Single crusher, any asteroid chunk -- there's got to be a better way

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Aricitic
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Single crusher, any asteroid chunk -- there's got to be a better way

Post by Aricitic »

I'm trying to create a simple setup for crushing any asteroid based on what is currently available. The setup - that works - is incredibly messy, IMO.



I've seen examples of smaller ones online but usually they are based on what is needed - I just want it to crush what's available, it's all being exported/used anyway.

I discovered that you can tell the crusher to crush based on just the asteroid signal - which *would* make it smaller, but if there are only a few of that asteroid left it will endlessly cycle through picking up and placing the chunk, thus the additional decider combinators. Since I need to filter out the chunk(s) held within the crusher and the inserter hand I have to do it this way... or do I?

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. -- also, any ways to make this post more clear or otherwise better, would also be appreciated.
Tertius
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Re: Single crusher, any asteroid chunk -- there's got to be a better way

Post by Tertius »

How about this.
01-11-2025, 01-16-10.png
01-11-2025, 01-16-10.png (936.65 KiB) Viewed 358 times
How it's working:
- it collects all inventories into one green wire: collectors, inserters that might hold asteroids (hand content in hold mode) and platform hub. The platform hub is used as temporary storage for the asteroids that might get output by the crusher.
- from the inventory, a map to the corresponding recipes is created. This is what the decider+constant combinator do.
- the crusher receives all recipes for all currently present asteroids. The crusher selects one of the recipes on its own. It's not required to supply just a single recipe.

Why you can use the hub as temporary storage without additional control: there are 2 inserters moving items from the collectors and 1 from the hub. Probability for each inserter is 33%. So probability is 33% an asteroid from the hub is inserted and 66% an asteroid from a collector. Probability for asteroids being generated by the crusher is 20%. That's less than 33%, so less asteroids are generated for the hub than removed from the hub, so in general the hub is empty or just contains an occasional asteroid.
If that's not sufficient for some reason, you can wire the hub with red wire and use a decider to output an X=1 signal if there is any asteroid of any type in the hub, and wire this red wire to the inserters moving asteroids from the collectors. Set them enable only if X=0.

Aricitic
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Re: Single crusher, any asteroid chunk -- there's got to be a better way

Post by Aricitic »

Thank you. I'll try this as it is vastly simpler than what I was doing.
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Re: Single crusher, any asteroid chunk -- there's got to be a better way

Post by aka13 »

I have a similar approach which I find absolutely great. Not sure if/how it would hold up to promemethium, since I have not bothered with it.
screenshots
The logic is fairly simple - check if any needed ressource is less than needed, crush the corresponding chunk.
If another type of chunk is available, and more than a threshold, reprocess.

The smaller version was for every planet except aquilo, the larger for all routes (except promemethium).
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Tertius
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Re: Single crusher, any asteroid chunk -- there's got to be a better way

Post by Tertius »

However, the problem with recipe changing for asteroid crushing is losing the productivity bonus accumulated within the crusher. I don't yet know if that matters (I'm not that far in the space part of the game to be able to see a difference), just mentioning.
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Re: Single crusher, any asteroid chunk -- there's got to be a better way

Post by aka13 »

Yes, that is one downside. However, I use a decider combnator to "lock" a recipe for a while, so that is minimized. I think one could time it to run a specific amount of cycles, if one counts ticks needed for 1 run.
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Aricitic
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Re: Single crusher, any asteroid chunk -- there's got to be a better way

Post by Aricitic »

Currently productivity isn't an issue for me as I don't have it researched, and I'm mainly getting the resources that are there when they are there.
Once productivity is an issue - i.e. I have it researched or have modules inserted - I'll probably have enough resources on worlds to make the full construct that I'm aiming for, at which point space will be less of an issue than it is at the moment.
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