Botless 4.5 Blue Belts out of a single train wagon
gfycat.com/WeeklyPertinentFox
gfycat.comPosted Apr 29, 2018, 7:22 PM UTC
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gfycat.com!blueprint https://pastebin.com/zjcKtH9r
This puppy can unload 11,000 items/minute, despite the bug that is present in the right-facing splitters. Without this bug, it would reach about 12,300 items/minute, or just over 5 fully compressed blue belts. It's also cheap, compact and very easy to set up.
Of all the things I've made in this game, this is the one I'm most proud of.
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https://i.imgur.com/FebRuFZ.png There, I fixed it for you.
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Quick fix: there, it won't get any faster than this.
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Amazing triangular design by stacking chests! Cool
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Now how fast do you have to cycle trains through this to keep it going?
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Well, at 11,000 items/minute, a train carrying 100-stack items (iron/copper/steel plates for example) would empty in 22 seconds.
So, pretty fast.
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But how much is left in the buffer chests at the end of unloading to cover you while the next train pulls in? it's dumping them out almost as fast as it's picking them up!
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In this case the buffer chests are full so it's dumping them exactly as fast as it's picking them up. You can see the filter inserters pausing for a moment every time they pull back.
If you unlock all the slots in the chests, you have a ton more time to get the next train: 48*12*100 = 57600 total buffer items, which at 11,000 items/minute is just over 5 minutes. If you want the buffer to keep up with the belts running at full speed though you still do need to get a train in there every 22 seconds on average.
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But if it starts off empty (or you've used it all up), and it's dumping to belt as fast as it's picking from the train, then you won't have much to cover the time from this train pulling it to the next one pulling in, even if it's only coming from the stacker. That's the delay that matters.
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The inserters for the second chests from the right don't seem to be working as fast as the others.
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Yep, that's what I mentioned in my comment: Inserters behave differently when inserting onto a sideways splitter depending on which way the splitter faces.
On the left-facing ones, the splitter instantly splits what the inserter drops, which makes it drop twice as fast as usual.
On the right-facing ones, the inserter inserts slightly behind the splitter, so it still inserts at the regular blue belt speed.
I've reported it on the forums, I hope it gets fixed but I'm not sure what the chances are, now that we're well into the stable versions.
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What if you unload the middle chests into another chest, then load onto a splitter from there? That way the splitters don't interfere with each other.
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That works yeah, the only reason I haven't done it is because it's ugly and much bulkier.
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Think about it. "4.6 blue belts out of a single train wagon". Doesn't that sound alluring? The number is higher. Mmmm, higher number. Improving performance. Oh yes, soooo good. Just try it out, it won't hurt. What would your parents say? "Not getting at least 4.6 blue belts out of a single train wagon is as shameful as getting nothing out of the wagon at all". You must worship the EFFICIENCY, it is said in every children's book. 4.6 is the most impressive number in any résumé, unless it is 4.7. Just ask Elon Musk for the reason he hired Nikola Tesla, he'll answer with "Who are you and how did you get in here?" and then somersault out of the room.
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What if it fixes in the opposite direction and slows them all down?
(Is this why it's 4.5 and not 5?)
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Then I'll be sad to lose this trick, but at least it will be consistent.
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God, I love this stunt.
You can improve the result lots, though, by adding extra outputs and getting all the splitters facing the same way.
How about 7 per wagon, any number of wagons? (16.9k/min/2.4k/min > 7)
Notice this is with 5 chests per wagon per side, to make it fit multiples. For just a single wagon this would unload to ~8.4 belts.
edit: no, I was measuring the wrong thing, this is limited by the wagon-unloading inserters, one unload inserter is (60/26*12)*60 = 1661.538 items/min so 16.615+K/min per car is 6.9+ blue belts for the middle wagons or 8.3+ per min for the front and back.
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That cargo wagon never empties 😮
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Well, that's either because there's a hole in spacetime inside of the wagon that infinite green circuits are coming from, or because I specifically recorded this gif in 10 of the 22 seconds it takes for the belts to carry away the entirety of the wagon's contents.
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XD I think it’s A space time anomaly. 22 seconds is pretty massive to good work.
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Hrm... so now I'm wondering if there's an in-between configuration that is faster than 3 express belts (what I currently use), but is 7 tiles or narrower so it can be tiled to cover trains with more than one wagon. Even if the devs issue the fix you want (instead of one where splitters no longer have an advantage over a regular belt), I'd still rather have 3xN belts unloading from N wagons in Nx7 tile lengths of a station. But if I can increase that factor of 3... 🤔
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Well, the fact that led me to redesign my unloader and create this one is that two stack inserters will fully compress a red belt, which means the full 12 stack inserters will compress 6 red belts = 4 blue belts.
The extra trick used in this design to push it further is that inserting onto splitters will let inserters drop items on two belts at once, essentially.
So at a minimum, it's pretty straightforward to extract 4 blue belts out of each wagon (just get 2 inserters on a red belt instead of 4 on a blue), and with some trickery you should be able to fit a couple of splitters to speed it up a bit.
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Two stack inserters still won't fill a red belt, though. You need one per lane, and there will be a gap as the inserter swings back to grab more stuff. At least a third inserter will be needed to fill that gap, and more likely four since you can't dynamically choose which side an inserter will drop on. The unloader I'm using right now is this: https://streamable.com/e94zj
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The other end of the belt isn't draining fast enough. You can see the next section of items catching up to the previous section.
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Faster than three express belts per wagon you can get with just about the the easiest unload:
That's a quickie to show the layout, you want your stack inserters unloading onto four segments of express belt, then you can drop back to red belt. Three very-nearly-full red belts is two very-nearly-full blue belts per side.
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Thought I'd just add on an old discussion on high-throughput train unloading. It's "only" 6 compressed belts out of 2 cars, and requires a circuit for it to work perfectly, but still pretty cool:
https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/7lhsn9/fully_compressed_12_train_unloading_for_016/
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Is this in fast forward or is my ups shitty?
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How is it that the splitters going left compress, but the splitters going right don't compress? Is this a bug?
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Highly likely. There are many oddities with differently-facing objects, and this is probably hitting a few of them.
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why 4.5 there are 6 belts
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Not six full belts.
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[deleted]
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Because they needed to be some type of item and electronics circuits look nice.
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Sorry i went full retard I meant to say why do they need to be filter inserters
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They don't, but if you're not using filter inserters in all your unloading stations, you're exposing yourself to contaminating your entire base from a train scheduling mistake.
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Alright thx I don’t use trains much so I didn’t know
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Love those paired splitters - really clever stuff.
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How about six compressed blue belts from one wagon? (Not my design, but I love it)
Edit: silly me... apologies.
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That's my design, and that's two wagons.
Edit: Actually it looks like I've never shared it, so it's someone else coming up with it independently. It's still two wagons though.
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Yep, you did :D In this thread. And I'm glad you did. I really like it.
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Oh yeah I did lol. Forgot about that.
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Looks cool but can't be tiled for adjacent carts.
Yeah that's the one downside of this layout, it only works for single trains. Still, I'm pretty sure the trick of outputting onto splitters can be applied to other uses.
I thought I tried outputing to spltters on .15 didnt work... I love your gif
Most people are using 0.16 now, Factorio beta versions are usually pretty stable
0.16 is stable now isn't it?
The comment is not which version I use. The comment is I don't remember this working when i tried it.
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Eh, if you design your train system around the odd advantages of shorter trains, it's not so bad. Alternatively, place a second stop one car length ahead and have the train stop twice.
I prefer loco-wagon-artillery-wagon.
Alas, you can't make one-car offsets with stops, only one-car-plus(or minus)-one-tile or two-car
Or you could be fancy and make 1-1-1 trains (wagon, loco, wagon).
I'm thinking 1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1 trains myself.
we can fit 10 of these inserters per car tiled. quick maths says thats faster than 12 inserters to blue belt. we'll have to test to be sure.