Conveyor i/o priority?

[dimmu1313]

So I finally have a simple Aluminum (Alclad plate) production setup running at 100%. I *think* I've dealt with the recycled water properly by tying it back into the fresh water supply, then turning down the fresh water pump such that the sum of the fresh water flow and recycled add up to the needed 300m3/min input that I need (I think I'm at 60 recycled and thus 240 fresh) and that makes sense.

For the Silica, however, I have a weird number input (140/min) and generated output of 60/min, which leaves 80/min needed from my external supply. If I was near a Quartz node, I would just tweak my Silica production output to match the needed 80/min exactly. However, in my setup, I'm delivering Silica by train and currently have a massive supply in the Freight platform and a whole lot of industrial containers.

I can't use Mk 1 belts into a merger because that would limit to 60/min, and my production chain would get stuck. The Mk 2+ belts give too much input and my production gets stuck because the heavy flow from the external Silica causes the local Silica (from Aluminum Solution production) to jam up with nowhere to go.

Before now, I would just periodically dump excess fluid (recycled water and excess AlSln) and delete excess Silica. But now I want to leave the setup alone, so that I get regular, maximized (at 60/min) Alclad Sheets shipped in by train. But even with everything seemingly tweaked perfectly, since I can't regulate the external silica source being shipped in to 80/min, I still periodically (though much less frequent than before) get jam-ups.

I'm not quite ready to try to run a super long beltway to a quartz node with Silica tweaked to 80/min so short of that, I'm wondering if there's a way to prioritize the Silica usage. I read that something similar can be done with fluid by "kinking" a pipe to 10m height such that only excess fluid flows downstream (i.e., produced fluid is used first, excess is sent downstream if the pipe fills) but there doesn't seem to be an equivalent for solid materials with belts.

[Nazemec]

dimmu1313 eredeti hozzászólása:

The Mk 2+ belts give too much input and my production gets stuck because the heavy flow from the external Silica causes the local Silica (from Aluminum Solution production) to jam up with nowhere to go.

Send the excess into a sink?
Split a 120 line into three, send one of those into a resource sink, merge the other two to get a 80 line?
Or did I miss something?

[Timi]

For conveyors it's easy, since you can just set up a Smart Splitter, and set one output to the priority material, and other output as Overflow. That way anything that doesn't fit the "main" route goes to overflow instead, where it can be sinked or used for something else.

For pipes, I've seen the pipe trick shared before as a way to prioritize liquids. Have the less priority pipe split to the side, have a little jump on the pipe so it goes directly up and back down again, and whatever you want to do with the overflow beyond that. It might need a fluid buffer or something, but that way the side branch behind the kink doesn't get any liquids until the pressure in the pipe system grows high enough. Haven't tried that myself yet, however.

[Zara]

Nazemec eredeti hozzászólása:

dimmu1313 eredeti hozzászólása:

The Mk 2+ belts give too much input and my production gets stuck because the heavy flow from the external Silica causes the local Silica (from Aluminum Solution production) to jam up with nowhere to go.

Send the excess into a sink?
Split a 120 line into three, send one of those into a resource sink, merge the other two to get a 80 line?
Or did I miss something?

I agree with this solution, as it would be the easiest way to do it,

[dimmu1313]

Nazemec eredeti hozzászólása:

dimmu1313 eredeti hozzászólása:

The Mk 2+ belts give too much input and my production gets stuck because the heavy flow from the external Silica causes the local Silica (from Aluminum Solution production) to jam up with nowhere to go.

Send the excess into a sink?
Split a 120 line into three, send one of those into a resource sink, merge the other two to get a 80 line?
Or did I miss something?

You didn't miss anything because I have no idea what you mean by a sink. Do you mean a storage container? That would gum up the line when the storage container fills. I'm not sure what else you mean.

EDIT: nevermind, I'm dumb. I didn't realize the AWESOME Sink can exist in multiple locations.

[cswiger]

Yes, the AWESOME sink can be in many places, and it solves almost all overproduction problems.

Note that once you get silica sorted, you should double-check how your water setup is doing, since the recycling bit seems to be a bit funky long-term. Even though two water extractors plus the 60 cubes of recycled water should precisely match the demands of three refineries, I'd find them grinding to a halt after a while with too much water, until I flushed the water pipes.

Adding a pump to try and control flow direction didn't make a difference. Adding storage kept the refineries running longer before getting blocked, but that's just kicking the can down the road rather than fixing the issue.

My solution was to set up a forth refinery using the recycled water only. That shouldn't have made a difference since the total resources being produced and consumed overall didn't change, but it seemed to become stable without manual intervention.

[dimmu1313]

cswiger eredeti hozzászólása:

Yes, the AWESOME sink can be in many places, and it solves almost all overproduction problems.

Note that once you get silica sorted, you should double-check how your water setup is doing, since the recycling bit seems to be a bit funky long-term. Even though two water extractors plus the 60 cubes of recycled water should precisely match the demands of three refineries, I'd find them grinding to a halt after a while with too much water, until I flushed the water pipes.

Adding a pump to try and control flow direction didn't make a difference. Adding storage kept the refineries running longer before getting blocked, but that's just kicking the can down the road rather than fixing the issue.

My solution was to set up a forth refinery using the recycled water only. That shouldn't have made a difference since the total resources being produced and consumed overall didn't change, but it seemed to become stable without manual intervention.

I think I saw on the wiki page that it is necessary at some point to have a refinery consume recycled water only but for now my alclad consumption is low enough that i have excess, so i'll cross that bridge when i come to it.