The bentham/arumba train unloader

[codewarrior]

Eh, I still like using bots to unload trains. I just make sure the purple unloading chests, the yellow storage chests, and the blue ore-needing chests are all reasonably close together. I run a lot of long belts from the blue chests to where the ores are needed to make sure the bots never have to travel far.

[cpw]

So, kindly go away if you're just gonna min/max everything?

While Zuri was being Zuri, that doesn't justify dismissing good designs as "min / max" as if doing something well in Factorio were somehow wrong and something at which to sneer. This is particularly true because your own motivation was to improve the efficiency of your previous design:

Also, I find that once you get all 14 or so resources from Bob's going, you end up with a huge distance for bots to travel, and you need to have segmented bot systems just for your unloader, and a massive fleet of bots. All of which makes it feel a bit crap.

Do you want someone chiding you for "min / maxing everything" if you want to avoid the problems you see in using logistics bots for sorting train output?

Fair enough and my apologies. I'm not trying to min/max by the way, just trying different approaches to the problem. This is my third playthrough of Bob's, and the first time I've made what I see as an interesting design for this issue. It's not min/max and I wasn't trying to pretend it was. It's intention is simply to be different.

This tempts me to try Bob's Mod's, just to see how I'd approach the problem. My first thought is that I'd sort things before putting them on the train, but that trains might routinely pull different car types. If lead and nickel always come together, logically that's one platform servicing two car types, not two platforms. But I'd need practical experience to see what worked, and what kind of volumes I could expect.

Yes, that's the thing, each material has different volume requirements. Many you expect to need tonnes of from vanilla, you just don't anymore. In my previous bot based solution, I ended up with ~1m iron ore, in about 5-6 dozen yellow chests, because you just don't need that much of it. A smaller scale solution like mine above, seems to fit the problem better. It's not quite like vanilla, the problems to solve aren't just volumetric, they're also problems of managing the large array of different types of resource.

I personally never have logistics bots carrying raw ore, with the sole exception of stuff dumped from my character's trash slots. Bots are very flexible compared to other transport, but low volume, so I usually only use them for high-end intermediate products like processors and modules.

I did encounter some sorting issues with RSO, which proved to be a real pain when it was copper and coal. Once I've got solar up my coal demand drops to almost nothing, and I was struggling with trying to store lots of excess coal just to let the copper mixed into it at that station flow. It was like the usual oil refining problems, only without any way of converting excess heavy oil into something useful

Yes, this is typical - my nickel is building up, but I'm gonna have to find more galena anyway, because lead is a vital core ingredient. Several resources have this relationship in Bob's mods.

Eh, I still like using bots to unload trains. I just make sure the purple unloading chests, the yellow storage chests, and the blue ore-needing chests are all reasonably close together. I run a lot of long belts from the blue chests to where the ores are needed to make sure the bots never have to travel far.

When you have ~ 14 lines of resources in blue chests, your "station bots" are still gonna be very distributed..

[codewarrior]

When you have ~ 14 lines of resources in blue chests, your "station bots" are still gonna be very distributed.

That hasn't been my experience.

[Marconos]

Interesting setup. I like the counters but some areas seem more complex then necessary. With the 14 ore types it changes that designs away from how much bulk can I push through a point to more of a get what I need when I need it approach.

I would see this type of unloading being better done with 6 arms / side into active/passive logistics chests based on your preference. Bots then move the items to the proper loader lines. You could control the output of those line with some chest / smart inserter logic. The piece that is missing is the logic that tells a train what stations to go to depending on what resources your need.

Would be really cool to say "hey I'm below my threshold of lead" then send the train to the lead area to get that item. Once it comes back, now I'm low on copper, send it to copper etc. If your resource requirements are Bobs are much lower that could be a fun and interesting setup.

With vanilla it's a matter of I just need more, more, more not really specific on levels.

Interesting problem and good early solution that could definitely be a design that feeds into a larger approach.

[SpeedDaemon]

Interesting setup. I like the counters but some areas seem more complex then necessary. With the 14 ore types it changes that designs away from how much bulk can I push through a point to more of a get what I need when I need it approach.

Yeah, the challenge with Bob's is more one of managing the complex construction chains than of volume (except in a few cases like solder plate if you're making lots of circuits and modules).

My later-game ore "sorting" system for Bob's is designed to be hands off for several hours at a stretch (all I have to do is build and tear down mines), rather than massive throughput (although I can do that, too - just add more trains).

Basically, I just blanket a large area with mines, resulting in a messy mix of ore that I dump onto trains. The ore storage areas unload via smart inserters, so the sorting happens during unloading. The train just makes the rounds to all of the different storage areas. I do wish there was a way to have trains only conditionally stop at a scheduled station based on the contents of their wagons, though. I started this to deal with the Bob's mod "galena gives both Pb and Ni" problem, but it worked so well, I decided to do it with everything (plus, those ore dumps can each handle north of 30 million ore, because unnecessary scale is fun).

A separate set of trains picks up ore from the storage dumps and brings it to the smelting area when needed. They're loaded at the ore dumps via smart inserters wired to the buffers at the smelt area to avoid blocking up the unloading chests with too much of any one ore.

Map

Mine

Ore Storage

Smelt Area

[brado]

I'm reaching a point in my bobs mod map that I have these issues.. thank you for your innovative suggestive examples.

[-root]

Some clarifications: I'm playing bob's mods and RSO (with a high level of dispersion of resources). Once rolling, I expect to have 14 or so different resources coming in via train. But BM doesn't really need a huge quantity of any of them.

What I don't know is how you ended up with a train full of four materials? This is an extremely strange design.

Bob's mods. You get multipatches of ore courtesy of RSO as well. They're all too small to justify complex field sorting, and as I just said, the 14-odd stations concept is just ridiculous. I want 1 station, where all my ore can be dropped off.

Ah, it makes a little more sense now... But it is quite small and the throughput is extremely low.

For a four wagon train, that would take a couple of mins + to unload if it was full (begs the question, will the wagons be full?). Plus the sorting system can't really handle much in terms of throughput either.

I'm assuming this is built to the right scale for your world? It seems rather restricted.