Speeding up Belts from Coal?

[Mr Lahey]

I'm fairly new to this.......

I have a coal miner mk 2 some 800 ft away from my main base, feeding coal by belt into now my third coal burning machine. So I've got the main belt of coal split three ways, and then a fourth split to an assembler to build steel. The result is the chunks of coal are spaced out enough that it's causing energy outages every 20 seconds or so - a lot of start / stopping production.

That's even with the mark 2 miner and overclocking production a bit.

Is there any way to speed up the conveyor belt from that far away? Should I up the overclocking more?

Would it help to split the coal belt into two at the miner?

Thanx for any ideas.

[Suzaku]

Belt speed is your main source of bottlenecking in this game. If you want more resources, you need to have belts fast enough to support them.

[Naewyng]

Well check to see the volume of coal you mine vs the volume you can move with the conveyor belts.

For example: if you produce, say 180 coal a minute (120 for normal mk2 miner + 1 overclock), then a mk2 conveyor will not be able to take all of it, since it can only move 120 a minute.

If you do use a mk3 belt out of the mine, to be able to move more than 120/minute, check to see how much coal your burners are actually using, compared to what they're getting. You said you split it 3 way. if you produce 180 (assuming you have mk3 belt out of the mine into the spliter), then that would mean each band gets 60 coal/minute (assuming you use normal splitter and not a smart/programmable spliter).

Now go and check to see if your coal generators require more than that. Also remember that the splitter will always split them equally to all the belts. So if you have, say, 30/minute going into a spliter, it'll push out 10/minute for 3 belts (or if you only have 2 belts coming out of it, 15/min).

To my knowledge, distance shouldn't matter in this case. It should be all about the rate of production(and delivery)/consumption.

[aRPeaR]

Originally posted by Mr Lahey:

Is there any way to speed up the conveyor belt from that far away?

You can't speed up conveyor belts, you can upgrade them to a higher mark if you have the technology unlocked.

Originally posted by Mr Lahey:

Should I up the overclocking more?

Yes, if your belt out of the miner can handle the item/min.

Originally posted by Mr Lahey:

Would it help to split the coal belt into two at the miner?

I believe not, but if you give more information, like node purity, overclock %, current unlocked mark belt. Than I can help you further.

Miner mining speed at 100% by resource node purity:
Miner Mark Impure Node-Normal Node-Pure Node
Miner Mk.1 30-60-120
Miner Mk.2 60-120-240
Miner Mk.3 120-240-480

Miner mining speed at 250% by resource node purity:
Miner Mark Impure Node-Normal Node-Pure Node
Miner Mk.1 75-150-300
Miner Mk.2 150-300-600
Miner Mk.3 300-600-780*/1200
*Limited by Conveyor Belt Mk.5 speed which is 780 items/min.

Conveyor belt item transfer rate:
Mark Items/min Speed
Mk.1 60
Mk.2 120
Mk.3 270
Mk.4 480
Mk.5 780

[Mr Lahey]

OOo.....thanx folks. Great stuff!!

[Tenebris]

My recommendation is to not split coal from a single node between power and Steel. Dedicate the entirety of a node to one or the other

[Tenzek]

Originally posted by Tenebris:

My recommendation is to not split coal from a single node between power and Steel. Dedicate the entirety of a node to one or the other

Was just about to say the same.

[Mr Lahey]

the mk3 belts seem to have solved the problem. I used those for all three of the coal burner belts, and kept the slower one for the steel assembly. Power storage seems to help too. Steel is at a snail's pace, but whatev's. THANX!!!

[DrNewcenstein]

If you're in grass fields running coal generators off the small node on the floating island, you should be aware there's a Pure node on a high cliff above the giant crater.

If you are using that one, dedicate it to power only, and use the smaller one for steel, as it's near 4 iron nodes.

Also, run coal into a container first, and let it pile up, then feed the coal generators. It should be some time before the demand exceeds the supply.