Any easy way to organize Iron ore products?

[Nhika]

I feel like setting up multiple coal lines to combine with them doesn't help as much, any tips?

[Morsk]

The coal will flow much slower than iron on the combined belts. You probably only need one belt of coal, and can split off little belts from it to combine with all the iron ones.

[Songbird]

Here's some nice ratios:
Yellow belts carry 15 items per second, or 7.5 items per second on each side of the belt.
Electric miners produce 0.5 items per second (1 item per 2 seconds) at the start of the game.
Therefore it takes 30 miners to saturate a belt (assuming you balance the two lanes).

Stone furnaces take 3.2 seconds to smelt an iron plate, meaning they process (1 / 3.2) ore per second.
15 / (1 / 3.2) = 48 furnaces to smelt a fully saturated belt, producing a fully saturated belt of iron plates. (Splitting the belt into two half-lanes or two half-saturated belts leads to two rows of 24, etc.)

Coal is used incredibly slowly. One belt of coal powers at least five arrays of 48 furnaces, I believe?

Conveniently, steel furnaces (and unmoduled electric furnaces) and red belts are both exactly twice as fast, so you can just upgrade both at the same time (as long as you double the iron ore input) to process double the ore in the same space later on. (Electric furnaces are 3x3 however, so if you plan to upgrade them, you will need to build your initial setup with this in mind, while steel can just be placed on top of stone.)

[knighttemplar1960]

Several ways. You can keep your smelter rows short and split the ore and coal inputs on a single belt and use an adjacent belt for the output using standard and long inserters for input and output.

You can use a yellow belt of coal adjacent to a red belt of ore for the input and use standard and long inserters to take the input off the belts and then place the output onto a belt on the other side of the smelter and merge the outputs at the end of the smelter row using a splitter to recombine the outputs.

You can layer red underground belts of ore with yellow underground belts of coal in a single row using standard inserters to handle the inputs and output the plates on the other side of the smelters.

You could do 2nd and 3rd method and leave 3 tiles between sets of 2 smelters and output the plates to a belt above and below the smelters and then merge those belts onto a main output belt that runs perpendicular to the short output belts.

It all depends on how long you want your smelter rows and how compact you want your set up to be.

Steel and stone furnaces are going to be temporary set ups in any case as you'll want to switch to electric furnaces for smelting as soon as you have the power to do so.

[Hedning]

Originally posted by knighttemplar1960:

You can layer red underground belts of ore with yellow underground belts of coal in a single row using standard inserters to handle the inputs and output the plates on the other side of the smelters.

Have you actually ever done this yourself in a real game, or is it just brainstorming?

Also steel furnaces are best as long as you can deal with the coal infrastructure. They are more compact, cheaper to construct, and just as fast. If you are going for "no spoon" (for example) you will never build them.

[knighttemplar1960]

Originally posted by Hedning:

Originally posted by knighttemplar1960:

You can layer red underground belts of ore with yellow underground belts of coal in a single row using standard inserters to handle the inputs and output the plates on the other side of the smelters.

Have you actually ever done this yourself in a real game, or is it just brainstorming?

Also steel furnaces are best as long as you can deal with the coal infrastructure. They are more compact, cheaper to construct, and just as fast. If you are going for "no spoon" (for example) you will never build them.

Of course I have. I have over 1,000 hours in the game and have graduated through a few different methods. Most games I use a combination of them.

In the starting area at the beginning of the game I split inputs on a single yellow belt and use short lines of smelters due to tech restrictions. I just let that continue to produce while I search for a nearby area on the map that has both coal and iron ore in relatively close proximity. For that expansion I usually use the layered red and yellow underground belts method I mentioned but when I first began playing I used the side by side resource input that I mentioned that utilizes the long inserters. I also used the 2 groups of smelters separated by 3 tiles method I mentioned early in my learning experience but I don't really care for that method as it uses too much space and the material flow isn't smooth enough to suit me anymore.

Once I have electric furnaces I layer blue underground belts with red underground belts in a single line of input and output until I switch over to logistic bots. I usually leave each set up in place and just let it run and produce until I need the space for something else or the patches providing materials run out and even then I usually demolish at my leisure.

Screen shots of my current multi player save:

Start patch smelting:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2275638433

First expansion smelting:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2275638549

Staring main electric steel processing:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2275638882

Starting main electric Iron plate processing:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2275663991

Copper smelting area is currently a blue print of the iron smelting area but the iron ore input has been replaced by copper ore. As soon as I have enough beacons and modules made this will get torn up and replaced by a logistic bot and beacon set up and the entire area between the railroad stations will be filled with furnaces and roboports.

There are only 5 achievements that I don't have. No time for chit chat and there is no spoon are 2 of them and I'm not really interested in getting them any time soon. I prefer a more relaxed play experience and so does my wife (who is my teammate on the multiplayer game.)

[Hedning]

And in those screenshots you don't show any with coal weaving, but rather mixed coal/ore belt that I think 99% of players use.

[knighttemplar1960]

Originally posted by Hedning:

And in those screenshots you don't show any with coal weaving, but rather mixed coal/ore belt that I think 99% of players use.

You can figure out coal weaving from the last screen shot where its iron ore and iron plate weaving. You can also see an example of resource weaving in the upper right hand corner of the 2nd screen shot.

Its no different for weaving coal and ores.

[Hedning]

It's not about figuring out how. I'm not a noob. I got the no spoon achievement 2017. I asked if you actually ever did it, to determine if your suggestion was based in experience or not.

[knighttemplar1960]

Its exactly about figuring out how. That was the bare bones of the OP's question and the reason I gave suggestions instead of examples in my initial reply. For me the fun has always been about figuring out how. I have no interest in the no spoon or no time to chat achievements. I have over 1000 hours invested in the game so I have done ALL of the things I mentioned some of them were from early play throughs and I didn't take screen shots of them and I determined those first attempts weren't efficient enough for me and tried something else until I hit on something I liked better and refined it from there. All of my hours so far have been vanilla, no mods, just the basics. There are MANY ways to achieve a goal in this game which is why I find it appealing. Some times you do it a certain way because of the terrain the map generates. There is no right way or wrong way. The only thing that matters is achieving your goal at what ever speed you find comfortable. (Unless you are going for the speed achievements which I am not.)

I did logistic work most of my life and retirement has been VERY boring for me. This game is satisfying for me in the same way that my job was and for many of the same reasons.

Edit - Clearly we have vastly different play styles.

[Nhika]

I've just figured out how to weave ore and coal together lol, trying to figure out ways to add more additions as I unlock more tech; it's complicated :P

Maybe my third restart already just so I can make things look nice <_<;

[knighttemplar1960]

Excellent job

[Lunacy]

You could run a single line of coal along the start of your furnaces and use a splitter for each row of ore.

[Katitoff]

Originally posted by Nhika:

Maybe my third restart already just so I can make things look nice <_<;

*laughs in restating the game after launching over 50 rockets, because I didn't liked layout at the end*

Good thing is, this game got endless replayability.

[Hedning]

Originally posted by knighttemplar1960:

Its exactly about figuring out how.

It's not the question I asked. It's like you are incapable of having a conversation.

[Nhika]

Originally posted by Lunacy:

You could run a single line of coal along the start of your furnaces and use a splitter for each row of ore.

oh crap forgot that existed, time to restart again