Manifold is failing on me

[SIDEKICK]

i tried the Manifold system, ran the coal mines first, then everything is fully stocked with coal and the conveyor belts are not moving anymore. when i start the whole system at first it all went OK everything is running.

then later 3 of my plants are not working anymore and it appears the last 3 have failed to catch up again. my whole power is unstable and is fluctuating 345 to 600.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2830360169

i checked the water its full. 3 water extractors for 8 coal power plants and the water extractors are actually elevated higher than the ports on each coal power plants. no fancy stuffs just a standard working water extractors no water tank no U-traps or anything like that.

i had to go back to my LOAD Balancing Conveyor System. this time though i figured if floor space is an issue why not go vertical. so i have LOAD Balancing Conveyor System VERTICAL.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2830360449

its stable now at 600mw no fluctuations.

would be nice to know how i can make the Manifold stable though like stable permanently and not just temporarily then it starts failing to catch up.

[Suzaku]

Looks like you did something wrong with the supplying of coal if the belts are empty. Either you didn't build the belts right, aren't supplying enough coal, or ran into the occasional bug I've seen where the belt just doesn't work right (usually solved by rebuilding the belt).

[Vectorspace]

It looks like your main supply belt is a mk2,which is exactly fast enough for 8x coal gens. Make sure you didn't have a single piece of mk1 mixed in there.

Coal gens have a buffer inventory slot that holds a full stack of coal. With a manifold, you must preloaded your machines by filling that stack. In the case of generators, you can fill it by hand or you can delete the power line and wait for the generator to fill up.
Otherwise, machines earlier in the line will hog the resources until their buffer fills, starving the later machines for ages

[SIDEKICK]

Originally posted by Suzaku:

Looks like you did something wrong with the supplying of coal if the belts are empty. Either you didn't build the belts right, aren't supplying enough coal, or ran into the occasional bug I've seen where the belt just doesn't work right (usually solved by rebuilding the belt).

well it was a standard Manifold setup from left to right. Coal mine is making 120/m and each coal power plant needed 15/m ... first splitter is at first coal mine then the second then the third and so on. so i made SURE that before i start everything up, the coals have reached each of the power plants and stops sending.

the belts are built correctly since the whole system DOES work for a while, about 1 to 2 hours. then i start to notice fluctuating supply and i went to check the power plant and saw the last 3 plants have slow supply again.

[SIDEKICK]

Originally posted by Vectorspace:

It looks like your main supply belt is a mk2,which is exactly fast enough for 8x coal gens. Make sure you didn't have a single piece of mk1 mixed in there.

Coal gens have a buffer inventory slot that holds a full stack of coal. With a manifold, you must preloaded your machines by filling that stack. In the case of generators, you can fill it by hand or you can delete the power line and wait for the generator to fill up.
Otherwise, machines earlier in the line will hog the resources until their buffer fills, starving the later machines for ages

from the mines to the first splitter i used MK2 since it should be transferring 120/m coal. but after the first splitter i figured i use MK1 since that would just be 60/m since it was split and it would be less down the line. is that causing the problem ?

[Suzaku]

/shrug

I'd only be able to tell if you did something wrong if I looked at it personally, or had more to go on besides a screenshot of an empty belt. I'll just say that I've seen countless people say "I did everything right", and only once was that the truth. There was almost always one mistake that ruined it all.

[umop-apisdn]

If you placed your splitters on pre-existing Mk.1 belts, then upgraded the belts to Mk.2, there are still pieces of Mk.1 belts inside your splitters.

[umop-apisdn]

Originally posted by DEADPO0P:

from the mines to the first splitter i used MK2 since it should be transferring 120/m coal. but after the first splitter i figured i use MK1 since that would just be 60/m since it was split and it would be less down the line. is that causing the problem ?

Oh, there it is. Yeah, you didn't math correctly.
You need Mk.2 for the first 4 coal generators, then you can switch to Mk.1 for the last 4.

[Mister Fabulous]

Originally posted by DEADPO0P:

from the mines to the first splitter i used MK2 since it should be transferring 120/m coal. but after the first splitter i figured i use MK1 since that would just be 60/m since it was split and it would be less down the line. is that causing the problem ?

Yes, this is the issue. The coal generator will fill at a rate of 60/m consuming 15/m until it is full. Then the belt after the first splitter will be sending an average of 105/m down. It needs to be a mk 2 belt, not mk 1.

Personally, I use the highest speed belts I have between all the splitters all the way down until the end. It's not any better/worse to have the belts always be exactly the speed they need to be with something like a manifold.

[Vectorspace]

If you do not pre-fill your generators with coal then as soon as they are started, the first gen will pull 60/m coal until its buffer is full, leaving only 60/m for the rest of the gens.
The 2nd will pull 30/m, the 3rd 15/m, and the 4th will only have 7.5/m, half of what it needs. And so on

Eventually the earlier machine's buffers will fill, so eventually the later machines will get their full amount of coal. But it will take hours upon hours.

So with a manifold, you must preloaded your machines to ensure they all work at full speed immediately

[umop-apisdn]

Originally posted by Vectorspace:

Eventually the earlier machine's buffers will fill, so eventually the later machines will get their full amount of coal. But it will take hours upon hours.

You misspelled "a few minutes", there, bud. 8 generators on a single-line saturated Mk.2 manifold should take 15-20 minutes to stabilize, tops... even if you started it with an empty belt.

Edited to add the supporting math:
First generator pulls 60/minute off the 120 line... for less than 2 minutes, at which point it's leaving 105/minute on the line.
Second generator was pulling 30/minute off the line for ~ 2minutes, then pulls 52.5/minute for a minute or so before it fills up and leaves 90/minute on the line.
Third generator has been running steadily the whole time (was receiving at least 15/minute for the first 2 minutes, and by the end of minute 3 is starting to fill at 30/minute while burning 15/minute more... 3 minutes after that, it's full and begins leaving 75/minute on the line.
We're now at 6 minutes from "go".

Fourth generator is hogging some of the coal, starving 5, 6, 7, and 8 until it fills up a few minutes later. Fifth generator struggles to fill, but is still pulling half of a 60 coal/minute line, so it takes less than 6 minutes from that point before generator 6 starts filling... which takes no more than 8 more minutes.

At that point, with 30 coal/minute on the line and only 1 remaining split, both remaining generators are receiving 15/minute.

[Man's Best Friend]

Well your first image doesn't show anything useful, so can't make any actual suggestions based on that. Just that I've fed several coal setups with a manifold just fine. Personally I set them up in paired rows for compactness, since there's no outputs to worry about.

Though thinking about it, you say that the "whole system is stocked" before "turning it all on."
That might be your problem right there oddly enough. I'm pretty sure power plants (and most buildings actually) don't actually accept solid inputs if they're unpowered or in standby. Since it sounds like you're leaving them all off or disconnected until the belts stop moving, they're not actually filling with coal. You have to connect them one at a time so they actually start filling their buffers properly. If you don't want to wait for them to fill naturally, you could start the whole project by putting in a storage container to collect coal while you build the rest of the plant. Then when it comes to starting it up, grab a bunch of coal and manually preload the buffers.

The system as first built probably would have eventually reached equilibrium, but it would take a very long time. It worked at the start because the belts acted as buffers themselves, and delayed how long it would be until you noticed that something was up. But given enough time it would have stabilized. Except maybe the last one in the line since it would be getting exactly what it required.

[SIDEKICK]

Originally posted by Suzaku:

/shrug

I'd only be able to tell if you did something wrong if I looked at it personally, or had more to go on besides a screenshot of an empty belt.

ill try to record the old system and show the setup. or maybe i can provide my own SAVE copy ? i don't know if that is even possible

Originally posted by umop-apisdn:

Oh, there it is. Yeah, you didn't math correctly. You need Mk.2 for the first 4 coal generators, then you can switch to Mk.1 for the last 4.

but how was that ? in the first splitter it splits the 120/min coal to 2x 60/min coal which only requires an MK1 belt. i thought the only time i needed MK2 belt was from COAL MINE which produces 120/min coal.

Originally posted by Mister Fabulous:

Yes, this is the issue. The coal generator will fill at a rate of 60/m consuming 15/m until it is full. Then the belt after the first splitter will be sending an average of 105/m down. It needs to be a mk 2 belt, not mk 1.

Originally posted by Vectorspace:

If you do not pre-fill your generators with coal then as soon as they are started, the first gen will pull 60/m coal until its buffer is full, leaving only 60/m for the rest of the gens. The 2nd will pull 30/m, the 3rd 15/m, and the 4th will only have 7.5/m, half of what it needs. And so on

GUYS thanks for the help i really appreciate it. im starting to understand that im treating the game very straight forward and im missing something BIG.

the MATH is very confusing to me. a POWERPLANT that consumes 15/min(OUTPUT) regardless of how much internal buffer it has or how fast it takes in COAL should in theory still be taking in 15/min after its buffer is full. INPUT 60/min vs OUTPUT 15/min means it cant take in anymore COAL faster than it can burn.

add to my confusion is why it requires an MK2 belt (120/min) if the POWERPLANT burns only 15/min regardless of how fast it takes in COAL (60/min) or how fast the belt is feeding it to the POWERPLANT (MK2 120/min) it should be full since its taking in more than its burning.

now i know you guys are correct and this is how the game works i just don't understand the math. its all so troublesome and one minor issue in the line like water not filling up could push me back another 30min or more to re-fill the entire facility.

i think ill have to stick with vertical load balancing for now since its not giving me any issues and is more stable.

the Manifold system is aesthetically pleasing though and is very neat to design.

[Suzaku]

Originally posted by DEADPO0P:

Originally posted by umop-apisdn:

Oh, there it is. Yeah, you didn't math correctly. You need Mk.2 for the first 4 coal generators, then you can switch to Mk.1 for the last 4.

but how was that ? in the first splitter it splits the 120/min coal to 2x 60/min coal which only requires an MK1 belt. i thought the only time i needed MK2 belt was from COAL MINE which produces 120/min coal.

Originally posted by Mister Fabulous:

Yes, this is the issue. The coal generator will fill at a rate of 60/m consuming 15/m until it is full. Then the belt after the first splitter will be sending an average of 105/m down. It needs to be a mk 2 belt, not mk 1.

As they said, the first splitter will be dividing the 120 coal/min into 60/min to the first generator, and 60/min down the rest of the line. HOWEVER, once the first generator fills up completely, it can only accept coal at the rate that it can consume it; that being a rate of 15/min. So now the first splitter is splitting the resources 15/min and 105/min. This is why you still need a mk2 belt moving down the line, because the mk1 isn't fast enough and has now become a chokepoint. Now the second splitter is splitting the 105/min into 52.5/min out of the 2 sides. Then the coal gen fills up, and becomes 15/min and 90/min; still need that mk2 belt. This process repeats down the line until the final generators are receiving the exact amount of resources needed to function.

[phadin]

When it comes to running power, I tend to stay away from manifold setup. I find it a bit too unreliable because of the dependency on filling up resource inventories AND the conveyor inventories to get sustained supply down the line. I prefer setting up proper splitters so each gets fed what they need without depending on overloading supply. It gets things up and running faster, and sustains just as well.

[SpaceWombat]

Did you set your miner clock speed to the max of your belt? If all your math is correct and you've pre-loaded then manifold cannot fail. You might have some unupgraded belts bottlenecking you somewhere.