Is there a more efficient way to equally disperse resources through conveyor splitters?

[Nemesis-489]

I have a large, no-upkeep coal factory that should technically run with no hiccups. but I have a few power stations that get starved and go down every 5sec, which could easily be avoided if I could calibrate the flow more accurately so all the coal isn't spilling out of the middle output and starving the side ones.

What I mean is, I could reach my desired efficiency if I could calibrate the splitter outputs 25/50/25. Which would feed my last four power plants just enough fuel, instead of it all flowing to the last two and leaving the set before them dry.

[Kel]

How much coal is your miner producing? what belt is the coal being placed on? How many goal generators are on that goal line/belt?

[Suzaku]

If you have enough supply and the belt speeds to handle it, then your method of distribution doesn't matter since it will eventually balance itself.

[Kel]

Originally posted by Suzaku:

If you have enough supply and the belt speeds to handle it, then your method of distribution doesn't matter since it will eventually balance itself.

Suzaku is correct... with one exception which has to do with mk5 belts trying to move 780 resources. Depending on your computers ability to handle all the processing and how you've laid out your belts. it's very common for the mk5 to not actually move 780 items per second, this is do to the background calculations in the game engine and the games in ability to process it correctly, it's the reason why we don't have mk6 belts.

[Aegis270]

Just build a manifold.

https://satisfactory.fandom.com/wiki/Manifold

Provided you have enough coal coming in to meet the requirements of all generators, the system will eventually saturate and you'll reach 100% efficiency.

Your system will likely reach this stage too, but trying to balance the throughput perfectly through balancers is space inefficient, the only benefit is that all machines will work before saturation, which is IMO a minor point.

[DrNewcenstein]

All coal generators set to the same clock speed consume at the same rate. If you have not waited for their buffers to completely fill, and the belts feeding them to back completely up before connecting them to the grid, you've done it wrong. It sounds like you're feeding coal into the center of the array and then distributing it to the left and right. If this is the case, you either have too many generators for your coal supply, or you did it wrong just to see material flow constantly.

Alternatively, fill up an industrial container first, then supply generators from that. This is similar to placing batteries after the power generators to ensure a consistent power flow.

Just In Time does not work. It doesn't work in simulations because it doesn't work in reality, so the simulation is accurate.

[headhunter]

Dont worry about it too much, as you progress you will need to retire all coal power because the coal will be needed for steel production

[DrNewcenstein]

Originally posted by headhunter:

Dont worry about it too much, as you progress you will need to retire all coal power because the coal will be needed for steel production

Maybe once you get to nuclear, yeah, but I keep coal power even after I get fuel generators running. No sense in throwing them away. There's plenty of coal for steel.

[PhailRaptor]

I've been having inconsistent behavior with my Coal Generators. Split into banks of 8, Coal Generators should consume a full Mk 2 Belt of 120/min. Some of my banks of 8 do work this way, others do not.

After waiting for the full manifold on all 6 banks of 8 to fill and stop moving resources, I started hooking them up. After a while, though, 2 of them have their last 2 Generators firing intermittently. I tried upgrading the manifold line to Mk 3 belts, but that didn't change anything.

And it's not the Water, either. I'm oversupplying with 3 Water Extractors, using upward U bends to control the overflow. Internal storage of each Generator is staying full of Water.