Utilising Storage Box's VS Conveyors Belts

[BorneArboretic]

Morning everyone!

So recently I decided to go onto twitch and watch a few streamers that were playing DSP. One of them was doing/is doing something I believe is extremely smart and surprising works 10x better than expected.

This gentleman uses Storage box's as the carrier of materials instead of conveyor belts, and it works a heck of a lot better than pretty much anything I've seen so far.

So my question to the players of Dyson Sphere Program is;
Do you use Storage Box's instead of Conveyor Belts? If so, why and how?? Can you provide examples and maybe explain why you do??

[Enginerd]

Origineel geplaatst door The Arboretic Truth:

Origineel geplaatst door Kendov:

What kind of setup would make ground transport faster than belts necessary? And what are those setups supposed to look like anyway? I imagine it as an oversized form of mixed load belt but that is utter nonsense for all practical purposes. Which youtubers should I look up for examples?

The streamer i originally found the idea from is Mnemomeme on twitch.

not to stir up an old topic but i remember watching this back in the fall.. but PC couldnt handle many games at the time. Now that it can im trying to find more info on that box method but theres nothing out there.. did you have any screen shots, youtube, forums or otherwise that you found helpful at least trying to learn it?

[umop-apisdn]

Origineel geplaatst door 1045278974:

Definitely a creative idea to use storage box + sorters instead of belts. I've never seen something like that before.

Aside from the fact that sorters consume power but belts do not, there's another problem.

A mk3 belt has speed 30 items/s, a mk3 sorter only has speed 6 items per second. With tech upgrades, mk3 sorters can move 6 items at a time, meaning they can move 36 items per second. If you put 2 storage boxes side by side, you can place 3 sorters in between. That gives 36 * 3 = 108 items /s, which is 3.6x the speed of belts(not 10x).

Although you can get 3.6x the speed of belt, there's a big catch: a single storage box occupies 3 squares, where as a belt occupies only 1 square. With the same room, I can easily lay 3 belts, Now boxes are only 20% faster than belts. In addition, it's easier to build a long running belt, the game has pretty good built in support for it. But building a long "belt" of storage boxes ? It's going to take significantly more work.

Significantly more work to setup + more power consumption to get 20% faster? I would personally not take it.

An interesting point, but I have some issues with your math.

Let's use the Large Storage; now you have the possibility of 5 sorters, not 3.

Also, the items are effectively teleporting across the box once they're inside. If you rotate the Large Storage from the previous example 90 degrees, you've only got 3 sorters running across 3 units, but then the item effectively teleports to the next sorter, 4 units away... roughly doubling the already faster transport speed.

To be honest, I haven't played in a while, but this concept immediately made me sit up and take notice. I can see how it would eat gobs of power really quickly, but I can also see how it would be highly effective at moving large amounts of product vast distances in quite a hurry.

As a playstyle choice, it definitely has some game-changing potential.

[umop-apisdn]

Origineel geplaatst door B1llaB0ng23:

Origineel geplaatst door The Arboretic Truth:

The streamer i originally found the idea from is Mnemomeme on twitch.

not to stir up an old topic but i remember watching this back in the fall.. but PC couldnt handle many games at the time. Now that it can im trying to find more info on that box method but theres nothing out there.. did you have any screen shots, youtube, forums or otherwise that you found helpful at least trying to learn it?

Conceptually, I would imagine it's simply "drop two storage boxes next to one another, add 3 sorters from one box to the other, add another storage box to the line; lather, rinse, repeat."

[Xilo The Odd]

with stackers i dunno if this idea is as efficient anymore since a belt can move 4 times the amount per tile a non research modded sorter can and it costs not nearly as much power. the only advantage is a far larger buffer out of the storage box method but also a larger footprint for space taken by the storage method as well as power drain.

[umop-apisdn]

Origineel geplaatst door Xilo The Odd:

with stackers i dunno if this idea is as efficient anymore since a belt can move 4 times the amount per tile a non research modded sorter can and it costs not nearly as much power. the only advantage is a far larger buffer out of the storage box method but also a larger footprint for space taken by the storage method as well as power drain.

I just fired up a new game to test this out; Assuming you mean "Automatic piler" when you say "stacker", that's probably true... but that requires yellow cubes to unlock. Sorters/Storages are available almost immediately, so i think there's still some early-game potential there.

[josmith7]

Origineel geplaatst door umop-apisdn:

Let's use the Large Storage; now you have the possibility of 5 sorters, not 3.

Also, the items are effectively teleporting across the box once they're inside. If you rotate the Large Storage from the previous example 90 degrees, you've only got 3 sorters running across 3 units, but then the item effectively teleports to the next sorter, 4 units away... roughly doubling the already faster transport speed.

To be honest, I haven't played in a while, but this concept immediately made me sit up and take notice. I can see how it would eat gobs of power really quickly, but I can also see how it would be highly effective at moving large amounts of product vast distances in quite a hurry.

As a playstyle choice, it definitely has some game-changing potential.

Unless you're running some mod even the long side of a large storage box only has 3 sorter attachment points. So, no, you're not getting more sorters with the larger box. (Though turned lengthwise the material is 'teleporting' further within the structure)

However, the point I haven't see raised is that over much of the world (including the entire equatorial zone) you can't get sorters between boxes only 1 grid apart; the shortest sorter path possible between boxes in those areas is 2 grids; which halves throughput. So over much of the world even the Mk.III sorter is only making 3 trips/s; meaning even with all 3 sorters on a box they can only move 3 sorters * 3 trips/s * 6 items/trip = 54 items/s (or 3240 items/s) between those boxes.
That's less than the new maximum 7200 items/s you can carry on a 4-stacked Mk.iII belt.

Of course for long range travel drones, especially after having been upgraded, are going to crush the throughput of any belt or storage container chain.


I have chained storage containers; but only as a way to make a very large buffer out of multiple connected stacks of them -- not as a way to try to speed up ground transport.

[umop-apisdn]

Origineel geplaatst door josmith7:

Unless you're running some mod even the long side of a large storage box only has 3 sorter attachment points. So, no, you're not getting more sorters with the larger box. (Though turned lengthwise the material is 'teleporting' further within the structure)

That's fair (and accurate); Like I said, I haven't played in a while, so I was misremembering the connection points. Blame my brain being too full of other building games.

Testing indicates that it's not actually any faster, when using Mk.1 Belts and Sorters attached to Large Storages, although the concept was super fun to think about. As a matter of fact, it seems to actually be about 20% slower, assuming 3 belts on the non-chained storages.

Test parameters:
All belts and sorters mentioned are Mk.1.
I dropped 5 Large Storages next to each other, short sides together, and connected 3 sorters between each.
I dropped 2 Large Storages next to the endpoints of the above "chained storages" in the same orientation (thus matching distance), and ran 3 belts between them, connecting them to each storage via a sorter.
I then dropped 5 stacks of gears into each of the "beginning" storages, and watched the products travel to the endpoints.
When the 3-belts version was finished, there was still an entire stack of gears in the chained storage system.

Conclusion: "3 belts" is roughly 20% faster than "chained storage".

Edited to add: In the first test, the belts are coming straight out from the side of the originating storage and going straight into the side of the destination storage, which restricts the sorters' transfer speed. Switching to a single lateral belt (fed by 3 sorters on the side of the storage) gave an even more dramatic speed difference; when the belt-fed storage was completely finished moving the product, the chained storage still had 2.5 stacks (half the product load) in the originating container... and the belt on the "normal" storage wasn't even ever full. Running the test again and wrapping the belt around 2 sides of the origin storage to enable 6 sorters to fill the belt to capacity (and empty it at the destination) was even more dramatic; there was more than 60% (3 stacks) of the product left in the chained-storage system's origin when the single-belt system had finished emptying its belt into the destination.

Final Conclusion: 1 full belt is significantly faster than a chain of sorter-driven storages. Even a non-full single belt is twice as fast as the chained storage method.

"This myth is busted." ... and I am disappointed, but Yay SCIENCE!

[Adam413]

Your resources in the game are finite, especially if you selected 1x or less with the multiplier. People here say it's bad late game, I say do what's best for you, because I absolutely disagree with them. They just simply are doing it inefficiently and did not invest the time to actually make it work, or just don't play the game that way (and that's perfectly fine!).

I personally use storage where ever and anywhere I can. There have been plenty of times where I discovered an issue with my pipeline down to the basic materials, but because I had tens-of-thousands of back up materials already in the storage boxes, I basically had a good enough safety blanket to continue operations factory-wide while I fixed the issue.

The large storage boxes and small all have 3 in-out ports on all sides, for a total of 12 possible in-outs. I take advantage of this by being able to utilize the stacking.
Let's say I have a tower of 4 large boxes (for simplicity). That gives me a total of 48 possible in-out ports to take advantage of. Normally I will reserve 6 of the 1st-level ports to IN and the other 6 will be PRIORITY OUT ports. For the 2nd-level ports and up they will generally all be OUT ports with lessening priority for each added level.

The way storage boxes work for output, as a storage box fills up it will fill the 1st level first, then second, then third, etc. till it gets to the top. When you are taking out from the box, the first level box will take everything from the entire tower of boxes starting from the top to the bottom. The second level will do the same, EXCEPT, once available inventory drops below the second box (1st level box has inventory but boxes 2nd, 3rd, 4th level is complete empty) nothing will export from that second box.

So for certain items mid to end game, you can use those priorities to your advantage. For things like the research cubes I have at basically near the lowest priority because they're not that important to me now that I've completed all the research and am only on unlimited tech. However, for anything else that uses that mat to create a higher tier item, they have higher priority. It's pretty complicated. But that's the fun part of it for me. It gets my brain going to imagine and plan out my production lines.

It'd go something like this:
Initial mat creation -> intermittent storage -> second-level mats -> intermittent storage -> third-level mats -> intermittent storage -> end product mats -> reserve storage

Those here saying they don't use storage are utter liars because the logistics station in-of-itself is literally a storage box. But you can have both. Boxes can only go up so much, they do take a bit of space, but that is irrelevant when you realize you can put belts on literally all the way up to the stratosphere, so you have like, over 10 (I counted 13 but I could be wrong, because this was last year lol and I don't remember what I did yesterday) different levels of belts in a single block. And with the new way you can bypass the grid, you can put way more than 3 belts in a space if you use ALL the space, not just the ground.

For my solar sails I have this going:
Initial mat refining, rocks. I have over 200K rocks in backup storage on my main factory planet, and each outlying satellite planet in my system and the neighboring stars have anywhere from 120K - 250K local storage themselves to help with demand.
Next is prisms, prisms I don't have much in storage actually but I do have about 80K in backup. Prisms to the next tier resources I can't think of the name for, I have over 120K in reserve, then finally the end product solar sails. I have a total of over 120K solar sails on reserve. I have not had the need to increase production of my solar sails (this is generally how fast you want the sphere, swarm, and shells to create/how many you can create at once sustainably). You do not need to increase deployment of sails unless you literally want to make something faster or are using the swarms for power as well, so for now, this setup works for me. Though I have begun imagining and working out a replacement for my setup.

My solar sail production line was created around my starting area. The starting area where I first began the game is an utter mess, because I had no idea what I was doing at the time, and it's the last area I need to revamp using what I know now. So that will take a little bit to work around.

Also for those that are saying power is a potential burden, sure, maybe early game, but once you get to mid game it literally does not matter. Just add more power production? The amount each individual sorter uses is miniscule, sure as you add more it grows, but why can't you just increase power generation? Lol. Your mini-suns are your primary source of power end game, some people will prefer to go to other methods so whatever works for you is good, it's a game after all. But power is something you shouldn't even be thinking about that much. Just make more power....

And battery backups. Please. You never know when you forget how much power you actually generate and you end up overloading your power network. I want more but I currently have 45 GJ of backup power which will last me about..... 5 minutes LOL. But it's usually enough for me to scramble and get more suns operational.

At the end of the day, realize that you play the game in the way that's fun for YOU. Not "efficiency" not "this that" not "simple vs complicated". I like making things difficult, because it makes me think harder about making new ways to overcome short-term challenges. Something too simple for me is boring, but I'm not you right. So if you like something simple and efficient, go for it! If you like something complicated and difficult, go for it! It's a game. If you have fun, then you're having fun. I disagree with some here, but that doesn't mean they're wrong. Just doesn't work for me because that's not fun for me, but it's fun for them. :)

[BorneArboretic]

Origineel geplaatst door Adam413:

Your resources in the game are finite, especially if you selected 1x or less with the multiplier. People here say it's bad late game, I say do what's best for you, because I absolutely disagree with them. They just simply are doing it inefficiently and did not invest the time to actually make it work, or just don't play the game that way (and that's perfectly fine!).

I personally use storage where ever and anywhere I can. There have been plenty of times where I discovered an issue with my pipeline down to the basic materials, but because I had tens-of-thousands of back up materials already in the storage boxes, I basically had a good enough safety blanket to continue operations factory-wide while I fixed the issue.

The large storage boxes and small all have 3 in-out ports on all sides, for a total of 12 possible in-outs. I take advantage of this by being able to utilize the stacking.
Let's say I have a tower of 4 large boxes (for simplicity). That gives me a total of 48 possible in-out ports to take advantage of. Normally I will reserve 6 of the 1st-level ports to IN and the other 6 will be PRIORITY OUT ports. For the 2nd-level ports and up they will generally all be OUT ports with lessening priority for each added level.

The way storage boxes work for output, as a storage box fills up it will fill the 1st level first, then second, then third, etc. till it gets to the top. When you are taking out from the box, the first level box will take everything from the entire tower of boxes starting from the top to the bottom. The second level will do the same, EXCEPT, once available inventory drops below the second box (1st level box has inventory but boxes 2nd, 3rd, 4th level is complete empty) nothing will export from that second box.

So for certain items mid to end game, you can use those priorities to your advantage. For things like the research cubes I have at basically near the lowest priority because they're not that important to me now that I've completed all the research and am only on unlimited tech. However, for anything else that uses that mat to create a higher tier item, they have higher priority. It's pretty complicated. But that's the fun part of it for me. It gets my brain going to imagine and plan out my production lines.

It'd go something like this:
Initial mat creation -> intermittent storage -> second-level mats -> intermittent storage -> third-level mats -> intermittent storage -> end product mats -> reserve storage

Those here saying they don't use storage are utter liars because the logistics station in-of-itself is literally a storage box. But you can have both. Boxes can only go up so much, they do take a bit of space, but that is irrelevant when you realize you can put belts on literally all the way up to the stratosphere, so you have like, over 10 (I counted 13 but I could be wrong, because this was last year lol and I don't remember what I did yesterday) different levels of belts in a single block. And with the new way you can bypass the grid, you can put way more than 3 belts in a space if you use ALL the space, not just the ground.

For my solar sails I have this going:
Initial mat refining, rocks. I have over 200K rocks in backup storage on my main factory planet, and each outlying satellite planet in my system and the neighboring stars have anywhere from 120K - 250K local storage themselves to help with demand.
Next is prisms, prisms I don't have much in storage actually but I do have about 80K in backup. Prisms to the next tier resources I can't think of the name for, I have over 120K in reserve, then finally the end product solar sails. I have a total of over 120K solar sails on reserve. I have not had the need to increase production of my solar sails (this is generally how fast you want the sphere, swarm, and shells to create/how many you can create at once sustainably). You do not need to increase deployment of sails unless you literally want to make something faster or are using the swarms for power as well, so for now, this setup works for me. Though I have begun imagining and working out a replacement for my setup.

My solar sail production line was created around my starting area. The starting area where I first began the game is an utter mess, because I had no idea what I was doing at the time, and it's the last area I need to revamp using what I know now. So that will take a little bit to work around.

Also for those that are saying power is a potential burden, sure, maybe early game, but once you get to mid game it literally does not matter. Just add more power production? The amount each individual sorter uses is miniscule, sure as you add more it grows, but why can't you just increase power generation? Lol. Your mini-suns are your primary source of power end game, some people will prefer to go to other methods so whatever works for you is good, it's a game after all. But power is something you shouldn't even be thinking about that much. Just make more power....

And battery backups. Please. You never know when you forget how much power you actually generate and you end up overloading your power network. I want more but I currently have 45 GJ of backup power which will last me about..... 5 minutes LOL. But it's usually enough for me to scramble and get more suns operational.

I love the way you explained this and honestly, this is probably the best way of explaining the storage box method.
I always disliked the belts due to the lessened potential of backup storage.
I also hate only putting down one storage box for backup.

You have sparked a lot of ideas my friend, thank you.

[kris44dad]

Origineel geplaatst door The Arboretic Truth:

Morning everyone!

So recently I decided to go onto twitch and watch a few streamers that were playing DSP. One of them was doing/is doing something I believe is extremely smart and surprising works 10x better than expected.

This gentleman uses Storage box's as the carrier of materials instead of conveyor belts, and it works a heck of a lot better than pretty much anything I've seen so far.

So my question to the players of Dyson Sphere Program is;
Do you use Storage Box's instead of Conveyor Belts? If so, why and how?? Can you provide examples and maybe explain why you do??

I use storage boxes as a buffer before going into a tower.

Also, when I want to have equipment shipped to me, I set the MAX in the tower to say, 100. After the vessel takes off to deliver the 100 to me, the buffer box immediately fills the tower back up, ready for the next request.

[umop-apisdn]

To be fair, every piece of ore that ends up in storage instead of being made into a product (and then a machine to make something else) is literally hundreds of ore stolen from future you. Veins Utilization research can make late-game materials effectively infinite; at the very least, it's possible to make the resources that are still in the ground in the lategame last longer than the computer you're playing DSP on will stay functional.

[aphfid]

I'd be interested in a link if you have one. I found Mnemomeme on twitch but not a video showing boxes being used as conveyor belts on Dyson Sphere. I can think of situations I might like to try this.

[BorneArboretic]

The only time i have seen Storage box's used to move material instead of conveyer belts was on a twitch stream. Since then, I haven't seen anything similar

[sabeliaree]

Origineel geplaatst door aphfid:

I'd be interested in a link if you have one. I found Mnemomeme on twitch but not a video showing boxes being used as conveyor belts on Dyson Sphere. I can think of situations I might like to try this.

I saw another streamer using it but attributed it to Mnemomeme. What people aren't doing in there calculations is stacking storage boxes. So you have one box floor level with your assembly and no automated storage spaces, then lets say you add 3 boxes on top of that with only a single space open for automation on the top box, but these 3 boxes all have 3 loaders. So you have 9 loaders not 3 loaders effectively between one box and the next box. Add that to stacking on the loaders and it's much faster to quickly move material down a production line while also acting as a minimal buffer. You need 3 different materials? 9 boxes on top of the bottom layer, with 3 loaders on the bottom filters for the 3 items you need. I think it becomes finicky that this method REQUIRES overproduction upstream, but this makes it easy to scale up and removed potential backups on the belts either on the loading or unloading end. It does scale up power as well, but power isn't a huge issue.

So when doing a single input line, this takes up more space, doing a 3 input production line, a little smaller footprint. That in addition to some finicky loading issue on setup and power usage, you can use the same trick around let's say miners and it alleviates needed to use sorters to keep one miner from backing up. Now the question I would have is we know loaders are inefficient and don't scale in end game builds for computation time, but what's the usage of loaders with boxes versus long belts with multiple loaders off them?

[thenonsequitur]

Not sure I see the point of using this method. Once you have logistics stations, ground transport of materials is only for minor stretches where belts are optimal. And prior to logistics stations there is nothing that needs such high throughput that belts can't easily deal with. And for places where a buffer is desired, logistics stations themselves work great.

I only ever use storage boxes for three purposes--as a place to deposit pre-ILS titanium/silicon hand deliveries; to hold my buildings after setting up a mall; and as a place to temporarily hold my inventory when I want to free up space for easier mass deconstruction.