Looks nice!xnmo wrote:I was almost going to post this in -root's help thread but decided here was probably more appropriate.
Really like this smart furnace idea and will likely use some variant of this in the future. That being said the look of the staggered rows in the design by rk84 and -root was bugging me so I made a slight change to the blueprint. Looks a lot neater and is more efficient on chest usage too.
With this blueprint it's also easy to leave in spaces if you want. So if that is what you desire you can fit beacons in too. Maybe not enough compared to what MeduSalem likes though
Iron and Copper ore is pretty easy to achieve... and there's no real downside at all. ^^
... I just used the beacons because there was space to fit some and because I'm also experimenting around with beacons in different layouts in general... to find out if they are really worth the effort.^^
If really using beacons then the furnaces have to run 24/7... feeding a massive storage system or something if you are not going to use all the plates, which is the case for my maps. Otherwise using beacons makes no sense at all and it would be better to have more furnaces to make up for that.
I'm actually curious how the expaned logic system in one of the upcoming updates will be like... because I read that there may be ways to control entire power grids with a signal of the logic circuit... Which actually would allow easily to shut down power to all beacons thereby reducing their power drain to zero once you don't need them anymore.
Yupp, pretty much... Steel needs to be limited at first but can be handled easily later on once inserters are able to grab 5 plates at once... as they can be easily set to work only when they actually can fetch 5 plates in one grab. But stone remains a massive downer and something one has to keep an eye at. Limiting the production is one way to go at it. But I might actually throw stone out of my setups because it's not that easily to be controlled like the other 3. I wish I could set the inserters to how many items they grab which each pick, because it would make things much, much easier.DerivePi wrote:If you are just dealing with Cu and Fe ores then the problem with balancing the "smart" furnaces goes away and the issue is limited to supplying the right balance of Fe and Cu ore. When you add stone and steel, two serious challenges present:
1. Furnaces must be fed the correct number of ingredients for steel and brick production
2. Production of Steel and brick should be limited. There is no reason to limit the production of FE and CU plate.
The corollary to item 2 is that FE and CU plates should continue to be produced regardless of supply. There is no reason for any furnace to be idle when it can be producing these plates.
To balance CU and FE (and not have idle furnaces) production I propose linking 2 timing circuits together. When one loop finishes, the other begins. One loop for CU and one for FE. Along each loop, place smart inserters that are linked to the storage of FE and CU plates. The inserters operate if the storage is below a certain ascending amount and shortens the timing loop (ie the time that ore is not loaded into the system - more supply of that plate = longer time for the opposite ore to be loaded into the system). Once the loop is finished the other timing loop begins (with an exception if supply of the other ore is empty it doesn't start the other loop). Loading the system is done with smart inserters and can be placed onto a belt or directly into each furnace.
I actually once had a simple gate logic by linking the output inserters and output chests together... then I had a load balance of 50:50... but it had one fatal flaw... it did not work if one of the ore supplies stopped because it blocked the processing of the other ore. And I couldn't solve that problem because the game doesn't provide a way to have "greater/equal", "lesser/equal", "NOT", as well as an "OR" for red&green wires. The logic system is a bit too limited to create complex gate systems in small spaces.
So timed circuits are better suited for that kind of load balancing obviously. That would be the smart approach.
I'm for the lazy approach... by regulating the ratios with my output belts... the more output belts for a plate type the more plates have to be made to fill the belts up, easily to calculate... one express belt = 2400 plates/min. It can be fine-grained with the amount of inserters taking from those belts at my storage center. There are roughly 8 inserters needed to take everything from an express belt with nothing passing by so that gives you increments of ~300plates/min or something (I guess someone has measured this already and may provide exact stats). Rather simple to setup... if the plates of one type go below a certain threshold then more inserters take from the belt thereby requesting more from the smelterbank thereby increasing the production of that plate. Needs a few seconds to adapt (the traveltime from the smelterbank to the storage system) but it works quite well. xD
Actually I only need the lazy method once... before my storage system is completed... but afterwards I never see it working again... because I think it is impossible that my 40 million plate storage will ever run full.
