How can I control production amounts better?

[Peter34]

I like having one huge looped belt,with Iron Plates on one side and Copper Plates on the other. I think of this as the Grand Belt or Central Metal Pool.

And then I have Assembly Machine grabbing what they need from it, and moving intermediate stuff to each other.

Red Science Packs are made by 3 Machines each, 1 to make the Gears and 2 to use those Gears to make the actual Packs.

Green Science Packs are made by a series of machines, usually 3 to make Belts and 2x3 to make Inserters, and the Belts and Inserters are moved to a secondary belt used only to make the Green Science Packs. From this Belt I have 4 or more tier 2 Assembly Machines grab what they need to make the Green Science Packs.

But I need a more elegant way to disable the respective productions when I have enough of any one kind of pack. And one that's accessible fairly early in the game. Right now my method is to manually disable some of the Inserters, by R-keing them to turn i the opposite direction, so that the affected production chain stops.

What I'd like, though, is to be able to order individual Assembly Machines to make X number of the items they're set to make and then stop. For instance I might tell one Assembly Machine to make 150 Red Science Packs, or another one to make 100 Green Science Packs. Instead of producing continously.

Or is my error that I keep doing the looped Belt thing? I like how it looks, it looks like industry, it looks like work is being done ("I find work so fascinating - I can watch people or machines do it for hours and hours"), stuff is happening, but it sometimes means that the early Assembly Machines, after the Inserter Points, get all of the Iron (Copper isn't so much of a problem) and so the machines later on aren't getting any.

With a non-looped belt, the Iron Plates and Copper Plates would bunch up towards the end, meaning all Assembly Machine would in theory be able to run.

But it would be less visually appealing to me. And it still doesn't solve my interest in being able to dictate to my system, or (more likely) to individual Assembly Machines) to produce X units of item Y and then stop and not do anything more until I give further instructions.

(I know I can also get more throughput of Iron Plates if I use the faster Red Belt, which becomes accessible fairly early in the game, but even that doesn't really solve the problem.)

[DaveMcW]

With a non-looped belt, the Iron Plates and Copper Plates would bunch up towards the end, meaning all Assembly Machine would in theory be able to run.

But it would be less visually appealing to me. And it still doesn't solve my interest in being able to dictate to my system, or (more likely) to individual Assembly Machines) to produce X units of item Y and then stop and not do anything more until I give further instructions.

Yes, non-looped belt is the answer.

To limit production, output items into a chest. It will stop when the chest is full.

Click and drag the X button in the chest to change its capacity.

[n9103]

A better, though somewhat more involved solution: https://forums.factorio.com/wiki/inde ... ic_control

[Peter34]

Yes, non-looped belt is the answer.

To limit production, output items into a chest. It will stop when the chest is full.

Click and drag the X button in the chest to change its capacity.

But that won't work if I want the stuff moved from the chest onto the Belt to my Research buildings. It'll only work if the Science Packs remain in the chest until I come get them and move them manually to the Research Building-feeding Belt.

I think I have thought up a better implementation, though: A looped Belt with another non-looped Belt inside carrying only Iron Plates. And then inserters at various places along the non-looped Belt that can re-feed the looped Belt, so that it's always well-stocked with Iron Plates. Because those are the ones that get used a lot. And that way I still get my "looped visual".

[DaveMcW]

Science Packs remain in the chest until I come get them and move them manually to the Research Building-feeding Belt.

That's what inserters are for.

[Peter34]

Science Packs remain in the chest until I come get them and move them manually to the Research Building-feeding Belt.

That's what inserters are for.

But if I limited a Chest to, e.g., 50 units of content, and then have an Inserter taking stuff out of the chest, then I don't accomplish anything.

[chlue]

Hello, the question is what you really want to archive. For science packs usually you want to ensure that you don't massively overproduce a certain pack and especially that you don't starve the production of the other packs by such kind of overproduction. For this chests with a limit work like a charm as long as you can keep your belts short .I currently use this setup (currently metal starved due to green circuit production --> I need to reorganize that part):

factorio_labs.jpg (271.82 KiB) Viewed 6901 times

- I tried to keep the belts short
- For each pack I have a buffer chest limiting the number of stockpiled packs to 400
- red and green packs directly go on a short belt for the labs
- blue packs were added later and I fly them with robots. The requester chest will take another 10 as buffer
This surely breaks if you build your packs far away from the labs, but for green and red this should be manageable and when you add the blue ones you can jump to logistic networks quickly.

[Jetlaw]

Science Packs remain in the chest until I come get them and move them manually to the Research Building-feeding Belt.

That's what inserters are for.

But if I limited a Chest to, e.g., 50 units of content, and then have an Inserter taking stuff out of the chest, then I don't accomplish anything.

When the belt fills up, the inserter won't be able to place any more packs on it. Then the chest starts to fill up. Then it gets full and you're golden. If the chest never, ever fills - Your production is equal to or less than your demand anyway.

Ultimately, it's good to have a buffer storage - Especially with red science because you'll ALWAYS be using it.

Alternatively, JUST use the belt as your buffer storage.

Ultimately though, overproduction is always temporary. Once your buffer storage is filled, production will lower to match demand as your factories stop working after processing 2-3 batches of an item (For example a red science factory with 2 red science in the output box won't produce any more science until you remove at least one of them). If your buffer storage never gets filled, your supply is less than your demand and you either need more automation or to pump more raw resources in if factories are iron/copper/whatever starved.

I, personally, buffer pretty much everything I can to at least one stack in a chest. It absorbs excess production when demand is low and keeps my factory running when demand is high.

[Ca_Putt]

Depending on how your Lab Input is built you could add a "buffer-chest" that is wired to the SMART Inserters of your Assemblers which shut off when you have sufficient Packs in your bufferchests. That would work without a Logistics Network. Once you have the Log-Net it's simple as can be as you don't have to maintain a Conveyor between Assemblers and labs.

From my experience, even a Blue conveyor has Problems supplying a whole factory with Iron when only using one side. Loop or no Loop I'd try to get two Iron lanes in some fashion.

You could also build a Bufferchest for every one of your Assemblers, two Smart Inserters and a counter nearby. I bet there are several nice Counter Setups around the Fora. That way the first Inserter fills the bufferchest, when the Chest is at 100 packs, the conter Switches the Inserter off and the second one starts unpacking the Bufferchest, when the chest is empty the Counter starts counting, when finished it will Switch inserter 1 back on again and production starts anew.

With bufferchests I offcource mean Smartchests or above.

[Jythier]

You want to keep stuff off the belts. The best way to do that is smart inserters and chests. Wire the smart inserters that pull the packs out to some smart chests at the end that act as feeders. So the red pack inserter is wired to the chests and looks for at least 3 green RPs, or it doesn't pull anything out, and less than 10 red RP or it doesn't pull anything out. Something like that. That would be for one chest feeding 3 labs. Then the green inserters can be on the same network and look for blue to be in the chest, or be wide open depending on what you want. IE, the inserter triggers production to start again when there's other RP colors available in the chest but not enough of itself in the chest. This will keep it from creating an infinite number of one type of RP without the other types being available, while also keeping production down to <10 + belt time. Meanwhile the chest will still pull from the belt. With multiple chests, you might want to double the amount and then put a limit on the first chest pulling in of half + half on the belt. So the back chest will get the overflow and it'll split evenly.. say instead of 10 in the first and 14 in the second, 12 in the first and 12 in the second, if you're producing until it sees 20 units in the two chests. Well it might produce 4 more before it gets to the chests, so you need to be putting those somewhere too. Or, if you're really smart, you wire it better somehow so that the two chests always get equal amounts. That will require a separate circuit and probably a piece of wood.

The ability of circuits to do things in this game is huge, but the usage of them is largely superfluous to these kinds of problems with overproduction. Production that is going to happen anyway but for whatever reason you want to keep a limited stock. There isn't anything wrong with that and I think it's fun to think of things like this, and I might try my idea later just to see how it works. You get red and green wire pretty early.