automating smelters doesnt work

[Senor Smoke]

tried to set up chest full of ore -> arm -> smelter -> arm -> chest full of bars, but the arms just pass the ore over the smelter into the second chest without waiting for the smelter to be ready for a new ore
a little disappointing. once ive got the resources for automation itd be nice to be able to just pile my raw ores into an input chest & have them worked into the output chest over time
(also, and this is a tiny feedback, but id enjoy the arms more if they moved items 1 at a time instead of 999 at a time. i dont know when i would ever need to be moving full stacks of items around via arms, & getting to watch arms chug along to work through a pile when you do toss a stack into the machine is more satisfying than each arm just moving a single stack of 999 once)

[Xaelon]

You can absolutely automate smelters/furnace/big forge. I do it all the time when I set up drills. That way I can just swing by and grab a bunch of bars.

I'm going to guess you might have the arms pointing the wrong way. When you place an arm you want the arm's hand pointing at whatever you want it to take stuff from. Also make sure you're using the correct type of forge too. You cannot smelt gold in the basic furnace for example.

If your goal is to take ore from a chest, load a furnace and then move the bars into another chest your setup could look like this:

(">" is the hand on the arm in my little diagram.)

[Ore Chest] >==ARM [Furnace/Smelter/etc] >==ARM [Bar Chest]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3124996057
This isn't exactly what you're doing, but the main point is to show how the arms should be placed. In this setup the ore is being supplied by boulders but see how the belts will move any ore produced under the arm? The ore will then get moved into the smelter next to the arm and the other arm will grab bars and put them in the other chest.

[IonDrako]

Originally posted by Xaelon:

You can absolutely automate smelters/furnace/big forge. I do it all the time when I set up drills. That way I can just swing by and grab a bunch of bars.

I'm going to guess you might have the arms pointing the wrong way. When you place an arm you want the arm's hand pointing at whatever you want it to take stuff from. Also make sure you're using the correct type of forge too. You cannot smelt gold in the basic furnace for example.

If your goal is to take ore from a chest, load a furnace and then move the bars into another chest your setup could look like this:

(">" is the hand on the arm in my little diagram.)

[Ore Chest] >==ARM [Furnace/Smelter/etc] >==ARM [Bar Chest]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3124996057
This isn't exactly what you're doing, but the main point is to show how the arms should be placed. In this setup the ore is being supplied by boulders but see how the belts will move any ore produced under the arm? The ore will then get moved into the smelter next to the arm and the other arm will grab bars and put them in the other chest.

Nah it's a real issue, you "can" automate it but since there's no way to set conditions on the arms it'll keep trying to feed even when the object it's supposed to feed into is full resulting in the arm responsible for taking the completed items out also grabbing the ones left on the ground by the first arm over feeding.

Really need to have some form of logic input you can set on the arms themselves so you can actually automate or autosort without going through annoying hoops.

[Senor Smoke]

Originally posted by Xaelon:

This isn't exactly what you're doing

yeah ur right, that isnt what im doing & thats why the rest of what u wrote isnt relevant to my issue. makes it kinda weird that u wrote all that tbh

[Xaelon]

Originally posted by Senor Smoke:

Originally posted by Xaelon:

This isn't exactly what you're doing

yeah ur right, that isnt what im doing & thats why the rest of what u wrote isnt relevant to my issue. makes it kinda weird that u wrote all that tbh

Then feel free to share your setup and hope someone else helps you out. I'll see myself out. Good luck.

[Atma]

Originally posted by Senor Smoke:

Originally posted by Xaelon:

This isn't exactly what you're doing

yeah ur right, that isnt what im doing & thats why the rest of what u wrote isnt relevant to my issue. makes it kinda weird that u wrote all that tbh

I don't think there's any workaround to the issue that your smelter is full of ore and can't have anything added to it other than, y'know, emptying the smelter from time to time.

I've only really ever run into this issue w/ Galaxite and only because I got that scene w/ 3 galaxite ore boulders together which I have funneling into 2 smelters that do get full and I have to unload usually once an evening if I want everything to keep running properly.

Only thing I can really think of for you is to add more smelters to your assembly line somehow.

I'm pretty new to this game, just been playing over the last few weeks, but I've beaten it on regular and have been playing through on Hard lately. At this point, I feel like I have the basic automation down pretty well, but I haven't messed around a lot w/ switches or auto-sorters though I have a working knowledge of how to set them up.

[enlyghten]

Why not have a series of smelters with arms between them? On one of my worlds I belted all my ore into my main base on 4 conveyors (one from each cardinal direction) and I just had everything going into a series of smelters in a series. If one smelter was full or had a different ore cooking, or if the ore couldn't be cooked in that smelter, the ore went to the next smelter or the next etc. Any mob drops that got caught on the belt or any ingots that were done got passed down the smelter line until they reached the chest on the end. Why would you need logic?

[Senor Smoke]

Originally posted by enlyghten:

Why not have a series of smelters with arms between them? On one of my worlds I belted all my ore into my main base on 4 conveyors (one from each cardinal direction) and I just had everything going into a series of smelters in a series. If one smelter was full or had a different ore cooking, or if the ore couldn't be cooked in that smelter, the ore went to the next smelter or the next etc. Any mob drops that got caught on the belt or any ingots that were done got passed down the smelter line until they reached the chest on the end. Why would you need logic?

ooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
bc each smelter can only smelt a couple of kinds of ores my home line would only need to be like 10 smelters long for me to have a chest i can dump any ore into.
but.... thatd be 22 tiles long? ew

[Stellar Remnant]

Originally posted by Senor Smoke:

Originally posted by enlyghten:

Why not have a series of smelters with arms between them? On one of my worlds I belted all my ore into my main base on 4 conveyors (one from each cardinal direction) and I just had everything going into a series of smelters in a series. If one smelter was full or had a different ore cooking, or if the ore couldn't be cooked in that smelter, the ore went to the next smelter or the next etc. Any mob drops that got caught on the belt or any ingots that were done got passed down the smelter line until they reached the chest on the end. Why would you need logic?

ooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
bc each smelter can only smelt a couple of kinds of ores my home line would only need to be like 10 smelters long for me to have a chest i can dump any ore into.
but.... thatd be 22 tiles long? ew

Smelt it on site next to the miner, then you just need to deal with the ingots.

[Senor Smoke]

Originally posted by MiniHerc:

Originally posted by Senor Smoke:

ooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
bc each smelter can only smelt a couple of kinds of ores my home line would only need to be like 10 smelters long for me to have a chest i can dump any ore into.
but.... thatd be 22 tiles long? ew

Smelt it on site next to the miner, then you just need to deal with the ingots.

this is specifically for ores that i collect while im spelunking away from my boulders that i wanna dump into a furnace at my base when i get home without having to sort it and hten keep track of the furnace to wait for it to be done with the ore type & ready for the next and without needing to just pile raw ore into a box that i will then forget