Tried and tested *input* belt balancers

[Tertius]

I'm a fan of the vanilla game challenges - if the devs considered loaders part of the game, they would have added them. Since they are only included in the sandbox, not in the regular freeplay scenario, I will not use a mod to add them anyway. Feels like cheating. My preference is to use mods only for functionality not available in the vanilla game, or for QoL such as a wider zoom for my UW monitor. Balancing wagon unload is a challenge that should be solved and not modded/cheated away. Solving challenges adds depth.

I even try to manage trains with built in circuits only, however after reworking my train logistics over and over again, and reading the last ALT-F4, I'm seriously considering Cybersyn as logistic train mod, because it adds useful functionality not in the game in a very generic way. LTN seems a bit convoluted and not generic enough, in my opinion (a legacy to its age, I assume). Beyond dynamic train control as a whole, Cybersyn's wagon control would be the one thing I'm really missing in the vanilla game, especially the ability to read the content of a single wagon.
It would be the first game changing mod I use and the first mod that would break my factory if removed.

[zOldBulldog]

I'm a fan of the vanilla game challenges - if the devs considered loaders part of the game, they would have added them. Since they are only included in the sandbox, not in the regular freeplay scenario, I will not use a mod to add them anyway. Feels like cheating. My preference is to use mods only for functionality not available in the vanilla game, or for QoL such as a wider zoom for my UW monitor. Balancing wagon unload is a challenge that should be solved and not modded/cheated away. Solving challenges adds depth.

I even try to manage trains with built in circuits only, however after reworking my train logistics over and over again, and reading the last ALT-F4, I'm seriously considering Cybersyn as logistic train mod, because it adds useful functionality not in the game in a very generic way. LTN seems a bit convoluted and not generic enough, in my opinion (a legacy to its age, I assume). Beyond dynamic train control as a whole, Cybersyn's wagon control would be the one thing I'm really missing in the vanilla game, especially the ability to read the content of a single wagon.
It would be the first game changing mod I use and the first mod that would break my factory if removed.

I solved the vanilla problem years ago. Now I am more interested in compact and good looking solutions If mods are needed for that... so be it. Although TBH I only use game-changing mods in my stations and for solar power (I don't like littering my map with panels).

[Tertius]

I like caring about all these details and complex edge cases. Being a software engineer in real life, I know dealing with the common case requires only 20% of your time but solves 80% of the task, while dealing with the edge cases requires 80% of your time and solves the remaining 20% of the task. Do you want an efficiency of 80% or 100%? I want 100% In real life, my boss usually says: "go with the 80%, don't waste the budget".

[zOldBulldog]

I like caring about all these details and complex edge cases. Being a software engineer in real life, I know dealing with the common case requires only 20% of your time but solves 80% of the task, while dealing with the edge cases requires 80% of your time and solves the remaining 20% of the task. Do you want an efficiency of 80% or 100%? I want 100% In real life, my boss usually says: "go with the 80%, don't waste the budget".

Been there, been told that... then if I figured it would take me less than 10% extra time to do the 100% I'd do that quietly. Then when years later my boss would say "we need to deal with these things" that is when I told him/her it was already done. Now they let me do whatever I consider worth doing even if it feels like too much And it's paid for itself many times over, especially now that software security is an issue that they pay attention to.

[mrvn]

I believe the 4 stack inserter per wagon can more than fill the blue belt. So you can circuit control them to only activate ones >= average -10. The end of wagon unloading inbalance will cause some stack inserters to be paused but if the belts are backed up slowing down the inserters that won't matter. If 4 stack inserters aren't enough to oversaturate the blue belt then you can always use a design with 6 or 12 stack inserters.

The clever but fragile circuit option would be to set the stack size for the wagon inserters. Say you have 60 items in the wagon. Then you do one swing with stack size 12, removing 48 items and leaving 12 items. Now you set the stack size to 3 so the 4 inserters take 3 items each for a total of 12. This assumes the wagon content is always divisible by the number of inserters or you get a rounding error leading to an inbalance. A simple arithmetic combinator set to "each / num_inserters = S" will do it, assuming all wagons have identical content and just one item type.

You can also set the stack size of the belt filling inserters. A stack inserter with stack size 10 will be slower than one with stack size 12. Not as much as disabling it completely. But really you just want to correct an inbalance of up to 12 items per train load.