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Okay, stupid question that no one asked, just to remove some doubt: are the trains coming in completely full?
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Jan 23, 2024 21:07
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Also, the buffer chests have to be even when the fully loaded train enters the station.
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Jan 23, 2024 21:15
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Designing unloading stations that don't become bottlenecked by an unbalanced state eventually is actually really obnoxious in vanilla. A normal belt balancer is definitely no guarantee for making it work, there are a lot of caveats attached. You run into all sorts of weird subtleties of belt and inserter mechanics. For example, if you're sideloading belts like in meow's screenshot you're very vulnerable to lane imbalances, which standard balancers do nothing about. Inserters prefer to grab from the closer side of the belt and since splitters preserve lanes it is quite likely that some of the chests within each wagon are going to be preferentially drained, unless your consumers happen to be perfectly balanced on both sides of each of the belts, and that's actually way less common than you'd think even if there are an equal number of inserters on both sides (low rate production and buffers filling up and emptying can cause surprising imbalances here; at the very least the output side needs to be balanced too). That doesn't really explain why the wagons get drained unevenly though but I've definitely seen that before too. I've basically stopped building vanilla train stations, I just always have a loader mod of some sort installed. For container to container transfers, stack inserters are generally preferable to loaders (although loaders do work with cargo wagons now) but with vanilla chests and stack inserters you can only fit one per chest. You can solve that with either bigger containers or with fancier inserters. If you're going megabase the latter is preferable for UPS reasons (inserter/loader interactions with containers get more expensive as the number of container slots increase, and that problem is exacerbated by the possibility of fitting more inserters around a bigger container). Here's what I used in K2 late game (the splitters closest to the containers are superfluous):  And here's what I use in my current Seablock run (ignore the copper cable in the wagon, that was some unfortunate belt contamination):  Bob's adjustable inserters are one heck of a drug. The combinators in both screenshots are just for setting train limits. The Seablock example has the inserters wired up too but that isn't actually used for anything, that was just a scrapped idea that happened to make it into the blueprint. Both of these happen to be loaders but the unloader design is exactly the same but with the belt and inserter directions reversed. TheFluff fucked around with this message at 22:14 on Jan 23, 2024 |
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Jan 23, 2024 21:58
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TheFluff posted:Designing unloading stations that don't become unbalanced eventually is actually really obnoxious in vanilla. I mean, of course we can just use mods. I'm using lots of mods, but the 'belt-inserter-chest-inserter-wagon' link for my loading and unloading stations is all vanilla. The only fancy part is that I've got the chest contents linked to the station to set train limits for loading/unloading capacity, which is also vanilla. I run 1-4 trains and balance the input/output. Never had any issue with things getting unbalanced. Nuclear locomotives now, that's the ticket.
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Jan 23, 2024 22:16
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Teledahn posted:I mean, of course we can just use mods. I'm using lots of mods, but the 'belt-inserter-chest-inserter-wagon' link for my loading and unloading stations is all vanilla. The only fancy part is that I've got the chest contents linked to the station to set train limits for loading/unloading capacity, which is also vanilla. I run 1-4 trains and balance the input/output. Never had any issue with things getting unbalanced. I'm not saying it can't be done, just that it's surprisingly hard to get right, with a number of subtle gotchas that aren't limited to the station design itself. Consumer patterns and train scheduling can introduce a lot of weirdness too. In meow's screenshot I didn't see any circuits to prevent the station from being filled up completely for example, and I'm pretty sure that doesn't help. Loader stations are even more sensitive to this; if you don't use train limit circuits that only open the station when there's a full load available you are very likely to get unbalanced chests. There's a reason circuited contraptions like the old "MadZuri loader" used to be so popular; setting train limits with circuits solved a lot of the issues but that only became available in 1.1. I've spent a lot of time bashing my head against unbalanced train stations.
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Jan 23, 2024 23:20
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TheFluff posted:That doesn't really explain why the wagons get drained unevenly though It doesn't explain it at all. There's no vulnerability to lane imbalances that are downstream from the station; the trains themselves balance these out. All we need is to ensure that the wagons are fully loaded and buffer chests are already evenly (un)loaded when each train enters the station, and finally that we run all the belts through a TU balancer before removing anything from them. I'm creeping up on 4k hours in this game and I never saw a station get unbalanced unless one of those conditions was not being met. Much more often, hacks like circuit controlled inserters paint over mistakes upstream or downstream from the station.
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Jan 23, 2024 23:28
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celestial teapot posted:Much more often, hacks like circuit controlled inserters paint over mistakes upstream or downstream from the station. This is why I was asking about whether the wagons were all fully loaded. I've seen people add in conditions like "train is full or 90 seconds passed or 5 seconds idle" because they think idle trains are not being useful (when the real problem is just not enough resources coming in to fill the train continuously). Introducing hacks to cover up perceived problems that aren't really problems just introduces more problems. Similarly, if some chests fill before others, as long as they can output a full belt this isn't actually a problem. This is why I just use the 6 chest design - yes, the outer chests empty before the middle chests, but if the output belts are being consumed at full rate, this solves itself eventually, or if trains are waiting in the station to unload, that just means there's not enough consumption. Three stack inserters are fully capable of filling up half of a blue belt; there might be a tiny gap once every 144 cycles or whatever as the outer inserters line up in timing, but if having 99.3% throughput instead of 100% is going to break your base then you've got other problems, and you could just circumvent this with either overbuilding trains (e.g. adding another station or more wagons) or lowering your target production rate slightly (e.g. removing one assembler).
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Jan 23, 2024 23:46
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Normally I cover the planet with solar panel and accumulators for power, but while I'm waiting for a copper deposit to deplete so I can finish automating yellow science, I thought I would play with nuclear power. What does everyone do for controlling the Kovarex Enrichment Process? This is what I came up with last night.  The output from the centrifuge goes into the output box, which is linked to the top yellow inserter. When U-235 >= 41, it picks up the U-235 going around the control loop. When the yellow inserter picks up the U-235, the filter inserter on the bottom right removes one U-235 from the output box and sends it on it's way, leaving just the 40 needed to restart the process. The bottom left filter inserter gets it's filter from the control box, so once the U-235 is added by the yellow inserter, it empties the output box and everything in it is recycled back into the centrifuge. When the output box is empty, the top filter inserter removes the U-235 from the control box and puts it back on the loop, where it spins until the output box is filled again. It really feels like there should be a better way of controlling this, with maybe some decider and arithmetic combinators.
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Jan 25, 2024 16:40
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People probably have fancy circuit logic controls but I just route the output directly into the input with a yellow belt, which is slow enough to catch all the u235. This requires waiting for the machine buffer to fill to get the profit but I generally am not in a hurry to get it.
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Jan 25, 2024 16:49
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Filthy Lucre posted:What does everyone do for controlling the Kovarex Enrichment Process? This is what I came up with last night. Belt on one side for sad rocks, belt on the other side for happy rocks, with stack inserters for output and input of the happy rocks onto the same belt, so it picks up its own output. It will take a little bit to build up the loop to overcome the extra storage for ingredients in the centrifuge, but once it does your excess happy rocks will automatically flow along the belt, which can then begin another enrichment process or start getting used for whatever you want.
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Jan 25, 2024 17:17
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I don't know why this doesn't deadlock, but it doesn't no matter how long I run it, so I keep using it 
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Jan 25, 2024 17:50
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I know how to attach images 
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Jan 25, 2024 17:50
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For all my enthusiasm for making belt-based builds for everything, this is the one time I almost always use bots. But I do use circuit conditions based on total available items in the logistic network to enable/disable requests for the shiny rocks, so I always have enough in process to make more but can still make nuclear train fuel before all the buffers fill up. Late postgame I end up not running kovarex at all, since I need the lovely rocks for ammo more than I need the shiny rocks, and I usually end up with an excess. (Also helps that by that point in the game I've torn out all my nuclear power for UPS reasons.)
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Jan 25, 2024 18:02
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Filthy Lucre posted:What does everyone do for controlling the Kovarex Enrichment Process? This is what I came up with last night. You can make it really fancy with the circuit network and bots (or belts like you did), or you can just have it feed back into itself. Here is a setup I used in my last Krastorio2 game (hence the need for the filter splitter to get rid of rock that is a byproduct of this process in K2):  Here is a bot based fancy one I've used a lot in my games. I stole it from the interwebs because I'm dumb about circuit network stuff: 
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Jan 25, 2024 18:02
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celestial teapot posted:I don't know why this doesn't deadlock, but it doesn't no matter how long I run it, so I keep using it I would guess the blue inserters put things back into the centrifuge faster than the yellow inserters can take them out, so the only time U-235 makes it to the white inserter to leave the loop is if all the centrifuges are full. If that's the case, this is actually a pretty simple solution. How well does it hold up after you've gotten the stack size upgrades researched?
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Jan 25, 2024 18:09
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For my last few bases I had local uranium processing. Where I have a 2x3 reactor including processing from rare uranium as a block. That I stamp down whenever power goes low. This is entirely sufficient control for kovarex, as long as you use large buffers for the actual kovarex input box.  This is my last belt based kovarex setup. No need to overthink things. The dark-U belt and the chest with the backup bright-U activate once the network has under "number" bright uranium: 
VictualSquid fucked around with this message at 18:31 on Jan 25, 2024 |
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Jan 25, 2024 18:29
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I have a setup with 3 inserters to take items out of the centrifuge: - filter bulk inserter that takes U-238 (dark green) - filter inserter that takes U-235 (light green), stack size set to 1, wired to the first inserter with "enable when U-238 > 0" - filter bulk inserter that takes U-235 (light green) and puts it on a belt to be re-inserted. When the centrifuge finished the current load, the first inserter takes out all of the U-238, which triggers the second inserter to grab a single U-235. Since the first inserter completes its job in a single swing, the second inserter will only ever take exactly 1 U-235. The third inserter handles the re-feeding of U-235. U-238 is supplied by a belt. "Fresh" U-238 runs on the outer edge, and U-238 from the output runs on the inner edge. Since inserters preferentially grab from the near side of a belt, this ensures the first inserter will always have a clear belt to put items on. If it didn't, the second inserter would keep taking U-235 out while the first inserter is hanging.  (Immediately to the right is a nuclear fuel cell factory. This is with the Freight Forwarding mod, so it uses lead plate.)
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Jan 25, 2024 21:02
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Since we're sharing nuclear builds, here's the best tiling nuclear installation design I've found so far: https://factorioblueprints.tech/blueprint/0c7dc7a0-341c-4af2-8f56-f665c5bfb4fc
celestial teapot fucked around with this message at 21:31 on Jan 25, 2024 |
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Jan 25, 2024 21:27
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I don't bother with complicated. It takes a few spicy rocks to saturate the kovarex centrifuges. Some minding is needed when starting up, but after that it works quite well. Yes I know I need to find another Uranium patch.
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Jan 26, 2024 06:50
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Xerol posted:. (Also helps that by that point in the game I've torn out all my nuclear power for UPS reasons.)
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Jan 26, 2024 11:49
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Strictly speaking pure solar is still better but if you're that worried about it I'm pretty sure a gun turret perimeter wall is definitely worse for ups than nuclear power.
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Jan 26, 2024 12:06
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At >50GW scales the heat pipe calculations start to add up to the point where it's worth replacing. Plus, why have infinite artillery range research if you're not going to pave the world in solar panels?
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Jan 26, 2024 12:59
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Even more train schedule magic: https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-395
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Jan 26, 2024 14:02
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I love it. Vanilla trains are now basically going to be high-capacity, long-range logi drones with correspondingly bigger infrastructure requirements and optional fine-detail control over their behavior.
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Jan 26, 2024 14:50
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I'm surprised they didn't add an interrupt for "schedule error" which you could use to make a misconfigured train return to a safe location.
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Jan 26, 2024 15:04
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I hope if multiple interrupts fire they’re deconflicted by first priority of available targets and second a defined round robin queued order making a full train based nvic
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Jan 26, 2024 15:32
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Xerol posted:I'm surprised they didn't add an interrupt for "schedule error" which you could use to make a misconfigured train return to a safe location. They did! https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-389 described an interrupt condition for the train having no path or the destination being full, to change the destination to a depot or other safe spot in that case.
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Jan 26, 2024 15:38
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Xerol posted:At >50GW scales the heat pipe calculations start to add up to the point where it's worth replacing. Plus, why have infinite artillery range research if you're not going to pave the world in solar panels? I like how you think. cf, my 110GW solar field:
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Jan 26, 2024 15:39
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Me sowing: Hahaha this fully autonomous train network will self-resolve all issues on its own! Take that Dosh! Me reaping: a 1-4 full of Rocket Control Units stuck indefinitely at depot due to a circular interrupt and mis-set priorities.
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Jan 26, 2024 15:43
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Slashrat posted:They did! https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-389 described an interrupt condition for the train having no path or the destination being full, to change the destination to a depot or other safe spot in that case. Missed that since the text just said destination full. Now I wish they were separate conditions because I feel like most people going to this level of depth on trains would want to distinguish between them.
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Jan 26, 2024 17:37
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M_Gargantua posted:Me sowing: Hahaha this fully autonomous train network will self-resolve all issues on its own! Take that Dosh! Honestly looking at the way theyre setting up the system it looks like you will struggle to prevent things picking up items there is no demand for. I can full see 20 trains of rocket control units stuck in a depot forever because there is no way to actually turn the station off.
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Jan 26, 2024 17:56
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Drone_Fragger posted:Honestly looking at the way theyre setting up the system it looks like you will struggle to prevent things picking up items there is no demand for. I can full see 20 trains of rocket control units stuck in a depot forever because there is no way to actually turn the station off. If you don't mind having a train out of rotation, you can just condition the Safe Spot interrupt on the train having no cargo (like the blog example does), so that it remains sitting in the Pickup station until a destination for the cargo becomes available. That'll stop further trains from going to that pickup. If you want to keep the train in use, you'll probably need to do some kind of circuit network thing where the pickup station is also disabled if all dropoff stations for the same item type are full or disabled.
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Jan 26, 2024 18:20
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I've noticed in screenshots that most people have circuit buildings displaying the signals in their state as icons. Is that something I can turn on in my base game, or do I need a mod for that? It'd be very handy for the bullshit i'm building in ultracube, and alt-mode doesn't seem to include it
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Jan 27, 2024 00:10
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It's a vanilla setting. Definitely helps a ton.
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Jan 27, 2024 00:12
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Venuz Patrol posted:I've noticed in screenshots that most people have circuit buildings displaying the signals in their state as icons. Is that something I can turn on in my base game, or do I need a mod for that? It'd be very handy for the bullshit i'm building in ultracube, and alt-mode doesn't seem to include it
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Jan 27, 2024 02:58
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thanks! surely this will be the thing that magically fix my spaghetti
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Jan 27, 2024 05:23
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I have become aware of, and accepting of, the fact that my best efforts in this game amount to “spaghetti branches off a neat bus”
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Jan 27, 2024 07:18
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well why not posted:I have become aware of, and accepting of, the fact that my best efforts in this game amount to “spaghetti branches off a neat bus”  and any space left between neat areas of carefully planned production, however vast, will inevitably get backfilled with spaghetti to fit some random need.
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Jan 27, 2024 07:58
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well why not posted:I have become aware of, and accepting of, the fact that my best efforts in this game amount to “spaghetti branches off a neat bus” Replace the bus with a rail system, and you got a perfectly fine megabase concept.
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Jan 27, 2024 12:31
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VictualSquid posted:Replace the bus with a rail system, and you got a perfectly fine megabase concept. Behold the Train Bus!
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Jan 27, 2024 17:14
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