I wanted to minimise the time biter eggs spend on my space platforms. Getting high throughput out of a cryogenic plant is not a problem, however delivering Promethium chunks to them is. I had been storing my asteroid chunks in the hub and alongside ammo in and out and other ship functions that are using the hub for storage/buffers, there just isn't a lot of room left for the kind of number of inserters needed to get decent promethium chunk throughput.
So, I had a look at belt based storage with the aim of wrapping the storage around the Cryogenic plants to provide room for as many inserters as I could while keeping the space used minimal. The end result is the following:
11-30-2024, 19-11-31.png (3.74 MiB) Viewed 1847 times
The storage is in the form of spiral mostly underground belts that wrap around the Cryogenenic plants, provide each with a high speed buffer of around 1.3K chunks (enough for over 50 batches of science) or so in combination with each loading using 13 inserters to keep up with the consumption rate of the cryogenic plants. That means this pair it can consume around 1350 eggs per minute. The pair is tileable as well.
The intended use is to fill up the belt buffers on the Shattered planet route rather than storing the chunks in the hub. On return to Nauvis, have a large array of rockets ready to deliver vast numbers of biter eggs and drop the science back down immediately. The end result considerably reduces the time the platform has to wait in Nauvis orbit and reduces time eggs spend on board to a couple of mins or less. I have seen turn around times using 3 of these tiles (5.3k storage) of a couple of minutes, most of which was getting the eggs up using enough rocket silos (8) to deliver 2000 biter eggs in a single launch from each silo and silo that are dedicated to biter eggs direct from the spawners so no conflict with anything else.
There are no circuits in this directly, however where the green wire is is where you might want to connect to read the amount stored in the belts to raise a return signal for an interrupt to handle. The Telsa turrets should not be needed, but I tend to add them where I am handling eggs in case something gets stuck and you don't notice.
This was my first quick hack at the problem and it seems to work well enough. I'm sure someone could improve the layout/belting etc.
Blueprints:
These are organised as a belt link, the main middle tile and an end version of the same with excess trimmed to stop any eggs from getting trapped in open splitters, excess underground etc.
Stack inserters are needed from the hub for eggs out and science back in to hub.
Please use the BP button instead of CODE for blueprints.
That said wouldn't it make more sense to feed the Promethium chunks from the sides instead of through an array of those blocks? That way you could place the blocks along the spine of the ship and then feed each block from a couple of collectors without running into throughput issues with any belts.
Re: Fast Biter Egg Cooker
Posted: Sat Nov 30, 2024 8:48 pm
by Khazul
mrvn wrote: Sat Nov 30, 2024 8:34 pm
That said wouldn't it make more sense to feed the Promethium chunks from the sides instead of through an array of those blocks? That way you could place the blocks along the spine of the ship and then feed each block from a couple of collectors without running into throughput issues with any belts.
Throughput issues with belts? How many collectors do you have on your ships to collect >120 promethium chunks/sec as well as whatever is needed for manufacturing of ammo, fuel etc?
As for feeding from sides, there is nothing stopping anyone from changing as needed. This setup made far more sense on the ship I used it on first and I prefer symmetry. Maybe the next will be different - each to their own
mrvn wrote: Sat Nov 30, 2024 8:34 pm
That said wouldn't it make more sense to feed the Promethium chunks from the sides instead of through an array of those blocks? That way you could place the blocks along the spine of the ship and then feed each block from a couple of collectors without running into throughput issues with any belts.
Throughput issues with belts? How many collectors do you have on your ships to collect >120 promethium chunks/sec as well as whatever is needed for manufacturing of ammo, fuel etc?
As for feeding from sides, there is nothing stopping anyone from changing as needed. This setup made far more sense on the ship I used it on first and I prefer symmetry. Maybe the next will be different - each to their own
I was thinking about your consumption rate. You can't fill the belts as fast as you consume Promethium by chaining them.
But that was never your intention I guess, not even close. The belts are for storage, obviously. But they are purely for storage and you want the factory to run at the 1350 eggs a minute so they don't spoil a second longer than needed, right?
You have no intention of taking eggs back out to the edge and produce science on the fly then? I falsely assumed you would have a massive ship for this setup that had tons and tons of collectors for a hybrid approach. Take eggs out and produce science on the fly till all eggs are consumed. Then on the way back buffer Promethium. Pick up eggs and produce science till the promethium is gone and then buffer some more eggs and repeat.
PS: I use low tier belts so throughput is far lower for me. I even have one ship with yellow belts because I produced them in space and never upgraded them even to red. And no oil to go beyond red on board. Never mattered before.
