Plastic production coal-starved?? (solved)

[bobdabuilda]

Hi guys, looking for a bit of help/guidance on this one, because I'm really not too sure on how best to tackle this.

I'm currently working on a "reverse megabase", inspired by Nilaus and his current series of videos. Have gotten up (down??) to the plastic portion of my manufacturin chain, and am seeing an issue with coal supply to my chem plants - I simply can't get coal into them fast enough, even with the use of 3 inserters... I had 3 stack inserters initially, decided to try a fast inserter for one of them instead to see if it helped any... which it didn't lol.

I have 2 belts coming in to my 10 chem plants. The screenshot shows the second lot of 5 with the coal coming in from below on the right hand side (unfortunately, this currently means the chem plant where that comes in only has 2 inserters, so the problem there is magnified somewhat). The belts are providing enough coal (max rate calc shows a bit over 65 coal required to feed all 10 plants) - the issue is that the inserters aren't feeding it in fast enough... even though I have 3 of the suckers.

Any suggestions, please, on how to resolve it... other than slowing the chem plants down by removing some beacons...

(The balancer is there as the output is only enough for just under 4 full belts - but the output's not an issue anyways)

[Kalanndok]

Are you sure it's coal starving?
My calculation gives an output of 17.03 plastic per second per assembler produced with just one inserter clearing it. That's not enough as one inserter can in the best case move 13.85 items per second from chest to belt.

As for input...one assembler only takes 6.55 coal per second so one inserter should be more than enough.

[Trific]

If they aren't getting enough coal to saturate the outgoing inserter, lowering the stack size on the stack inserters may help. When the plant signals "low coal", a non-limited stack inserter will try to grab a full claw of coal before swinging, which can lead to the plant waiting for coal as the inserter gathers enough coal from the belt for a full claw.

[bobdabuilda]

Are you sure it's coal starving?

Absolutely. Sitting there watching it. The inserters pause while it's producing, clears the outputs, and then can't keep up with the insertion when they're able to carry on.

Thanks Trific for the idea of limiting the stack-inserters... will look into that. Seems a little counter-intuitive at first, but your reasoning sounds logical

Update: solved it. Kalanndok - turned out we were both kinda right lol (although you were MORE right ). It WAS being coal-starved... but after I spent some time sitting and watching what was going on, it was ONLY getting coal-starved (for some reason) after it got output-jammed. Because it was only loading output with a single stack inserter, the cham plants were occasionally getting overloaded, pausing, and for some reason the coal wasn't loading during that time - so as soon as it started back up again, the coal starvation happened...

Added an additional outbound loader, and it's running smoothly now...

Thanks for taking the time, guys

[wobbycarly]

Another option is to load the coal from the belt into a (limited) chest. Then every time the inserter swings to the chem plant, it will be a full handful. The inserter loading the chest will just keep working as required.

Even in your limited space you can put the chest in the corner and have the inserters at right angles.

[bobdabuilda]

Thanks for that, wobby - will keep it in mind. For now, I've moved the power up a square, and extended the output underground with a single belt in order to add a second stack inserter offloading the plastic, and it's fixed the lot. Will be keeping a close eye on it for a while, though, to ensure it doesn't still quirk out on me occasionally... at which point I'll try the temporary caching, as it's not a bad idea