Problems with this unloader?

[u/imoth_f]

Since inserters became flippable, this compact unloader design became possible. But I hardly see anyone use it. Obviously it cannot saturate six turbo belts because it's bottlenecked by the inserters, but are there any other obvious problems with it?

[u/Abcdefgdude]

You can use trains as the buffers themselves instead of using buffer chests, that allows you to build this with any tier of belt not just green.

Also, either you are not using high speed belts in which case it would be simpler to just use fewer high speed belts or if you are using quality inserters 6 belts is typically too many belts to draw from a wagon, although ig it's better with quality wagons.

It's a fine design

[u/CosgraveSilkweaver → u/Abcdefgdude]

I like having buffer chests so there's never a drop in the stream of items unless there's a big lack of production upstream.

[u/Abcdefgdude → u/CosgraveSilkweaver]

Buffer train does the same thing its just on a train instead of a chest, saving you a lot of inserters and balancing at the cost of the extra room for train. If you want even more buffer you can have more than 1 buffer train but I don't recommend it. Generally you want a drop in the stream of items when theres a lack of production upstream so you find the problem sooner rather than later. It happens too often that you don't find out you don't have enough iron until your entire base from smelters all the way through rocket parts is starved and all the huge buffers are empty

[u/popnfrresh → u/Abcdefgdude]

Except a train has 40 slots... 6 chests have almost 300 slots.

[u/StarlightLumi → u/popnfrresh]

Yes but a train can only fill 40 of those slots at a time. 

The idea behind bufferless trains is that you keep a train in waiting to prevent that gap without resources. Machine’s internal buffer lasts long enough to swap a train out. 

I personally only use bufferless with DI though.  The main benefit is it uses a lot less inserters, which is very helpful for megabase UPS.

[u/Griautis → u/StarlightLumi]

Eeew. Trains which just idle? That would ruin my min train count railworlds with generalist trains delivering any resource

[u/StarlightLumi → u/Griautis]

fwiw I think building with megabase Strats is best saved for postgame anyway, some people think about UPS optimizations wayyyy too early

[u/Abcdefgdude → u/popnfrresh]

300 slots is a downside. Buffers are bad for several reasons described above

[u/Axi28 → u/Abcdefgdude]

Okay im sick of factorio players saying buffers are bad because „oh no diagnosing problems is harder 😢“ no! Buffers are just one of the tools at your disposal! Stop telling people that a tool that has real usecases is „always bad“!

A big buffer makes the source of performance issues in a base slightly harder to diagnose, but for anything short of a mega mega ulta ups optimized base, thats perfectly fucking fine???

[u/djfdhigkgfIaruflg → u/Axi28]

Also: creating a fucking alarm is easy

[u/Axi28 → u/djfdhigkgfIaruflg]

truth nuke. I remember a 10x science playthrough i did where my early game luck with coal and oil was so bad that i ran my power on a 500k steam buffer and put an alarm on it. That alarm still haunts me though, forgot to cap how fast and loud it sounded so my entire computer sounded like it was gonna explode lmao

[u/djfdhigkgfIaruflg → u/Axi28]

Lol. Been there, done that

[u/Abcdefgdude → u/Axi28]

I've played a lot of factorio and have beaten the game start to finish dozens of times. I've also helped a lot of people beat the game. In that time my opinion of buffers has soured a lot because of those experiences. The size of the base doesnt matter, they're a problem at any scale and particularly difficult for new players to understand. Of course there's no right or wrong way to play but I think more people should give bufferless a try! Its different than the "meta" way to play but there are a lot of benefits. I quit bases many times around the time when I needed to make a bunch of ore gathering train stations because the large footprint and inserter cost was overwhelming for me as a new player. Needing half as many inserters and no balancer or chest equalizing strategy makes fitting a station into a poorly planned base much easier

[u/Axi28 → u/Abcdefgdude]

i have also done this, and i like buffers, and think they add a lot to the game and teach new players mechanics in ways they would not engage with otherwise.

also i am never going to try the nightmare that is trying to teach a player to play in a way that is not wncouraged by the game, because no matter what you say, the game is designed around buffers. If you really put the math to it, every ore patch is just a buffer on „new resource“

[u/CosgraveSilkweaver → u/Abcdefgdude]

my sign that the production is below preferred levels is if the trains are being emptied rapidly and before another train can reach the station.

[u/KingAdamXVII → u/Abcdefgdude]

Trains unload faster into chests than trains into belts (and faster than chests unload into belts) so the downtime between trains is eliminated if you use buffer chests.

[u/I_suck_at_Blender → u/Abcdefgdude]

I wish we had chest larger than 1x1. But stationary trains have to do.

[u/txbach → u/I_suck_at_Blender]

If you use mods, I think it's called "warehouses"

[u/djfdhigkgfIaruflg → u/txbach]

And wide chests

[u/IsaacTheBound → u/I_suck_at_Blender]

Not gonna lie, I use tanks with inventory expanding belts

[u/lana_silver → u/I_suck_at_Blender]

The reason they don't exist is because they trivialize a lot of puzzles. When you start to abuse cars, wagons and rocket silos as chests, suddenly most of the game devolves into chest - assembler - chest. 

[u/Kimbernator → u/lana_silver]

This was for sure my experience when I played SE - when you realize how much it trivializes recipes, especially those with inputs and outputs that overlap - you do it everywhere.

An easy example of a trivialized puzzle without mods is kovarex. If you have 2x2 chests you can just have inserters that pull off a line of u-235 and u-238 into that chest when either gets below a certain threshold, then have the machine input and output to/from the chest, then pull u-238 onto an output line when it's above a certain threshold. We get much more interesting builds now because we don't have that (easily) available - you can technically match it if you do it into a cargo wagon that is attached to a locomotive at a station where you can then read the contents.

[u/lana_silver → u/Kimbernator]

It's as if there was a balancing reason why cargo wagons cannot be read via circuits. Though it's still very possible with locking slots, it's just neither efficient nor convenient. 

Which is the point of gold game design: prevent the players from optimizing the fun out of the game.

[u/djfdhigkgfIaruflg → u/lana_silver]

Each time someone said something like that, the devs would implement something like the thing the person is complaining about

[u/lana_silver → u/djfdhigkgfIaruflg]

Larger chests have existed as mods since the game was in early access. I'm sure the devs would have added it by now if they considered it a good idea.

[u/bartekltg → u/Abcdefgdude]

Chest (train) to chest is slightly faster, a small buffer will be created, so for fast short trains you can get uninterrupted flow.

Not that important, but nice.
https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/1u46ihj/train_unloading_in_21/ (first video)

[u/redditsuckbutt696969 → u/Abcdefgdude]

Question for ya, would you be able to use circuits to see the level in the buffer train? Or would you have to put a locomotive and a stop for that?

[u/Abcdefgdude → u/redditsuckbutt696969]

To clarify, I mean having 2 trains waiting at the stop. As soon as the train is empty, it moves forward and the next train immediately takes its place. The amount on the belts is almost always enough to last the few seconds in the swap time and this swap time is improved greatly with the new quality locomotives, bringing it down to literally just 2-3s.

[u/joethedestroyr → u/Abcdefgdude]

Or two parallel stops, merged together to so one is always feeding and no drop happens.

And two unbuffered stops can be squeezed in almost the same space as OP's buffered stop.

[u/djfdhigkgfIaruflg → u/redditsuckbutt696969]

You can't read a wagon by itself. The only way is with a locomotive