Angels Ore Processing Mk1

[evandy]

Working on my first Bobs&Angels base. My bootstrap base is almost out of Sapphirite, so I've had to start up my major ore refinery, rather than getting Electronic Circuit boards together. This is just a start, but I'm pretty pleased with how it's turned out. (Silicon and Nickel are direct ore-to-ingot since I need blue science to process them) Just direct-ore-crushing to ingots for the moment; But now I'm ready to start blending ingots to get Bronze for the red inserters, and go back to working on circuit boards.

Once I get Circuit Boards and blue science up, I plan to put in Slag Processing and start direct-sorting for the ores I want (Mk2), followed by adding floatation (Mk3). I am debating whether it's worth doing Ferrous and Cupric crushed ore sorting for the Manganese and Chrome; any thoughts on that?

Basic Ore Processing:


Coal & Sulphur Processing:


Plate Pressing (Ready for train stops):

[septemberWaves]

Regarding ferrous and cupric sorting, the utility may vary. The most obvious benefit is that they provide you with one pure ore per mixed ore (none wasted as slag) without having to go as far as thermal refining. However, the ratios resulting from the process can be inconvenient.

I have found an excellent use for the first stage ferrous processing; one of the iron production methods involves equal proportions of iron and manganese ingots to make molten iron - and conveniently, those two metals are produced in equal ratios from the first stage of ferrous processing, ultimately resulting in a direct 1:1 (or 2:3 or 1:2 depending on how good your pure-ore-to-ingots refining system is) ratio of input mixed ores to iron plates. I intend to use this method for the majority of my iron ingot production. The most significant drawback is the fact that you can obtain a 2:3 ratio from iron smelting with only the first two science packs, while the same ratio for manganese smelting requires chemical science packs as well (I solve this with a temporary blueprint involving 1:1 smelting for both metals, which I will later replace with an upgraded smelting method, but otherwise you would end up with excess manganese if attempting to maximize productivity on the recipe with just red and green science).

I have not figured out if there are similar helpful ratios for other stages of ferrous ore processing, or for any of the stages of cupric processing. I would assume that there are, but I do not have the game open presently so I cannot check.

[evandy]

I did notice that the Ferrous and Cupric processing was the only real way to get Manganese and Chrome, so if I want those, then that's probably the way to get them. Once I get Chemical Science going, I am thinking that rather than belt-based, I may make my ingot smelting with logistics/cargo bots, and have a number of circuit conditions to enable ingot creation based on the available ore of different types. Too much lead? Throw it into glass. Low on steel? Use the Manganese there, otherwise with iron, & etc. I have technically unlocked Angel's Cargo bots, but I don't have any real access to the logistics chests yet so they aren't very useful.

Right now I've been focusing on getting my Electronics Boards up and running. Going for a low 15/s ratio for starters (then switch to getting chemical science going), but plan to upgrade to a full 30/s red belt soon. The ratios here are crazy; something like 500 greenhouses just to make enough wood to support 15/sec on white circuits (about 50% for plastic, and 50% for resin). I haven't tinkered with bioprocessing yet, but will likely take some time to investigate it and see if it does any better than bob's greenhouses.

[septemberWaves]

I have a suspicion that the ferrous and cupric routes may be very useful for players who do something like what I prefer to do with ore processing: using a complex sorting belt array and exploiting the prioritization ability of splitters to prioritize ore input from mixed ore sorting (after refinement to the maximum available tier), but with secondary input from direct catalytic sorting to specific ores (to be used only where input from non-catalytic sources for a particular ore are insufficient). I think I will try to design a system which uses ferrous and cupric methods as top priority routes (on account of iron and copper being used more than most other materials), with mixed ore sorting at secondary priority and catalytic sorting at tertiary priority. I have no idea if this system will be practical, and it will be interesting to see how it compares to methods without ferrous/cupric methods in terms of catalyst use.

As for your system, it sounds like a very interesting idea to use logistics for ore consumption like that. I wish you luck on getting it to function nicely.

[evandy]

Thanks! I just finished getting my Electronic Circuits (aka white circuits) up. I built big; 1 red belt (30/sec). Alas, it seems my Tin smelting can not keep up with the demand. I had a warehouse full of ingots, so I added some more plate casters as a quick fix. Now have 28K of both types of white, and it should settle down once that fills the silo at about 50K. In the meantime, I need to go make some solid fuel and get Blue science online. I have the electronic circuits now\, the hydroxide powder stuff is a byproduct of making the Ferric Chloride for the white circuits anyways, and I think solid fuel is the only remaining thing I need. Tapped an oil well and let it start filling up Angels tanks an eon ago; I see that I now have 20K+ of Naptha and Fuel Oil, so I can make some solid fuel no problem. Then I can research the Pelletizing tech for the effeciency boost, so it'll be a good time to redo my ore refinement. I see that Cupric sorting gives me 50% copper and 50% tin, which sounds pretty awesome right now.

(Too bad that I've been putting off mining the Jivolite and Crotinnium, or I could hook that up real fast. 8> )

[septemberWaves]

I typically try to avoid buffering items except at I/O locations for bulk transport (typically trains). A large part of my factory design philosophy is the idea that if I cannot provide enough material for a machine array to be running constantly, I need to upgrade the production for that material. Of course, some machine arrays do not need to be running constantly, but designing as though they all do means that a factory is capable of handling situations where a lot of major resource consumers are running simultaneously regardless of how often such scenarios occur. The major exceptions are catalysts (the ones used for ore production, not the petrochem ones) because of what I mentioned earlier where I only create ores with the catalytic method as a secondary supply for when other methods are insufficient (and buffering here helps to reduce the processing requirements for catalyst creation), and the solid byproducts of liquid processes (like oil refining or salt water electrolysis), where the liquid products are more important but I still prefer to avoid wasting the solid byproducts where possible.

Of course, with a logistics-based factory buffers do make sense (since they're an I/O for bulk transport, in this case robots) but the same general rule applies that it is advisable to design production arrays to be able to handle the maximum demands of consumers. You may have had a warehouse full of tin ingots which could supplement your circuit array now, but when those ingots deplete your circuit producer will be slowed to the rate at which tin ingots are input, and the extra plate casters will not help you until you upgrade ingot production. I am not attempting to criticize you for buffering key materials; I just wish to make note that with large item buffers in place it is much more important to take care that your production facilities are not outpaced by consumers, since it will take longer for you to realize when production is insufficient.

Moving on to mining all six ore types is definitely a good idea at this point; I typically set that up as soon as I have a railway (my current game is a little different on account of also using Madclown's mods, but I'll still set up refining for every raw ore once I have a railway, it just means there are more raw ores to do that for). It is probably also wise to set up a system to research and produce raw productivity modules; you should be capable of manufacturing all of the required components around now (with the possible exception of gold, but initial gold production is not overwhelmingly difficult), and a productivity bonus without any slowdown or power increase is extremely useful around the time that you are upgrading ore processing facilities.

I think Angel's Bio Processing may help you out as well, but I have yet to figure out the numbers and how it compares to Bob's greenhouses so I cannot be certain if it is useful for trees. The puffers, however, look very nice to get running; I am fairly sure that a large puffer array produces a net gain of hydrofluoric acid, which can be a nightmare to get hold of in reasonable quantities.

[mrvn]

The first level of cupric/ferrous ore sorting is the most efficient you can be with no extra slag produced or catalysators needed.

After that all the other levels seem like a lot of complex work for little to no gain until you get to chrome. It's the only way to get chrome and you need some. So there is no choice.

But the different cupric/ferrous levels might help balancing ore consumption to match resources. Which is what you should be doing and goes beyond just priority splitters. So goal is to use the different ore sorting recipes so that the mining of base ores and consumption of refined ore matches. That's something you need to calculate using circuit logic dynamically.

On the other hand it's a lot simpler to use cupric/ferrous ore sorting (Because it just is so efficient and simple) + the N:1 recipes and simply add mines for the base ores as needed. Only use the 1:N recipes to produce e.g. the needed silver/gold to research the N:1 silver/gold sorting.

[evandy]

Thanks for the thoughts guys. I totally agree on getting my smelting up to par, and it is on my list but not at the top. Hence the silos as temp until I am ready to respond. My to-do list is currently:

Blue science
Logi bots
Mining
Ore sorting
Smelting


I want the pelletizer and more of the tier three recipes before I do more than patch my smelting because I will just need to redo it then anyways. And they are locked behind the blue. Plus, need electronic circuits for most of the mk3 machine builds.

[mrvn]

I noticed that direct iron/copper/lead/tin takes crushed ores. Silicon, bauxite, silver you get from crushed ores but only with the 1:N recipes. But direct silicon, bauxite, silver sorting needs chunks. But for titanium, gold, uranium you get everything from crystals, direct or mixed.

Shouldn't the titanium, gold, uranium direct sorting need pure ore to make it one tire harder?