It's possible, but you can run into issues where filling an inventory of one thing prevents the delivery of another, or where high throughout of one thing means another doesn't get delivered. So, it's probably a bad idea.
Satisfactory: 1.2 Release Is Live!
- Thread starter Tegid
- Start date
@Lt_Storm WOW! Thanks! See, I KNEW there was something I was overlooking. So yeah, I don't want to do it that way at all. I'll have to give it more thought. Having a train go around to each site and pick up things in a different car for each will probably be the safest bet.
More armchair theorizing. I can get 300 crude oil out of a normal well, so using the 200 compacted coal byproduct to make 250 packaged turbofuel a minute using only half the crude oil seemed like I was leaving too much on the table. So I tried looking for what else I could do with the left over 150 crude a minute and a little water. Something else that was on my list... 50 circuit boards a minute. After all, I'm going to need to make a bunch of other things with those circuit boards that are also on the list.
Along with that, I should probably use the other normal oil well to make an optimized recycled plastic and rubber factory to supply rubber and plastic for more than my own personal need... okay, I worked it out and... I'm afraid I may come up against a logistical wall at this point. I CAN make 450 plastic AND 450 rubber a minute with one normal oil well and some water. Ans, as far as I can tell, that should probably be more than enough for anything I want to do. the issue is I'm not really sure how much I can realistically transport with a single train car. Each car can hold 6,400 plastic (or rubber). at MAXIMUM speed, that would take me 14 minutes and 13 seconds to make enough to fill up the car. These are pretty close bases, and I don't think it should have a 14 minutes round trip. I'm sure by this weekend I'll have a track finished and be able to better judge the round trip. Now, until I actually start using that much, I'll DEFINITELY have a backup of plastic and rubber. This is a new logistical problem, it would be making stuff faster than a belt can feed a single awesome sink. I might have to have a separate awesome sink for each line.
There are probably videos online about how to make this factory. I haven't seen any of them. I've heard rumors of the "recycled plastic and rubber factory" but I've always made all my plastic and rubber out of byproduct polymer from my fuel lines. That doesn't appear to be quite enough for everything anymore and if I'm about to be able to move it anywhere I want with my trains, then this is the first time I can actually take advantage of this kind of crazy thing.
I've been trying to think on how I could feed back the right amount of materials into the inputs and still have the right outputs. I think there are two ways. Either I set aside 8 (7.5, but I guess I just set one to 50% speed) of the refiners just to output, OR I set them ALL to feed back to the inputs, but then have a smart splitter take the overflow from the inputs and split them off to the holding containers. I could kind of see the benefit of either way. The overflow method would probably fill the manifolds faster, and also prevent any sort of backup from even being possible. the other method of just having dedicated 'output' refiners and 'feedback' refiners seems like it should work, but be slower on the startup. Might use more refiners. It feels like the dedicated output solution should be the 'right' one, but the overflow method seems to have more advantages and even feels s little simpler. What is your take on the subject?
Here is an example from some of the earliest alt recipes, both of which you should keep your eyes open for:
Iron Wire: It lets you create (technically) copper wire out of iron ingots, very good if you don't have copper around, but isn't as fast or as efficient as using copper.
Cast Screws: this lets you make screws from ingots instead of rods. It still makes four screws to an ingot, but makes them a little bit faster and lets you skip needing a constructor making rods. this recipe is all about efficiency, there is NO downside.
Pure iron Ingot: This just lets you turn iron ore into iron ingots a LOT more efficiently, if you also have access to water. It takes more energy, but it is both faster and more efficient. Generally it is more complicated though.
I just used iron examples because they are bog standard and pretty early in the game. I think those first two are available as soon as you can build the MAM.
More armchair theorizing. I can get 300 crude oil out of a normal well, so using the 200 compacted coal byproduct to make 250 packaged turbofuel a minute using only half the crude oil seemed like I was leaving too much on the table. So I tried looking for what else I could do with the left over 150 crude a minute and a little water. Something else that was on my list... 50 circuit boards a minute. After all, I'm going to need to make a bunch of other things with those circuit boards that are also on the list.
Along with that, I should probably use the other normal oil well to make an optimized recycled plastic and rubber factory to supply rubber and plastic for more than my own personal need... okay, I worked it out and... I'm afraid I may come up against a logistical wall at this point. I CAN make 450 plastic AND 450 rubber a minute with one normal oil well and some water. Ans, as far as I can tell, that should probably be more than enough for anything I want to do. the issue is I'm not really sure how much I can realistically transport with a single train car. Each car can hold 6,400 plastic (or rubber). at MAXIMUM speed, that would take me 14 minutes and 13 seconds to make enough to fill up the car. These are pretty close bases, and I don't think it should have a 14 minutes round trip. I'm sure by this weekend I'll have a track finished and be able to better judge the round trip. Now, until I actually start using that much, I'll DEFINITELY have a backup of plastic and rubber. This is a new logistical problem, it would be making stuff faster than a belt can feed a single awesome sink. I might have to have a separate awesome sink for each line.
There are probably videos online about how to make this factory. I haven't seen any of them. I've heard rumors of the "recycled plastic and rubber factory" but I've always made all my plastic and rubber out of byproduct polymer from my fuel lines. That doesn't appear to be quite enough for everything anymore and if I'm about to be able to move it anywhere I want with my trains, then this is the first time I can actually take advantage of this kind of crazy thing.
I've been trying to think on how I could feed back the right amount of materials into the inputs and still have the right outputs. I think there are two ways. Either I set aside 8 (7.5, but I guess I just set one to 50% speed) of the refiners just to output, OR I set them ALL to feed back to the inputs, but then have a smart splitter take the overflow from the inputs and split them off to the holding containers. I could kind of see the benefit of either way. The overflow method would probably fill the manifolds faster, and also prevent any sort of backup from even being possible. the other method of just having dedicated 'output' refiners and 'feedback' refiners seems like it should work, but be slower on the startup. Might use more refiners. It feels like the dedicated output solution should be the 'right' one, but the overflow method seems to have more advantages and even feels s little simpler. What is your take on the subject?
Alt recipes (kind of) come in three flavors. One is being able to make things when certain stuff is scarce in an area. Another is jsut a better way of doing it with no downside, these are rare. The final type is the ones that can make things more or faster if you have additional resources in an area.
Here is an example from some of the earliest alt recipes, both of which you should keep your eyes open for:
Iron Wire: It lets you create (technically) copper wire out of iron ingots, very good if you don't have copper around, but isn't as fast or as efficient as using copper.
Cast Screws: this lets you make screws from ingots instead of rods. It still makes four screws to an ingot, but makes them a little bit faster and lets you skip needing a constructor making rods. this recipe is all about efficiency, there is NO downside.
Pure iron Ingot: This just lets you turn iron ore into iron ingots a LOT more efficiently, if you also have access to water. It takes more energy, but it is both faster and more efficient. Generally it is more complicated though.
I just used iron examples because they are bog standard and pretty early in the game. I think those first two are available as soon as you can build the MAM.
I went with a hybrid approach for my rail system. With the exception of Nitrogen, every single one of my trains was a single car, and every one of my stations was a single platform. If I needed a new item at a location, I added a new station and handled the signals (big screenshot below of one example - my oil factory had 10 separate stations attached to it in this manner)
It would not have worked for high-volume stuff like Ingots, but for Project parts and the stuff required to make Nuclear rods it was a great solution.
This is how I've always set mine up. The HOR>Diluted Fuel>Recycled Rubber&Plastic (AND POWER) loop is a thing of beauty. I can put together a tour of my factory tomorrow if you want, so you can see how it's supposed to work.
Do it this way. Rubber overflow goes to a container/depot/station/sink just for Rubber, Plastic overflow goes to a container/depot/station/sink just for Plastic. I believe my entire factory ran off of 300/300, which surprised me since I was actually consuming a full 780 in EA. Not sure what changed.
No need for the tour, though I appreciate the offer. I am using satisfactory tools, and have just been experimenting with different factory setups to see what I like the best.
I have two new factories planned at Plastic Beach, and each is going to use about 1,850MW of power, not counting water pumps and overclocked oil wells. When I'm done, I'll probably have most of everything I'm going to make there wrapped up, and just in time for the trains.
Other projects I had been planning, like a second aluminum plant to mass produce aluminum casings, will be relocated to other sites. I have a caterium node nearby I hadn't tapped, and I'll probably be wanting to work with that for making some of the other things on my list. Issue is, I'm going to need more alt recipes. This will likely take me some time to get all of this squared away.
It is just feeling like I'm running faster, moving further, and not making near as much progress as before. Each factory I'm making is bigger than anything I've done before (except the rocket fuel plant, but that was relatively simple compared to even the heavy modular frame factory. I suspect that I'll reach the tipping point soon, when I have a network set up to move things around, and I'll have factories set up to produce things needed else where. That is when the factories will becomes easier to make. All my current factories pull from raw materials, and have to do everything all over again. Once I start setting up some bigger, faster factories, it will speed things up, And in ones like the fused frame factory, they are a PRIME candidate for slooping, since they are producing things at a low rate but from just one machine.
I'll come up with a plan eventually, but for now my path is clear. First, I'm going to complete my train track and get it running back and forth, long before I start running materials to it. Then I'll lay out foundations and start planning out my two new factories at Plastic Beach. They are both very large factories needing MANY refineries and lots of water, so I'll need to determine where I can build them out. I may even head north a bit, or east over the beach. If I have to, I can pump the water in from the sea, since I really only have to worry about headlift, not horizontal distance. I think my onsite storage for plastic and rubber is probably going to be six double containers. I want to make sure that I have plenty, even if I have multiple trains pulling from it, as long as I don't take more than 450/min of either one.
Yes, I once set something like this up with trucks for steel and coal. So long as I made sure that there was a shredder to handle the overflow on the destination side, it sorta kinda worked. But, it never worked particularly well. With particularly small volumes, it would work much better, but still, not entirely reliably.
Train cars can realistically transport one belt's worth of material, so long as it's buffered with an industrial container and two belts connecting that to the station. (While the trains load, it blocks the input to the station, so you need to be able to put it in the station faster than it arrives). Of course, this isn't guaranteed due to travel time, if the train takes too long, then throughput suffers.
The deepest SE regions of the map have nuclear spiders. Rifles don't help against them, as the damn things can jump really well. Once I had to fight off two at once and decided it wasn't worth the effort. If I go back to collecting HDDs, I might have to try nuclear nobelisks, but I have no idea if they are nuclear grenades, or just spread a radiation cloud.
Also, unlocked the last set of milestones just before I left for work. After going and expanding my power a bit (until I ran out of computers to build more fuel plants...) I went back and looked at turning on the accelerator without any overclocking. Turns out I'm not really producing enough copper powder. I disassembled a lot of copper wire and cable and sheet constructors and tried to get all the ingots to the powder constructors, and I think I've got four constructors running at about 60%. So I've got something else to fiddle with while I try and collect all the bits to unlock the last few milestones. Meanwhile, as I type this form work, my computer at home is producing more Nuclear Pasta (150% overclock and a loop) and sticking the overflow that's not needed to complete the game into a box (assuming it doesn't cause a blown fuse). That should turn into lots of tickets, so maybe I'll be able to just use them for milestone unlocks.
I've seen giant poison spiders and nuclear fluffy tails. Two poison spiders are my limit, and I tend to have to kite them a lot, and use a ton of filters and jetpack fuel. I've been working on making cluster and I'll probably be making nuke nobelisks for when I have to face them in this game. I'm pretty certain I will deforrest their area once I find them.
I haven't even started on nuclear pasta. I do however already have enough tickets, since I've bought everything except for the trophies.
I reworked my station a little. I can't get rid of all of the "path then block" signals, but most of the ones that are left are not on passthroughs, they will only be encountered when the train is just leaving the station and not at full speed anyway.
I didn't want to completely get rid of the four signals in the middle, as that makes the intersection count both the entrance and exit, and it is more than two train lengths long. So instead I merged them into two path signals in the center, as that is both the entrance and exit of a complex intersection. Some of the signals aren't in the right place as I haven't built a station there to put them in the right place, but I have worked on making the whole entrance one intersection and the whole exit another intersection (112m long, so still following your advice of 100m+). I'm kind of assuming that since the path signals also denote blocks, that a path followed to closely by another path would trigger the same kind of situation. Either way, I hope this design will meet my efficiency expectations.
I also built out the mirror side. to show this design can be expanded on either side of the track.
This isn't quite true. If your factory is feeding 2x Mk5 belts into a Storage Container, and you're feeding the Freight Platform with 2x Mk6, then it only takes about 50 seconds to fully empty the storage and return to equilibrium. The time for a single freight platform to stabilize should be given by the equation below, so as long as that's less than the round-trip time then you can move your whole load.
You can find your station's max fill rate by setting the equation equal to the average time between loads and solving for Input. As an example, a freight station with Mk6 belts and 2 minutes between loads (i.e. a single train with a 2 minute round trip) can fill at ~1990 units per minute. This is, of course, only relevant if you're trying to build world-spanning factories.
A whole bunch more math here, but most of it hasn't been updated for Mk6: https://satisfactory.wiki.gg/wiki/Tutorial:Train_throughput
If your intent is to allow two trains onto a straight track at the same time, Path>Path will not work. You'll have to go back to the way you had it set up with Path>Block>Path and live with the trains slowing down a little before the Block signal. This is because Path signals look ahead all the way to the next Block when reserving their path, and will hold that entire path until they've fully exited. If I understand my signaling correctly, those signals should make the new section you added more efficient, but they don't change the efficiency of the original mockup.
Ok, I timed it (running empty) and it is 4:23 seconds round trip.
I had a HONEY of a time trying to get the signals to work. It kept insisting that one of my signals was the wrong type, or facing the wrong direction. I started cutting off the dead ends and other paths trying to figure out where it was seeing a problem. Eventually, I told it I was building a block signal and looked around. It turned out my last two signals before the long stretch were correct, but I had apparently deleted and rebuilt the tracks, which meant the signals weren't technically attached to anything. Once I rebuilt them, the train took off on its loops. (edit: I mentioned "building a block signal" because that colors the tracks per block, and it let me see where the tracks DIDN'T change color, because the signals weren't technically attached to them anymore.)
I still need to place block signals along the path, but as far as trains go, it is built. At this point, I don't have the factories set up to supply it with what it should be taking, so I guess I'll have to get to work on that eventually.
I had a HONEY of a time trying to get the signals to work. It kept insisting that one of my signals was the wrong type, or facing the wrong direction. I started cutting off the dead ends and other paths trying to figure out where it was seeing a problem. Eventually, I told it I was building a block signal and looked around. It turned out my last two signals before the long stretch were correct, but I had apparently deleted and rebuilt the tracks, which meant the signals weren't technically attached to anything. Once I rebuilt them, the train took off on its loops. (edit: I mentioned "building a block signal" because that colors the tracks per block, and it let me see where the tracks DIDN'T change color, because the signals weren't technically attached to them anymore.)
I still need to place block signals along the path, but as far as trains go, it is built. At this point, I don't have the factories set up to supply it with what it should be taking, so I guess I'll have to get to work on that eventually.
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This is such a Satisfactory kind of post - "I just spent the last dozen hours putting together <thing> - it's not actually functional yet, but I'm really happy with how it's going!"
On a similar note, I've got uranium -> fuel cell -> fuel rod done. Next up is the reactor and plutonium processing.
Well, I had to do one or the other first. My original plan was to just use the train to bring my personal plastic and rubber (40/min) from where it is to storage so I can shove it in machines manually. One I started to get the infrastructure in place, I realized that I really needed to automate more stuff, and there are a ton of things that have much easier recipes with plastic or rubber, but my 40/min isn't going to cover even one of those lines. Then there was the whole 'turbo fuel' thing from earlier, which was recent enough it doesn't need rehashed. I'll get my lines made, figure how to get materials up hundreds of meters in the air, and then back down again. And then I'll have a more options on making other things. Pretty much I feel like I'm just spinning my wheels, but in reality I'm laying the infrastructure that will make the game easier and more rewarding in the future.
I've still been thinking of what I can sloop and what I can't. I was thinking my HMF factory was out of contention because it had two manufacturers and that would take eight sloops, and while I have that, I don't have that many to spare. But I had an epiphany on the way to work. If I turned off one machine, overclocked the other by 200%, the manifolds would still work, and then I could just sloop one machine for four sloops. So there are ways to double your outputs, if needed. My hypothetical fused frame facility may go that route as well.
Next question is what happens when the source destination is full? I don't want to sink the stuff at the destination, I'll be sinking it at the manufacturer for overflow. Ideally, it would just leave the train car full, and it would get over to the source and just not be able to pick up any more. I'm hoping that is the way it works, and it doesn't do something like stop the train until it can drop off everything.
I'm going to tweak my blueprint for the refinery. These next two factories are going to be 90% refineries, so I'm going to be needing to place a lot of them. the way I built the floors in the rocket fuel plant was okay, but it had its downsides. This time, I'm just going to lay out an entire floor of 1m, build my refinery blueprint with their 2m foundations on top of the 1m, then go underneath and just delete all the 1m. It is just difficult for me to place blueprints without a foundation to place them on, but by using a 1m foundation which I don't use for anything else, I can filter it and delete it without accidentally tagging anything else.
Edit:
I JUST remembered there is one more oil source at Plastic Beach, a resource well! So I might make those aluminum casings there after all!
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One of my doggos gifted me a nuke and I tried to use it on a group of hatchers. It gave off a big bada boom, but it didn't do anything to the hatchers though (not really surprising since they were all closed) Pretty sure it would have killed most other things, left some radiation but it dissipated rather quickly.
Been thinking about it, and I think I need to start getting all the HDD. Like, I have a bunch of BIG builds I need to do, but every one of them requires alt recipes I don't have, I think I need to go out and get maybe another 10 HDD to start with. I think that should probably get me to the point where I'm building elevator parts again (maybe in a few weeks). Once they are building, I can go and spend all my time getting HDD. Just like I did with the computers, I can load my temp DD (it's just a single container with a DD stuck on it) with turbo ammo, so I can't run out. then take the hypercannon over to unexplored parts. Just hunt down everything I can. Use the temp-hypercannon (EEEE) to fly back to base when I get full. And just repeat until I've unlocked almost all of the alt recipes. That should also get me enough mercs to unlock more DD stuff. Hopefully I'll fins some sloops.
Another project I need to do is build some giant power storage. Just some sort of huge brick, which I can repeat as needed to soak up some of this excess power I'm generating, and hold it for when I need to overclock and sloop those phase 5 buildings. I don't want to spend too much time on it, because I don't know I'll even touch my power limits, but just the plans I have for my upcoming three factories JUST at Plastic Beach will use more than half the power as I'm using everywhere else on the map. So I just want to be prepared for some brownouts if there are spikes.
And with that resource well, I'm going to be making casings AND heatsinks... and during the next phase, TIME CRYSTALS! Once I get the alt recipes (yes, it all comes back to that).
I've also thought about switching my current gunpowder factory (since I doubt I'll be using it all up, and every batch of nobelisks I make, and all the subtypes, I've been sending through the slooped temporary machines, so all that stuff is doubled, or with clusters, quadrupled (since I have to run it through there again). With what I have around it (and a few alt recipes I don't have yet) I can turn it into a packaged sulfuric acid factory.
Also, I've rethought about the nitrogen, and since I'm not retooling my empty fluid tank line to make heatsinks anymore, I'm going to set it up for maximum packaged nitrogen gas. Turns out that using nitrogen gas from an industrial tank is actually fraught with problems dealing with the flow rate deteriorating as the tank starts to be less than full. But with an unpackager, it will just stall while it is full, and unpackage more as soon as it can. As long as you are matching the usage, you should have maximum flow rate.
Oh, yeah. It's all coming together...
Another project I need to do is build some giant power storage. Just some sort of huge brick, which I can repeat as needed to soak up some of this excess power I'm generating, and hold it for when I need to overclock and sloop those phase 5 buildings. I don't want to spend too much time on it, because I don't know I'll even touch my power limits, but just the plans I have for my upcoming three factories JUST at Plastic Beach will use more than half the power as I'm using everywhere else on the map. So I just want to be prepared for some brownouts if there are spikes.
And with that resource well, I'm going to be making casings AND heatsinks... and during the next phase, TIME CRYSTALS! Once I get the alt recipes (yes, it all comes back to that).
I've also thought about switching my current gunpowder factory (since I doubt I'll be using it all up, and every batch of nobelisks I make, and all the subtypes, I've been sending through the slooped temporary machines, so all that stuff is doubled, or with clusters, quadrupled (since I have to run it through there again). With what I have around it (and a few alt recipes I don't have yet) I can turn it into a packaged sulfuric acid factory.
Also, I've rethought about the nitrogen, and since I'm not retooling my empty fluid tank line to make heatsinks anymore, I'm going to set it up for maximum packaged nitrogen gas. Turns out that using nitrogen gas from an industrial tank is actually fraught with problems dealing with the flow rate deteriorating as the tank starts to be less than full. But with an unpackager, it will just stall while it is full, and unpackage more as soon as it can. As long as you are matching the usage, you should have maximum flow rate.
Oh, yeah. It's all coming together...
On the other hand, rifles + hover packs work really well as you can fly high enough that it is fairly easy to dodge. Add in a big power pylon, and you even have cover. This is probably the biggest reason that I expand my power network just about everywhere.
So, because of the whole blocking the inputs while the train docks thing, you can't ever achieve two Mk anything belts worth of throughput from one car. This is ultimately why the station can accept two belts: in order to deliver one belt worth of materials, you need to have two belts connected to the station, this applies for even Mk. 1 belts. So, you feed that one belt into a industrial storage container and then you feed two belts from this container to into the station. Now you can reliably transfer one belt worth of materials, which simplifies that math greatly, because you have eliminated the docking period from the calculation. If you add a second belt going into the container, well, now the buffer doesn't do anything (at least, presuming your factory can actually keep up with the two belts) and you don't need it, but the calculation needs that magic number to work and you aren't actually delivering the full two belts to the destination. This may or may not be a problem. But, if you need to deliver the two belts worth of stuff, you need a second platform (or perhaps a third if your train is slow).
As for the time it takes to fill the container, well, that's (stacksize * 32) / belt speed, or, for a stack size of 100 and tier 6 belts, roughly 2.66 minutes, no need to worry about the 27.08 seconds that the train takes at the station because you are buffering and not trying to send more than a single belt's worth of stuff per car, it washes out in the buffer. So, if your train makes the loop within 2.66 minutes, then you can ship a full belt with one car, otherwise it will take two.
That's the way it works, unless you tell it to wait until it can drop off everything.
Though, of course, you can kill a closed hatcher with two or three normal noeblisks in one big explosion, so I'm not sure them being closed matters....
It's a LOT easier just to crouch and shoot them. Apparently crouching makes you able to sneak up and hit them, but since a lot of them also have other creatures around them, I tend to just shoot them. And even then, they don't open if you are crouched while you shoot them. Sneaky crouch.
Unlock the hoverpack if you can and haven’t. It will change how you approach world exploration.
I have it. I use it constantly... in my factories and over my train line. But I've JUST started making my train line. It's been a only few hours since I made my first train ,so I don't have that much coverage for the map with them.
I don't see how that helps when I'm on the other side of the map from anything I've built. And even then, if I DID have electricity everywhere, a hypercannon gets you across the map much faster. I have so much biofuel that my rocket pack gets me to places to explore once I get across the map.
I mean, sure, but you only have to run power poles to an area once. With large pylons you can cover a fairly large area pretty quickly. Which makes exploring an area pretty easy.
I guess my problem is I like my pylons neat. I put foundations under them, and try to make my lines run on the cardinal directions. But even then, ziplining around is slower than my hypercannon. I still have only gotten to test it once, but it was very successful. I'm looking forward to getting out there and seeing more of this world. Getting around and my limited play time are my biggest hurdles. Most days i'm lucky to get an hour in. The weekend I can usually get some work done, but I've been having trouble focusing.
Mostly I'm using the game as a way to relax, which is why I'm not pushing forward as hard or anything.
I can probably finish building my main railroad lines to the north and east which will be bringing power out there as well, but for now it would mostly be wasted effort until I expand my factories further than my tiny south-west corner.
Hoverpack unfortunately disconnects between Power Towers at max distance. Think you can get about 75% of the way there, though.
I don't think you actually read what I wrote. Or we're talking past each other.
You can, in fact, get 2 Mk5 Belts worth of input (i.e. 1560 items/minute) into a Freight Station, you just have to buffer it and connect the buffer to the station with Mk6 belts. If your buffer is connected to the station with 2x Mk6 belts, your input threshold is, in theory, only limited by the time between refills. Your throughput is further limited by the stack size of the item.
In practice, for Plastic and Rubber, which is what mogbert was talking about and is a 200-per-stack item, the station can fill up a full car load in 2.666 minutes using 2x Mk6 belts and a buffer. This combined with what I wrote above means that if you time your route to exactly those 2.666 minutes, your max throughput for that platform is about 2079 items per minute, which is still between 2 full Mk5 belts and 2 full Mk6 Belts.
Or, in other terms, in the 27 seconds it takes to fill a train car, an input from the factory of at least 2079 items per minute can fill a buffer with enough material to fully utilize 2x Mk6 belts for 2.666 minutes, which will also maximize the throughput of a single train car full of items that stack to 200.
We are getting pretty far afield from what I was concerned about. For me, throughput is mostly limited to travel distance, as I'm sure there is plenty of time to load up up the car, since I'm not making more than what even a mk,3 belt can move, so I'm sure the trains will do just fine. If I run into a belt or throughput limit, I'll just use more cars.
Here is something I threw together this morning. With all my power being generated at Plastic Beach, I've been concerned about what would happen if I accidentally deleted a power tower at some point. That is one of the reasons I wanted redundant train rails, and I hooked up power at both sides, because I'm constantly worried about that.
But for a secondary redundant backup, I built some power storage. At first I was going to build a large brink in the blueprinter, but then realized that the materials could get out of hand for trying to make it, and if I was only going to make one, then I might as well build it on-site. So, instead I stepped back, thought about it, and realized the best way (for me) to do it, was to blueprint one LAYER of it, then I can make as many layers as I want. I could stack them up, put them side by side, etc... I also started with corrugated metal walls, but realized I liked the look of the machines and swapped to glass. I stopped at three layers right now, but I can expand it as much as I want in any direction I want. I figure this will be fine for those machines that have unsteady power draw and might spike together or something, particularly if I have a lot of them.
I think that is how power storage works, right? Lets say I have 10,000MW. And my normal usage is 8,000MW (smaller numbers for easier discussion). And I have 2,000MW of storage (fully charged). If my power fluctuates by 3,000MW (occasionally), then the storage should cover it when it goes over 10,000MW and begin to discharge, then when it drops back down to 8,000MW, they start to recharge. Right? I'm hoping that is how they work.
Here is something I threw together this morning. With all my power being generated at Plastic Beach, I've been concerned about what would happen if I accidentally deleted a power tower at some point. That is one of the reasons I wanted redundant train rails, and I hooked up power at both sides, because I'm constantly worried about that.
But for a secondary redundant backup, I built some power storage. At first I was going to build a large brink in the blueprinter, but then realized that the materials could get out of hand for trying to make it, and if I was only going to make one, then I might as well build it on-site. So, instead I stepped back, thought about it, and realized the best way (for me) to do it, was to blueprint one LAYER of it, then I can make as many layers as I want. I could stack them up, put them side by side, etc... I also started with corrugated metal walls, but realized I liked the look of the machines and swapped to glass. I stopped at three layers right now, but I can expand it as much as I want in any direction I want. I figure this will be fine for those machines that have unsteady power draw and might spike together or something, particularly if I have a lot of them.
I think that is how power storage works, right? Lets say I have 10,000MW. And my normal usage is 8,000MW (smaller numbers for easier discussion). And I have 2,000MW of storage (fully charged). If my power fluctuates by 3,000MW (occasionally), then the storage should cover it when it goes over 10,000MW and begin to discharge, then when it drops back down to 8,000MW, they start to recharge. Right? I'm hoping that is how they work.
Since I've been scouring the googles I figured I may as well ask here. Does anyone have a good storage blueprint (I'd like a sushi belt input sorted to containers and dimensional storage)
I've got some ideas on how to set it up myself just figured I'd ask about it before reinventing the wheel.
I've got some ideas on how to set it up myself just figured I'd ask about it before reinventing the wheel.
My understanding is that demand was measured in MWh. So if you have a Max Continuous of 10,000MWh, everything running at max capacity will eat 10,000MW per hour. So if you have battery capacity of 10,000MW, you have 1 hour worth of power and max demand with no power generation provided. So if you factory is eat 10,000MWh and you are producing 8,000MWh, battery storage of 10,000MW should keeping you running at capacity for 5 hours.
Again, that is my possibly flawed understanding of it. Also, you are much more organized than I. I have 60 batteries in clusters of 6 spread out on that mesa overlooking the desert starting area.
I've seen that, and I get it, but I want to make sure it cuts on with overages instead of only power outages. Everyone speaks about the time power storage lasts during a power outage, but I can't find information, for or against protecting AGAINST power spikes (not kicking in after a power spike kills your power.
I was disappointed with how the priority power switches worked, so my idealized way of thinking how things should work. I'm concerned with the fluctuating power draws of the final tier of buildings (which I don't have access to yet). Since I'm likely going to be overclocking and slooping them, I know they will have crazy power draws, and the description says that they fluctuate. I was just concerned that they would be fine and well below the limit, and then once in a blue moon, their spikes would line up and go over the limit. So I just want to put a little buffer in there as spike protection. What I'm concerned with is my power limits don't show any higher, so I'm not sure if the power storage works as spike protection.
Finished my nuclear plant - I've currently got one reactor running at 200% chugging along; the waste being turned into plutonium and currently binned, although I've got plans to use them for drone fuel instead, since I hear that using it in vehicles doesn't cause plutonium waste.
I believe it should be fairly straightforward to overclock everything to 200% to get another reactor online, although I'll have to watch my supply inputs.
I believe it should be fairly straightforward to overclock everything to 200% to get another reactor online, although I'll have to watch my supply inputs.
Demand is measured in MW, storage is measured in MWh. If you factory is eating 10,000MW and you are producing 8,000MW, battery storage of 10,000MWh should keeping you running at capacity for 5 hours.
@mogbert this does translate exactly the same way for smoothing demand spikes, with the caveat that batteries will only charge at 100MW max. So if you're producing 10,000MW of power, and you're consuming 8,000MW, you can fully charge 20 batteries (10GW-8GW = 2,000MW, divided by 100MW = 20) in an hour and store 2000 MWh total. 40 batteries will store the same 2000 MWh over that time period, but will only be 50% full and will continue charging for another hour until they're all full.
The discharge rate is not limited. If your batteries are full and your consumption spikes to 12,000 MW, those 20 batteries will burn out in an hour. 40 batteries will burn out in 2 hours. If your consumption spikes to 20,000 MW, 20 full batteries will burn out in (20 * 100 MWh) / (20GW - 10GW) = 0.2h * 60 = 12 minutes. 40 full batteries will fully discharge in 24 minutes.
The safest way to handle this is to first consider the percentage of time you expect to spend consuming above your production. If that's higher than 50%, build out more power. If it's below 50%, build at least (Production - Consumption)/100 batteries. The further below 50% that number is, the more batteries you can build, and thus the bigger cushion you have to handle bigger/longer spikes before you're forced to build out more power facilities.
Thanks! That is exactly what I was looking for! Yeah, I'm only expecting occasional spikes, not riding right on the limit, though I don't know what my power requirements will be. Who knows, if I push it too far, I might, MIGHT consider nuclear power. It just seems a lot of trouble.
As far as the upper tier buildings go, I haven't built them all yet, but they seem to slowly ramp up to a maximum power. So it's not like you have to have the ability to randomly supply power through a 10 GW spike. I think the accelerator is 5GW when it starts processing, then slowly ramps up to 10GW (assuming no loop and overclocking..). Once the nuclear pasta is done, the power either drops back to 0 (waiting for more copper powder) or just goes back to the 5GW cycle start.
I don't have enough copper powder throughput right now to try and keep two accelerators exactly coordinated to keep the power closer to 15GW continuous, but maybe that's possible?
This only applies to the Particle Accelerator. The Converter ramps, drops, then ramps again, and the Encoder is completely erratic. You absolutely do need to supply power through (effectively) random spikes.
That's going to suck a bit. Good thing I have alternate battery recipes, I guess.
It does suck, but to clarify: Power Storage ≠ Battery (despite the fact that we keep using them interchangeably). Power Storage is a building you plop down and connect to the grid. Batteries are a consumable item used primarily by Drones. This conversation is focused on the former, so everywhere in the last page that any of us have used the term Battery, substitute Power Storage.
TIL you can jump on top of those space giraffe things and they are like trampolines.
Uh, anyway, back to productioning... stuff...
Uh, anyway, back to productioning... stuff...
I checked out a new area and picked up a whole bunch of mercs and sloops. Even found four HDD. The second one had the last alt I needed for my first factory. Maybe I can get around to starting it tomorrow.