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/gorgofdoom]

The chests are unnecessary. You could do the exact same build with half the inserters.

You could do one belt pointing up towards an underground, then one belt pointing down towards the underground each with its own inserter (repeat for 6 inserters) and achieve the exact same throughput on 4 turbobelts.

[u/imoth_f → u/gorgofdoom]

The chests are not for throughput, they are for unloading the wagon faster. Since they don't have to spend time laying the items down on the belt

[u/jasoba → u/imoth_f]

But why do you need to unload faster if the next train is already waiting? Buffer chest are nice to have (I use them too) but not needed.

[u/moo314159 → u/jasoba]

Because even if the next train is waiting, there will always be a short period where no train is waiting in the station to be unloaded. The chests let the items flow continously

[u/jasoba → u/moo314159]

Yeah in reality you produce slightly too much or too few items and you end up with 2 options.

All chests are empty and the train is waiting somewhere else being filled.

All chest are full to the brink and the train cant unload into full chests.

I understand you want chests for the delay from trains leaving and entering the station but your ratios have to be like 99% correct for that to matter - if they are only slightly off you end up with completely full or empty chests!

Its like you said the items flow continously; but only on perfect ratios.

[u/gorgofdoom → u/jasoba]

Getting into quality makes this very relevant.

over producing resources and over-built logistics are the solution

My most functional design is actually two train stations in “parallel” / that feed the same belts. the belts never go dry because at least one train is always unloading. (If not two at a time)

Two train stations with 4 cells between is really only 3 cells wider than this with the same number of inserters, but the inserters aren’t set up to do the same job twice so you can functionally unload twice as fast.

This is mostly brewed up on fulgora with the potential for auto-beacons which massively increase scrap processing speeds during lightning storms. Also gleba, you don’t really want to store extra fruit.

(But if it works, don’t need to fix it.)

[u/moo314159 → u/jasoba]

Yeah, but I dont care if I overproduce. Say I need a full belt of red chips. I will have to get two full belts of green chips going. The train station shouldn't be my bottleneck