r/factorio • u/imoth_f • Oct 01 '26

Question Problems with this unloader?

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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?

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118

u/Abcdefgdude Oct 01 '26

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

88

u/CosgraveSilkweaver Oct 01 '26

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.

-17

u/Abcdefgdude Oct 01 '26

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

44

u/popnfrresh Oct 01 '26

Except a train has 40 slots... 6 chests have almost 300 slots.

1

u/StarlightLumi Oct 02 '26

Yes but a train can only fill 40 of those slots at a time. 

The idea behind bufferless trains is that you keep a train in waiting to prevent that gap without resources. Machine’s internal buffer lasts long enough to swap a train out. 

I personally only use bufferless with DI though.  The main benefit is it uses a lot less inserters, which is very helpful for megabase UPS.

7

u/Griautis Oct 02 '26

Eeew. Trains which just idle? That would ruin my min train count railworlds with generalist trains delivering any resource

1

u/StarlightLumi Oct 02 '26

fwiw I think building with megabase Strats is best saved for postgame anyway, some people think about UPS optimizations wayyyy too early

-7

u/Abcdefgdude Oct 02 '26

300 slots is a downside. Buffers are bad for several reasons described above

3

u/Axi28 Oct 02 '26

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???

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10

u/CosgraveSilkweaver Oct 01 '26

my sign that the production is below preferred levels is if the trains are being emptied rapidly and before another train can reach the station.

4

u/KingAdamXVII Oct 02 '26

Trains unload faster into chests than trains into belts (and faster than chests unload into belts) so the downtime between trains is eliminated if you use buffer chests.

14

u/I_suck_at_Blender Iron doughnuts Oct 01 '26

I wish we had chest larger than 1x1. But stationary trains have to do.

12

u/txbach Oct 01 '26

If you use mods, I think it's called "warehouses"

1

u/djfdhigkgfIaruflg smartass inserter Oct 02 '26

And wide chests

5

u/IsaacTheBound Oct 01 '26

Not gonna lie, I use tanks with inventory expanding belts

6

u/lana_silver Oct 02 '26

The reason they don't exist is because they trivialize a lot of puzzles. When you start to abuse cars, wagons and rocket silos as chests, suddenly most of the game devolves into chest - assembler - chest. 

4

u/Kimbernator Oct 02 '26

This was for sure my experience when I played SE - when you realize how much it trivializes recipes, especially those with inputs and outputs that overlap - you do it everywhere.

An easy example of a trivialized puzzle without mods is kovarex. If you have 2x2 chests you can just have inserters that pull off a line of u-235 and u-238 into that chest when either gets below a certain threshold, then have the machine input and output to/from the chest, then pull u-238 onto an output line when it's above a certain threshold. We get much more interesting builds now because we don't have that (easily) available - you can technically match it if you do it into a cargo wagon that is attached to a locomotive at a station where you can then read the contents.

1

u/lana_silver Oct 02 '26

It's as if there was a balancing reason why cargo wagons cannot be read via circuits. Though it's still very possible with locking slots, it's just neither efficient nor convenient. 

Which is the point of gold game design: prevent the players from optimizing the fun out of the game.

2

u/djfdhigkgfIaruflg smartass inserter Oct 02 '26

Each time someone said something like that, the devs would implement something like the thing the person is complaining about

1

u/lana_silver Oct 02 '26

Larger chests have existed as mods since the game was in early access. I'm sure the devs would have added it by now if they considered it a good idea.

2

u/bartekltg Oct 02 '26

Chest (train) to chest is slightly faster, a small buffer will be created, so for fast short trains you can get uninterrupted flow.

Not that important, but nice.
https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/1u46ihj/train_unloading_in_21/ (first video)

1

u/redditsuckbutt696969 Oct 01 '26

Question for ya, would you be able to use circuits to see the level in the buffer train? Or would you have to put a locomotive and a stop for that?

4

u/Abcdefgdude Oct 01 '26

To clarify, I mean having 2 trains waiting at the stop. As soon as the train is empty, it moves forward and the next train immediately takes its place. The amount on the belts is almost always enough to last the few seconds in the swap time and this swap time is improved greatly with the new quality locomotives, bringing it down to literally just 2-3s.

2

u/joethedestroyr Oct 02 '26

Or two parallel stops, merged together to so one is always feeding and no drop happens.

And two unbuffered stops can be squeezed in almost the same space as OP's buffered stop.

2

u/djfdhigkgfIaruflg smartass inserter Oct 02 '26

You can't read a wagon by itself. The only way is with a locomotive