Energy efficiency vs production rate ballance

[Nich]

So I am a new player and I have managed to get my Red and Green Science production in a place where I am fairly happy. I have tried a couple things. All on one belt processing, 1 in 1 out and not sure what to call the last one but lets just call it parallel pools.

All on one belt worked really well until the imbalance in production rates would leave my belt littered with 1 recourse. It was also very easy to change production very quickly, add new modules, used a low number of grabbing arms

1 in 1 out was really nice and used the least grabbing arms but I just couldn't tackle the problem of getting belts and yellow grabbers to 9 different Green pod assemblers (needed to keep the circuit machine busy). I have also found that at least at the point I am at 9 Green pod assemblers seems like a lot of overkill.

My final solution was with parallel belts each lane using a different assembly. It used the most belts and the most grabbers and required extended grabbers. This is truly the least elegant of the solutions but it works very well

I am going to take a 4th pass at it and I am thinking a combined 1 belt and 1 in 1 out is the best solution but this time I want to take power usage into consideration.

My question is this what uses more power. An idol Assembler or an active grabbing arm? From what I can tell the raw resources are about the same and so insignificant compared to the throughput that it hardly matters to me.

Also I noticed my Science labs are not picking up Red pods when they pass by. They look like they are attempting to but fail until the backup has reached them and they are finally able to pick up the pod.

[huliosh]

You can check the description on every item, but I like to look at graphs ingame.

1 min graph

I've managed to split input copper and iron belts into perfect ratios for red and green science. This will make sure that you will get the same amount of science packs even if input belt isn't compressed.

belts and ratios

Blueprint string for belts with splitters

Code: Select all

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[greep]

You can also check the wiki:

https://wiki.factorio.com/Inserter

I believe "drain" is the energy use when idle, energy consumption when not. As you can see, idle is not even a single kilowatt, compared to 90kW for an active assembler.
Edit: ah the other way around. Unless this is incorrect, maybe idle assemblers don't even use energy?

[Nich]

I had seen that on the wiki but I noticed somethings don't have a drain so I was unsure if they meant they had no power off or they used no power when off.

I got my 1 to 1 green assembly plant done. My only problem is my circuit card maker likes to hiccup as it sometimes runs out of resources and then takes a long time to get restarted. How do I tell it to maintain a larger buffer on the input?

How do you take screen shots if your not playing on steam? I really like how it turned out. It would be nice to show off my baby.

Started working on the fundamentals to get blue science working.

[huliosh]

How do you take screen shots

Print screen button

My only problem is my circuit card maker likes to hiccup as it sometimes runs out of resources and then takes a long time to get restarted. How do I tell it to maintain a larger buffer on the input?

If you are talking about inserter jiggling, then probably belt is too fast or could be inserter is placed right on the exit of the underground belt. Best match is yellow belt for yellow inserters, red belt for yellow and red, fast inserter for express belts.

[ssilk]

Moved from General to Gameplay Help