I got quite a bit done today in the factory in a semi-short amount of time. Let’s go!
Concrete and Landfill -> New Base
I finally got most of the Concrete and Landfill to the local train depot and into a special Steel Chest in the new base, however most of the Concrete I’ve made is almost gone as it has been laid down for faster walking.
Redoing the Filters
Well this didn’t take long to get all screwed up. I had to rip up all of my Balancers filtering each incoming part due to a few factors. First, I have two items that come into each train stop and gets output through buffer chests like most people do. The problem is that with Fast Inserters, it grabs the first thing it can get to in the chest. Even though you have two items in the buffer chest, you might only get a flood of one item and none of the other. This locks up the input and you’ll never get any of that second item! That just won’t work.
Secondly, you need to filter based on what’s coming in. I originally had one item that I didn’t plan for, hoping that it would just continue to go through the non-prioritized side until it hit the main bus, but like the problem before, you would just never get that item through no matter what I did.
This was semi-easily solved by two things.
You must plan space between each filter, don’t stack them up or else you will get more frequent lock ups. Spacing the Balancers out really helped, but it didn’t fully solve the problem.
You also need some help with a little logic on how Inserters and how they dump items out of the buffer chest. I had an idea to see if I could replace each Fast Inserter with a Filter Inserter, then look down the bus line to read the belt contents and tell the Filter Inserter what to bring out. For example, my train brings Iron Gears and Steel Plates to a specific stop. Looking down the bus line, there are many Steel Plates on the belt in question, therefore a signal needs to go back to the Train Stop, blacklisting the item in the Filter Inserters so that it will get some of the other item. If the signal was Iron Gears, then Iron Gears would get blacklisted! This keeps repeating so that you technically get an even flow of each item and the main bus doesn’t get clogged up.
Starting with Green, Red and Blue Circuits
I decided to start the new base with a massive main bus and to start creating mass Green, Red and Blue Circuits. It’s a small start at the moment but I plan to keep building more modules to increase the output.
What’s Next
I’ve started to work on bringing more Iron and Copper Plates into the Initial Base so that my main bus can get some help. I’ve also had to rip up some Electric Mining Drills because they have mined everything they touch. The iron patches are already starting to dry up, which means that I will have to search and bring in even more Iron Plates!
I’ve also thought about planning out a main smelting station for both iron and copper, then I can send it out to various places. Not a huge priority but I think it might make things easier in the long run.
Drones have started to get more into view, now that circuits are being produced. Can’t wait to drop blueprints and have the work done for me!
Finally, I still need to come up with better names for my base.
This is Day 16 of #100DaysToOffload.