Factorio Forums

For the last few games I've been using Furnace lines 6 Furnaces long, or usually doubled up to 2x6 but with half the output going upwards and the other half to a Belt going downwards. I just wondered at whether I should try using longer Furnace lines, since I've frequently seen YouTubers using lines of 8 or 9, with Inserters moving the plates onto normal yellow Transport Belts.

But when I tried that, I found that the last Furnace in the row could never insert its output onto the Belt. Only the first 7 could, meaning the 8th was wasted and would just build buffer up to 100 and then represent wasted resources and space after that.

So is that the max, for yellow Belts? 7? That seems a bit extreme, given that so many YouTubers use more than 7. What's up?

Hm. i can give you tips, but I think you learn much more, if you take the building of such a youtuber and rebuild it on your own, tile by tile. Somewhere you'll find the difference. There MUST be a difference.

ssilk wrote:Hm. i can give you tips, but I think you learn much more, if you take the building of such a youtuber and rebuild it on your own, tile by tile. Somewhere you'll find the difference. There MUST be a difference.

I can't see what it is, except if he plans to upgrade the yellow belt to red at some later point.

I don't play vanilla but lets look at the numbers. A stone furnace needs 3.5 seconds per plate. A yellow belt can handle up to 6.6 items/second/lane if they are compressed. So you can use up to 23 furnaces to fully saturate a yellow lane. The problem is: the items will not placed compressed on the lane, so my solution is to use partly red belts where the plates are placed. But at the end, only the yellow belt is needed. Hope I did not a mistake in this reasoning.

Inserter compression varies widely, anything between 60% (7 furnaces on a yellow belt) and 80% (9 furnaces on a yellow belt) is possible.

You can try stopping the belt or clearing the belt to reset the item pattern and get a different result.

Of course the safest solution is to merge two half-full belts with a splitter, you can run almost 12 furnaces on a yellow belt this way.

DaveMcW wrote:Of course the safest solution is to merge two half-full belts with a splitter, you can run almost 12 furnaces on a yellow belt this way.

So the best solution is actually this:

Two double-rows of 2x11 furnaces each.
One row has 2x6 furnaces going down and 2x5 furnaces going up. The other row has 2x5 up and 2x6 going down. Each 2x6 and 2x5 is then merges with a splitter, facilitating perfect compression, with one Belt-stream going up and the other going down?

You need 2x6 + 2x6 to achieve perfect compression. The 12th furnace will still run 88% of the time.

DaveMcW wrote:You need 2x6 + 2x6 to achieve perfect compression. The 12th furnace will still run 88% of the time.

Okay, thanks. I'm less OCD than most Factorio players, so the assymetry of the 2x5/2x6 setup wouldn't have bothered me, especially when it's mirrored (I probably have a mild case of OCD, sure), but I think a 2x6/2x6 setup is just faster and simpler to create.

I might be a bit off, but ain't belts better suited to push item onto another belt than inserters? Especially when the belt is already rather full ?