Control of inserters / belts

[race-dot]

Hi,

first of all: my english isn't perfect because I grew up in a country far far away so some of my words might not be understandable by some people. If so, please tell me.

My problem is a problem many (new) players might have: How can I control the inserters so they don't spam all belts?
I've played the game for about 10-15h now and have (beside other things) researched all kinds of inserters. The thing is, that if you need two or more parts for a production (e.g. green electronic circuits - 1x iron plate and 3x copper cables) you might come to the point that you have only iron plates and no copper cables or the other way round. In my production logic, all production stuff has it's own belts (4x4 factories, surrounded by belts where on the inner side the factories get their goods from and on the outer side deliver it). The final (sub)product (like copper cables) is then grabbed by filter inserters and transported to the next stage (e.g. the 4x4 factories for green electr. circuits). When for any reason you run short of copper plates or iron plates the whole production stopps. Then the belt is full of copper cables and no place for iron plates.

So long story short: Is there a way to say the inserter: "You only place so many iron plates on the belt that there are a maximum of 30 plates on the belt"? Then there would be enough space to place copper cables etc.

Thx for your help
Philip

[321freddy]

The way I would usually do it is by having either seperate belts for each item or if you don't care that much about throughput you can put the items on different lanes of the belt.
This way you ensure that all needed items can reach the assemblers even if there is a shortage. I strongly discourage you from using mixed belts/lanes because of exactly the problems you mentioned.

[DaveMcW]

https://wiki.factorio.com/Circuit-netwo ... elt_Design

[Deadly-Bagel]

Doing it in the way you suggested (eg 30 items on the belt) is certainly feasible using the circuit network however it requires the items to be in a loop. Otherwise say 30 iron will collect at the end, so the end assemblers can't get any copper wire but the first assemblers can't get any iron.

What you would typically do is either set it up so the copper wire assembler inserts directly into the electronic circuit assembler, then feed iron plate from a belt. For other assemblers you might utilise the two lanes of a belt, put say iron plate on one side of the belt and iron gear wheel on the other side. The two lanes are both accessible by inserters but they don't interact with each other so a surplus of one component won't block the other lane.

If you're having trouble I recommend watching something like Factorio Towns or (if you can sit through it) Abundant Automation on YouTube to get a handle on how the game is played.

[race-dot]

Thanks for all the answers

using seperate belts could be an option, yes... I'll have to test it tonight whether I can build the production process like this.

Mixed belts were used in some (German) "Let's play" Youtube Videos and it looked quite nice using the inner and outer lane.
Feeding stuff directly into a factory isn't (at first thought) not a practical idea because I need wheels or other stuff at virtually every corner of the production process and so I would have to build a factory near each production lane (with belts for copper/ iron/ whatever).

I'll try some of your ideas tonight, especially reconstruct everything to use duiffrent belts for everything.
Thanks guys (and girls?)

[ssilk]

Moved from General to Gameplay Help

[Frightning]

Hi,

first of all: my english isn't perfect because I grew up in a country far far away so some of my words might not be understandable by some people. If so, please tell me.

My problem is a problem many (new) players might have: How can I control the inserters so they don't spam all belts?
I've played the game for about 10-15h now and have (beside other things) researched all kinds of inserters. The thing is, that if you need two or more parts for a production (e.g. green electronic circuits - 1x iron plate and 3x copper cables) you might come to the point that you have only iron plates and no copper cables or the other way round. In my production logic, all production stuff has it's own belts (4x4 factories, surrounded by belts where on the inner side the factories get their goods from and on the outer side deliver it). The final (sub)product (like copper cables) is then grabbed by filter inserters and transported to the next stage (e.g. the 4x4 factories for green electr. circuits). When for any reason you run short of copper plates or iron plates the whole production stopps. Then the belt is full of copper cables and no place for iron plates.

So long story short: Is there a way to say the inserter: "You only place so many iron plates on the belt that there are a maximum of 30 plates on the belt"? Then there would be enough space to place copper cables etc.

Thx for your help
Philip

The easiest way to solve this kind of problem is to arrange your belt setups so that each of the two required items has its own dedicated lane on the belt, and will only ever be placed in that lane, that way, although you might run out of plates or cables, the lane for that item will just become empty and thus can be automatically refilled once the shortage is addressed, for a picture of what I mean, take a look at my bussed building store I made in my most recent factory:

20161225044757_1.jpg (507.97 KiB) Viewed 3337 times

[race-dot]

thanks for your explanation and sorry for my late reply.

Over christmas I played a lot (for my standards). Something like 20h in 4-5 days.
But after all, my factory is more perfect than ever before. Even got a defense and walls

Back to topic:
I changed most of my small 4x4 factory complexes as you suggested with up to 2 belts left and right. It works pretty good, although producing a lot of different stuff makes the belts more complex than ever before.
But with the logistic robots available everything changed for me. Except for very short ways and easy mass production, logistic robots are perfect. But that's a diffrent topic. My problem is solved with the belts on each side.

Yes, as Is said: Thank you guys, happy new year and have fun with your factories.