Splitters

[ExoneratedPhoenix]

I just don't get them. I am saying to bias the right or left priorities on output but they continue to push out always on the right hand side.

I have tried a few YT tutorials but they seem to gloss over the fundamentals and start showing ridiculous 17 splitter setups for late late late game by 2 minutes into the video.

Are there any videos going over literally the actual logical gates? They look like "and" "or" "xor" gates etc to me, or very similar. But I can't get them to behave in a way I understand digital logic...

Any good VERY fundamental tutorials anyone can recommend?

http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Projects/CAL/digital-logic/gatesfunc/index.html

That is how I am visualising them - am I overthinking this?

[Jupiter3927]

On standard settings, they take equally from each input belt and output equally on both output belts.

Telling it to prioritize output to the left belt means it will try to put everything on the left belt.
Any overflow will go on the right belt.

Setting the input priority to the left will make the splitter take items from the left belt before taking from the right belt.
This is really a niche situation and I only ever do it when I'm trying to deplete certain miners.

With both input belts full, both of these settings basically do nothing.

Setting the filter will only put the filtered item on that output belt and everything else on the other belt.


Treating splitters like logic gates isn't how I do it.
I consider them as, well... splitters.
For all the settings above, It's prioritizing one belt over the other, nothing really special other than that.
The filter setting is great for mixed patches and uranium.
You only really need the video tutorials for mixing more than 2 belts together.
The hard part about mixing more than 2 belts is getting the outputs evenly prioritized.

[ExoneratedPhoenix]

Originally posted by Jupiter3927:

On standard settings, they take equally from each input belt and output equally on both output belts.

Telling it to prioritize output to the left belt means it will try to put everything on the left belt.
Any overflow will go on the right belt.

Setting the input priority to the left will make the splitter take items from the left belt before taking from the right belt.
This is really a niche situation and I only ever do it when I'm trying to deplete certain miners.

With both input belts full, both of these settings basically do nothing.

Setting the filter will only put the filtered item on that output belt and everything else on the other belt.


Treating splitters like logic gates isn't how I do it.
I consider them as, well... splitters.
For all the settings above, It's prioritizing one belt over the other, nothing really special other than that.
The filter setting is great for mixed patches and uranium.
You only really need the video tutorials for mixing more than 2 belts together.
The hard part about mixing more than 2 belts is getting the outputs evenly prioritized.

Belts have a left and right side - when you say left and right belts, do you mean two separate belts, "left" and "right" (up and down same) or left and right side of one belt?

I want to utilise the lefthand side of my belts, but they auto to the right hand side and splitters don't seem able to switch it to left and right no matter how I prioritise the outputs...

[Jupiter3927]

Oh those...
Splitters won't touch those.
I was talking about two separate belts going in and 2 belts coming out.
You have to get creative with your belts to force objects to one side of the belt.

[Machete91]

A conveyor belt has a left and right lane, and splitters do not mix those. Basically means one lane of a belt can clog while the other flows. The priorities control the 2 input and 2 output sides of a splitter only, priorities do not affect left/right lanes in any way.

[ExoneratedPhoenix]

Originally posted by Machete91:

A conveyor belt has a left and right lane, and splitters do not mix those. Basically means one lane of a belt can clog while the other flows. The priorities control the 2 input and 2 output sides of a splitter only, priorities do not affect left/right lanes in any way.

I am glad of this - thought I was losing my mind lol.

I assume they will be later techs.

[ExoneratedPhoenix]

Originally posted by Jupiter3927:

Oh those...
Splitters won't touch those.
I was talking about two separate belts going in and 2 belts coming out.
You have to get creative with your belts to force objects to one side of the belt.

Glad I am not misunderstanding anything then.

I assume later tech will use more logic gate type setups to control what side of the belt I can use?

[AlexMBrennan]

Are there any videos going over literally the actual logical gates? They look like "and" "or" "xor" gates etc to me, or very similar. But I can't get them to behave in a way I understand digital logic...

This has nothing to do with splitters so I am not sure why you brought it up but arithmetic combinators implement the standard bitwise operations[en.wikipedia.org]. This can for example be used in (de)multiplexers.

What are you trying to do, and why do you think the Factorio implementation is wrong?

[ExoneratedPhoenix]

Originally posted by AlexMBrennan:

Are there any videos going over literally the actual logical gates? They look like "and" "or" "xor" gates etc to me, or very similar. But I can't get them to behave in a way I understand digital logic...

This has nothing to do with splitters so I am not sure why you brought it up but arithmetic combinators implement the standard bitwise operations[en.wikipedia.org]. This can for example be used in (de)multiplexers.

What are you trying to do, and why do you think the Factorio implementation is wrong?

I am not claiming the implementation is wrong. I assumed splitters had a particular function which I now know they don't.


I am trying to get stuff that is on the right side of the belt onto the left side so I can utilise both sides for optimum efficiency. But everything defaults to the right hand side of the belt.

How do I get things onto the left side?

[astrosha]

If you want to take the contents of one belt and dump them onto one half of the (or another) belt, then use side-loading. Splitters won't help here, unless you need them for the filter functionality.

[ExoneratedPhoenix]

Originally posted by astrosha:

If you want to take the contents of one belt and dump them onto one half of the (or another) belt, then use side-loading. Splitters won't help here, unless you need them for the filter functionality.

What is side loading? If it is where I simply add another belt onto the side of the main one - it always defaults to the right hand side.

I want a coal/iron line so the fetchers can get coal for fuel and iron for smelting, but I am having to use a large footprint variant of two individual belts because I can't seem to get both lines selected with two different resources.

They all go on the right hand side no matter what belts I put in any configuration.

I am still early tech levels - so maybe something exists later on to fix this issue?

[ExoneratedPhoenix]

Originally posted by TwistedHelix3:

Originally posted by astrosha:

If you want to take the contents of one belt and dump them onto one half of the (or another) belt, then use side-loading. Splitters won't help here, unless you need them for the filter functionality.

What is side loading? If it is where I simply add another belt onto the side of the main one - it always defaults to the right hand side.

I want a coal/iron line so the fetchers can get coal for fuel and iron for smelting, but I am having to use a large footprint variant of two individual belts because I can't seem to get both lines selected with two different resources.

They all go on the right hand side no matter what belts I put in any configuration.

I am still early tech levels - so maybe something exists later on to fix this issue?

Edit: I have checked out YT tuts but they skip a lot of the mechanics, show a quick example in creative mode and very quickly change a few bits and all the lanes change, but they're not explaining the mechanics of why those things are changing, so it isn't of much help unless I do it by rote - which isn't as fun.

[AlexMBrennan]

There is no such lane balancing tech.

You can control which side of the belt items end up on by building T-junctions which will deposit resources on only one side of the belt.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2328096178

[astrosha]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2318768490

Use some variant of that for splitting a full belt of coal and a full belt of ore into two half belts to feed your smelting columns.

You do not need to have both belts coming up from the bottom, either. A single yellow belt of Coal can fuel 666 furnaces. If you have that coming in from the side, splitting off of the main belt to go to each side loader, that one belt can fuel 666/48=13 (and change) iron/copper smelting columns (one steel column would count as two, having twice the furnaces, assuming you are using direct insertion of iron plate to the steel making furnace).

What's happening there is the left side belt comes up, and half goes to the left side of the splitter, with the rest going to the right half. The splitter halves side-load onto the belt in the middle, each side removing half of the input belt's contents. The right hand belt goes under the whole contraption, and then has the same thing happen to it : the splitter puts half onto one belt, half onto the other.

[knighttemplar1960]

They are mechanical splitters rather than electronic splitters. Each side of the splitter remembers which side it placed last and attempts to alternate sides each itteration. If you have 2 belts side by side and there are no gaps on the belt you can run it into a splitter and each belt will maintain its intergrity (or purity) in regards to what products go where. If it can't alternate it doesn't.

If your flow is uneven because you have differening supply speeds or demand speeds then a splitter set up like that will do something like this:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2328397607
and once it gets saturated again yo'll wind up with a mess like this:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2328397709
You can fix it temporarily like this at least until the high supply side gets saturated and your belts dead lock.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2328397831
You are trying to make spiitters more complicated than they are. They are very simple gates.
This is the simplest way to do what you want with 2 different inputs.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2328397401
This is a simple single side lane inverter.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2328397481
and this is a simple dual side lane inverter.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2328397544

[ExoneratedPhoenix]

Originally posted by knighttemplar1960:

They are mechanical splitters rather than electronic splitters. Each side of the splitter remembers which side it placed last and attempts to alternate sides each itteration. If you have 2 belts side by side and there are no gaps on the belt you can run it into a splitter and each belt will maintain its intergrity (or purity) in regards to what products go where. If it can't alternate it doesn't.

If your flow is uneven because you have differening supply speeds or demand speeds then a splitter set up like that will do something like this:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2328397607
and once it gets saturated again yo'll wind up with a mess like this:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2328397709
You can fix it temporarily like this at least until the high supply side gets saturated and your belts dead lock.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2328397831
You are trying to make spiitters more complicated than they are. They are very simple gates.
This is the simplest way to do what you want with 2 different inputs.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2328397401
This is a simple single side lane inverter.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2328397481
and this is a simple dual side lane inverter.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2328397544

Those last 2 images is exactly what I was needing! Many thanks.

I am learning a lot tonight. This game is amazing, and I am going to enjoy learning all the gate logic etc in it.

Many fun weeks ahead!