UPS Optimization - Red Science (editor)

[guitars11]

And the times visalized from flame_Sla's CSV file - sorry its not milisecs but microsecs:
UPS-flameSla-Belter-measurements-times-20230418.png

This is a pretty cool breakdown of the different attributes. How did you do this?

[Belter]

updated 4.5 and is now 4.5.1. I found 2 furnaces that were not working as intended, somehow the ore got messed up.

I don't get higher UPS for 4.5.1 than 4.5. Actually <1% slower - withing the margin of error: 610 vs 606 UPS.

[Belter]

This is a pretty cool breakdown of the different attributes. How did you do this?

Google sheets From the CSV attached to flame_Sla's post here

[guitars11]

updated 4.5 and is now 4.5.1. I found 2 furnaces that were not working as intended, somehow the ore got messed up.

I don't get higher UPS for 4.5.1 than 4.5. Actually <1% slower - withing the margin of error: 610 vs 606 UPS.

Ok good, that's about expected.

[guitars11]

I was able to add another beacon to the iron furnaces, which makes the speed 9.4 instead of 8.4 and had 3 different combinations of how that beacon affected other entities.

4.2.10 : only affects furnace but also removes 1 beacon from gears https://factoriobox.1au.us/map/info/20e ... 378d176bb4

Screenshot 2023-04-18 221622.png (1.74 MiB) Viewed 2558 times

4.2.11 : affects furnace, gears and iron miner https://factoriobox.1au.us/map/info/ff6 ... 1cb660d1b6

Screenshot 2023-04-18 222237.png (1.44 MiB) Viewed 2558 times

4.2.12 : affects furnace, gears, iron miner, and copper miner https://factoriobox.1au.us/map/info/5f8 ... 4f0afff12b

Screenshot 2023-04-18 222317.png (2.03 MiB) Viewed 2558 times

4.2.11 might beat 4.2.2 and 4.2.12 could as well...

After testing, it seems that 4.2.2 is still just better... not entirely sure why the extra beacon on the furnace doesn't help. it's weird that an extra beacon on the miner would have that much of an impact if that's what's causing the extra time. Or something is wrong with 4.2.2

[flame_Sla]

5x10000 ticks
the results are slightly different

5x10000.png (386.69 KiB) Viewed 2544 times

[guitars11]

5x10000 ticks
the results are slightly different
5x10000.png

Interesting. I'll have to run the same

[Belter]

Interesting. I'll have to run the same

On the weekend I will also re-measure and update the 1st post. Tried to beat v4.2.2 and failed so don't see the benefit of publishing more versions here from my side Still have some ideas, and for sure learned a lot again, TY!
- lower the timing to 100% production - a cycle of 448 instead of 436.36 is enough in theory
- think again about perfect timing (UPS is not any better in my versions, far from the top)

Thread stays open of course in case somebody comes with a new concept which will beat the top w/more than 1%-2%.

For Green Science will start a new thread, same conditions. This weekend of soon after.

Let me know if you have any suggestions to adjust the conditions, assuming the less is more and defenitely I'd like to see on-site solutions. Same 100 belts and will ask for FactorioBox upload to make it simple.

[Belter]

Updated the first post with 4.2.10/11/12. On my system 4.2.2 still wins.

[Belter]

The top UPS versions are adding 12 plates/gears as they feed the RS machine every 2nd round only. They time themselves perfectly, basically feeding w/6 items, which is 8.4 packs due to +40% productivity. So the Red Science inserter puts 8 or 9 items on the belt. Far from optimal, but the full 12 item swings of the plate/gear inserters are compensating.

Would be nice to have a mod which draws signals and assembly mahcine storage graphs I can use the pause feature currently only.

[flame_Sla]

...
Would be nice to have a mod which draws signals and assembly mahcine storage graphs I can use the pause feature currently only.

write a mod yourself
I don't think it will be difficult: every tick to save buffers of all assembly machines to a log file

[Belter]

Some interesting feed / prod stack sizes and the # of required machines in case of different modding for 8 beacon setup:

FeedProd.png (36.54 KiB) Viewed 2352 times

[Belter]

...Would be nice to have a mod which draws signals and assembly mahcine storage graphs ...

write a mod yourself
I don't think it will be difficult: every tick to save buffers of all assembly machines to a log file

Yeah, maybe... which machines, whjch signals to monitor, feature creep :-]

[Belter]

Some interesting feed / prod stack sizes and the # of required machines in case of different modding for 8 beacon setup:

Tried the 9B 2SM 2PM setup (light blue, but for 9 Beacon only 13 AMs reqd / lane). UPS-wise failed (522 UPS only).
The reason: had to add another iron smelter as the gears AM was starving.

Looks the 3PM 1SM setup will run w/1 smelter (purple) will build it soon. See only 7.5 smelters required per lane:

11B3PM1SM.png (156.33 KiB) Viewed 2328 times

https://factoriolab.github.io/list?z=eJ ... A1VRSX&v=7

[spacedog]

The one thing that bothered me a bit about these tests was allowing for arbitrary ore patch placement via the editor. I get that it was done to allow for end-to-end DI builds. It's a good way to learn more about optimizing production performance, but obviously there are a lot of other unavoidable real-world problems that every mega base faces.

Don't get me wrong - some valuable learning still happened, but this is eventually going to end up way off in the weeds of theory that can never be put into practice. I'm imagining a blue science build that requires iron/copper/coal/oil/water patches of just the right size and location to support optimal DI layouts...

I know it was mentioned that maybe green science should be next, but what are your thoughts on sticking with red science a while longer, and continuing to peel the onion a bit? Maybe a version that requires handling ore being delivered outside the production block, in any configuration that can feasibly be delivered by train (i.e. no magical mixed belts of ore just showing up from loaders connected to infinity chests).

As the cost of product assembly is pushed lower and lower by these experiments, the cost of those other things becomes a proportionally higher part of the total UPS picture - and therefore where the biggest remaining perf gains will be found. Finding the most efficient ways to buffer and distribute materials delivered by train to feed these DI builds seems like a worthwhile next step.

Maybe the problem space becomes too big that way and isn't fun. Or maybe I'm missing the point here. Anyway, curious to hear people's thoughts.

[Stevetrov]

My second submission

https://factoriobox.1au.us/map/info/411 ... 4a91e874a4

Its not particularly good, but it has better beacon sharing the guitar 4.2.2 but transport lines are less favourable.

red_science_v2.jpg (420.48 KiB) Viewed 2251 times

I think I might be able to improve on it further by offsetting the clocks for each inserter, but not sure when I will have time to look into this.

[Stevetrov]

The one thing that bothered me a bit about these tests was allowing for arbitrary ore patch placement via the editor. I get that it was done to allow for end-to-end DI builds. It's a good way to learn more about optimizing production performance, but obviously there are a lot of other unavoidable real-world problems that every mega base faces.

Here is my two cents, as the game hasnt changed a lot over the last couple of years then improving on existing designs is going to be very hard. The best designs are 1K cells that take ore on single sided or mixed belts. With the best being the base by fallinghostplayer just ahead of smurphys base.

For a competition to be interesting it needs to provide something different enough for these designs to not be the winners before the contest starts. Allowing ore placement anywhere is one way of achieving this, simply because its not been studied as much although we have always known it would be optimal.

By the way its fairly easy to setup mixed ore belts on a real world in a very UPS efficient way, the only issue is how far apart the ore patches are that ofc can be adjusted in the settings.
eg

mixed_mine.jpg (567.62 KiB) Viewed 2167 times

[flame_Sla]

...
As the cost of product assembly is pushed lower and lower by these experiments, the cost of those other things becomes a proportionally higher part of the total UPS picture - and therefore where the biggest remaining perf gains will be found. Finding the most efficient ways to buffer and distribute materials delivered by train to feed these DI builds seems like a worthwhile next step.
...

I will add to what Stevetrov said:

if you are interested in UPS, forget about ore delivery by train
multithreading for belts "killed" trains and bots (for vanilla)
High UPS 40k cell base (u/fallenghostplayer)

examples of correct bases on belts:
link-1
link-2

[spacedog]

Appreciate the replies!

For a competition to be interesting it needs to provide something different enough for these designs to not be the winners before the contest starts.

I totally agree. I guess that was kind of my point though. I've been pouring over the prevailing UPS wisdom for a while now, and most examples I see just have the raw materials showing up from infinity chests, or from ore patches placed in the editor, or sometimes from overlapping ore patches that resulted from setting the frequency to 600% in the map settings.

I remember looking closely at those monolithic 1K SPM blocks from smurphy1 and fallenghostplayer a while back, and they are impressive feats of engineering. But pretty much immediately my mind wanders to, "how would I even begin to provide 65K+ iron ore per minute to all the conveniently placed inputs around the perimeter of this thing, in a real-world map where I don't already have hundreds of levels of mining productivity?" So it made me wonder if adding some constraints around that would make these builds more interesting to a wider audience.

But in hindsight I think maybe I missed the point. There are layers of problems in Factorio, and I think different people gravitate toward different ones. How compact/fast can you make a production block (puzzle game). How can you build an efficient train network for a rail world mega base (logistics game). How can you build Tetris and video players from combinators (abusing the game ).

if you are interested in UPS, forget about ore delivery by train
multithreading for belts "killed" trains and bots (for vanilla)

I always understood this to be true for reasonable distances. But isn't the max belt length for a single transport line 200 tiles? If you're playing on e.g. a rail world style map because you think trains are fun, do belts really still win (UPS-wise) over very long distances, despite being broken into dozens of transport lines? (Especially if you can't 100% compress the belts?) If so, that changes my thinking about a lot of things (like smelting ore into plates on-site), because the overall throughput of belts completely crushes trains.

[flame_Sla]

I always understood this to be true for reasonable distances. But isn't the max belt length for a single transport line 200 tiles? If you're playing on e.g. a rail world style map because you think trains are fun, do belts really still win (UPS-wise) over very long distances, despite being broken into dozens of transport lines? (Especially if you can't 100% compress the belts?) If so, that changes my thinking about a lot of things (like smelting ore into plates on-site), because the overall throughput of belts completely crushes trains.

at a distance of 40km belts are better than trains, this is the current version of the game
the beginning of the discussion
https://discord.com/channels/5793454873 ... 6693114910
invitation to the discord channel

222.png (41.43 KiB) Viewed 2136 times