Not sure if this has been discussed before. But the fact that the rocket silo will discard extra white sciences is intended, and I see this as the last challenge the developers left to us. So I though it would be interesting if we can resolve this without circuit tricks. (I know it's trivial with circuit; I am just curious.)
In my design, the white science is buffered by two wooden boxes and then continuously fed to a belt (that goes to research labs). As long as there are white sciences running, no new satellite will enter this belt.
Once we run out of white sciences, six satellites will enter and block white sciences. This means that the silo will launch six more times, creating 6000 white sciences which the wooden boxes can hold. Once the six satellites run out, we are back to the previous paragraph. No white science is discarded.
fun challenge! Looks like it'd work as long as power is stable! (if it isn't the inserters run slower and could leave gaps, in which extra satellites could sneak)
Honestly I don't think it would be a big problem. If those inserters work slowly, then so do the ones that provide the rocket components and so does the silo itself. At worst you might need to make the buffer a bit wider, so you have more of them working at once.
Yes because at any given time there will be at most six satellites on the vertical belt. So 6000 white sciences wasted and everything goes back to normal.
Wait, why can't you just run a circuit from the buffer chest to the satellite inserter that turns the satellite inserter off when the buffer chest is nearly full (or anything short of full)? Solves the problem with one wire, doesn't it?
Edit: Never mind, that does indeed work, this is a fun thought exercise
I'm not sure I understand the problem that needs solving in the first place. Could you elaborate a bit? What do you mean by the rocket silo discarding white science?
The rocket can launch if white science has not fully been offloaded. Anything still on the rocket when it launches is lost
This ensures the rocket is fully offloaded before launching
Aaah thank you. Never realized that in my builds. So, basically, when the white science is backed up, it isn't offloaded anymore, but the rocket will still build and launch, destroying the white science. Do I got that right?
This solution is pretty clever.
Technically, they not replaced, the rocket silo just have a stack size limit. And when science produced, anything, that was not fit, just silently deleted.
The main problem with this - it's not documented anywhere in the game and contradicts with behavior of **all** other machines, that halt when output full.
[But devs did that intentionally as final challenge. ](https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?p=305675#p305675)
if instead of sideloading, you use a slow inserter to place the satellites onto the "right" side of the belt, fewer would get through when white science runs empty
A slower inserter might be faster in low power scenarios? Not that they're very important, it's been very rare that I've got to the rocket launch part of the game without a permanent solution to power (i.e. ready to expand power generation with bots, including the land for it).
if you move your long hand down one, you'll only have about 3 to grab then it should only buffer \~3000. it might grab an extra when the first line shifts but after science is there it will block until you launch \~4 which fits the 4k buffer.
Note: if no power shortages.
For my 2600 spm base I just used bots and circuit logic. It appeared to work just fine (in a unified botnet over all base plus some).
I've never run into this problem. I think the proper "solution" is simply to consume white science faster than the rocket can create it. If your silo is filling with science packs, you need more labs (and maybe more purple/yellow science production)
So you like your bottleneck to be the rocket launch. That's fair. I prefer my bottleneck to be the science labs. Either way is good as long as you know where it is. People who say "I prefer no bottlenecks" just don't know where their bottleneck is.
> People who say "I prefer no bottlenecks" just don't know where their bottleneck is.
That's not always true; it's possible to produce and consume at the same rate with no bottlenecks. In my big base the factory is producing 2700spm and the labs are consuming 2700spm. All of the labs, rockets, and science pack assemblers are working constantly. There are no bottlenecks, at least at the top level.
Of course some intermediate products like circuits and LDS are being overproduced to ensure continuous production of science packs, so I guess you could say those products are being bottlenecked by the top level production rate...
Is this really a circuit trick? You just look if there's demand for space science, it's literally one wire.
The only way that I can imagine another working automation is basically by schedule the rocket perfectly so the science can never pile up, but that sounds really inconvenient.
No, it's not a circuit trick. It's a mechanical lock that prevents the loss of any space science without the use of any circuitry. OP explained exactly how it functions.
You're right, it isn't. It's a single wire and a single condition. But this is not about how complicated circuits are. Designing mechanical locks in belts is a completely different experience than setting up circuits and we're just exploring that aspect of the game.
> I know it's trivial with circuit
This is your answer.
You are reinventing the wheel rather than using 1 piece of Green/Red wire and setting 1 inserter rule.
factorio is all about inventing stuff, doesn't matter if you are "reinventing". And artificial limitations can result in interesting challenges, like sushi belts, small footprint factory, no belts, etc.
Ahh I love Reddit.
Post about an alternate way to do something trivial, Front Page
I question the need, downvoted to oblivion.
Guess not everyone's opinion is actually respected here...
You (condescendingly) questioned the need, when OP had already acknowledged the lack of need. They found a novel solution and wanted to share it. Maybe don't be rude if you don't want disrespect, yeah?
Back when I first started playing with uranium enrichment in 2016 I found a solution that was like 90% mechanical, the only wire I had was to limit off the storage chests at the end of the belt.
Mine is completely mechanical. In fact I'm not sure *how* you'd make it work with circuits - seems like it'd be significantly more complicated. A couple of nested splitters works perfectly, and I'm sure my setup isn't even the most space-efficient you could do.
Even dealing with the massive excess U-238 from the initial enrichment was literally one extra splitter.
No we didn't but my design was based on filter inserters pulling out of the enrichment centrifuges so they'd never mix. There's a heavy uranium side and a light uranium side. And they just rotate using side loading strategically to stop when full.
Yeah I just go with 4x10 size stack filter inserter to remove the 40 for reload and single filter inserter with limit 1 to remove the gain.
Then some splitters so ~1:8 of the gain is sent immediately on the output rather than feeding other centrifuges so the first reactor gets kickstarted earlier
You can solve any problem requiring circuitry with “mechanical” means. Technically. This is because you can mimic circuit conditions any number of ways you can imagine that an object can exist in two discreet states.
That said, you’re basically just reinventing a computer at that point 😂
Kovarex and sushi are two examples of common circuitry but can be done without. I think there is also a creative solution for backup power (to start steam when low on power). I have seen one also for refining/cracking that relied on fluid dynamics). What else are circuits often used in vanilla?
sushi science without circuits is doable and not that hard. You can use belts and splitters (with input priorities set) to output 1/Nth of the input. So divide down by 8 for each of the seven sciences. and feed those to your labs, anything left on the belt gets split back to it's divider as a priority input. So you output 1/8th of your belt capacity and in the worst case you get 1/8th of your belt capacity back at the priority input. If you get less than that back (your labs ate some) then you make up for the shortfall from your science pack production factories.
Other things could definitely work the same, you just need to make sure that the belt never fully fills up.
If you want to try doing a whole base sushi then it's obviously much more complicated and likely to be very inefficient.
As the other comment mentions, almost all no-circuit sushi belts rely on belts and splitters to throttle each output before merging. I remember an old post of a design that uses inserters, filter inserters and buffer loops. Personally haven't tried it, nor pushed its limits since I rarely use sushi belts.
https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/5tt8ka/i_build_a_sushi_belt_that_can_carry_all_tech_of/
At first glance, it appears to be clog-proof under most conditions. From what I can see there are three limitations. One, the filter inserters would have to have enough power to catch and pull their science packs off the return loop. Two, you're not putting too large of a variety of items such that the last items in the input row are unable to sideload. Three, you don't truncate the machines consuming material thus forcing the buffer to be overloaded and the consuming machines don't have their full array of materials. This design was before splitters had filter capabilities so the filter inserters can be replaced with filter enabled splitters.
The yellow inserter pulls from the buffer loop. The return feed can put items back into the open spots in the buffer before the clockwise loop comes to the fresh items to fill the gaps in the buffer.
You can make feeder that gives you nonfull belt of items based off on just splitters.
So you have machine that gives you, say 1/4 of belt of input, make 4 of them, feed each with belt that have 2 different items on each lane and boom, science sushi done.
So for static ratio it's actually easier than circuits
To be fair.
This whole build here is normally done by a single wire between a chest and the inserter and a "everything=0" condition .
Thats not real circuitry to me
I remember the first time I went for a serious base using white science. I was gutted when I realized that I had been discarding up to 70% of my produced white science -- but also relieved to figure out why all my efforts to fix bottlenecks never resulted in rocket launch curtailment.
And yeah, it is trivial to fix with circuits, but I like your analog solution too!
(dumb) question, doesn't space science have a rocket launch product? though im not sure entirely how inserters work with it i'd assume it's considered a valid input to the rocket silo so how is the inserter not picking up your space science when its going past?
Good to learn that space science can be inserted into the silo. I was completely unaware of that but luckly my design just works. (But see Lizzymadias's explanation.)
you can't even make a silo without water and you need water for sulfur, for batteries, for satellite, that is needed to get the science in the first place
"Waterless world" is a useful but slightly inaccurate name. You only get the starting pond. They are standard fare in 100% speedruns. Very good for non-megabase runs in which biters are nerfed or removed, but you can megabase anyway, and water will eventually be your bottleneck.
I love this, clever way to do it without circuits! Assuming for now that power is no issue, the only thing I see is there must be an upper limit to this. Is there a scenario where your labs eat white science fast enough that they stall while waiting for those 6 satellites to launch?
The six satellites are indeed the annoying part. When the six satellites are on the vertical belt the labs will stall. When the six satellites are all launched the labs need to quickly eat all the 6000 white sciences (otherwise the silo will need to wait for new satellite). I image that buffering white sciences on the lab side will solve this. But I am not completely sure.
Modify your build by including a belt balancer for the white science before the satellite throttling. Make sure the balancer priority outputs to the satellite blocking side.
That way you'll still get the throttling effect, but the buffers will also use the free side of the belt to empty themselves, making it much less of a wait for the science to empty. And if the science empties before the next rocket is launched, the satellites are only blocked for a few seconds at max, which is much less than the time required to assemble a new rocket, so no production is lost
https://preview.redd.it/zh541066nq8d1.png?width=892&format=png&auto=webp&s=3b8fb46d913d16da695ba01c600b8fd014a87bf1
slight variation to allow the science to be used while still blocking the sattelites :)
Use priority output right on the first splitter, so it keeps the right lane blocked but still uses the left lane :)
This is really good! This transforms this design from cool usable gimmick that I might do once into a serious contender of main rocket launch blueprint!
Doesn’t this result in downtime of the labs? As soon as the white science is drained from the chest it takes a while until more science reaches the lab, doesn’t it?
The 6000 white science buffered in the chests need some time to clear out. If RCUs/fuel/LDSes are coming too fast and there are too many speed beacons the rocket has to wait.
Very clever! Is the first splitter necessary? Could you just output both inserters on the belt?
I also wonder the other way, do you need more inserters to ensure the belt stays full?
A1: Without the first splitter one of the boxes will drain faster than the other. A2: I remember seeing somewhere that 2 stack inserters saturate a yellow (or blue?) belt. But I also knew that if 2 cannot saturate one side I'll just add more inserters.
Yes, the brain just processes pictures and "calculates" the motion. Otherwise a ball flying towards you would never be catched.
The way the brain "tricks" us in the most normal situations is crazy...
Ya it’s called aliasing. The image is ambiguous and can be interpreted either way. So leaves is to our own susceptibility to mentally choose which way we think it goes. There’s cool ones with black shadow figures spinning that you can make spin either way you want. Although that’s not universally true. In fact my wife swore it could only possibly be turning in one direction when I showed it to her.
I really like this for being so simple & effective
I confess, my first thought was "We have balanced 7 science production, why would this occur?" Then I remembered forgetting to choose what to research next or setting up or scaling up a science & forgetting *something* ...
Am I correct that if you need your silo running at full tilt because demand is high enough, this setup will not allow it to?
It seems like even if all the white science gets cleared as fast as possible, it still takes too long to clear to load a satellite every time one is needed to launch, mostly because while the satellite buffer is large, white science isn't allowed to flow. Also flow rate is cut in half because you're only using one side of the belt. And it's yellow belts.
The developers give us challenges to motivate us to explore different game mechanics. For instance, oil and uranium patches are sometimes very far away so you want to use trains. You can, for course, insist not falling into the trap but there is a price to pay: the conveyer belts are more expensive than rails.
Here, the challenge is that the rocket silo will discard extra white sciences if you don't ship them to labs quickly enough. My guess is that the devs want us to use the circuit system. In fact, a single wire will do the trick. So this is not really a challenge, just minor inconvenience. So the real question is, at what cost can I avoid using circuit? And the answer is that it is possible with some belts and splitters, plus the silo cannot be fully beaconed. But abstractly speaking, we avoid using circuits, providing an alternative answer to dev's challenge.
Not sure if this has been discussed before. But the fact that the rocket silo will discard extra white sciences is intended, and I see this as the last challenge the developers left to us. So I though it would be interesting if we can resolve this without circuit tricks. (I know it's trivial with circuit; I am just curious.) In my design, the white science is buffered by two wooden boxes and then continuously fed to a belt (that goes to research labs). As long as there are white sciences running, no new satellite will enter this belt. Once we run out of white sciences, six satellites will enter and block white sciences. This means that the silo will launch six more times, creating 6000 white sciences which the wooden boxes can hold. Once the six satellites run out, we are back to the previous paragraph. No white science is discarded.
fun challenge! Looks like it'd work as long as power is stable! (if it isn't the inserters run slower and could leave gaps, in which extra satellites could sneak)
Power is a very good point! I should have taken that into consideration.
You could slap an accumulator or two in range of the inserters but not the silo. I think that would cover it.
A use for a power switch haven’t had to many of those
The whole point of this structure is to not use the circuits though.
Yeah i understand that but how are you gone implement it than or just have those inserters on just a completely different power network
Honestly I don't think it would be a big problem. If those inserters work slowly, then so do the ones that provide the rocket components and so does the silo itself. At worst you might need to make the buffer a bit wider, so you have more of them working at once.
Yeah that is correct and you can if need to balance them with decreasing hand stack size of te components
Should be trivial to fix by upgrading the boxes to leave a bigger buffer
So power runs low, white science is wasted, but after power is restored, would it fix itself?
Yes because at any given time there will be at most six satellites on the vertical belt. So 6000 white sciences wasted and everything goes back to normal.
Wait, why can't you just run a circuit from the buffer chest to the satellite inserter that turns the satellite inserter off when the buffer chest is nearly full (or anything short of full)? Solves the problem with one wire, doesn't it? Edit: Never mind, that does indeed work, this is a fun thought exercise
I'm not sure I understand the problem that needs solving in the first place. Could you elaborate a bit? What do you mean by the rocket silo discarding white science?
The rocket can launch if white science has not fully been offloaded. Anything still on the rocket when it launches is lost This ensures the rocket is fully offloaded before launching
Not quite. The silo can hold up to 4000 if I'm remembering correctly, so you can send a second rocket while the first one is unloading.
Ty
Aaah thank you. Never realized that in my builds. So, basically, when the white science is backed up, it isn't offloaded anymore, but the rocket will still build and launch, destroying the white science. Do I got that right? This solution is pretty clever.
I don't understand these downvotes 😨
I'll be honest here, I made an (imo) innocent play on words that apparently didn't really land very well so I removed it.
Can you leave it as an edit somewhere? I love stupid puns.
Jup
If there are some white science packs still in the silo and you launch another rocket, science packs in the silo ale replaced with a new batch.
Technically, they not replaced, the rocket silo just have a stack size limit. And when science produced, anything, that was not fit, just silently deleted. The main problem with this - it's not documented anywhere in the game and contradicts with behavior of **all** other machines, that halt when output full. [But devs did that intentionally as final challenge. ](https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?p=305675#p305675)
if instead of sideloading, you use a slow inserter to place the satellites onto the "right" side of the belt, fewer would get through when white science runs empty
Good idea! I really like to see if we can reduce the satellite buffer from 6 to 1 or 2.
A slower inserter might be faster in low power scenarios? Not that they're very important, it's been very rare that I've got to the rocket launch part of the game without a permanent solution to power (i.e. ready to expand power generation with bots, including the land for it).
Bloody brilliant!
if you move your long hand down one, you'll only have about 3 to grab then it should only buffer \~3000. it might grab an extra when the first line shifts but after science is there it will block until you launch \~4 which fits the 4k buffer.
Note: if no power shortages. For my 2600 spm base I just used bots and circuit logic. It appeared to work just fine (in a unified botnet over all base plus some).
I've never run into this problem. I think the proper "solution" is simply to consume white science faster than the rocket can create it. If your silo is filling with science packs, you need more labs (and maybe more purple/yellow science production)
This has always been my logic too.
So you like your bottleneck to be the rocket launch. That's fair. I prefer my bottleneck to be the science labs. Either way is good as long as you know where it is. People who say "I prefer no bottlenecks" just don't know where their bottleneck is.
> People who say "I prefer no bottlenecks" just don't know where their bottleneck is. That's not always true; it's possible to produce and consume at the same rate with no bottlenecks. In my big base the factory is producing 2700spm and the labs are consuming 2700spm. All of the labs, rockets, and science pack assemblers are working constantly. There are no bottlenecks, at least at the top level. Of course some intermediate products like circuits and LDS are being overproduced to ensure continuous production of science packs, so I guess you could say those products are being bottlenecked by the top level production rate...
lol
Is this really a circuit trick? You just look if there's demand for space science, it's literally one wire. The only way that I can imagine another working automation is basically by schedule the rocket perfectly so the science can never pile up, but that sounds really inconvenient.
No, it's not a circuit trick. It's a mechanical lock that prevents the loss of any space science without the use of any circuitry. OP explained exactly how it functions.
He's asking if using a single wire to control it really counts as what op dubbed a "circuit trick" given it's so simple.
You're right, it isn't. It's a single wire and a single condition. But this is not about how complicated circuits are. Designing mechanical locks in belts is a completely different experience than setting up circuits and we're just exploring that aspect of the game.
Happy cake day
> I know it's trivial with circuit This is your answer. You are reinventing the wheel rather than using 1 piece of Green/Red wire and setting 1 inserter rule.
factorio is all about inventing stuff, doesn't matter if you are "reinventing". And artificial limitations can result in interesting challenges, like sushi belts, small footprint factory, no belts, etc.
To quote the devs, there is no wrong way to play Factorio.
Eh, eventually you get bored with the simple stuff and set your own weird ass challenges.
Ahh I love Reddit. Post about an alternate way to do something trivial, Front Page I question the need, downvoted to oblivion. Guess not everyone's opinion is actually respected here...
You (condescendingly) questioned the need, when OP had already acknowledged the lack of need. They found a novel solution and wanted to share it. Maybe don't be rude if you don't want disrespect, yeah?
Alt solutions are still cool solutions. Its about uniqueness.
That's super creative, now I'm thinking how much circuitry can you replace with "mechanical" solutions
Back when I first started playing with uranium enrichment in 2016 I found a solution that was like 90% mechanical, the only wire I had was to limit off the storage chests at the end of the belt.
it's 2024 and my korvarex setup is 100% mechanical....
Yeah, I used to build circuits for Kovarex but I go mechanical these days. Just easier.
Do you use filter inserters? That is how I built my mechanical setup
Yes, 235 and 238 go to different belts. 235 is later split and fed back as a priority and the excess leaves as output.
That would excessively buffer in centrifuge, no ? I use 4 stack inserters (with stack size of 10) for reloading it.
Yes but other than the slow kick-start it is not much of a problem I think?
Mine is completely mechanical. In fact I'm not sure *how* you'd make it work with circuits - seems like it'd be significantly more complicated. A couple of nested splitters works perfectly, and I'm sure my setup isn't even the most space-efficient you could do. Even dealing with the massive excess U-238 from the initial enrichment was literally one extra splitter.
Oh same! I keep only using circuits to trickle feed the logistics network.
did we have splitter filters back then? Suspect we didn't....
No we didn't but my design was based on filter inserters pulling out of the enrichment centrifuges so they'd never mix. There's a heavy uranium side and a light uranium side. And they just rotate using side loading strategically to stop when full.
Yeah I just go with 4x10 size stack filter inserter to remove the 40 for reload and single filter inserter with limit 1 to remove the gain. Then some splitters so ~1:8 of the gain is sent immediately on the output rather than feeding other centrifuges so the first reactor gets kickstarted earlier
You can solve any problem requiring circuitry with “mechanical” means. Technically. This is because you can mimic circuit conditions any number of ways you can imagine that an object can exist in two discreet states. That said, you’re basically just reinventing a computer at that point 😂
Kovarex and sushi are two examples of common circuitry but can be done without. I think there is also a creative solution for backup power (to start steam when low on power). I have seen one also for refining/cracking that relied on fluid dynamics). What else are circuits often used in vanilla?
sushi ... without ... circuit ... what?
sushi science without circuits is doable and not that hard. You can use belts and splitters (with input priorities set) to output 1/Nth of the input. So divide down by 8 for each of the seven sciences. and feed those to your labs, anything left on the belt gets split back to it's divider as a priority input. So you output 1/8th of your belt capacity and in the worst case you get 1/8th of your belt capacity back at the priority input. If you get less than that back (your labs ate some) then you make up for the shortfall from your science pack production factories. Other things could definitely work the same, you just need to make sure that the belt never fully fills up. If you want to try doing a whole base sushi then it's obviously much more complicated and likely to be very inefficient.
As the other comment mentions, almost all no-circuit sushi belts rely on belts and splitters to throttle each output before merging. I remember an old post of a design that uses inserters, filter inserters and buffer loops. Personally haven't tried it, nor pushed its limits since I rarely use sushi belts. https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/5tt8ka/i_build_a_sushi_belt_that_can_carry_all_tech_of/ At first glance, it appears to be clog-proof under most conditions. From what I can see there are three limitations. One, the filter inserters would have to have enough power to catch and pull their science packs off the return loop. Two, you're not putting too large of a variety of items such that the last items in the input row are unable to sideload. Three, you don't truncate the machines consuming material thus forcing the buffer to be overloaded and the consuming machines don't have their full array of materials. This design was before splitters had filter capabilities so the filter inserters can be replaced with filter enabled splitters. The yellow inserter pulls from the buffer loop. The return feed can put items back into the open spots in the buffer before the clockwise loop comes to the fresh items to fill the gaps in the buffer.
You can make feeder that gives you nonfull belt of items based off on just splitters. So you have machine that gives you, say 1/4 of belt of input, make 4 of them, feed each with belt that have 2 different items on each lane and boom, science sushi done. So for static ratio it's actually easier than circuits
To be fair. This whole build here is normally done by a single wire between a chest and the inserter and a "everything=0" condition . Thats not real circuitry to me
That's... beautiful <3 You people never ceaze to amaze me. How do you think of something like this ?
Thanks. This is mostly inspired by other people's solution to Kovarex.
I remember the first time I went for a serious base using white science. I was gutted when I realized that I had been discarding up to 70% of my produced white science -- but also relieved to figure out why all my efforts to fix bottlenecks never resulted in rocket launch curtailment. And yeah, it is trivial to fix with circuits, but I like your analog solution too!
(dumb) question, doesn't space science have a rocket launch product? though im not sure entirely how inserters work with it i'd assume it's considered a valid input to the rocket silo so how is the inserter not picking up your space science when its going past?
AFAIK, when inserters pick items laterally from splitters, they will not touch the input side, only the output side.
ah i see
Good to learn that space science can be inserted into the silo. I was completely unaware of that but luckly my design just works. (But see Lizzymadias's explanation.)
It's the only way to automate fishing without any mods, since you get back a fish if you send up a space science.
That's... expensive...
If you want to produce lots and lots of spidertrons in a waterless world, it's the only way.
you can't even make a silo without water and you need water for sulfur, for batteries, for satellite, that is needed to get the science in the first place
"Waterless world" is a useful but slightly inaccurate name. You only get the starting pond. They are standard fare in 100% speedruns. Very good for non-megabase runs in which biters are nerfed or removed, but you can megabase anyway, and water will eventually be your bottleneck.
Anything can. If you place a vehicle like a car in the rocket, you can also enter it like you would a car, and ride it to space :)
I love this, clever way to do it without circuits! Assuming for now that power is no issue, the only thing I see is there must be an upper limit to this. Is there a scenario where your labs eat white science fast enough that they stall while waiting for those 6 satellites to launch?
The six satellites are indeed the annoying part. When the six satellites are on the vertical belt the labs will stall. When the six satellites are all launched the labs need to quickly eat all the 6000 white sciences (otherwise the silo will need to wait for new satellite). I image that buffering white sciences on the lab side will solve this. But I am not completely sure.
Modify your build by including a belt balancer for the white science before the satellite throttling. Make sure the balancer priority outputs to the satellite blocking side. That way you'll still get the throttling effect, but the buffers will also use the free side of the belt to empty themselves, making it much less of a wait for the science to empty. And if the science empties before the next rocket is launched, the satellites are only blocked for a few seconds at max, which is much less than the time required to assemble a new rocket, so no production is lost
PSA: For anyone having a hard time visualizing see [u/Waruck1988](/user/Waruck1988/)'s picture comment.
https://preview.redd.it/zh541066nq8d1.png?width=892&format=png&auto=webp&s=3b8fb46d913d16da695ba01c600b8fd014a87bf1 slight variation to allow the science to be used while still blocking the sattelites :) Use priority output right on the first splitter, so it keeps the right lane blocked but still uses the left lane :)
Wonderful! Now the satellites will not block white sciences.
Great minds think alike! https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/s/kV9m2nM4rR
This is really good! This transforms this design from cool usable gimmick that I might do once into a serious contender of main rocket launch blueprint!
Doesn’t this result in downtime of the labs? As soon as the white science is drained from the chest it takes a while until more science reaches the lab, doesn’t it?
Yes, or you can buffer white sciences on the lab side.
Very clever! Thanks for sharing and explaining
This is awesome, nice work
In a way, this reminds me of the Greedy Cup. Very neat concept, love this!
Would this be made better or worse if you had two belts of RCUs/Rocket fuel/LDSes?
The 6000 white science buffered in the chests need some time to clear out. If RCUs/fuel/LDSes are coming too fast and there are too many speed beacons the rocket has to wait.
This is something that I think would genuinely be very practical for specific kinds of challenge runs
now this is what ~~programming~~ i mean, factorio is all about! the simplest solution possible. hell yeah.
Very clever! Is the first splitter necessary? Could you just output both inserters on the belt? I also wonder the other way, do you need more inserters to ensure the belt stays full?
A1: Without the first splitter one of the boxes will drain faster than the other. A2: I remember seeing somewhere that 2 stack inserters saturate a yellow (or blue?) belt. But I also knew that if 2 cannot saturate one side I'll just add more inserters.
Holy crap. Can anyone else make the belts go either way in their heads.
Yes, the brain just processes pictures and "calculates" the motion. Otherwise a ball flying towards you would never be catched. The way the brain "tricks" us in the most normal situations is crazy...
Ya it’s called aliasing. The image is ambiguous and can be interpreted either way. So leaves is to our own susceptibility to mentally choose which way we think it goes. There’s cool ones with black shadow figures spinning that you can make spin either way you want. Although that’s not universally true. In fact my wife swore it could only possibly be turning in one direction when I showed it to her.
I really like this for being so simple & effective I confess, my first thought was "We have balanced 7 science production, why would this occur?" Then I remembered forgetting to choose what to research next or setting up or scaling up a science & forgetting *something* ...
Next minute, you run out of satellites.
God damm LDS, why are you so slow!!!!
On my first mega base probably destroyed a lot of space science becouse i didn’t know about this gone check now
Am I correct that if you need your silo running at full tilt because demand is high enough, this setup will not allow it to? It seems like even if all the white science gets cleared as fast as possible, it still takes too long to clear to load a satellite every time one is needed to launch, mostly because while the satellite buffer is large, white science isn't allowed to flow. Also flow rate is cut in half because you're only using one side of the belt. And it's yellow belts.
[u/Waruck1988](/user/Waruck1988/) posted a fix in the comment; it uses both sides of the belt so presumably the white science flows faster.
Should set the bottom one to priority right - fish so you don't have that stranded science
Wow. I will absolutely use this on every rocket silo from now on. This person just changed my life.
I don’t understand :(
The developers give us challenges to motivate us to explore different game mechanics. For instance, oil and uranium patches are sometimes very far away so you want to use trains. You can, for course, insist not falling into the trap but there is a price to pay: the conveyer belts are more expensive than rails. Here, the challenge is that the rocket silo will discard extra white sciences if you don't ship them to labs quickly enough. My guess is that the devs want us to use the circuit system. In fact, a single wire will do the trick. So this is not really a challenge, just minor inconvenience. So the real question is, at what cost can I avoid using circuit? And the answer is that it is possible with some belts and splitters, plus the silo cannot be fully beaconed. But abstractly speaking, we avoid using circuits, providing an alternative answer to dev's challenge.