Best equatorial belt layout ?

[Zazou]

Hey,

I’m trying to make equatorial belt layout. Do you have screenshot to share ? It’s better to do 2 belts ? Sorter or splitter ? Height ? Thank you !

[Hoki]

the equator offers a couple options to use: main bus and powerbelts (solar or solar+wind power). as this isnt factorio you can in theory use as many belts as you like. the setup only depends on how you wanna draw from the bus. if you want to use sorters you can go as dense as you like and raise (groundbus) or lower (skybus) the lines you want to draw from.
sky- and groundbus both have their own pros and cons:

skybus:
+ compact
+ out of the way of most machinery
+expandable in almost all dimesions
-accessing it can be annoying
-limited to sorters for the most part (or you stack splitters until youre at max height)

groundbus
+easy access to fill and draw from
+quick and easy to set up
-splitter variant requires quite a lot of space

if you want to use splitters you need more space as you have to fit in the splitters in the bus for when you want to draw something from it.

personally i prefer using powerbelts instead of a main bus at the equator. space is limited and keeping the the belt fed it a pain. instead i rely on logistics to keep paths short and organized.

[N3kr0]

On my layout i got 5 lines.
One for each "basic ressource" (coal, copper, iron, stone and oil.
Water i can get all over the world
Those belts will feed all my productions all over the planet (i hope)...

[Hoki]

Originally posted by N3kr0:

On my layout i got 5 lines.
One for each "basic ressource" (coal, copper, iron, stone and oil.
Water i can get all over the world
Those belts will feed all my productions all over the planet (i hope)...

a single bluebelt can supply up to 24 smelter IIRC so i doubt that you will have enough capacity with just one belt for the entire planet.

[!?!]

Don't do it until you got t3 belts tho.

Originally posted by Hoki:

a single bluebelt can supply up to 24 smelter IIRC so i doubt that you will have enough capacity with just one belt for the entire planet.

The starter planet produces around 30-ish oil per second so you're fine slapping all your oil wells on 1 30 items/s t3 belt.

[Zazou]

Originally posted by Hoki:

the equator offers a couple options to use: main bus and powerbelts (solar or solar+wind power). as this isnt factorio you can in theory use as many belts as you like. the setup only depends on how you wanna draw from the bus. if you want to use sorters you can go as dense as you like and raise (groundbus) or lower (skybus) the lines you want to draw from.
sky- and groundbus both have their own pros and cons:

skybus:
+ compact
+ out of the way of most machinery
+expandable in almost all dimesions
-accessing it can be annoying
-limited to sorters for the most part (or you stack splitters until youre at max height)

groundbus
+easy access to fill and draw from
+quick and easy to set up
-splitter variant requires quite a lot of space

if you want to use splitters you need more space as you have to fit in the splitters in the bus for when you want to draw something from it.

personally i prefer using powerbelts instead of a main bus at the equator. space is limited and keeping the the belt fed it a pain. instead i rely on logistics to keep paths short and organized.

Thank you for your detailed answer !!! What do you mean by powerbelts ? (sorry I'm non native english speaker).

[ApathicAlpaca]

I use splitter main bus (drawing from bottom first) and what gives me a headache is how to efficiently fill up the lower levels after an output. I usually lead a belt down from the next height level to make sure that I have maxed capacity 'from the bottom up'. Otherwise I would have to add new height levels very quickly and on the ground there would be nuffing. Come to think of it, that would free up bottom levels for different products on the same 'bus slot'. Hmm.
Anyway, filling up top-down takes a lot of space and can mess up other buses or output belts.
Do you guys even do that? How do you go about it?

[MysticDaedra]

I'm using my equator as a 3-wide solar belt, with wind generators to the side. Power for days. Add accumulators if you must, I haven't needed them yet.

[Hoki]

Originally posted by Zora:

Thank you for your detailed answer !!! What do you mean by powerbelts ? (sorry I'm non native english speaker).

Originally posted by MysticDaedra:

I'm using my equator as a 3-wide solar belt, with wind generators to the side. Power for days. Add accumulators if you must, I haven't needed them yet.

i did mention what powerbelts are very slightly. Daedra already gave a more indepth explanation to what power belts are.
every planet has 3 critical areas of importance namely the poles and the equator. the poles provide the most uptime for individual solar panels and ray recievers but comes with a reduced performance. there you gain the best return for small investment. the equator is the opposite of it investmentwise. there you get the highest return but also the highest downtime. these 3 areas are where you want to put soar panels (for rayrecievers you want high uptime so they prefer just the poles). putting solar panels aroung the entire planet along the equator is what you can call a power belt simply because that what it looks like.

the thing about powerbelts and the poles are that both function without the need of accumulators as there should always be 50% of the panels be running at all times.

Originally posted by ApathicAlpaca:

I use splitter main bus (drawing from bottom first) and what gives me a headache is how to efficiently fill up the lower levels after an output. I usually lead a belt down from the next height level to make sure that I have maxed capacity 'from the bottom up'. Otherwise I would have to add new height levels very quickly and on the ground there would be nuffing. Come to think of it, that would free up bottom levels for different products on the same 'bus slot'. Hmm.
Anyway, filling up top-down takes a lot of space and can mess up other buses or output belts.
Do you guys even do that? How do you go about it?

A groundbus has the advantage that you can just use a splitter with 2-2 configuration (having all openings towards 2 directions instead of 4) to equalize some of the belts easily.