Anyone do science like I do?

[Big Dog]

Actually curious, no one on youtube seems to do this but it's how I do it. All my science goes into 1 chest and the chest is set on the logistics network and the inserters of the science factories to work only if there is less than 1k science of a pack type in my chest.

I see people run like double lanes of science into labs and I don't get it. What's wrong with 1 chest supplying to 1 lab and then all the other labs take it 1 by 1 from the first lab?

[conqueror_of_will]

Originally posted by Cat:

I see people run like double lanes of science into labs and I don't get it. What's wrong with 1 chest supplying to 1 lab and then all the other labs take it 1 by 1 from the first lab?

Whats wrong with just using a belt? They get the job done just fine.

If you daisy chain your labs they run slower. When an inserter takes the science packs out of the lab, it will take all of one type of pack(unless you manually limit the inserter stack size), temporarily stopping the lab.

[Fel]

It's not like there is only one valid method.

Your method has one drawback, which is that there is a limit to the amount of labs you can have that way.

https://wiki.factorio.com/Inserters
Even stack inserters with all hand size researches can only transfer 27.69 items per second from inventory to inventory (chest to lab and lab to lab).
Since you have up to 7 different science packs sharing the same inserter that means about 3.96 items per second for each science pack.

More importantly, labs feeding other labs can quickly run into issues where only a portion of the labs have all of the science packs at the same time (since you take them from one lab to give to another lab).


If you had several of those chests each feeding 4 labs that each feed about 2-3 more labs then it would be fine and you could expand it.


The main reason people tend to use belts (usually only with 1 lane per pack) is because it's very easy to extend and you can use the same setup from the very start.
The assembling machines pause on their own once the belts are full as well (or when the chest they are feeding doesn't accept more items and you can limit that chest's available slots).

[Kiranos]

Less throughput.

1 blue belt = 45 items / sec
22,5 per line (so per science type)

1 fully upgraded stack inserter = 12,5 items / sec
You could have 3 per science lab so 37,5 items / sec
Edit : sorry, it's like chest to chest so 25 / 75 items / sec.

But you have 3 inserters having to move 6 different science type, and you're limited by the internal stack size of the science lab (2-3 max) so stack inserters will be inefficient after x science labs and way before it happens with 4 belts each side.

[knighttemplar1960]

The only science I limit is space science because it produces faster than the other science packs (that's because it doesn't produce on an X per second rate it produces 1,000 per launch). I do that by wiring the inserters that insert the satellites into the rockets based on the chests that hold the science packs that load the train that carries them to the lab area. When I get more space science built up than I can use in a single trip (that isn't one full train of space science packs that's one full train of yellow science packs which is the science pack that controls my personal limits in my base's set up.)

As others have mentioned daisy chaining science packs has a maximum limit for through put. When you are building a mega base and going for 1,000 science per minute or more daisy chaining is no longer sufficient unless you build multiple daisy chain arrays.

[Big Dog]

ah ok so the inserter throughput is the reason. Makes sense. I don't really enjoy the super late game, I tend to start over from nothing when I launch the first rocket and try to do it faster.

[THE kilroy]

I Daisy chain casually cause its just simpler and can be cheeper. However when its time for business i dont daisy chain cause its much harder to reliability keep labs active at the same scale due to the speed and regularity of an inserter taking from 1 lab for another

[Nico]

Originally posted by Cat:

ah ok so the inserter throughput is the reason. Makes sense. I don't really enjoy the super late game, I tend to start over from nothing when I launch the first rocket and try to do it faster.

I also don't enjoy late game, but I instead decided to try out some overhaul mods to make the game more interesting. Since as fun the base game already is ... mods can make it so much better. And it also avoids repetiveness since those overhaul mods can make the game very different.
And yeah, limiting the whole science pack usage by a single inserter can really slow it down, I personally prefer to have belts to supply many labs at once, though you ofc can also make a grid, aka have one lane of labs picking them up from belts and then a few lanes behind that use inserters to grab them from other labs. As long as you don't chain too many labs it should work quite fine.

[Arcane]

Originally posted by Cat:

Actually curious, no one on youtube seems to do this but it's how I do it. All my science goes into 1 chest and the chest is set on the logistics network and the inserters of the science factories to work only if there is less than 1k science of a pack type in my chest.

I see people run like double lanes of science into labs and I don't get it. What's wrong with 1 chest supplying to 1 lab and then all the other labs take it 1 by 1 from the first lab?

I also started to do it lake that in my current game. I think it is super neat. And most importantly it is very easy to extend by copying.

You can have a simple array of 3 chests feeding into a single lab, you will have throughput of about 24*3 = 72 science per second. This is shared between all types of science. So it will be ~10 science of each type per second. This is high enough throughput IMO. And then you can just copy this array 100 times really easily since there are no logistics or belts to handle.

Originally posted by Kiranos:

Less throughput.

1 blue belt = 45 items / sec
22,5 per line (so per science type)

1 fully upgraded stack inserter = 12,5 items / sec
You could have 3 per science lab so 37,5 items / sec
Edit : sorry, it's like chest to chest so 25 / 75 items / sec.

But you have 3 inserters having to move 6 different science type, and you're limited by the internal stack size of the science lab (2-3 max) so stack inserters will be inefficient after x science labs and way before it happens with 4 belts each side.

1 fully upgraded stack inserter >25 items per second. Since inserter can spin more than 2 times per second.
You can have 3 boxes with inserters at the side of the lab. And 3 on the other side. So total 6 requester boxes with 6 inserters. This will be >150 science per second. This is WAY higher than any belt setup. Not even accounting for a mess that so many belts will create. 3-5 labs won't be able to spend 150 science per second even with the fastest upgrades and modules setup.

Also without belts this box-inserter-lab section can be copied really easily. You will have 2-3x research capacity for the same space.

[astrosha]

I daisy chain labs. It looks real cool with the mod Disco Science running.

I'll have a grid of 10x10 labs. I use Filter Inserters to move packs along. Although which side is which is irrelevant, I'll have Red+Green on a belt at the bottom of the array, with inserters taking from that belt and putting into that first row of labs. I then use Filter Inserters to move those two packs upward. Blue and Grey on the left side, filter Inserters moving those two packs to the right. Yellow and Purple on the right side of the array, Filter Inserters moving those two packs to the left. And White science at the top; with, again, filter Inserters moving the space science packs down.

This prevents a pack from dancing around; its only got ten labs to move through before it cannot move any further. It is possible to do something similar with any square (or rectangle) grid of labs. but, make it too large, and throughput becomes something of an issue. Stack Filter Inserters can only have one item set, while filter Inserters can have up to 5 items set.

[Kiranos]

Originally posted by Arcane:

Originally posted by Kiranos:

Less throughput.

1 blue belt = 45 items / sec
22,5 per line (so per science type)

1 fully upgraded stack inserter = 12,5 items / sec
You could have 3 per science lab so 37,5 items / sec
Edit : sorry, it's like chest to chest so 25 / 75 items / sec.

But you have 3 inserters having to move 6 different science type, and you're limited by the internal stack size of the science lab (2-3 max) so stack inserters will be inefficient after x science labs and way before it happens with 4 belts each side.

1 fully upgraded stack inserter >25 items per second. Since inserter can spin more than 2 times per second.
You can have 3 boxes with inserters at the side of the lab. And 3 on the other side. So total 6 requester boxes with 6 inserters. This will be >150 science per second. This is WAY higher than any belt setup. Not even accounting for a mess that so many belts will create. 3-5 labs won't be able to spend 150 science per second even with the fastest upgrades and modules setup.

Also without belts this box-inserter-lab section can be copied really easily. You will have 2-3x research capacity for the same space.

Damn you're right, I did the maths again and it matches the wiki data, it's indeed 27,69 items / sec from chest to chest.
(However the 13,85 items / sec belt to chest from the wiki seems wrong).

But isn't there a problem with the science lab internal buffer ?
If 1 science lab is empty, how much a fully upgraded stack inserter could put in at once ? 12 ? Or less ? (I didn't really test this for now).

And if you have 3 inserters on the left and 3 on the right, how do you daisy chain it after ? 3 inserters in and 3 inserters out ? Your throughput would be half the initial science lab with 6 inserters in, no ?

I like the @astrosha idea.

[knighttemplar1960]

Originally posted by Kiranos:

Damn you're right, I did the maths again and it matches the wiki data, it's indeed 27,69 items / sec from chest to chest.
(However the 13,85 items / sec belt to chest from the wiki seems wrong).

But isn't there a problem with the science lab internal buffer ?
If 1 science lab is empty, how much a fully upgraded stack inserter could put in at once ? 12 ? Or less ? (I didn't really test this for now).

And if you have 3 inserters on the left and 3 on the right, how do you daisy chain it after ? 3 inserters in and 3 inserters out ? Your throughput would be half the initial science lab with 6 inserters in, no ?

I like the @astrosha idea.

I don't know if you took it into your calculations or not but inserter swing from chest to chest is much faster than from belt to chest or chest to belt. There is time lost in the grab picking up from a belt and also time lost in the deposit on the belt.

You can also layer red and blue underground belts with one type of pack on each lane. which gives you a pack throughput on the low end (the red belts) of 15 packs per second. According to the wiki, base research speed for a lab is 30 seconds. (Caveat - when I timed it base speed was 90 seconds.) With max science speed researches (+250%) that gets you to about 1 of each pack used per 8.5 seconds using the numbers from the wiki. (When I timed it with a stop watch it came out to 25 seconds per lab [without beacons and modules]) and you don't have to worry about the buffer of a single lab affecting your entire chain. (The buffer for a single lab is 4 science packs and it refills that type of pack when it drops to 2 or less).
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2784151406

Using my observed numbers going forward, layered red and blue belts with 1 type science pack per lane will let you serve an array of 375 labs. Inserter swing and grab time become a non-issue with such long cycle times.

If you use beacons and productivity modules for a long line of labs (or you can snake the labs and cut the required number of beacons all most in half) you can affect 1 lab with 6 beacons loaded with speed module III. That gives you a 90 seconds cycle time with +250% for speed researches, +300% for the beacons, -30% for the 2 productivity module IIIs or 6.2 times faster than base speed of 90 seconds. Giving a single lab a cycle time of 14.5 seconds while producing an extra 20% science.

That still leaves inserter swing time as a non-issue and layered red and blue belts should be able to supply a single array of 217 labs each affected by 6 beacons holding speed module IIIs with 2 productivity module IIIs. Unless my math is way off.

[Arcane]

Originally posted by Kiranos:

Damn you're right

Woah! This is so rare to someone admit someone else is right on the forums.

Originally posted by Kiranos:

But isn't there a problem with the science lab internal buffer ?
If 1 science lab is empty, how much a fully upgraded stack inserter could put in at once ? 12 ? Or less ? (I didn't really test this for now).

And if you have 3 inserters on the left and 3 on the right, how do you daisy chain it after ? 3 inserters in and 3 inserters out ? Your throughput would be half the initial science lab with 6 inserters in, no ?

So in my opinion having 3 chests on one side is good enough. So I don't bother with two-way loading. I chain 5 labs and 3 chests can feed 5 labs easily. Then I copy paste 5 labs row with 3 chests and a bunch of beacons next to it. I can copy this setup 100 times in a minute easy. Then it comes down to the throughput of the logistics bots network and this is super easy to scale by adding another 10000 bots. Each individual chunk of 5 labs + boxes is not the bottleneck at all, 3 boxes easily handle 5 labs.

Given how easily copy-able it is I don't care about how much labs can 3 boxes actually handle. Does not matter at all.

There is a common way to setup 6 supply boxes per row of labs. You put half the science on one side and another half on another side. Then put filtered inserters in between the labs. One way you filter items that are supplied on that side and the other items on the opposite side. With filtered inserters they are not going to pass science back and forth.

[Kiranos]

Ok I see, so it's more like multiple smaller setup than big rows fed by belts.
And those small setup are independant, so it's easier to expand it, but you need to scale your bots too.

I imagined the OP trying to daisy chain a lots of labs from a few chests only.

[Fel]

Specifically a single chest feeding all of his labs, at least that's how he worded it.

[Codester]

Ew, no lol.