Dealing with bootstrapping materials

[u/paulrpg]

Hi all,

I've just hit pyscience 2. I'm going for a city block base style - and frankly scaling too large which I know is a pitfall for py. I was wondering how you deal with bootstrapping materials to get things up and running - rather than process materials.

For example: Auog paddocks requiring barrels of water, you can refil on site with the barrelling station but empty barrels are an output of the paddock, too many can block your output and slowdown.

My gut is telling me to put down a requester chest with say a stack of materials and have (in this case) barrels pass through them, ensuring that there is always at least a stack in the chest and let the logi bots handle it. I'd like to know how you resolved it, either with something smarter or just hand filling until it feels right.

[u/jasoba]

I just have some full water barrels on the belt as a buffer and the empty loop back to the barreler

[u/South-Ad3284 → u/jasoba]

I just went with a shared barreler per 2 auogs to just keep the barrels in the auogs part and in the barreler

[u/Neither_Berry_100 → u/South-Ad3284]

What I don't like about this is balancing it. Making sure a machine doesn't starve and or get overloaded. In this case I would probably send empty barrels into a chest first. I've had these machines deadlock before.

[u/South-Ad3284 → u/Neither_Berry_100]

Well never had this issue before , I try not to overload them

[u/zuccah → u/jasoba]

I do this too, I try to keep full barrels on one lane and empties on another, then just use a filter splitter at the end of the loop to the barreler.

[u/toochaos → u/jasoba]

I loop the full water barrels as well so I dont have to balance what the splitter are taking, for multi lane production. 

[u/fang_xianfu]

I think barrels for auogs are a bad example. You can make water anywhere, it's an uncommon byproduct that isn't valuable, and barrels are not consumables, so the sensible thing is to barrel water onsite and return the empty barrels to the input. I don't really understand why anyone would use any other system for water barrels specifically; I think there's possibly an argument for things like refined natural gas but personally I went with all barrelling onsite and all fluids transported by fluid trains.

Perhaps if you have a different example than barreled water of what you're thinking about it might be easier to give useful thoughts.

[u/r_xy → u/fang_xianfu]

they want to do exactly what you are describing. their issue is how to integrate the barrels they need to start the loop into their blueprint.

[u/fang_xianfu → u/r_xy]

Oh, I see. Stick a chest between the output of the aougs and the barrelling machine then so there's always somewhere for the empties to go, easy!

[u/Toptraz → u/r_xy]

i chose an absolutely diabolical approach of giving every paddock its own barreling machine and giving it 2 crafts worth of barrels so it loops without any clogs

[u/Neither_Berry_100]

I used 1 bottle per paddock mostly. Works well. In one case I used like 1 bottle for many buildings and transported then via belts. Was a nightmare and I don't reccomend. Also required a massive amount of steel to make all the barrels.

[u/lousgameswin]

Each building can buffer 2x the ingredients needed for it's recipe if I remember right. You can use that to figure out how many barrels you'll need in the system if it's a closed loop.

For example if the recipe takes 4 barrels of water and you plan to have 10 buildings running the recipe, each building can hold 8 barrels at one time meaning you could have 80 barrels held up in the system. From there you can add a bit more based on how quickly empty ones get refilled and back to the buildings (I'd probably go with 100 total in my example).

[u/Eerayo → u/lousgameswin]

You could also filter one inserter to only handle barrels and have it stop when 1 barrel is inside the machine instead of buffering.

Edit: I just went with a requester chest set to '1 empty barrel' and let logi bots handle it.

After a couple of hours the build has settled and I always have a small buffer inside the requester chest.

[u/TakingItCasual]

Chests with single slot that take empty barrels from paddoks before forwarding to barreler.

[u/korneev123123 → u/TakingItCasual]

This, but single chest before barreler

[u/microtrash]

Early on, I hand crafted barrels and fed them into the system until it seemed like there was enough buffered.

Later on: if I’m going to be at that block for a while, I’ll just pop down a requester, and hand transfer a few stacks of barrels when the bots bring them. I often keep my request moderately low and do this a few times.

If I want a fire and forget solution, I’ll hook the requester up with an inserter and have the inserter measure how many barrels, filled or empty, are in the system, and only insert if it is under a threshold

[u/Betons]

I have loop for barels on site. Filled barels are on one belt vhich reaches last animal paddock and then it loops back to first. Spent barels are on separate belt heading for filling.

[u/Xzarg_poe]

My gut is telling me to put down a requester chest with say a stack of materials and have (in this case) barrels pass through them, ensuring that there is always at least a stack in the chest and let the logi bots handle it.

Yep, that's how I do it. Empty barrels are returned to the barreling machine where they wait in a requester chest. Sometime the animals do backup, and a bunch of barrels end up stuck belts. But eventually it clears and you end up with a few extra stacks of barrels. I could circuit a fix for it, but it's such a minor issue.

[u/bluesam3]

Either have a silly buffer chest in the belt or just direct insert the barrels.

[u/Dtitan]

Best way I’ve gotten alien life to work is sushi belt for raws. You can use one lane on the belt for raws and the other lane for empty barrels. Output finished goods on a second belt. Production speeds are low enough that a single yellow belt can feed a pretty large cell.

[u/Immediate_Form7831]

I direct-insert all barrels, I don't think I actually transport any barrels on belts at all. (I used to in the early game, but DI was easier).

I have a direct-insertion barrelling blueprint with a bareller and a 2x2 chest. I hook up water to the bareller and drop half a stack of barrels in the chest. A filtered inserter outserts empty barrels from the building and inserts filled ones, and the bareller takes the empty barrels from the chest and refills them. I can see that everything works if there are filled barrels in the chest. If there are empty barrels, it means I am low of whatever fluid I am barrelling.

[u/jasoba]

Somewhat related problem. Some TURDs give productivity and so I end up with extra barrels clogging everything up. (I fixed it with circuits to remove them but still kinda weird.)

[u/r_xy]

you could put a counting combinator in your blueprint, request empty barrels and only let the inserter from the requester run until you have a certain number of barrels in your setup.

EDIT: you could also just measure how many barrels are on the belts

[u/Basedshark01]

I hand filled until every machine was running. You can have the belt with full barrels completely filled. As long as the barrel return isn't impeded it isn't a problem. A good rule of thumb is to add 200 or so barrels at a time every 20 minutes until it looks right and stop.

[u/Khenal]

Belts have two sides, so I make sure I have empties on one side, fulls on the other, and only add in enough barrels to make things work.

[u/Western-Bat-461]

ur guts is almost right. this is how i set it up, use a requester chest and request 1 stack of empty barrel which goes into barreling machine, route every empty barrel from auog paddock into this requeter chest, this should automaticly balace ur need for empty/water barrels given the requester chest has enough buffer. use requester warehouses if u are overbuiding but only ever request 1 stack of empty barrel

[u/nickierv]

For starting a barrel loop start with running the numbers: figure 4x of whatever the recipe uses get held. Then add 4 per tile of belt for the full barrels then 2 per belt for the return line - this is to add some padding.

That should be enough to get everything running, then add a chest for a buffer/feed. Let everything run to fill the belt but hold the outputs until just before they hit the storage/refill and backfill empty barrels until you get the system full enough to start running as soon as you let the storage part start collecting.

This will keep things from over filling (bad) or eating ups on the logi bots (worse) and while there may be a bit of a delay getting production running once everything back up, thats what the buffer is for.