Why the emphasis on "ratios?"

[Malidictus]

It took me a while, but I noticed that nearly everything in Satisfactory is either a multiple of or a divisor of 60. I didn't think much of it, but pretty much everyone I speak with seems to put a SUBSTANTIAL emphasis on getting the ratios just right, just perfect. A Mk2 belt carries 120 ore per minute, a smelter smelts 30 per minute, so each belt must be paired up with exactly 4 smelters, ideally split in neat quarters (and not 1/3, 1/3, 1/6, 1/6, say). Everything must line up with no belts compressed and no belts empty.

Now, I'm something of a dirty builder. I come from a background in Factorio where the large number of machines used typically throws off ratios anyway. I'm used to underestimating supply so input belts compress, overestimating product so output belts don't and letting the game sort itself out past that point. Yeah, it takes a while for machines to reach equilibrium since lines typically saturate from one end, but it does reach that eventually. With infinite resource nodes, I don't need to worry about suddenly losing supply so that should be fine... right?

Yet I seem to be in the minority on this. As I said, I've heard tall tales of balancing ratios from a number of people. I go looking for mods and find numerous similar-sounding Splitter/Merger mods with very intricate control over ratios. I go to look up something on the Wiki - say Power Shards - and find a deliberate note which warns against overclocking power producers because it leads to fractional resource consumption. Much harder to balance belts that way. Which it is, I agree. I even got into a protracted design back-and-forth with a friend over designing belt splitting the other day, over the issue of splitting evenly.

Please understand that I'm not looking to criticise or pick a fight. I'm just trying to understand. Why does this game seem to have such an emphasis on neatly balancing and splitting belts, even when a less refined brute force approach can work just as well? What am I missing?

[Vegas Doc]

I'm in the "Just having some fun, relaxing, getting away from it all" group. You're just reading post from a bunch of perfectionist nerds, who are taking a video game way too seriously, bragging to their Mensa Nerd brothers and sisters, how cool they are, and how much time they wasted doing the math, when they could of been riding on a truck with their red-neck friends and throwing Nobelisk explosives at anything that moves (the other end of the spectrum)! Yeah, some real fun there!

You paid $30 (maybe only $20 on sale)for the game, or maybe your parents did, that's the best way, good ole mom and pop, so you can play the game anyways that you want to, don't become a psycho mensa nerd, and try to figure out the ratios, the math, the way that they should of designed it, and you could do so much better, or anything like that until you really really really know the game and are trying to perfect your factory, people do it in different ways, the way that satisfies you, is the right way, don't worry too much about how they have fun, it's NOT! Happy Pioneering! take if from a pro life is way too short to..... well, it's really short, I know that at least.

[Nauskills]

I think people just really like the feeling of ''getting the math just right''
I don't see any any upside of getting the ratio perfect actually. I always prefer having a little bit more being produced than what is being consumed in a line, so that belts and machines are always full, and machines never stop for half a second every now and then because one of the resources required was just a little bit behind

[Maehlice]

Nodes are unlimited, and the map has more resources than the typical player will EVER tap, so there's no such this as "waste". Efficiency is done for its own sake.

(Getting the input & output throughput rates to match up properly is still important and worth it, though.)

I still mind the ratios for the lower tier raw/basic materials, but it eventually gets to the point where it's all but impossible to use everything to the nth degree.

[HuMaNgUtAn]

I like to plan for perfect ratios so that I know in advance exactly how many resources I need and can design the factory (architecture, logistics, recipes etc) around that from the start. It also gives you smooth constantly flowing belts which look great.

Also - you don't need splitter mods (or even splitters) to get perfect control of ratios. You can do it by over or underclocking particular machines to the exact percentage.

[DrNewcenstein]

Perfect setups are visually appealing to some. All belts in and out flowing constantly while blasting Raymond Scott's "Powerhouse" in the background:
https://youtu.be/r3FLN0iQ9SQ?t=96

(or the breakdown in RUSH's La Villa Strangiato, for the unwashed masses who didn't first hear it in Bugs Bunny cartoons)

Other than that, I'm not a fan of nitpicking. OCD is not a virtue. I remember a time when people were locked away in an asylum and given shock treatment for it because it's a legit mental disorder. Just run it and let it run. Pile it up at the input so the machine is never empty and never waiting. Just-In-Time is a lunatic fallacy in reality, just as it is in a simulation (i.e. "video game") and not a viable pursuit.

[zBeZz]

Game is trying to let you play your way.

If you want to be a perfectionist... there are tools and ratios for that.
If you want to play around and go spaghetti style... you can.
If you don't want to build anything, and just sit there sipping tea. you can!

As said, the people who usually are more inclined to share are those geared more towards perfectionist.

Me? I'm both. My OCD side kicks myself in the ass for building a spaghetti base. But then my lazyness gives up on building a ratio compliant base resorting to spaghetti. :)

[Aven]

You have 3 options:
a) Do the math
b) Manifold
c) Just build

All will take you to the same destination.

[Grizzt]

zBeZz nailed it. The game gives you the flexibility to play your own way. When just starting out, I was definitely of the 'slam it on the ground and feed whatever into it' player type. As I progressed and gained more familiarity with the game, I started paying attention to ratios, or at least roughly how much of something I was making. I had to as I moved in to Assembler recipes. I was just running out of materiel, and wanted to starting making better use of the resources I was already bringing in.

I watched a few "100% efficiency" videos (especially by Scalti), partly for building design ideas, and to dip a toe into really making efficient use of what resources I may have locally at a build site.

As I started to need 'more of everything', and being somewhat of a homebody (I didn't really start exploring far out from base for a long while), it was just a slow natural progression to want to at least try to use what I had to it's potential.

Having to keep power flow working reliably was probably the real kicker. Even before Update 4's power change to 100% consumption, it paid to be somewhat careful with how and how much, water and coal were going in to those generators.

I think the game does a good job of gently bringing you along and giving you options on how to build your factory. But there's no one right solution, only what you like best.

[John Hadley]

There's barely any emphasis in the game on ratios. That emphasis is made by the players.

It so happens that many people that appreciate factory games are engineering types that are most pleased when they achieve the most efficient design for something with as little waste as possible and to do that you do have to keep track of ratios. However, the game can also be played by architect types that appreciate building focused on aesthetics and visual appeal. These types would be more concerned with where and how they place factories and how they connect them together with the environment to make them look interesting and exotic, not so much with achieving the absolute highest input-to-output efficiency.

The game supports people that enjoy the engineering aspect with splitters and mergers and belts that have certain ideal ratios depending upon what you are sending down the belt, but it also supports people that enjoy the architect aspect by making a large and diverse map with many interesting places you could choose to build your factory to make it visually appealing. Both can advance in the game just fine and enjoy the part that they like to focus on the most and let the other aspect slide for the most part. Beautiful but less efficient, or efficient but ugly? You choose. There is no wrong answer to this problem.

[Malidictus]

Originally posted by John Hadley:

There's barely any emphasis in the game on ratios. That emphasis is made by the players.

I've seen this come up a few times and I wanted to address it, just so we're all on the same page. This much I understand :) There indeed doesn't seem to be anything I'm missing, but rather it's more of a personal choice thing. I was just curious as to what drives people into seeking perfect ratios to the extent that I've randomly come across it nearly everywhere I look.

Coming here from Factorio probably doesn't help my case here :) As I said in the OP, that game's craft times and modifiers and such ensure that ratios are never exact in pretty much any situation, especially with Beacons involved. I always need something like 93.5 machines to process all of my belt input. My blueprint tile is a stack of 10, one on each side of the bus. I can do 80 or 100, and 100 is too many. So, go with 80 and the lines just back up, acting as a buffer. That's sort of the mentality I came into this one with.

Originally posted by HuMaNgUtAn:

I like to plan for perfect ratios so that I know in advance exactly how many resources I need and can design the factory (architecture, logistics, recipes etc) around that from the start. It also gives you smooth constantly flowing belts which look great.

See, that's the bit I don't get personally. To me, constantly flowing belts are a sign of insufficient input. While that could mean that the machines hooked on to the belt are consuming exactly as much material as the belt is bringing, it could also mean that something isn't getting fed somewhere along the line. Maybe I hooked up more machines than the belt can feed without realising it and there's a shortage somewhere down the line. I won't know without examining it. On the flip side - a belt that's backed up and moving slowly is a sure sign that everything it's hooked up to is receiving more material than it needs. Sure, there could still be issues like backed-up output or broken lines, but that's not an issue of input, at least.

There was a mention of "waste" earlier, and that definitely is a thing. Belts are de-facto storage devices. Ideally, you want resources in machines, not sitting around on belts. However, I don't see these resources as any more wasted sitting in a belt than they would be sitting in a buffer chest. They're just "in transit." I also don't see backed-up resource-producer buildings as a waste for the same reason. The resources they aren't making aren't needed and aren't costing power since machines idle when they back up.

There is, however, one major issue with my approach to infrastructure. I rely almost entirely on line saturation to handle proper splitting for me, which means that the system generally doesn't work well until it's actually saturated. That requires an initial influx of resources and that can be significant. I'm working with a the Autopack mod (because I fell in love with Deadlock's Stacking Beltboxes in Factorio), which means it takes a tremendous amount of resources to actually saturate belts. Even at a packing ratio of just 20% (down from the default 50), that's still a LOOOT of material per belt. Takes a substantial amount of time before it fully saturates.

I can certainly see the benefits, though. Thanks for the perspective, everyone.

Originally posted by Nauskills:

I don't see any any upside of getting the ratio perfect actually. I always prefer having a little bit more being produced than what is being consumed in a line, so that belts and machines are always full, and machines never stop for half a second every now and then because one of the resources required was just a little bit behind

Agreed. I think I mentioned this above so I'll be brief, but this is where I typically stand. I always want to produce more than I'm consuming so that I have a buffer available for when I expand or something goes wrong. Plus, having compressed belts and full pipes brings peace of mind. One glance tells me that everything is working at capacity without having to check.

Originally posted by HuMaNgUtAn:

I like to plan for perfect ratios so that I know in advance exactly how many resources I need and can design the factory (architecture, logistics, recipes etc) around that from the start. It also gives you smooth constantly flowing belts which look great.

This is true. Having an idea of how much input translates into how much output is definitely important. My original quandary was with the seeming emphasis on matching the two. In my own experience, everything works smoothly as long as I'm producing in excess of what I'm consuming.

My general approach to designing tiled facilities in Factorio was to run a central bus of packed items, then split into horseshoes on either side of it. A "Horseshoe" is simply two belts on the outside of a stack feeding material inwards towards two rows of buildings, which in turn deposit output towards a central beltline between them. The size of a stack is determined by how much a single belt can carry while the number of stacks is determined by how much the bus can carry.

I don't think the same quite applies here simply because the scale of this game is so much smaller. Machines are big, but there are FAAAR fewer of them. Even the gigantic factories I've seen on YouTube rarely employ the "300 of the same machine" approach I used in Factorio :) Makes the math simpler to do, though. And the "multiples/divisors of 60" setup certainly helps.

[Zenthar]

Most of the time its fine to build factorio style and just overkill everything and see what it can handle. This tends to run into problems when you've got machines that output liquids though as over killing the input will clog the output unless you get the ratio just right.

[EntreNous]

Originally posted by zBeZz:

Game is trying to let you play your way.

If you don't want to build anything, and just sit there sipping tea. you can!

TEA? YOU HAVE TEA? Why I get stuck with this horrible strong stale coffee