math-and-meta

[subtle elk]

wait no my name its changing

[sacred pilot]

Name of your sex tape

[versed violet]

This one managed to squeeze 5 conveyor lifts into 1x1 shaft (walls). Is this max, or is it possible to push in more?
Nothing overlaps (although getting in and out is nearly impossible, have to squeeze between lifts or through corner)
Design is repeatable, so can go up ad infinitum.

[signal nimbus]

Four side by side on row 1, another four on row two, another four on row three. I think you can fit 12 in that space if you need to.

Vertically, anyway. 8 in a 1 wall space.

[orchid lark]

I think i understood the problem. I used a biomass generator to extract 30 40 coal to kickstart the process. But miners are far from the area and the coal is coming with a mk1 belt. So basically my generators dont run until the coal has travelled the distance but the miners constantly work so new coal ia being made but not being consumed till it reaches the gen therefore the clog. And i dont think u can remove the clog anytime because no matter what i do it will eventually clog

So is there anyone who can find out a way for me to take those extra coal to my base??

[glacial hemlock]

Build 10's of biomass burner to power the miner, of course.

You actually only 1, but some additional building of biomass burner helps to buffer thr power

[orchid lark]

Bro the miners are being powered from the coal gen

If i would have used biomass burner then how would it be automated

I am using to power to create power😎 🤣 🤣

[iron dune]

upgrade belt, put a slug in the miner

[fierce ruin]

i think you don't really have "extra coal" from what you said. You just have a full belt, but you produce as much as you use. If you want to be sure, and use or potential overproduction, the best would be to use a smart splitter to pick the overflow.

[glacial hemlock]

I mean, you want to kickstart the process, but that power didn't last long enough to completely kickstart it, so I am giving you one of the method to do so. You could dismantle the biomass after they start running smoothly.

the problem is due to the long distance (and thus, long delay) as you have stated

[orchid lark]

Smart splitter??

[orchid lark]

I think the coal in the belt is extra as i have tried removing all the coal but eventually the gen fill up

I got an idea of feeding the coal to a storage and then storage to the gen so that i can store the extra coal for my use

[upbeat tide]

Buffering can work, BUT use it in moderation. I use buffering for my trains mostly

[bleak coral]

Buffering is only needed for trains, it doesn't do anything anywhere else cause otherwise we don't have fluctuating inputs.

[upbeat tide]

Only other exception is in some types of fluid builds. Buffering could either help to balance it out, or make it worse.

[bleak coral]

Yeah that too

Or like seeding inputs or something, basically if you have a specific reason rather than as a rule of thumb to always use them

[upbeat tide]

Case points, in my turbofuel plant I buffer the heavy oil residue. Originally it was done to balance out the piping, but the design got simplified farther down the build process. The tanks remain and help by keeping a steady HOR supply

I also keep a tank of TF before it pipes to the fuel gens for a little big of fuel storage just incase things go sideways

But in my aluminum ingot build, zero buffer tanks at all for the fluids.

[bleak coral]

aluminum is actually where I'm using a buffer, as extra storage for the recycling refinery so it has some extra water during the water cycles and doesn't stop

[upbeat tide]

I need to get back to expanding this a bit more but this is mine.

I am using valves on the external water supply pipes and its working great.

[fierce ruin]

It's something you can unlock from caterium free in MAM. It's an improved spitter that can, among other things, be est to have an output only sending overflow.

[orchid lark]

Wow its very good

[orchid lark]

i got the answer to my problem. I am not consuming the power i am producing and the gen dont use the coal at full potential when the required power is less

[sand garnet]

coal power is always 100%

[orchid lark]

oh

[sand garnet]

that is one of the changes made to the game in update 4

[orchid lark]

i am playing on update 4

[sand garnet]

right, so your coal power will always run at 100%

[orchid lark]

i think this is the best right now

[mortal panther]

How do you split when there is no natural belt balancing from splitting into 2s or 3s? I need a belt with 210 output to be divided into one belt of 90 and one with 120. As 210 can only be evenly divided into 35, 70, 105 and 140, I fail to see a way to make a perfect split here 😄 I could ofc just go for an overflow system, but if anyone got any pointers how this can be approached instead, I'd be most grateful

[wind spade]

I'd say use manifold or make stuff 1:1. There's no point in balancing

and you can split in any ratio by simply cycling back unused outputs

[upbeat tide]

Unless the balancer is a simple ratio, it will always be easier to manifold rather than use a balncer method.

[queen rivet]

Balancers are a thing in Factorio because ore nodes have falling output over time so there's a need to make sure various areas of the factory don't get starved. But even there, most factory lines are manifold, just using inserters to feed the buildings instead of splitters and direct feed belts.

[mortal panther]

Ah got it, thanks for all input. Manofolds deffinetly makes life easier :)

[upbeat tide]

Just remember manifolds do have a priming time. Also, try not to make them too big. At a point mergers, splitters, and pipe junctions become buggy and dont work as desired.

[queen rivet]

Also, blueprints, so you really only have to "build" a balancer once, otherwise they're a PITA 😛

[versed violet]

Ah, balancers, just built my first one. Does this suffice for 3-to-3 load balancing?

[upbeat tide]

Whats the purpose? @versed violet

[signal nimbus]

I used to be on the side of manifolds, but these days... I'm less sure.

The main advantage that load balancing has over manifolds is how quickly it'll spin up. Especially with the larger stack sizes, that's a legit concern.

Not saying load balance everything, but I'm considering what kinds of easy load balancing I can do to reduce warmup time. E.g. does it take 5 minutes or 5 hours.

For early game factories, load balancing almost happens by accident, and is easier on the power situation while you're on bio.

[upbeat tide]

Agreed that in some situations load balancing works, but honestly not sure what its use would be for aluminum ingots. As the message above

[signal nimbus]

One sec...

Oh, that's an easy one. One smart splitter.

Mk 3 in, mk 2 out as primary, mk 2 out as overflow.

@mortal panther

If splitting like that makes the spin up time faster, I mean... it's one splitter.

[frosty pawn]

i always make manifolds but i also prime the machines/generators by making sure they are full before connecting power lines. for very large manifolds, i only do this for some of the machines at the end of the line (because inventory space and time). for fuel generators sometimes i take a shortcut by putting a buffer at the end of the line and letting it fill up before adding a valve and connecting cables to the generators so that they will temporarily have more fuel coming in through the pipes than they can use - having a small internal buffer of fuel in each generator ensures that my perfectly calculated system does not keep fluctuating between 0 and 1 fuel

also when working with pipes, make sure any pipes connected to outputs go up and any connected to inputs go down. gravity will ensure the pipe manifold works as expected.

[glacial hemlock]

@mortal panther if balancing is absolutely necessary, you could try make a 1:5 split.

!wikisearch balancer

[shadow prairie]

https://satisfactory.fandom.com/wiki/Special:Search?query=balancer

[wind spade]

it's actually worse on power situation. With load balancing, you have all machines turning on/off at the same time, making spikes. With manifolds, you have machines turning on one by one, which means less spike and more consistent power usage

[signal nimbus]

@wind spade I see where you're coming from, but during the spin-up time the load balanced system is producing at max while the manifold system needs to produce items to produce items effectively. It takes more time, and therefore quantity of power, to get it to produce efficiently, meaning you spend more biofuel overall to produce X final items, and take longer to do so.

When power is automated, I agree.

[wind spade]

actually not true

since biomass is self-regulating, you only ever spend power when a machine is crafting

so you always spend the same amount of power (or rather energy) per item

[signal nimbus]

Correct, but you inherently make more items.

[wind spade]

sure, you'll take a bit longer to produce given amount of items, but you don't lose power efficiency

[signal nimbus]

Power efficiency no, fuel input efficiency yes.

[wind spade]

and considering how much you usually want to do in early game, I don't think waiting a few seconds/minutes to craft something is an issue

[wind spade]

not even fuel input efficiency

if you put in 200 biomass, you'll run out of it when you have crafted items worth of 200 biomass, no matter if it's a manifold or a balancer

[signal nimbus]

Yes, but you also need to account for the items sitting in inventories not being crafted at that instant.

Those require power to craft as well and are not being used.

[bleak coral]

interesting hadn't thought about that, though I think balancers generally win until mk3 belts anyway cause of the warmup time being so much worse with mk1/2 belt speeds and you have much less to do so a lot more waiting around and a lot less letting stuff warmup while you go do stuff

[signal nimbus]

In a manifold of four, you will inevitably have two full stacks of items, unused, in the first two machines.

That too.

[wind spade]

I've already done a lot of math on mk1/mk5 efficiency in manifolds and came to a conclusion, that there's basically no difference between them

[frosty pawn]

this is why i manually fill machines in a new manifold

[signal nimbus]

Math-wise, you're right until taking into account time and wasted items.

[wind spade]

but they are still crafted, so can be used elsewhere. And arguably, in early game you want a few stack of intermediate items for various purposes anyway (building, research, handcrafting, ...)

[wind spade]

they are not wasted, you'll still use them at some point

[signal nimbus]

They can't, if you want to keep your argument that they are just as efficient.

[bleak coral]

if you take the approach of infinite time, sure, but when you're at the point in the game of using mk1/2 it's not really about long term efficiency or even efficiency at all, it's about getting items quickly to teardown a setup and then make something more permanent/efficient

[wind spade]

I mean using mk1s vs mk5s in manifolds

[signal nimbus]

Either a manifold has the same item efficiency as a load balancer, OR you can use those items.

[wind spade]

using faster belts does not yield any gain (assuming you still have fast enough belts to carry the items obviously)

[signal nimbus]

Remove the items, and efficiency decreases until you build them back up again.

[wind spade]

you can't just ignore items for the purpose of your argument though. Ofc if you ignore the items, it seems like "wasted energy", but if you don't ignore them, you'll see that you have them there, which is "stored energy" kind of.

[bleak coral]

yeah I'm saying on stuff 120ppm or less, manifolds are a bit slow to warmup, especially if it's a bunch of machines and also that you're waiting for enough items to be made to do your next thing and you don't really have anything else to do

[frosty pawn]

when you realise that the number of items per minute is more valuable than the number of stored items, you will not care how many are inside machines waiting to be processed

[bleak coral]

it's like everything together, not just the belt speeds

[wind spade]

hunt drives, nobody does that early but everybody should

[signal nimbus]

It is stored energy, BUT those items are not the end goal of that factory. If I'm making RIP, I don't care about the screws.

[wind spade]

I know it's an example, but I'll nitpick anyway - screws should be made 1:1 always 😛

[signal nimbus]

Fair.

[wind spade]

and for pretty much any other intermediate product - it's always useful to have them around

plates, wires, ingots, ... they are all useful early game for building stuff

[frosty pawn]

but they ARE around! theyre all around crash sites!

[signal nimbus]

While true, I tend to do that with... well, a factory.

For real, I use a dedicated iron plate and iron rod line early game.

[wind spade]

it's been confirmed that there's not enough items around crash sites to progress through the game, iirc it's something like rotors that are missing

[frosty pawn]

i was just talking about screws that are not part of an assembly line

[wind spade]

so you kinda have to produce stuff at some point anyway

[bleak coral]

wonder if there's enough to open all the pods though (except the ficsmas ones)

[wind spade]

iirc not as well

[signal nimbus]

Might be...

[wind spade]

but majority of them can be opened

(from those requiring only items ofc)

[signal nimbus]

Are there enough rods, plates, cable, wire, and concrete to make bio burners?

[bleak coral]

theoretically there's also enough items to build enough biomass generators for the power ones, you'd just have to plan carefully

what's the biggest power requirement? 240MW?

[wind spade]

well sure, but as I said there's some common item that's never around pods, iirc it's rotor, but don't quote me on that

[signal nimbus]

At a minimum, you have the HUB burners.

[wind spade]

wasn't it like 400 ish?

not sure tho

[signal nimbus]

I've found rotors, I think. Think somewhere in the northwest?

[wind spade]

then motors maybe? or stators?

I think it was something like that

[bleak coral]

me either, gonna check the map, I think I know where it is

[signal nimbus]

Definitely found both of those.

[bleak coral]

aaaah why is it on the right?

put it back!

[signal nimbus]

Good, I'm not the only one who doesn't like that 😫

[wind spade]

hmmm... I know for sure that somebody mentioned a pretty common item that's never around drop pods

[wind spade]

wdym?

[signal nimbus]

Satisfactory Calculator

[bleak coral]

anthor changed the menu location on SCIM

it's probably fine, just feels weird

[wind spade]

honestly the more weird thing is the white map background when in dark mode

thanks for burning my eyes

menu on top is superior anyway 😛

[bleak coral]

I like side-by-side cause I'm usually changing stuff a lot

[signal nimbus]

NGL, yours is way better than SCIM for factory planning. Literally only thing I could suggest is maybe calcs for belts.

[bleak coral]

also it's 420MW for pod that needs the most power

[wind spade]

yeah, I thought so

[bleak coral]

nah the whole point is it's logistics agnostic, that's part of why it's so fast

[wind spade]

well that depends what do you mean by "calcs for belts"

[bleak coral]

like simple mode on anthor's is way faster because it doesn't do much logistics

[signal nimbus]

Literally just dividing the throughput by the throughput of a specific class of belt.

[wind spade]

like in old tool?

[bleak coral]

all that does is increase the number of nodes, which muddles the information

[signal nimbus]

Maybe?

True.

[bleak coral]

again, it's not telling you how to make it, just what the numbers for total throughput and total machines

[wind spade]

hovering over an arrow in old tool showed belt amount

[signal nimbus]

That would be cool.

[bleak coral]

oh, yeah I guess that's neat

[wind spade]

I didn't add that in just because I kinda forgot about that functionality and I felt like it wasn't used too much

[signal nimbus]

Eh, fair. Also tbf, the math isn't hard.

[shut storm]

Yup, can do all of the perfect split calculations in my head.

[wind spade]

when I was rewriting the tool to the current version, I started from scratch, so it wasn't left out on purpose

[signal nimbus]

:+1:

[wind spade]

also there's currently no "max belt available" setting anywhere

so that'd have to be somewhere

[bleak coral]

oh also to be able to open all the powered pods with just stuff from crash sites you'd need at least 90 rods + 90 plates + 150 wire + material for power lines/power poles + material to open them, seems possible

that's with 6 fully slugged biomass burners for the 420MW, so you could do that first and then the 256MW one, and then might be able to get away with just one slugged biomass burner for the rest, cause I'm not sure any others go over 75MW but definitely don't go over 150MW so you could definitely get away with just two

[wind spade]

7?

[bleak coral]

no 6: 420/75MW

5.6, so round up to 6

[wind spade]

250% OC = 202% power

[bleak coral]

oh right duh lol

[signal nimbus]

Was gonna say 😋

[bleak coral]

so yeah 7....

and then 2 for the rest after the 256MW one

cause I know there's one that's 70ish MW

[signal nimbus]

What you don't need is to get all of them, though, to get all the alternate recipes.

[wind spade]

if we play with items around drop pods only, we have nothing to power the burners 😛

[bleak coral]

technically there's leaves and and animals around the drop pods

[wind spade]

well that depends on definition of around

cause technically the whole map is around drop pods

[bleak coral]

some of the items you're picking are like in grass/trees

it's a pretty conservative definition of around

[wind spade]

and was a joke anyway

[bleak coral]

my factory I built from items I picked up around drop pods is "around" a drop pod in the grand scheme of themes 😛

[glacial hemlock]

There is no iron plate and rod to loot.

[ocean depot]

About to start mass automation. Would you guys recommend bringing all ore to a central location or just making factories at nodes?

[glacial hemlock]

The latter method is more FPS friendly

[sand garnet]

dude's asked this question in 3 channels :/

[ocean depot]

😉

[signal nimbus]

@ocean depot Highly depends on what recipes you're using, but I think it's fair to say that a single megabase for everything never works out. Lagfest extraordinaire. I'd recommend a number of smaller megabases, with some of the best locations being the Grass Fields in the Southwest, the Northern Desert in the Northwest, the Dune Desert in the Northeast, and Crater Lake near the center. Bring everything from at least the local biome to the one location, figure out which production steps happen in each area, and go from there. Also simplifies large-scale logistics down to "connect the triangle, then connect the center".

This way you can access the more efficient recipes (Pure X) without needing to bring a random water pipe to the middle of nowhere.

[wind spade]

I'd go even further, separating whole production lines into single building. Every building produces final products from raw materials, no factory-chaining

[signal nimbus]

Thought about that, but the logistics of oil say that two, maybe three refineries to process all the oil in the world would work out better than snaking oil to odd factories here and there.

[wind spade]

oh yeah, I treat plastic and rubber as raw materials for this case

[signal nimbus]

Same with Aluminum, actually. Iron and such, eh. Copper, eh. Caterium's another weird one, but I think I'd also centralize that.

[cold rock]

Putting the initial Caterium mining to quickwire setup in its own outhouse is worthwhile imo, then centralizing the quickwire

[signal nimbus]

Oh I mean centralizing the world's Caterium supply.

[cold rock]

I think that's on a different scale of production than the original question. 🙂

[wind spade]

quickwire, wire and screws should always be made onsite instead of having centralised production

no matter which building style you use

[signal nimbus]

I get wire and screws, but why do you say Quickwire?

[wind spade]

big stack sizes and big amounts required

[signal nimbus]

Ah.

[wind spade]

saves tons of belts

and logistic issues

[signal nimbus]

...looking at it, Quartz might also be a candidate for centralization. There's literally three clumps in the world.

[wind spade]

well that just means you'll have three factories processing quartz

one "factory" doesn't have to make JUST one item

[signal nimbus]

That's what I mean.

[wind spade]

the point of my suggested style is that you don't ever chain factories - one factory always contains everything it needs to turn raw materials into final products

(again, counting rubber and plastic as raw materials)

[signal nimbus]

Due to logistics?

[wind spade]

due to not wanting to deal with liquids

so yeah, kinda

[signal nimbus]

...interesting.

[upbeat tide]

I do what Greeny suggesrs above, but with some slight differences.

For example, the beacon factory for my nuclear rod factory is located off-site and will be trained into the main nuclear rod facility.

The petro coke for my Aluminum plant is off-site and trained in as well.

[wind spade]

yeah, obviously people can change what they want. I just feel like this way makes it easiest to plan and upgrade

[upbeat tide]

Well, the petro coke example is setup for maximum aluminum production. Even though currently that factory makes 3060 ingots a min. Second expansion is coming soon™️

[oblique hollow]

Imagine needing 2 alts to maximize Aluminum.
[This Post was made by the Instant Scrap Gang]

[upbeat tide]

Unless they heavily reduced sulfur use, instant scrap is a non-starter imo

[oblique hollow]

Good luck running out of sulfur

[upbeat tide]

Turbo fuel, nuclear, plutonium, munitions, batteries. All of that and I have roughly 600 ish sulfur un-allocated

[wind spade]

turbofuel is crap when you have nuclear/plutonium. Munition doesn't need much sulfur and you don't want to produce munition any fast anyway (unless you're nonstop fighting, you hardly need more than 1/min or smth like that). Batteries are nice for drones, but you probably won't need too many anyway. So apart from nuclear, you have tons of sulfur to use 🤷

[upbeat tide]

I need to confirm, but here are my use numbers for sulfur

1200 - TF
600 - batteries
2200 (ish) nuclear/pleutonium

So, just from that I am using around 4k sulfur. Seeing as there is just below 7k on the map, not alot left for instant scrap. I am building max aluminum, soo its not really a fesible option

Something like that anyway. I dont have my full breakdown sheet with me currently

[wind spade]

Why make TF if you have nuclear 🤔

[upbeat tide]

It was made to provide power for other processes. I havent build nuclear besides the beacon requirement so far. Got side tracked with aluminum

Im also running a 60/min HMF factory, so using a decent amount of power

[oblique hollow]

How. Much. Of your capacity are you using?

90%?

[upbeat tide]

No, about 60% currently

If everything is active.

And most I dont keep permanently running, aluminum ingots is an exception though. Too much of a PITA to let it stop

[oblique hollow]

60%. Then you definitely could spare to reallocate some sulfur to downsize aluminum power consumption and simplify setup

Btw, good call..... How power efficient is IS

[upbeat tide]

I have no idea on the power eff iciency, but space efficiency would be better for sure. Still, my sefup I feel is really compact as is

3060 aluminum ingots so far

Gonna add 2160 more in the next few days

It could be more compact too

[fringe pawn]

Is there a way to feed the wastewater from creating aluminum scrap back into the refineries creating alumina solution, such that I can minimize the water extractors needed? I tried to find a guide on Google, but a lot of the usual clickbait content mill sites are cluttering the results with garbage.

As I see it, I can have one pure bauxite node feed four slightly underclocked refineries set to sloppy alumina. But as I plan the next refining step I'm struggling to determine how to deal with the wastewater, as there doesn't seem to be a way to prioritize its use over water from extractors.

I have Electrode - Aluminum Scrap unlocked, so the next step of the plan is 2 underclocked scrap refineries per 1 solution refinery, and then sending the resulting scrap into smelters.

[sullen cloud]

Just route these water byproducts into the water input and just add an amount of fresh water, which is needed to fulfill the total amount

and make sure that the alu scrap refineries are always running

[fringe pawn]

Is this post accurate? https://www.reddit.com/r/SatisfactoryGame/comments/mbke9c/water_pipe_loop_backup/gs1bgfe?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

If so, my understanding is that I could have my alumina solution refinery feed two scrap refineries, then pump that water back into solution refinery. If the extractor's water is coming in from the higher input on the pipe junction, the extractor will be what backs up, and not the scrap refineries?

Visual: wastewater from aluminum scrap refineries from the side inputs, and water extractor water from the top

@oblique hollow Based on your username, may I beg your input?

[oblique hollow]

dont rely on priorities. underclock the extractor to match your numbers, and also limit the input from it via a valve

anyone that says "i just feed it on x position and that gives it priority" has just been lucky in getting around+

priorities simply dont exist for pipes / are unreliable

buuut:

its good that your pipes are higher than the refineries

also dont forget to close the loop

and prefill all machines and pipes before you turn it on

[fringe pawn]

I'll probably engineer for some excess water, then make a wet concrete factory hooked up to a sink to dispose of it.

[oblique hollow]

"Closed Loop Pipes"

[oblique hollow]

thats also ok

[fringe pawn]

Rather than a loop back, it'll just dump into the concrete refinery.

[oblique hollow]

the loop here is to ensure the refineries work fine. it is needed, no matter what you do with that water

long pipes with many splits = loop needed

its the case everywhere

you are lucky if things work without one

[fringe pawn]

looks at coal plants and wipes sweat from brow

Okay, I think I've got it though. Happy Monday!

[drowsy flicker]

My 1000 Bauxite refinery basically abuses overclocking/underclocking to handle the wastewater in only one pipe per machine. Only part that's sketchy that I'm keeping an eye on is Alumina Solution backing up but so far it seems fine.

[fringe pawn]

Planning for backup seems like no big deal. I'll just make 20 reservoirs and occasionally dump it into my concrete factory.

[oblique hollow]

its not really abusing

using dedicated refineries that ONLY receive wastewater is a fair process

[fringe pawn]

Setting up my first module now. One miner feeding 4 solution refineries, feeding 8 scrap refineries, with only one water extractor to start. I'll just add extractors one at a time until I get excess.

Well, 2 extractors. I know one won't suffice.

[frosty owl]

I guess I'm a very lucky Boi

[undone notch]

How do you guys transport resources/anything vertically? It was pain in the ass to set up hilly railway and it also limits freight cars

[frosty owl]

I use lifts ^^

[undone notch]

I've set up batteries production a bit, so I guess drones will come in handy for that

[undone notch]

I don't like such long belts/lifts 😦

[frosty owl]

Do you like giant train spirals better?

[bleak coral]

lifts + elevated trains

[frosty owl]

Tbh, I also RARELY ever had to make a lift longer then the max allowed limit for a single lift (if more, one needs to set up a tower)

[elder frost]

serious question if you are using a manifold pipeline on a 400 water/min line would you still need a loop?

[bleak coral]

or really long slopes on trains if it's long distance and you have to go over a big obstacle that you can't just go around, like the central map plateau

[frosty owl]

No

[oblique hollow]

usually no

if you have like one machine that needs the 400, its safe
4 machines too
buuut 20 machines? could be troublesome

[elder frost]

48

[oblique hollow]

yeah.... might need a loop there

[frosty owl]

Just slap a buffer in front of the line and it'll balance out~

[elder frost]

i currently have it supplied at 410 W/min

and it doesnt seem to have an issue

[oblique hollow]

if it works then its good

[elder frost]

didnt know if there was something on reload it might break etc lol

[oblique hollow]

only if you see thinsg failing should you consider a loop.
or you just preemtively build one

[elder frost]

had that happen on my fuel factory

[oblique hollow]

yeah, some people have fluids vanish from pipes and buffers

cant really help there

[elder frost]

fair enough

thank you 🙂

[signal nimbus]

...and suddenly the single power plant not getting supplied with water at one of my recent coal plants makes sense.

[frosty owl]

Tbh, I think loops are overrated. I suspect one can achieve the same result by adding a buffer and having the loop reach only halfway along the manifold
In other words, I think the biggest help the loop provides is just like adding some buffering at the end of the manifold that can refill losses (which I find more complex to set up than a buffer mid-way)

[oblique hollow]

sure you could. buuuut i dont like playing guessing games

[elder frost]

Vencam not exactly.

[oblique hollow]

i always build a loop because i know its safe

buffers? not so sure....

[bleak coral]

for max flowrate it's also so it splits the flowrate in two so no one part needs to be going at max flowrate

[elder frost]

in my power plant for some reason the left branch gets more fuel than the right in lanes 1 3 and 6

and in 24 and 5 the right side gets excess fuel

we looped the lanes together and it works fine after looping

[oblique hollow]

it simply allows for greater self balancing

and regulation

[frosty owl]

On that regard, has anyone tested if adding a buffer at the END of the line with a valve, letting it fill up before starting the manifold, makes it empty out overtime in a 600/min manifold?
I'd expect it to empty-out, but has it been tested?

[elder frost]

yes

it drains

[oblique hollow]

because 600 is not 600

so theres a deficit

[frosty owl]

That's why I'm saying adding a buffer at the middle of the line would suffice (same result, half the return pipe, even got a buffer for quick refilling of the manifold now 😏)

[fringe pawn]

Wait, do I even need a concrete factory as a dump for excess water? Can I just vanish the small excess accumulating in my reservoirs by deleting and rebuilding them?

[drowsy flicker]

You can also approach buffers and Flush em but like, do you really wanna do maintenance for it?

[bleak coral]

sure you could just flush a buffer, but then you'd have to maintain them though instead of them just going forever, it's better to do something with the waste water where the process won't stop

[frosty owl]

Have you tested this or know of someone who tested it? Same for @oblique hollow . I might get into skme similar testing soon™️
I'm not asking to know if you think it would drain or not 😆
||To be specific: manifold going from machine X to machine Y, set up a buffer after Y, let it fill up, add a valve start the machines and see if it empties out over time. Buffer obviously needs to be placed lower of the manifold to give it lower priority in refilling it||

[fringe pawn]

This isn't going to be a scenario producing much excess. Realistically I may never need to drain it.

[drowsy flicker]

Then you'd be treating excess fluid like you would nuclear waste before you can recycle it...

[elder frost]

I ran it myself - on a max flow line it empties due to the 600 flow isnt 600 flow

[frosty owl]

You made sure the buffer had the lowest priority in filling the manifold, right?

[bleak coral]

I can't think of a process that produces a trivial amount of waste water that could realistically be stored like nuclear waste

[fringe pawn]

I could also just underclock the extractors to drain it, too.

[elder frost]

the buffer should never have needed to be used, i prefilled everything in stand by, and had a top side buffer as well. both buffers drained at 600 total draw on the line, with 600 supply.

the pipes rated at 600 do not supply 600

[bleak coral]

wait this isn't waste water, you're just producing excess water from extractors? how is that a problem?

[elder frost]

lund he has excess water from the alum process iirc

[frosty owl]

That is not the setup I'm referring to though... (the one previously described under a spoiler)
I'm referring to a buffer AT THE END of the line, not in between 2 pipes (only 1 exit of the buffer is connected to the manifold)

[elder frost]

the buffer at the far end of the manifold also drained

i had a full buffer on each side

[fringe pawn]

The worst case scenario is that instead of balancing my water extractors one tick over the equilibrium line, I could just go one tick under.

[frosty owl]

And funfact: pipes CAN provide 600/min, as long as you don't try to split them directly to machines 😉
Same for buffers
Eg: you can run a 600/min oil rig by splitting a 600/min oil pipe into 2 buffers each feeding a 300/min setup with mk2 pipes

[frosty owl]

👌
Did you make sure it had the lowest priority in filling the manifold, though?

[elder frost]

was hooked via a up curved pipe to the manifold i shouldnt have had a reason to drain

[bleak coral]

if you're making a recycling loop just add a valve set to the amount that's needed from the extractors so they can't add too much water

[elder frost]

but the bastard still felt the need to drain >.<

was a long day of toying with fluid dynamics

[frosty owl]

Testing is FuN
(Currently trying to figure out how long a mk5 belt segment needs to be before it starts bugging)

[fringe pawn]

Laying foundations now. This is for the 2 pure bauxite nodes in the NW, that overlook the oil fields. I've set a 6x12 for the 8 solution refineries and 12x12 for the 16 scrap refineries.

[exotic rain]

Question: Is turbofuel even worth it any more for power given the complexity and need for sulfur, vs just diluting regular fuel? I can't seem to make the numbers very attractive.

[sand garnet]

yes it is

[fierce ruin]

turbofuel is stonger than fuel; but imo i think fuel is good enough until you unlock nuclear, and focusing on nuclear after that seems better.

[sand garnet]

enable all alts for u4.satisfactorytools.com/production and set the input to 300 oil or whatever

[exotic rain]

With sulfur being such a limited amount, it just seems easier to just fire up 2x the oil to fuel for close to the same power (1200 oil = 40GW with fuel or 600 oil is ~44GW using turbofuel). Oil isn't the limiting factor, it's sulfur.

[bleak coral]

Well 2 things:

1. 3200 m^3/min is significantly more pipes than 1333.333 m^3/min, and also you can switch to turbo blend to spend more oil for less sulfur anyway
2. what are you saving the sulfur for? nuclear doesn't actually use that much of it, it can only use up to half of the map even when maxing nuclear, and there's no significant usages of sulfur outside of turbofuel and nuclear

All the alts that use compacted coal or sulfur are far more wasteful than using it for turbofuel

well except the black powder one, but that actually saves sulfur

[sand garnet]

Im fairly certain they also said on one of the recent streams we might get another sulfur node or something

[bleak coral]

Forgot about batteries, but my main point is that as long as you aren't going crazy with turbofuel it's not gonna eat all your sulfur, once you get past one (or maybe two) nodes of sulfur for turbofuel it starts to get very unwieldy anyway with the number of fuel generators you need

[exotic rain]

Thanks. Just trying to do some planning - started a new game. Trying to figure out how to address power.

[elder frost]

@exotic rain. I ran about 6MW on coal then 38MW? Blended turbo. Now beefing up production heading for nuclear with recycled waste to sink

[fringe pawn]

In my case yes. The point at which my 16 coals plants were inadequate, I had unlocked the turbofuel blend recipe.

I think the point at which you can't easily add to your coal power, you simply take the best fuel option you have at that time.

I could even see skipping fuel generators altogether and going straight to nuclear. This is my first time playing and that almost happened to me on accident. As a bridge it was either geothermal or fuel generators.

[frosty owl]

Will this still work after a few hours and save loads?
🇾 / 🇳
Note: that is NOT a smart splitter

[upbeat tide]

As long as the feed order never changes, should be fine. But if it ever does then its done for.

[frosty owl]

@oblique hollow @topaz hedge Another day, another set of results... From bottom to bottom (miner output is 780/min):
5) Short mk5 belt to sink: works fine ✅
4) Short mk5 belt to ISC, then to sink (either single mk5 or multiples): works fine ✅
3) Short mk5 to ISC, then long mk5 to sink: items pile up in the ISC ⛔
2) Long mk5 belt to sink: items pile up in the miner ⛔

1. Short mk5 to splitter/ISC, then multiple belts either to a sink or merge back into a (short) mk5 then sink: works in all listed scenarios ✅
   Can we conclude that "long", full mk5 belts tend to bug somehow while they're fine for "short" lenghts?

[frosty owl]

You think it can keep going even after reloading the save? I'd be pleasantly surprised if it did xD

[upbeat tide]

Ooh yea thats a sentence of failure right there

Takes just one tick to mess up the belt order

[bleak coral]

the solution is clear: just go absolutely crazy on ISCs with short belts between 😛

short belt, ISC, short belt, ISC, for a whole kilometer or something

[frosty owl]

To be honest, I suspect that having mergers/splitters instead of the ISCs could work the same 😆
As long as it has some buffering

[exotic rain]

Switch to Storage Teleporters 😄

[glacial hemlock]

@frosty owl what does 'short' means? 10 meter? 50 meter? 56 meter (1 full length)?

it would be not surprised if the rounding error comes from belt joint

[frosty owl]

That is still hard to tell... Maybe 1/2 max lenght belt segments, but I'm unsure if lenght has a relation to it (eg: if 2 medium segments are the same as 1 long one)

I tried the (1) solution at the end of a long segment, it's working

[glacial hemlock]

i see. Thanks! If you confirmed that is repeatable, you could add that into the wiki 😉

[frosty owl]

I'll share the save to see if it's repeatable after I sort out the mess for testing (probably a few days) 😅 😆
Would you be willing to test if it works, when the time comes?

[bleak coral]

oh I'd love to try the save myself, it'd be good to run it on a variety of hardware to try see how much the FPS affects it

also, is the save just the test setups, or is it your main world with all your factories as well?

[frosty owl]

It's a save where I'm making my nuclear. Should I make it a "blank" save? (With only HUB, power and machines needed)

[topaz hedge]

Sounds like it's time to end my factory break and try to duplicate some test results XD

[bleak coral]

probably just keep it the same so as to keep the comparisons fair; otherwise you'd have to redo all your measurements on the blank save
just was curious if I'd actually get better fps than you, cause iirc you have a bit better GPU while I have a bit better CPU

(I have a gtx970 with a Ryzen 7 3700x)

[topaz hedge]

I don't think a blank save would really be all that relevant though. but I could do a blank save test... I've got decent hardware 3600x and 2080.. currently I'm moving all my games from my 1tb nvme to a 2tb sata ssd XD

nobody is going to really run full mk5 belts in a blank save, so it's pretty much just be to see if more shit = lower thoughput.

[bleak coral]

true, though a blank save would be a good control of >=60fps vs <60fps

[topaz hedge]

I think our cpu's are pretty much equal as far as satisfactory is concerned. passmark single thread score of 2689 for the 3700x and 2677 for the 3600x XD

I didn't really see belt length affecting thoughput though.. that's interesting. that might explain some of the issues I had on a previous save with a mk4 belt

although, my test that ven did with the short belt to a splitter and then multiple mk5 belts failed.

[frosty owl]

I'm fairly convinced my system doesn't run quite well anyway

If you don't care about messy stuff, I can send it o er right away, otherwise it's gonna take a while before I sort things out 😅

[bleak coral]

I can wait, I'm getting into outer wilds right now anyway

[prime birch]

I finally unlocked Oil Processing. Any tips on set up? I'm using the nodes nearest to the Islands by the Rocky Dessert.

[fierce ruin]

build on site and then ship solids out

[fringe pawn]

Sanity check, if I make a simple 10 rubber/10 plastic refinery array off of one overclocked pure node, I can just make a single pipe loop circle all 20 refineries to feed them, right? And then a single output loop feeding coke refineries?

[topaz hedge]

I'd put a 3rd pipe in the middle. of the rows and hook that into your feed pipe where it splits into 2 to make the circle.

[topaz hedge]

something like this, but with double the number of refineries

[fringe pawn]

Perfect, that's basically the plan

[topaz hedge]

notice there's a 3rd pipe in the middle/center of the row. you'll probably want to do that.

[fringe pawn]

What purpose does it serve? Easy to do it, but I also want to understand

[topaz hedge]

provides another path for fluid to flow and prevents the refineries in the middle from starving/backing up because of a long row of junctions to each end.

long chains of pipe junctions tend to "restrict" the flow and having a middle pipe seems to do a very good job at preventing it.

another plus is it'll handle ~800m3/min through mk1 pipes pretty well.

[fringe pawn]

Ultimately I'm probably going to tap the second nearby pure node and make a second level of the exact same setup. Perhaps link the whole thing, and have the two crude wells come in from opposite sides?

Drafting it now...

[topaz hedge]

sould be okay

[fringe pawn]

For the 10 factories being fed crude oil, I mirrored the above floorplan. The input from the oil well immediately splits going down the center aisle and behind both sides. The 5 refineries devoted to heavy oil don't have a 'crossing pipe,' but because that loop isn't close to capacity it shouldn't matter.

Once walls are up, second floor built directly on top will be identical.

[wind spade]

Basically with fluids you can never go wrong with extra pipes

[cosmic quarry]

Was wondering if its possible for me to manifold 2 outputs into three inputs? See image below (Aka is there a cleaner way to do this)

[wind spade]

Yeah, if the middle belt is fast enough

Which in this case is

[cosmic quarry]

So something like this?

[glacial hemlock]

Screw? Yes. Just a merger then a splitter

[wind spade]

Yeah, anything can work 🙂

[sage dagger]

Would 280 batteries per min be exessive? I just feel like I wouldn't get full use out of all of them

[wind spade]

Depends how many do you plan to use. They are mostly useful for drones, you can also stick them to vehicles (tho you don't want automated trucks, maybe just for personal transport)

[sage dagger]

Thanks, i think I will go ahead with the 280, and just so if I do need a large quantity, they are there.

[frosty pawn]

i'm sure you will find a use for them with so many useful resource nodes being in annoying locations where a drone port would be much more convenient than a train station

[frosty owl]

@upbeat tide ...surprisingly enough, 4 hours and 2 reloads later, this is still going...

[glacial hemlock]

Try to backlog both constructor and smelter and see if they still work after blockage removal

[frosty owl]

No, I wanna see of they work fine with only that single splitter 😆
And I'm honestly surprised it hasn't blocked after reloading the game, already ^^

Note: that's not a smart splitter

[upbeat tide]

In this situation, I can only think of a few responses.

“If it aint broke dont fix it”
“Nobody but god knows why its working”

😄

[fringe pawn]

Oof. Do people end up using pure copper ingot? The power cost looks like it jumps high enough to negate the benefits compared to copper alloy ingot.

[sand garnet]

Power is a non-issue

[granite jasper]

If you need more copper than what you'd normally get, and you've got water and power to spare, it is the way to go.

[sand garnet]

Nuclear can make way more power than you will ever need

[fringe pawn]

I don't have nuclear yet, though my power situation is comfortable. This is to feed my aluminum factory so I also don't need much copper anyway. But I am looking down the road at nuclear power. Perhaps I should make the factory footprint for refineries and just expand it once I'm splitting atoms.

Making my aluminum and oil processing plants has given my plenty of experience at laying out big refinery arrays, so it should go quickly.

[upbeat tide]

I use pure copper alot. Its a very easy setup too.

Its output of 750 a min for only 300 copper ore matches well with stuff like fused quickwire, etc.

[fringe pawn]

Nice

[upbeat tide]

Pure copper actually is the cleanest of the pure alts.

From cleanest ratio to messiest

1. Copper
2. Aluminum
3. Caterium
4. Iron
5. Quartz

In terms of need to underclock to a % or not

Getting the machine count “just right” etc

Like for example, a 600 ore supply of iron will make 1114 iron ingots. Its not exactly a clean system ratio wise

[fringe pawn]

Messy numbers are okay as long you can calculate the output accurately. The water balancing act for aluminum makes it the most annoying IMO, but once I start feeding copper and plug the whole thing in I'm pretty sure I've got it thanks to everyone's help.

Fused quickwire does look solid. As I'm developing the desert I think my last major recipe decision is which regular wire to use. I'm leaning toward iron wire, just because there's so much iron. I have both the other alts unlocked, but caterium seems to rare to involve? Though fused wire does an pretty impressive production ratio.

[frosty owl]

Ever noticed how with pure copper and pure caterium, you can make 3 quickwire (fused recipe) with exactly 1 ore of each caterium and copper? 😄

[upbeat tide]

Yes

The exact ratio is 150/750 per fused quickwire module.

Will be able to support enough machines to make 1800 quickwire

Should be 20 assemblers per module if memory is right, and 5 per belt, 450 a min belts

I know its a bit slow, but from experience its a belt rate that melds well with other products, high speec connectors, AI limiters, etc

So, one normal copper and caterium node can make alot of quickwire 🙂

[frosty owl]

Funfact: I'm making quickwire for max nuclear rods out of 2 pure copper/caterium nodes :P

And with leftover ore

[upbeat tide]

Ah with pure the setup gets a bit funky but still doable

Im currently working on an expansion to my aluminum smithing house, but do plan to tackle nuclear as well eventually

Tbh, not really looking forward to building 150+ nuclear reactors again 😄

[frosty owl]

Eh, it's just around 250 reactors ONLY FOR URANIUM RODS, no sweat

[upbeat tide]

? Isnt is still 0.2/min for uranium?

And max is 50.4 now right?

[frosty owl]

Yep, that's 252 reactors

[upbeat tide]

Oh yea true durr

My U3 plant was only 31.5 rods 😄 forgot

1/3 max

252 reactors, 252 water extractors, and 4 waste belts. One per 70 reactors 😄

Well, could be 75 works too

[vale imp]

What the hell? We spent around 20 hrs to build up an 14-reactor-plant to get our power 😄 How long did it take to build the factory for 50.4 uranium? 😄

My respects for this work 😉

[upbeat tide]

Mods, like Smart! Life savers for huge projects

@vale imp this is long defunct now, but this WAS my U3 nuclear reactor area. It was only built for 31.5 rods a min.

[vale imp]

That seems like very unhealthy even with the protective suit 😄

[fringe pawn]

Eh, we eat berries and nuts right from the bush on a strange alien world. Pioneer life. ☠️

[upbeat tide]

FICSIT medical policy
“The Acceptable Radioactive Isotope Exposure for FICSIT Pioneer Staff”

Policy summary:

FICSIT Medical has determined that radiation exposure is acceptable. Exposure will not grant removal from the site and transport to a medical facility.

If the employee sucumbs to exposure, then policy 1564-24.04 “FICSIT Cloning Policy” comed into affect.

[vale imp]

And we are walking with a protective suite, but we need another one to be protected from uranium, but this cnnot protect us from poison 😄 And the second suite is too big to get into a jetpack at the same time 😛

[fringe pawn]

Tier 9: exosuit that combines gas mask, hazmat, jetpack, and blade runners. And that works while you're in a vehicle. 🤞

Drawback: it untames doggos.

Huh. Is that math correct? With sloppy, electrode, and pure ingot, 10 bauxite comes out to exactly 10 ingots? :smilingthanos: https://u4.satisfactorytools.com/production?share=jRTQoYzrriLY9eXO4ify

[oblique hollow]

Lemme find my handy chart....

[fierce ruin]

anyone know why, everytime i save and quite the game, when i load back in my oil machines go idle?

[oblique hollow]

Bug probably

Theres an issue where liquids disappear from pipes

But not everyone has that

Guess you are one of the unlucky ones

[fierce ruin]

might be that, machine thinks pipe is full and idles machine

only happens to one them

easy enough to turn on again, i just flick the power off and on

the universal solution to tech errors

[oblique hollow]

Nvm, 10 to 10, its correct

I just cant read my own chart

Its not the best but eh

Honestly, the normal route is just as efficient

[fringe pawn]

I'm using bauxite nodes near oil, so routing coke is easier

I've built the slurry and scrap factories, but not the ingot factory. I could route in some silica and maximize it. Decisions. That chart definitely helps weight the considerations.

[upbeat tide]

If your goijg max aluminum, than use pure alu. The silica requirement becomes kinda astronomical.

[oblique hollow]

Why cant we just mine sand 😭

Its literally 90% silica

[fringe pawn]

Oof, that silica requirement is gnarly even with cheap silica recipe.

[upbeat tide]

Yup! You will use what? 60, 70% of max silica just for it

[fringe pawn]

Maybe add cheap silica?

[oblique hollow]

Ech.... Right.....

I didnt wanna deal with that

[fringe pawn]

https://u4.satisfactorytools.com/production?share=hhlLy1VrgvzQL8iW9Rx6

Not much better, so it'd be for completeness at best.

Even the limestone requirement is hefty enough to be annoying

[fierce ruin]

i wish we could put liquid in the awesome bins, would make my fuel system really efficent
got 600 oil going into 18 generators, which is great math for that going into fuel then fuel gens
but i have 60 oil going no where and i think that its breaking my oil sucky thing

i have 2 600 oil things so i have 120 oil to turn into pet coal and throw in the awesome bin but still, liquids into bins would be nice

also makes splitting the oil a real pain

[oblique hollow]

Problem: Awesome Sink shredds solid parts to analyse them. You gain nothing by analyzing water

(so even the packaged water is cheating)

[fierce ruin]

i think water would be like throwing nuke waste into it, it just wouldnt go in

also found a system for overlow for using vertical force to push excess away which is a smart solution so it isnt super needed
just a idea

[vale imp]

I am just pragmatic. I burn everything what cannot be shreddered 😄 For "safety" I don't build cycles to prevent stopping machines, so every water I burn with coal in generators 😄 Same for oil. Plus you get an extra bit of power 😄

But why would the oil sucking thin break if its not at full use?

[frosty owl]

If you're interested in balancing your rods, I suggest grouping the reactors in multiples of 2, 3, 6 or 12 for easy balancing ^^

[frosty owl]

Took me about 20h just to design my nuclear factory (making Cells, Rods, Quickwire, Caterium Ingots, Copper Ingots) and set up/belt the machines in a way I liked. Considering that's using QOL mods and building in creative... I don't wanna think about how long it takes normally
Now I'll just need another 20h to finalize and decorate it...

[fringe pawn]

Oof. Over 50 industrial containers of coke. I really should stop getting distracted and get my aluminum operation going >_>

[fierce ruin]

Pablo Escobar would like to know your location

[fierce ruin]

whats the difference between a programable splitter and a smart one? they seem the same on the wiki

with programmable spitter you can set a list of item that can go through an output. with smart spitter it's only one.

oh kk

[fringe pawn]

With a water prefill and precise underclocks to water extractors, this system should run tight? With any bauxite input quantity if I later want to add/upgrade miners. https://u4.satisfactorytools.com/production?share=ikBH7VSNW4R0GNaKr5yf

Just need to route copper now.

[oblique hollow]

limiting water extractor output with valves make sit even safer than just udnerclocking

because, if for some reason something backs up, the water extractors wont try to output at 300 (that happens when their internal tank fills up)

its just extra safety

[fringe pawn]

Right, I guess I should do both. Get the power savings of underclocking, then cut off the remainder with a valve

[oblique hollow]

i run a comparable setup: 780 bauxite to x Sloppy Solution, then normal Scrap and then Pure ingots

i get 600 something ingots out

[fringe pawn]

Oof. My 72 coke containers are now full and jamming my plastic/rubber operation. Not a big deal at this point, but that's going to be a helluva a process to sink 😛

[oblique hollow]

why they backing up tho

also why do you have 72 containers for coke

this isnt a drug simulator, this coke is neither dank nor dope

[fierce ruin]

coke is dope||amine||

[fringe pawn]

I figured I would get my aluminum going pretty quick. Nothing to it, right? Then the coke will hit equilibrium. But time has gone by and I've continued to add overflow containers. It's not actually valuable in the sink, so I'll probably just let the containers sit.

[oblique hollow]

empty them and reduce their numbers? its wasted space and materials

i wish we could make black powder with coke

[fringe pawn]

I wish we had some sort of rifle that made sense. Even as sci-fi fantasy the one we've got now is a headscratcher.

[oblique hollow]

rebar gun stronger

[fringe pawn]

Right, but the rebar gun makes sense as an improvised weapon of sorts. Construction tools are known to be dangerous. What the heck is the rifle, though?

[bleak coral]

rubber bullets 🤷‍♂️

[fringe pawn]

It's the beacon requirement for ammo that confuses me. And everything about the recipe for the rifle itself.

[bleak coral]

yeah that's weird, definitely a gamey decision rather than an aesthetic/lore one

[fierce ruin]

so it can beacon ammo ig

[oblique hollow]

rebar gun + some modular frames + some cables = voila new gun

that would make more sense

[bleak coral]

I wouldn't mind a second go at the rifle, the design is kinda neat (I like top-loading guns), but it feels meh even if it is better damage

two small changes that would help a lot: increase magazine size to 20 and stack size of bullets to 500

[frosty owl]

Testing update: 2 people tried the testing save (messy version)
Results seem consistent

Funfact: the mixed belt splitting to 2 machines with a NORMAL splitter still goes strong

[abstract copper]

How big is the save though?

Are you dropping cpu frames yet?

[sand epoch]

Why not just make some coal gens to burn the overflow for extra power rather than continually adding more storage?

[fresh leaf]

I mean, if the power isn’t used, it’d be simpler to just run it to a sink

🤷‍♂️

[fringe pawn]

Yeah, I'd rather sink it than set coal plants. If I were to add power it'd be rerouting the oil residue output to make turbofuel for fuel generators. But I'm good on power for a while. I even hooked up some geothermal plants for kicks.

[frosty owl]

Save pretty smol, but I think I drop frames often (even just moving around quickly with fly)
Though, this has also been tested by 2 more people already ^^
(Anyone willing to give the test a go is welcome to~)

And another update on that (thanks to @fierce ruin for testing this) is:
MK5 belts behave worse the more belt segments there are
Eg: A miner connected to sink with a si gle mk5 segment may work fine, making that same belt with 20 segments instead will have it back up

[wicked tinsel]

probably internally each belt segment is simulated separately and moving items between belt segments is a bottleneck in simulation

[fringe pawn]

Ouch, 20 isn't even long.

[frosty owl]

There has been a video on how belts work recently, btw ^^

[wicked tinsel]

it only touched how items are rendered

[frosty owl]

Don't take that as an exact number, I'm just saying: 1 segment is better than many (for the same length)

[fierce ruin]

to add on that, i was mainly concerned if the problem was the number of belt, or the lenght on the belt (and the number of part): a belt with 40 really small part start to back up quite quickly. a belt with 20 max lenght part backup, but not as fast.

and i agree with amelek explanation, that seem the most likely

[fringe pawn]

Right. I don't think an exact number is important. It's now known best practice to immediately split. Easy.

[frosty owl]

For reference if anyone needs
Basic info and quickfix for mk5 throughput issues: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/558721941410807812/848978394602799124/Cattura.JPG

[fringe pawn]

I will soon have a very amusing looking wall of vertical lifts in a few places where I'll double the amount of lanes. 😛

[frosty owl]

Work smart, try to merge where you can ;)

[fringe pawn]

Yeah, those lifts eat up space quickly

If this isn't an issue with MK4 belts, compression and switching at the top and bottom would work nicely.

[fierce ruin]

you can keep mk5 and just make that they aren't full; they can still carry more than a mk4 without problem

(if you don't try to use them at full capacity, if they get a small backup at a time, they can "fix" that on their own)

[frosty owl]

AFAIK anything below the feared 780/min (let's say 760 just to be sure) works as intended, so go nuts with balancing and such 👍 (I will)

[fringe pawn]

Right, I think this pretty much only an issue with MK3 miners

[frosty owl]

Nope, it's the belt
If you try with machines' output, the result is the same ^^

Surprisingly, having miners with dou le output (like the Devs said they didn't want to do as it would make things worse) could MAYBE fix the issue

[fringe pawn]

Right, I mean everywhere else you can use the MK5 belt no worries. Just the miner you need to immediately split

[loud heron]

Clearly we just slow the game down

Easiest fix

[frosty owl]

I wouldn't recommend it, but... hopefully... yes?

I mean I don't recommend MAXING them ofc ^^

[fringe pawn]

RIght, maxing belts at any point in the game is asking for trouble

[frosty owl]

Maxed mk4 work fine though afaik

... Has anyone proposed to make a "testing" channel to discuss testing-related stuff?
Starts to feel kinda off-topic for #math-and-meta...

[fierce ruin]

i have the glitch where my oil machines go idle when i load into the world, anyone know someway to make it fix itself?only think that works is updating the pumpthing likedisabling its power and re-enablng it

[frosty owl]

Best if you ask in #old-questions-and-help

[fierce ruin]

oh sorrythought i was there

[fringe pawn]

Sweet, I think I've for a spot where I can reliably crash an explorer and walk underwater if I want.

[winter gull]

How so? This is news to me, Im currently only at T3 belts, but Ive been trying to max out as many of my belts as I can, it seems that would be the most efficient strategy.

[fringe pawn]

If you don't have a storage container or spare belt bandwidth somewhere in the mix, the tiniest hiccup affects production

Not necessarily in a major way.

[winter gull]

oh ok i always buffer with storage

habit from other similar games lol

when you say hiccup, you mean like CPU or video lag?

Good to know though either way, so glad I joined the discord, Ive learned so much

I just have to stay out of the screenshots section to avoid feelings of hopeless inadequacy lol

[fringe pawn]

Not CPU/system lag, production lag.

[bleak coral]

Well.... both actually

[upbeat tide]

I just saw the prototype of AMD’s 3D cache approach and that can be very useful for SF id think

[bleak coral]

Cache is king

[frosty owl]

The big issue comes with the last tier belts ||mk5||
Before then, they work as expected (so any mistake is your fault :P)

[winter gull]

I see, ok that is good to know. They talked about maybe just scaling the speeds of all the belts down and then just scaling down recipes costs to match

seems like the easiest fix

[upbeat tide]

700 or 750 is the max I put on a mk5

More often its 600

[fringe pawn]

We all aim for a harmony of mathematical precision, but reality is not always so kind, so always have some sort of buffer solution.

[frosty owl]

Just use bolted recipes and all your issues will be gone~

[fringe pawn]

For instance I now only use MK3 belts at minimum. It seems wasteful, but it ends up being very useful if a machine develops a backlog. Once you clear the the impediment, it can disgorge everything quickly.

[upbeat tide]

Bolted recipes are underrated.

Says the crazy person who built using bolted frames in thee 60 a min HMF factory

[frosty owl]

They are sooo convenient!

Also a great way to trigger Greeny

[fringe pawn]

Most recipes are good in some situation. There are some true duds like automating the portable miner, but I think most things are well balanced enough.

[frosty owl]

I'm so mad they automated the miner before the medical inhaler...

[fringe pawn]

Automating rifle ammo is annoying too. Bullets need a manufacturer, and you're feeding it rubber, beacons, gunpowder, and pipes. It's exhausting to think about the raw ingredients you're bringing together.

[upbeat tide]

Nah better. Go build a Crystal Beacon plant, or a Seismic Nobelisk plant 😄

And at decent outputs.

[frosty owl]

Now that's evil

[upbeat tide]

Considers options sfter my 5220 aluminum ingot factory is complete

[frosty owl]

Nuclear ofc
One step at the time...

Wanna tour mine to take a glimpse of some U4 nuclear designs and take the chance to check a couple test setups for mk5 belts along the way, @upbeat tide ? 😆

[upbeat tide]

Ah, got a “lab” world?

[frosty owl]

Nah, I just happened to set up a few testing areas close to my nuclear factory (which is the entirety of the save, since it's my nuclear save)

That's where the mixed belt - > normal splitter setup I mentioned to you before is too

[upbeat tide]

Ah nice 🙂 im still deafly allergic to mixed belts. I break out in hives 😄

[frosty owl]

Honestly, I've yet to use them in any... "serious" setup

[upbeat tide]

Gonna be adding 3 more aluminum ingot modules to this soon. A normal and 2 more pure nodes

It was fun getting the bauxite here. I decided to be a mascust and belt it...from the far west nodes

[frosty owl]

Why not make them elsewhere to make use of some node proximity and diversify? ^^

Just throwing ideas...

[upbeat tide]

Well, its in central map. Node proximity is 60% of all bauxite nodes

Only the far west and swamp ones not close

Its east of the big lake not far from the middle map uranium node

[frosty owl]

I mean proximity to other nodes
Eg: close to oil for quick coke access and combinations with oil products. Close to sulfur to set up a batteries factory easily... You get the idea ^^

[rain perch]

BlaBlaBla, im too dumb for this crap

[upbeat tide]

Oh, oil isnt far too. Using the mid map oil field for the coke

[magic shadow]

then why are you in this channel

[rain perch]

Because i want to feel smart

[magic shadow]

first step to becoming smart is not believing you are dumb

[rain perch]

believing and thinking is different things, its like religion and science

[magic shadow]

._.

[frosty owl]

I may just be projecting my own experience, but (re)working on my nuclear factory kinda opened my eyes (even more) to how interesting your buildings can be if you just try to consider all the nodes around and how you can use them to make your production more convenient
Eg: I started by laying out the nuclear cells/rods production
Then noticed caterium and copper nodes nearby. Layed out quickwire facilities
Noticed I still have plenty of space and water: add caterium and copper refinement
Noticed there's iron close by too: keep will lay out a beacons factory for my entire base from only iron (iron wire and all that) since about 15 manifacturers are enough for that

Wow, that came out longer than expected ^^

[upbeat tide]

I was wondering what kindof novel you were typing 🙂

[frosty owl]

I'm a wordy one sometimes it seems

[upbeat tide]

But I do agree, naturally evolved factories are cool

[frosty owl]

Yeah, that's a good TLDR 😅 😆

[sand garnet]

Dont click

[glacial hemlock]

!mods

<@&387163995947270144>

[loud heron]

Sounds like I missed a party.

[vale imp]

I tried to make it "right" and lookes at satisfactory calculator and figured - we started base in west, expanded to north and do the "big factory" for Tier 9 lift in the south - that we aren't doing anything in the east and NE. So I found that in and around the swamp in the east there is everything needed for the nuklear plant. That was the first and single time I used the satisfactory calculator. Every other factory expansions we did via exploring the map 🙂

[glacial hemlock]

That 's a big leap

[covert tundra]

The way I go about this is to work out the LCD of all the fractions. So since you need 210/210 > 90/210 + 120/210, this equates to 7/7 > 3/7 + 4/7 (use online LCD Calculator to find this). So bascially you need a 7th splitter. This is a prime number so can't be built directly from splitters which provide half & 3rd. The actually way of doing this is on the wiki, see article on Prime Splitters. Once you know the primes, any ratio can be built by cascading prime splitters together in a chain.

[frosty owl]

Now now, why go to complexity lane when you can visit your good old friend, smart splitter? :P
Just split 120 (full mk2 belt) out of 210 and let the rest througthe overflow output of it (90/min)
@mortal panther
||(BTW, balancing may not be absolutely necessary, but it's not like it doesn't work or is extremely complex out of some specific cases 😉)||

[mortal panther]

Haha yeah I know there's waaay easier approaches to this, to achieve the same result. But I mean.. it's fun to just figure out or understand how to do it in an unnecessarily complex way as well right? 😄

[covert tundra]

@frosty owl Genius, never actually thought of that for this particular example. (Using conveyor speed as the limiter.)

[frosty owl]

True as well 😆

[mortal panther]

but yeah, using a mk2 belt.. wow.. that's genious! So clean and simple 😄

[frosty owl]

Smart splitters open up a whole new world in balancing
Just beware of the "full MK5" issues and you're good 👍

[frosty owl]

In that regard, the speed of MK3 conveyor is actually quite convenient since it lets you get numbers that would normally require bulky balancing
Eg: 480-270 = 210 = 70*3 try balancing for 210 without smart splitting ahahah

[covert tundra]

When inspecting the position of a foundation in the Satisfactory Calculator, is the (x, y, z) value the actual top left hand corner of the block?

[pliant barn]

Is the best way to make a 5 way splitter to just have a standard 6 way splitter with 1 path leading back to the beginning to be merged for another loop?
Not sure if this question is a little bit too basic for what appears to be going on in here...

[frosty owl]

Yes and no :)
Yes for the splitter: unless you can smart split the belt, that's the easiest way to make a 1 to 5 split
No for the question being too "basic"

[pliant barn]

Do smart splitters offer splitting ratios inbuit?

I've always danced around them because I like to keep my systems simple... like me.

[wind spade]

depends. Usually manifolds are considered "best" 😛

[pliant barn]

hello greeny dev

I literally just read your reddit post from 2 years ago

[frosty owl]

No, but since you can choose a "primary" and "secondary" output, you can get certain amounts directly
Eg: got split 300 in 5 by smart splitting a mk1 belt out of it and splitting the rest 2 times

[frosty owl]

The simplest systems are the manifolded one, usually ^^

[pliant barn]

unfortunately I'm not splitting figures like that quite yet, but I'm sure I will be soon enough

[frosty owl]

It was just an example, I hope you get what I meant ^^

[pliant barn]

Sorry, of course I do.

I had an extremely simple motor setup, stators and rotors being made at the same location with the alternate steel rotor recipe.
I had to find a way to split 140 wire into 2 assemblers that required 40pm each and 2 other assemblers that required 30

so I built a 7 way splitter with that except is was a 9 way splitter with 2 paths heading back to the start to remerge.

I figured that this difference in quantities required would make a manifold a bit risky

[wind spade]

no, that's exactly why manifold is better

you don't have to care about quantities, as long as input >= output, it's fine

[frosty owl]

That's one case where having smart splitters can help: smart split 60 out of 140 and you can simply split the 2 belts again to have the perfect ratios (note: same number of splits as a manifold!)

[pliant barn]

my input matched my requirement with no easy way of increasing it short of having a 1300m copper conveyor

What you guys have taught me however is I need to go back and read about manifolds again

Thanks heaps

[wind spade]

manifolds work the same as balancers

if you have enough or more input, you get 100% output

[frosty owl]

I hope you kept into account that using "merge back" loops increases your througput on certain belts!

[wind spade]

if you have less input, you get less output (but both ways decrease it by same amount)

[pliant barn]

I certainly did, 1.3x if I did my math right

[wind spade]

so no matter if you build manifold or a balancer, you'll eventually get the same efficiency

[frosty owl]

Sure, after at least 1 minute it does :P

[wind spade]

so unless you have a reason to do balancers, manifolds are just easier and faster to build

[wind spade]

nah, it can be even faster (though not always is). However you can pre-fill manifolds or let them fill while you build next step, so it's not a big issue

[frosty owl]

Note: beware of very long full conveyors
The higher the tier, the more prone they will be to have losses along long distances (higher tier = more loss on the same distance)
Note: this is for FULL belts

[frosty owl]

"Not a big issue" depends a lot on your buildstyle ;)

[pliant barn]

Alternatively they are just ugly and I wanna wait for trains

[frosty owl]

Note: The max tier of belts, when full, will have losses after A SINGLE belt segment!

So... watch out when you get there ^^

[pliant barn]

So would you be opposed to the fact that i did a 1:16 load balance for my coal generators?

Because in my singleplayer world (I'm now on a coop), I found when I used a manifold there I ran into issues. Even though I am 99% sure I had enough input to cover it

[wind spade]

well I'd just build a manifold and let it fill over time, most likely I wouldn't need all the power immediately, so it wouldn't matter if a few gens wouldn't work from start

and 99% of issues with coal power come from water and pipes

(at least judging by this discord)

[pliant barn]

I just do 2 80% underclocked per 4

I dont see any issues

[wind spade]

it also depends on how you connect them, etc.

(and you can also be the 1% that has other type of issues 😛 )

[terse otter]

Let me just make sure I'm not getting anything wrong here.

Polymer to rubber is a 2:1 ratio
Heavy oil to rubber is a 1:2 ratio
This means the ratio of poly to heavy is 1:4
The polymer recipe trades 20 heavy oil for 110 polymer.
This is trading heavy oil to polymer at a 1:5.5 ratio

So only counting unshared production, the polymer production recipe produces more then 30% more total rubber.

[fierce ruin]

No, i need to check where you math is wrong, but HOR->diluted fuel->rubber is far better than polymer resin

[terse otter]

A more exact production rate being
80 + 5 from the heavy oil recipe
40 + 65 from the poly recipe

[frosty owl]

"Heavy oil to rubber is a 1:2 ratio" Remember, the recycled setups require half of the plastic/rubber to run, so in the end it's a 1:1 ratio (subtracting the plastic needed to run the setup)

[terse otter]

Oh, I found it. The poly recipe costs double crude.

[fringe pawn]

Could I divert plastic from this chain as needed and it would simply temporarily hurt rubber production? Versus potentially doing something that would need to be 'unjammed?' https://u4.satisfactorytools.com/production?share=Iut0TpCsMm39q7SabbFF

[terse otter]

So it's half production

[fierce ruin]

"The polymer recipe trades 20 heavy oil for 110 polymer." you actually trade 60 HOR for 90 polymer, the recipies don't have the same oil input

[terse otter]

And for the heavy to rubber ratio I said, I'm accounting for diluted fuel

[frosty owl]

Sure you can, though I don't get what you mean by "doing skmething that would need to be unjammed"

[fringe pawn]

Fluid backup (HOR or fuel) that would need to be flushed by toggling recipes or similar.

[frosty owl]

@terse otter To keep things simple:
30 oil > 65 resin + 10 HOR > 32.5 rubber + 10 rubber/plastic

30 oil > 40 HOR + 20 resin > 40 rubber OR plastic + 10 rubber

So while the polymer gives a bit more rubber, in the end it's worth making HOR since you need rubber AND plastic in similar amounts

[frosty owl]

You would have the fuel > HOR for the recycled rubber backing up

[terse otter]

That doesn't seem quite right. 10 Heavy oil -> 20 fuel -> 20 rubber, so the heavy gives double what you listed

[fringe pawn]

Ah, I see it now. That could halt the whole chain.

[frosty owl]

@terse otter

[fierce ruin]

and HOR also give some PR

so in the end, even just for producing rubber, HOR recipe is better than PR recipe

[frosty owl]

Right, forgot about that. More rubber for HOR then

Edited the change

[terse otter]

The recycled setup functionally turns 1 plastic/rubber and 1 fuel into 2 plastic/rubber, so the fuel should be a 1:1 ratio with plastic/rubber?

[frosty owl]

You need HALF of the output to feed a similar setup producing the opposite, so you can think of it as a 1:1 fuel:rubber/plastic

Eg: have 120 fuel, make 120 plasti and 120 rubber
You need 60 plastic and 60 rubber to RUN the setup, so you're left with 60 plastic, 60 rubber

[terse otter]

Encapsulating the complicated recycling setup and taking a step back, each point of fuel is producing a point of either rubber or plastic at any given time. Is that right?

[fierce ruin]

yes

[terse otter]

And each point of heavy oil is producing 2 points of fuel. So chaining those together, heavy oil to rubber/plastic is 1 point of heavy for 2 points of plastic/rubber

[frosty owl]

Sounds about right

[terse otter]

So HOR recipe
30 oil -> 40 HOR + 20 resin -> 80 rubber/plastic + 10 rubber

Polymer (halved due to cost)
30 oil -> 10 HOR + 55 resin -> 20 rubber/plastic + 11.25 rubber

[frosty owl]

Bruh, how do I always get so confused by this too...

[terse otter]

HOR is roughly 3x better

Oh. nvm 1 second

[fierce ruin]

it's easy: HOR is stricly better than PR; and we don't need to know more 🙂

[terse otter]

Polymer (halved due to cost)
30 oil -> 10 HOR + 55 resin -> 20 rubber/plastic + 27.5 rubber

Poly is slightly more then half the production

[fringe pawn]

The issue, IMO, is creating some flexibility in the setup so you can shift some production to favor rubber/plastic as needed. The biggest obstacle for this, as far as I can tell, is a lack of smart splitters for liquids, so you'd also need to pack them.

[frosty owl]

30 oil > 10 HOR + 65 (13*5) resin...

[terse otter]

And there isn't quite enough fuel to convert it to plastic

My error there as well 😛

[fierce ruin]

just change a bit you recycled refinery and its done

[frosty owl]

Why would you need smart splitting for fluids @fringe pawn? You can't mix them

Overflow pipes are a thing, too

[terse otter]

The way you shift rubber/plastic production would be in the recycling system. Make the excess come out from the other side of the loop.

[frosty owl]

Honestly, I just build another setup rather then modifying an existing one. Modifying those is quite a lot of work, at least for how I set them up

[fringe pawn]

Bah, versatility is hard

[fierce ruin]

i have a plastic/rubber system that can regulate itself as long as i don't extract more total plastic/rubber than i produce. But the ratio can adapt.

[terse otter]

I think if you aren't running the poly into your recycler, you can directly flip the production just by reversing the recipes?

[fierce ruin]

if you push back most of your output back into recycling, and let just the overflow as your real output it works ok (it can bring problem with max belt thoughput but i think thats all)

[terse otter]

How would you say max belt would be a factor?

[wind spade]

max belts are broken

[fierce ruin]

because its a system where i try to push more and more into a closed loop

[wind spade]

or rather, the longer the belt, the less max throughput it has

[fierce ruin]

and i know max belt are broken, but it's for a self regulating system that produce more than needed, so i don't really care about optimizing the max belt speed.

[frosty owl]

Max belts tend to have "losses"
MK5 after ~1 segment
All others after more (MK1 is barely noticeable even in very long belts)

[terse otter]

I think you would have to develop multiple separate loops regardless, and merge them after the fact. A lot of the throughput would be lost in the feedback costs.

[versed violet]

simply loop the plastic/rubber back into where it is needed with smart splitter at start that will divert the overflow

[fringe pawn]

MK5 belts lose some efficiency even at 2 segments? And here I thought I was doing well only spending 2 resources on my belt-> container for miners 😛

[frosty owl]

When U4 still wasn't here, I had a fun recycled setup: used all the excess fuel from the fuel generators to make plastic/rubber (standard plastic/rubber refineries provided the feed)
The fun part: the less power I used the more fuel > rubber/plastic I had

[frosty owl]

1 belt segment isnt necessarily 1m of belt. It just means 1 piece of belt. Can be max lenght too

[terse otter]

That's a hilarious setup

[frosty owl]

It was fun to gauge my power draw by the plastic output ahahah

[fierce ruin]

i did that fuel setup too. and i was quite sad to destroy it with u4

[frosty owl]

I never destroyed it... Just restarted
So it's still there, in some save....

[terse otter]

Here's a big picture question. What's the general ratio on rubber to plastic in end game builds? Does it vary a lot based on what your target is?

[fierce ruin]

alt recipes change that a lot

[terse otter]

I'm planning on just overkilling oil products, and then coming back later to get better accuracy.

Assume maximum alt recipes

[fierce ruin]

iirc, plastic is used a lot in base recipe, rubber a lot in alt

[frosty owl]

It varies a biy, but I think generally it's between 40:60 and 60:40

[versed violet]

I find that my plastic focused refinery making 400 plastic, only ~150 gets used, while I would need like 500+ rubber more than the 150 I have, and I need it now.

[frosty owl]

With how much oil there is now, unless you plan to finish all resources or something, I say: use oil alts wherever possible. It speeds up production immensely (like coated plates, circuit boards with plastic, so on...

[terse otter]

I built a bit of an overkill production line for the tier 7/8 unlock, and rubber seemed like it was a lot more heavily used then plastic. I guess I'll start with a 60/40 ratio for now, and improv if that's notably off.

[fringe pawn]

I would even go 70/30, depending on your recipe supply. Alts can completely cut plastic from the supply chain if you want. You can't forgo it completely, MK2 pipes and so forth require it.

[kindred plover]

why would you want to cut plastic from the supply chain?

[terse otter]

Simplicity I imagine. Things get real complicated when you are minmaxing

[fringe pawn]

I'm looking over the wiki, and I don't see any recipes where you're hurt badly for using a non-plastic recipe. I wouldn't even call it minmaxing, just simplification. This assumes recipe access, though. Supercomputers might be the hardest place to cut plastic if you stall on getting hard drives late in the game. Plastic smart plating may be a compelling choice, but it's not a gamechanger.

I don't count the use of plastic within the HOR recycling regime as being in the supply chain.

[terse otter]

Plastic smart plating is a doubling recipe and leads into Thermal propulsion rockets. Each rocket needs 10 plates, so that's saving a notable amount of materials right?

I guess the iron isn't worth much to begin with

[fringe pawn]

It's just an increase in complexity. Whether that's difficult will depend on how someone has developed their map. Turning 3 plastic into one smart plating seems okay.

The other option would be to just dial up the existing smart plating manufacturing that you have, if you've got some sort of modular setup where you can just feed more ores and add levels to factories.

But, if you're using plastic for iron plate production, then it's probably an easy step to also plug it into smart plating production. Though I'm not sure the plastic iron plate recipes are worthwhile.

THe numbers on solid steel ingot + iron coated plate are probably ridiculous, though.

[terse otter]

My understanding is that it's faster to feed plastic in, but there's so much iron on the map that you don't really need the boost

In terms of time to build versus resource limits

[fringe pawn]

Yeah, it's the same reason I don't get the love for concrete boosting recipes. They're good, sure, but there's so much limestone that as you accumulate hard drives, concrete shouldn't take priority.

Wow. With a pure alt chain, 100 iron ore turns into 1671 iron plates.

[bleak coral]

Personally I like wet concrete cause it's fast and more efficient. It actually ends up being a power and space saver compared to the vanilla recipe despite using refineries. The only downside is you need to be near water.

[fringe pawn]

It's amazing how tier lists vary so drastically on wet concrete in particular. I was looking at a list the other day that had it in the top tier. It's good, but it doesn't come close to belonging deserving top tier status with heavy hitters like encased industrial pipe and solid steel ingot. There's another list I'm looking at now that has wet concrete all the way down in the bottom tier, though, which is even crazier.

[cedar mica]

You can ether make 6 contructors or 1 refinery. I say that places wet concrete, quite high on the "saving you machine number" scale

[fringe pawn]

I don't weigh number of machines highly. In terms of time and effort the water extractor, pipe, and refinery are probably more work than placing 6 of the same building (any situation). Encased industrial beam is a good example, where literally it even uses all the same buildings as the base recipe, you just need to make more. Toggle settings, and continue the rows of assemblers.

Heavy encased frame is another absurdly good one. Enough to make you wonder whether it should be nerfed.

[cedar mica]

When building in scale, number of machines matter. 13 refinerys + 12 water extractors vs 67 constructors, for 1000 concrete.

[fringe pawn]

You're only counting buildings, though, not overall complexity, which is difficult to quantify. That's going to need multiple pipelines, for instance. It's a good alt, and I would say well balanced.

Automated miner, on the other hand... 🤦‍♂️

[sand epoch]

is great for drones.

[fringe pawn]

How many drones are you building?

[sand epoch]

last count was @90 ports

[bleak coral]

Related though, heavy encased frame is a good scenario where wet concrete is super useful. If you're just making a handful of concrete it could go either way (since we're not trying to save limestone), but heavy encased frame eats such a huge amount of concrete I think using wet concrete is worth it. Cause now we're not talking 6 vs 1, we're talking 10s of constructors vs a handful of extractors + refineries.

[fringe pawn]

And of course perhaps you're already routing water for other things, removing some complexity.

[bleak coral]

Yup, since you might already be doing like pure iron or something

[fringe pawn]

Water becomes really good for a lot of things down the road. I don't think I'd get it as soon as it unlocks, though. I think overall you need to hit some sort of critical mass where everything switches to using water when prudent.

Definitely by the time you hit aluminum.

[bleak coral]

Yeah, you have to plan around it too. Like decide whether you're doing pure recipes or not before you start, so you know where you need to place stuff for convenient water if you decide you want to do it.

They can't be easily inserted into every system everywhere

[fringe pawn]

I think that's why I've stuck to the NW coast. Easy access to pretty much every resource

[bleak coral]

Oh, since we're talking about concrete and overall losers/winners, can we take a moment to again collectively laugh at fine concrete?

one of the worst recipes

[fringe pawn]

Rubber concrete is terrible as well.

[bleak coral]

rubber concrete actually is the most efficient with weighted resources

[cedar mica]

Fine concrete = How to get rid of Aluminium Silica, I guess

[bleak coral]

HOR alt -> diluted fuel -> recycled does crazy things

[cedar mica]

Looped resources, dont work very well, as it require 100% efficency

[fringe pawn]

Oof, playing around with the calc and seeing what HOR can do is nuts.

[bleak coral]

now do I think all that is worth doing for rubber concrete? nah, but it does do something interesting if niche

fine concrete just loses to all the other recipes

[fringe pawn]

Yeah, ultimately almost everything is useful if you have a base with the right combination of resources. There are oil nodes with nearby limestone I suppose.

[bleak coral]

and hey if you have excess rubber you don't know what to do with, why not?

[frosty pawn]

oil with nearby limestone is nice but that oil is usually also near water and the wet concrete recipe is easier to use all the output of a miner without modifying clock speeds

[bleak coral]

I could probably have incorporated some residual rubber into my HMF factory now that I think about. cause I had a turbofuel plant right next to it with excess resin. Oh well

[fringe pawn]

Seriously though, what are the craziest numbers of drones people have made? I can't see any justification for automated miner.

[frosty pawn]

also if you have a bunch of different resources nearby, wet concrete uses 100 water/min and Alternate: Instant Scrap requires 60 and produces 50

[bleak coral]

Automated miner is useless unless they make portable miners stack. Even if you're making tons of drones, it's far more space efficient to just build them as needed.

Like inventory space efficient

[frosty pawn]

i see many people get hung up on trying to recycle the water from aluminium production when it has always made more sense to me to use the output for some other production

[fringe pawn]

I just make a workshop right at the site of mineral nodes and make them there.

Besides being useless, the cost and complexity of automated miner makes it even more insane.

[bleak coral]

It's to justify the awesome sink points

[frosty pawn]

miners give a lot of coupon points

[bleak coral]

all equipment that isn't automatable have a ton more points than they normally would from their recipes, and they didn't change the points for the miner

[frosty pawn]

but i agree, i never carry portable miners to a resource node either, i just build a workshop on site and make what i need

[fringe pawn]

Does that end up being worth it? The crux of the issue is that you don't start with alts for free. You need to bust your ass and find the hard drives. Portable miner is literally the last recipe you should buy. Or the nobelisk one, unless you use them as weapons.

[frosty pawn]

when you have 3 bad choices, you have to choose the least bad

[bleak coral]

meh, their cost isn't that bad, especially as a convenience thing you build once so you can stop manually making them, if miners stacked I'd be fine with it

[frosty pawn]

automating nobelisks can be good because hand crafting them from scratch takes too much time IMO

[bleak coral]

I just don't consider it a real convenience until carrying a bunch of miners doesn't take up most of my inventory

[frosty pawn]

automating nobelisks from overflowing parts is a good idea too

[fringe pawn]

What do you even do with that many?

[bleak coral]

nobelisks or miners?

[fringe pawn]

Nobelisks

[bleak coral]

clear landscape

kill stuff

[fierce ruin]

they go fast

[frosty pawn]

dont need an output belt on the nobelisk assembler. just need 1 stack

[bleak coral]

I can burn through like 400 no problem in an hour or two

[fringe pawn]

I've never been a big landscaper, I guess that makes sense

[frosty pawn]

theyre fun for combat 😄

[fringe pawn]

I just cover everything with concrete

[bleak coral]

I like sticking stuff in/around the landscape, so gotta clear where I'm placing foundations down

stuff can stick up through foundations, or block foundations

[fringe pawn]

I just build higher until nothing is clipping through. Usually one foundation in the ground, then one more on top of that.

[frosty pawn]

i always chainsaw everything in the area that i'm gonna cover with concrete. feels too wasteful for my taste to leave it under there

[bleak coral]

meh, I don't need the biomass

[frosty pawn]

i need the frames

i bought my GPU in 2015

[bleak coral]

destroying/keeping biomass doesn't affect framerate

[frosty pawn]

i dunno if removing them helps but having a bunch of trees and stuff that nobody will ever see makes me feel bad anyway

[fringe pawn]

I think the ultimate turd hard drive would be auto miner, rubber concrete, and fine concrete

[fierce ruin]

and i think destroying tree is even worse for loadtime (from a dev stream long ago, maybe it changed)

[frosty pawn]

my SSD is pretty fast

[bleak coral]

a little bit, grows the save some, I wouldn't consider it impactful

[cedar mica]

Its more about any mycelia you kill

[bleak coral]

I also have plenty of that, and tbh I do go after that with a chainsaw

I think I have like 3000-4000 of it lying around though

it's quite plentiful

[frosty pawn]

i have an autoclicker macro on my mouse so i can just hold the button and scoop it all up 😄

[bleak coral]

me too, mostly for early game and picking stuff up off belts, I call it "pick shit up"

[cedar mica]

You miss out, as there is quite a lot you cant manully collect

And you cant target everything with chainsaw ether

[frosty pawn]

i thought you get the same amount whether you pick it or cut it.. ?

i chainsaw all the treees

[bleak coral]

there's stuff you can't pick up, including stuff that gives mycelia

the pink coral is the best source of mycelia

and you need to chainsaw it

[frosty pawn]

i know that. it's also the most annoying to leave alone so i always chainsaw the corals

[cedar mica]

Found that out in caves. Some of the biggest once, cant be chainsawed or picked, so need to use the AOE from chainsaw to get them

[frosty pawn]

plus it gives some limestone that i throw in a constructor

[bleak coral]

I just trash the limestone/silica 🤷‍♂️

[fierce ruin]

even better have it toggle on click EVIL LAUGH

I should learn macros tho

[frosty pawn]

but if im there to clear the area to lay concrete i know im gonna run out of concrete so i chainsaw anything close to a rock and make sure there is not a single piece of anything left behind that i could pick up one way or the other

it's not uncommon for me to forget what i was gonna build there in the first place

[bleak coral]

I have a few....

[frosty pawn]

that's a lot of buttons 😮

[fierce ruin]

mmmmmmmm

[bleak coral]

I have macro buttons on my keyboard, and then one goes on my mouse

oh well I guess three actually, the hotbar ones and the foundation placing one (which is just rapidly clicking)

[frosty pawn]

i click pretty fast already and dont make ridiculous floating platforms

so clicking the mouse 20 times on 1 spot because i'm standing in the right spot is fine by me

[bleak coral]

yeah I find that tiring after like the 5th time, but I also got a mod for that so I don't really need that one anymore

[frosty pawn]

after 1000 hours playing with no mods i dont want to break my streak just to use SMART only for foundations

[bleak coral]

palpatine voice: do it

[sand epoch]

Amen

[magic shadow]

yall don't know what you're missing

[bleak coral]

also my ridiculous floating platform has fake supports I'll have you know 😛

[frosty pawn]

i've seen the feature videos by the dev and i've seen ppl use it on twitch. i know what i'm missing and i'm fine with it

[fringe pawn]

DO people like alcad casing? That seems like a big investment for a tiny decrease in aluminum use.

[cold rock]

It's more work but copper is basically free

[fierce ruin]

floating platforms are clearly modded
they're not supported

[cold rock]

I intend to use it in the facility I'm building right now

[cold rock]

eyyyyy

[bleak coral]

I built both of mine without smart, I got it afterwards

just takes a podcast or 6 😛

[frosty pawn]

i havent decided for myself yet, so far i've only needed aluminium in small quantities so i have a temporary setup that doesnt involve silica at all and makes enough for building blenders

[bleak coral]

if you're already buildings sheets you're already bringing in copper

[fringe pawn]

Yeah, I jsut realized that

[bleak coral]

if you're not building sheets 🤷‍♂️

[fringe pawn]

It's the last step of my aluminum operation, so I'll just place crap ton of assemblers and they can be toggled as needed.

[frosty pawn]

sloppy alumina, pure ingots and default casings is enough for me atm 😄

inefficient but still more than i need to actually use rn

[cold rock]

I'm using default casings for the battery factory because the math works out exactly right

[frosty pawn]

yeah i find that combining alts with default recipes is usually much better than trying to do only alts

e.g. steel rotor + default stator + default motor = win

[bleak coral]

actually now that I think about I built my 50x100 floating platform without even that macro (might be what killed my last mouse now that I think about it lol)

[frosty owl]

I'm pretty sure I never threw more than 150 in all my playtime
I like green around my factory :harmonious_hannah:

[frosty pawn]

i dont use nobelisks for clearing landscape. only for removing those big breakable rocks and to kill enemies

[frosty owl]

Just do things the smart! way

[frosty pawn]

pro tip: stick a bunch of them to a vehicle, run over some enemies, get out and press the button

[frosty owl]

I prefer to do something like this https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/553550313533997057/817044112761946142/Screenshot20210304-14401200000.png

THEN run over to some other enemy and.... 🤣

So... How do you guys usually get belts over rails, when you can't go too high up, nor below the rails?
I'm trying to find a cool way to do so that isn't just a row of floating belts above the rails...

[frosty pawn]

you mean train rails?

[bleak coral]

never had to do that actually, my trains are all elevated above the factories

[frosty pawn]

i would try to make a station for those things instead, or i would make a 1 foundation high tunnel with walls

under the rail

[frosty owl]

And as you can see, I don't have that much space to the sides either (crossing from left to right) sigh
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/553550313533997057/849307113494413322/Cattura.JPG

[bleak coral]

or like to the side of them or something, away from belting anyway

[frosty owl]

I need to move the stuff FROM the station over the rail, and can't go below it :/

[bleak coral]

can you make lifts look not ridiculous?

or maybe make an archway to hide the lifts in

[frosty owl]

That's what I'm wondering
Right now I'm thinking to make a tunnel over the rail and have the belts go over it, but... Dunno, seems very simplistic to me

[frosty owl]

That'd be cool, but I don't really figure how

[frosty pawn]

you wanna make a rail from the south side of the smaller station that goes east?

[frosty owl]

Oh no, I just need to cross the central vertical rail

[frosty pawn]

i would make a hole either side of the rail and let a lift go down 1 foundation

[frosty owl]

The 2 stations both unload in the same area, from there half goes to the building in front (down in the picture), half to the left (crossing the rail)

[frosty pawn]

theres only water down there, so should be fine

[bleak coral]

hard to say how myself without being in game and seeing the limits, it does look like a really tight space to do it in

[frosty owl]

I can't go down! >.<
Its literally half a meter above the ground (and I don't like to submerge belts anyway ahah)

[frosty pawn]

going up would mean much taller lifts to avoid clipping with trains. you could raise a section of the rail like a bump about 2m high

[frosty owl]

Tight spaces... How do I ALWAYS end up with tight spaces...

[bleak coral]

my main thought is you can just surround the lifts and belt connecting them with walls/foundations/slopes so it's more aesthetically pleasing than some skinny lifts

and use one of the conveyor hole walls for in/out

[frosty owl]

Mh... That might not be a bad idea
I have a decent amount of space above (12m from the rail level), but lifting the rail sounds pretty good actually ^^

[bleak coral]

oh that is a good idea, and much less disruptive

[frosty owl]

Yeah, that'd be nice too, being able to use conveyor holes. Though it'd take some time to align and figure out...

Thanks for the brainstorming, guys, much appreciated

[frosty pawn]

personally i would build the belts first (clipping like a madman) and then see how i can get ramps and rail to go over without making a mess

might have to use corner ramps if other things get in the way

[frosty owl]

I'm really against clipping, generally 😅
It hurts, and makes building very complex sometimes, but... That's how I am

[bleak coral]

also: haha Arc de Spaghetti?

[frosty owl]

Sounds yummy

[frosty pawn]

i'm ok with floating rails if theyre not unreasonably long

[frosty owl]

Though, you've seen the screenshot above
I'm trying film a belt porn, not a spaghet cooking show :jacelul: :jacelul:

[frosty pawn]

🍝

[frosty owl]

As long as they look supported well enough (so not too long) I agree! :D
I mean, overall, I just like things to look... Kinda realistic.... Kinda

[frosty pawn]

you can always put belt supports to "hold them up" lol

[frosty owl]

I'll have to try that out just to see how it looks ahahah

[frosty owl]

Could you throw a wild guess at how many floors this factory currently has? ^^
(Belting for all machines is completed already, just lack the connections for the entire building)

Or could it be one floor? 😏

[frosty pawn]

you have refineries and manufacturers above/below and on the right the manufacturers look completely opaque... probably 3 or more floors? many many foundations high

i guess that's why you build all the way down to the bottom of the lake lol

oh that's not even a lake, that's the sea lol

[frosty owl]

That's just a shallow area of the sea, but you're spot on!
3 manufacturing floors!
(Assemblers and refineries are on one floor)

Water there is like half a meter high

[frosty pawn]

oh they must be blenders though, right? i just noticed they only have belts on one side

[frosty owl]

Nope?
No blenders in the entire screenshot (nuclear processing with alts, no blenders involved)

[frosty pawn]

ah ok

[frosty owl]

What made you think of blenders?

[frosty pawn]

blenders only have inputs and outputs on one side, but manufacturers have 4 inputs on 1 side and an output on the other side

unless i'm confused

yeah i think i'm confused

they have 4 inputs and 2 outputs

[versed violet]

yes, blender has 2 pipe 2 belt input on one side and single belt+pipe output at other

[frosty owl]

@cold rock You can read some more about it here #math-and-meta message
A more concise and well made explanation will probably be made... soon™️ (I guess after someone bothers making it and testing is concluded)

[cold rock]

Not much to go on there. Any idea what the loss rate is? Is it based on number of segments?

[frosty owl]

Yes, segment number. Losses are proportional to how grave the issue is (so depend on number of belt segments and (speculation here) how much lag there is)

Can be less than 1/min up to (max I've heard) 8/min, for mk5

@versed violet A ISC can reset the segment count, yes. Mergers/splitters... I hoped so and tried to slap down a few mergers on a belt: they nearly all backed up eventually
MAYBE if you place the mergers first, THEN connect them with a belt...
But considering how often splitting setups with mk5 belts have shown issues, I doubt that can be a solution

[frosty pawn]

you can combine straight belts to make them stupidly long if they are straight. just build a splitter or merger on the connection and then dismantle it. note however this will eventually begin to cause graphical anomalies since you can technically be very very VERY far away from the "location" coordinates of the belt and still be right next to it, so the level of detail and the location of items on the belt might not be visually accurate

[frosty owl]

@frosty pawn Interesting... Would you like the testing savefile to try that out? ^^
You know, the more test results, the merrier~

[frosty pawn]

i can merge all the belts and see if it makes a difference, but it will make ugly screenshots xD

[frosty owl]

The setup is messy already and who cares about screens, we crave DATA

[frosty pawn]

it will essentially be 1 super long straight section of belt that can go from 1 side of the map to the other, but might break Ben's heart

[frosty owl]

If it worked with no bugs, I'd be using it (obviously covered by something at the very least)

So, shall I DM it?

[frosty pawn]

yeah sure

i see the screenshot in #old-questions-and-help so basically what we will do is convert the 2nd example into the 5th example. it will look ugly but it will be technically the same arrangement of miner, belt, smelter

[dense dune]

Does anyone know a method to make the hypertubes bend smoother? (Image: noodle mode, vs what I want).

[sand garnet]

you'd have to place inbetween connectors

[dense dune]

Darn, I tried that and because they bend so much at the end its hard to get a nice shape doing that.

[frosty owl]

Thanks to @frosty pawn's testing, it seems belt segments' lenght is not a factor with the belts' throughput bug. Only the connection between the segments
Even a 1km long belt segment can work properly

[glacial hemlock]

There is only so much you can bend as there is a fixed range of minimum and maximum radius. As well as there is fixed angle of loop support rings. The curve as smooth as you shown above seems impossible. The workaroud is using mods that allow micromanagement of placements

[dense dune]

Thanks for the thorough answer. Unfortunately i'm trying to play through vanilla. But I appreciate you clearing that up for me. 😃

[fringe pawn]

Almost done with my aluminum production. I activated the first floor of the sheet/case building, and everything is working well enough. Once I finish the second floor, I'm excited to see if all 28 assemblers (6 casing, 22 sheet) run with perfect efficiency, like the calc says they should. 🤣

Oof. continuing the hard drive conversation form yesterday, I'm currently faced with fine black powder, charcoal, or biocoal. -_-

Riddle me this, is compacted coal useful enough to justify unlocking? Because here's the thing: if you never unlock it, you gate several other alt recipes and take them out of the pool. If none of the compacted coal recipes are significant, it seems like the top strategy would be to prevent them from being added to the hard drive tech pool.

Specifically, you miss out on fine black powder (garbage), compacted steel ingot (solid steel ingot is far superior anyway), and both turbofuel recipes. Turbofuel is good, but is it necessary?

[terse otter]

compacted coal leads to the compacted steel recipe, which is REALLY good

Oh wait, that's solid steel that's good

[fierce ruin]

fine black powder isn't garbage, imo. And for turbofuel you have another recipe without compacted coal now

[fringe pawn]

The other turbofuel recipe requires a blender to produce, though.

[terse otter]

Early turbofuel makes the pre-nuclear power quite easy, but honestly fuel power isn't too hard to begin with

[fringe pawn]

That's my thinking. A single pure oil node can power like 10 GW worth of generators with no alts, I think? More?

[terse otter]

Less I think

[fringe pawn]

Might need the HOR alt for more than 10 GW. But everyone knows that recipe is God-tier anyway.

[signal nimbus]

600 per minute, 400 fuel, 5000 MW

2500 using residual.

That's with a full overclock, btw.

[fringe pawn]

I must have been recalling the numbers as if using a full cluster. So you could use the full West shore to do 10 GW with 1200 crude, and devote 600 crude to rubber and plastic. Assuming no alts.

[terse otter]

I did heavy turbofuel in my current playthrough to power my unlocking builds, but just pulling a biome's worth of oil into a temp powerstation is probably faster, yeah.

[fringe pawn]

It had been a while since I had seen them come up, but coal is so common charcoal and biocoal definitely seem bottom tier, close to portable miner.

[wind spade]

doing oil without alts is pretty weird move lol

[bleak coral]

charcoal and biocoal are memes basically, they're the best at something no one does: converting biomass/wood into power

well no one does after biomass burners I mean

[fringe pawn]

And I think once people move on from biomass burners they're happy to stop feeding biomass 😛

[bleak coral]

yeah, but if you want to do a biomass-only run, there they are haha

[oblique hollow]

biomass to turbofuel, on the other hand....
that would be dope

[wind spade]

well biomass to turbofuel is possible with biocoal 😉