Chest-on-a-belt
Posted: Tue Feb 11, 2014 8:14 am
Abstract. A chest able to travel via conveyor belts. It distributes resources from chests to assembly machines to chests.
What is wrong with conveyor belts?
• If input is greater than output then the belt is full, and you have all the resources on it just laying around doing nothing. It also feels like your production is halted because resources seem static.
• If input is lower than output then the belt is empty, and only first factories are getting resources leaving nothing to the back end. The production freezes, even if you have enough resources to produce everything in a slower pace.
• You either produce at full rate, or produce nothing.
• If the belt cannot handle your factory’s needs, that is it. You need to upgrade the belt.
• Resources are placed and taken one at a time. If belt’s input inserters combined cannot feed your assemblers combined, your factory is starving.
• They take a lot of space. You need a separate belt for each kind of resource your factory needs. It makes ugly looking squiggly belt lines with tons of intersections.
• Belt based factories grow to maintenance hell very quickly.
The answer to the belts is logistics bots.
What is wrong with logistics bots?
Disclaimer: I have only played with 7.5 bots.
There are two major gameplay points in the game: designing and maintaining. Logistics bots take them both and turn into a joke. Here is how a bot based factory looks like
Requester |-> assembly |-> … |-> assembly |-> provider
(The number of assemblies in between is low: 1-3)
If you need to produce anything, you follow this pattern. This is a no-brainer, and no-brainers are bad.
A-chest-on-a-belt.
The design is similar to trains.
You place a (special) chest on a (special) belt.
A new piece of belt: station belt. It is not moving by default. Whenever a chest enters the belt, the countdown initiates. After player defined time passes, station belt propagates the chest to the next belt (probably a normal one). During this time stations inserters can take from and put into the chest. A special instruction to tell the station belt to wait until inserters fill the chest.
The chest is a requester chest. While the chest is waiting on a loading station, smart inserters fill the chest with requested items. The inserters can be programmed to fill the chest only if the network is short of some items, so the chest will wait at the station. While the chest is waiting on an unloading station, smart inserters unload some of its contents (defined at the station). The player defines the items to unload and their quantity.
Chest routing is similar to train routing. A chest has the list of the stations to visit and a splitter routes the chest to the defined station.
Vs belts:
• A player knows what resources he needs to build an item, so he can configure the chest to take the needed amount in the loading station. The chest will then go through unloading stations near the assembly machines and split the resources in such a manner that no overflow or starvation happens.
• A player knows the production time, so he can set chest interval such that the factory will get as much chests as it needs.
• Any factory will need exactly one belt to function
• If you have not enough resources per minute for constant production, the factory will produce at lower rates, but will not starve.
• The belt bandwidth is measured in chests per tile.
• The design is concentrated around the loading stations as you can have different routes feeding from one station.
Vs bots:
• Player needs to design harder when using chests-on-a-belt.
• Bots distribute resources better and easier.
• Bots are no-brainers.
Vs trains:
• Chests take less space.
• Chests can be programmed.
• Chests require no fuel.
• Trains feel like an overkill.
Overall.The chest are less of a maintenance hell than belts and more fun than bots. The bots are objectively better than the chests in terms of optimal play because they can distribute the resources among many requesters with ease.
Resources go through factories in chests, and with a proper design a single chest going through a factory guarantees exactly 1 (2, 3, ... depending on the design) end product.
What is wrong with conveyor belts?
• If input is greater than output then the belt is full, and you have all the resources on it just laying around doing nothing. It also feels like your production is halted because resources seem static.
• If input is lower than output then the belt is empty, and only first factories are getting resources leaving nothing to the back end. The production freezes, even if you have enough resources to produce everything in a slower pace.
• You either produce at full rate, or produce nothing.
• If the belt cannot handle your factory’s needs, that is it. You need to upgrade the belt.
• Resources are placed and taken one at a time. If belt’s input inserters combined cannot feed your assemblers combined, your factory is starving.
• They take a lot of space. You need a separate belt for each kind of resource your factory needs. It makes ugly looking squiggly belt lines with tons of intersections.
• Belt based factories grow to maintenance hell very quickly.
The answer to the belts is logistics bots.
What is wrong with logistics bots?
Disclaimer: I have only played with 7.5 bots.
There are two major gameplay points in the game: designing and maintaining. Logistics bots take them both and turn into a joke. Here is how a bot based factory looks like
Requester |-> assembly |-> … |-> assembly |-> provider
(The number of assemblies in between is low: 1-3)
If you need to produce anything, you follow this pattern. This is a no-brainer, and no-brainers are bad.
A-chest-on-a-belt.
The design is similar to trains.
You place a (special) chest on a (special) belt.
A new piece of belt: station belt. It is not moving by default. Whenever a chest enters the belt, the countdown initiates. After player defined time passes, station belt propagates the chest to the next belt (probably a normal one). During this time stations inserters can take from and put into the chest. A special instruction to tell the station belt to wait until inserters fill the chest.
The chest is a requester chest. While the chest is waiting on a loading station, smart inserters fill the chest with requested items. The inserters can be programmed to fill the chest only if the network is short of some items, so the chest will wait at the station. While the chest is waiting on an unloading station, smart inserters unload some of its contents (defined at the station). The player defines the items to unload and their quantity.
Chest routing is similar to train routing. A chest has the list of the stations to visit and a splitter routes the chest to the defined station.
Vs belts:
• A player knows what resources he needs to build an item, so he can configure the chest to take the needed amount in the loading station. The chest will then go through unloading stations near the assembly machines and split the resources in such a manner that no overflow or starvation happens.
• A player knows the production time, so he can set chest interval such that the factory will get as much chests as it needs.
• Any factory will need exactly one belt to function
• If you have not enough resources per minute for constant production, the factory will produce at lower rates, but will not starve.
• The belt bandwidth is measured in chests per tile.
• The design is concentrated around the loading stations as you can have different routes feeding from one station.
Vs bots:
• Player needs to design harder when using chests-on-a-belt.
• Bots distribute resources better and easier.
• Bots are no-brainers.
Vs trains:
• Chests take less space.
• Chests can be programmed.
• Chests require no fuel.
• Trains feel like an overkill.
Overall.The chest are less of a maintenance hell than belts and more fun than bots. The bots are objectively better than the chests in terms of optimal play because they can distribute the resources among many requesters with ease.
Resources go through factories in chests, and with a proper design a single chest going through a factory guarantees exactly 1 (2, 3, ... depending on the design) end product.