Factorio Forums

This is well known 4x4 balancer. Inserters simulate uneven consumption.
I connected counters to its inputs and found they are not balanced. Single splitter is affected too, but multiple splitters gives more effect.
You may say there’s only 0.07% difference, is it really important? Well, it depends. If you multiply very small amount by very large time interval, the absolute result will be not so small.

Balancing is important for train unloading: wagons should stay balanced regardless of uneven consumption. If there are some unload differences, they will be accumulated and train scheduling will fail. This is important for large bases that are optimized for very high throughput.

I have to say, splitters were absolutely ideal several weeks ago. Wagons were kept balanced for tens of hours. I did not notice exact moment when splitters were changed. Today I saw my trains are not balanced anymore and found this. Is it possible to revert splitters to be 100% perfect again?

Load this demo and keep running for couple hours. Nixie Tubes, Creative Items and Deadlock's Stacking Beltboxes & Compact Loaders mods are required for it.

Splitters don't and can't split when consumption is uneven. That would mean that when one side is blocked, the whole splitter is blocked.

kovarex wrote: Sat Aug 17, 2019 11:22 am Splitters don't and can't split when consumption is uneven. That would mean that when one side is blocked, the whole splitter is blocked.

Maybe "splits" wasn't the best word for this. I speak about splitter input belts. Splitter combines two feeding belts by taking items evenly. Yes, I should say "splitters combines unevenly". Could you check this?

(Changed topic from "Splitters splits unevenly" to "Splitters combines unevenly")

It is a Belt balancer: if you want even input consumption, you will need a lane balancer.
https://imgur.com/r/factorio/sgAsj

disentius wrote: Sun Aug 18, 2019 2:01 pm It is a Belt balancer: if you want even input consumption, you will need a lane balancer.
https://imgur.com/r/factorio/sgAsj

Yes, it's a belt balancer, I need to balance input belts not lanes. The problem is, splitter has got some flaw and balancers works worse now.

coppercoil wrote: Wed Aug 21, 2019 7:05 pm Yes, it's a belt balancer, I need to balance input belts ...

coppercoil wrote: Thu Sep 19, 2019 7:46 pm It seems this splitter bug is fixed too. Now balancers are great again

The standard 4>>4 balancer, you show in the picture, is not input balanced. Never was.

Another thing is, I don't see how the inserters simulate uneven consumption. Each output belt is emptied by 14 yellow inserters.

Impatient wrote: Thu Sep 19, 2019 10:29 pm The standard 4>>4 balancer, you show in the picture, is not input balanced. Never was.

It's input balanced, output balanced and throughput unlimited, three in one. I'll not dispute about this, it works and I use it for ages.

Impatient wrote: Thu Sep 19, 2019 10:29 pm nother thing is, I don't see how the inserters simulate uneven consumption. Each output belt is emptied by 14 yellow inserters.

Partial consumption was the key to reproduce that bug.

coppercoil wrote: Fri Sep 20, 2019 6:30 am It's input balanced, output balanced and throughput unlimited, three in one.

You are right. My mistake.

Looks fixed after last update.