Production deadlocks

[leadraven]

Hello, everyone!

Any recipe that has at least 2 outputs might potentially lead to a deadlock where overflow of 1 output blocks production of another output. And I want to discuss such recipes.

1. Miners on the border of two patches. It is natural and minor problem. A bit annoying, but could be ignored.
2. Unbarreling deadlock isn't a problem at all.
3. All kinds of Oil processing.
   Heavy oil -> Light oil -> Petroleum Gas chain eliminates all deadlocks except Gas overflow.
   Let's investigate potential problems with Light/Heavy oil shortage.
   1. Flamethrower ammo. Ammo can be used only manually, thus its deadlock is a very minor problem.
   2. Solid fuel production. Sometimes its deadlock is very painful. It's a rare situation, but if you fuel your boilers with Solid fuel, an overflow of plastic can lead to total blackout. I've got it once . Since then I always place one small block of ... Gas -> Fuel plants!
      This recipe is sooo impractical. There is almost no sense to use it. Almost. I like to see 0 counter on it, but I know it protects my factory. Like a soldier who has never been in a real battle.
      Gas -> Fuel is an excellent example of non-trivial deadlock solution. I love this recipe. I don't know was this trick conceived or not, but it's beautiful.
      But here is one more deadlock, and of course it is...
   3. Lubricant.
      Here is no solution for this deadlock. Lubricant production is strictly limited with Gas consumption. And that's very unpleasant.
4. Uranium processing recipe. This deadlock is eliminated with Kovarex enrichment. And it is an opposite situation.
   I really like how this deadlock is intentionally designed. It even exists in real life! It creates wide potential for further processing.
   And here comes the Kovarex enrichment, the laziest solution possible. First impression was "Wow, that's very interesting recipe!". But when I did it for the first time, I realized how boring it is. This is a huge waste of potential.

What is your opinion? Do you use Gas->Fuel safety catch? Does Lubricant limitation bother you? Or you never get Gas overflow?
Do you like Kovarex enrichment from this point of view? Did I miss any other deadlocks?

P.S. A little self-promotion : I've suggested an alternative to Kovarex enrichment in another thread : viewtopic.php?f=6&t=64651.

[Hannu]

What is your opinion? Do you use Gas->Fuel safety catch? Does Lubricant limitation bother you? Or you never get Gas overflow?

I like this kind of problems. They are very realistic things in logistics. I understand that it goes very easily too hard to be entertaining for players without engineering background, but hope that there will be even few situations in finished vanilla game in which you have to think processing of side or multiple products. I play usually with Bob's & Angel's mods which give much side products and handling of them is very essential.

I like to have realistic style development. First I dump crap to void chest and later when I get more advanced tech I make processing for everything. In my opinion the game should support this and have some kind of mechanism for dumping massive amounts of waste in piles. Piles would be permanent and produce pollution and prevent building on top of them. Player should do the strategic choice if they want to invest to recycling processes at mid game and avoid pollution or continue to pile waste on large areas and handle increased biter aggression.

[GrumpyJoe]

I like them as well. Needs some circuit logic, not cracking heavy oil when you don't have enough lube was my fist circuit controlled entity ever.

In a game about automation I think those things are essential to its success

[BlueTemplar]

Indeed.

IMHO Storage Tank - Pump linking via control wire should be one of the game start "Tips & Tricks" !

[theolderbeholder]

Absolutely. My refineries were always not very good until I finally read up on control networks.
Worked like a charm ever since and in hindsight, it was trivial. I mean, hey, it is a single wire between a pump and a tank, then set a condition.
I was just afraid of all the combinators and stuff.
Don´t be.

[quyxkh]

Here's my pre-16.16 filter splitter, which I still use when I'm just picking lint and there's a list of things I could want (like, say, I'm not worried about iron and copper on a belt, just about iron-or-copper and anything else):

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

Copy blueprint

snap@T1131474=496x384-190.5-234.25,z2.jpg (11.84 KiB) Viewed 6401 times

Both belt segments are wired read-hold, the downstream one is enable-if everything < 0, the constant combinator has -16 copper and iron so everything that isn't copper or iron plate shows up positive and sets the inserter filter ahead of time, priming the inserter to be ready and waiting to pick any junk items off the belt. A filter-inserter+constant-combinator is nearly as cheap as a yellow splitter, much much cheaper than a red one, and I'm a fiend for compact cheap and easy so I like this a lot for cleaning low-volume junk off a belt. The two lane-ticks it takes to pick a junk item off the belt is cheaper than the at-least-three lane-ticks the junk item occupied, so recompression can recover/eliminate any introduced delay.

Yeah, I keep the gas-fuel overflow release on tap. Heavy/lube you take care of the same way, cracking heavy to light then solid. I tend to have a stretch where I'm rapidly building solid-fuel buffer chests because, I dunno, do I like that way of dealing with that jam? I guess. Rocket fuel eventually eats the excess anyway, it's all good.

If you really want to get in to the intricacies of production chains and reprocessing webs, get some of the mods. My introduction to those was Seablock, for some reason I've never done just Angel's or Pyanodon's or anything, figuring out another increment of good designs for Seablock is enough for me when I want that kind of challenge. I expect people who're into it are going "smh" right now.

[leadraven]

My dear friends, looks like you didn't realize the discussed problem. Circuit logic will never save you from a deadlock. Gas overflow will stop you refineries regardless of logistics. You just can't produce lubricant faster then you consume gas.

[BlueTemplar]

Just consume gas faster ?

[leadraven]

Just consume gas faster ?

My initial post is mostly about very interesting use of absolutely impractical recipe gas->fuel. And about how much I don't like Kovarex enrichment recipe from this point of view.
I am curious whether other players think about this aspect.

[BlueTemplar]

I'm not sure why you consider Gas => Fuel to be "absolutely impratical" ?
Well yeah, if you use the solid fuel from that as a main power source, while most of the oil is used by production, and don't carefully design/circuit it you're going to get issues, but that is to be expected !

And a somewhat similar issue can happen with non-electric furnaces depleting your coal before it reaches your boilers...

(Also, I guess that you can *in theory* have the same issue with some Uranium => ammo recipes ?)

[bobucles]

Gas overflow will stop you refineries regardless of logistics. You just can't produce lubricant faster then you consume gas.

Check the results again for 0.17. Coal cracking was dramatically buffed and produces a heap of heavy oil now. It looks like lubricant problems will be going away.

[BlueTemplar]

Or even switching back to basic oil refining if your issue was while using advanced...

[Frosti85]

actually you can produce lube without deadlocks:

you use coal liquidification

heavy oil -> lube
light oil & petro -> solid fuel -> steam -> used for liquidification and to provide energy (steam engines) for the plant

you can create a plant with this that doesn't require outside energy and converts coal into lube, without any byproducts to manage

[Koub]

actually you can produce lube without deadlocks:

you use coal liquidification

heavy oil -> lube
light oil & petro -> solid fuel -> steam -> used for liquidification and to provide energy (steam engines) for the plant

you can create a plant with this that doesn't require outside energy and converts coal into lube, without any byproducts to manage

Bear in mind this thread was started almost 1 year and a half ago. Meanwhile, some serious changes in the oil processing recipes have been made into the game.

[foamy]

actually you can produce lube without deadlocks:

you use coal liquidification

heavy oil -> lube
light oil & petro -> solid fuel -> steam -> used for liquidification and to provide energy (steam engines) for the plant

you can create a plant with this that doesn't require outside energy and converts coal into lube, without any byproducts to manage

Bear in mind this thread was started almost 1 year and a half ago. Meanwhile, some serious changes in the oil processing recipes have been made into the game.

While true, coal LF was present back then too.

Ultimately the solution to refinery throughput issues is to ensure that, in all conditions, all of the oil can go somewhere. This is as true now as ever, although with the changes to basic refining it is now trivial to ensure until you require lubricant and/or rocket fuel.

In essence, you want to crack oils to the next higher level only if there's demand for that oil that isn't being met by standard production. And, in the event of a backup of petroleum gas in the specific situation where you require light oil or lubricant as well, you can dump the petroleum gas either to storage as a short term buffer, or flare it off into solid fuel and either burn it in a waste disposal boiler array or feed it to the RF production.