Maximum express belt steel furnace throughput

[Patric20878]

@ssilk: Reminds me to ask, is there any plans to add in real circuitry? As in like, real logic gates, wire a to wire b results in a logical output, like how KOHCKPYKTOP and Minecraft redstone does. Current way to use smart inserters and inventories with some random item in it feels cheesy heh.

@cerb: Yeah, thought so for the fast belts heh. I'll download your map and see.

[Cerbsen]

The best real way to test this is if the output belt were ultra fast (1000% speed), and that belt would extend maybe twice the distance, past the furnaces. In the way, compression would absolutely not be an issue at all anymore. Then it'd be as simple as just watching if the fast belt at the end starts stacking

Problem is everytime you change the length of a belt you have to make sure you hit the sweetspot for max. compression. And/or find out what determines the compression change at different distances, while making a fast "loader belt" still speed up the process, so either way it would make testing both things less time consuming.

The basic belt placement in the picture can transport ~370 items / min. per side. If you extend the basic belt to the yellow mark on the left, you only get ~354 items / minute. Merging at a red rectangle, you get ~345 items / min. I measured the rough amout by changing speed modules in the furnaces until i found the breakpoint between to much or to less throughput to provide full compression.

[ssilk]

@ssilk: Reminds me to ask, is there any plans to add in real circuitry? As in like, real logic gates, wire a to wire b results in a logical output, like how KOHCKPYKTOP and Minecraft redstone does. Current way to use smart inserters and inventories with some random item in it feels cheesy.

I think you already saw this:
https://forums.factorio.com/wiki/inde ... k#Examples

There are also mods, that implement a bit. A logic mod would be a really simple task, but it is not needed yet, so not made by a modder.
https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... =14&t=6272 [MOD 0.11.x] Smart Circuit Systems - 0.3.7
https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... =14&t=5552 Power switch mod

The cheesiness: Well I think this thread describes the direction https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... ile#p40639
The main idea is, that there are some devices and by clever routing you get completely new functions.

[Patric20878]

@ssilk: Yeah, I saw that. Mainly why I feel it's cheesy is that logic gates are meant to be the most fundamental, the building block of every logic. Using smart inserters to create logic gates is totally backwards - it already has the equivalent of tons of logic gates in it for it to be able to compare and check inventories, yet you're using it to create the very logic that was already built into it to make a simpler gate? While it can do that, the fact is that it manipulates items to mimic logic gates. Logic gates irl use electricity as input and output, not items The power switch mod seems to get the idea, though that isn't quite fundamental enough. In real circuitry, the two fundamental kinds of logic to build anything is IMPLIES NOT and AND logic, the former where a constantly on signal is used with input signals to create NOT logic, or multiple inputs to create NOR logic. Everything else is derived from there. And Minecraft redstone way simplifies NOT/NOR logic so you don't even need the constantly on signal, and doesn't have fundamental AND logic, but ah well, everything else it gets right.

@Cerb: I wouldn't rely on that graph as a reliable representation of where you should merge belts. That's correct for your setup at best. As far as we know, anything from simply removing and reattaching the belt, changing smelting speeds, and other unknown factors can greatly affect the optimal merge points, and I've already found that to be true on the first one. Good news though, I found a great way to determine if the merge point is optimal and belt fully compressed - at least on my computer, if belt is fully compressed, the items after the merge point don't even visually move at all if I set game speed to 10. And of course, 10x game speed is a really great way to really see if something stacks or not over a long period of time.

And also, there's no problem with having an ultra fast belt for decompressing the express belt throughput tester. You need to find the optimal merge point for fast and normal belts already with a faster belt, and I never said that you can ignore merge point optimization on having an ultra fast belt decompress the express tester. Having one would be a lot more reliable than using splitters, which is yet another unknown that I need to verify that it doesn't affect compression.

Also, I see that you're using decimal smelting speeds with speed modules. Good idea which I didn't try, and so I took it a step further by using beacons so I can get it even more accurate to 0.1 smelting speed intervals. And so far, I"ve tested normal and fast belts, and am not sure if splitters can keep full compression on express belts, but I'll do that soon.

Results:
Normal belt: 21.5 (highest 0.1 interval)
From your range of 21.4 - 21.6, found it to be like exactly 21.5. It can handle 21.5 without stacking, and 21.6 stacks at an extremely slow rate, even on game speed 10, but it's there alright. So slow that if I were to guess a number between 21.5 and 21.6, I'd say like 21.58 or something, because it takes whole minutes for it to fill that belt.

Fast belt: 36.0 (highest 0.1 interval)
Yep, confirmed. Far as 0.1 intervals go, 36.0 is the exact total smelting speed to reach max throughput on a fast belt. 36.1 starts stacking, faster than 21.6 stacks for normal belts, which is why I'm sure the exact total smelting speeds for them must be finer measurements than 0.1 smelting speed intervals. But luckily, that doesn't really matter, because there is no way to get 0.05 intervals Getting an exact items/second value will require a finer test - this smelting speed based test is a rough way that just happened to show that items/second throughput is higher than what was listed on wiki.

Express belt: ???
Until I test and verify that splitters keep full compression in that setup, don't know the values.

Edit: Found that splitters don't always keep full compression and it certainly doesn't in your setup, so your express belt setup is not a valid setup to test this. One side of the splitters start stacking, normal due to that left side takes priority behavior, but I can clearly see that there's a tiny gap in compression in the merged express belt every 2 seconds or so. And actually, I found that even shifting over that setup of splitters one tile to the right will screw up compression even more. so that merge point optimization thing even extends to splitter placement apparently. Tricky. See if you can find a position that keeps full compression.

Also, I cleaned up and modified your test world a bit and did some console commands, like always day, instant mining, all tech researched, and some give commands. If you want, you can download it here. I find it a lot more convenient to test on.

[ssilk]

@ssilk: Yeah, I saw that. Mainly why I feel it's cheesy is that logic gates are meant to be the most fundamental,

Yeah, that is, what most are thinking, but it isn't important, because go with that argument to an electronic musician (there are some nice pics in the linked thread).
You don't need an AND-Gate to create music. You need additions, multiplication, higher levels of logic. But only in very, very rare cases you need a logic-gate.

In Factorio it is the same. I make some examples:

A finite state engine
A state engine is nothing else then knowing, in which state you can change to which other state. You don't want to program that with boolean logic. But many do. I don't know, why. There is nothing interesting, doing that. It would be much more interesting to have a device, where you can program the state engine by clicking on some bubble and draw arrows between them. In other words: I want to say: "If I'm in state 1 and we have more than 10000 copper then go to state 2, if not but we have 10000 iron go to state 3".
A logic gate is then just the simple case of such a state engine.

A heating-control

This is a regulator with feedback. Quite complex to make such a thing with boolean logic. But there are ready algorithms, which can calulate that very well. You need something like that for endless belts production: About how many items do I need to put on the belts and how many are not used in the end?

An alarm system
You will have many sensor (recognizing, if there are natives near for example), and with boolean logic only many cables and now you need to have some logic, under which circumstances the whole system will fire an alarm. What I really want is a device, where I either can plug in all of the cables of the different alarm system and it autorecognizes, which type of sensor is plugged in, or I need to plug all devices onto one bus and then the alarm-system.

Real world
Where in the real world do we need real boolean gates? There are very rare cases. In most cases they use "tricks", if really needed.

And so on, I can strip many, many such examples out of my hat.

Logic gates irl use electricity as input and output, not items

Yes, but that is, how every game uses it currently. But the truth is, it is not electricity, power on/power off, boolean algebra, it is in most cases much more granular. It's information. And information has nothing to do with boolean algebra. Information is, what we make out of it. And it has always a physical reason. The are currently only the item-counting in the chests, but we will get much more relatively "soon" I hope (1-3 month).

[Patric20878]

I'm not sure why you keep calling it boolean logic. Maybe you mean binary, and that's different. Sure, there is only true and false, but this is on digital electronics circuitry, and 3 inputs can have as many as 8 outputs and 32 inputs can have over 4.3 billion, not just true and false. On where the real world needs this, entire cpus and their alu's are built entirely by logic gates. When they advertise how many transistors are in their newest CPU, they're talking about how many logic gates. Universities offer entire classes on this and every electrician needs to know it, and your computer probably, no, definitely, has millions of them inside. Many people, including the redstone foundation server I was in years ago, have built whole 64 bit quad core cpus with circuitry alone, because that's kinddaaa how it's done in real life too. Just that irl, they use integrated circuits as to not reinvent the wheel. While trying to build one those you listed with circuitry MAY be difficult, so is building cpus, graphing calculators, and prime power calculators with circuitry, and all of those have been done in Minecraft already, and clearly it's quite popular to do even if not the most accessible. And on the finite state engine, simple D flip-flops can achieve the same thing and has memory - the concept is practically the same, and why would I even do state engines by your logic if I can just do If-elseif conditional logic in a high level programming language? Just read http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/vol_4/chpt_11/5.html. and see this exceptionally simple implementation of a finite state machine in circuitry: http://homepages.ulb.ac.be/~khanson/PHY ... m-impl.png. Checking for 10000 is so simple you could have 16-bit memory keep track of over 6.5 times that number. And how about twice the size at 32-bit? 4.3 billion, and it only gets larger. And the forums already has someone doing logic gates actually, https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... f=8&t=7747. For more advanced logic, you could always just add in integrated circuits, like how the RedPower mod for Minecraft does. And this would not and should not replace the current smart inserter and wire system logic, that's totally different from circuitry and serves a higher-level need than circuitry does.

It isn't the matter of need on why a lot of people like this. And I agree with you 100% that it isn't important to have right now, but neither is having smart inserters logic out their inventories when you could have it run a program coded in a high level programming language instead. The smart inserter/wires system is "then just the simple case" of such a programming language too. Why even bother designing factories then? It's just "a simple case" of doing so manually when you could just plop down tank factories that already produce tanks by themselves in RTS games. Run with the "need" logic further and this game will shortly become SimCity instead of Factorio. And yes, I do get that the devs have more important stuff to develop first for a long time, but having this could be something to look into in the future, and when I say I would've liked to see it implemented, I don't mean it implemented IMMEDIATELY when there are more important things to develop, and of course there is when Factorio's in late alpha. People love games like Minecraft and Factorio because there's not many games that let you build whole bases with such fundamental parts, and that's the same reason people love circuitry design as well.

All I'm saying is, if Factorio did include circuitry along with its main course of factory building and the game became popular, it would certainly draw attention from a LOT of people who love and do this stuff. and that would seem like a very smart move to me. It wouldn't actually be that useful compared to more advanced wired logic that already exists, but seeing how technical this game is already, I think something like circuitry would perfectly fit the nature of the game, if even just to disconnect power in specific location on a power grid with a condition, something that I had to cheese by using an entire steam engine with boiler, accumulator, and radar setup just to make my coal detector in my improved steam engine setup, when it would've been far simpler to use IMPLIES NOT logic to do: connect a wire controlled by the coal detector to the main wires powering the valves, and if the detector's wire is on, main wires power is blocked at that connecting point (ie: off). Just look at how simple KOHCKPYKTOP is with only like, metal wire, 2 silicon wires, and connecting points as placeable items, and how deep the resulting game is.

[ssilk]

Well, I try a short answer.
Logic gates ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic_gate ) is so simple and basic, I'm sure, there will be a mod, which implements it .

Modding will be simple with the coming circuits, that I think nobody would like to bother to built a computer just with that. And if someone even made it and posts then this proudly here, with some pictures, there is a big yawning: "Nice you made an 8 bit CPU with 64 kB RAM with the speed of a C64. Really nice, all that cabling that tooks you weeks. Impressive. But we had this already 25 years ago. And what should we do with it??? Programming? This? Forget it. Look, I can use one simple Lua-script to empulate your whole CPU setup, that is much easier. And I can also do USEFUL GAME STUFF with it. Which is much more fun."

[Patric20878]

Welp, you should just know then, the indifferent reaction you expect is in my opinion and experience quite unfounded seeing how the general reaction to this in Minecraft redstone is typically more along the lines of "holy s__, how did you do that?" And the minecraft community is a LOT more indifferent to efficiency, compactness and all that stuff than this community is. Don't forget that once you reach endgame for the nth time and have all the factories and tons of mines setup to more than you'd ever need and use, the "need" part of the game is over, and the rest is "want", and not all of "want" is meant to be useful. And how can you seriously say that no one would care about something "useless" like a CPU when I JUST linked you to the very thread where zaubara from this very community posted one? The reception is anything but indifferent. https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... f=8&t=7747

And once again, using the "can do this with Lua" applies to everything, not just circuitry, "Why should we even care to design our own factories in Factorio? Just copy it from that popular youtube channel or use a /give command to give ourselves 100 million circuits and be done with it." Why don't people just do that? Because that's cheating is why, and actually making your own design from scratch block by block instead of using a prebuilt one or spawning one in from console is the core of what makes games like Minecraft and Factorio fun. Being able to design a working 12 hour digital alarm clock from circuitry is just as rewarding as building a factory in Factorio, and I know because I done it in redstone. And seeing that you did say "Yeah, that is, what most are thinking" on only having smart inserters to make logic gates being cheesy, I think that quite goes against what you're saying about no one caring about this.

Either way though, I think we're starting to derail this thread from its intended topic. We may have different opinions on this, but we can agree to disagree, and it's up to the devs anyways

[ssilk]

And the minecraft community is a LOT more indifferent to efficiency, compactness and all that stuff than this community is

That is maybe good like so, cause otherwise I eventually would not play Factorio.

Don't forget that once you reach endgame for the nth time and have all the factories and tons of mines setup to more than you'd ever need and use, the "need" part of the game is over, and the rest is "want", and not all of "want" is meant to be useful. And how can you seriously say that no one would care about something "useless" like a CPU when I JUST linked you to the very thread where zaubara from this very community posted one? The reception is anything but indifferent. https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... f=8&t=7747

Hmmm... Well, you got me. I excuse me, I mixed my personal preferences too much in. All I wanted to say is: discussions about the real speed of belts are eventually useful for optimizing your game or find new tweaks. But discussing about circuits which may be upgraded in the next version is eventually not so super useful.

it's up to the devs anyways

Of course.

[Patric20878]

That is maybe good like so, cause otherwise I eventually would not play Factorio.

Truth be told, not only is it good, it's great, and you, me and everyone else here are so lucky to be in and be part of a community who cares for this stuff. No one really does in Tekkit Classic (and I've searched too many servers to keep count) and I'm grateful that the community here does. I hope that is never taken for granted - I sure don't.

On circuits, true logic gates aren't actually implemented yet, so logically, it can't be upgraded either. But I see your point yes. And hopefully you see mine too, so with that understanding, back on topic now

I think I might try to see if I can mod fast belts to be 500% or at least something much greater than 300% from express so I can test express throughput. Without a faster belt acting as decompresser and splitters not exactly keeping full compression, I can't think of any better way to test it legitly. Going to read around and see.

Have any solutions that don't require modding, ssilk/cerbsen?

Oh and cerb, how come when you type decimals like 12.34, you always type it with a comma like 12,34? Just a bit hard to read

[quinor]

In some countries decimals are written with comma instead of point, you just have to get used to it.

[Patric20878]

Oh, I understand now. Thanks.

[Koub]

Oh and cerb, how come when you type decimals like 12.34, you always type it with a comma like 12,34? Just a bit hard to read

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_ma ... imal_comma : welcome to a big world

[Edit] : Doh ! Hadn't seen there were answers

[ssilk]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_ma ... imal_comma : welcome to a big world

Nonetheless we should try to write decimal numbers with dot, when we write in English!

[Koub]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_ma ... imal_comma : welcome to a big world

Nonetheless we should try to write decimal numbers with dot, when we write in English!

Totally, and we also should use imperial system. Metric is so much ... not English . Imagine : use a yard instead of a tile, let's say a yard would be 0.9144 tiles (see my magnificent decimal point ?), the imperial chunk could be ... 34 tiles, that sounds enough imperial for me. Even could do that for quantities ... One plate, one ore, that's so sad, we should use pounds and ounces to measure stuff. That would make all these calculations totally awesome (and I also expect some melting brains dripping out of the ears)

Well that was some serious off topic. I have really enjoyed a lot all this thread. I'm an optimizer myself in life, but no matter how much I want to optimize and rationalize my factory, I always just end-up with a total nonsense factory, with nothing build with good ratios, bottlenecks everywhere, ... All your calculations will help me - maybe - building one day a neat, organized, expandable, factory

[Patric20878]

@koub: It does typically take triple digit hours of hard work to get good at games like this. As long as you're willing to make mistakes, try new things, never accept a suboptimal design, and understand the reason behind everything rather than just accept and memorize values with no personal analysis, it's only a matter of time.

And I really ought to get around to modding in that super-express belt so I can finish testing for express throughput heh.

[Patric20878]

Tested for express belt! Unfortunately, modding in faster belts wasn't that effective, as I've found that compressing it too much will actually cause it to decompress hard. But I have played around with the splitter setup up yours, Cerbsen. Simpified it to just one splitter, as there was no need whatsoever for all those express splitter turns, since they eventually just merge back onto one belt anyways.

And the highest combined smelting speed I got to work for express belts for one side is 53.7. Just as with the other belts though, you must find an optimal merge point for the splitter, or it screws up hard. It doesn't appear to actually compress 100% like the other two (rough count of 6 or so instances of decompression in 20 seconds), but I guess that's the best I can do for now. I'll upload a cleaned up world later.