Combining, Splitting, and Balancing Large Numbers of Belts

[Carl]

Sorry for the awkward title but i only have a rough idea of how maybe the point i'm going raise could be addressed. The core issue i'm getting at here however is when you have a large number of belts feeding into somthing, (usually ore coming off the train/miners for me though some people prone to even more insane sized factories may have similar issues with the iron and copper portions of their main bus), and balancing or compressing down/up the number of belts gets very troublesome, i can do it fairly easily from a setup PoV for any number which is both even on input and output using splitters, (i imagine everyone can duh), but if you want an odd number of outputs or inputs i haven't the foggiest how to do it without a LOT of space usage, and above 4-5 belts it gets really, really space consuming even with even numbers on inputs and outputs.

Conceptually what's needed is a method of expanding the basic splitter concept to encompass as many input/output steps as you want. The problem is i'm not really sure how well the game support such modularity. The alternative method is to be a bit cheekier and resurrect the loader/unloader concept, but make it only interact with a specialised storage machine, that would have to be modular, but based on liquid tanks it looks like a unified storage inventory across multiple seperate but connected blocks is possibble, For UI reasons it would have to be inaccessible to the player, (in the same way you can't access the inventory of an inserter), and the total capacity per block does not need to be high, but if done right it should meet the needs.

Now some might say you won't normally need this, and i'd say yes and no, it depends a great deal on how big your final form is and at what point in the game your talking about, small to moderate final builds will probably just about bump into this issue IMO, however large and above builds will start running into it late game, (or earlier for bigger builds), and i imagine as new ever more expensive techs and machinery are added you'll find the definitions of small, medium, large, e.t.c. increasing which make the problem more prevalent and occur at earlier stages. Still i'd say any such tech should be mid game at the earliest. If anyone has any other idea's on how thi8s might be achived, (or even a technique i haven't discovered), feel free to but in.

[Mehve]

I suppose it's a matter of opinion how big a problem this is. While current belt balancer designs are obviously more than a single space solution, you can usually combine/split quite a few lanes before things get really awkward.

[mattj256]

I like the game's design as it stands. If you're obsessive and have a lot of time on your hands you can figure out how to do this with nothing but splitters and underground belts. If you're like me you can look it up online and try to memorize it. Or you can take the newbie approach and do a simple design with splitters that works but not optimally.

I like the elegance of the circuit network designs but they can be cumbersome to set up. This will be easier once 0.15 comes out and we can store and share blueprints across games.

If the developers want to add anything, it should be a priority splitter. Here's a mod that does what I'm talking about: https://mods.factorio.com/mods/msu320/compoundsplitters First it outputs as much as possible onto one belt. If that belt is full it starts putting things onto the next belt, and so on. It would be nice if this was in vanilla. (There could be a "mode of operation" on the existing splitters. No need to create a new entity.)

[Carl]

I suppose it's a matter of opinion how big a problem this is. While current belt balancer designs are obviously more than a single space solution, you can usually combine/split quite a few lanes before things get really awkward.

Well i'm specifically talking about the point at which it does get awkward as all hell. As an admittedly extreme example my current setup for copper roe has to feed 10 lines of miners down into 8 whilst balancing and compressing. My Irone ore is 13 into 20. (both those outputs go through a belt->storage->belt sequence that cut the final numbers in half). But really over 8-10 combined input+output lanes gets to be a real pain.

I like the game's design as it stands. If you're obsessive and have a lot of time on your hands you can figure out how to do this with nothing but splitters and underground belts. If you're like me you can look it up online and try to memorize it. Or you can take the newbie approach and do a simple design with splitters that works but not optimally.

Thats an interesting setup, but the bigger of those is starting to push the practical limits of the concept before it becomes hugely unwieldy. My own design is quite a bit different and smaller sizes a touch more unwieldy but if it scales as i think it should, (i really need to put it through a test in sandbox ) it's probably better at big sizes.

This is specifically about those cases where people are building larger factories, like you need to, to beat some of the achievements, the amount of copper and iron you'll consume require a lot of ore to be processed, so it's going to give you issues like this. And i imagine in the long run as noted resource requirements are going to go up for basic gameplay which is going to extend the problem down to more typical factories.

[Mehve]

Well i'm specifically talking about the point at which it does get awkward as all hell. As an admittedly extreme example my current setup for copper roe has to feed 10 lines of miners down into 8 whilst balancing and compressing. My Irone ore is 13 into 20. (both those outputs go through a belt->storage->belt sequence that cut the final numbers in half). But really over 8-10 combined input+output lanes gets to be a real pain.

That's kind of the point, though. It's easy to get jaded by some of the megafactories out there, but 8+ similar belt lines IS extreme. By the time you have that many belts moving the same material in parallel, you're into the realm of single-digit minutes between rocket launches, and equivalent. I'm not sure we should expect shortcuts at that point.

[Carl]

Well i'm specifically talking about the point at which it does get awkward as all hell. As an admittedly extreme example my current setup for copper roe has to feed 10 lines of miners down into 8 whilst balancing and compressing. My Irone ore is 13 into 20. (both those outputs go through a belt->storage->belt sequence that cut the final numbers in half). But really over 8-10 combined input+output lanes gets to be a real pain.

That's kind of the point, though. It's easy to get jaded by some of the megafactories out there, but 8+ similar belt lines IS extreme. By the time you have that many belts moving the same material in parallel, you're into the realm of single-digit minutes between rocket launches, and equivalent. I'm not sure we should expect shortcuts at that point.

Not even close to that often. Bear in mind the way i'm running it it only comes to 4 lines of feed output via the belt->storage->belt setup and i plan for re belts as the prime mover so the throughput is a lot less than it seems. That many inputs is to balance the expected uncompressed state they'll run in for much of the time between trains once i inevitably have to move to that. Don;t get me wrong i'd still classify this on the upper end of the large scale, but you don;t need 8 before it becomes a monumental pain, anything more than about half that size is one. Big builds just make it especially noticeable. But it';s there on anything above a medium sized factory.

[ssilk]

Another splitter.
I point to viewtopic.php?f=80&t=518 Smart Splitter (-Suggestions will never End) and
viewtopic.php?f=80&t=24061 New Types of Belts (And why they are NOT a Good Idea!)


Btw: This subject is addicting; even me couldn't resist to write some splitter suggestions:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=23616

[Carl]

Well i would have posted this there, except this isn't about splitting for the most part. Yes you can use splitters to do compression or load balancing across multiple belts but it's not what they're designed to do, thats just another use people have figured out ways to use them to do. And by and large i don't have any real issue with that. Unfortunately beyond a certain point such ad hoc solutions become completely unworkable due to the scale involved. At those scales the game really needs a (suitably high tech tier, expensive, e.t.c.), dedicated solution to the issues of compression and balancing. Slitting is quite simple and the least space consuming part if all inputs are load balanced allready. I just don;t see any reason a dedicated load balancer or compressor shouldn;t handle the splitting aspect integrally. But it's very much the compression and especially balancing which is a giant pain in the posterior beyond a fairly modest scale.

[GinoMK]

The splitters that split between 2 lanes(belts) that are in the game are nice, but I think that it would be awsome to have a Bigger Splitter that splits between 3 or 4 lanes (4 preferably) and can also set one lane (or 2) as top priority. Maybe you can set up some pattern splitting configurations or if you don't want to overfill one splitter with loads of stuff make a new splitter (Pattern Splitter) that splits stuff with some pattern configurations on lanes (example 1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4,...(1st lane,2nd lane,3rd lane,4th lane,and then form the start or how ever it was set)). I was also thinking of Filter Splitters that filter stuf in different lanes ... Quantity Splitters that will split every 10th iron ore to the 2nd lane while sending everything else to the 1st lane... Timer Spliters that split iron ore every 20 seconds for 5 seconds...

[vtx]

You can allready do that in the game.

1 lane to 4 lane : = : belt / > : splitter

Code: Select all

....>==
==>=>==
..>=>==
....>==

Link the 2 belt after the splitter with red wire and you can priotirize the lane.

[ssilk]

https://wiki.factorio.com/Balancers

viewtopic.php?f=80&t=518 Smart Splitter (-Suggestions will never End)

[topica]

TL;DR

Wide Splitter (3-belt splitter) makes cargo wagon loading and unloading better.

What ?

Wide Splitter is 3x1 entity and has 3-belt input and 3-belt output.
This splitter can combine 2 or 3-belt input and divide them to output belts equally.

Why ?

When I use cargo wagons, I use 3 to 1 belt balancer or 6 to 1 balancer that is implemented with conventional splitters.
(for 4 cargo wagon unloading, four 3 to 1 belt balancers -> 4 to 4 belt balancer)

Well-known 3 to 1 belt balancer, however, has a complicated shape and its throughput is not perfect.
This makes loading or unloading logic obscure.
I think belt logistics should be more useful.

4-belt splitter or more are unnecessary because (2^n)*(3^m) belt balancer can be implemented if there are 3-belt splitters, and other belt balancers have low demand in the game.

[Koub]

Won't happen

[bobingabout]

would love

[darkfrei]

It can be 3x3 entity:
3 mini-loaders (input), one chest 3x1 and 3 mini-loaders (output).

[eradicator]

would love

would love 1x1 splitter that splits to all three sides :x.

[crysanja]

this is a complicated solution, the easy one would be a 1x6 chest.

[Gergely]

Is this moddable?

[darkfrei]

Is this moddable?

Just take this two:
https://mods.factorio.com/mods/Atria/WideChests
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/miniloader

Three loader to load, three loader to unload chests 3x1 or 1x3.

[Optera]

Has anyone ran an ups comparison for n to m balancers made up from splitter, loader and miniloader (hidden inserter)?