transport belt optimization and compression

[visionfear]

I wonder if anyone havea better setup for using 4 belt lanes.
please try to describe in details

My Own Design:


From forum: https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... f=8&t=9529

[Yttrium]

Yes, I think you are looking for Perfect 4-belt balancers, Balancers that will always output evenly no matter what comes in.

Heres three perfect 4 belt balancers, The left has a footprint of 5x6, the middle has a footprint of 4x7 and the right is a 5x5 corner balancer(But will fit in an inline turn).

Three 4-belt balancers

The middle one isn't my design but has been around so long that I can't remember who the author is.

The left and right have been designed by me but there's a good chance someone else has created something similair.

Furthermore I have two 8-belt balancers, The left one is 12x7 (but the left outspurt can be bridged by a underground) and the right one is a bended one and has a footprint of 10x10 (but will fit in an inline turn)

two 8-belt Balancers

I have 16 belt balancers but none of them are elegant enough for me to like/show them.

[visionfear]

Yes, I think you are looking for Perfect 4-belt balancers, Balancers that will always output evenly no matter what comes in.

Heres three perfect 4 belt balancers, The left has a footprint of 5x6, the middle has a footprint of 4x7 and the right is a 5x5 corner balancer(But will fit in an inline turn).

Three 4-belt balancers

Um I can't See the 5x5 you are talking about ? (had to use the picture link to see it)

[Yttrium]

Yes, I think you are looking for Perfect 4-belt balancers, Balancers that will always output evenly no matter what comes in.

Heres three perfect 4 belt balancers, The left has a footprint of 5x6, the middle has a footprint of 4x7 and the right is a 5x5 corner balancer(But will fit in an inline turn).

Three 4-belt balancers

Um I can't See the 5x5 you are talking about ?

Yeah, I was in the middle of updating my post, It should be there now

[visionfear]

I think the picture is too big but what is the diffrence from

Forum Design:

4-Belt Balancer

Forum Design 2:

4-Belt Balancer 2

[Yttrium]

The first picture uses splitters to avoid corners but this is no longer needed in .12

The last two splitters on my design (Second picture) are not needed but it looks neater, However in the rest of my designs the splitters at the end DO matter.

I guess I should remove all esthetic splitters to Avoid confusion.

Hope this helps.

[Jackalope_Gaming]

I recommend looking at https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comme ... balancers/ for count perfect splitters and balancers.

As far as I know MadZuri is the one who made the 4x7 4 belt balancer. Or was it you, Yttrium? Contained in that thread is an 8 belt balancer along with a 16. The 8 is pretty well optimized, but the 16 belt one from someone named I_need_a_better_username_ had two extra splitters that aren't needed plus some extra underground belts. I've cut back on the splitters and the underground belts while still retaining perfect 16 to 16 splitting and balancing in the picture below.



Some technical things I've noticed about Factorio's splitters and balancing setups:

A 2 belt requires one stage of splitter, a 4 belt needs 2, an 8 belt needs 3, a 16 belt needs 4, and a 32 belt needs 5. Notice all the numbers are powers of 2 and also the number of stages is 2 to that power to get the number. 2 to the 3rd is 8 such. That means you take the number of belts to be balanced, divide it by 2, and times it by the number of stages to get the absolute minimum number of splitters needed to balance that many belts. Thus, a 2 belt requires 1, a 4 belt requires 4, an 8 requires 12, a 16 requires 32, and a 32 requires 80. And a 64 would require 192, for what it's worth.

Edit: To get even more technical, if you input the text (log(x)/log(2)) * 2^((log(x)/log(2))-1) substitute x= [insert number of belts to balance here] into Wolfram Alpha then round up to the nearest whole number, you should get the minimum number of splitters needed to balance an equal number of inputs and outputs. I say should because any number that isn't a power of 2 will result in needing to round up and in practice the resulting rounded number might not be accurate for the given belt balancing. I'll test out as many as I can now that I've done this math.

[Yttrium]

@jackielope, Very nice post, The 8 belt balancer was based on madzuri's design but I was able to shave off a single vertical tile in mine and put the inputs/outputs one tile closer to each other.

I'm hoping to come up with my own 16 belt balancer version soon. I already got a few but nothing I'm proud of.

[Jackalope_Gaming]

@Yttrium Ah, I see what you did with that 8 belt now. Hm, in looking at it you could take away the underground belt from the third to left... Ah screw it, here's a picture.

[Yttrium]

Hmm, I would change it but alot of people that actually need 4+ belts of a single ore will most likely not care or even prefer underground belts as they do not require oil, But good spot!

[Jackalope_Gaming]

Yeah, I can see why using the underground belts would sometimes be a bit better since it doesn't use oil. Granted, in looking for optimization potential in each design it's possible to find a way to lower both the underground belts and the overground ones as well.

After figuring out a reliable pattern for balancers using a power of 2, I made this 16 belt balancer.



In this case I decided to be a little unoptimized and go for having all those splitters lined up in the middle for aesthetic reasons, though the bottom part of it isn't exactly a work of beauty... Top part is nice and symmetrical though.