Belt Balancing

[Pienapple]

I'm wanting to merge all of my belts from my ore deposits onto one belt before it reaches my smelter, but everytime I do so, one side of the belt is always full, and the other falls behind. Anything I look up on belt balancing takes me from 1 belt to 4 or 4 belts to 4 belts merged and I'm just trying to get 4 to 1.

Let's just say for this example my current ore patch has about 20 miners 5 on each side of the belt. This is pretty roughly what I've got in my save.

[The_Mell]

https://wiki.factorio.com/File:Lane_balancer_mechanics.png
Just use both 'in' of the splitter for 2 to 1.
3 of those then will be enough to go from 4 over 2 to 1.

[Catteus Of Mars]

sometimes i look at solution this simple and go "m i stupid?" :D

[RiO]

The_Mell eredeti hozzászólása:

https://wiki.factorio.com/File:Lane_balancer_mechanics.png
Just use both 'in' of the splitter for 2 to 1.
3 of those then will be enough to go from 4 over 2 to 1.

Catteus Of Mars eredeti hozzászólása:

sometimes i look at solution this simple and go "m i stupid?" :D

That solution is actually TOO simple though. It only correctly balances when both inputs to the balancer are fully compressed, and it has bias on the output lanes.

Balancers are really complicated to get right, unless you are thoroughly steeped in the mechanics and the math behind them. And that incomplete 1:1 lane balancer is sort of the canonical example of that trap.

Lots of smart people steeped in the mechanics and math behind balancers have done work to crunch out actually working designs though.

https://github.com/raynquist/balancer/blob/master/blueprints/balancer_book.txt

is what you want. No shame in using a balancer blueprint book.

[jamiechi]

I no longer use belt balancers on my bus. I use the Wide Chests mod to combine several storage boxes into a line or square. And I use the Miniloader mod to move the stuff from and to the belts. You can reduce the interior of the box to 1 stack if you don't want too much of an internal buffer. It allows perfectly balanced outputs in a much smaller space than using a balancer made from belts and splitters.

[RiO]

jamiechi eredeti hozzászólása:

It allows perfectly balanced outputs

Afaik miniloaders are lane-biased. In situations where the draw from the chest is less than a fully compressed belt but the in-direction loader has a fully compressed belt available, the in-direction loader will favor the lane serviced by the first to swing of the pair of inserters hidden inside it.

[jamiechi]

RiO eredeti hozzászólása:

jamiechi eredeti hozzászólása:

It allows perfectly balanced outputs

Afaik miniloaders are lane-biased. In situations where the draw from the chest is less than a fully compressed belt but the in-direction loader has a fully compressed belt available, the in-direction loader will favor the lane serviced by the first to swing of the pair of inserters hidden inside it.

Yes. I have to admit my system isn't always perfect.

Sometimes I do need to use logistics to change the priority of the miniloaders I use for inputs or outputs. For instance one miniloader will only output if the chest is above 200, another only if the chest is above 100, etc.

[fractalgem]

I'm not sure why you're squeezing it all down to one belt when you'll easily want at LEAST two belts of throughput to have reasonable throughput later on in the game, but you do you I guess. and maybe you plant to rebuild that bit anyways once you've got your starter base/mall going.

Personally I find the tiny lane balancers to be "good enough" 9/10 times. can look a bit ugly in some edge cases tho, but getting one side more used than the other generally means you have another issue anyways.

[Hedning]

RiO eredeti hozzászólása:

That solution is actually TOO simple though. It only correctly balances when both inputs to the balancer are fully compressed, and it has bias on the output lanes.

Too simple for what? I bet it is not at all too simple for his application.