Good strategies for three mixed ore patches?

[Chris!!]

Whenever I start a new world there's usually like two or three types of ore with no space between them, and usually I just reroll the map until I get one where there's good distance from each other for easier set up of mining drills.

No more, I am tired of constantly rerolling the map. (If your only suggestion is "just keep rerolling" just don't bother posting, thank you.)

I've decided to make a design with electric mining drills with two spaces between them, and have them feed directly into a splitter that sorts the ore as it gets mined. This is fine for two types of ore, but it cannot work if there's three types of ore. I did make a hacky solution to this so that it runs fine, but I know it can be better.

So I am wondering if there's any good designs or strategies for dealing with mixed ore patches with up to three different types of ore? I don't like to leave gaps in the mining area, but will likely have to if necessary. Thanks in advance.

[Fletch]

You can place miners that overlap multiple patches, and then add "filter splitters" on the belt to shunt off the filtered ore-type onto its own belt. Click on the splitter, and you'll see "output filter" where you can pick the ore-type and which output belt to send that specific ore type.

3 ore types make no difference -- you'll need minimum 2 filter splitters to handle 3 types.

[Universalgenie]

That's the way to go. You can't balance the load with these mixed belts, so they will get stuck when a ressource is not needed that much. You should build one mixed belt from the overlapping parts of that patches and belts with only one ressource on it. Then the mixed one should be splitted and fed into the clean ones with priority.

[god bless you]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3407986545

[Chindraba]

Originally posted by Chris!!:

Whenever I start a new world there's usually like two or three types of ore with no space between them, and usually I just reroll the map until I get one where there's good distance from each other for easier set up of mining drills.

No more, I am tired of constantly rerolling the map. (If your only suggestion is "just keep rerolling" just don't bother posting, thank you.)

And here I am doing the exact opposite. I reroll until I find a map where iron, copper and coal are very close, and stone not too far away. Overlapping is fine by me.

This is the starting area for the map I used in my 100% game.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3408112183

Originally posted by Chris!!:

I've decided to make a design with electric mining drills with two spaces between them, and have them feed directly into a splitter that sorts the ore as it gets mined. This is fine for two types of ore, but it cannot work if there's three types of ore. I did make a hacky solution to this so that it runs fine, but I know it can be better.

So I am wondering if there's any good designs or strategies for dealing with mixed ore patches with up to three different types of ore? I don't like to leave gaps in the mining area, but will likely have to if necessary. Thanks in advance.

Good designs for dealing with mixed ore mining, in my experience, are unique to each case. I do try to reduce the 'mix' a bit in the early game phase when I'm using burner drills. Since they only mine from 4 tiles and at first I have them feeding directly into a furnace instead of belting everything out, I can place them so they are not mixed, but clean up a section so that when I place the electric drills the mix is gone.

The chief strategy is knowledge. The drills on mixed ores don't just put out the ore some mixture or ratio to match the amount of ore available. Each tile can only have one ore in it, even though the drill can cover 9 tiles and get mixed results. As the drill 'mines', it will work a few cycles on each tile before moving on to the next tile. It keeps doing that until all tiles have been tapped into. Then it starts over, with a few cycles in each tile again. For best results, then, it helps if the number of tiles for each resource is close to the same. 9 doesn't divide well by two, so equal probably won't happen, unless the drill also covers some empty tiles.

The next thing I try to do is make it so that the drills on mixed ores will exhaust their supply first. Whenever their belt interacts with another I give the mixed belt priority, even when that means using a splitter where I could side-load. I also try to make as few belts mixed as possible while making the mixed belts as mixed as possible. Sometimes the means running the belts horizontal when the patch would look better with the belts vertical.

After any splitter which is pulling off one of the ores I add another to do lane balancing before adding it to another belt and then I give the supply I pulled off the priority input when merging it into a clean belt. Again, to use up the mixed supply fastest. It also helps avoid jamming on the mixed belt upstream from the splitter.

The most likely order of jamming is coal, stone, copper and then iron, which almost never jams if the priority is set right on splitters. If a belt has more than two items on it I'll pull them off in the reverse order - iron first, coal last

There is one other thing I like to do with my starter patches, though it's not related to mixed ores. I like to use the early burner drill + furnace combinations to "clean up" the shape of the patch. When there's a little tongue of ore sticking out which wouldn't fit well into a straight line of electric drills later, I'll put the drill + furnace pair on that to use it up early. Cleaner lines of belts once I get to that point.

[knighttemplar1960]

What I have always done for mixed ore patches is set up the electric miners on the seam as close to a 50/50 split of materials as possible so that there is only 1 mixed belt. If my intended direction for ore flow is north I run the mixed belt south use a splitter at the end to filter the ore and route the belts from the filtered splitter to the back of the closest non-mixed belt. Since the ore from the mixed belts comes it at the back it fills the belt before it reaches the pure belt(s) and takes up the room on the belt first the other miners only fill in the gaps. This means the mixed ore line of miners will empty first.

With 3 types of ore you use 2 splitters, with 4 types of ore you use 3. I usually split off the type of ore that produces most in the mixture first.

You could also use a system similar to what I used for sorting processed scrap on Fulgora before I switched to bot sorting. It takes a lot of extra space but if you go to Fulgora before you have bots you need to figure out a belt system.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3408403450

When you process scrap the most common item you get is gears so those split off first. The rest of the splitters sort based on percentages of material output from most to least.

[Flash✪Gordon]

Originally posted by Chris!!:

I've decided to make a design with electric mining drills with two spaces between them, and have them feed directly into a splitter that sorts the ore as it gets mined.
This is a super idea. Thank you!

Originally posted by Chris!!:

This is fine for two types of ore, but it cannot work if there's three types of ore. So I am wondering if there's any good designs or strategies for dealing with mixed ore patches with up to three different types of ore?
Just add a second splitter!

Originally posted by Chindraba:

And here I am doing the exact opposite. I reroll until I find a map where iron, copper and coal are very close, and stone not too far away. Overlapping is fine by me.

I just have this. Each and ever stone furnace getting feeded directly from an electrical miners either standing on iron/coal or on copper/coal stops working. They fill up exactly one time (even cleverly: the miner first send only the 5 coal and after that only 100 copper/iron for the 100 copper/iron plates). So far so good, but after this one fill the stone furnaces stop working. Which I interpret that the miner wants to send no more iron/copper: The stone furnace slot of coal has it's 5 coals but gets no copper/iron.

I call this a bug, since the game AI does it exactly right the first time, but then fails the second time.

Finally I gave up and just built the miners exclusively on pure copper and pure iron.

[Biometrix]

Filtering mining drills are ALMOST in the game. ALMOST. They removed it because it "didn't feel right."

https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=118333

[Fletch]

Originally posted by Gordon✪Gekko:

Each and ever stone furnace getting feeded directly from an electrical miners either standing on iron/coal or on copper/coal stops working...I call this a bug, since the game AI does it exactly right the first time, but then fails the second time.

That is working as designed, definitely not a bug. The miner is a dumb and predicatble machine (no AI) and has no knowledge of what is downstream that is processing what it is mining, and what the ratios need to be to keep those downstream machines working properly.

Because you are direct mining from a split mixed ore patch (ex: coal/iron), directly into a furnace, you don't get a chance to visualize the problem -- but can guarantee that the miner will not output coal/iron at the proper ratios to keep the furnace working.

The miner picks a tile, and will mine exactly X of those tile resources (I think X=10), then the miner picks another tile and mines exactly X of that tile's resources. So you end up 10 coal, then 10 iron, then maybe 10 iron again, then maybe 10 coal, then maybe 10 coal again, etc. Eventually the furnace will be full of coal (because it needs less coal than iron to make a plate), and the miner wants to output more coal but there is nowhere for it to go -- so the miner stops. Once the furnace gets to the situation where it is full of coal, and has no iron, then the furnace stops too -- now the miner/furnace setup is what we call "deadlocked", and requires manual intervention to fix it.

To visualize it, instead of direct mining into a furnace: instead have the miner output to a belt, and then an inserter feeding "whatever from that belt" into a furnance. It may run for a while, but eventually you'll only have coal within reach of the inserter -- same deadlocked situation.

That's why you need to automate filtering of the mixed coal/iron belt -- and in the case of a single miner and a single furnace, you'll need to buffer the extra coal somewhere to ensure you have the supply of iron making it to the furnace.

[Flash✪Gordon]

Originally posted by Fletch:

Originally posted by Gordon✪Gekko:

Each and ever stone furnace getting feeded directly from an electrical miners either standing on iron/coal or on copper/coal stops working...I call this a bug, since the game AI does it exactly right the first time, but then fails the second time.

That is working as designed, definitely not a bug. The miner is a dumb and predicatble machine (no AI) and has no knowledge of what is downstream that is processing what it is mining, and what the ratios need to be to keep those downstream machines working properly.

Because you are direct mining from a split mixed ore patch (ex: coal/iron), directly into a furnace, you don't get a chance to visualize the problem -- but can guarantee that the miner will not output coal/iron at the proper ratios to keep the furnace working.

The miner picks a tile, and will mine exactly X of those tile resources (I think X=10), then the miner picks another tile and mines exactly X of that tile's resources. So you end up 10 coal, then 10 iron, then maybe 10 iron again, then maybe 10 coal, then maybe 10 coal again, etc. Eventually the furnace will be full of coal (because it needs less coal than iron to make a plate), and the miner wants to output more coal but there is nowhere for it to go -- so the miner stops. Once the furnace gets to the situation where it is full of coal, and has no iron, then the furnace stops too -- now the miner/furnace setup is what we call "deadlocked", and requires manual intervention to fix it.

To visualize it, instead of direct mining into a furnace: instead have the miner output to a belt, and then an inserter feeding "whatever from that belt" into a furnance. It may run for a while, but eventually you'll only have coal within reach of the inserter -- same deadlocked situation.

That's why you need to automate filtering of the mixed coal/iron belt -- and in the case of a single miner and a single furnace, you'll need to buffer the extra coal somewhere to ensure you have the supply of iron making it to the furnace.

I build this time on purpose a miner on a almost even iron/coal patch. Everything is exactly as you said. I was not observing good and long enough when I did it on my own: I had the (wrong) impression the miner first filled the coal into the burner and then only iron, which is obviously not the case.

Now you write I need automated filtering:

Is that only possible with splitters, or can inserters also be put into a selective mode?


==> So far I noticed that a yellow inserter. feeding stuff from a sushi belt into an assembler producing belts, intelligently picked the stuff that the assembler needed. Or was that only coincidence? I did not observe it over a longer time.

[Fletch]

Originally posted by Gordon✪Gekko:

Now you write I need automated filtering:

Is that only possible with splitters, or can inserters also put into a selective mode?

The new v2.0 version of the game allows you to filter with any inserter (back in v1, there was a special "filter inserter" and only it was able to do filtering). Just click on any inserter and you'll see a spot where you can set a filter condition.

[Flash✪Gordon]

Originally posted by Fletch:

Originally posted by Gordon✪Gekko:

Now you write I need automated filtering:

Is that only possible with splitters, or can inserters also put into a selective mode?

So far I noticed that a yellow inserter. feeding stuff from a sushi belt into an assembler which is producing belts, intelligently picked the stuff that the assembler needed. Or was that only coincidence?

The new v2.0 version of the game allows you to filter with any inserter (back in v1, there was a special "filter inserter" and only it was able to do filtering). Just click on any inserter and you'll see a spot where you can set a filter condition.

Okay cool. I do that the next time I run the game.

What about my last edited paragraph: This inserter was not set to filter. Is it right that the inserters to an assembler only pick the stuff the assembler needs? like the inserter of a mixed belt always picks 1 coal in the moment the furnace needs one?

[Fletch]

So far I noticed that a yellow inserter. feeding stuff from a sushi belt into an assembler which is producing belts, intelligently picked the stuff that the assembler needed. Or was that only coincidence?

In that case, where inserter feeds ingredients into an assembler, the inserter is somewhat "intelligent" in that it will automatically grab anything off the belt that it can load into the assembler. You don't need to set a filter on inserters that are loading items into assembly buildings - the inserters will do what is expected.

[PunCrathod]

Originally posted by Gordon✪Gekko:

Originally posted by Fletch:

The new v2.0 version of the game allows you to filter with any inserter (back in v1, there was a special "filter inserter" and only it was able to do filtering). Just click on any inserter and you'll see a spot where you can set a filter condition.

Okay cool. I do that the next time I run the game.

What about my last edited paragraph: This inserter was not set to filter. Is it right that the inserters to an assembler only pick the stuff the assembler needs? like the inserter of a mixed belt always picks 1 coal in the moment the furnace needs one?

Assemblers(and most other machines) have an inserting limit. Inserters will only pick up stuff from a source when the destination assembler(or another machine with a insertion limit) has less items than this limit. And stacksizes are much higher than these limits so you never run into the problem of an inserter trying to put stuff in that does not fit. And since these limits are per item type it looks like the inserter is being smart and taking stuff at correct ratios but in reality it is just a side effect of the inserting limit.

Edit: If I remember correctly assemblers inserting limits are recipe ingredients*2. If there is more of an item than twice the amount the recipe needs the inserter stops picking up that item from the source.

[Flash✪Gordon]

Originally posted by PunCrathod:

Assemblers(and most other machines) have an inserting limit. Inserters will only put stuff in when the assembler has less items than this limit.

So far I understand

Originally posted by PunCrathod:

And stacksizes are much higher than these limits so you never run into the problem of an inserter trying to put stuff in that does not fit.

Here I lost you.

What have stack sizes to do with the inserter selecting the right ingredients for the assembler and letting pass the other stuff?

[PunCrathod]

Originally posted by Gordon✪Gekko:

Originally posted by PunCrathod:

Assemblers(and most other machines) have an inserting limit. Inserters will only put stuff in when the assembler has less items than this limit.

So far I understand

Originally posted by PunCrathod:

And stacksizes are much higher than these limits so you never run into the problem of an inserter trying to put stuff in that does not fit.

Here I lost you.

What have stack sizes to do with the inserter selecting the right ingredients for the assembler and letting pass the other stuff?

If the inserter picks up something that cannot fit into the destination because it already has a full stack the inserter becomes stuck holding that item and cannot pickup other stuff that the destination still has room for.

For example a construction supply train can have a lot of filtered slots in a wagon and if a single inserter is responsible for putting in more than one type of item you may end up with an inserter holding an item that can't fit into the wagon. And because the inserter is holding that item it cannot pick up the other items it is supposed to put into the wagon.


Edit: just to clarify further. The insertion limit is checked when the inserter is picking up the item. And when the inserter is putting the item into the machine it does not care about the insertion limit and only the stacksize matters. So even when the assembler has more items than the insertion limit the inserter can still empty its hand because the stacksize is much larger than the insertion limit.