I have made a design for making green circuits. The in-game ratio calculator says that it should output exactly 60 green circuits per second. But for some weird reason it fails to do so. There are always small gaps on the output belt. Why does that happen? Thanks in advance for help.
Here is the link to the blueprint: https://factoriobin.com/post/uxmzyt
And here is a screenshot from the game:
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Re: Weird problems with EM plant green circuit build
Posted: Sat Apr 26, 2025 6:45 pm
by mmmPI
The inserters when placing item on belts sometimes do it like people who park their car on 2 spot at the same time, right on the lane. That's not exactly what happens, but it's the same idea, if a first inserter place an item on a belt, and then this item moves, and a 2nd inserter place an item next to it, it can leaves 0 gap, but it can also leaves a tiny gap too small for a full item that will be wasted space, and move along. Such "wasted space" then causes the assemblies to not have room to output their material, and they will very briefly stall from time to time.
It look like outputting item on a splitter would do the job, but nope, not used this way.
There exist different ways to have a "compressed belt", with side loading (2 sides of a belt forced into 1 side) , or using the splitter's priority settings ( 2 belt lanes of input, only 1 as output), such things could squeeze out the tiny gaps between items. Some players even use combinator to set a timer on inserter for them to place item on belts without tiny gaps, that's really a thing !
Re: Weird problems with EM plant green circuit build
Posted: Sat Apr 26, 2025 7:00 pm
by kkk100101
So you say there is no easy way to correct that build without changing the design entirely?
Re: Weird problems with EM plant green circuit build
Posted: Sat Apr 26, 2025 7:04 pm
by jdrexler75
You can fix it with some additional inserters to fill in the gaps.
The final plants should have each have a red blue inserter plugging the "inside" holes, and a yellow inserter feeding a sideloading belt to plug the "outside" holes.
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Re: Weird problems with EM plant green circuit build
Posted: Sat Apr 26, 2025 7:08 pm
by mmmPI
you can try adding one inserter for output to each EM plant, pointing north, dropping green circuit on a belt 90° oriented with the main output. That will probably not solve all the tiny gaps because that would only impact the exterior sides.
There's way to salvage this, there is enough room, but it needs adaptation if you wanna make sure you have 60/s output.
The "more problematic" EM plant will be those that try to ouput when the belts are the most filled, you can try to provide a little 1 belt buffer so EM plant can output when the main lane is full, and merge this extra lane with lower priority at the end, to make a 3=>2 lane or 4=>2 lane at the end.
Re: Weird problems with EM plant green circuit build
Posted: Sat Apr 26, 2025 7:20 pm
by Premu
So the problem is either that the inserters feeding the EMPs aren't fast enough (I doubt that, but better check it anyway) or that you can't get the items quick enough onto the belt.
You might try to move the both sides one field closer to each other, so that the opposite sides actually fill on both sides of the same belt, and have the output belts leaving in two different directions. That should work with less hassle.
Re: Weird problems with EM plant green circuit build
Posted: Sun Apr 27, 2025 1:28 am
by Nova
You can do something like this, removing all splitters and using the top two EM plants as a "gap filler" by having separate belts to sideload unto the main belts.
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Re: Weird problems with EM plant green circuit build
Posted: Sun Apr 27, 2025 11:52 am
by Tertius
The key is sideloading to fill the gaps. An inserter alone is insufficient for filling gaps, because it must swing back to refill its hand and might miss a gap while swinging back. Even two inserters in a row will not work, because both might swing back at the same time. Gaps can be filled reliably only if there are as many items buffered for sideloading as the gap size, in this case 4 items.
How about this. You need to think about how to fill both lanes evenly. Splitters are not the first choice, since they're not able to buffer to fill gaps. We have 3 machines for 2 lanes. So use 1 machine for each lane, and the 3rd machine has to output to both lanes for even distribution.
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