So ive picked up Factorio since a while again and im now starting to design my first Megabase (technically a Kilobase). And ive had problems balancing my outputs with pretty much every 12 beacon build im trying to design.
I attached a screenshot of a simple gear design and I just cant seem to be able to get a full belt out even though my rate calculator says I should be able to.
Is there like a trick to make this work? or is it possible at all?
Ps: I tried to add more Speedmodules but that would just mean I need more than 3 belts and it still wouldnt result in a full belt.
Any help is appreciated!
Output not balanced
Re: Output not balanced
Hey good luck with your megabase !
For 90/sec you need 2 compressed belts of output, i see you are using the bottleneck & rate calculator mod, so i suppose from the pictures sometimes the assembly machine indicator turns red, either from lack of input or output full.
Either more inserter to feed the machine plate, or more inserters to output the content would help. ( my guess is the output of the 2 fastest assembly isn't put to belts fast enough with only 1 stack inserter).
For 90/sec you need 2 compressed belts of output, i see you are using the bottleneck & rate calculator mod, so i suppose from the pictures sometimes the assembly machine indicator turns red, either from lack of input or output full.
Either more inserter to feed the machine plate, or more inserters to output the content would help. ( my guess is the output of the 2 fastest assembly isn't put to belts fast enough with only 1 stack inserter).
Re: Output not balanced
The second assembling machine does turn red for a fraction of a second ever so often. I do have two stack inserters per Assembling machine. That should be enough right? knowing that a single stack inserter can manage around 13-ish items/s.mmmPI wrote: ↑Tue Nov 07, 2023 1:06 pmHey good luck with your megabase !
For 90/sec you need 2 compressed belts of output, i see you are using the bottleneck & rate calculator mod, so i suppose from the pictures sometimes the assembly machine indicator turns red, either from lack of input or output full.
Either more inserter to feed the machine plate, or more inserters to output the content would help. ( my guess is the output of the 2 fastest assembly isn't put to belts fast enough with only 1 stack inserter).
Input looks fine aswell. The inserters have a slight down time even every 10 seconds or so.
Re: Output not balanced
Well you are correct there are 2 output stack inserter per machine not 1.FruuzZ wrote: ↑Tue Nov 07, 2023 1:18 pmThe second assembling machine does turn red for a fraction of a second ever so often. I do have two stack inserters per Assembling machine. That should be enough right? knowing that a single stack inserter can manage around 13-ish items/s.
Input looks fine aswell. The inserters have a slight down time even every 10 seconds or so.
There are those numbers (2nd table) that can help for more precision about the 13-ish.
https://wiki.factorio.com/Inserters#Inserter_Throughput
Maybe just stack size would help.
The descrepancy from the rate calculator mode and the result in game are caused by the machine turning red sometimes i suppose because it shows the rate for the machine functionning at 100%.
I still think it is related to inserter throughput, looking at one of the machine that turns red would help figuring out if sometimes the input are empty, or sometimes the output are filled. Even if the inserter are enough to transfer in the math, sometimes the belt supposed to receive the gears will be backed up and that inserter will temporarily get stuck, but on your picture it seems that there is enough buffer. ( that inserter downtime is caused by no material ? or no room for destination ? ).
Re: Output not balanced
The center iron belt has 8 stack inserter taking from it while for the outer ones it's 4, try balancing that by moving some.
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Re: Output not balanced
Red means (iirc) lack of input on the machine. Try using the editor time step features to watch it better. Sometimes this can be caused by the output backing up for a moment, resulting in the inserters pausing on input, sometimes it's just material not being fed fast enough.
From what I can see, with the way you have those iron plate belts feeding in, the inserters on the inner edge are only getting half the material, meaning those are not operating at the item speed you think they should. Maybe try using a splitter to cut in the material from the outer belts after your current one splits the middle belt (balancing the material between the 4 belts a bit better)? I'm just spit balling here without having the time to fire up the game and try it out myself.
From what I can see, with the way you have those iron plate belts feeding in, the inserters on the inner edge are only getting half the material, meaning those are not operating at the item speed you think they should. Maybe try using a splitter to cut in the material from the outer belts after your current one splits the middle belt (balancing the material between the 4 belts a bit better)? I'm just spit balling here without having the time to fire up the game and try it out myself.
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Re: Output not balanced
Thanks for this. It seems to be fixed. Like you said even though it seems like 2 inserters on the outside should be enough (and technically it was). The outer inserters did sometimes not use their full capacity and starved the assembling machine for a split second. I moved one of the inner input inserters to the outside on the two right most assembling machines. (3 on the outside and 1 on the inside. and that seems to have done the job.
Thanks for making me look in the right direction haha. I was completely stuck thinking about other solutions.
Re: Output not balanced
One of the issues with maximum speed is that items are picked up faster than being delivered by the belt, especially if earlier inserters created gaps on the belt. In this case, later inserters have to change lane and pick up the rest of their items from the other lane. However, changing lanes this way wastes time. It's not the solution to just put as many inserters on one side of a machine until they somehow grab enough. A single full lane is faster than two half full lanes with gaps. It's smarter to provide full lanes. And to merge lanes for later machines, if earlier inserters created gaps.
It's also often faster to let items stall on the belt to collect them for the next inserter swing instead of letting them flowing by. If you just started designing production lines with maximum speed, you will see what I mean later and grow many grey hairs from that (if you don't pull them out right away). Because of that, I decided to design 8-beacon production lines for my base (2 beacon rows) instead of 12-beacon lines, because this way the speed isn't that extreme.
I slightly rebuilt your setup, merged lanes, and was able to reduce the amount of inserters:
It's also often faster to let items stall on the belt to collect them for the next inserter swing instead of letting them flowing by. If you just started designing production lines with maximum speed, you will see what I mean later and grow many grey hairs from that (if you don't pull them out right away). Because of that, I decided to design 8-beacon production lines for my base (2 beacon rows) instead of 12-beacon lines, because this way the speed isn't that extreme.
I slightly rebuilt your setup, merged lanes, and was able to reduce the amount of inserters:
Re: Output not balanced
Thanks! this made me realise there is more than one way to fix this problem. Thanks for your time! This will help a great deal with designing the rest of my "Mega"baseTertius wrote: ↑Tue Nov 07, 2023 2:19 pmOne of the issues with maximum speed is that items are picked up faster than being delivered by the belt, especially if earlier inserters created gaps on the belt. In this case, later inserters have to change lane and pick up the rest of their items from the other lane. However, changing lanes this way wastes time. It's not the solution to just put as many inserters on one side of a machine until they somehow grab enough. A single full lane is faster than two half full lanes with gaps. It's smarter to provide full lanes. And to merge lanes for later machines, if earlier inserters created gaps.
It's also often faster to let items stall on the belt to collect them for the next inserter swing instead of letting them flowing by. If you just started designing production lines with maximum speed, you will see what I mean later and grow many grey hairs from that (if you don't pull them out right away). Because of that, I decided to design 8-beacon production lines for my base (2 beacon rows) instead of 12-beacon lines, because this way the speed isn't that extreme.
I slightly rebuilt your setup, merged lanes, and was able to reduce the amount of inserters:
Screenshot 2023-11-07 151840.png