network monitored ressource buffer + autosorter

[bastrath]

Hello,

I'm still quite new to factorio, playing it for two month now and i love this game. I'm reading every day in this forum, so I thing now it's time to post something I've build by myselve. It's nothing to great, but I thing it's some kind of cool, so I just want to share this with you.



All chest are connected to the green network, so I can controll the flow of ressources being transported to my base by train. The main line is priorised over the support line comming from the buffer. All chest are requester chest, except the coal.

If there is more then 20k of for example copper detected, this ressource wont be load on the train - if the station is connected to the same network of cause. This makes it possible to transport multible kind of ressources mixed up in one wagon, unload them onto one belt and sort them whith smart inserter whithout getting a deadlock because of overproducing one ressource and fill the hole autosorter up with this. I know, the usage of the differend speeds of belts on input and output isn't optimal, but that wasn't my priority.

For shure it's nothing new to most of the advanced players and there are better solutions possible I thing, but I'm a bit proud I've figured this out by myselve, especially the priorise System of the belt.

I hope you like this

[bastrath]

So this is the autosorter. The outgoing belts are connected to the buffer shown in my last post. It could be build with less space, but I like symetrie very much
Because of the network controlled buffer there isn't more input of one specific ressource then the buffer could handle, so there SHOULT be no deadlock situation.

This sorter will be used only for mixed ressources. If one ressource arrives allready sorted it will not go through this, so throughput shouldn't be a big problem.

[Neotix]

Every sorter in Factorio I ever seen, have one big flaw. Overflow it with one resource and entire system stuck. To prevent it there have to be some mining control system. The easiest way is to put Smart Chests in sorter / buffer and deactivate inserters in mines.

[bastrath]

I think it's impossible to build an autosorter whithout some kind of controll to the ressource flow before. A smart switch would be cool, so the controll is much easier. This way we don't have to adjust 10 smart inserter or more per ressource at the mine, just one smart switch to let them flow - or not. And as an addition some sort of radio station to broadcast the different networks and it's content for mines far, far away

[Neotix]

On my map I decided to sort resources in source, not in base. Trains are transporting sorted resources and each resource have his own station with buffer. In that way only when one mine have more than one resource it can stuck but it's only minor percent of all mines.

[dee-]

Same here - the base only gets presorted cargo trains. No sorting is done in the base, it would waste space and is usually unnecessary if you presort where mixtures can happen.
Iron and copper are also already smelted because they have a larger stack size when snelted and unprocessed they currently have no use in the game.
So everything "individual" is not in the base but where the problem arises so it can be omitted when there is only one resource type needing no filterer at all.
If you have many resource fields that give you mixed resources making one sorter in the base might be more efficient as you only need one train to get the mixed resources to the base where one sorter is sorting them but I think you'll get throughput problems if you do it in only one place whereas sorting at the resource sites can be done in parallel for every site.