed them double the input since you'll need the ore eventually, overflow goes in sink/other production

[bleak coral]

I don't think there's an agreed upon system that uses that moniker. I just see it used whenever the logistics involves overfeeding a system or machine and then using the overflowed material in any manner.

So sure why not haha

[signal nimbus]

I do like the term "sushi belt".

[supple mural]

sushi belts are very fun

[bleak coral]

it's unfortunate that they're super inefficient in satisfactory

[supple mural]

satis belts dont have the capacity to make that reasonable in a real production line

as a belt that goes into a mall? it makes sense

[bleak coral]

though I guess you stick a sink on the end it's w/e

[supple mural]

maybe for a small assembly line

[icy sun]

I also love the term sushi belt

[bleak coral]

yeah the throughput is the main issue

[supple mural]

also controlling what's on the belt

[icy sun]

There isn't a splitter that can separate them though is there

[signal nimbus]

Mmm... I can see it for a couple of things, I just haven't figured out how to fix the issue of items backing up the system

[supple mural]

smart/programmable splitter

[icy sun]

Haven't gotten that far then, haha

[supple mural]

also, there's no way to make sushi belts without using a sink

[bleak coral]

it's in the caterium tree, just needs T2 stuff

[supple mural]

cuz there is no way to measure whats on the belts

[fierce ruin]

at the very least you could just cap the feeding belts

[supple mural]

hmm maybe it would work

if you can get it right, it would be a nice way to simplify manifolds if you didnt need to stack them four belts high

[fierce ruin]

it would constrain it not guarantee through put tho

[supple mural]

i think, next time i make a manifold of manufacturers, ill try a sushi belt

just for the chaos

[signal nimbus]

So... smart splitter with one output into the machine, one going past, and then one more on overflow going around?

[supple mural]

you just need two outputs

to the machine would be filtered to the item, and down the manifold would be set as "overflow"

any extra would be overflowed out the end of the manifold, so you can either send it back through or sink it

though you should sink it

until we have priority mergers

also, the belts coming off the manifold need to be the same speed as the manifold

so if your sushi belt is a mark 5, the belts going into the machines also need to be mark 5

[signal nimbus]

So, here's what I ran into. I sushi belted an even mix of reinforced iron plates and modular frames. The frames came first, and backed up quickly. This prevented the plates from continuing past.

Basically because the inventory of the smart splitter filled up on frames, far as I can tell.

[frosty owl]

Small example of why I love 🍣 after mk4 belts in small factories
You start with a belt bringing in ores (full belt) Those make ingots (full belt again), which make plates (not so full belt).
Now you need reinf plates (assume using bolted alt). Bring the plates in, split the overflow (plates for personal use or future use). The plates belt is now mostly empty
Merge reinf plates AND steel beams on it: you have a belt ready to feed a whole bolted frame factory
And yes, proper connections to sinks are a must, but it's not hard to handle imo

[supple mural]

this is why you set it to overflow anything the smart splitter cant put into the machine

[frosty owl]

Bruh, sushi belts for manifolds are the most convenient thing ever, since they usually don't take that many item/min, and the few items that do need big volumes can be fed 1:1 (steel screws, fused quickwire...)

[supple mural]

ive been doing a stack of four or three conveyors each time ive made a manufacturer manifold ehe

[frosty owl]

Tbh, it's kind of a pain to program a manifold of smart splitters without copy-paste settings

[supple mural]

oh, that does sound like... lots of fun

[frosty owl]

But... It's just one belt xD

[supple mural]

AA copies the settings in splitters, right?

cuz im definitely going to be using area actions when i start megabasing again... placing 120 assemblers by hand is not the most fun in the world

[frosty owl]

I prefer to refrain from copy-paste tools. I think it saps me of creativity, making me do designs that are too repetitive for my likings
So I just wait for smart! :)

[supple mural]

yeah, looking back at my last attempt at megabase, i think i might be having more fun in U4 without AA, but maybe thats because of other reasons?

[frosty owl]

I also REALLY dislike how you can't eyedrop stuff with AA though

[supple mural]

¯_(ツ)_/¯

[fierce ruin]

AA?

you guys been 🍺?

[supple mural]

not that type lol

[frosty owl]

U4 was pretty fun without mods too for me :)
Not too big a deal as long as I just spaghett my way to endgame without going "mega" xD

[supple mural]

same

[next kelp]

Hello I need to know stuff

How much turbo fuel to the gens consume

[bleak coral]

4.5/min

[upbeat tide]

4.5

[bleak coral]

charts on this page: https://satisfactory.fandom.com/wiki/Fuel_Generator

[next kelp]

And is anyone able to double check my math?

[upbeat tide]

3.141558...oh wait

[bleak coral]

just post the math/question, and someone will if they want to

[next kelp]

2400/30-80 alt hor
2080alth 1600 pol res
1600/60 - 27 res plastic
540 water minute
8040-3200
3200/30 - 107 diluted fuel
6420 packed water
3210 platic
267 gens
For fuel

I’m the maths one for us and I need to double check my numbers for processing oil to fuel is good before we build for the next few days and I fail lol

[bleak coral]

Can't quite make out what I'm supposed to see here

[barren quartz]

you have a coal/sulfur/crude input? or just a TF target for 1200/min

[next kelp]

2400 oil to fuel for now

And making the resin into plastic

[bleak coral]

using diluted fuel and the alt heavy oil residue?

[next kelp]

Sorry it’s so curde I was doing it on the fly and rush

[barren quartz]

2400 crude oil with all alts would be 5k TF/min

[next kelp]

Yes

[bleak coral]

honestly I'd just check it in a calculator to be honest: https://www.satisfactorytools.com/

[next kelp]

I try and can’t figure how to use it lol

[barren quartz]

https://www.satisfactorytools.com/production?share=m2pWLUGyHveT23bWWge2

[bleak coral]

I can help with that, what's confusing you?

[barren quartz]

without digging into how the tools site works, 1200TF/min is made by:

if youre looking for a quick number confirmation

[upbeat tide]

You should get 3200 TF from 2400 oil

If using turbo blend anyway

[bleak coral]

either way 2400 crude is a huge amount of oil to turn into turbofuel, that's anywhere from ~711 to ~1185 generators

[upbeat tide]

711.111111111

[next kelp]

Yes

For 120k power ish

[barren quartz]

2400crude to TF would be 192k

[upbeat tide]

No its 106,666

[bleak coral]

for turbo blend, for regular it's ~177k

[barren quartz]

yep math was wrong, 177k

[next kelp]

So my numbers are ok tho

[bleak coral]

Well I wouldn't use turbo packaged, I'd get blenders first and do this:

[barren quartz]

its hard to make sense of the list but it seems like it checks out, not sure about plastic input unless im forgetting an alt but packaged water shouldnt req plastic input

[next kelp]

Ok ty

[barren quartz]

follow lunds, thats your best method

[bleak coral]

Packaged can be done in a loop, you don't need to make more, but definitely just skip packaging entirely if you're gonna go that big

[next kelp]

It’s incomplete but I just needed a baseline to work from that was correct lol

[barren quartz]

i forgot diluted fuel was an alt now, yeah you can get rid of packaging entirely

[bleak coral]

Also consider doing turbo blend fuel instead and increasing the oil, since it reduces sulfur a lot

[upbeat tide]

You can replicate mine. Blend fuel + turbo blend fuel + 1800 oil + 1200 sulfur = 544 fuel gens

[bleak coral]

and you're gonna be eating a lot of sulfur doing this

[upbeat tide]

My lil TF zone

[barren quartz]

for reference, lunds 1st pic takes about 2/3 of global sulfur, 2nd one takes about 1/4th global

[upbeat tide]

Lund’s second is exactly mine just drop to 1800 Oil

[bleak coral]

to be fair this is the equivelant amount of turbofuel:

that's still around a 40% reduction in sulfur

[red plover]

"lil" he says

[barren quartz]

^ that one adjusted to 3900 oil can be done in the north lake area entirely using all impure/normal/pure

still gotta bus sulfur though

[upbeat tide]

It is little. 😉

[red plover]

GAH the people on this discord build on such a huge scale lol. I'm so proud of the hours I put into my "lil" 480/min TF plant 😜

[upbeat tide]

Full world so far

Next up is 9780 aluminum ingots

Ive elected to go full pure alu ingot

[barren quartz]

you actually followed the one home foundation rule, impressive

4 worlds in and i always break that

[upbeat tide]

Thats what they call it?

[red plover]

Also, it's aligned N/S. I do 1 home foundation, but I'm at funky angles

[iron prairie]

It took me several days, and many, many hours to make my U3-era 4000 turbofuel/min plant. I can fully believe "a few hours" to make even 480/min.

[barren quartz]

ive heard a few people say home tile, reference tile, etc. all meaning just having one to reference but N/S definitely saves headaches

setting up alclad this week, bauxite infrastructures just been off-putting

[upbeat tide]

Im gonna get all bauxite nodes to one spot, in my case the lake Northeast of the void hole

[barren quartz]

cries in east desert

[upbeat tide]

And I know im gonna be at the lowest end of max aluminum but ah well

[lone pivot]

haha i usualy have to struggle to break the 1 big ass grid style.

[upbeat tide]

Im not fond of needing 6.5k quartz to get to 13k aluminum ingots

And instant scrap is a non starter 🙂

[barren quartz]

is 13k even possible? my maths all been bottlenecked by 7.8k baux/min, thought the theoretical max was lower than that

[iron prairie]

13k is possible with use of sloppy aluina, electrode - aluminum scrap, and a mix of the regular & pure aluminum ingot recipes.

[bleak coral]

are you still using the old satisfactorytools site?

[upbeat tide]

There ya go all aluminum production comparisons

[barren quartz]

my sites on u4 but my brains stuck in u3

[upbeat tide]

And yea 7k quartz is a LOT

[iron prairie]

I'd put #2 (sloppy alumina, electrode - aluminum scrap, pure aluminum ingot) as the default, and only switch in default aluminum ingots as needed for production because it uses up so much quartz for so few aluminum ingots.

[upbeat tide]

#4 is full vanilla

Only 4k ish quartz. More reasonable but yea

[bleak coral]

it's funny how much that got flipped on it's head

[iron prairie]

AFAICT, you get +0.4666667 aluminum ingots per quartz invested, so... it's not a great trade.

[bleak coral]

U3 you'd never not use quartz to boost aluminum

[iron prairie]

It also makes pure aluminum ingots extremely important to large-scale factories.

[upbeat tide]

Yup hence why im doing slop + electrode + pure

Itd a 1:1 ratio bauxite to ingot but its fine by me

[bleak coral]

lol 1:1 is now bad

[upbeat tide]

Ikr? 🙂

[bleak coral]

woulda killed for that a month ago haha

[iron prairie]

It can also effectively be stretched further by using alclad casings, which swaps in relatively cheap copper to reduce the aluminum investment in anything using aluminum casings.

[upbeat tide]

Yup thats on the menu too

And im gonna use classic batteries alt for even lower aluminum usage in that department

My full sulfur usage map is as follows

1200 - TF
600 - munitions
600 - batteries
2100 - nuclear
1512 - plutonium
828 - unallocated

[iron prairie]

... What do you need that much black powder for?

[muted crypt]

gun

nobelisk

[upbeat tide]

54 a min nobelisks and rifle ammo cuz im nuts

[muted crypt]

you can't even throw 54 in a minute

that's assuming that's all you do

[upbeat tide]

I know but...🤷‍♂️

[iron prairie]

I've been 100% fine with singular cartridge/nobelisk lines (15 & 3/min), requiring just 45 black powder/min, which amounts to 33.75 sulfur/min (assuming use of fine black powder).

[upbeat tide]

Issue is im already planning for all sulfur goods. May cut back munitions tho will seee I suppose

Last time it was with only 180 sulfur

[icy sun]

I'm a bit confused as to how the Calculator works. Reinforced Plates for instance defaults to an ore node of 120, but if I only have access to a 60 ore node and I cut the end product in half to re-adjust the plans I get weird results like 1.5 constructors.

[iron prairie]

That's because you need 1.5 constructors doing screws.

What that usually means in practice is a pair of constructors underclocked to 75%.

[icy sun]

that makes sense. So there isn't a way to do a calculation based off of how much ore you have access to, that must be because i'm very new and am currently thinking in those terms?

[iron prairie]

You can go to the "Items, Input" tab and manually set how many raw resources you have access to.

The "maximize" function sort of works, but doesn't optimize the inputs: typically, you maximize, find how much it makes, plug that back in for items/min, etc.

[icy sun]

hmm, i don't quite follow that last bit. could you give me an example?

[iron prairie]

Well... let's say you're maxing thermal propulsion rockets: https://u4.satisfactorytools.com/production?share=VUqD5Q6BzaD0Fl5u2Vbx

[bleak coral]

Just throw him in the deep end huh?

[icy sun]

XD

[iron prairie]

Note how it uses 11700 crude oil/min... in a comically inefficient fashion, with everything going through default rubber.

Instead of selecting "maximize", plug in 103.48 TPRs/min manually: https://u4.satisfactorytools.com/production?share=H2HbmFsOTluhcupZBdlN

This now uses just 8345 crude oil/min, as it uses the vastly more efficient HOR -> diluted fuel -> recycled rubber/plastic loop.

... and a weird amount going to coke steel. It's not a perfect tool. Disabling that alt brings it down to 5492.46 crude oil/min.

[icy sun]

cool, i'll remember that when i eventually get around to maximizing big things

[bleak coral]

it works scaled down to smaller stuff too, I'm sure silly only used that cause it has a very obvious example of why you do it that way

[icy sun]

nods

[iron prairie]

I was sure that somewhere in that insanity I could identify a weird choice made by the maximize option.

[icy sun]

what is the maximize option based on. the total amount of the base resources on the map?

[bleak coral]

by default, yeah, but you can change the amounts in the Items, Input tab

[iron prairie]

It basically asks "given the requested output, how much can be made?" without also asking "Given that maximum amount, what's the most efficient way to make it?"

[icy sun]

so let's go super simple for a sec, for I am a man of little brain. Let's say I have two 60/m Iron nodes and one 60/min copper node and I wanna make the basic parts to send the first Space Elevator shipment. I'd set my max in the Input tab, and then select all the items I wanna make, to see how many I can make. Then re-do the calculation with those max/min for each item to get the efficient way

[iron prairie]

And/or manually play with items/min, which is usually the better option if you have a lot of desired products.

[icy sun]

what would I be looking for, in playing with that setting

[bleak coral]

side note here: using maximize on multiple items at once is janky cause you have to use the sliders change their relative parts per minute

cause if you ask for maximum of multiple items there's an infinite number of combinations that are solutions for that, so the tiebreaker is to set them at the same ppm and then you cange their relative ppm with the sliders

[icy sun]

so if i was gonna use the calc to plan a really big build i'd wanna determine how much of something i'm gonna make and then subtract those resources from what I have access to?

[iron prairie]

Or just set it to use the map max resources, find out what you need, and track down the requisite resource nodes.

[bleak coral]

yes, this is how I do things

and then you give each item it's own tab

[icy sun]

awesome, thanks for the help! back to making copper wire now...

[iron prairie]

On a sidenote: you're probably going to want to track down more iron. Even a pretty barebones early-game factory (https://u4.satisfactorytools.com/production?share=XvzSAkXekv9YuLKga6ep) can consume 135 iron/min.

[icy sun]

good call. the two 60/min was actually just an example kept simple. I started near three 60/s with several more within reach. but I'm about to go look for more so I know roughly what direction i wanna expand in.
Considering how to do a sort of arterial highway thing to run all the ore along

something simple so I can elaborate on it easily when I unlock more assets I expect

does the calculator display power consumption?

oh! there's a tab. ignore me

[bleak coral]

Average is based on the assumption of all machines at 100% clockspeed. For example when it says 1.5 machines average will assume two machines at 100% with one running only half the time. You can get less with underclocking and more with overclocking

[icy sun]

so i'll be able to ballpark it

[bleak coral]

basically

[icy sun]

will a copper wire factory that needs "1.33" of a constructor consume the same power whether the constructors are 100%/33% or two at .66%?

[bleak coral]

two at 66% will be better

the common practice of doing all but one 100% and one underclock comes in when you make like 20 machines and don't want to set 20 clockspeeds

though we have copy-paste now, so maybe less people will do that

[icy sun]

where is the efficiency lost by doing 100/33? are the diminishing returns for being more underclocked?

[bleak coral]

Underclocking lowers the power needs faster than production falls. So having more of the production being run underclocked means more of it is being run efficiently.

[supple mural]

underclocking a machine to 50% uses less than 50% power

so, its more like there's increasing gains when underclocking

running all the machines in a line at 90% instead of having all at 100% except one at 10% will save you more power

[bleak coral]

@icy sun
For exaple if you need 1.5 smelters the total max MW is 8. With one machine at 100% and one at 50% that means you'll have a total of 4MW + 1.31951MW = 5.31951MW from one machine running at 100% power and the other at about 33% power.

But if you run two machines at 75% you'll have two machines at 2.5244MW for a total of 5.0488MW. The total is lower becausing you're reducing 8MW to about 63% instead of just 4MW to about 33%. So instead of just lowering a part of the total power you're lowering your whole power draw.

Ironically the difference gets bigger the more machines you're reducing cause the total gets bigger, but that's also when people get too lazy to do it haha.

[fierce ruin]

So if we scale up the number of necessary power sinks by 100 and set all to 1%...

🤔

[bleak coral]

Oh yeah I've done that, you can get some machines running at lower than 0.1MW

low enough the UI says it's 0MW by rounding even though it's drawing power

It's completely impractical though

[fierce ruin]

lol no doubt, but interesting in a world where resources are renewable, and you only need consider time/effort/space when constructing

it's always a battle of optimal vs practical

[icy sun]

It's a really unique game in that respect. I'm really enjoying it so far.
Though I haven't gotten to the renewable power yet. At least getting biomass isn't too terribly tedious yet. Think i'll need to get Coal set up before I expand much more though, my generators are starting to pile up

[fierce ruin]

Yes, your life becomes so much better when you get off biomass for the first time

It's well worth the time invested, considering no more trips to gather wood and whatnot

[icy sun]

when planning a factory, if clocking or production is off by a small decimal should it be slightly under, or slightly over

[lone pivot]

i'd say over

[fierce ruin]

^ I prefer over. I'd rather have a slight bit more than needed than the opposite

[lone pivot]

ye

[icy sun]

and it should be too negligible to cause, like, a conveyor stall? I get OCD about seeing those

(assuming the belts can take the load, etc)

[lone pivot]

ye i feel ya

[topaz hedge]

depends where. if in the middle of production line. over, at the end of it where it won't matter or you're already over producing, a bit under

[fierce ruin]

full belts make me feel good lol, means i've got more ways I can use that line

[topaz hedge]

some parts have really bad decimals that are pretty much impossible to nail down input/output ratios

[icy sun]

I have two screw constructors running at 75% (30/min) going into a merger and then to a container via MK1 Belts. But the belt going into the side of the merger stalls

shouldn't both run smooth since it's 30 in x 2 = 60 out on a MK1?

oh! i cleared and restarted it. It looks like it was just overfed

[topaz hedge]

yes, but at exactly 30/min but no if the belts are already full

[icy sun]

^

ty

[proven sphinx]

like this ?

[vast jungle]

if output belt number is a multiple of 2/3, then doing it with small 2/3 mergers is usually an easy way to do it

[bleak coral]

Huh, normally I ward off people from using ISCs as balancers (cause they don't work that way) but if you just put both output belts directly into the freight platform that'd work

I guess you're basically using the buffers as mergers

[proven sphinx]

i mean, i just made a model ( the belts there can just go straight into a station but as it would be hard to show in a picture with all 4 stations i just did it this way x) so pretend the ISC is the stations 😂
but the point is , at the output of the ISC, all 4 belts will have the equal flow no?

[bleak coral]

yes, but also you want to do exactly this and have the outputs go into the stations, having ISCs as buffers for stations is good so the flow doesn't stop when they load up

freight platforms stop their IO when a train is loading/unloading

It's clever, I like it 🙂

[proven sphinx]

Ait, i'll do it like this then i belive i had nightmares about this when i slept last night cause i didnt finish putting my thoughts in motion 😂 so when i got up today i just had to login and do this 😂 but thanks! i'll place this into my train station, just in a bigger scale

[frosty owl]

That is why I balance ||nearly|| everything

[vestal wharf]

Does anyone has a good Modular Frame Automation plans for Tier 2 player?(I still haven't unlocked tier 3 and 4

I have got 2 extra pure Iron ores and can use level 2 conveyor belts

[vast jungle]

not sure what you mean with "Modular Automation plan"

[vestal wharf]

Modular Frame Automation Plan*

[vast jungle]

which of the inputs for the modular frame you already have automated?

[vestal wharf]

Reinforced Iron Plate is automated, it's 10/min

I have got a lot of stuff automated rn

Except the Modular Frame

and Smart Plating

[vast jungle]

the important question you should ask yourself is what Recipe you want to use...

if you go with the Default Recipe, you could take 3 RIPs/min, add some Iron Rods and you would get 2 ModFrames/min

the only recipe that is more efficient on RIPs would need Steel Pipes... so it might not be useful for you

[vestal wharf]

I don't have any alternate recipes rn

[green mango]

With only T2 unlocked he won't have that yet

[vestal wharf]

Tier 3 and 4 is open but I didn't do anything there for production(steel) rn

Nvm, I just unlocked steel prodcution

[vast jungle]

thats why its not (yet) useful for him...

but just go with the default Modular Frame recipe and make a single machine building them into a Container... you can worry about larger scale production later when you are sure what recipe you want to use

[proven sphinx]

is there some math to how much an extra locomotive helps when adding one ?

if my train goes 85 km/h uphill with 1 loco, how much speed will it gain with an extra?

[vast jungle]

how many wagons you have behind the locomotive?

[proven sphinx]

atm i got 4

and im running shuttle setup so 4 wagons and a loco

[vast jungle]

then its most likely the incline... more locomotives wont make it faster

so you are already at "max speed"... which can be quite fast "downhill" 😉

[proven sphinx]

x) so an extra loco wont help me get the time spent one way go down ?

[vast jungle]

one locomotive every four wagons should be enough

if you have more than 4 wagons, add another locomotive for every four wagons

[paper python]

Can someone help me design Steel Beam + Encased Steel Beam factory here?

[red plover]

https://u4.satisfactorytools.com/production?share=j7rCZaMM7URpsuphFjdW

This website will be your best friend

[paper python]

I mean

the spot placement

not the calculation

I mean, I don't know the way to make it less conveyor

as Limestone spot is pretty far from the Iron + Coal spot

[red plover]

Are you familiar with a "manifold"? It's a building technique many on this server use to help them organize their factories

Here's an introduction: https://satisfactory.fandom.com/wiki/Manifold

[paper python]

Ah, I didn't plan to do large scale one, I'm just casual player

[frosty owl]

I think you got plenty enough space. Just help yourself out a lot with watchtowers and decide wether you wanna start laying things by the end-product (assemblers first) or by your inputs (foundries first)
Always remember to leave enough space between machines' rows for belts (you know how compact you like them) and I suggest grouping the machines in groups, so you you a reason to separate them to add details and ease of movement (also possibility to move around belts)

[fringe crow]

Manifold is Bestifold.

[proven sphinx]

i need some help, i made this balancer to deliver the equal amount to each of my 4 train stations, but i figured out i need 2 extra wagons, how best could i make a balancer splitting those 5 belts ( 2x780, 2x600 and a 300 ) so that they deliver about 510 to each station 6 stations instead of 4 ?

[old ember]

What's everyones feeling on the sloppy alumina alt?

Seems to be a toss up between getting more aluminium for your bauxite, but costing more quartz.

[muted crypt]

I've been seeing a lot of people saying it's good.

But maybe I'm just misinterpreting conversations.

[gusty nexus]

i prefer the alts that let you cut quartz out of the equation

because you would otherwise have to import quartz in order to properly optimize your aluminum production

and sometimes simplifying the production process is as, or more, valuable than maximizing production amounts

[icy sun]

what's the most efficient way to do biomass generators pre-coal? Just build as many as i need together in a convenient spot, connect them all to a main power grid and keep them fed?

[oblique hollow]

Thats just about the only one, yes. Dont spread them out

[barren quartz]

ive always just speedrun for coal, dropped biomass gens when they were needed in one little spot

[icy sun]

cool, ty

[river night]

i still have my biomass up just because it doesnt run anyway since its the only power that regulates itself, a small buffer if i over-use again 😄

[red plover]

Power storages automate that too, when you unlock them

[river night]

i know, but i didnt get aroudn to building those yet

[oblique hollow]

Then get to it! Youre wastin valuable MW here! ⏲️

[river night]

my new stator plant is online now, so that problems is out of the way

i guess i could build my first power substation

[bleak coral]

Given the same amount of quartz and the same amount of bauxite sloppy gets you more aluminum ingots. The extra silica you get from the other recipes doesnt make up for getting less scrap from the bauxite.

[old ember]

That was kinda where I was leaning. Particularly since I've got the cheap silica alt.

Thanks everyone 💪

[deep root]

I'm still having trouble justifying using the silica

[red plover]

Then don't! Play the game your way. You may weigh certain cost / benefit scenarios differently than other players, and that's okay

[deep root]

I'm not here to tell people not to use it!

Just sharing my opinion

Quartz is more valuable to me in my current game stage than bauxite, so I'll use a little more bauxite to get my aluminum

Plus quartz is so far away from bauxite its just a hassle lol

[old ember]

I've got quartz and bauxite pretty near each other - though iritatingly there's no limestone there 🙁

[frosty owl]

At this point, why not just feed each belt into a freight and balance on the unload side?

[bleak coral]

Aldo you could do the same thing there but use all 3 outputs from the splitters instead if just two

[proven sphinx]

i split each 780 into 3 and each 600 into 3, then i took the last 300 and merged into the 2x 600 belts

[frosty owl]

So you wanna keep the belts as they are now on that side?

[proven sphinx]

then put all the 12 belts into each their input in 6 x ISC , then i took 6 belts as output , i wont fill up a mk5 belt anyways , so no need to fill up the stations with anything else but that

[frosty owl]

Confused face
Well... If you wanna have 510 for each station, you can get that number with 270+120+120 it's not a terrible split to make

[proven sphinx]

i need to have a buffer when the train is loading, so i need the ISC's , so i did it like this, is it wrong ?

[calm flax]

You need to double belt between the buffer and the train station if you running max rate on the belt connected to it

[proven sphinx]

now im confused, why ?

[calm flax]

Train station pauses output for 30 seconds. So if you have a 480 belts connected and your running 480 it can't do 480 constantly. So you need a 2nd belt so when its on your doing more than 480

[proven sphinx]

thats why i have a ISC as a buffer

[frosty owl]

I think he got that already 👍 (Lund explained it before)

[calm flax]

seems odd way to do it 🙂 cause you don't have 1 you have like 6?

[frosty owl]

But I gtg now, will come back later if the issue is still "open" 😆 GL

[proven sphinx]

1 buffer for each station ?

[calm flax]

Well that depends. on inputs and output and train travel time duration of what you need

Most of the time for a single 780 feed you can get away with 1-3 stations (travel time) and 1 ISC

[proven sphinx]

my main goal is that the wagons dont get 100% full, but the loading station doesnt run dry, that way my drills will be providing 100% work all the time

ive got a total input of 3060 bauxide per min to my train station

[calm flax]

So dependig on travel time you need like 4 or 8 stations. and 4xISC's

assuming you have mk5 belts 🙂

[proven sphinx]

as i've heard the top output of a ISC is random and the lower one is prioritized, that means the stations will not fill up at a equal speed, wich can result in 5 stations getting full and 3 not, thats why i want to have each ISC have the same input, cause that way i will get that input as an output to each station

[calm flax]

yeah that doesn't happen....

If you have an ISC and connect belts to bot output both belts come out full

asusming the container never runs dry

[icy sun]

what's a tidy way to route a power line through a wall into a building? I may just not have unlocked the piece yet...

[calm flax]

@icy sun power connectors unlocked in shop

[icy sun]

ty

oh! the double ones, rad

[proven sphinx]

at some point when i manage to get enough flow the buffers will just fill up when the loading stops, and then the stations will be the storage

[bleak coral]

One is the priority and one is the overflow. The priority one starts as the first one connected to belt, and then is chosen randomly only load. This only matters if you're trying to split the throughput using the ISC and the ISC isn't full. If it's full it'll just give max output to both belts. And the double outputs to the freight platforms means the both belts are going to same place anyway so any unreliablability or instability doesn't matter.

[calm flax]

If you have a 780/min feed you can just dasy chain the belts down the station.... until you have enough stations for that belts. With the first station being double belted to the isc

[fast urchin]

argh, now I found the problem why turbofuel was considered so useless by my calculation: in the data.json, all liquid energy values are divided by 1000

[frosty owl]

As long as you don't surpass the capacity of your trains (which depends on their timing) you can be sure that however many item/min are coming from the loading station will come out of the ISCs connected to the unload station ^^
480+270 come in? 750 will come out 👍

[vestal wharf]

Why are pipes pain in the a*s ,_,

[bleak coral]

fluids are weird even when simplified

[lament jolt]

So I have a Coal Power question: with no shards and 4 normal coal mines using MK 2 miners, what is the maximum number of coal generators it can support? I have Mk 3 belts.

[bleak coral]

coal generators need 15 coal/min to run

[supple mural]

72 generators

4x270/15 = 72

[lament jolt]

Wait...the node is 120 on mk2...how does that give 72 generators over all 4?

[supple mural]

overclock the miners

[lament jolt]

I don't have enough shards for that, been slowly building a base and just got to 5/6 tier. I know I'll have to build a steel factory and computer factory so I can get furl gens working...have 10 coal plants now. With my small base so far, max consumption is around 560mw. Computer factory I have no idea how much...but I know it will need more than the 750mw I can produce now.

oops, meant fuel, not furl lol

[supple mural]

just explore for fifteen minutes, youll find 12 shard's worth in no time

[lament jolt]

Hmm...

I also have tapped a pure coal node, though it may end up being the main coal source for my WIP steel factory. It is about 230 meters from my base which has 4 pure iron and two pure copper close by

[obsidian sluice]

if you're where I think you are, try exploring further west! you might find a whole bunch of normal coal nodes in that direction my bad I'm bad at reading

[supple mural]

i think he already found them

if youre talking about the water area in the north

[obsidian sluice]

yeah hahaha

[supple mural]

or possibly the coal lagoon?

[lament jolt]

Yeah, got about 16 fluffy hogs...took me some time to clear it out

[obsidian sluice]

that has some amazing pure coal nodes, but I think it'll be an even longer fight

[supple mural]

huh?

[lament jolt]

Upper north biome by the two quartz pure nodes

[supple mural]

i thought the lagoon was all normal nodes

ah, so not the lagoon

[obsidian sluice]

oh there's 3 pure coal nodes near-ish to the northern forest

that's where I went after maxing out the 1 pure and 4 normal nodes for steel and power

[lament jolt]

This is a very rough setup... I haven't beem going for efficiency or clean layouts...

[obsidian sluice]

building clean factories on foundations comes later 😛

[lament jolt]

Oh I have foundation blocks. I just turned them off for this

[obsidian sluice]

I personally didn't bother with foundations until I started working on oil products with alternate recipes

[lament jolt]

My power network is sad...need to unlock the mk2 poles but I think I want to get Fuel Gens unlocked first

[obsidian sluice]

the Mk 2 poles are more of a quality of life improvement haha

like, you'll get by with Mk 1 poles, but once you upgrade, you never wanna go back to Mk 1 poles

have you stumbled upon caterium nodes yet?

[supple mural]

mk 1 poles should just not exist

just mk2 poles need to exist

[lament jolt]

I have one marked, forgot to bomb it. I have been sinking stuff to quick buy things I don't have production lines for. My last save file I unlocked industrial things by way of buying two stacks each of rubber and plastic

[obsidian sluice]

I feel like Mk 1 poles exist to remind you to manage your power cables

[south warren]

Best way to divide a conveyor belt in 16?

[obsidian sluice]

1 --> 2 --> 4 --> 8 --> 16?

[wind spade]

manifold*

[south warren]

but the splitter has only 3 outputs

[wind spade]

@south warren like this

--S--S--S--S--S--S--...
  |  |  |  |  |  |
  X  X  X  X  X  X

[obsidian sluice]

manifolds are cleaner, but splitters are more efficient (initially)

[wind spade]

they are actually the same efficient

[obsidian sluice]

you could just not use one of the outputs! that way the splitter just splits it into 2 belts and alternates between them

[south warren]

big brain

and big mess but i dont care xdd

[obsidian sluice]

okay yeah that's true, they're just as efficient after you fill up the inputs

the only use-case for balancers is probably balancing train car inputs? like if you have 4 nodes filling 3 cars, and you wanna fill them up evenly

[wind spade]

that's where you fill 4 cars instead of 3 😛

[obsidian sluice]

space constraints 😛 I couldn't fit 4 cars into that coal lake in the SW corner of the map

[topaz hedge]

utoh.

[wind spade]

because then you get exact numbers at the other end as well and you don't have to hope that the balancer does it's job correctly

map has pretty much infinite vertical space, I doubt that you really couldn't fit the extra car 😛

[obsidian sluice]

(also I made a really pretty 4:3 balancer that looked like lasagna, and damn I was gonna use it)

[bleak coral]

I'm adding something to the clockspeed page on the wiki, do y'all understand what I mean by this:

The formula for finding the clockspeed to set a power generator to for a desired production rate is:

(clock speed) = 100 * (production rate / 100)^1.3
where clock speed is a float between one and 250, and
production rate is the percentage of full capacity you want to run the generator at. 

[topaz hedge]

Always build train stations bigger than you need or leave the space to expand them ^^

[wind spade]

you got your formula wrong

[bleak coral]

it pasted wrong

[wind spade]

ah nvm you fixed it

[obsidian sluice]

a worked example might help readers?

[wind spade]

you also don't need "at full capacity" now since they run at full capacity anyway

[supple mural]

no i think full capacity is fine there

[bleak coral]

oh I missed that, copied from previous section

I'll go ahead and remove that from both

[obsidian sluice]

I gotta tear my factory down for U4, so I'm definitely building in extra capacity for my stations! 😄

[bleak coral]

I'm also updating the page for U4

[wind spade]

otherwise it looks good and understandable, but I'm maybe the wrong person to judge that 😛

[bleak coral]

oh wait, no I mean full capacity as in like 66% of full capacity

[wind spade]

also, you can't have OC between 0 and 1?

like 0.5% oc?

[bleak coral]

you can

[obsidian sluice]

my factory kept starting and stopping when I completed it, and I think it's because I produced precisely enough between factories, so there was no margin for error

[supple mural]

then that's not full capacity? what even does full capacity mean?

[obsidian sluice]

like if I produce 150 AI limiters in Factory A and Factory B consumes 150 AI limiters

[supple mural]

in a game where nothing is at "full capcity" by default

[wind spade]

not sure how much "float" is used in generic english, I almost exclusively use it in code, but maybe "floating point number" or just "decimal number" (or "decimal number with up to 4 decimal digits precision") would be better

[supple mural]

because you can always overclock

[obsidian sluice]

so I'm just gonna produce a little excess at each factory and sink overflow inputs

[supple mural]

just define the "production rate" in that equation as normal production at 100% clock rate i guess

[bleak coral]

maybe I should say normal rate, because I mean like where you want run say 0.75 generators so it would be 75% of the normal rate

[supple mural]

because full capacity is a little amgiguous

[bleak coral]

ok

[supple mural]

yeah, normal rate would work

[wind spade]

0.75 gens isn't 75% of normal rate 🙂

[bleak coral]

that's what the formula is for

[supple mural]

oh right

[bleak coral]

75% clockspeed generator is not 75% of the normal rate

[supple mural]

bleh, why

[wind spade]

balance

[bleak coral]

it's bad balance

[wind spade]

yeah I know, but in your sentence it seemed like you are talking about it wrong

because I mean like where you want run say 0.75 generators so it would be 75% of the normal rate

[obsidian sluice]

why not tell readers "if you need 75% of a fuel generator, you clock it at 100*0.75^1.3 = 68.80 clock rate"?

[bleak coral]

that's what I'm trying to get across

[wind spade]

yeah, no arguing there, but I don't think there's much better way to balance them without touching fuel efficiency, which I wouldn't like at all

[obsidian sluice]

so if the reader's math doesn't get them 68.80, they've got it wrong, and they need to read it again

[topaz hedge]

Why not have a different overclocking menu for generators alltogeather that's 1-200 and not 1-250

[wind spade]

(or actually I would like it, but pretty much no other person would, so 🤷‍♂️ )

[obsidian sluice]

oh no, I meant it as: why not give the readers an example to make sure they've understood you?

[bleak coral]

oh, sure I can do that

[supple mural]

could just make it so that the clockspeed of a generator functions exactly the same as how machines work; clocking up to 200% means double power output and fuel consumption instead of teh random number it is now

[bleak coral]

I'd be okay with this, just as long as we can have clockspeed = production rate, that's my main pain point

I don't care if they limit it to 200% max

[wind spade]

then there would be no downside to overclocking a gen

[obsidian sluice]

the exponent mostly serves to discourage you from overclocking power plants and to push you towards building more instead

[supple mural]

i dont get it

it just serves to confuse new players

and anyone who wants to save space will do so

[topaz hedge]

That's what I was thinking, you'd still need 3 shards to reach 200% but it'll match up better to it's production/consumption rate better than what it is now.

[supple mural]

so why make the numbers hard?

[bleak coral]

you either understand it and can use, or don't and build wrong

I don't like that

and it needs outside information or sitting there and guessing until it's right

[topaz hedge]

Mark wants us to have messed up numbers. and horrible ratios lol

[supple mural]

not to mention that last i checked the GUI of the fuel gen will actually give you two different generation rates based on the clock speed

[obsidian sluice]

let's say I gotta build 100 fuel gens, but I don't wanna. I could instead overclock 50 fuel gens to 250% to achieve the same effect, but in saving space, I use a ton of power shards (50 fuelgens*3 = 150 shards, or a shitload of slugs)

[wind spade]

overclocking is a tradeoff, you add one relatively common item that has no other use to a machine and get free boost from it. So it has to have some disadvantages, for producing machines it's more power needed, but for gens, you don't want to touch fuel efficiency because that would suck for players, so I think diminishing returns (don't get full boost) is a good way to do it

[obsidian sluice]

so the exponent forces you to decide if you want space or resource efficiency

[bleak coral]

uh it doesn't burn fuel at 250%

the efficiency is the same

[supple mural]

fuel to energy is 1:1 at all clock rates

[wind spade]

yeah, the OC GUI is wrong, you have to look at top left GUI, which is correct

[obsidian sluice]

ohhhh

[bleak coral]

yeah the only thing it does is do a lower production rate cap, and make the numbers weird

[supple mural]

still though, bad ratios arent a crazy disadvantage

[iron smelt]

in satisfactory you have enough space.. so the only thing you need to overlock are miners

for every other thing .. just place more machines

[topaz hedge]

horrible practice. overclock everything!

[iron smelt]

xD

[obsidian sluice]

slugs are a limited commodity though? (unless you have a doggo farm, but even then, it's inconsistent)

[topaz hedge]

everything that isn't a power generator lol

[supple mural]

yeah, which i think is enough to nerf sharding power generators

[wind spade]

well they are renewable, so 🤷‍♂️

[supple mural]

you dont need generators to work differently than every other power shardable building

[wind spade]

my point still stands, without touching fuel efficiency, there's no good other way to somehow add a disadvantage to generators

[supple mural]

250% should do the same thinng in a gen as everywhere else

you take 2.5x in and put 2.5x out

[topaz hedge]

See nuclear powerplant :p

[wind spade]

but where's the disadvantage in this?

[supple mural]

using power shards in generators instead of in machines

[wind spade]

that one does 2x in and 2x out at 250%

but it's already better to use shards in generators now

[supple mural]

the only "disadvantage" is bad ratios

[topaz hedge]

Yes, and the nuclear powerplant cannot overclock over 200% because... water

[supple mural]

well.. yeah

[wind spade]

production machines are the worst target for OCing already. Gens are better in this case, so you don't want to buff them even further

[topaz hedge]

So you're saying my 1 smelter to 1 foundry solid steel is a bad target for overclock 😮

[obsidian sluice]

👀 I overclocked all my production machines for ficsmas

[supple mural]

its just completely unintuitive for generator overclocking to be the way it is

[wind spade]

the same way as it's unintuitive that OCed machines take more power 🤷‍♂️

[topaz hedge]

get more power and get gud.

[wind spade]

and if they fix the OC display after the game being 2 years out and add a note in the UI, then it wouldn't cause too much confusion

[supple mural]

ah, so when i overclock a smelter to 250% it runs at 2.05 times the speed of 100% clock speed?

[topaz hedge]

No.

[wind spade]

I'm saying that out of 3 possible groups of OC targets (miners, machines, gens), machines are the worst in terms of what you get vs what you lose

[supple mural]

duh. it was for arguments sake

i know how OCing works in everything other than generators :P

[topaz hedge]

They just need to give the power generator UI a bit of love.

[wind spade]

how is it intuitive that if I OC a machine to 250%, it eats 433% of power?

[supple mural]

also, im not arguing that generators are good or bad targets for OCing

[supple mural]

goe faster, use more power, makes sense

[wind spade]

makes sense, but is it intuitive? no

[supple mural]

every method in any game of increasing a machine's speed works like that /shrug

[topaz hedge]

I think that's the supposed tradeoff... it's not a nice number, like 250% or 300% more power.

[wind spade]

except for all the games that doesn't 🤷‍♂️

[supple mural]

what makes gens unintuitive as they are now is that they are wholly unique in not changing their output ratio to match the clockspeed

that's what im complaining about

[wind spade]

after they finally fix the OC UI, then most of this would be nullified anyway

since you would be able to just put the target power output in the thing and it'll give you the OC % automatically (and correctly)

[supple mural]

hm. that is true

there's still no good way for it to make sense if they keep the exponential scaling though

itll be easier to use, but still wont make sense, because what a shard is worth will be different in a generator than in a production machine

in every machine that doesnt produce power, one shard is 50% increase in production, up to three

but in generators thats not how it works

[wind spade]

well generators are not production machines 🤷‍♂️

it just behaves differently, since it's a different kind of building

and you still haven't proposed any good way to nerf OCing of gens if you let them have their linear scaling 😉

[supple mural]

why is it necessary to nerf them?

[wind spade]

because devs like their game to be balanced, as they proved over last 3 big content updates

[supple mural]

how is it balanced to have generators work the way they do?

[wind spade]

the disadvantage of OCing a power gen is not being able to use 100% of the boost you'd get from shard

[supple mural]

why is a disadvantage necessary?

[wind spade]

because otherwise it's free gain

[supple mural]

its still a free gain

just less of a free gain

[wind spade]

which is the disadvantage 😉

[supple mural]

if free gains are a concern, why not get rid of OCing in generators?

[wind spade]

all recipes ingame are balanced to be a tradeoff between something, some use more space and more power, some more resources, some have worse ratios, some use less common items, etc. It's player's choice to go one path

[wind spade]

I'd be more than happy with that, but devs don't seem to want to do that

[supple mural]

so, youre telling me that its better to make a machine unintuitive so that it works differently than other buildings... because then power shards would be too good?

[wind spade]

it's unintuitive because the UI is broken

if it would work correctly, it would be fine

[supple mural]

i dont really mind if power shards were only worth 33.333% clock boost in a generator, i just want the clock rate to match the change in output and input rates

[wind spade]

and I just want people to stop OCing gens, but here we are 🤷‍♂️

[supple mural]

rather i should say, a 1% change from 100 to 101% should yield the same change in power as 199 to 200%

if the price needed to pay for that is a loss in fuel efficiency at faster clocks, ill take it

[wind spade]

that's not good, as you could gain fuel efficiency in less than 100% clock speeds

[supple mural]

just like every other machine in the game

[wind spade]

that's not fuel efficiency

[supple mural]

i can run a full turbo motor factory off of one fuel gen if i downclock everything to 1% clock rate

[wind spade]

also the same thing can be said for producing machines, why does power consumption at 100%->101% increases less than at 249%->250%?

[supple mural]

(hyperbole, obviosuly you need the drills to be at max clock)

[bleak coral]

oh this is still going on?

[supple mural]

but you see, the production rate of the machine is consistent accross clock rates

the prodcution rate of generators is not consistent accross clock rates

[wind spade]

power is also an input 🤷‍♂️

you can even generalise it to something like this:
OCing a building changes every input/output linearly, except for power, which changes exponentially

and that's true for any building and gen

[supple mural]

doesnt account for the fact that fuel is used linearly with power generation

and at that point changing that statement to account for fuel gens makes it no longer general accross all machines

[wind spade]

fuel usage per power can be considered a "recipe"

1 coal -> 300 MJ

and everything is still valid

[supple mural]

every other recipe increases its production in linearity with clock speed, not an exponential on clock speed

if you include power as part of the recipe, then in every other machine the opposite is true

[wind spade]

gen produces certain amount of MW (which is power, so that scales exponentially) per second. Fuel gets burned according to max production, so that doesn't scale with OC at all

there's nothing like "burn time of fuel"

[topaz hedge]

Yup, I don't really discuss with the greenie too much anymore, I've figured out that he enjoys it a bit too much X3

[wind spade]

so that doesn't scale with OC at all

[bleak coral]

it's just unnecessary complications IMO, it's not an interesting tradeoff like with production

[wind spade]

I don't mind long discussions, just tell me if I'm overdoing it I guess 🤷‍♂️

[wind spade]

I assume that's because of lack of better solution for that 🤷‍♂️

[bleak coral]

like I've said before, I don't mind the balance of only being able to go up to 200% production rate for generators, but the nonlinear nature of it and it not matching up with clockspeed isn't interesting and confuses new players

[supple mural]

does a solution count as bad if the only other solutions are also bad? 🤔

[topaz hedge]

No no, you're fine. I don't mind.

[supple mural]

thats what i think as well

[bleak coral]

go ahead take 3 slugs for 200%, just let me know what's going on

[wind spade]

if it's best out of the possible solutions, then I'd say no, it's fine

[bleak coral]

without having to go find a formula on the wiki

[deep root]

Why couldn't the solution be max 200% clock on generators? Yeah I'm putting in my 2 cents on this conversation

[topaz hedge]

fills a ISC with powershards on scim I'll do just that lund 😄

[wind spade]

I think that would lead to the same "why can't I OC to 250% if I have 3 slugs in" questions as the current "why doesn't it produce 250% power"

[bleak coral]

honestly probably because this was quicker than creating an overclock UI specifically for power generators

[topaz hedge]

That's how I feel too, cap it at 200% and fix the UI so it's correct and stops all the confusion

[bleak coral]

there's always questions, but that's at least an easy one to answer compared to how it is now

and their setups wouldn't be broken

[supple mural]

imo, the solution that would be most consistent with OC behavior in all other OCable machines would be to make generators produce less power per fuel input

[deep root]

But... Each machine UI is different anyway...

[supple mural]

as you increase their clock

[wind spade]

well anyone who OCes a gen deserves to have their setups broken 🤔

[wind spade]

the oc part at the bottom is a reused module

[topaz hedge]

They're always going to ask why their coal generators don't work

[supple mural]

and yes, yes, that would mean infinite power, by making 50000 gens and uncerclocking them

but youd need to dedicate so much space to gens it would be meaningless

same thing with regular production buildings

you can underclock 50000 to 1% and use no power, but you need 50000 machines

[bleak coral]

nah, if it was inefficient to do it even less people would want to do it, and everyone would discourage it even more than they do now

I don't want to make the option bad

[deep root]

So you're telling me the code references the module for every machine, instead of the module is input into every machine individually?

[topaz hedge]

Space really isn't an issue. the issue and the reason WHY i overclock is it cuts down the time spent building

[wind spade]

I assume they'd rather keep fuel efficiency at 100% all the time and have weird stuff happening with OC, instead of your proposed solution (at least I'd feel that way)

[topaz hedge]

fewer machines, fewer belts to connect. and sometimes nicer ratios.

[bleak coral]

plus you need to underclock for some certain setups cause the numbers don't work out right, especially fuel/turbofuel

and it'd be bad to punish people for not doing whole number generators

[topaz hedge]

I normally build 1-2 fuel gens less for fuel setups.

[supple mural]

if you view miners as backwards generators, they take power and make a resource, the higher the clock, the more MJ it takes to make an item, so in generators, which take something and make power, it makes sense for diminishing returns as you overclock

[wind spade]

I think that CSS is a good enough company to not duplicate a code for each different UI, when the OC module is the same across all of them (and I also assume that it's why the calculations are broken on gens, because they use the same formula, instead of using the correct one for gens)

[topaz hedge]

if it says I can support 145 fuel gens, I'll build 144.

[bleak coral]

btw I finished updating the clockspeed page: https://satisfactory.fandom.com/wiki/Clock_speed

the power generator part is the section I changed

[supple mural]

even if the clock gui was fixed to show the proper power generation rate, it would still have the issue of 250% oc =/= 2.5x production rate

[deep root]

But your argument supports them actually making a different ui for generators. Being that they are a good enough company and all

[wind spade]

and machines still have the issue of 250% oc =/= 250% power consumption 🤷‍♂️

[wind spade]

why would they duplicate a whole UI module if the only thing they need to change is one formula? that would be handled in the module's code directly, based on classtype of the machine

[supple mural]

well yes, you can say that that's inconsistent

[bleak coral]

btw anyone who doesn't feel how greeny does ( 😛 ) here's the QA post for it:https://questions.satisfactorygame.com/post/606b7372aa0ba107e3256b33

[deep root]

"oh hey the ui on generators doesn't work out right, we are a good enough company to fix it"

[supple mural]

but using the fact that a machine is inconsistent as an argument for why something else should be inconsistent as well is rather silly

[deep root]

As you said, they are a good enough company

[wind spade]

tbh I reported it recently and they didn't seem to know about it being wrong 🤷‍♂️ so maybe people just don't bother reporting it

[supple mural]

not to mention that they are inconsistent in completely different ways

[deep root]

They see an inconsistency and want to make it correct

[wind spade]

that's not an argument that gens have to be inconsistent as well. That's an argument for "why don't you want to change this inconsistency as well, why are you only bothered by gens"

[bleak coral]

damn this has been going on for an hour now
strong feelings on this one

[wind spade]

it still is nothing against steam vs epic or U2 screw out of ingots discussion

[bleak coral]

U2 screw out of ingots?

[supple mural]

production machines use exp more power with more clock, meaning you get less out for you input, while gens, you get out the same as what you put in at all clock speeds, but instead of production rate linearly scaling with clock speed, you get the exp less per shard, unlike other machines, where clock rate is 1:1 with production speed

[wind spade]

U2 had alt recipe that allowed you to skip the rod step, removing a machine but not changing any ratio. But U2 screws were horrible and no screw recipe was even remotely good. But people still insisted on that screw recipe being the best, even if they could pick iron wire (at that point way better than current iron wire) or stitched plates

[deep root]

This though is a trade off. You save space but use more power. This is consistent with some alt recipes, having a trade off.

[supple mural]

its impossible to make a generalized statement about power and input/output because its inconsistent across the board

[wind spade]

tradeoff for gens is that you can't use the slug to it's full potential 🤷‍♂️

[wind spade]

my statement is consistent 🤷‍♂️

[bleak coral]

greeny would be happy if we couldn't OC gens at all

[supple mural]

its not though

[topaz hedge]

I find out odd they didn't know that the power generator ui for overclocking was wrong o.O

[bleak coral]

yeah there's a few posts about it on the QA site

[supple mural]

if you consider power as part of the recipe, gens and production machines act dfferently

[deep root]

This would be okay... If it was like this in other applications of shards

[topaz hedge]

but U2 screws... maybe that's why there's so many people who hate screws and refuse to use them, even if it's easier

[bleak coral]

meh, screws still aren't that great

[wind spade]

it is.

• any recipe's resource input/output scales linearly
• any machines power input/output scales exponentially
• any fuel has 100% energy efficiency at all times

[keen flame]

I use "Whatever has the greatest resource efficiency"

[deep root]

What is a resource though...

[wind spade]

anything but power, that is used as part of a recipe

[keen flame]

Anything but power

lmao

[deep root]

Why is power not a resource?

[keen flame]

Power is a "limiter". It's designed to slow your production of actual items

[wind spade]

because you can't fit it on a belt or in a pipe? 🤷‍♂️

[supple mural]

machines and gens work differently
1: clock rate to output scaling is different between the two
2: power per recipe is different depending on the clock rate in a machine, while it is unchanging with clock rate in gens

also, why do you not consider power as a resource?

[deep root]

Power lines are a "pipe"

[topaz hedge]

I think power isn't a resource in the sense that you can't produce anything from it... apparently dark matter didn't make it into the game with the atom smasher xD

[supple mural]

power is just as much a resource as anything else

[topaz hedge]

But they are not :3

[deep root]

You produce EVERYTHING from power

[wind spade]

1 that's why the statement differs between "power" and "resources"
2 gens don't have recipes, so that's invalid

[supple mural]

you literally used gens having recipes as an earlier example, so your own argument of why input is the same as output across clock rates in gens is invalid

[deep root]

They have a recipe! Fuel in, power out... Just because you can't choose which type of fuel doesn't mean there isn't a recipe

[supple mural]

^

[topaz hedge]

from the strict game sense point of view, we're saying it's not. irl, power is definitely a resource, and there no arguement

[wind spade]

but there isn't 😛

[keen flame]

^ Basically what I've been saying. I talked about this a lot on the plutonium threads, but power is not classified as a resource because of the way it consumes resources without actually producing any items in return - under the context that "producing items" is the main point of the game

[supple mural]

if the power used/produced by a recipe scales exponentially with clock speed, and the solid/liquid resources used scales linearly with clock speed, then gens are inconsitent on multiple fronts with all other OCable buildings @wind spade

[topaz hedge]

I can produce 10 motors a miunte from 2000MW or I can produce 20 motors a minute from 500MW, two different amounts of power, vastly different production rates.. power is not a resource.

[supple mural]

power is a resource

you use it to make materials

with miners and extractors

[deep root]

You have to provide power to every machine somehow... So power lines become the belt/pipe

[keen flame]

Power is a roadblock. It is something you are actively fighting against and limited by while producing items - it is not used to produce items

[supple mural]

can you say that again, but slowly?

[wind spade]

my statement:
for any building, item (any solid or fluid) input/output used in it's recipe scales linearly with OC %, while power requirement/production scales exponentially. Any fuel's energy efficiency is 100%, no matter the OC.

works for both gens and machines

and for the recipe in a gen, I said "you can imagine as if it was a recipe", there isn't a recipe really and they work differently from code's perspective

[supple mural]

no, it fails when you consider that miners, when producing coal, use more energy to produce coal when with a higher oc

miners are generators in reverse

they take power and make a resource

and have no selectable recipe

[deep root]

Okay, this makes sense to me then. Power scales exponentially... I'm good

[keen flame]

If you have enough iron ore to produce 100 rotors, you should be able to produce 100 rotors. But you'll eventually run out of power if you're only on bionmass or something. You have to either work around that limitation by underclocking, or remove that limit by dedicating more resources to it. But power itself does not actually contribute to any item production - it only slows you down when you hit the limit, and then is ignored for a while

[supple mural]

say that again but even slower

[keen flame]

which part are you confused on

[wind spade]

well if you want to include miners, you can just make exception for them 🤷‍♂️

[supple mural]

then your statement is not general 😉

[wind spade]

it works for the two groups you have issues with 🤷‍♂️

for any non-miner building, item (any solid or fluid) input/output used in it's recipe scales linearly with OC %, while power requirement/production scales exponentially. Any fuel's energy efficiency is 100%, no matter the OC.

there, general statement

[supple mural]

then why does a gen not use 2.5x the coal in to produce 433% power out?

[deep root]

But they're is no recipe for miners... So you don't need a statement for them

[supple mural]

there kinda is, its what you place them one

[wind spade]

why would it? it's exponential, but nobody said what the exponent is

[topaz hedge]

But yeah.. power isn't a resource.. you burn resources to make power, but the power itself isn't one. :3

[supple mural]

the part where you say power is not a resource, but it is obviously consumed when crafting a aprt

[wind spade]

that's energy what you're talking about, not power

power is never consumed

[topaz hedge]

power is consumed regardless if use it or not. IRL generators consume energy just to make power, even if you're not using it

[keen flame]

Every part requires a static amount of items to create. power is variable, and isn't consumed - you just simply run out of space after a bit

[supple mural]

while youre right, in this conversation weve been using power and energy almost interchangeably

[wind spade]

I haven't 🤔

and I don't want to keep correcting people 🤷‍♂️

since there's already enough messages

[supple mural]

eh, fair enough

[supple mural]

but still, by your definition, solid/liquid resource useage scales with clock speed, which it clearly doesnt in generators

[deep root]

Oh but if we want to make a general statement about power scaling exponentially it has to use the same formula as machines (it could be in exact reverse though)

[wind spade]

anyway TL;DR:

• if you're unhappy with something, go to QA and post/upvote
• if you want my opinion, read above
• you won't change my opinion by repeating arguments
• also while I'm not happy with current state, I don't consider it more unintuitive than e.g. exponential power consumption

[wind spade]

there's no general formula even for gens, some gens (cough nuclear power plant) have different exponents

[supple mural]

eh, it do be opinion

[wind spade]

that's why I didn't include the exact exponent in the statement, but I could say "scales exponentially (exponent being defined per-building in game data)" to be more correct

[deep root]

That's where it could become unintuitive then.

[keen flame]

I'm sitting somewhere between the two camps personally. Though I think from a usability/game design perspective it makes no sense to have the exponential scaling on gens, but it makes perfect sense for production machines

[wind spade]

generators don't have recipes and item input in gens depends on produced power

[supple mural]

fuel usage, in terms of power, energy, whatever, is 1:1 at any clock speed, while this is untrue in any other building thats not a gen

[wind spade]

because any other buildings don't use fuel?

[keen flame]

@wind spade consider:
"Resource usage scales linearly with production output, while power production/consumptions scales exponentially"

that solves GoHD's argument

[deep root]

If power scales exponentially, then intuitively I think it scales by the same exponent for every machine. In this case it would be machines consume power when overclocking at an exponential rate "opposite" to generators producing it

[wind spade]

yeah I was writing something like that already

[keen flame]

lol. we keep ending up on the same page

[deep root]

I use opposite because I'm no math wiz and I don't know what the term would be

[wind spade]

@supple mural here's fixed version then, no miner exception

for any building, it's item output scales linearly, while it's power consumption/production rate scales exponentially
item inputs scale linearly with target output

[supple mural]

consider a miner, or a prodcution building, it takes a certain amount of energy to perform the crafting operation, this means that energy use per craft is increased exponentially

agreed?

[keen flame]

I like my version slightly better only because it doesn't have to specific between "item" output or otherwise

[keen flame]

Disagree. Miners have a resource input of "zero". zero is scaling linearly - 2.5 times zero just also happens to be zero

[frosty owl]

Greedy zero

[supple mural]

what im saying is, if clock speed changes the amount of energy required to produce something, then why does clock speed not do the same when producing energy?

[wind spade]

🤷‍♂️ I just finished writing mine, without modifying it. I kinda like yours, yeah

[deep root]

But it does...

[wind spade]

it's again energy vs power 😉

[supple mural]

explain what you mean by this

[keen flame]

because that would objectively break game balance. power shards would become far too powerful that way

plenty of other reasons too but that one is the most up front

[supple mural]

machiens take exponentially more energy input per craft when overclocked

correct?

while their output/input of non-energy resources scales linearly with clock speed

also correct?

as in, these are facts we can agree on, yes?

[wind spade]

gens have limit of how much power they can produce, while what they do is turning fuel's energy into electric energy
machines have a fixed amount of power needed to operate
they don't need any amount of energy per craft or anything similar.

[keen flame]

No, me and greeny both said "input resources scale linearly with output production"

as in - resource input isn't coupled to clock speed

[supple mural]

it is

[wind spade]

energy per craft is a weird variable anyway, as it scales with crafting speed and recipe time, so it depends on more variables

[wind spade]

not in any of our statements 😉

[keen flame]

Also this ^ Machines don't consume power - they just have a total power window within which they can operate

[supple mural]

do you mean i havent been stating that input is coupled to clock speed?

[wind spade]

input scales linearly with output

OCing only changes output

[supple mural]

oh wait

[wind spade]

and power

[keen flame]

input doesn't scale with clock speed - output scales with clock speed

[supple mural]

i read that as "your" ignore that

oops

[supple mural]

machines dont consume power?

[keen flame]

Machines don't consume power.

[topaz hedge]

something like that. Power (electricity) cannot be created, consumed, or destroyed. it can only flow. ^^

[wind spade]

machines consume energy

[keen flame]

power is not an item that is being produced, routed to machines, and then consumed

[wind spade]

power is energy per second

[keen flame]

power is an upper cap on the number of machines you can run, which individually erquire a set amount of power available to operate

[wind spade]

it's just indicator of how much energy goes through a wire

[topaz hedge]

energy can not be created or consumed or destroyed either XD

[wind spade]

convert sorry

[keen flame]

I should clarify: Greeny is explaining more in a real-world sense, I'm explaining more from a game design sense

same principles, different context

(as far as I can tell)

[supple mural]

sigh....

machines consume power over an interval of time to create an item

[wind spade]

yeah, I'm kinda using real world's physics, since they are in most cases the same as the game mechanics

[supple mural]

that's energy

[topaz hedge]

^^ sorry. really you've both got valid points.

[wind spade]

yeah but the time to create an item is another variable which you introduced

and that ALSO scales with OC

[supple mural]

and the time necessary to burn fuel is a factor youve ignored

¯_(ツ)_/¯

[wind spade]

because there's again nothing like burn time, there's only fuel's energy value and generators power production, the time to burn depends on those variables

[keen flame]

machines require a specific amount of power over a specific amount of time to produce an item. that amount of power scales inversely exponentially with the amount of time

[supple mural]

sounds about right

[keen flame]

Fuel burn tim,e is the resource input, with power produced being the production output

[keen flame]

fundamentally different from your statement though - I never said "consumed"

[wind spade]

it's kinda like how we have base units (SI) and derived units. I'm trying to use only "base" units (those defined by the game), because then the statement is simpler than if I'd have to include all the derived units (burn time, energy per craft, etc.) as well

[supple mural]

wait, you're saying that energy is not consumed when producing an item?

[keen flame]

Exactly

[supple mural]

blank stare

[keen flame]

if you have 100MW, and your machines use 40MW, you aren't left with 60MW - you're left with 100MW and 40MW being "used"

you still HAVE 100MW. it's just being allocated to machines instead of "free"

[wind spade]

technically the energy is converted from electrical to kinetic/heat, which in turn powers the machine/heats the furnace that then crafts/smelts the item

[supple mural]

example: you put one coal into a coal gen, you produce 75MW for 4 seconds
now, you also have a mchine that uses 75MW and has a crafting time of 4 seconds

[keen flame]

as opposed to something like ioron plates - if you have 100 iron plates, and consume 40 of them to make reinforced plates, you're left with 60 iron plates

[supple mural]

that means it takes 300MJ to make that item

[wind spade]

at that crafting speed

it's only true for 100% OC

[topaz hedge]

that's assuming the generator waits for seconds and consumes a coal. they don't. they are burning it at a steady rate.

[supple mural]

so, energy useage per craft changes with clock speed?

[topaz hedge]

yes..

[keen flame]

that's what we've been saying

[topaz hedge]

MJ/item can go up or down with clockspeed

[frosty owl]

Clock something to 50%, suddenly you need much less MJ for the same item (half production time, but less then half the MW consumption)

[keen flame]

A higher clock speed means you have to allocate more of your available power

[wind spade]

energy usage per craft is a derived variable, you shouldn't calculate it from clock speed, but rather from energy consumption (scales exponentially) and from recipe craft time (which is derived from machine output rate, which scales linearly with OC)

[supple mural]

this right here

this is why i dont agree with your generalization

(not you vencam, Greeny and Rowan)

[muted crypt]

are we arguing about power? can I join?

[supple mural]

sure i guess

[muted crypt]

someone tl;dr me lol