n9103 wrote:Interesting layout there. Possible for some pretty extreme buffering. Good fix for the conflicting ores problem.
Entirely wasteful, as far as resource efficiency goes, but I imagine the number of beacons is a sign of a purely post rocket defense setup.
Yepp, resource waste all the way... but what else to do with 3 million plates per type if not experimenting around a little bit?
starxplor wrote:To save some horizontal space, if using any mod that has near/far inserters, you could output both plates to one side. This would allow horizontal expantion where each vertical set only needs a vertical output line on one side. This allow removing the two inserters and chest on one side of the smelter, cutting 3 spaces out of the footprint per vertical set.
I will probably experiment with this in my next game.
Yeah with mods nearly everything is solveable... but I tend to play Vanilla Factorio for various reasons because I'm always afraid to break compatibility for my maps when the game gets updated but the mods are no longer maintained by their creators.
I extended my experiment to logistic bots as well, which is super-wasteful on the energy side but funny since this way I can manage all 4 resource types with the same furnaces.
I basically used the same layout but sqished down. I could place even more beacons... Up to 6 effecting 4 furnaces... but well I think 4 is already enough... ^^
So I left the space empty... maybe for future ores that get added into the main game. The system is quite expandable this way, as it would be possible to smelt 10 different ore types in the same facility.
A little bit of care has to be taken that Steel Plates and Stone Bricks don't eat exactly only one Iron Plate or one Stone. Basically this means that the inserter might insert not enough ingredients to fully finish crafting an item and there's no real way to control that without fiddling around on how much Steel Plates/Stone Bricks are allowed in the output chest, which takes some time to find "good" numbers because it will heavily depend on how fast the furnace is working (modules and stuff). The furnace might get stuck that way, especially with Inserter Stacksizes Bonuses that are not 5.
With Inserter Stacksize Bonus of 5 as well as using 170% crafting speed (Productivity Module 3s in all Furnaces and Speed Module 3s in all Beacons) - I've experienced no problems though, so I could leave the input inserters to only take in when the output chest is empty, because once the output chest signals the input inserter to stop then it will surprisingly only end up with a maximum of 10 excess ingredients in the furnace. Which basically means that if it is 10 Iron Plates it works to produce 2 Steel Plates and the furnace is empty again, with Stone it produces 5 stone bricks and it is also empty. It's a funny coincidence that it works because they share the same multiple.
No matter what it will get unstuck eventually if the output chest gets emptied by Bots. Eventually the inserter will put exactly enough ingredients into the furnace to reach the multiple that's needed to fully empty the furnace and thereby enabling the
"context switch".
Note: I'm currently not using the facility to it's maximum potential that's why some of them are idling... as I'm only taking 2 full belts of copper plates and 2 full belts of iron plates from it... which is pretty much capping the production speed to 4800-5200 plates/min per type, which is below what the facility would be hypothetically be able to. Once I'm moving my steel production inside there as well the furnaces will be much fuller since they will have to keep up with steel plate production and the therefore increased iron plate production as well.
The estimated throughput of the facility is about ~12400 copper or iron plates. Don't know about Steel plates since they take longer to craft and more ingredients.
Update: Ran a small test with one Requester Chest outputting on a belt with a fast inserter... the production of steel plates is heavily varying between 180-200 plates/min plates per minute (probably due to unexpteced bot travel time)... the iron plates are up to 6500-7000 plates/min while 4800-5000 go onto the belts into my storage system and the rest probably going into steel plate production. The copper plates are remaining capped on 4800-5000 due to belt limitations, they are not experiencing any suffering due to the additional steel plate load. Seems pretty solid numbers... especially nearly matching what I estimated.
I guess the preemptive multitasking works the better the more
"tasks" the furnace can choose from and the longer it takes for the bots to pick up all the items from the output chests. The longer it takes... the more time there is to smelt something else until it can return to the previous ore.
... my final thoughts on that thing is that it would be a vast improvement if we could connect a furnace/assembler to the red/green wire to look how much ingredients are already loaded into it. It would simplify everything.