Option to reduce Mk III sorter stacking factor?

[Raymoo]

After researching sorter stacking, I've found that where I have Mk III sorters pulling from and onto belts (where one of them is yellow) the throughput drops below 6/s. From what I understand, without the upgrade the sorter can move back and forth fast enough to make 6 round trips a second, and in parallel, the belts are moving items onto / off of the sorter at the same rate. But with stacking, the belts can no longer move items in parallel with the sorter moving back and forth, because they have to wait for the sorter to return. So while the overhead of moving back and forth per item is reduced, the overall throughput is reduced if either side is a yellow belt because during the longer round trip, the belts are unable to transfer items to/from the sorter's input/output cells.

This has caused some of my existing assembly lines to have reduced throughput after researching the upgrade. Could an option be added to reduce the stacking factor of a sorter so this can be avoided? Or a nicer solution might be to set the stacking factor to 1 if both sides are belts, and one of them is yellow (if either side is a facility, then the round trip time isn't increased). Then it would automatically give you the best throughput.

Currently, the only workaround I know is to have a buffer of green/blue belt long enough to hold the number of items the sorter transfers, though if I'm doing that then it's easier to just upgrade the whole line. Is there a better way to deal with it, without just walking around my factories and upgrading all my belts?

[Arcane]

If I understand correctly your throughput should eventually stabilize when all sorters pick up and hold some buffer of items. Performance of the factory should not drop.

That said there are some cases in advanced factory design when you need to mix blue and green sorters to make it work. For example sushi belt designs have that problem. How to balance items getting onto and off the sushi belt so that the belt does not get jammed. There are different balancer designs out there that require some belt and sorter tricks.

[Raymoo]

From what I could tell, there is no buffer for the sorters, if you mean something like the input port being able to hold 6 items while waiting for the cube to return.

[Kyrros]

If I need a constant uninterrupted stream of items coming from a Mk3 sorter, I just add a 2nd sorter behind or in front of it on the belt to fill in the gaps. Obviously the throughput of the 2nd sorter will dismal, but then again, it's job is not to run at capacity, merely to fill the gaps left by the one that is.

Though, I suppose a new 1-way sorter 'tube' would also be a potential solution. Would work like a ski-lift, it picks up and travels only in one way carrying item(s), but then loops back empty on a 2nd parallel track in the same 1-width grid line.

[Raymoo]

I just don't think it should be possible to make an existing setup worse once you've researched it. If I have to add another sorter to get the same throughput that I used to have, then it takes up more space.

[JuryCyber]

Originally posted by Kyrros:

If I need a constant uninterrupted stream of items coming from a Mk3 sorter, I just add a 2nd sorter behind or in front of it on the belt to fill in the gaps. Obviously the throughput of the 2nd sorter will dismal, but then again, it's job is not to run at capacity, merely to fill the gaps left by the one that is.

Though, I suppose a new 1-way sorter 'tube' would also be a potential solution. Would work like a ski-lift, it picks up and travels only in one way carrying item(s), but then loops back empty on a 2nd parallel track in the same 1-width grid line.

:sphere:

cool idea right their mate........agreed

[matke587]

I agree. A means to reduce the MK 3 sorter pickup is needed. The upgrade is only really meant for dedicated lines of materials, where the sorter will function with no issue regardless of upgrades. However on a line which has multiply resources the function of the sorter with upgrades fails, and indeed the upgrade system on them sorters is a "No-no". Example of multi-item lines are sushi everything malls for building buildings, where only 4 lines are being used to feed multiple assemblers each making unique items. So a means to step up/down how many items a sorter will pick up after you start researching the upgrades would be an awesome addition.

[Nekogod]

Originally posted by matke587:

I agree. A means to reduce the MK 3 sorter pickup is needed. The upgrade is only really meant for dedicated lines of materials, where the sorter will function with no issue regardless of upgrades. However on a line which has multiply resources the function of the sorter with upgrades fails, and indeed the upgrade system on them sorters is a "No-no". Example of multi-item lines are sushi everything malls for building buildings, where only 4 lines are being used to feed multiple assemblers each making unique items. So a means to step up/down how many items a sorter will pick up after you start researching the upgrades would be an awesome addition.

Sushi lines cause problems even with normal sorters, they're generally a bad idea all round and are best avoided.

[Raymoo]

The issue I described happens for single-item belts, not just sushi belts (which I have no experience with).

[Dirkels]

The problem discribed here are the reason I don't research the belt stacking upgrade anymore. So an option to set the stacking level per sorter would be welcome, that way we can use it were it does no harm.

[Arcane]

Originally posted by Nekogod:

Sushi lines cause problems even with normal sorters, they're generally a bad idea all round and are best avoided.

I ve seen working implementations of sushi belt with balancing designs. It is a viable technology. It does requires a sophisticated approach and solid engineering however, so I would not recommend that to beginners.

But it absolutely can work well and save a lot of space on belts. I.e. for some factories it is a strictly superior design.

[Arcane]

Originally posted by Raymoo:

The issue I described happens for single-item belts, not just sushi belts (which I have no experience with).

If you run in such issue I would recommend to upgrade belts to blue as well. Or otherwise use green sorters.

[lokieid]

why are you running a MK3 sorter filling up a yellow belt? Just downgrade to the mk 2 sorter that deposits on the yellow belt. only the MK 3 sorters stack.

[Raymoo]

Originally posted by lokieid:

why are you running a MK3 sorter filling up a yellow belt? Just downgrade to the mk 2 sorter that deposits on the yellow belt. only the MK 3 sorters stack.

The Mk 2 sorter only outputs 3 items per second, while the yellow belt can take 6 items per second. If I use Mk 2 sorters then I'll have to use 2 of them which takes more space.