2x resources reaching 4x the furnaces?

[Xarovin]

I'm just messing about with some designs in a creative world, and I've just tried out a furnace setup. In theory, it should work, but when I tested it, it's working differently to how I expected.

Basically, as you can see in the picture, on the inside lanes I set it up to use twice the ore that the outside lanes use, since it reaches twice the furnaces. However, the outside lanes reach about 9 furnaces before the ore runs out, and the inside lanes reach about 30. What's the deal with that?
For the record, I know the output lanes are full, but when I took the picture, they were still all sucking in ore.



Also while I'm here, would it be beneficial to overlap beacons (it looks like I may have room for 3 more per row), and would it be better to use less furnaces overall but put speed modules in each one to stack with the beacons? I'm not bothered about the time it'll take to get the speed modules, I'm just planning the final result here

[DaveMcW]

Basically, as you can see in the picture, on the inside lanes I set it up to use twice the ore that the outside lanes use

That is incorrect. You set it up to use 3x as much, which matches your 9:30 observation.

The input belt gets split in half twice, so only 25% of the input goes to the outside lane. 75% of the input goes to the inside lane.

If you want a perfect 2:1 split, you need to merge one of the lines from the second splitter back into the first splitter. (50% inside, 25% outside, 25% back to start)

[Xarovin]

Oh, good point haha, I've still not fully recovered from a 24 hour coach journey a few days ago so that's my excuse for the appalling maths
I'll fiddle with it tomorrow to get the 2:1 split anyway, I'm trying to keep it relatively compact so I'll redesign that part

Don't suppose you'd know about the second question? ;p

[DaveMcW]

Using speed beacons to reduce the number of unmodded furnaces does not make economic sense. You will need far more power and produce far more pollution.

However, if you have productivity modules in the furnaces, speed beacons are very useful. Productivity modules are so expensive and dirty already, that anything you can do to reduce the furnace count helps.

[Xarovin]

Ah ok thanks a lot, that makes sense. Are you saying it's worth using productivity modules for everything, or is it more if they're really needed for things like steel, do whatever you can to keep the number of them down?

Btw, now with the ratio fixed, with just the two lanes going in, it produces 4k iron per minute, with 4 lanes (looks the best and gets the express belt to 100%) it's 5k, and fully maxed out is 6k. My world with the bottleneck is on 2.2k, so fingers crossed this will be enough for the next world

[cswiger]

Use efficiency modules everywhere by default. They reduce the power drain and pollution generated.
Use speed modules maybe on Pumpjacks and maybe with Assembly Machines making something slow.
Use productivity modules for Alien artifact => Purple Science, and maybe blue or red circuit production.

One tech-3 productivity module and three efficiency-1 modules in an Assembly Machine 3 works pretty well.
Otherwise, the productivity modules tend to generate a huge amount of pollution and chug electric power.

[RoddyVR]

Use efficiency modules everywhere by default. They reduce the power drain and pollution generated.
Use speed modules maybe on Pumpjacks and maybe with Assembly Machines making something slow.
Use productivity modules for Alien artifact => Purple Science, and maybe blue or red circuit production.

One tech-3 productivity module and three efficiency-1 modules in an Assembly Machine 3 works pretty well.
Otherwise, the productivity modules tend to generate a huge amount of pollution and chug electric power.

I go with more like:
Use productivity modueles everywhere by default. get free stuff.
use speed modules on pumpjacks, or if i screw up and run out of space to place more assemblers (only thing speed does by itself is save space).
dont use efficiency cause i like having massive powerdrain and polution (those who dont i'd recomend efficiency everywhere the first 2 didnt fit).

[Xarovin]

Haha thanks guys, I've just been trying out a few things.
Steel with productivity is too slow, and for the sake of 4.1 iron instead of 5 it doesn't quite feel worth it. I've set the beacons to use speed and furnaces to use efficiency, which seems to work quite well, and it never really goes past rows of 10/12 so I can trim down the size a bit.

Having 2 iron lanes dedicated to 1 steel lane seems to be perfectly balanced, so to avoid leaving the base with 1 remaining iron lane, I fiddled with the splitting again and got it working with 4 lanes. I'm not sure what'd be a good output amount for each, but the result of this is 2.5k iron and 0.5k steel per minute

[zytukin]

Module use is up to your preference and what you want to do in the game. If you've got the power to spare spare for defenses (if you're not in peaceful mode) and faster production, you could say screw the environment and put speed modules on everything.

Looks like you have 4 lines going down to 2 lines, then back up to 5 lines to go into the smelters. The pinch point is where it goes down to 2 lines.
If you want to get all 128 furnaces running then you need more conveyors going from the ore storage into the smelters.

My setup is 4 conveyors from the storage to the furnaces, each line feeding 20 furnaces for a total of 80 furnaces (each has 2x level 2 speed modules) producing 4.2k iron plates per min. I could still add more furnaces. Think the max is 30 per packed express conveyor if they have level 2 speed modules.

4lanesin.jpg (138.27 KiB) Viewed 3488 times

4lanesfeeding.jpg (181.62 KiB) Viewed 3488 times

[Xarovin]

Yeah, the pinch point idea was so that I could balance it for each row of 20 to take half a belt, since that is actually quite a lot anyway. Plus, I think without the use of mods or cheats, getting 4+ express belts fully loaded for each type of ore would require an awful lot of effort aha.

Anyway, here's my result of using the original idea to smelt everything at a steady rate - http://i.imgur.com/LK1VSSo.jpg

[zytukin]

Yeah, the pinch point idea was so that I could balance it for each row of 20 to take half a belt, since that is actually quite a lot anyway. Plus, I think without the use of mods or cheats, getting 4+ express belts fully loaded for each type of ore would require an awful lot of effort aha.

No cheats or mods used in those pictures I posted. Unless you count peaceful mode. No clue if you would call it a lot of effort.
Just a large 'buffer' of chests to smooth out the flow of ore delivered by trains from a few mining outposts.

That first picture is the top end of a huge set of chests that act as passive storage, it's somewhere around 600 chests (doesn't need to be that big, 200 chests would have worked for that just as easily)
The lines labeled 'from mines' are actually brought to my factory via train from mining outposts, so it isn't a consistent flow. But, since it goes through the chests before going to the smelters, the chests act like a buffer. When a train arrives and ore comes in faster then the smelters are using it, more chests are picking up the ore then are putting it on the conveyor. Then when the flow slows down between trains, there is still ore in the chests that can be fed to the smelters, so they continue to run without any interruption.