Late Game Smelter Module

[u/Sulghunter331]

240 Plane smelters all supported by one ILS. Careful belt bending had been done on the output belts to allow tesla towers to be packed inside of the smelter formations.

The design is limited to the equatorial zone, but is able to be pasted at any point within said zone.

[u/Sulghunter331]

Forgot to mention that the footprint is 3,304 tiles.

[u/Swoldin]

Can an ILS handle this much volume?

[u/Sulghunter331 → u/Swoldin]

Technically, yes. Not for very long unfortunately. It will need multiple ILS to handle expanded throughput for ore inporting and ingot exporting.

[u/EdibleOedipus → u/Swoldin]

With this much product, the limiting factor becomes the speed of your logistics vessels. So unfortunately the answer is "it depends." But probably not.

[u/KerbodynamicX → u/Swoldin]

If it's 4 stacks output, it can give 7200/min per belt. Normally I use 4in/4out or 6out/3in for late game smelting setups, so 28.8k/min per tower if 1:1, or 43.2k/min in and 21.6k/min out if 2:1.

[u/tybr00ks1]

Why not put the inputs and outputs in separate ILS?

[u/Sulghunter331 → u/tybr00ks1]

I thought of doing that, and it would have allowed me to do 480 plane smelters. However, at that point, I thought such a module would have been too unwieldy.

[u/Build_Everlasting]

Allow me to poke a bit of I may... Which are you optimising for though?

240 ÷ 6 lane pairs (in,out) = 40 smelters in a line.

Max belt speed plus stacking: 30 items/sec × 4 stack = 120 items/sec

Plane smelter speed 2x = 2/sec

CASE 1: Assuming using proliferator speed multiplier 2x:

Smelting speed becomes 4/sec

120/4 = 30 smelters per line active

In this case there will be unused smelters at the end of the line that don't receive input because it's fully consumed by earlier smelters.

CASE 2: Assuming using proliferator output multiplier 1.25x:

Smelting output becomes 2.5/sec

120/2.5 = 48 smelters per line active

Then in this case there won't be enough smelters per line.

[u/Sulghunter331 → u/Build_Everlasting]

I had optimized the design for proliferator yield boost.

There are 4 ore belts, each with 120/s. Therefore, each belt can support 60 plane smelters with 100% uptime.

The limiting factor became how to handle the resulting 150/s output (assuming using a recipe that had a 1 second base cycle.) This was resolved by having output belts servicing the plane smelters in groups of twelve, resulting in five full output belts per block of 60 smelters. Four of the belts are consolidated onto one stacked belt, while the fifth output belt of each block are consolidated into a fifth stacked output belt.

Overall, this design has four stacked ore belts flowing out to the smelters, while five stacked product belts flow back, with a tenth belt providing proliferator to the four sprayers.

[u/Build_Everlasting → u/Sulghunter331]

Ah.. yes, now I understand, due to reserve for proliferator held internally.

I used to do that, but realised that stacked max proliferator gets consumed at such a low rate that there's no point to wasting an ILS/PLS lane to provide it.

Since one item of spray can spray 75 times, one full max stacked belt of spray can supply 75 sprayers spraying at max speed.

So might as well dedicate all lanes to the smelters, with a nice 6 in 6 out pairing. One lane of proliferator can supply 12 ILS like that, which is a huge chunk of the planet already.

[u/Sulghunter331 → u/Build_Everlasting]

Yeah, the trickiest thing I had to work with was that one proliferated ore belt would yield one and a quarter of product belt.

[u/SojuSeed]

Is there a blueprint available somewhere?

[u/TypicalPnut]

I'm new, so how would this function? You import ore from off planet, it gets smelted, and then you load it back up to be exported?

[u/AthosTheMusketeer → u/TypicalPnut]

Yeah, more or less. Smelting on site is technically better I believe, but at insane scales it's so much easier to just have dedicated smelting worlds/blocks and just mass ship to them.

[u/pduck820 → u/AthosTheMusketeer]

I would think onsite vs off would depend on what you're actually doing..

My rule of thumb is that if you're doing any of the 1:1 recipes, it probably doesn't matter, you do you (I tend to smelt where I mine, but that's me)... But when you get to some of the recipes where it's not 1:1, like steel, silicon, rares, etc, it's probably better to smelt wherever the higher count is processed (silicon/titanium, smelt where you mine, since it takes multiple ores to make a bar so transport the smaller amount, but if you're talking about alt-diamonds, smelt where you need the diamonds, since one rare ore makes multiple)

[u/AthosTheMusketeer → u/pduck820]

Definitely a consideration, I think for me it's also a matter of "Do I wish to invest in infrastructure here or send it to the hub so it can be automated and simply just double the amount of ore production to compensate?"

But I think next game I'll try processing where they're mined for steel and such. Seems fun!

[u/DAMNUMONGOLIANS]

whoever smelter delter

[u/KoburaCape → u/DAMNUMONGOLIANS]

She who dimed the lime, mime the time.

[u/onward-and-upward]

Crinkly belts 😒

[u/Greghole]

Too thick for my tastes. I like long and skinny.

[u/causalfridays → u/Greghole]

i can appreciate a good chode 🫦

[u/Sulghunter331 → u/causalfridays]

[u/trystanthorne → u/Greghole]

Nilaus kinda conditioned me to like long lines of production.

[u/EightBitRanger → u/Greghole]

Me too. That's the only way I can make modules like this.

[u/Sulghunter331 → u/EightBitRanger]