Very useful technique to fine tune ratios

Circuit-free solutions of basic factory-design to achieve optimal item-throughput.
Involving: Belts (balancers, crossings), Inserters, Chests, Furnaces, Assembling Devices ...
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Circuit-free solutions of basic factory-design to achieve optimal item-throughput
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blazespinnaker
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Very useful technique to fine tune ratios

Post by blazespinnaker »

Note that this technique is for advanced use cases and a bit of a spoiler. If you haven't launched a rocket yet, might want to skip this one. You've been warned :)
One of the tricky (though fun) things with factorio is figuring out how much production is required as input to a factory for a given output.

The /editor provides an extremely useful tool called the infinity chest which can be perfectly used for this. Wherever you have an issue determining proper equilibrium, stick an infinity chest and set the filter inside the chest to what it is you need. Set the "at least" to some number (doesn't matter as long as it's lower than what the chest can hold). You can use the loader or an inserter to pull from it.

Now, on the other side, start loading up the infinity chest with your production input. Periodically check the chest to see if it's starting to buffer inside the chest. If it flat lines at the number you put in for "at least", than you're not building enough. If it's very rapidly buffering / increasing, you probably have too much production input.

You can use calculators as well, but I find that only works in rare circumstances where you have a very fixed production. There often are other constraints at play (changing designs, time, geography, location of ore / belt design / adding splitters / etc). This approach appears to work in all cases and is very fast, with little need to figure out the math.

eg:
Screenshot 2021-01-02 043931.png
Screenshot 2021-01-02 043931.png (128.82 KiB) Viewed 2813 times
I was struggling with fine tuning the GC input for a number of different factories and I was still tweaking things both up (the ore miners) and downstream (number of red engine / frame assemblers). Part of the issue is that when you change one source, it can cause others to buffer, wreaking havoc on your attempts to balance everything. The chests will help maintain equilibrium as you perfect the design.

It can be hard to get perfect ratios so I just always use the 1+ that leads to buffering versus starvation.

some tips:

You'll need to let the infinity chest fully compress the belt (one side or both, depending on your goals) to get correct results. use loader for two sides (creative mod), super inserter from editor extensions for loading the chest.

leaving the chests in place until the entire factory is complete is a good idea.

leaving space in your designs for placement is required sadly. really need an infinity chest of 1 tile that can act as a belt

For rocket silo, if you just have one, the best way to adjust consumption is adding/removing modules to the silo itself. it can take awhile to settle due to the buffering of launching.

emptying out chests after making changes speeds up the change/test sequence

works with the infinity pipes too, but I'll stop there in explaining how :)
OptimaUPS Mod, pm for info.

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