Using multiple gates in conjunction

[RustyShackleford89]

I'm having a lot of difficulty trying to make lines that involve multiple variable gates. Example: using a counter and a caste line in succession. I try to make a purge line for those who don't qualify and it gives me a big X with a warning that the line is circular. To clarify, the example is maybe an ant that passes an "old"gate and the counter is full. Using the counter first gives an error, but using a caste gate first for some reason keeps ants from purging themselves if the counter is full. Is there some sort of standard or best-use that I'm missing? Logically, the purge line is successful but I'm still getting an error X on the line.

[Alleas]

so you use the counter gate then a caste gate ? why not just use the caste gate on the main trail to filter out the ants you want ? and behind the caste gate you can set whatever you want. not sure i understood it correctly tho, but what is it that you wanne create ?
wanne i can understand it beter then and help out

[RustyShackleford89]

Originally posted by Alleas:

so you use the counter gate then a caste gate ? why not just use the caste gate on the main trail to filter out the ants you want ? and behind the caste gate you can set whatever you want. not sure i understood it correctly tho, but what is it that you wanne create ?
wanne i can understand it beter then and help out

essentially I want to filter my OLD ants into the machines that make them into inventor ants or iron workers. But maybe I only want there to be 2 ants waiting to become inventor ants and all other ants to move along to the other machines. Using the counter gate with the caste gate first makes all ants wait at the counter gate and creates a bottleneck. I want them to move on if the counter is full but they still wait.

But with your comment, I have an idea that I want to try and I'll come back with my findings.

[RustyShackleford89]

Originally posted by Alleas:

so you use the counter gate then a caste gate ? why not just use the caste gate on the main trail to filter out the ants you want ? and behind the caste gate you can set whatever you want. not sure i understood it correctly tho, but what is it that you wanne create ?
wanne i can understand it beter then and help out

my biggest issue is that using counter gates with other gates creates an error on the purge line for some reason, even tho it works as intended. The error says the line is circular when it isnt

[Frankie]

What confuses me is that you say you get an big X. As far as I know a big X only appears if you go in opposite directions ---><--- , which in turn doesn't let the ants move forward anymore. Maybe you set your gates from the wrong direction or something ?

[Alleas]

so i made a old gate that goes into old trails, on the old trails i have caste gates that filter out certian ants and on that trail i have timer gates on certain assemblers and combiner (for the combiners i use a splitter gate after the timer gate) the ones that are not pickup up go to the recycler or back in the old trail, depends on what there are ofcourse.
if you set up the timer gates for example on a iron ant assembler (takes 10secs to create one) and you set the time to like 10 sec or a bit more you wont need a "line" for waiting ants

i hope this helps a bit out ?

[RiO]

Originally posted by Frankie:

What confuses me is that you say you get an big X. As far as I know a big X only appears if you go in opposite directions ---><--- , which in turn doesn't let the ants move forward anymore. Maybe you set your gates from the wrong direction or something ?

That big X also appears over a counter gate when there's a network loop. I.e. when the network the counter gate can 'see' inputs back into the counter gate itself.