How do I effectively feed all machines?

[engineeringengineer]

I've started using a main bus design in my base and it was all great until demand started ramping up. I had made enough outposts and had enough copper and machines to satisfy the copper wire demand, but it seems my design is flawed.

My setup consist of laying 60 copper wire on either side and connect them to 40 green circuit machines, then repeat that across 4 arrays for theoretically enough circuits for the whole base. This is probably not at all efficient as I know you unlock modules and beacons later on, but I enjoy the early game infrastructure.

At first I had a lot of copper going into the first belt of the first array, then looping into all the other arrays.

MedalTVFactorio20240704155318.png (5.27 MiB) Viewed 767 times

After that I made it loop till the end of the second one and had another belt split on the opposite site doing the same thing mirrored. It seemed that despite having enough resources, the belt throughput was limited, and no matter what it would only reach the first half of the first array. Then I I tried splitting the line of copper equally across four fourths of one half of the array, which might work if I pumped more resources into it, but it still doesn't seem efficient.

MedalTVFactorio20240704154730.png (4.01 MiB) Viewed 767 times

I assume the issue here was just building too much? How do I remedy it? I know blue belts should be of some help. Thanks for any help provided!

[mmmPI]

It seemed that despite having enough resources, the belt throughput was limited

Indeed the belt capacity is limited, yellow belts can only carry 15 item per second, red 30 and blue 45.

Thus if the copper for the whole 60 assembly making copper wire is expected to come through 1 yellow belts. It will be limited to 15 copper plate per second and will not be enough for all the machines to work at the same time.

Having the content of 1 belt spread accross 4 different belts is like allowing cars on the highway on 4 lanes, if you only have a single lane for entrance to get the allowance ticket or whatever thing. That's where the backlog/ jam/ slowdown will be, not matter if there are then 4 or 6 or 8 lanes of highway.

The copper cannot "enter" the "highway lane" fast enough in the pictures shown, as the "second" design. because there is a single "entrance lane" ( than then split into 2 and then into 4 ).

[engineeringengineer]

Thanks for the reply. How would one go about calculating the amount of items needed per second to satisfy the 60 machines on one side and possibly the other? Assuming I switch over to blue belts with a 45 item capacity and tier 3 assemblers with a 1.25 crafting speed without modules, a copper plate would be picked up every 0.4 seconds to be turned into 2 wires. Would that then mean that 60/0.4 = 150 items/second would be needed?

[Loewchen]

Would that then mean that 60/0.4 = 150 items/second would be needed?

Yes. With T3 assembly machines you would have access to productivity modules and beacons so you would need a different setup anyway.

[SoShootMe]

How would one go about calculating the amount of items needed per second to satisfy the 60 machines on one side and possibly the other?

For a single recipe, without modules, it's fairly simple: rate = machines * crafting_speed * recipe_quantity / recipe_time. So the rate for copper plate with 60 assembling machine 3s making copper wire is 60 * 1.25 * 1 / 0.5 = 150 (as you found).

But once you want rates in more complex cases, it quickly becomes obvious why calculators (web-based, eg https://kirkmcdonald.github.io/calc.html, and in-game, eg https://mods.factorio.com/mod/MaxRateCalculator) exist .

[engineeringengineer]

Thanks! These are quite useful

[Trific]

MaxRateCalculator is quite old. I would suggest RateCalculator, which is more modern and better supported. https://mods.factorio.com/mod/RateCalculator