math-and-meta

[zealous tide]

no tengo blenderators yet

[earnest glen]

this. Anyhow if you "rush" a bit down the tiers you can skip big fuel plants. I built mine just because i'm slow and i like big factories

[zealous tide]

love the way the pipes look here

[earnest glen]

but putting down >500 fuel gens can be super annoying ahah

[upbeat tide]

Yea building at this scale, organization is mandatory

[tropic hawk]

if you use 3 pure oil nodes or 2 pure, and 2 normal, then you only need 1 mk II miner on a pure sulfur node clocked at 150% to make turbofuel for 160 generators

[zealous tide]

in your pic, can you connect the pipe support to the junction first and then just add the valve on or do you have to do any fuckery?

[thorn bane]

btw im still recommending #screenshots message

ive used that desing in multiple playthroughs now and it hasnt failed me so far

[upbeat tide]

Nice

[earnest glen]

too complex for my taste. Also "standard" vip actually work very good in my save

[zealous tide]

what function does that serve?

[earnest glen]

in my old aluminium factory i was pumping 1.2k water into a system that needed only 400 with no issues

[thorn bane]

it makes the recycled water from the scrap refinery take priority over the fresh water from extractors
this way the scrap refineries will always have an empty fluid buffer and never waterlock

[upbeat tide]

Yea mine is perfect balanced in terms of water

[tropic hawk]

some meta statement: OSHA would have a field day with most of our factories

[upbeat tide]

Lol

[earnest glen]

actually mine are fully "walkable". I like to put in doggos and i like they follow me everywhere i go ehehe

[zealous tide]

interesting, basically gives them prio on the line and the water extractors will just underproduce to match the available room in the pipe instead?

[thorn bane]

yep exactly

[earnest glen]

that's the base concept of what being called VIP here

[zealous tide]

Gotchuu duh that makes sense lol

Still trying to wrap my head around how it actually functions though. You have to do it because junctions are fucky or something right?

[thorn bane]

well junction dont have any priority so the water extractors would just fill up all the pipes stopping the recycled water
but with that design the fresh water is connected in 1 spot while the recycled water is connected in 6 spots resulting in a priority for the recycled water

[earnest glen]

if everything is perfect, probably to do that kind of closed loop a valve with a limit on fresh water will suffice

as there is the "load bug", where each machine lose 5 m^3 of fluid at each reload, if you do that way the system is gonna fail soon or later

[thorn bane]

ive had situations where a simple valve setup got waterlocked even though the math was right
ive also seen many people on discord post that they have the same issues
so imo its not enough to just use a valve and the right math

[thorn bane]

the load bug actually helps fix the issue as it removes water and not add

[zealous tide]

okay so here's my question, if you hooked them up like this, you're saying the water extractor would over power the recycled line up top?

[earnest glen]

but as is a loop, too few water means no bauxite ref which lead to more water

[thorn bane]

actaully hm i wonder if they fix that if alot more people will have issues with alu xD

[earnest glen]

the only viable alternative is to just package&sink

[thorn bane]

well if you do the math right it will work mostly just not 100% of the time due to pipes beeing weird

[earnest glen]

but as i'm a bit obsessed with efficiency i will never do that 😛

[zealous tide]

i'm just wondering if the pipe would fill from the recycled up top first, and then the extractor would just match capacity to fill the rest, or do they split 50/50 at the junction

[thorn bane]

but all the water is getting used up
it would just mean that youre producing <100% scrap until the water is full again

[wind spade]

pipes don't work the same as belts, they don't split 50/50 or anything, they fill from bottom up

[thorn bane]

its really unpredictable as the flow from one input can stop the other one etc.

[zealous tide]

so like this, if 200pm is going into a 300 pipe at the top, does the water extractor only make 100pm?

ignore the bottom pipe if necessary

[thorn bane]

no
sometimes yes sometimes no it varies alot

[zealous tide]

gotcha, so you have to build the vip's to manipulate the game into being more consistent/predictable then basically?

[thorn bane]

well its just a way to force pipes to have a priority since they dont have one by default

[zealous tide]

i'm just confused, i would think they'd either have priority or split, but its just randomly calculated?

[earnest glen]

anyhow, imo, the golden rules with pipes are: 1. loop the inputs, 2. don't trust pump head-lift meters, 3. avoid mk2 at full capacity 4. VIP every time you have to recycle stuff 5. use buffers to sort-of stabilize flow

[zealous tide]

is there an actual mechanic that calculates the way fluid travels in the pipe with physics and shiet like sloshing around or something?

[thorn bane]

no its not random its just impossible to predict
sometimes the fresh water will have 600m³ throughput sometimes the recycled will have 600m³

[wind spade]

isn't it "avoid any maxed pipe"?

[earnest glen]

on mk1 the loss is negligible

[thorn bane]

its not maxed it just sometimes builds up until it is released

[earnest glen]

but anyhow i use only mk2 at this stage so i didn't test it that much

[wind spade]

I'd also add 6. overproduce fluids slightly if possible (due to fluid load loss bug)

[earnest glen]

indeed

[zealous tide]

@thorn bane could you draw on your VIP ss the flow direction and maybe /min?

[bleak coral]

buffers don't stabilize flow, and if they're in-line they hurt flow until they're full, buffers are nothing but big pipes and just like pipes they'll slosh around until completely full

buffers that are perpendicular to the pipe flow direction are mostly fine, but they don't help flow, it just adds more space

[oblique hollow]

they do if they are parallel to the pipeline, in certain cases (see the Flow Equalizer)

[bleak coral]

really? huh

but I'm right that in-line hurt until full right?

[oblique hollow]

inline is iffy

i hate inline buffers

[earnest glen]

i usually put them above machines to store fluids when the flow is getting high but the machines aren't consuming it yet

[thorn bane]

i like inline buffers for my recycled water output

[earnest glen]

also i prefill them so for some loads the fluid loss doesn't hurt the production

[bleak coral]

@oblique hollow how does putting a valve before and after an in-line buffer affect it (so it only flows one direction)? do you think it helps, hurts, or doesn't really do anything?

[oblique hollow]

erm... still not really great because you lose flow until its at 75m³ or 300m³

the parallel buffer has like 50% less initial flow reduction

[bleak coral]

so if I just wanted some extra water storage for starting a recycling loop it'd be better to just go ahead and use an equalizer or compensator?

[oblique hollow]

if you wante extra a single branched off buffer should be enough

[zealous tide]

so can you not have an oil extractor maxed at 600/min?

[oblique hollow]

eh... it varies

sometimes it works and sometimes not

[thorn bane]

pipes are weird xD

[bleak coral]

is the best way to handle that to just branch it off after one section?

[oblique hollow]

whats so odd about that

[bleak coral]

same as the 780/m miners

[earnest glen]

Confirmed. It has to be a single pipe tho

[thorn bane]

the flow rate is moving
the water amount is moving

thats a "simple" 50/50 split

[bleak coral]

yup, cause the flowrate readout sucks tbh

[oblique hollow]

and?

flowrate ALWAYS fluctuates

[bleak coral]

it'd be like reading the ppm of a belt by counting how many items go through a point

[oblique hollow]

you never get clean numbers

[earnest glen]

Those are affected too?

[oblique hollow]

on average, the flow you see there should be 100 if you have 200 input

[bleak coral]

780/m belts aren't completely reliable past one belt segment, especially with sub-60fps due to floating point rounding errors

[thorn bane]

but the fluctuations vary

[oblique hollow]

yes

because machines dont produce or consume continuously

have you forgot that?

[earnest glen]

Good to know, maybe i didn't encouter the issue yet

[oblique hollow]

they consume and produce in "chunks"

[thorn bane]

no i mean on the setup
if i use the vip its pretty much constant 210 flow

sometimes 209 sometimes 211

[oblique hollow]

buffers can cause fluctuations, but they can also reduce them

[earnest glen]

And thats is exactly why i use buffers for fluids

[bleak coral]

honestly that flowrate needs to be changed to something like : "Average flowrate of X over Y Time" and maybe also the current one to watch fluctuations

but most of the time people want the first

[oblique hollow]

a graph like with power would be nice

[bleak coral]

yup

[oblique hollow]

where you can see the average flow over time

[zealous tide]

graph would be siiick

would help visualize the system so much

[oblique hollow]

..... i think im gonna fabricate something and put it in the QA site

[bleak coral]

ping me when you do, I'll upvote it

[zealous tide]

i want a cities skylines pipeline mode xD

show pipe flow backups with an overlay somehow, maybe varying intensities of red

[thorn bane]

drain is pretty much constant 210 (the input of 300-90)

[zealous tide]

a troubleshooting tool that overlays like that would be dope, maybe binoculars to troubleshoot from far way and show idle buildings highlighted yellow and powerless buildings highlighted red, maybe have a pipes mode that shows through walls out to a certain distance, so you can kind of see through your walls/spines to investigate trouble spots from a distance

[thorn bane]

i love that its this convoluted and complex
makes the game fun and challenging 🙂

[zealous tide]

definitely include both options, maybe additional ways to view the data if you can come up with any useful ones

[oblique hollow]

hey @thorn bane can i get a screenshot of a power pole graph real quick

[frosty owl]

Yeah, I used it for both the scenarios compared
The major difference without it is an increase in iron usage, iron smelters and plates constructors. The increase would be a bit bigger for the Bolted route (uses more plates)

[oblique hollow]

heres a mockup

[thorn bane]

uh i like it

[oblique hollow]

apparently theres already a QA post for flow averages

just not with an mockup attached

[zealous tide]

imagine a pipe junction cube 😮

[oblique hollow]

would probably have horrible flow

[zealous tide]

yeah that would be my biggest concern too

[azure gust]

Is there any documentation/guides for making oddly-sized balancers/reducers? I have an input of 9 non-saturated belts that would fit on 7 belts [mostly saturated], but I'm having trouble figuring out how to create the interface to convert 9 in to 7 out

[oblique hollow]

that would be a 9 x 7 balancer matrix

[river night]

if you dont need exact splits or anything, you could just ghetto a reducer

[oblique hollow]

which is horrible

you would need an array of 63 splitters / mergers to convert those 9 to 7 mostly saturated belts

[azure gust]

I tried to create an injected manifold design, but I need some combo of splitter/merger that has 2 inputs and 2 outputs in order to not be huge

[river night]

if you do it exact yes, but if you just care that it fits into 7 belts without worrying about perfect distribution..

[frosty owl]

@earnest glen @proven prawn Reworked and fixed the priority merged. Also decorated just a bit, since I feel like I won't change this area much from now on ^^

[analog depot]

Anyone willing to look and see what an overclocked Manufacturers out put is with alternate nuclear fuel rods. Is it 1.2 a minute?

[oblique hollow]

overclocked to what %

the uranium fuel unit alt does 1,5 Rods/min at 250%

while the normal recipe does 1/min at 250%

[earnest glen]

noice!

[analog depot]

@oblique hollow thank you yeah it was 250%

[zealous tide]

@wind spade do you have an overclock mode on the calculator to round to whole buildings and account for the increased consumptions?

[oblique hollow]

that means you cant have the exact output you want

[versed violet]

Would that actually make sense? If its just the last machine, it will be a blip on background of 10 or 100 other ones. If its for all machines, you can just multiply the final result by whatever the power use at given overclock multiplier is.

[zealous tide]

hmm i guess the only thing it would matter for is power use, i was thinking some things consume more but the consumption is linear from 1-250% clock for all machines right?

so it basically already does account for the clock in materials when it does a fractional number of machines i guess

25.66667 could be 24 at 100% and one at 166.67% and the only numbers that would be off on greenys calc is power, i think?

[frosty owl]

No, the power consumption increases exponentially with clock
At 250% clock they take ~4x the power

[zealous tide]

yeah thats what i'm saying, but you dont consume more material to make the same amount of product for any machine, when overclocked, right?

[frosty owl]

No, that would mean changing the recipe itself

Even the generators keep following their "recipe" when overclocked: X fuel gives Y power, no matter the clock

[wind spade]

I don't. Not sure if that will be possible anyway

[proven prawn]

Looking good😄

[frosty owl]

AND working good! :D
(I tried it)

The fix was easier than expected, luckily

[proven prawn]

Looking like your having fun testing out that mod, its interesting the things you can see with it, only downside is it kind of breaks the rendering forever until you reload😅

[frosty owl]

Yeah, kind of a bummer, but a fun way to end some factory building ahahah

I like it so much I might try to make a .gif out of it

[faint ember]

So let's say that you're gonna produce pure plastic/rubber out of an oil node

What's the preferred ratio once you're full up round on alternate recipes and tier unlocks?

Seems to me like rubber is more valuable.

But is that to 600/300 in favor of rubber, 500/400, or something else?

[frosty owl]

I usually just make them in even numbers, then make a factory of rubber or plastic whenever in lack of one or the other
Oil offers a lot of flexibility, I find most convenient to use it "as I need" whenever it can make the processing easier
Eg: oil close to iron = coated plates

[burnt wraith]

You can set it up so that if you're good on rubber it produces more plastic, or if you're good on plastic it produces more rubber

I try to make everything that way

[faint ember]

What does that look like?

[burnt wraith]

for example a pipe of 600 oil, split in half, going into 20 rubber refineries and 20 plastic refineries

[wind spade]

I see a lot of people asking "in which ratio should I produce X and Y?". And my reply is always the same: you won't get the ratio correct, no matter how much experience you have. It's way better to not produce things in advance and rather produce them on demand - if you find yourself in need of 200 plastic for some production line, make 200 plastic. That way you never overproduce or underproduce things and you won't be playing a game of whack a mole to catch the perfect ratio between two things.

[burnt wraith]

this way both can individually use all 600 oil if one gets backed up

[quaint ember]

It's probably unwise to build something that jams if the consumption ratios aren't perfect though.

[burnt wraith]

why?

[muted crypt]

Because (for example) what happens when you consume all of the rubber and half of the plastic? Then it's trying to supply output with not enough oil to provide to produce

[burnt wraith]

well yeah there's no setup you can make to fix a problem where you don't have enough oil
you just need to get more oil

[quaint ember]

That's just an underflow, not a jam. I'm talking about a situation where if plastic consumption totally stops then so does rubber production

or vice versa

[burnt wraith]

the only way it would stop producing is if you stopped consuming, so I don't see how it is a problem

[wind spade]

because if stopping consumption of one item leads to stopped production of other item, it's bad

[burnt wraith]

I agree with that, so I don't make setups like that

[wind spade]

hence the original point:

It's probably unwise to build something that jams if the consumption ratios aren't perfect though.

[burnt wraith]

the one jamming only increases the production of the other

[wind spade]

not always

e.g. recycled loops

[burnt wraith]

yeah recycled loops are a nightmare, I don't touch those

[wind spade]

they are great, they triple your plastic/rubber production (together with alt HOR)

you just have to sink products to keep production

[burnt wraith]

they are great if you are out other options

[river night]

recycled is fine as long as you add an overflow sink to make sure it keeps working

[burnt wraith]

kind of like diluted ore recipes

[wind spade]

they should be the first option you consider if you're looking to get a lot of plastic and rubber 😉

[oblique hollow]

diluted ore xd

[river night]

diluted ore? alloy? pure ore? what? 😄

[oblique hollow]

there are no better alternatives to the recycled recipes

[burnt wraith]

ore plus water

[muted crypt]

pure

[oblique hollow]

ah, the pure ingot recipes

[burnt wraith]

yeah that XD

[river night]

pure is just a flat productivity increase, there is no balancing issue like that, unless you like built it with waste water from aluminium or something

[burnt wraith]

it's great for increasing production but finding another ore node is much easier

[wind spade]

you'll eventually run out of nodes tho 😉

[muted crypt]

idk I like the fact that I can like.. multiply my copper by 2.5 from a node

[river night]

i'm not sure its really easier to get a second node from quite a distance away instead of just adding some water, which is available in quite a many places

[burnt wraith]

that's why I said it was another example of "they are great if you are out of other options"

[wind spade]

if one option is to move stuff from a few hundred meters away and other option is to just add water that I have nearby, I know what I would choose

[burnt wraith]

also running out of ore nodes isn't a problem if you finish at golden cup

[river night]

if you are talking about iron .. sure, there is probably one nearby you can use .. but anything else? rather add some water

[burnt wraith]

add refineries, pipes, water extractors vs. a belt

[wind spade]

it's not add refineries. It's build refineries vs build more smelters

and that "belt" can have even like 2km and that's just pain to build

[heavy canyon]

why refineries

[burnt wraith]

okay when did a few hundered meters become 2km

[quaint ember]

required for the pure (hydro refining) ingot recipes

[river night]

I replaced my concrete setup with pure concrete just the other day, and while it uses a bit more power now, it got much smaller in size, since one refinery replaces like 3 constructors or something like that

(plus double the concrete)

[burnt wraith]

but I still find that less of a pain than fitting refineries in places that currently fit smelters

[wind spade]

because they are used in pure recipes 🤷‍♂️

[quaint ember]

probably because they're the smallest machines that have the requisite ports

[river night]

I think most people build new factories rather then actually retrofit existing ones

[wind spade]

well that's upgrading a setup, but usually you want your setup to be built with all the alt recipes from the begining

[heavy canyon]

oh ok

[quaint ember]

refitting the steel recipes isn't as much of a hassle as the others because IIRC they're all foundry

[river night]

ratios change, though

[heavy canyon]

do any of you know how to get water to my coal generators quick

[burnt wraith]

that's true, the better comparison is making a build that has to fit refineries vs making a build that only has to fit smelters

[wind spade]

build your coal generators next to the water

[heavy canyon]

ok thanks

thanks

[wind spade]

well usually it's less refineries than smelters 😉

[river night]

space is the least constrained resource as well

there is loads of it

[quaint ember]

depends what part of the map you're trying to build at, too... there's a stranded pure coal node in grassy plains that's about 700 m from water IIRC

[river night]

if you want to optimize for size or power, no reason not to use plain old smelters, but many of us are not bothered by the water lines

[burnt wraith]

it's easier to take the coal to the water than to take the water to the coal

[quaint ember]

true, coal gens use 3x as much water as coal

[river night]

its not even that, its that liquids are more annoying to transport

[quaint ember]

the head lift business?

or the 'forget moving it on a tractor' business?

[river night]

at the time you are building your first coal plant, you are like at 120 belts, and 300 pipes, so its ~similar per line

[quaint ember]

fair...

[river night]

but yeah mostly headlift, if the terrain is flat its fine, but where is it

[quaint ember]

for that very reason I'm currently building a cantilever platform out over the falls where west crater lake overlooks the rocky desert

3 pure nodes, no head lift worries

[river night]

there is a couple good coal spots near water that has you not worrying about location much all around the map

might be slightly off your normal path, but power lines are easy 🙂

[quaint ember]

I know one in the northern rocky desert, a lone node near sulfur and a small pond in SE grassy plains, probably a bunch of others too

the one near the sulfur seems like a natural fit for early compacted coal

[river night]

northern forest has this clearing with a lake and 3 nodes, run out of room in there before anyhting else 😄

[quaint ember]

last time I was in the northern part of the map I couldn't take three steps without some ornery wildlife taking exception to me

not sure if a mod is related to this or not, but there were a few times I had hogs yeet my corpse into the high altitude boundary of the playfield volume

with the right camera angle this resulted in a spyplane view of the map

also was looking at the power costs of clock tuning ... modest adjustments either way really don't make a huge difference once you allow for the change in number of machines required

75% clock on the water pumps for coal generators saves about ~1.2 MW per coal gen IIRC

[magic sparrow]

Underclocking can be a serious savings on power.

[dark summit]

so is power usage a curve?

[earnest glen]

what do you mean?

if everything is efficient, should be a line misread the thread sorry -.-

[river night]

power usage is not linear with overclocking, so you can save quite a bunch of power by using underclocked buildings, if you are fine with having more of them

[upbeat tide]

Its also curved the other way. With underclocking, power usage drops faster than you would expect

[faint silo]

me on my way to put 100 particle accelerators at 1% to save up power

[thorn bane]

relative power save:
at 250% you use 73% more power
at 100% you use 100% of the power
at 50% you use 66% of the power
at 1% you use 6% of the power

[thorn bane]

so youd save 1400MW at the top end
or half a nuclear power plant
or 9 fuel gens

[burnt wraith]

wait if 50% uses 66% of the power, doesn't that mean two 50% (100%) uses 132% power?

[empty glade]

instead of 200% of power

[burnt wraith]

oh so it's not 66% of the power

[thorn bane]

(also that line looks pretty linear to me)
hides in corner

[burnt wraith]

it's 66% of 50% of the power?

[thorn bane]

its 50% efficiency so you need to build 2
those 2 combined use 66% of the power a normal 100% oc would

[zealous tide]

It's a lot more than that I think

[river night]

the numbers seem right, at 50% a constructor uses 1.3MW, but you need two for the same throughput, thats 2.6MW, which is 66% of the normal 4MW (for a single constructor at 100%)

[thorn bane]

jup just double checked math checks out

[bleak coral]

Also got to love that some machines can go low enough in power so they use less while running than idle.

[thorn bane]

anyone know how long pipe manifolds take to fill?

im curious how much the load bug actually affects fuel setups
with 100 TF gens and 4h play session it seems like a buffer with 2m³ turbofuel/min is enough to make up for it

@bleak coral
100 gens is 450TF/min and 500TF lost on load
so in 4h thats 2.1m³/min that needs to be added
so 0.46 gens

[bleak coral]

Yep sounds right

Could add enough buffers to hold 500 for immediate relief, and just let the buffer fill for extra security.

[thorn bane]

now i just want to know how long it takes for a pipe manifold to regenerate if you dont have overproduction

i feel like it shouldnt take that long of sitting at 95% power production

[oblique hollow]

ehehehehhee

[bleak coral]

Oh it never recovers, it just drops gens until it reaches an overproduction equilibrium

I've watched this happen to a system

[oblique hollow]

the only way to make it recover is to manually intervene

[thorn bane]

mine usually recover but i dont check on them too much

if they dont all run you make more
so eventually they do balance out

its just like a belt manifold

[bleak coral]

Next time I'm in game I'm gonna shut down a few gens in each system, and let them stabilize, probably also find a place to put some industrial buffers in parallel.

[quaint rampart]

don't do the second thing. buffers introduce additional slack, which is exactly the thing pre-filling your pipes is meant to remove.

[earnest glen]

Actually not if put them above machines

[quaint rampart]

it's intuitive that "welp adding a big supply bucket will help right" but in practice it often makes sloshing and starvation issues worse

[oblique hollow]

if there is no sloshing possible, buffers dont cause any

and if there already IS sloshing, parallel buffers reduce it

its a double-edged sword

[zealous tide]

could you just add a valve at the start of the buffer to prevent sloshing?

it would at least prevent backflow up to the valve right?

[oblique hollow]

you could

[zealous tide]

so then if the pipe before the valve dries up, whatever is after the valve will not flow back through the valve to fill that empty space right?

[oblique hollow]

in theory yes. but if that part dries up you have sloshing nontheless because your input drops

[zealous tide]

thats my theory and it seems to work (afaik) but i have nothing overly complex

[zealous tide]

what would be causing the sloshing?

[oblique hollow]

input dropping and then being increased again. one big slosh xd

[bleak coral]

This, we talked about this yesterday. Which is why I said parallel pipes. So I'm basically gonna setup a compensator or equalizer and fill up the buffers. The idea being they meet the sudden spike in demand and keep flow steady and the pipes filled while production catches up and all the empty space can go into one place instead of the whole system.

[zealous tide]

well if you have a valve before the buffer, and the buffer is 80% full, it would only flow forward out of the buffer and slosh in that tiny tube between the valve and buffer

[oblique hollow]

filling them up completely just causes them to output at max capacity

just fill them to 75 each if you use small buffers

[bleak coral]

Well the idea is they would empty into the system on a reload

For a turbofuel plant

[oblique hollow]

then you need to fill the entire pipe system...

that can work. yes

but, again, only if all pipes are full.

else the buffers will try to fill those gaps

[bleak coral]

Yup, that'd be the idea, fill the whole system, then when a bunch goes away on reload the buffer fills those gaps, and the system can stay full and the excess production refills the buffer for next load.

[oblique hollow]

that can work. just gotta be patient

[bleak coral]

Yup, lots of manually shutting off fuel gens, but I've done it before, and I've got podcasts.

Am I right to assume this should be at the top of a multi-level system?

[sterile shard]

hey, it's heavy modular frame built at ratio, look at the righ colum for the number of machine XD

[oblique hollow]

104,4? odd ratio number

[quaint rampart]

26:1 i can't read euro-style decimals apparently

[upbeat tide]

I setup my HMF for a end total not exactly ratio. I know there are a few hundred machines involved tho.
60 a min is alot of heavy frames

[drifting plover]

Couldnt you just place down like a hundred batteries, wait for them to charge, and then when you log on the factory has time to restart before the batteries run out

[bleak coral]

It's not about covering a power shortage, it's about it reaching a stable state where the pipes are full again.

[drifting plover]

well like couldnt the TF have time to refill the pipes and stuff with the batteries

[bleak coral]

the batteries aren't gonna stop the demand

[oblique hollow]

the generators still consume

[drifting plover]

well it will give it that like 3ish minute reboot time for the entire factory for TF to get rebooted

[bleak coral]

I'm not gonna manually shut off and turn on fuel generators on each load, that's silly

[drifting plover]

well i feel like itd just be the entire factory restarting the TF production and moving down pipes

so like after 2-3 minutes it would be all done and the turbofuel will easily go back into the fuel gens

[bleak coral]

you can't mass turn off fuel generators, you have to manually turn each of them off one by one

[drifting plover]

you wouldnt have to turn them off

[oblique hollow]

yes you would

[bleak coral]

if you don't they just keep taking fuel

[drifting plover]

why would you tho cuz it would just be refilling

[oblique hollow]

generator off: no constant consumption
generator off: constant consumption

[drifting plover]

yeah but like if it runs out of fuel you have the batteries to cover the factor

factory

[oblique hollow]

it increases the delay if you leave them on. or possibly even keeps the pipes below 100% indefinitely

[drifting plover]

if you have a buffer and a valve to stop backflow then they refill after you get the new TF to push it forward

and then everything refills

[bleak coral]

you have two scenarios:

1. overproduction and waiting enough time to fill the system back up, no downtime, no down generators
2. equal production or not waiting enough time, generators shut down, but they will never recover since the demand always equals supply so there's no excess to fill up what the reload bug took away, so the system's flowrate is unstable

power storages don't help in either, unless you're manually shutting generators down and letting everything fill back up

[oblique hollow]

also, batteries only work if you have enough generators still on. if 3 / 12 generators fail to run, then even batteries cant compensate that if your demand is sufficiently high

[drifting plover]

i think its fine to have just 1-2m^3 per min extra

cuz that will fill up the buffer and compensate for the reload after a bit

[drifting plover]

even if you just have a ton of batteries?

[oblique hollow]

they'll drain eventually

just how "oh well i have 50 million containers for nuclear waste" is no permanent solution

[bleak coral]

I think you're underestimating the amount of time it takes to refill, it's like a few hours if you only have a tiny overproduction, like 2-4hrs, not like 3 minutes

[oblique hollow]

for 3 minutes, you need like 30 m³/min extra

[drifting plover]

so you do an extra refinery that uses the heavy oil residue TF recipe to fill it up quickly

[oblique hollow]

it all depends on how many generators you have

[drifting plover]

cause it does a lot per min

30 per min extra will refill the entire thing easily

[bleak coral]

And if you have enough overproduction to fill it up in 3 minutes, you don't need the power storages anyway, cause the generators will never go down

[drifting plover]

and fill the buffers

[thorn bane]

again:
100 gens is 450TF/min and 500TF lost on load
so in 4h thats 2.1m³/min that needs to be added
so 0.46 gens

[thorn bane]

thats impossible
if the gens are off youre making extra
it will ALWAYS result in 100% efficiency
the only question is how long

thats why i use batteries
and its working fine

[oblique hollow]

100 hours is already "infinite" to me

same for 10 hours

if i have to wait 10 hours for a problem to fix itself, im mad

[bleak coral]

That's why I'm gonna overproduce by like 30 or something, and do the buffer/equalizer thing

[thorn bane]

well having 97% efficiency isnt even a solution so id rather get a fix eventually

id rather have 95% efficiency at the start and eventually get to 100% compared to always running at 97%

[zealous tide]

This is why you should just use the much easier and simpler diluted fuel in a blender xD

[oblique hollow]

this also affects diluted

it affects any fuel generator setup

[zealous tide]

Ohh reload bug that's what I missed, sorry

So that's what makes fluids disappear, a reload?

[earnest glen]

5 m3 for each machine

You can mitigate the issue but Is always there 🙃

[zealous tide]

and its every time you reload the game?

[oblique hollow]

everytime you load a save

[zealous tide]

💩 👍

[muted crypt]

When you say 5 cubic meters per machine, does this mean like... from the machine's "inventory" or from the connected pipe or what?

[oblique hollow]

pipe

the machine has a second, invisible input buffer thats about 5m³ big (or so is the assumption)
upon loading the game, that buffer gets emptied, and thus the pipes empty into it

[muted crypt]

...I see

[bleak coral]

My guess would be that it's a save bug where what's in that space isn't saved, but it'd be wild if something actually deleted what was in there even though it was saved.

[muted crypt]

?

[proven prawn]

Heres a math problem, how close could ((2^(1/1.321928 )x10)x36) be reduced to 600

[wind spade]

what's the x10 and x36?

[proven prawn]

x10 is the default number of nuclear waste and 36 is the group I was considering changing it to for the nuclear power plants, right now its groups of 35

[sand epoch]

converting the waste to rods to sink/use?

[proven prawn]

Yeah, I figured it out though, extract 480 using smart splitters and 120 and 60 after that leaving me with exactly 300, can then combine with other 300s to get the 600.

[sand epoch]

480 what?.. waste.? smart doesn't work on them..

you could just use regular though.. just do a manifold of splitters and combine 5 mk1s..

[proven prawn]

normal uranium waste can be sorted by type with them, plutonium waste doesn't have a sorting type with them, when your using the belt to only move and balance one type of material that doesn't really matter and can always use any undefined for plutonium waste to, not that I plan on using making plutonium waste though.

[sour wyvern]

has anyone made a turing complete computer with smart splitters?

because... it should be possible.

[sand epoch]

What is a 'turing complete computer'?

[wind spade]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_completeness

[sand epoch]

Yea.. but what does that have to do with building in satisfactory??

[wind spade]

they are asking whether or not is satisfactory turing complete

[sand epoch]

Not what i read, but okay.

[wind spade]

or rather whether or not anybody attempted to build such a turing complete computer in satisfactory

[sand epoch]

And that just brings me back to how you are suposed to build a computer inside a game... o0

[wind spade]

turing complete computer is very simple

compared to what you probably think about when somebody says "computer"

[sour wyvern]

oh it's been done many times before

[azure drum]

Yeh, it's been done in quite a few games. Notably minecraft

[dark summit]

And Conway's life

[high wagon]

When you realize your main project is going to need 1005 refineries.

[frosty owl]

Nope. The closest I heard where discussions about a Turing complete pipe calculator, but that would take minutes for the simplest instructions :hehe: (belts might be a bit faster though)

[wind spade]

turing complete isn't about speed, it's about "is" or "isn't"

[bleak coral]

does the fact every system I've seen can't feed itself input have anything to do with turing completeness? cause as far as I knew the other big limitation for logic systems in satisfactory is machines aren't able to be manipulated except by hand, that's where the input comes from

[earnest glen]

Question: at this point is late to change layout so i slightly downclock some machines, but there is a way to fully utilize a pure node with mk3 miner? Like splitting early as with extractor and pipes?

[bleak coral]

no

cause you always need a belt first

so 780 is the limit

[earnest glen]

No thats ok. I'm talking about using full 780

As mk5 lose some throughput on the way

Even if implementation and math is correct, i had to downclock some foundries to use only ~760

Otherwise a couple of them are starving from time to time

[bleak coral]

oh yeah, it seems to happen between belt sections, so splitting it right away should™️ be good

[wind spade]

I'm not exactly sure how turing completeness is defined, but I think input is always by human, isn't it?

[bleak coral]

idk, I tried looking it up and was immediately like "I'm too tired for this" 😛

[frosty owl]

Aye, it has been tested for, works fine ✅

[earnest glen]

Thanks

[sour wyvern]

yes, but things have to be able to do other things. I've been thinking about this for a while, and I'll do some more thinking tomorrow and maybe start making some notes.

[median thunder]

satisfactory doesn't have priority input mergers

so I believe it is not turing complete

[frosty owl]

You can do priority merging with pipes
With belts too, though not complete priority, only a very high one

[median thunder]

that seems incredibly difficult

given how finicky pipes are in general

[frosty owl]

It has been tested for throughly
You can check that out at the VIP junctions part of the Piple

[frosty owl]

So... people who love to sort stuff (imma at you @livid forge due to the sorter you just did)
How powerful did train sorters just get compared to belt sorters, with the news on trains being able to pick up specific items from stations?

[oblique hollow]

for me with my uranium setup, not at all.

i still have to unload all the same items on one platform

and then belt sort it

[frosty owl]

Oh, a mixed cargo for UFR materials?

[oblique hollow]

yep. also for PFR

i have like... 6 containers to smart sort parts into

and they all come from one platform already

i dont load any other stuff into it

the same train also carries quartz but thats always full and i cant use that anyway

and the last freight car is for transporting empty canisters back to refill

so my current system doesnt benefit at all from that

[frosty owl]

Any overflow?

[oblique hollow]

overflow goes to sink

i have no other use for those products

my uranium setup is just "throw parts at it until it works"

[frosty owl]

Easy enough, I certanely appreciate the mixing

[gray willow]

how the heck am i supposed to produce enough heavy modular frames latgame without grinding for 20 hrs to set up a another whole overclocked production line for modular frames (this will be a pain to do and i dont want to. help pls (i have one fully overclock manufacturer and it never has enough encased beams, help pls)

oh, did i mention i prefer spaghetti over real organizing?

[drifting plover]

use satisfactory tools to get good beam production

and if you use the alt that makes 3 every 64 seconds its a lot easier as well

[gray willow]

without mods pls i dont wanna cheat

[drifting plover]

satisfactory tools is an online production planner

[gray willow]

which alt? remind me bcuz even with object scanner i can never find enough hard drives

[drifting plover]

https://u4.satisfactorytools.com/production

[gray willow]

WAIT i googled it i need to get heavy flexible frame!!!

[drifting plover]

im pretty sure its heavy encased frame

[gray willow]

which costs the least encased beams

[drifting plover]

yeah but encased doesnt use screws

[gray willow]

now: help me with hard drive finding strats (i have object scanner & explorer)

[drifting plover]

use satisfactory calculator

interactive map it shows location of all hard drives

[gray willow]

the flexible is perfect i have an oil surplus

[gray willow]

ok ill look it up

[drifting plover]

https://satisfactory-calculator.com/en/interactive-map

imo you should just use scim for finding areas to build. theres an area on the far left hand side that has really good resources and theres coal below it. you can make around 404 steel ingots a min using only 270 coal and iron per min with all alts

[gloomy palm]

What would be your most productive method to plan a factory ahead of time? Using SCIM, Mods, giant printout of the game map and a sharpie?.. do you not really take the terrain into much consideration, do you plan around the terrain, do you just build your factory above the ground on platforms? I'm curious

[drifting plover]

I usually just manifold out resources along a giant area if it calls for like 20 of thme and use satisfactory tools to get the exact number

[gloomy palm]

How do you think of where to start positioning machinery?

[drifting plover]

I have a giant platform and i just go for whatever area doesnt have stuff and is kinda open, an area thats close to resources and open, or just near an edge

[gloomy palm]

interesting so no formal planning per se

[drifting plover]

I try to group all my similar buildings together

So like foundries/ smelters then constructors/refineries then assemblers then manufacturers

But other than that no planning

And the belts in between each part are a bit of spaghetti

[quaint rampart]

A turing machine is a pure function from a specific kind of 5-tuple to another kind of 5-tuple. No human is involved in the mathematical model, as such. Metaphors like "Tape" and "input" are for comprehension only.

Something is turing-complete if it models a turing machine which can emulate arbitrary turing machines based on its input (the initial 5-tuple)

More generally, a system is "turing complete" if you can implement a reasonably-large subset of turing-machine-computable algorithms on it. Generally, anything with branching, repetition, and storage can do it, which means that Satisfactory plumbing might be turing-complete (based on work by McGalleon).

@sour wyvern ☝️ Smart splitters don't meet these criteria, and it's likely that you cannot implement a turing-complete system on top of them, but i'd be open to counterexamples or even partial constructions that show computation, even in a more limited category.

You might be able to implement finite state machines using belts and splitters, though, and there's a reasonable amount of computation you can do with those without needing the full capabilities of the turing model.

[oblique hollow]

with pipes you can do NAND gates, and with some special buffer setups, you can make oscillators that periodically input a signal down a line

and with enough NANDs and such, you could technically build a computer

[quaint rampart]

yeah NAND is the universal gate

A NAND gate on its own is not turing-complete, but there are ways to build NAND circuits that can solve turing-complete problems up to a limited input size

@oblique hollow what does a buffer clock look like, out of curiousity?

[livid forge]

i havent looked into that train setup, maybe it has its place, but i doubt it'd change my sorting setup.

Something i would love though, is the smart merger feature, that'd significantly cut down on the bulk of my storage

sounds like a good system if you can limit the amount of stuff a train picks up from a station. So for instance, half the cart is dedicated to iron plates, and half the cart is dedicated to iron rods?

in cases where one dedicated cart per item is redundant

[gloomy palm]

Fascinating

[bleak coral]

oh wait I just realized we could use switches + pumps + elevation to control inputs now, without having to mess with machines

[oblique hollow]

oscillation rate is pretty much 1,3333 per Minute

so SUUUUPER slow

[quaint rampart]

sure, but plumbing gates aren't quick anyways

computability says nothing about it being fast 😄

[oblique hollow]

yeah, they take up to 30 seconds to respond

[livid forge]

curious, whats the purpose of this?

[bleak coral]

proof of concept + fun?

[quaint rampart]

Oh I see how this works, that makes total sense

[oblique hollow]

originally, it was supposed to be a comparator of sorts. but now it just acts as an oscillator. once the buffer is full, it magically completely empties itself over that mk 2 pipes

[quaint rampart]

It completely emptying itself is a "plumbing isn't fluid dynamics" moment

[oblique hollow]

i expected the head lift drop to stop it at some point, but no, it just completely goes empty

[bleak coral]

a great example of "satisfactory fluids aren't real fluids"?

[oblique hollow]

yes

[quaint rampart]

extremely yes

a real-world example would just fill up to the tip line on the right-hand pipe and then flow steadily after that

maintaining a more-or-less steady level in the tank

[oblique hollow]

same with, if you have a full and an empty buffer, and put a valve between them, the full buffer just fecking empties itself into the other

[quaint rampart]

the pump also wouldn't do much, on account of being connected to itself. It'd keep fluid moving in the system but it wouldn't add working pressure

[oblique hollow]

the pump is just there to cancel head lift

[quaint rampart]

yeah

[oblique hollow]

its in an unpowered state

[quaint rampart]

oh I didn't notice that, neat

I always forget that off pumps aren't closed

[oblique hollow]

yep, they just reset pressure

[bleak coral]

I am parodically reminded of this when some comes in with a broken coal plant that has way too many pumps

[oblique hollow]

i laugh whenever i see "Why isnt this flowing" and theres 50 pumps and at LEAST one of them is unpowered

[bleak coral]

exactly

[quaint rampart]

I just put valves everywhere 😉

[bleak coral]

I always think "someone didn't read the instructions did they?"

[quaint rampart]

can't have flow problems if you have no flow

[bleak coral]

or the infamous backwards pump, and it's more common cousin the the backwards station

[quaint rampart]

more seriously my plumbing adventures are very very simple. pumps to go up, buffers for trains, and no pumps, valves, or buffers anywhere else

[oblique hollow]

its a pretty valid formula

before slapping pumps or valves down, check everything else and try it

only then slap extra stuff down

if one or two extra things dont fix it, 900 more wont either

[quaint rampart]

I generally have a more-inputs-than-outputs rule, and it serves me well on both belts (no need for complicated splitter ratios) and plumbing (what's 5 m3 between friends)

people who let demand exceed supply on a logistics system confuse me

[bleak coral]

stolen by the machine, that's what that 5m^3 is :P'

the ones that confuse me are people who just jump right in to making a system, and don't test new things

first thing I did with trains was build a small-scale setup just to mess with them and figure them out

much easier to make a mistake when the track is like 100m long and you can mess with both ends in the same place than to find out you got something wrong after building 1km of track

[oblique hollow]

now that i think about it the longest pipelines i place are always sulfuric acid lines

oil and water are always incredibly short

[bleak coral]

why's that?

[quaint rampart]

sulphur over there, batteries and nuke processing over here, and fluid cars suck donkey chode?

what is this, a tanker car for ants?

[oblique hollow]

idk i just always have my sulfur refineries up on some hill and then let the acid flow down

since there will be no head lift issues, why not

[quaint rampart]

A single freight car, with the smallest stack size, can saturate a mk5 belt for 2m 3s, or a mk2 pipe for 2m 40s

You're way better off, in terms of sheer volume, moving packaged fluids than fluids in tanks. That could be a neat tradeoff, but the margin is so huge that there really isn't a contest.

(A freight car loaded with packaged sulfuric acid can provide a mk2 pipe for 5m 20s, given sufficient packagers to unpack it that fast, and can be unloaded more than fast enough to sustain that.)

[livid forge]

you can also use the same train to transport the bottles back to the loading station

just have a packaging system on each side

you can store 2400L³ in an industrial tank, how many liters can you store in an industrial container if you package it?

[oblique hollow]

4800 m³

48 slots, packaged fluids stack to 100

[livid forge]

oh its meters? either way, thats a big difference...

[oblique hollow]

one canister is 1 m³

[livid forge]

pluss the tank is physically bigger

LOL THEY ARE NOT! haha there is an easy way to fix it 😄

make the volume of the container more realsitic

[muted crypt]

one cubic meter is 1000 liters - big difference^^

[livid forge]

i meant big difference between a tank and container

but yea its like 6galon containers visually 😄

[quaint rampart]

yeah it's actually that the volumes used for fluid production and consumption are grossly exaggerated

if you couldn't compress fluid into a container-sized thing (and liquids, at least, are SUPPOSED to be incompressible! it's part of the definition!) …

[livid forge]

just change everything from m³ to L³

[quaint rampart]

cubic litres 😡

[livid forge]

ok wait thats dumb...

[quaint rampart]

funny though

[livid forge]

just liters..

[oblique hollow]

heres an actual 1000 L "canister"

[quaint rampart]

but yeah that's about how I think of it … except then the tanks and freight volumes don't make sense

[oblique hollow]

we got pocket dimesion technology

[livid forge]

how big is a standard grid?

8x8 meters?

[muted crypt]

one foundation is 8x8 yes

[oblique hollow]

standard foundation is 8 x 8 m

so one conveyor pole is supposed to be like.... 1 m wide

[livid forge]

how fucking massive are humans in this game?

[oblique hollow]

and conveyors are 2 m

[oblique hollow]

we are only like 2 m tall

[muted crypt]

that's still 6'6"

ish

a little over, almost 6'7"

[oblique hollow]

she a tall lass

[muted crypt]

1.8m
the Pioneer is just properly-modeled Alex from Minecraft confirmed

[magic shadow]

wHaTs ThAt In MuRiCaN

[oblique hollow]

5.5 FOOTBAWLS

[magic shadow]

5'11"

so actually, my height lmao

[livid forge]

hmm the container volume isnt actually that far off...

i mean the tank volume

if you expanded it to fit its boundtry box it'd be roughly right

and dude... the volume of a waterbottle isnt too far off either

you can fit roughly 14x14 bottles on a foundation

and they are roughly 1 meter tall

so i came to a radius of 0.285m which yields a volume of 0.26m³, if you dont account for the fact that it tapers towards the top

i expected less. But still far off from 1m³!

[oblique hollow]

hmm, maybe the packager actually DOES compress the fluid

[livid forge]

by a factor of 4, damn those bottles are strong

pop one and it'd explode 😄

[oblique hollow]

oh factor of 4?

that comes close to the same thing it does to gas

it compresses 4m³ of gas down to one bottle

[livid forge]

ye they contain 1m³ ingame but i calculated it to be roughly 0.285m³

visually, that is

[oblique hollow]

wanna try and find out how big the gas bottles are?

[quaint rampart]

My actual complaint is that the balance of consumption rates and container sizes really makes fluid transport a complicated and unrewarding mess in comparison to dry goods. “Different” I could live with, but running a long pipe is both easier and more effective than a fluid train so it’s more “why bother”

And that seems like a misstep in game design

[livid forge]

its rarely worth it to package fluids irl too though

pipes are always better, packaging is more for very long distance, or for transporting manually

[livid forge]

i dont have a gass container on me, can you send a screenshot of one on top of a foundation?

and next to a 1m tall foundation, to see its height

[oblique hollow]

btw, on topic of transport, heres some IRL statements

[livid forge]

ye seems about right

[oblique hollow]

bulk liquid vs dry bulk is an age old debate

[livid forge]

easy to transport, thats only true in some scenarios though. The lower the volume, the better. And the longer the distance, the better. Its a gradient

the bigger the volume, or the shorter the distance, the more likely it is that you'd want pipes instead

[oblique hollow]

its a trade-off to consider

[sour wyvern]

I upgraded my oil pipeline to mk2 .... didn't upgrade the pumps. derp.

[oblique hollow]

xd

[abstract copper]

I thought the mk 1 pumps could handle 600m3

[sour wyvern]

nope. I thought that too, but they act basically like 50% valves. and your flow goes all weird

er, wrong comment I replied to, obviously

[livid forge]

last screenshot

can you put one in the middle? to cut out perspective

[oblique hollow]

alright

dead center on the foundation middle?

[livid forge]

middle of the row where you put them

things get wider the more off center it is due to perspective, does not have to be in the middle of the platform, just middle of the row you already put down

[upper tiger]

beautyful

[sour wyvern]

I just want the jetpack to work with turbofuel

so I don't have to keep fuel AND turbofuel

[livid forge]

roughly 0.09m³ of volume, mind you, they pressurize gass though. But you can use that to calculate how many bars it'd take and see if thats higher than what would be realistic 😛 @oblique hollow

[oblique hollow]

just barely 0.1 m³?

[livid forge]

of space, yes

[oblique hollow]

thats a compression of 40 x

4m³ to roughly 0.1m³

[livid forge]

im having a hard time finding out what pressure it'd be

but thats a compression rate of 1:40

normal air pressures are 1:8
anything above 1:10 is high
1:12 is where most things cap out

587.84PSI

anyone know how much that is? 😂

a low pressure leak valve for a liquid nitrogen container is 25-50psi

a high pressure leak valve for liquid nitrogen is 100-230

so yea, those containers ingame are absolute units

[livid forge]

oh nvm hydraulic presses can be as high as 10k

[oblique hollow]

1 liter nitrogen (liquid) = 696 liters (gas)

so 1:40 is nothing in theory

4 m³ = 5 liters liquid

thats half a bottle

[livid forge]

thats likely room temperature though? remember liquid nitrogen is often cooled

[oblique hollow]

or less than half even

[oblique hollow]

if you compress it hard enough, ANYTHING turns liquid

[livid forge]

ye but if you drop the temperature, you also drop the pressure

[oblique hollow]

well, we could assume that the packager also cools it...

[livid forge]

so room temperature liquid nitrogen would be about 10228.416PSI which is the same range some hydrauluc presses operate, mad pressure, but not too unrealistic

[oblique hollow]

or it really just compresses it and its still a gas

so not totally mad

[livid forge]

its hard to find pressure needed to liquify nitrogen, seems everyone cools it to liquid then stores it

but scuba tanks are pressurized to 3000psi

[oblique hollow]

so those lousy 587 are nothing

[livid forge]

yea..

[oblique hollow]

the only madness left are the liquid canisters

[sour wyvern]

built in pocket dimension

like a lizard doggo

I do love how gas flows exactly like a liquid though.

[dark summit]

If you compress it enough it becomes one

[zealous tide]

Wouldn't be suprise if they differentiate it further somehow in a future patch, maybe as simple as filling upwards or something idk

[bleak coral]

wait did you all justify the weird fluid compression? I guess nitrogen, but like water? I mean that's really hard to compress isn't it?

or I guess more specifically how the size of things holding fluids doesn't match to how much they hold is what I mean

[cedar hornet]

hi i posted something in the questions and help chat but now that i think about it it prob belongs here

[fringe sequoia]

If I had a machine outputting at 120 per min, would I need access to a 120 per min conveyer belt to have it then go into a stacked conveyer belt with 2 60 per min conveyers?

Or can I have the conveyer from the machine to the splitter also be 60

[bleak coral]

you can't connect splitters directly to a machine, there's always a belt in-between

[fringe sequoia]

So, I'd need a matching capacity belt to transport the stuff to a splitter into two half capacity belts?

[bleak coral]

yes

[glacial hemlock]

In short, no free-capacity buy slamming a splitter onto a connector of a machine, that won't work

[quaint ember]

in practice I think that's only an issue with resource extractors, anything else you can build multiples of freely

mk2 belts are expensive though, so a short run of 120 then split into two 60s is a cheaper way to build

[bleak coral]

Mk2 bekts are super awkward, reinforced plates are so much harder to make at scale at the point in the game when you want mk2 belts. Mk3 and higher are much nicer.

[quaint ember]

Mk4 seems a little cringey though. Encased beam is about as awkward as reinforced plate.

Maybe you have better tools to work at scale by that point, but the cost is stiff and the crafting time doesn't help.

[frosty owl]

Almost seems like both RIPs and Encased Beams should be produced stably as soon as possible 😉

[tardy crescent]

I have 20 refinerys processing crude oil, turning it into 1600fuel/min, that fuel is hooked up to 3 MK2 pipelines connecting to 130 fuel generators, each 600fuel/min is connected to 1 Large buffer each and is split into 3 pipelines connected to 20+20+10 fuel generators, my power generated sometimes cuts out by about 1000-2000MW, why is the fuel not pushing fast enough into the generators? i added valves in front of every single section to prevent backflow and i filled up the entire system with fuel before starting generators, everything is built on the exact same level on a big platform so there should be no headlift issues other than the large fluid buffers who only hold 80-90% fuel due to headlift, help?

[wind spade]

Fluid buffers need to be full to allow full throughput through them iirc

[tardy crescent]

so... removing all buffers would make the system more stable??

[wind spade]

Filling them and putting them to the side instead of being on mainline

Also the valves aren't really needed. Did you limit them?

[tardy crescent]

the valves are needed to prevent backflow

[wind spade]

Backflow isn't a problem if pipes are full

[tardy crescent]

pipes are not staying filled once the system is running, due to 1:1 ratio

[wind spade]

Well you'll have issues then due to fluid loss load bug

[tardy crescent]

link explaining fluid loss load bug please

[wind spade]

On each load of your save, machines connected to a pipe will remove 5m3 from that pipe

[tardy crescent]

so then how would i fix the issue im having, is it just literally impossible to connect 130 generators to 1600 fuel in the games current state?

[wind spade]

The issue may be caused by 1000 different things and I mentioned a few of them. I'd just overproduce a bit or build two less gens and keep it like that

[thorn bane]

id recommend ~1% overproduction
so if you have 100 gens only connect 99

[tardy crescent]

is that the only way to do it in the games current state?

[thorn bane]

yes

you can upvote the bug on the qa site:
https://questions.satisfactorygame.com/post/60784b5aaa0ba107e325889d

they addressed in a q&a here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhQsMU7iR3I

[tardy crescent]

thankyou both

[frosty owl]

Only if the machines are higher than the top of the buffer, if same height about a 1/4 of its volume is fine to transmit flow

[frosty owl]

There's just a small adjustment I can suggest in case you care about the power draw from the fuel production to be flat

[tardy crescent]

@frosty owl please

[frosty owl]

You can add a separate fuel production line (very small, just to fight the load bug) to refill your pipes in key points through VIP junctions and set this production on a different gritld
Main production will have priority and run at 100% while the secondary just turns on to refill losses

[thorn bane]

oh i actually like that solution

didnt think of a VIP for that

[tardy crescent]

thats what i was thinking but i think i'll just remove 1-2 generators instead until i have no power fluctuation

[frosty owl]

Or you could OC the secondary fuel production line to fill the buffers temporarily
Up to preference ^^

[oblique hollow]

only for gas. for liquids its 75m³ / 300 m³, depending on buffer size

[thorn bane]

@bleak coral @muted crypt yo i just saw a question about liquid biofuel on the qa site:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s52yTvp9nbM
in it mark says that they might make it with farming or a lawn mower so its an actual lategame power generation
thats probably why its still in the game

[frosty owl]

What about gases?
I only mentioned the 1/4 fill requirement at the same height (or higher if the buffer is below the fluid user)

[oblique hollow]

for gas, if you want max flow the buffer needs to be full

making buffers useless

they cannot keep 600 or 300 flow up if input drops

[frosty owl]

The subject was oil though

*oil stuff

[oblique hollow]

oh. greeny mentioned buffers and how "they need to be full to allow max flow through"

i corrected that to "thats only true for gasses"

[frosty owl]

"Or buffers placed below the fluid user"

[oblique hollow]

oh for below, yeah, they gotta be full for that head lift to pass on, unless you add a pump on their output

[frosty owl]

I think the easiest solution is simply to have the buffers raised over the refineries' level

[bleak coral]

That'd be kinda neat, though I'm imagining they'll do another pass at the conversion numbers hopefully. Cause biocoal/characoal currently have the better energy conversion. Though I guess that matters less if it's automated/unlimited, and so you can choose liquid just cause you can build some fuel gens instead of a bunch of water extractors and coal gens.

[zealous tide]

Is that because they flow back into the input?

[oblique hollow]

no its because for gas, the pressure depends on how full soemthing is

and you only get max flow if whatever the gas is in is at full volume

so a buffer thats not at 300 / 2400 m³ will not deliver 300 or 600, and will gradually sink

[tardy crescent]

what would that do, you mean?

[crisp lion]

Biofuels are currently a dead thing in the game and it makes a lot of sense to expand on it, it was put in with an intent.
However this is a game which takes place in the future so it's approach would be VASTLY different than how it's done today.
I hope the devs watch something like this vid before implementing it because then they can pull off something that fits the meta.

BUT- maybe they want it to be bad! "It's terrible but I did it for fun" is a common factory design theme. There's already quite a bit of irony in the game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpEB6hCpIGM

[tropic hawk]

basically this: Biofuel is consuming more energy than it gives.

we might be fixing it with algae, but not for a while

[crisp lion]

A really fascinating use would be piping Co2 from carbon burners, oil/coal/wood into algae arrays
Water + smoke = biofuel
We already use pipes for gas!

[cedar hornet]

is this enough pumps or to much

[deft lichen]

place one pump and follow the automatic snapping guidelines

they exist for a reason

[tropic hawk]

That could be interesting... Maybe it would require an attachment. And who knows? maybe CSS would make it so it does factor in pollution for seeing if you can breath...

[thorn bane]

or click on a pump and look at the headlift indicator

[twin crypt]

Hello everyone, look what I found

it is completely transparent

[glad cloud]

what is that?

[glossy gyro]

That's a bug when you dying, it can spawn a big version of your current equipment

[faint silo]

I first thought you had just built the chainsaw manually lmao

[swift robin]

WORLD SAW

[verbal walrus]

Lmao

[vapid gorge]

Hey quick question on the gas. Sounds like it works dif to the liquids. If moving gas in a manifold prod line do you need a fluid buffer in the middle of the loop to keep the pressure going?

[oblique hollow]

Dont use buffers for gas, those do nothing

Unlike liquids, for gas, the flow rate depends on how full a pipe / buffer is.

A half- full pipe will only ever supply 150 or 300 m3/min, same for a ** half full buffer** (thats 200 or 1200 m3!!)

So if you have a full buffer, it does NOTHING to support the current flow rate of gas

[vapid gorge]

Right but... does that mean you won't be able to supply a manifold that consumes 600 gas pm since it'll be constantly less than full?

[oblique hollow]

You can try to supply a manifold with 600, but dont use buffers

It should work, but it depends on framerate of course

[vapid gorge]

Should I still loop the feed in pipe like liquids?

[oblique hollow]

Ye

[vapid gorge]

kk ta

[slow falcon]

how much will I get at point B if from point A to B about 7 or 8 km, and 840 coal per minute is supplied to point A?

and is there any formula for such a calculation?

[muted crypt]

Depends entirely upon mode of transport, route of travel, etc

[slow falcon]

point B is left, A is right (train)

there is one long ascent, but the speed on it does not change much (only + 15-25 km/h during the descent, during the ascent - 5-10 km/h)

[unreal osprey]

formula:

more info on the electric locomotive page:
https://satisfactory.fandom.com/wiki/Electric_Locomotive

or flipped around for throughput calculation:

[slow falcon]

thanks

[frosty owl]

When the buffers are higher than the rest of the pipe network, they will transmit flow without the need for them to be full

[quaint rampart]

Just did the math. With no inventory upgrades, Ms. Satis can carry approximately 216,000 lbs or 96.4 imperial tons of concrete at a time. Hell of a lift.

(Using normal 80lb concrete bags stacked in three per item, based on in game visuals)

[faint ember]

Lift with your legs, not with your back.

[muted crypt]

and what is it with inventory upgrades, @quaint rampart?

[faint ember]

324,000 pounds.

Nope, missed a zero

Oh, the bags are each 80 pounds!

500 x 3 x 81 x 80 = 9,720,000 pounds.

That's about the weight of a medium-size major combatant warship.

[sand epoch]

Bag of holding ftw

[azure gust]

why is it always like the last step of a base that's like "ok, now build 81 refineries"?

[crisp lion]

I wonder if math channel lets you talk about the game's development funds like some other places?

Some game devs who made decent money will ask the community how to balance the funding or just say "hey we're able to provide LTS thanks to the game's success" which in term helps sales and then the game kinda becomes immortal.

[hardy cave]

What is the exact % of the last Fuel Generator when you build 34 of them and need 33,333333 to burn the 400m3/min?

[crisp lion]

I just underclock a unit when I have an excess in a production pipeline.

[median otter]

33.33333 means 33 and 1/3, if that’s what your asking

[median otter]

change at the amount of power generated, not at level to over/under lock

[hardy cave]

Yeah, that's what I was thinking and what I did but I have some waves sometimes in my generated Power, might be due to a previous linked Power source less well tuned. Thank you.

[median otter]

a way you could check if it’s from the new power you added would be to just look at the machine and see if it’s running idle at any point. glad to help

[fierce ruin]

ok big brain time if someone knows the answer your my hero because i am un sure of the math answer for this.

4 Rolymer Resin needs to be taken every 2.4 seconds.
But I have 20 machines Making 3 Polymer Resin every 6 seconds.
How many machines do I need to take in 4 Polymer Resin ( 2.4 seconds ) if I am only making 3 Polymer Resin every 6 seconds when production of Polymer Resin is only 6 seconds.

( 1 machine will eat up 4 Polymer every 2.4 seconds. )

[quaint rampart]

X*(3/6) = 4/2.4
X = (4/2.4)(6/3)
X = 24/7.2
X ~= 3.33…

So three and a third machines

[fierce ruin]

please explain in a dumb downed version.
I could very easy just make that amount, but i need to know how you got that answer.

[quaint rampart]

Given an unknown X, assume that X machines making 3 resin per 6 seconds is equal to - produces the same rate as - one machine making 4 resin per 2.4 seconds. Then solve for X.

First step is to multiply through (6/3) to cancel out the fraction on the left-hand side

Second step is to simplify the remaining fraction on the right-hand side

We can check the result, as well. 3 and a third machines each making 3 resin per 6 seconds is 10 resin per 6 seconds, or 5 thirds of a resin per second. On the right, 4 resin per 2.4 seconds also simplifies to five thirds of a resin per second.

The idea is to figure out how many machines operating at one rate is equal to a single machine operating at the other rate, which is a pretty straightforward algebra problem with one unknown

[prime night]

Think i found an exploit/bug with water extractors that might let me bypass the need for a waterpump all-together. It seems that I can make a wall 40 meters high, and run a pipe up it. Then build some more pipe. At first, you don't see the exploit because the first pipe is full sure, but the rest of the pipes basically have no water.

however, if you flush the whole system or connect the water extractor after these pipes are built - it has no problem filling them all up.

but who knows, after a save/load it might all break.

Ok if you use a 4way and have another two or more extractors attached, doesn't work. Does work with a single extractor and a 4 way, but i don't have a consumer attached so behavior might go back to normal if i did attach one.

nevermind, game was just yanking my chain and the pipe doesn't actually have any pressure to it even though it says it's full.

[prime night]

ok but i did figures out that if i go up a hill, and then down a hill...and up again...as long as the second hill doesn't go over the highest point - it doesn't get added again to my headlift. so seems the game just does a simple calculation of "highest point - pump height = headlift"?

[wind spade]

that's pretty much exactly how fluids work in real life 🤷‍♂️

[prime night]

cool

[oblique hollow]

Why even are you doing math with "it makes X resin every Y seconds" theres a reason machines show item/min values

To convert "X items per second" to items per minute, divide 60 seconds by the production time in seconds.
2.4 seconds = (60 / 2.4) = 25 / min.
Multiplied with 4 Resin, that equals 100 Resin/ min consumption.

If you have 20 machines making 3 every 6 seconds, thats 3*(60/6), so 30, times 20, so 600 Resin / min.

So what do we get?
Consumption = 100 resin/min, production = 600 resin/min.
Solution: build 6 machines consuming resin

@fierce ruin (obligatory ping afterwards.)

[frosty owl]

Weird... Nowdays that's usually how I start a base

[frosty owl]

Trying to make the generated power graph of fuel generators flat is quite hard for 3 reasons ^^

1. Generators' production speed scales weirdly with clock (hard to tune them exactly)
2. Pipes systems struggle to deliver their max flows
3. Pipe systems lose fluid proportionally to the number of connected machines each time you load the game (the more machines, the bigger the loss)

If you keep these points in account, your power production should be completely flat, else it'll have some ups and downs, most likely after a couple loads of the game

[frosty pawn]

if you have some leftover fuel that is not enough to run a fuel generator at 100%, just put that generator something like 1m higher up than the others (or make a bump in the pipe) so it will only take extra fuel and wont deprive the others. also put a power storage somewhere in the same power network. you dont need to do weird clock speeds.

[oak atlas]

K-mean clustering for minimizing logistic in satisfactory:

I have tried to cluster different resource nodes in the grass field with files containing MATLAB code and node data linked below:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1GKdSDgPGky6yq6nBrRn1Sfxm5RayvTJl?usp=sharing

Note:

1. Still haven figured out how to represent nodes in 3D as sometimes the Z-coordinates cluster could be below the map terrain.
2. Assume equal weightage of resource type and node purity
3. I added a centroid of centroids to serve as regional collection/long distance transport/processing center.
4. I suck at programming beyond MATLAB, don't know how to parse game file data into coordinates, so I do it the manual ways typing coordinates into excel files.

Potential benefits
At the very least, it cut down the train station stop time from 7 station (black cross) to 1 (pink cross),
which is a
(7 x 25sec)-(1 x 25sec)= 150 sec (2 min 30s)
reduction in train loading time, plus whatever travel time it would take to travel through this region.

So, with all that,
what is your take on the K-means clustering, useful or most likely a gimmick?

[frosty pawn]

useful but i assume most people do what i do which is look at the map and pick a point that looks more or less the center of a cluster of nodes that arent so far apart that they become inconvenient to include in the cluster.
also i dont know if your math picked a point on the map which has land flat enough to make a station big enough. there is more to it than xy coordinates and i think the fuzzy logic that human brains are good at would have resulted in something close enough anyway

[tropic hawk]

ngl, i want to do it the former way, but i do just pick a spot that is roughly the center

[thorn bane]

hm im curious if that can be used for something like "find the best spot for a factory that uses iron, copper, sulfur and oil"

[mossy pike]

Sometimes you need a lot of space, and may not want to build in the center but where there's lots of space. Would be cool to have a "lines to closest nodes from spot x", so if you need 900 sulfur it draws lines to the closest nodes that satisfy the input req.

[oak atlas]

ah yes the good old 'oh shit one of the resource node is halfway abroad the map' conveyor belt heaven.

on a more serious note, it is probably possible,
just need to add data feature of resource type and run k-means with different data feature.
(factory need X iron nodes, Y copper nodes, etc. cluster them together to get the centroid aka ideal factory location)

my current trial just treat all node are the same and try to group them, maybe I can try to add the feature in to differentiate between different type of resource node.

do note that my prototype is just 2D though, when I try 3D sometime the centroid is below the ground.
so at best it is an approximate location.

[oak atlas]

the next problem is probably the need to assign penalty to the k-means system,
cause there maybe cases where belting 1 faraway pure node is easier than belting 4 impure node despite theoretically having less distance overall,
but that is beyond the standard Kmeans function of MATLAB and require customized function.

[thorn bane]

i mean its kinda mitigated by the fact that you can merge the 4 nodes together but ye thats not optimal

[frosty owl]

I'd be very interested in a belting/piping logistic minimizer. Totally not much more complex, I'm sure you could include such a feature? :)

Jokes aside, even if only 2D and very rough around the edges, it could be a convenient tool to see how much one can make his logistics more efficient

[random flame]

Given the unloading animation speed, in U5 will 2 max tier belts be able to unload faster than a constant supply of incoming trains?

For stack size 200 items

I guess for 100 as well.

[ornate shoal]

are they gonna change how train loading works also?

[random flame]

well, trains will have to wait in line if you have multiple dropping at 1 station.

Which will include the time taken for 1 to pull out of the station, and the next to accelerate in.

[thorn bane]

right now trains dont unload while the train is docking so that would actually make it really bad

[random flame]

rather than as it is now where they can all just pile in.

[ornate shoal]

but can they dock at the same time currently? i havent noticed

[thorn bane]

yes

[random flame]

I'm just trying to plan out for U5, wondering if scaling trains would be better by doing more stations, larger stations, more trains, etc...

[ornate shoal]

then it's gonna be tons slower after update

[random flame]

Yeah they can stack docking RN but I think they have to wait for the current docking to finish before the next one starts.

So it will be slower.

[ornate shoal]

making more trains will always be a loss then. better to go for longer trains or more stations

[random flame]

longer stations = more delay between each train pulling in, as it'll take longer for the station to clear. Multiple parallel stations will avoid that issue but it's more setup cost and more space and it means designing the rail network for small, more numerous trains.

[random flame]

This is why I asked about belts. I'm wondering where you reach a point where the delay between each train pulling in is so long, that you end up with empty belts waiting for the next unload.

ok, just did the math myself and 2x Mk5 belts on the output will empty each segment in seconds no matter what, so I guess that's not a relevant factor.

[ornate shoal]

probably not in seconds. for 100 stack size it would be 15.6 stacks per minute

so roughly 2 minutes for full freight car

[random flame]

yeah, I misread the belt speed as per second not per minute

it actually takes a few minutes, so longer trains makes more sense in that regard

[frosty owl]

Yeah, adding trains to the same freight can only get you so far. It's useful for long trips, but still has the usual throughput limitations while adding 25s of "down time" to the stations (each trip)

[random flame]

I'm looking to do a multi-output station using smart splitters and an item sink to handle the overflow so I need to make sure I have everything well balanced or I could end up just sending a bunch of stuff to item heaven and never manufacturing anything. iirc stations empty from the bottom up so if I load items in before the station is done emptying and could block the items on the top rows from ever getting unloaded. I can fix that in U5 with stop conditions to force trains to wait between trips but that defeats the point of having mixed output platforms in the first place.

[frosty owl]

How would that defeat said point?

[random flame]

Because the point is to maximise the uptime of each platform section by allowing it to pull double duty.

If I have to delay my trains I can't scale up

I guess it'll work for higher tier items that will be running a low item/time rate regardless, but it won't do for high throughput factories/items like stators or circuits

[frosty owl]

I think I don't get it...
But maximizing uptime with freights carrying mixed items AND try to sink as little as possible sound like very hard requirements

Why do you need to maximize the uptime? Wasn't it to get maximum throughput from the train?

[random flame]

I'm not too bothered about sinking as little as possible, so long as I don't end up in a situation where I'm sinking lots of 1 item and blocking the other from makingit into the factory.

[frosty owl]

It's all points anyway xD

[random flame]

Ultimately it's a personal challenge to see how well I can do stations where each train brings in a full load of 1 item but the station can handle trains bringing in different items.

[frosty owl]

Ahhj

[random flame]

I think I'm overthinking it though. Stations emptying from the bottom up means they will always be unloading whatever came in last so as long as I have the right number of trains on the network to balance the unloading at the same ratio the factory consumes them at, it should work out.

[frosty owl]

Wouldn't it make sense to focus the effort on the sending stations instead? Where they send items only when full (mixed content) and the train will unload only when the freight can accept that many items (so none get backed up)

[random flame]

The way I'm set up, sending stations always send a single dedicated item.

[frosty owl]

Yes, the order in which they load/unload stuff matters only if you mix items in the same freight, else it can be ignored

[random flame]

I'm avoiding backups by sinking the overflow.

[frosty owl]

Sink overflow at the UNLOAD, correct?

[random flame]

Yep

[frosty owl]

If you can rely on train timings (as we will be able to) you could balance the output of the unloading station to minimize use of sink while the next shipment comes

Eg: you ship 270 concrete/min, so you output a MK3 belt from the unloading ISC

[random flame]

if I see the sink is getting overused, that's a sign that I can either expand the receiving factory or add more trains to the route for whichever input isn't getting sunk.

or both

[frosty owl]

You can still add an "emergency" overflow between the freights and the ISCs in case of "extra big" delivery or something

[frosty owl]

That exact reason is why I love to have all outputs converging eventually in one sinking area (usually close to final storage)

[random flame]

I'm planning to use the 'only depart when full' stop condition so I know all incoming trains will have a full load.

Also I have no idea what's going on with my power right now. I thought power storage had unlimited discharge but when I turn my grid back on the fuse instantly blows even though I have power in storage...

[frosty owl]

Might be braking on a grid not connected to storage somehow?

If not, this might be #old-questions-and-help material

[random flame]

yeah I'll ask there thanks.

[sterile kayak]

What is the best way to temporarily make some computers? I don’t need a lot of them per minute, I just want to automate them quickly for hub unlocks. I do have some alternate recipes and some hard drives lying around, so if it is nessecary I can use them.

[wind spade]

you'll need more of them later, so usually it's better to make any things with automation

[sterile kayak]

True, but I need just a few for expanded power infrastructure (fuel gens) and my max consumption is already way over my power production

I might just hand feed them then

[sterile kayak]

With this I mean that I can’t make a big factory right now, not enough power.

[river night]

computers are relatively complex to just make in an ad-hoc machine for the moment, the time it would take to plan that out you could make a few by hand, or setup one more coal plant to hold you over, which is probably a better game flow 😄

[wind spade]

you can just add more coal gens and then automate computers

[sterile kayak]

True

[wind spade]

(and you should always keep max production over max consumption)

[sterile kayak]

And I like building coal gens, so that might be the best solution

Thanks for your help anyway

[robust forge]

I made a row of about 30 coal gens with 4 normal coal nodes and its so much power

[dark summit]

So a normal nuke reactor uses 300 water per minute right, so I should apply just over to avoid the 5 lost in input buffer. Right? Or is my assumptions wrong

[wind spade]

yes

[ornate shoal]

you don't lose much to the bug. it's only one machine

[drifting plover]

Yeah but losing 5 every time you reload could be bad if you only produce 300 for each

For me i just link up 3 water extractors, no under or overclocking to each one and have valves to prevent backflow and a pump right after the junction to make sure they go to the right place

Also with the water extractors, if you are worried about the idling you can put any fluid buffer and it will always have water no matter what

[abstract copper]

It was mentioned that when you're farther away from something, it no longer simulates physics. Does that mean trucks in the void at the other side of the map do not impact performance? So yeeting waste is harmless?

Or is this another case of Jace being a lying liar?

[wind spade]

if you're farther away from vehicles that are in automatic mode, they teleport from node to node. This will change in U5 however. For manual trucks they are still simulated imo.

it also raises a question - why do you have trucks in void? 😛

and no, yeeting waste isn't harmless. It still radiates, so if you really want to put your waste in void, just build some containers there instead, much better than doing some trucks magic (which most likely won't even work)

[abstract copper]

Ah, true. Not something I do myself but I hear people mention it

[wind spade]

trucks still have simulated physics, they just don't simulate their whole journey and teleport node to node

[empty glade]

Automate, then let the output fill so it stops. Or you can put it on standby. That way potential consumption will never become current consumption.

[bleak coral]

huh convo in #old-questions-and-help made me calculate what's the round trip time needed to use a full mk2 pipe vs a full mk5 belt with just one freight car
it's ~4:06 for the belt assuming a 100 stack item, and 2:40 for the pipe.......
man I can't think of better example of how much worse it is to transport by liquid vs solid
even at the worst of a 50 stack item it's ~2:06, which can be avoided by doing trains for low-stack items, and of course it can get better with 200 stack and 500 stack items

so like for me it seems transporting by liquid is basically the equivalent of always transporting 50 stack items

[versed violet]

Is it possible to build a flat 2 to 2 belt balancer without belt clipping? Would like to balance 2 belts, but only have one splitter height available.

[river night]

on the other hand, a mk3 miner is going to produce much more stuff then eg. a single oil well will ever spit out, so maybe solid products are just always in higher volume

[bleak coral]

yes, but you might not have enough height, just need to raise one of the belts at the crossover point, you could try getting it as low as possible then delete the support

of course then items might clip

[versed violet]

That no longer makes it "flat"

[bleak coral]

"flat enough" 🤷‍♂️

[versed violet]

I've got something like this, but in case of one input belts being empty, one side will get 3/4 of items and the other 1/4.

[fair cliff]

You can fit two belts stacked within one splitter of vertical space I think

[river night]

considering the entire concept relies on exchanging materials from the same splitters, if you must have it all perfectly flat, then you will have it clip instead

[bleak coral]

I was thinking in reference to moving liquids to solids vs solids to liquids, but that is an interesting point to consider, you may still end up with the same number of cars if the volume of solids outpaces the number of liquids enough

[fair cliff]

However there are also some recipes that demand just as much liquid as solid, and water is used by a lot more recipes than any one single ore.

[river night]

water is so ample that transporting it with a train is bordering madness, however 😄

[bleak coral]

yeah, the solution for mass water need is always just build by an ocean

anyway, hate to start a good convo and leave, but got to go take care of car stuff, see y'all later

[river night]

on the other hand, if you need nitrogen, and you dont like the nitrogen spots ... not sure its so terrible to transport it

[bleak coral]

oh just gotta comment on that real quick: nitrogen compresses by 4x when packaged, so it's best to just do that if you do it by train

[river night]

oh i forgot about that

stupid special gas

[bleak coral]

I'm pretty sure that makes up for the empty package car added + extra power for packagers/unpackagers

[fair cliff]

I mean gas do be like that

[river night]

But wouldnt a gas tanker on a train also be pressurized then? 🙂

[versed violet]

ooooh, I think I figured it out!
Smart splitters at input, with main output going to merger in center and forward lane set to overflow.
If only one inpout belt has items, they all go to central merger and are split equally into outputs.
If both input belts are full, half of each belt goes to center, then is split among outputs, and remaining half goes straight.
[Happy Pioneer noises]

[fair cliff]

This is a valid point.

[versed violet]

Real life note:
Small tanks have thick walls and thus can handle bigger pressure. The train tank is relatively thin for the volume it contains, thus cannot reach so high pressures.

[faint ember]

The test pressure of a thin-walled pressure vessels is inversely proportional to its radius, if I recall.

Only since it's #math-and-meta. Stress, pressure, diameter, thickness.

[frosty owl]

That's something I wanted to point out too xD
Transporting water via fluid trains is the quivalent of moving screws with trains imo 😆

[frosty owl]

Just what I was about to suggest 😆
I haven't tried something similar yet, but that would kind of balance them right?
As in: adding more splitters/mergers to extend the current ones in front would make the split ever closer to an even one... Or is it already even?

[versed violet]

Should be even already. All goes through middlen if only 1 belt is full, otherwise spreads based on overflow.

[frosty owl]

Makes sense, good work 😁

I never bothered trying a flat 2:2 balancer (I don't use them in the first place) thinking it would be quite chunky 😆

[versed violet]

It is quite chunky, but sometimes you have to balance 2 full belts and do not have space for 2 levels.

[frosty owl]

Eh, 3 mergers and 3 splitters isn't too chunky...
Is my sense of scale getting weird? 😅

[river night]

you dont really need space for two full levels though, you can make the crossing in the space of one level as long as you either don't mind the parts partially clipping, or just not transporting tall things like wire spools, just by making the belts go up/down a bit - not flat, but not necessarily exceeding the height of one wall, or one splitter, or whatever a level is for you 🙂

[frosty owl]

That's how easy things get when you don't have constrains

[river night]

its easier if its a full wall, i tend to not build those super tiny splitter-high crawlspaces personally

[frosty owl]

Same. But sometimes we find ourselves in weird (and tight) situations :hehe:

[viscid shadow]

This has nothing to do with Satisfactory, but I need help with math that i'm too dumb to figure out

Can anyone help?

[versed violet]

Does not work. Stacked splitters are already one belt apart, and forcing a two belt levels in space of one is not possible without ugly clipping.

[frosty owl]

Depends on the subject

[viscid shadow]

4 people pay different amounts for a single item then want to even the debt, what's the formula?

[frosty owl]

Not my subject...

[viscid shadow]

it's math....

😛

[frosty owl]

I don't have the solution and I'm too tired to actually use my brain😅

[viscid shadow]

I just dont even know what it's called.... related rates?

[tropic hawk]

is that the question? if not type it all in here

[viscid shadow]

It's not home work, this is a real life problem

@tropic hawk

[versed violet]

Item price divided by 4, subtract how much they already paid. The remainder for each person is how much they needed to pay up to make it even. If value is negative, it is how much others owe them.

[viscid shadow]

right, but how do you divide that last number correctly?

[versed violet]

You don't. People who underpaid lay the money on table, the ones who paid too much pick from the pile. There should be no money left on the table and everyone paid up.

[viscid shadow]

this is after they pay, they have to pay to eachother

[zealous tide]

Use 1,2,3,4, everyone owes 2.5, whoever paid 1 is owed 1.5, 2 is owed .5, 3 owes .5, 4 owes 1.5

[viscid shadow]

yes i got that part, but how do you know how much 4 owes to each person?

[versed violet]

You don't owe to person but to common pot.

[viscid shadow]

there is no common pot

the idea is to split the pot

[versed violet]

designate 1 person as a "banker". those who owe pay them up. that person pays the ones who paid too much. problem solved

[zealous tide]

So you need to figure out ($4paid-1.5overpayment)/ 3number of people owed?

[viscid shadow]

lets make this simple. An item is $400. bought by 4 people. P1 pays 200, P2 pays 100, P3 pays 75, P4 pays 25. How much does P4 owe to each person

[zealous tide]

Ohhh lol

[thorn bane]

you dont know thetes multiple solutions

thats why a pot is the easiest

[viscid shadow]

there is no pot dude

[zealous tide]

P3 owes as well

[viscid shadow]

yes

but i figured you have to solve for each individually

[versed violet]

There is a caveat - if you divide rates, you will run into fractional dollars, and there are no fractional dollars. Just agree with P1 and pay him the missing 75$, then tell rest you solved your debt. You only owe to P1.

[zealous tide]

So p3 owes 25, p4 owes 75, unless you can designate who is paying who, or have a formula for what person owes what, I don't think you can reliably make a formula to calculate what you want.

[viscid shadow]

yes the formula is what i want

[frosty owl]

You make one
P4 puts in (400/4)-P4 and so on, until P2 and P1 take money from the pot

[viscid shadow]

because the actual problem is 2876.94 and P1 put in 1255.34 and P4 put in 130 and I need the formula

[zealous tide]

Find the amount everyone owes

[viscid shadow]

ok, thats the easy part

[zealous tide]

Subtract that from what they paid

[viscid shadow]

again, the easy part yes

[zealous tide]

Do math to get everyone back to the amount everyone owes

[viscid shadow]

yes ... the MATH part is the question here

[frosty owl]

👆

[zealous tide]

He doesn't want to do a pot

[viscid shadow]

there is no pot

[zealous tide]

So I'm thoroughly confused now

[frosty owl]

You just "make" one, virtual (write down numbers) or phisical (money on the table)

[viscid shadow]

ok there is a pot, how do you divide it correctly then?

[zealous tide]

What do you need to do with the answer, I guess is the question

[viscid shadow]

this is real life

[frosty owl]

Each take their part after the dues piled up

[viscid shadow]

how do you know how much that part is?

[zealous tide]

Idk why this is confusing

[frosty owl]

(Itemprice/people) - (how much one paid)

[zealous tide]

You only need to do this once Right?

[viscid shadow]

yes

[zealous tide]

What's the total amount to be divided up

[viscid shadow]

i feel like this is a pie chart questions

lets say 400 to make this easy to follow

[versed violet]

Step 1. calculate how much each person should have paid.
2. Calculate how much you are missing to that amount.
3. find who overpaid the most and how much they overpaid. If the amount they overpaid is equal or more than what you oew, pay them in full the amount owed, problem solved.
4. If they overpaid less than you owe, pay them how much they overpaid, then repeat step3-4 for remaining persons with the remaining amount of money you owe.

[viscid shadow]

ok so P4 owes 75, you say he just tosses that to the pot

[zealous tide]

Either way, p1 needs $100, p2 needs 0, p3 owes 75, p2 owes 25, combine p2 and p3, give to p1, easy

[viscid shadow]

k

[zealous tide]

If you have 4 people, divide the total by 4, if someone overpaid above that, whoever owes pays up to that person, then the rest goes to whoever else owes

[frosty owl]

Trying to write that formally on mobile is hell

[viscid shadow]

yes

i was trying to do this in excell

[thorn bane]

just say you will do the pot then scam everyone and leave the country ez profit

[zealous tide]

It doesn't matter where the money comes from, everyone just needs to get to the same number somehow

[frosty owl]

Well, it does matter that the money come from who owes else the ones who overpaid already would have to take out even more money from their wallet 😆

[zealous tide]

Well true xD

[versed violet]

Mind that if there are multiple people who 'owe' money, you need to agree with all of them, preferrably on public chat or in person.

[thorn bane]

you can probably maka a formula

[versed violet]

can't guarantee a formula will be understood. numerical values work best in concrete cases.

[viscid shadow]

i figured out the easy answer

P4 pays everything until their debt is settled, then P3 pays the remaining

I was trying to get it so that P4 pays a percent to each P1 and P2 but that just makes it hard

I'm sure there is some related rate formula for this