Conveyors and their illogic

[Sable Winters]

So. I've noticed a few things while using the new conveyor system and manufacturing blocks. And that is that these conveyors are the most illogical, frustrating things to use. Why are they dynamic, and not a set direction? Why can't we just rotate a block that has a set direction? (I've noticed a bug too where, randomly, upon loading ((i guess?)) they're just completely reversed.)
Before reading the following horror story, if anyone has any tips or suggestions, I'm very keen to hear them, I need all the help I can get apparently.

I had a line running from a pair of silos up and around to a refinery and component factory, which was also connected to the fabricator. Well, come to find out, resources don't pause at the refinery to get refined if they need to be, instead they just carry on and gum up the works. Well, alright, I can solve that by jerryrigging the refinery to FORCE refinement. Well, okay, that worked but now how do I get unrefined resources there? See, there's no convenient way to join two lines together at a corner. At all. Infact, it's dang well impossible. Which means, out goes the component factory as well. See, I -could- make a round about for the materials to go around until they're refined, but I also noticed that the conveyors don't prioritize output slots, so again, gummed up. Think about having to craft the resource crates to transport them easily, or store them in block form in the SCU. That takes a lot of resources, right? And some of them are refined? What happens when the refineries are full but can't output? they just sit there waiting for an empty conveyor. The problem is, what are the chances that it'll find one? slim, unless you have a ridiculously large conveyor system. It'd be a whole lot easier if the conveyors had a set direction of travel, and you 'changed' it by 'rotating' the block, rather than this irritating dynamic oh I'll go this way, you want me to go this way right? NO, NO PLEASE STOP THAT, PLEASE! Oh I quit.

Edit: I forgot to add that filtering unrefined so that they don't get stuck at the refinery lets materials that need to be refined bypass it as well. There's no 'logic' ability in these conveyors, and I think we need to have a lot more control over them to be even remotely easy to use.

[Audion]

Originally posted by Raio Verusia:

So. I've noticed a few things while using the new conveyor system and manufacturing blocks. And that is that these conveyors are the most illogical, frustrating things to use. Why are they dynamic, and not a set direction? Why can't we just rotate a block that has a set direction? (I've noticed a bug too where, randomly, upon loading ((i guess?)) they're just completely reversed.)
Before reading the following horror story, if anyone has any tips or suggestions, I'm very keen to hear them, I need all the help I can get apparently.

I had a line running from a pair of silos up and around to a refinery and component factory, which was also connected to the fabricator. Well, come to find out, resources don't pause at the refinery to get refined if they need to be, instead they just carry on and gum up the works. Well, alright, I can solve that by jerryrigging the refinery to FORCE refinement. Well, okay, that worked but now how do I get unrefined resources there? See, there's no convenient way to join two lines together at a corner. At all. Infact, it's dang well impossible. Which means, out goes the component factory as well. See, I -could- make a round about for the materials to go around until they're refined, but I also noticed that the conveyors don't prioritize output slots, so again, gummed up. Think about having to craft the resource crates to transport them easily, or store them in block form in the SCU. That takes a lot of resources, right? And some of them are refined? What happens when the refineries are full but can't output? they just sit there waiting for an empty conveyor. The problem is, what are the chances that it'll find one? slim, unless you have a ridiculously large conveyor system. It'd be a whole lot easier if the conveyors had a set direction of travel, and you 'changed' it by 'rotating' the block, rather than this irritating dynamic oh I'll go this way, you want me to go this way right? NO, NO PLEASE STOP THAT, PLEASE! Oh I quit.

Edit: I forgot to add that filtering unrefined so that they don't get stuck at the refinery lets materials that need to be refined bypass it as well. There's no 'logic' ability in these conveyors, and I think we need to have a lot more control over them to be even remotely easy to use.

Filter conveyors are your friend.
Can you post pics of your setup?

[Sable Winters]

I should have thought about putting pics up, but I gave up and took most of the fabricator set up off it to save weight. Regardless, the filter conveyor set up for unrefined chunks didn't work, anything that had to be refined simply bypassed it and gummed up the fabricator line. I was aiming for compact, but I realized I'd need so many conveyors and such a large construction that I lost interest. I'm not good at building 'big' as it is. I guess I can set up the basic gist another time and post it. Also, I noticed something else - Silos will still accept resources even if they're full and they'll spit what ever out to fit the new stuff.

[ZeroGravitas]

The crafting system has accumulated a lot of bugs, with Payload's coders too busy developing multiplayer to get to fixing it up, as yet. It took me a long while to figure out all the types of thing that were going wrong, but I've added a few more bug reports to the forum that will hopefully making it easier to get it all working, eventually.

I think there needs to be a couple more crafty mike missions too, because the component factories are complex to use, and the auto-crafting AI is very specific about how it should work. There's a simple, functional design on the forum, if you're interested...?

Anyway, did you realise you can right-click conveyors to reverse them?

There really needs to be a good guide or two made for crafting. But, personally, I don't entirely see the point, until it works and is self consistent, at least. A little sad, for now. Sure they'll get there; it's core game play, I think.

[Sable Winters]

You can right click conveyors to reverse? No way... That... Explains a lot, actually. Well darn.

And you bet I'm interested, if I can learn work arounds, excellent :)

[ZeroGravitas]

Originally posted by Raio Verusia:

And you bet I'm interested,

Okies. :-) There's a couple snapshots of the mini all-crafter that DerNiepe came up with (and I tried tweaking) here in this bug report forum thread (may need to register): https://forum.terratechgame.com/index.php?threads/0-7-5-7-wont-craft-blocks-with-exotic-components-e-g-seed-ai-without-unnecessary-refinery.12133/#post-75529

Or, directly, this snapshot file (to add to your game's "Snapshot" directory): https://i.imgur.com/XYr6dNx.png

The rest of the trick is to feed it with compressed resource blocks from your inventory. To get a good supply of these, mine a bunch of Erudite (or which ever) to make a load of money, then primarily buy them from trade stations whenever available, or compress them yourself from various mining bases.

Don't worry about unrefined res, as you should have loads of most the basic blocks that need these in their recipies (as you get loads from killing a few techs). And you can always scrap some of those to convert between.

You can build a bigger storage system onto this manufacturing stub, later, if you wish. DerNiepe's example in that thread has a crazy compact silo system that really abuses the game's physic-less treatment of resources in silos. (I wouldn't use it though, as it will likely cause issues. ;-)

[Sable Winters]

Yeah, the save I have, I ended up putting 3 auto miners on the green crystal and mining it to extinction (one vein), sold every ounce of the stuff and made like 500-600k, ended up with 300k left over after building my first plane (YAY, life so easy now!) and buying many needed parts. My mobile platform needs a total redesign, it's got too many flaws for this to function correctly lol. Is there any easy way to use multiple silos?

[ZeroGravitas]

Originally posted by Raio Verusia:

Is there any easy way to use multiple silos?

Depends what application you want to use them in...?

And regarding refineries, just stick your refinery on your (large) input silo, and pre-refine everything (if going with my advice above).

[Sable Winters]

Haha, oh I don't know, I love compact.

https://gyazo.com/d544a539960e8362869aa3918e5cca58 Running into this, though, what are these blocks I need? (3 selected with red outline) One is a blank white 'block', is it still ingame? Or do I need the R&D Lab?

[ZeroGravitas]

Originally posted by Raio Verusia:

what are these blocks I need?

Ah, appologies. One is the tier 3 Component Factory dongle, another the venture fabricator, and lastly, yeah, the Pacemaker block from R&D. (You can build it without any of these for now.)

It's a little frustrating that you can't just load tech snapshots without some of the peripheral parts... The design is fairly simple though; mostly just a striaght line conveyor, with 4 component factories. There needs to be a refinery connected to the line somewhere, though, and dongles have to be arranged right, too, for the top tier blocks to craft.

In DerNiepe's design there is a loop-back conveyor underneeth, in case spuriously requested resources need to go back to the silo. He also has a second sneaky silo under the visible one.

You'd need to add scrappers and/or collectors (and a refinery) to the main/input silo too, or course. And your choice of fabricator place at the end.

[Sable Winters]

Ah, okay, cool. I'll try to replicate it when I get both time and the opposite of lazy :D

[ZeroGravitas]

You could just load it up quickly in the Creative mode, strip out the parts you don't have in campaing and re-snapshot it so you can load it ok.

Here's my actual implementation of the above linked crafter too (with scrappers and a little extra storage added): https://i.imgur.com/uUIJfgd.png

And you can of course take inspiration from other's builds on the fourm, like, I think this one by Zed should work well enough: https://forum.terratechgame.com/index.php?threads/zeds-tech-zoo.9126/page-4#post-78758

[Sable Winters]

I swear I'm blind... Yet another 'thing' I hadn't known about, I didn't notice Creative mode was actually a thing now! Thanks bunches :D