[MOD 0.17] Deadlock's Crating Machine

[aka13]

Hey Deadlock, I am currently playing around with your crafting machines, and I wanted to make sure I do havbe the right math behind my ideas.

Let's say we are talking about the mk3 machine, which supports a blue belt worth of crated items.
In-game I see that inside a crate fit 10 ores. That means, if the mk3 machine can handle a full blue belt of crates, that means that it needs to be supplied a whole blue belt of crates and 10 blue belts of ore, correct?


Would that imply that to stack plates into crates, utilising the mk3 would be a waste of recources, since I would need 1 side space for the input, 1 side for the crate, and only have 10 sides left for loaders to input the plates? Or am I missing something? How do the craftring times influence this?


edit 1:
I can't quite wrap my head around crafting times as well. Plates seem to need twice the time to craft, so that means my previous statement must be wrong, that means that the mk3 canm only proccess half a belt of crated plates? SInce, it takes twice the time for plates as opposed to ores?

[Deadlock989]

In-game I see that inside a crate fit 10 ores. That means, if the mk3 machine can handle a full blue belt of crates, that means that it needs to be supplied a whole blue belt of crates and 10 blue belts of ore, correct?

It's the other way around - each machine can handle one full belt of the raw item. That means a mk 3 machine can take a full blue belt of ore (or plates or whatever) and outputs 1/10th of a belt (or 1/20th for plates etc.) of crated ore.

Would that imply that to stack plates into crates, utilising the mk3 would be a waste of recources, since I would need 1 side space for the input, 1 side for the crate, and only have 10 sides left for loaders to input the plates? Or am I missing something? How do the craftring times influence this?

No, you only need two inputs (one belt of products, a slower belt of crates) and one output - the other way round when uncrating. To completely fill a belt of crated ores, you'd need 10 machines (and 10 full belts of ore). I'll upload some picture examples in a minute.

I can't quite wrap my head around crafting times as well. Plates seem to need twice the time to craft, so that means my previous statement must be wrong, that means that the mk3 canm only proccess half a belt of crated plates? SInce, it takes twice the time for plates as opposed to ores?

You will rarely, rarely need a compressed belt of wooden chests. The machines are tuned so that they always pack up 20% of a stack into a crate at the same rate, no matter what the stack size of the product is. Ores have the lowest stack size (50) so they're the quickest to pack. A crate of iron plates takes twice as long to craft compared to ore because the stack size is double (100) and so a crate has twice as many plates as ore in it. Items with higher native stack sizes get more compression on a belt- they're smaller. I know this is all a bit unintuitive but it was the rationale I had in my head at the time. I wouldn't necessarily do it the same way a second time.

TBH it's of highly questionable value to crate up ores, especially if you're primarily moving it around by train. In the first release you couldn't crate ore at all but I was persuaded (and it turns out a side effect is that these mods are not only a massive boost to belts, they're a huge boost to inserters too). In my play-through I only found any benefits from stacking iron plates, copper plates, plastic, steel and green circuits (but a substantial benefit, see the Maths bit on the mod portal).

[Deadlock989]

This is how I did it on my last big play, which got up to about 600 science per minute and 0.2 rockets per minute on less than a full belt each of crated iron and copper plates.

Packing up copper plates. There are 16 of these "furnace units" on the map for copper, each outputting a blue belt of plates, and they all feed into a single not-quite-compressed belt of crated copper plates. Returning crates come back the other way - notice neither crate belt is full even with 16 smelteries feeding it, it would need 20. See how the belt out from the machine is about 1/20th full, before it's merged into the main belt. Big tip: to make this work without having to compress the belt with wooden chests (which is a bit of a nightmare to arrange), priority splitters are your best friends and make everything worthwhile.



Half a kilometre away, iron and copper plate crates are siphoned off into an electronics factory which itself outputs one blue belt of circuits:



The map. See how the "buses" are really a set of enormous parallel sushi belts, with full crates on one half and empty on the other.

[aka13]

Thank you for the quick reply. Now that the logic is the opposite of what I thought it is, makes total sense. I don't understand how I read it through on the mod portal and managed to misunderstand it.
I see how in your usage scenario you think of packing ores being impractical. I play on marathon however, and have 4wagons x20 balanced central offloading station, from where I balance the incoming ore and send it to furnaces. In my case packaging ore will be extremely useful.

[Deadlock989]

Version: 1.2.1
Date: 30. 03. 2018
Changes:
- Crating/uncrating activities are no longer included in production statistics.
- This can't be a retroactive change so you will still see crate production stats in the past.

[canisin]

Hello, I have just discovered your mods and I loved how high quality and well polished they look! Thanks for your hard work.

I have not yet had a chance to play with them, but while reading this mod's description, I had the idea that a later tech for plastic crates would fit rather well in terms of theme and real world equivalency. Just a second recipe for crates from plastic instead of wood. I am not sure whether the current graphics for the crates would make sense with this second recipe though. But I just wanted to share the idea with you.

[Deadlock989]

Hello, I have just discovered your mods and I loved how high quality and well polished they look! Thanks for your hard work.

I have not yet had a chance to play with them, but while reading this mod's description, I had the idea that a later tech for plastic crates would fit rather well in terms of theme and real world equivalency. Just a second recipe for crates from plastic instead of wood. I am not sure whether the current graphics for the crates would make sense with this second recipe though. But I just wanted to share the idea with you.

Thanks.

It makes sense. It's what some of the other boxing/palletting mods did (except with dodgier maths). I did a big playthrough with the mod as it is now (see a few posts back). Foolishly, I'd started that world with low tree settings because I wanted space. It made getting all the wood for the crates a bit of a nightmare. Not an issue if you have some other "wood from thin air and magical recursion" mod, but I didn't. Since it boosts belt throughput so hugely and saves you such vast amounts of resource capital for buses, it could arguably cost a lot more to make crates (plastic or even steel) and still be worth it. But I don't think there needs to be any tech progression, or faffing with multiple kind of crate. It doesn't make sense to me that a wood crate holds X items and a plastic crate holds Y items when they're the same size. And ending up with a bus of mixed crates would be boring to untangle, even if they hold the same - you'd need to filter each one out and have a separate unpacker for each, because you can't have automatic furnace-type recipes when there's more than one result (the unpacked item and the crate).

This mod was my first, and it has turned out to be the "poor cousin" of the three mods I made, probably deservedly so. Most people don't want to be hassled with crates. A few like the challenge and the way you have to build a slightly different kind of bus. Reflecting on how people reacted to these mods and some of the worse decisions I took, I probably wouldn't make this one wood-based a second time. In fact I probably wouldn't make it at all a second time.

[aka13]

In fact I probably wouldn't make it at all a second time.

Well, I think it's the best solution to the whole belt problem. I love the mod

[canisin]

Thanks.

It makes sense. It's what some of the other boxing/palletting mods did (except with dodgier maths). I did a big playthrough with the mod as it is now (see a few posts back). Foolishly, I'd started that world with low tree settings because I wanted space. It made getting all the wood for the crates a bit of a nightmare. Not an issue if you have some other "wood from thin air and magical recursion" mod, but I didn't. Since it boosts belt throughput so hugely and saves you such vast amounts of resource capital for buses, it could arguably cost a lot more to make crates (plastic or even steel) and still be worth it. But I don't think there needs to be any tech progression, or faffing with multiple kind of crate. It doesn't make sense to me that a wood crate holds X items and a plastic crate holds Y items when they're the same size. And ending up with a bus of mixed crates would be boring to untangle, even if they hold the same - you'd need to filter each one out and have a separate unpacker for each, because you can't have automatic furnace-type recipes when there's more than one result (the unpacked item and the crate).

This mod was my first, and it has turned out to be the "poor cousin" of the three mods I made, probably deservedly so. Most people don't want to be hassled with crates. A few like the challenge and the way you have to build a slightly different kind of bus. Reflecting on how people reacted to these mods and some of the worse decisions I took, I probably wouldn't make this one wood-based a second time. In fact I probably wouldn't make it at all a second time.

You're welcome. But who said to make it into an upgrade? I am just suggesting an alternate recipe for crates. When you cannot find wood or cannot be bothered to find wood, you just use your existing plastic to make your crates. You grow out of your dependency on wood, just like the way it is with wooden electric poles.

[mrvn]

The reason why I don't use crating yet and probably won't is that stacking is so much more in line and the ratio is already huge.

But I'm thinking of using this for a main buss of my mall. Have a single fast belt loop with crates of any type added on demand, then uncrated at the relevant subsection of the factory to produce the needed good and shit the crate and finished item on to the outlet and crate reuse.

[Deadlock989]

You're welcome. But who said to make it into an upgrade? I am just suggesting an alternate recipe for crates. When you cannot find wood or cannot be bothered to find wood, you just use your existing plastic to make your crates. You grow out of your dependency on wood, just like the way it is with wooden electric poles.

I totally get where you're coming from, but:

- mixtures of different crates on the belt would be a boring/irritating problem to solve, see above
- every time you add a new crate, you add another fifty or so recipes, many more if you've added third party mod support, and I loathe inventory tab clutter with a passion

For these reasons alone, there won't be more than one kind of crate. Maybe it should have been plastic all along though. But then, if you make too many wooden chests, at least you can burn them for a fleeting amount of energy. Plastic is forever.

[Deadlock989]

Another way to handle it would have been to have a dedicated generic crate item, and then have different numbers of it produced by different materials, e.g. wood planks make 2, iron makes 4, plastic makes 4, steel makes 10 etc. Doesn't make literal sense but is arguably a more useful play mechanism. Too late now though

[mrvn]

What I would like to see is recipes to make crates out of chest + stack of X.

[Deadlock989]

What I would like to see is recipes to make crates out of chest + stack of X.

We discussed this before, I did look into it but it was a pain in the neck and was another thing that would create horrible inventory screen bloat due to doubling up every recipe all over again. Just unstack them before you crate them, very easy to do. Or don't stack them in the first place, even easier.

[canisin]

You're welcome. But who said to make it into an upgrade? I am just suggesting an alternate recipe for crates. When you cannot find wood or cannot be bothered to find wood, you just use your existing plastic to make your crates. You grow out of your dependency on wood, just like the way it is with wooden electric poles.

I totally get where you're coming from, but:

- mixtures of different crates on the belt would be a boring/irritating problem to solve, see above
- every time you add a new crate, you add another fifty or so recipes, many more if you've added third party mod support, and I loathe inventory tab clutter with a passion

For these reasons alone, there won't be more than one kind of crate. Maybe it should have been plastic all along though. But then, if you make too many wooden chests, at least you can burn them for a fleeting amount of energy. Plastic is forever.

No, no! I am sorry I still couldn't explain my idea
Keep the existing empty crate item prototype, all the existing crating/uncrating recipes, and all the crated item prototypes.
Keep the existing wood based recipe for the empty crate.
Only add a second recipe that uses plastics and produces empty crates. The regular kind of empty crates. Not a new special or different kind of crate.

[Deadlock989]

But there is no "empty crate". This mod uses actual wooden chests from vanilla. You're suggesting that I make wooden chests craftable from plastic. Among other things, that means you can burn plastic, probably for an overall net loss of energy but still.

[canisin]

But there is no "empty crate". This mod uses actual wooden chests from vanilla. You're suggesting that I make wooden chests craftable from plastic. Among other things, that means you can burn plastic, probably for an overall net loss of energy but still.

Ahh!! Now, I feel quite stupid. Well, I don't think I have anything further.
You already have iron chests and all the problems associated with creating further crating recipes.

But I suggest you take a look at the Auto Barrelling mod for a way to have automatic recipe selection at your crating machines and maybe hide the recipes from the crafting menu and maybe then incorporate crating based on different chests thus breaking the tyranny of trees!

[Deadlock989]

But I suggest you take a look at the Auto Barrelling mod for a way to have automatic recipe selection at your crating machines and maybe hide the recipes from the crafting menu and maybe then incorporate crating based on different chests thus breaking the tyranny of trees!

Thanks for the tip-off, I just took a look. The method wouldn't work for DCM because the Auto-barreller is a furnace-type entity. That's the method I use for Deadlock's Stacking Beltboxes, which is another kind of belt compression that doesn't use crates at all. You can only use furnace entities to automatically select recipes when the recipes have no more than one input item and no more than one output item. Crating recipes by necessity must have either two ingredients or two results. I did learn that fluids don't count for this restriction, which is why barrelling works, so that's something I didn't know yesterday. But it won't help in this case.

[canisin]

But I suggest you take a look at the Auto Barrelling mod for a way to have automatic recipe selection at your crating machines and maybe hide the recipes from the crafting menu and maybe then incorporate crating based on different chests thus breaking the tyranny of trees!

Thanks for the tip-off, I just took a look. The method wouldn't work for DCM because the Auto-barreller is a furnace-type entity. That's the method I use for Deadlock's Stacking Beltboxes, which is another kind of belt compression that doesn't use crates at all. You can only use furnace entities to automatically select recipes when the recipes have no more than one input item and no more than one output item. Crating recipes by necessity must have either two ingredients or two results. I did learn that fluids don't count for this restriction, which is why barrelling works, so that's something I didn't know yesterday. But it won't help in this case.

You're welcome! (even though my idea and help did not amount to much in the end )

[mrvn]

What I would like to see is recipes to make crates out of chest + stack of X.

We discussed this before, I did look into it but it was a pain in the neck and was another thing that would create horrible inventory screen bloat due to doubling up every recipe all over again. Just unstack them before you crate them, very easy to do. Or don't stack them in the first place, even easier.

Recipes can be hidden from hand crafting and put in a different tab for the crater machine to keep things organized. So I don't quite buy the inventory screen bloat argument.

As for unstacking that is a volume issue. The few tests I've made shown that crating is a rather slow process, limited to the speed of a single belt of the same level of uncrated items. I would hope that crating stacks would be faster because the stacking has already done half the work. Maybe it should even manage to craft a compressed belt of stacked items although a fife fold speed increase seems high.