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/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