it’s deterministic only in the sense that every player sees the same behavior


Yes, I understand this. Still, large scale train-to-train bases with synchronised behaviour is not a novel idea; 10k SPM example , 20K SPM example . Regardless, I would still like to understand what it is that I need ...

I’ve never built a setup expecting identical, perfect operation from everything


Yeah, this sort of design is particularly useful for train-to-train bases. As Factorio is deterministic, creating synchronised systems is within reason. Still, this design philosophy may not be within "normal ...

They're distinct systems, but one is capable of robbing the sulfur from another?


Ah, I see what you mean. By "each pair of chem plants" I am referring to one sulfur chem plant and one sulfuric acid chem plant that form a pair. Each of these pairs (sulfur + acid) has a dedicated supply of water ...

Tbh, I’m not exactly sure why it matters


The problem is a cascading chain of events that lead to catastrophic failure. As each pair of chem plants is a distinct system from the others, one falling out of sync could brick the production cell and anything that relies upon it. Imagine the sulfur ...

My point is, that the game is 100% consistent, but only for the exact same origin. If you create a blueprint of a setup and place it on different coordinates, that setup can have its entities in different update order and that can create differences in behavior that may or may not be noticeable ...

Moving the undergrounds up so the inserters deposit sulfur onto a belt seems to affect the behaviour. My testing so far is not rigorous, but the inserter behaviour is consistent with my expectations. However, what relevant variables an underground belt introduces is less clear to me.

All behavior is dictated by the update order, so if it does not create an actual desync it is not a bug.


Just to clarify, I am not reporting a multiplayer desync issue. I knew "sync" is correlated with multiplayer issues, and I should have stated this in the top post.

To me, inconsistent swing ...

0eNrdXVtyG7mS3Qu/RQfeD8d4F/N3w6GgqJJc0RSp4MNuT4cWMLuYn9nYrGSqSEoESYDIk2W22fdGXLctUqcS+QBQmQfIv0YPs03zumzn69Hnv0btdDFfjT7/66/Rqn2eT2b9z9Y/X5vR51G7bl5Gd6P55KX/13LSzkZvd6N2/tj8Ofos377ejZr5ul23ze73t//4eT/fvDw0y+4LR785nn6btPPx/hl3o9fFqvvNxbx/XIc2llZ9snejn/1ftftkuwc9tstmuvuOers7w1cf ...

Blaze, if you want to dig into the rabbit hole take a look at Swolar's megabase. I don't know of anything that's more thoroughly optimised than this.

I'll just leave these here...

Lane Balancers.png

Left to right:

1-1
2-2
2-2 Unlimited Throughput
2-2 Inline
3-3
4-4
4-4 Inline
5-5

To my knowledge, these are the best available however the 5-5 needs a lot of work, it's a giant mess. There's a really nice 6-6 and 8-8 out there but no one really ...