Vertical Load Balance

[SIDEKICK]

Manifold keeps leave the last 2 Coal Power plant without coal.
but Load Balance takes up floor space. so why not go Vertical

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2964727754

[ColdFish]

If your coal input matches your consumption, a manifold will eventually feed all power plants without issue. It will just take a while to get there.
There's literally no need for balancers of any kind in this situation.
All they do is reduce initial startup time.

Doesn't mean you should never build them (especially if you enjoy building those), but if you want/need to save space, just stick to a manifold.
You can manually pre-load the system if you don't want to wait for it to saturate by itself.

[SIDEKICK]

Originally posted by ColdFish:

If your coal input matches your consumption, a manifold will eventually feed all power plants without issue. It will just take a while to get there.
There's literally no need for balancers of any kind in this situation.
All they do is reduce initial startup time.

Doesn't mean you should never build them (especially if you enjoy building those), but if you want/need to save space, just stick to a manifold.
You can manually pre-load the system if you don't want to wait for it to saturate by itself.

im having an issue with Manifold for 8x coal powerplants which hunted me for years and seems to work on other players. this is my setup in my previous location.

1x MK1 Miner on PURE Coal node
MK2 Belts
8x Coal Power Plant each needed 15 per min

i even tried by manually loading COAL on each of the power plants first and making sure the line is really choked and slow moving. but after a while the plants are eating more coal than i can deliver. the last 2-3 plants are left with little to no coal coming their way.

[ColdFish]

Weird. That really shouldn't happen.

Just to make sure, your input line from the miner isn't stuttering (which would indicate coal backing up somewhere) and you run MK2 belts all the way through the manifold, right?

[cywizz]

I assume you aren't overclocking your powerplants?
Also, are you sure you are not running out of water rather than coal? Your load balancing image above shows mk1 pipes which has a max throughput of 300...Eight gennies requires 360 which will cause issues.

[kLuns]

Only 300 water fed from the right. Unless there is another supply outside of the picture.

The feeding belt from the left is mk1. Are you sure it's not a belt?

[GrimDuin]

Water pipe mk1 can transport 300 water/min. Each coal generator requires 45 water/min. For 8 generators you need at least 360 water/min pipe capacity. Or 2 pipes for 180 water/min each. It can be achieved with with 4 pump set to 75% clock speed.

And about coal, I can only suggest that someone double check your setup IN GAME, because this screenshot can be confusing in details of splitting coal

[SIDEKICK]

Originally posted by ColdFish:

Weird. That really shouldn't happen.

Just to make sure, your input line from the miner isn't stuttering (which would indicate coal backing up somewhere) and you run MK2 belts all the way through the manifold, right?

yup the whole lines was using MK2 belts. the lines near the last 3 seems very vacant.

Originally posted by cywizz:

I assume you aren't overclocking your powerplants?
Also, are you sure you are not running out of water rather than coal? Your load balancing image above shows mk1 pipes which has a max throughput of 300...Eight gennies requires 360 which will cause issues.

no sir , haven't gone that far yet, have not unlocked overclocking yet.

actually im having trouble with water as well. and some people explained that its because each pipe can only carry 300m3 of water and with my 3 water extractor giving a total of 360m3 of water it might not reach the end unless i make a loop connection to the end as well. BUT despite that, the coals above should have been choked and VERY FULL if water is the only issue. but they are very vacant. the first 5 or so plants are FULL but the last 3 are vacant. with only 1 coal unit animated coming out of the splitter each 5 seconds.

Originally posted by kLuns:

Only 300 water fed from the right. Unless there is another supply outside of the picture.

The feeding belt from the left is mk1. Are you sure it's not a belt?

no sir not this picture, i meant my previous setup which was a manifold setup. this setup is a load balancing setup vertical style.

Originally posted by GrimDuin:

Water pipe mk1 can transport 300 water/min. Each coal generator requires 45 water/min. For 8 generators you need at least 360 water/min pipe capacity. Or 2 pipes for 180 water/min each. It can be achieved with with 4 pump set to 75% clock speed.

And about coal, I can only suggest that someone double check your setup IN GAME, because this screenshot can be confusing in details of splitting coal

thank you very much i think this will resolve my water issues. but the coal, should really be full and choked if its just a water issue.

also can i ask, if i have 4 water extractors each set to 75% clock speed, wouldn't that give me 360m3 still ? but how does that resolve the limit on the pipes ? thank you

[ColdFish]

Errrr... I know you wrote Mk1 miner on pure coal node, but the place from your screenshot only has normal nodes, iirc.
You sure you are getting a full MK2 belt of coal?

Otherweise, coal side, I am currently out of ideas.

[cywizz]

You will need to split your pipes so that you feed 4 generators with 2 extractors (So have 2 separate pipe networks). You can not exceed the max 300 in the pipe on either end

[DerFinneAT]

Originally posted by DEADPO0P:

Originally posted by ColdFish:

Weird. That really shouldn't happen.

Just to make sure, your input line from the miner isn't stuttering (which would indicate coal backing up somewhere) and you run MK2 belts all the way through the manifold, right?

yup the whole lines was using MK2 belts. the lines near the last 3 seems very vacant.

Have you double-checked the miner is actuallly running at 120 per min?

I manage to end up with a totally correct 120 per min coal-plant setup from time to time, with letting the miner run at 90 per minute, and spending half an hour to locate the issue myself.

[YetiChow]

4 water extractors @ 75% won't overcome the limit on pipes. What it will allow you to do is run a "double-ended" pipe arrangement -- link the extractors in groups of two, link one group to the near-end of your pipe and the other group directly to the far-end (in other words what you're really doing is making two pipelines, each with 2 extractors, but they meet up to share their flow into the middle couple of gens.) You don't need to worry about valves yet, it's the same idea as using a manifold -- and you can keep one of the extractors at 100% for a short while to "prime" the system, setting the underclock gradually to make sure that the pipes remain full.

Or, since you're running multiple pipes at that point anyway, you can just split your extractors so that each extractor feeds into 2 gens directly (you can use vertical pipe stacking to save space), which actually reduces the amount of math that the computer is constantly doing to manage the water levels and thus reduces the chance of stuff getting weird.

That's the thing nobody tells you about manifolds -- they do sometimes skip a beat.
The simple explanation for why manifolds "falter": it's just travel time. If the travel time along the conveyor takes longer than the cycles of the machines pulling from it, then of course the machines are going to finish the cycle and pull a new item faster than those items are making their way to the end of the belt. Now, in theory the machines are always full... in practice, there are small moments (fractions of a second) where this isn't true; but those fractions of seconds do add up. So what happens is that if you have 8 machines in a manifold, then one "round" of items to feed each machine once is 8 items... but if the travel time to get to the end of the manifold is >8 times the length of the single crafting cycle for the recipe/machine in use (and remember that the cycles are fractions of a second!), then there's a chance that one of the machines early on in the run will grab a second item from that round before it has fully passed through and before the second round has arrived. Consequently, there's a very small gap created in the feed.

Over time those gaps build up, always adding up towards the end of the line. Hence why the last machine is missing so many items; every so often a machine upstream got that item instead of waiting for its own allocation in the next "round" coming through. That's why balancers never falter assuming you keep their inputs consistent -- you've already done the math to ensure that the rounds are distributed properly, there's no risk of an item being grabbed by the wrong machine.

You can avoid the issue by using belts which are much faster than the cycles of the machines pulling from them; there is a critical point beyond which the "item taken from the wrong round" can't happen. The missed beats become much more pronounced the closer the belt speed and cycle speed converge.

In other words: manifolds are awful in the early game when you're trying to do high-speed processes; and work much better in the late-game when you a) have much higher-speed belts, and b) are typically doing recipes with a lower crafting speed cycle anyway.

[GrimDuin]

Originally posted by DEADPO0P:

also can i ask, if i have 4 water extractors each set to 75% clock speed, wouldn't that give me 360m3 still ? but how does that resolve the limit on the pipes ? thank you

Imagine setup like this:
1. Two water pumps [75% clock] will produce 90 water/min each, 180 water/min both. Put that water in 1st pipe. Connect that 1st pipe to generators 1, 2, 3 and 4.
2. Other two water pumps also can produce 180 water/min both. Put that water in 2nd pipe. Connect that 2nd pipe to generators 5, 6, 7 and 8.

[sansee]

A general rule is to distribute the water as evenly as possible, no matter how many are connected in the system:
https://satisfactory.fandom.com/wiki/Coal_Generator?file=Coal_generator_pipe_analysis.png

In other words; you can connect as many generators you want together as long as the math checks out.

And in an 3:8 setup I always use Mark 3 belt to and on the manifold part of the system and then Mark 1 belts in the last part slow it down. Same here, the manifold system works well anytime regardless if it's early or late game as long as you've done the math.

tl;dr: Always check the math!

[SIDEKICK]

Originally posted by ColdFish:

Errrr... I know you wrote Mk1 miner on pure coal node, but the place from your screenshot only has normal nodes, iirc.
You sure you are getting a full MK2 belt of coal?

Otherweise, coal side, I am currently out of ideas.

no the one on the picture is from the current load balancing system.
the one i had problems with is from a manifold system.

Originally posted by cywizz:

You will need to split your pipes so that you feed 4 generators with 2 extractors (So have 2 separate pipe networks). You can not exceed the max 300 in the pipe on either end

thanks this will solve the water issue.

Originally posted by DerFinneAT:

Originally posted by DEADPO0P:

yup the whole lines was using MK2 belts. the lines near the last 3 seems very vacant.

Have you double-checked the miner is actuallly running at 120 per min?

I manage to end up with a totally correct 120 per min coal-plant setup from time to time, with letting the miner run at 90 per minute, and spending half an hour to locate the issue myself. :cozyrealmroyale:

yup on my old system ( not the one on the picture ) it was churning 120 coal. was MK1 miner but on a PURE coal.

Originally posted by YetiChow:

4 water extractors @ 75% won't overcome the limit on pipes. What it will allow you to do is run a "double-ended" pipe arrangement --

thanks ! this works. had 2 water extractor each on both ends for a total of 4. they even the distribution of water 240 from each end.

[Dragonmaster]

I generally just do 1 extractor per 2 gens and have that 1 extractor downclocked and ONLY work the 2 gens. Since a Water Extractor is pretty much the same width as 2 coal generators side by side, it works out to where water extractors are spaced out evenly for each 2 gens well as well.