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After a hiatus of two weeks due to a couple of FFF’s hot off the presses, we’re back this week with two articles all about belts. In the first one, Recon419A explores an interesting concept that has belts deliver items in a just-in-time fashion. Then, things get truly nerdy as pocarski takes a deep dive into building a turing machine only using belts. Computer Science degree recommended!

Continue reading: https://alt-f4.blog/ALTF4-23/

Extremely informative! With how much I use circuit network stuff I actually never really used them on belts. Feels like there's a ton of missed potential here for me.

Holy cow the turing complete belts are amazing.

I had developed a similar concept of belt logistics for a central mall in a Pyanodon-game.
One central mall where I can easily shop for many (100 or something) different items that are produced in all different areas of my large factory.
I have set up required amounts per item, and if any item in the mall-chest is below that, it will set a negative value on the red-wire circuit.
That red-wire runs along the collection-artery-belt, together with a green-wire. An inserter will put items on the collection-belt, and sends a pulse on the green-wire. That will change a stored value per item at the mall which is added to the red-wire signal. Thereby making sure only exact as much items as requested are sent.
In the mall area, there is (for each item) a small buffer on the actual belts (5% of the requested value), because I remained with a single problem: the tick between the moment the inserter would put the requested item in the chest (which would send a green-signal to reduced the stored value) and the chest upping its content with one. Now the green-signal to the stored value is done when an item exits the collection-belt into the central mall-buffer-area.

In essence: With circuits and a stored value, I would add the content on the belt to the requested amount thus making sure I never send more than requested.

I did not yet manage to come up with a similar concept for distribution of the less-requested items in Pyanodon, because it is more easy to collect into one place from different sources, than to distribute from one source to multiple places (which was also mentioned in the Alt-F4 as a difficulty)

Rysz wrote: ↑

Wed Feb 17, 2021 3:07 pm

I did not yet manage to come up with a similar concept for distribution of the less-requested items in Pyanodon, because it is more easy to collect into one place from different sources, than to distribute from one source to multiple places (which was also mentioned in the Alt-F4 as a difficulty)

I wonder if it is possible to create separate networks with “stations” that act as both requester and provider. Similar to the request-inserter-storage that is often used to connect separate logistics networks.

Whoa. You lost me halfway through.
No programming background at all, so I have never been able to get the circuit network to do anything... not even just go "beep" when a train arrives at a stop.

Very interesting.