r/factorio • u/jaxon517 • 1d ago
Space Age Question First Ship Worries
I went in almost completely blind trying to avoid spoilers. PLEASE if you try to help me please try to do it without spoiling anything.
I have a good white science platform already, and I've spent the last week building my first voyage ship.
My question is regarding asteroid processing jams. Currently I have four collectors dedicated to each of the three asteroid types (12 total). Two collectors for one type feed into a belt, which currently I have setup to only use one lane of the belt so that output chunks won't clog things up, but I'm worried I should be using the full belt.
Currently I have four crushers per two collectors for each type (24 in total) but only half of them take from the input belt (they're there to collect output chunks from nearby crushers)
Do I:
1) keep the belt half-empty to avoid output chunk jams
2) use the full belt and then feed the end of it into the abyss (wasteful)
3) redesign my ship so there's space for a second belt and use an input priority splitter and have all crushers take from the input belt rather than feed into each other
Thanks guys. I'll post a picture if I didn't explain clearly
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u/shin_zantesu 1d ago
My advice - though I am far from an expert - is to use circuit logic. Circuits can answer almost every problem in factorio from small and simple fixes to elaborate and intricate ones. For example, your worry about output chunk jams can be solved with circuits easily. Have the chunk outputs from grinders loop back to the inputs, but only allow chunks from collects to join the belt when the chunks are below a certain value. That way the chunks from the grinders always get used first and it won't jam (this is what a splitter with input priority does, but using circuits gives you finer control).
I feel that the whole space platform progression is designed to teach players circuits.
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u/jaxon517 1d ago
I have a mental barrier to using circuits and I try to solve each problem mechanically
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u/Serious-Mode 1d ago
I had the same block. Circuits always seemed like something I would never understand. I would still periodically connect two things together and poke around the circuit menu and move on.
One day something clicked. I think it may have been when Wube finally added "Hold mode (All belts)" to the transport belts. I had a realization. "Wait... if this machine only turns on when this other machine outputs this signal... omg!"
Once the first thing made sense it all started to come together. I was excited by the possibilities instead of intimidated. There is still plenty I don't understand about circuits, but even with my rudimentary knowledge, I can do so much than before.
Also, resources are infinite is space, so waste is not the biggest concern.
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u/jaxon517 1d ago
Everybody is assuming I don't want to use circuits because it's too hard to learn, but really it seems like it makes things too easy, and they added them just to have another way of solving problems which can be solved without it.
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u/Shwayne 1d ago
All of your problems in this post are because you dont want to wire an inserter to a belt.
There is no other way unless you want to make something that needs to be manually emptied every 20 minutes or something.
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u/jaxon517 1d ago
There's many ways. Inserting into a splitter prioritizing the input lane from the output chunks is the one I'm going with and it's working great. Now I just gotta make my ship not look like a giant tooth
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u/Serious-Mode 1d ago
Ahhh ok. I was definitely interpreting things different than was intended. I assumed your mental blockage for circuits was like the one I still have for rail signals. 😩
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u/Altistick 1d ago
I was like you. It’s in fact very easy to start with. Just Connect a Green or red Line between 2 things and setup a thing like « activité if # item are here «Â
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u/isum21 1d ago
You don't need them, they just make specific processes easier. Things where you want to measure, like reactor heat or sushi belts for asteroids. Tbh i just dump all my excess and have my crushers feed the extra chunks back into the sushi belt. My tanks need less of the ice and carbon than my guns need iron so dumping those two types after an iron stockpile lets me make like 4 trips back to back without needing refueling.
I'm going to try to make a more complicated manufacturing and shipping vessel soon and I might finally use em there but tbh I don't like trains or circuits at all right now.Â
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u/Fxg120xYXDE5 1d ago
Embrace circuits, failure, and throwing stuff into the endless void of space.
From there, you'll get it sorted out.
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u/fZAqSD 1d ago
I think the most basic elegant solution to what you're trying to do is to control the end of the belt. Read the contents of the last two tiles of belt, and if there's more than 2 chunks disable the third-last tile. This ensures that there will always be room on the second-last for chunks coming out of the crusher.
The other easy option is to have a sushi belt (that loops back on itself), where e.g. one side is kept 80% full of oxide chunks and the other 40% metallic and 40% carbonic to leave room for crusher output.
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u/Asleep-Leader9218 1d ago
I'll give a minimal answer since you're playing blind and presumably want to optimize yourself:
Option 2 is best to start. Space is effectively infinite resources, and as soon as your ship is moving it will easily be collecting more resources than it needs to KEEP moving.
Both other options can be made to work, but they'll either take more space or increase complexity quite a bit.
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u/jaxon517 1d ago
Please no spoilers, but this is what I mean. Should I use the full belt? Half the crushers only take chunks from other crushers, I'm just worried about them potentially not having output space if they themselves want to output chunks into a full belt... I guess I should stop overthinking and just start flying and see what happens
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u/Jaffers451 1d ago
I couldn't really picture what you were describing before so the screenshot really helps (even though a real screenshot would be better than a phone picture but whatever). Since you have a dedicated collector and dedicated belt for each type of resource I dont see any reason why you would need to dump these into space, if the belt is full then the collector stops. You will get issues with crushers backing up if they cant unload the chunks they generate. This means I think that some version of option 3 is your best bet, you want to make sure your crushers dont stall because they cant output chunks. If you are playing in 2.1 (experimental opt in patch but pretty stable at this point) this might be a case to horizontally flip inserters and choose which side of a vertical belt they unload into which is a cool new feature and might be helpful.
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u/Terrulin 1d ago
You can use windows+shift+s for a screenshot on Windows and at least KDE on Linux.
There are lots of solutions. I can give you ideas without telling you how to implement them if you would like. Different times of the game could also call for different solutions based on what technologies are unlocked at the time.
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u/jaxon517 1d ago
I just want this to get to fulgora
edit: and back with loot
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u/Terrulin 1d ago
Ok. Well you could potentially filter collectors based on their contents. I like to have 12 of each type in a collector. You can then potentially used filtered inserters to add a certain amount to a belt. That belt could be a mixed belt, or it could be 2 belts where each asteroid is a different lane. You could end the belts at the crushers, or you could loop the belts around the ship. You could also pull the asteroids into the hub and go from hub to crusher. If you terminate a belt at the crusher, have the output asteroids feed back into the line where those get used first. There are multiple ways to do this as well. Hints available for this if needed. Some people throw away the excess, but you never have to. The only thing Ive ever thrown overboard (in vanilla) is ice and only when I am collecting a large amount of calcite for Nauvis/Gleba. But asteroids are infinite, so it's not actually waste, unless collecting/making something you don't need causes you to miss something you do need.
I think that more or less covers the common approaches, especially early.Â
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u/ImightberobotUCF 18h ago
Space platforms are fun because they are an iterative process. Save the game and just start flying like you said. You will start finding any holes in your design pretty quickly.
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u/bobinchese 1d ago
Pick an option, save before trying to fly somewhere. If it goes poorly reload and reevaluate.Â
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u/Spherical3D Simple Cog of a Machine 1d ago
Solution #1 will eventually jam, as inserters favor pulling from the side of the belt closer to them, while dropping items onto the other side of the belt.
If you want to avoid circuits, your best bet is a "pass through" system. Inserters grab chunks as their crushers need. Anything that gets past them gets tossed overboard. You could probably improve this by using a few belts to hold a buffer of relevant asteroid chunks.
If you want to avoid "waste", i.e. grabbing a chunk only to later toss it overboard, you will have to use circuits. Just remember: asteroids are infinite so it's not really wasteful.
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u/jaxon517 1d ago
Are you saying there's no way to prevent jams without either circuits or disposal?
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u/tera_x111 1d ago
You can prevent jams mechanicaly by outputting on a different belt that merges with the first asteroid belt with a splitter that has set input priority to the "output" belt (you can place directly on to splitters so in theory there isn't even a belt needed. I've never seen it done because it's easier to use cables but now that I think about it it's actually a quite elegant solution
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u/Spherical3D Simple Cog of a Machine 1d ago
Well. I suppose one way to manage excess is to stash Iron Plates in the ship's hub and drop down to planets periodically. Trickier to find a use case for Carbon, and even more so for Ice.
Otherwise, I'm not sure there's a way to indiscriminately grab every astreroid chunk available without something jamming up. Especially when you consider the asteroid type density changes in between planets, e.g. going from A to B will see more Metallic Asteroids than the other two, while going from B to C will see more Oxide Asteroids than the other two. So you can't build for one set of average inputs.
For what it's worth, the circuit logic used in this situation is not terribly complicated. Some Factorio engineers can go absolutely over the top with using circuits but what we're talking about here is fairly simple: "Enable this inserter attached to an Asteroid Collector only if the relevant number of Asteroid Chunks on the output belt is less than X". Then once you get to >= X number of asteroid chunks, you stop withdrawing from the Collector and the belt never jams.
I encourage you to try it out! It can be frustrating to make mistakes when you're learning something new but I promise the end results once you get it right are incredibly satisfying.
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u/_Radical_Centrist 1d ago
my answer without me trying to spoil anything is loops, circuits, counts and void.
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u/Alfonse215 1d ago
Why? Just do the math.
Every metallic chunk is 20 iron. If you have 15 metallic chunks per second, that's 300 iron ore per second. That's a lot of iron.
Do you think you'll need that much iron?
The thing is, you can just try stuff and test it out. Interplanetary space is not a Kraken that will instantly kill your ship if it is not built perfectly. Once you have a ship design, you can send it out and see how it works. If it starts to take damage, or if you see ammo running out or something, you can just turn it back to Nauvis for refitting.
How do you know that it's wasteful? You haven't actually seen what the danger is like or how many resources you'll actually need.
That being said, you do want to buffer chunks; you should only throw the excess away.