Automatic Piler is straight garbage

[ImAnOOb]

Am i missing something here? One belt goes in, One belt comes out. The belt coming out can now hold more because its stacked, yet for close to the same tech level you can send your belts into ILS. I thought "maybe I can find a use for this on magnetic ring construction because It builds so fast it floods my blue belts." Nope, the Automatic piler also takes up loads of space, and craming it into my modular blueprinted stacks of factories is near impossible and a net negative result in throughput.

Ill admit I had a save going where automatic pilers were an automatic unlock when they dropped but when on earth would you use these things? I cant think of a single efficient way. I could see if you could have multiple belts coming in and it gets stacked like when theyre coming out of the ILS, but as is?.... What is the point?

[Dragonmaster]

If you've unlocked the tech for ILS/PLS's to use the piling, it loses some value but those are locked VERY DEEP into the tree. The piler is gotten at Yellow science and can be very useful at that level. Even after the ILS/PLS stacking tech, its useful on the outputs of stuff to allow more on a line. (Also casmire crafting says hi)
It also can cut the amount of belts needed in half for transport which saved on power for outposts instead of using a PLS/ILS transport system.

Theres PLENTY of uses for the piler and its not garbage.

[margalus]

Ils stacking is end game after you already won. Piler is available from the beginning

[Bluemoon_19]

It helped here to get a belt flooded right to the end smelters

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2748454071

[SmoothCrimnl]

also fractionators

[McC1oud]

Say you put a 30 belt full in one side, the output is 15 items on the 30 belt but the items are stacked up as 2 items.

You do this with two belts and then merge them, you've increased throughput to 60 units.
Max level you can stack them 4 times so a 30 belt becomes 120 belt.

These have flipped the game upside down in terms of ratio design.

[Nekogod]

I like using them for casimir crystals and fuel rods cause they need so much hydrogen/deuterium per item, really condenses the build if you can get 120/s down a single belt.

[LorDC]

Originally posted by Dragonmaster:

If you've unlocked the tech for ILS/PLS's to use the piling, it loses some value but those are locked VERY DEEP into the tree. The piler is gotten at Yellow science and can be very useful at that level. Even after the ILS/PLS stacking tech, its useful on the outputs of stuff to allow more on a line. (Also casmire crafting says hi)
It also can cut the amount of belts needed in half for transport which saved on power for outposts instead of using a PLS/ILS transport system.

Theres PLENTY of uses for the piler and its not garbage.

If you've unlocked ILS/PLS, pilers lose almost all the value. Why? Because logistics allows for super-easy blue-print-based horizontal scaling. (Horizontal as in a lot of small identical seups instead of single big one.)
So, yeah, the only real use of pilers is supporting increased fractionator output.

[ImAnOOb]

Okay I appreciate these examples, Since I had already unlocked Pls and Ils when the patch came out i didnt deal with em. I would much prefer to see some more late game utility though as currently there seems to be virtually none outside of fractionation which once youve got the universe at your fingertips simply requires space

[Arcane]

I think Fractionators + Pilers is an amazing combo. Because it makes Fractionators 4x more efficient. The faster the throughput of Fractionator is, more Deutereum you get. And pilers allow to have a blue belt with 7200/min throughput. This is nothing short of amazing!

Outside of that I don't see much use either. For a normal production line it is easy to copy a line and be done with it. Saving space on a few belts is not worth it IMO. It is harder to design a line like that and having chained Pilers takes a lot of space too.

[josmith7]

Originally posted by Arcane:

I think Fractionators + Pilers is an amazing combo. [snip]

Outside of that I don't see much use either. For a normal production line it is easy to copy a line and be done with it. Saving space on a few belts is not worth it IMO. It is harder to design a line like that and having chained Pilers takes a lot of space too.

I ended up using Pilers them when retrofitting my antimatter fuel rod production to proliferated output (which, yes, is a mixed bag as parts of it only work on speed boost). But the speed boost on the particle accelerators meant that I was producing more hydrogen and more antimatter than could fit on a single belt. But I didn't really have an easy way to pull out more belts and then proliferate them. So I added a gap about halfway down the lines of particle accelerators make the belts detour off to either side into a piler -- that created enough room on the belt for the rest of the particle accelerators to unload.

I guess my other option would have been to reduce the number of accelerators, and then scale down the rest of the blueprint to match -- but I went quick and dirty instead and jammed in pilers to make it work.

[Dragonmaster]

Originally posted by LorDC:

Originally posted by Dragonmaster:

If you've unlocked the tech for ILS/PLS's to use the piling, it loses some value but those are locked VERY DEEP into the tree. The piler is gotten at Yellow science and can be very useful at that level. Even after the ILS/PLS stacking tech, its useful on the outputs of stuff to allow more on a line. (Also casmire crafting says hi)
It also can cut the amount of belts needed in half for transport which saved on power for outposts instead of using a PLS/ILS transport system.

Theres PLENTY of uses for the piler and its not garbage.

If you've unlocked ILS/PLS, pilers lose almost all the value. Why? Because logistics allows for super-easy blue-print-based horizontal scaling. (Horizontal as in a lot of small identical seups instead of single big one.)
So, yeah, the only real use of pilers is supporting increased fractionator output.

Pilers STILL work perfectly fine with ILS/PLS's after you unlock them (up until you unlock the VERY LATE GAME tech that allows them to output stacked. They allow you to make more condensed builds as imagine that you have a recipe that requires 2/s of 1 item and 1/s of the 2nd item. Assume mk3 belt. Before you would either have to make a 2nd line of the 2/s belt or only go with 15 assemblers due to the 2/s item. With Pilers you can instead take 2 belts out of the ILS right away, Pile then merge them and now you can fit the full 30 assemblers in a more compact build since the 2/s item is double stacked and the 'belt ratio becomes 1:1".

[pat]

For me, the auto-piler tech advancement comes too late in the game to care about. There are different ways to play the game and I understand that some are trying to put spheres around every star, but by the time I've completed my first sphere, I'm starting to lose interest.

I wouldn't mind seeing a piler mk2 that has the same footprint as the original, but with two belt inputs.

[Neferneith]

Originally posted by pat:

I wouldn't mind seeing a piler mk2 that has the same footprint as the original, but with two belt inputs.

^ This
Any shenanigan done with pliers could already be done with the vertical merger/spliter and the footprint is the same.

BTW, it's a bit of a noobtrap that compared to ILS, all pliers/splitters tricks to gain footprint are nullified by the fact that they are larger than one belt. I can't bother anymore. To me splitter are mostly priority sorters.

[Felony McShiv]

I wouldn't call it garbage as people are clearly using and enjoying them, but no, they really aren't particularly useful. Sure they unlock with yellow, but so do ILS, and a clean and compact 600 cubes per minute factory is quick and easy at that point, which will easily get you to "end game".

[LorDC]

Originally posted by Dragonmaster:

Originally posted by LorDC:

If you've unlocked ILS/PLS, pilers lose almost all the value. Why? Because logistics allows for super-easy blue-print-based horizontal scaling. (Horizontal as in a lot of small identical seups instead of single big one.)
So, yeah, the only real use of pilers is supporting increased fractionator output.

Pilers STILL work perfectly fine with ILS/PLS's after you unlock them (up until you unlock the VERY LATE GAME tech that allows them to output stacked. They allow you to make more condensed builds as imagine that you have a recipe that requires 2/s of 1 item and 1/s of the 2nd item. Assume mk3 belt. Before you would either have to make a 2nd line of the 2/s belt or only go with 15 assemblers due to the 2/s item. With Pilers you can instead take 2 belts out of the ILS right away, Pile then merge them and now you can fit the full 30 assemblers in a more compact build since the 2/s item is double stacked and the 'belt ratio becomes 1:1".

Two lines of 15 assemblers take the same space as one line of 30 assemblers.
Oh, and VERY LATER GAME is when you start designing your factories around UPS limitations of your PC. Logistic stacking is i'd say just at the beginning of end-game.