A tip to use the Stackers (mnemonic 8-8)

[Peter34]

I've been somewhat skeptical about how useful the Stackers are, and I'm still not truly sold on them.

However, trucks do spend a lot of time dumping to the ground, or into the ocean, compared to delivering the same quantity of stuff (Rock, Slag, Waste, Dirt, etc) into a single Loose Storage. It's simply faster to get rid of stuff into a Loose Storage than it is to dump it directly on the ground, so the trucks get more stuff done, i.e. if you use Stackers some of the time, then 80 Trucks can do the same total logistics workload as would otherwise require maybe 85, 90 or 95 Trucks.

Disclaimer: I've only observed this. dumping being slow, with the tier-1 Pick-Ups and tier-2 Trucks. I do not know whether the tier-3 specialized Dump Trucks are different.

Anyway, for the purpose of filling in the ocean to create land, if your desired land height is 2, with the top voxel layer being Dirt only, then there's an easy-to-remember number:

8

Set the Stackers to dump to a maximum offset of -8 (you can't choose positive 8, so you just need to remember the number 8), and space them 8 voxels apart. Each Stacker is 3 voxel tiles wide, so you want to observe a buildable distance/spacing of 8 tiles between each Stacker.

Then start feeding them stuff. They dump at 200 units/minute, the same speed that a tier-2 U-Shaped Belt can move stuff, so what I do is I usually set up 3 rows of Loose Storage, one for Rock, one for Slag, one for Waste, feeding into a Balancer. The remaining 5 exits on the Balancer then each get a tier-2 U-Shaped Belt, each feeding to 2 or 3 Stackers, most of which are paused. Then I unpause 2 or 3 Stackers at a time (running 4 or 5 means they won't dump at full speed, since the tier-2 Belts can't feed them fast enough). Once a Stacker stops dumping, because it's reached its desired offset height (-8 relative), I just demolish it then unpause another Stacker on the same Belt.

The result is peaks of stuff much higher than the height 1 you want, but the dumped stuff spreads out covering a lot of ground, meaning that once the Stackers are done, your Trucks can fairly quickly "fill in" the remainder to height 1. Once they've done that, you send in Excavators to remove the peaks, mining everything else down to height 1. Then after that, you dump Dirt, with Trucks, up to heigh 2, to get that pretty green layer of grass.

Obviously, if you want to just "dump ugly" then you can do it differently, experiment with different numbers, but the 8/8 thing has the virtue of being very easy to remember, and it'll give good results. I tried a distance of 6, and the peaks were too close together, it didn't feel efficient, and the Trucks cannot really drive in between the peaks, so 8/8 is a much better number to use.

[SpeedDaemon]

I hate having to have excavators at my dump sites, so if I'm using stackers, I usually set them to -12 to ensure I don't need them.

I'll have a balancer with priority to the stackers, and overflow into a bin set to empty, with one or two trucks assigned. Their dump area starts at the current flat area, and extends out to where the stackers' peaks are. When the stackers can't dump any more, it backs up into the bins and the trucks fill in between the peaks, at which point you can move things over and restart.

That said, I've only really found them useful when dumping a large volume in the same area, or off of very high cliffs. Otherwise, trucks are easier, since you can control exactly how the result is graded.

[VladK02]

I used to use stackers too. But....too complicated, too time-consuming. Just let the trucks drive and do something else. Its like SpeedDaemon said - stackers only work off really high cliffs.

[ni.frings]

I use my stackers simply at the end of longer conveyer routes on a big pile and use one dedicated truck and excavator to flaten out the land to get new land mass from the ocean. this saves me a lot of fuel and the pile can work as a buffer for my disposals.