Factorio Forums

Is it possible to have two (or more) separate, perfectly identical circuits that somehow produce different signals (for example 1 Black, and the other 2 Black)?

Both circuits are started at the exact same time (gametick) and cannot rely on external input nor too much on the environment (it has to work everywhere) or any kind of player interaction.
They may run for a short amount of time as long as they come up with two different results.

I am looking for some game mechanic that is not absolutely deterministic and can be transformed to some value in a circuit network.
I tried robot flight times, didn't work out.
And fluid count, which rarely did work, but probably just because I was bit off with my timing.

Requester chests are an easy way to generate pseudorandom robot flight times, if you you are connected to an outside roboport network.

If you are limited to a local network, try requesting wood and making sure the blueprint replaces some trees.

Pipe build order will generate pseudorandom fluid flow.

Would you mind explaining the use case? Why is same start tick so important? What chance of identical values is acceptable? What range of values is acceptable?

DaveMcW wrote:Requester chests are an easy way to generate pseudorandom robot flight times, if you you are connected to an outside roboport network.

If you are limited to a local network, try requesting wood and making sure the blueprint replaces some trees.

Pipe build order will generate pseudorandom fluid flow.

Would you mind explaining the use case? Why is same start tick so important? What chance of identical values is acceptable? What range of values is acceptable?

Outside interference, like a roboport, is not possible. Inside roboports work very deterministic.
Build orders may also not be a factor. It should work as if the two setups are build at the exact same time.

The start tick is important, because both circuits could be started in the same game tick.
Any chance of identical values are actually accepted as long as at some point both circuits produce a different output. (shouldnt be longer than, say 60 game ticks)
Any symbol or range of values is acceptable.

There might be no real use case. I was playing around with collision detection while sending signals through a single wire, where each sender/receiver doesn't have a distinct address or any kind of unique value to work with.