An earlier version of my design in the "FACTORIO 0.14.XX AND PRIOR" section explains why you shouldn't use water tanks: For those who used my old coal detector and water battery setup during Factorio v0.10 and v0.11, I'm happy to say that the workaround solutions are now obsolete. With the...

And the update is finally here! This design held up my favorite hobby, Touhou, for over half a year. So glad to be done. I don't even play this game anymore, since almost 3 years ago.

It works on both sides of the belt. I only seen burner inserters fail to pickup coal if it's on the closer side of the belt.

The only time yellow inserters aren't fast enough is right after a restart, when the inserters aren't supplied enough power to run properly. It works at full power just fine until the 1:2 bug depletes steam. Where do you get the idea yellow inserters aren't fast enough to pick things up from a red b...

Typically a minor difference, but putting it at the end makes the setup restart significantly slower after coal depletion when power consumption is relatively low, and results in more time spent moving the burner inserter to the end everytime a row is expanded towards the 59 boiler max per row. So I...

I was addressing that in context of red belts being too fast for burner inserters to reliably pull coal off of, and the other ideas mrvn had with splitting the belt into 2 yellow ones to slow it down and such. If it was intended to be an unrelated idea on saving the 81 more KW a burner inserter cons...

Hinting at me spending 15 pages of discussion optimizing the crap out of these designs, yes yes I know.
But I'm doing it to simplify and optimize the design, not complicate it :>

Yes. :D 1 red splitter vs circuit network logic dependent on steam level of a storage tank connected to an engine, guess which one is simpler and uses far less tech and space? :lol: And I think I've just about optimized everything I can for the setup, up to 2 stacked rows of boilers/engines. Think a...

Eh, you guys are overcomplicating it. Just use one red splitter where one end dead ends at the burner inserter. No need to use circuit network tech ;) And as for yellow inserters not being fast enough to grab coal from red belts when low power, just one of the drawbacks that come with upgraded belts...

Was considering it. On second thought, it's probably not a great idea for normal operations. Need to test more. Yeah actually, by math, 5 burner inserts consume 470 KW at max, whereas dedicating a steam engine to all inserters is 900 KW down. So nevermind at the dedicated engine for inserters idea. ...

Upon doing the following math again: 8000KW * 0.5 (boiler efficiency) * 26.67 item/s / 900KW = 118.533.. engines worth of coal, I've come to realize that the only reason the setup can sustain 119 has to do with the bug where the boiler doesn't produce enough steam to sustain 2 engines. Which probabl...

A 1.24% decrease in boiler coal consumption would work too, calculated from 27 / 26.67. And also I just tested 119 again - it sustains fine. 118.5 is from wrong math. Recall the formula is 8000 / 2 /1800 * 26.67. The 1800 comes from 2 steam engines x900 KW each boiler. In a 60/119 setup, not every b...

By doing 61/121, and I make it last 11-12 minutes cuz MAGIC. :> But no, same reason I can make 120 steam engines work when the previously thought to be best was 60. And no, I don't need exactly 108 MW of power. Almost never will there be a situation where my base needs 108MW instead of 0-107MW, and ...

Yes, so 120 isn't a significant number far as burst power goes. For just 30s burst time, you could probably use 128 engines. As the previous designs have all set the precedent for the standard setup to be fully sustainable, if one wants burst power, they can add their own variant, like how I used to...

@Blake: No need, either way the one extra is trivial. The burst is no more important now than it was before, and no one said anything about burst power before. Number aesthetics don't overrule what I drew in the graph. @mrvn: Incorrect. 121 engines lasts about 11-12 minutes of coal and can sustain s...

This is supposed to be low-tech compatible, like literally before medium pole tech - solar cells and drones don't count :P Someone at drone tech not needing to remove the 120th engine gets offset by someone who needs to place the 120th engine manually, all you'd be doing is making it trivially longe...

But it only ever fluctuates when you use 100% of the power for a long long time. Why would I use 60/120? 1) easier to build up to it by adding 4 boilers + 8 steam engines in a blueprint every time power runs low, no need to delete the 120th engine or 60th boiler. 2 ) 2 boilers and 4 engines each sh...

I'd definitely go with 60/120. Why? Because a 60/120 setup will always produce as much or more energy than a 60/119 - if it has fuel buffered it produces more, if the fuel buffer runs out it produces as much, as such unless there's something really useful you can do with that 120th steam engine slo...

In all but brownout situations there should be more production capacity than consumption. So I would go with 60/120. That gives a little extra room for spikes. And when not in a spike steam will collect, coal will back up so when the next spike hits it will take a really big and long alien attack t...

8MJ per lump of coal /2 for boiler /1800 for 2 engines at 900 kW each * 26.67 (or really 40 * 2/3) equals 59.26 Thanks for the explanation. Then I'm convinced by evidence it's really coincidence - the 26.67 is 2/3 of 40, which is a round even number instead of some seemingly randomly picked decimal...