When you know what you want...

[Zourin]

I had started up a new game, and started the groundwork for the iron smelting.. and took a step back and realized just how many different design concepts go into something so basic and early game. Then I realized I've been doing this so often that this stopped being complex at some point.

- 20 forge design upgradeable all the way to electric furnaces without reconfiguration.
- No need to change internal belt layouts when upgrading to electric furnaces
- 5x5x2 design for better parallel processing and lane utilization
- 2-lane ore input split into two 1-lane tracks without splitting lanes. I later upgraded the ore feed to a right-hand load balancer (not in the shot)
- Fuel feed line that can be cut off if/when I upgrade to electric
- 13k Output buffer. Maintains full smelting throughput before I've even hooked it up to anythig.
- Quad splitter to ration out consumption as I expand
- Single-to-double lane split shift.
- Still expandable layout (if for some crazy reason I need more)

[TylerB]

Nice little setup. I would be worried that a single lane ore feed would not be enough for 100% uptime on a steel furnace using coal. Your screenshot looks like even some of the stone furnaces are starved. After switching to electric furnaces, a double lane ore feed might not even be enough depending on your module use. In my own design I ended up having to use 2 full lanes with a splitter to deliver ore to a line of smelters.

[Nova]

Yeah, it looks like it does what it should do, so alright. You could remove every second power pole, through. Would make it cheaper and less confusing (fewer cables).

[Zourin]

This map blessed me with really pathetic ore fields, so I don't have nearly enough ore coming in as I'd like. All the more reason to sustain throughput into the buffers. 13k in the chests, 2k in the furnaces. As for power, Yeah. I stopped caring about the details and slapped basic poles everywhere and moved on to the copper line. I was *literally* at my second tech when I built this (Automation, Logistics) when I put this together. Sadly, it was all hand built. I hadn't even automated red packs yet.

At some point I stopped thinking of belts as a single-resource device and just about everything I do now takes into account both lanes. a lot of the resources sent to assemblies are belts with both an iron and copper lane, and it works well enough. In some more insane moments, I output on the same belt as the input belt and abuse underground belt voodoo to keep the resource line going.

[Canyew]

I like your build for the pre-planned sections. I makes it look nice and its very easy to just slap down your electo-furnaces when you get them. However you are cutting your overall throughput of raw ore by splitting the belt in half for the furnaces fuel source. Personally I like having a full belt of ore then splitting it. (Thats if you have a large enough ore source to do such a thing.) I really like using this setup

Before:



from here all you need to do is remove the arms and furnaces, remove the coal belt push the input belt up 1 space from the lower set, and the 1 space from the top output.
It sounds like a lot but it really takes no longer than 4 or 5 minutes.

After:

[OBAMA MCLAMA]

@canyew
Whats with the 2 belt 1 sided copper ore?

And in your examplw, you are going from 9 steel furnaces/side to 6, you are actually losing production in your upgrade unless you have speed modules in them.

And I used to think upgrading furnace lines took long too, but when you really need to, you have construction robots that can tear it down in 30 seconds, then you can make a small boueprint and make the rest. So a couple minutes really isnt much.

[Canyew]

I did speed insert these furnaces and expanded the line after those pictures. It was mostly taken on a per example. I just like having the full ore belt preset and ready to go. So I don't have to worry about removing coal feeds etc. There is a lot of room there after I removed the old furnaces.

Also. I have a problem where I never seem to actually run out of copper.