Smart Merger

[Daz the Lemur]

I'm not sure if I'm mixing up things between DSP, Satis, modded Minecraft, Foundry, etc., but I was sure we had smart mergers before.
A merger where you can set a priority input. If I'm wrong and we never had one, then why not? For example I would like to use the Silica that comes from my Alu production first for the electronics before having to crush up quartz for more.
We have a Smart Splitter, after all...
I really like how DSP handles it. Much more convenient and so easy to use, and all in one thing.
On that same note, a smart fluid junction would be fantastic.

[Kage Goomba]

Nope - likely a mod out there if you really want.

Only suggestion is mergers are sequential just like splitters.

So whatever is "merged" or "split" first in line is always going to go first in that sequence.

Course not sure id approach it that way but then I don't know what your really doing either.

Id go at it from the splitter side of the coin.

Whatever is "Consuming" first is going to get first dibs.

Example - I've got a Turbofuel plant that I'm using to crank out a ton of plastic - but I'm slicing a small portion of that for packaged turbo fuel for personal use - so its first in line before its shipped off.

As such - the packaged turbofuel gets first slice and the leftovers move on.

[Daz the Lemur]

I never used mods with Satis in the past, only now I picked up the larger blueprint chambers mod, and only for making blueprints in a creative save, to later use in my normal vanilla save, since the blueprints made in those are useable in vanilla albeit oversized.

However your solution still wont do what a priority merger can do. If you've played DSP before you'd know what i mean. A merger that has a set priority input will block every other input so long as stuff from the priority input comes in. Once that input runs dry, it lets in the other sides.

And as far as Satis mergers goes, arent they round robin? As far as i could observer the satis mergers let every input have a turn regardless of where and what it is.

[Kage Goomba]

Originally posted by Daz the Lemur:

I never used mods with Satis in the past, only now I picked up the larger blueprint chambers mod, and only for making blueprints in a creative save, to later use in my normal vanilla save, since the blueprints made in those are useable in vanilla albeit oversized.

However your solution still wont do what a priority merger can do. If you've played DSP before you'd know what i mean. A merger that has a set priority input will block every other input so long as stuff from the priority input comes in. Once that input runs dry, it lets in the other sides.

And as far as Satis mergers goes, arent they round robin? As far as i could observer the satis mergers let every input have a turn regardless of where and what it is.

Just simply 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3.
Ports are skipped if something is blocked or not connected.

You either mod - or you rethink your issue - which honestly sounds like your over-complicating it.

[Daz the Lemur]

Originally posted by Kage Goomba:

Originally posted by Daz the Lemur:

I never used mods with Satis in the past, only now I picked up the larger blueprint chambers mod, and only for making blueprints in a creative save, to later use in my normal vanilla save, since the blueprints made in those are useable in vanilla albeit oversized.

However your solution still wont do what a priority merger can do. If you've played DSP before you'd know what i mean. A merger that has a set priority input will block every other input so long as stuff from the priority input comes in. Once that input runs dry, it lets in the other sides.

And as far as Satis mergers goes, arent they round robin? As far as i could observer the satis mergers let every input have a turn regardless of where and what it is.

Just simply 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3.
Ports are skipped if something is blocked or not connected.

You either mod - or you rethink your issue - which honestly sounds like your over-complicating it.

A priority merger is anything but overcomplicating things.
having to set up an overflow sink is more complicate than that.
We Do Not Waste. ;)

[Scissorhands]

so are you trying to avoid overflow sinks or something? I don't get it either. Hundreds of hours in this game and I can't think of a single reason to use a priority merger. Everything is produced at about 110% of what I need for the production chain, with the rest overflowing to a smart splitter sending first to storage with a depot, and then to a sink.

Try to rework whatever you were talking about with silica and crystal, to follow this method.

I beat dyson sphere as well and still don't understand why you would need a priority merger here.

[Kage Goomba]

Originally posted by Daz the Lemur:

Originally posted by Kage Goomba:

Just simply 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3.
Ports are skipped if something is blocked or not connected.

You either mod - or you rethink your issue - which honestly sounds like your over-complicating it.

A priority merger is anything but overcomplicating things.
having to set up an overflow sink is more complicate than that.
We Do Not Waste. ;)

Except your treating this game like DSP - when it isn't.
That's over-complicating it.
You have the tools - use them - or mod them in.

[Kage Goomba]

Originally posted by Rusty Shackleford:

so are you trying to avoid overflow sinks or something? I don't get it either. Hundreds of hours in this game and I can't think of a single reason to use a priority merger. Everything is produced at about 110% of what I need for the production chain, with the rest overflowing to a smart splitter sending first to storage with a depot, and then to a sink.

Try to rework whatever you were talking about with silica and crystal, to follow this method.

I beat dyson sphere as well and still don't understand why you would need a priority merger here.

This pretty much.

[Wolfgang]

Produce as much as you need or more, problem solved. I honestly never saw any use in these with the resource nodes being unlimited.

[Scissorhands]

Originally posted by Kage Goomba:

Originally posted by Rusty Shackleford:

so are you trying to avoid overflow sinks or something? I don't get it either. Hundreds of hours in this game and I can't think of a single reason to use a priority merger. Everything is produced at about 110% of what I need for the production chain, with the rest overflowing to a smart splitter sending first to storage with a depot, and then to a sink.

Try to rework whatever you were talking about with silica and crystal, to follow this method.

I beat dyson sphere as well and still don't understand why you would need a priority merger here.

This pretty much.

Only thing i can think of, is he is maybe trying to load balance instead of using manifolds, and thinking he needs something for the problems resulting from this. Could be wrong, but almost 1k hours in this game running miles of manifolds and not once have I needed mergers to prioritize items for something.

[🌺💗Tazzamorous💗🌺]

The game hasn't had one as long as I have known it.

While one doesn't exist you can achieve the effect though.

If you split your high priority input and merge it multiple times onto the low priority input it will dilute the feed down. More mergers = higher percentage pulled from the high priority. You can't get 100% but assuming you are just trying to overcome a minor flowrate differential then this method (1 splitter > 3 outputs > 1 merger) will suffice.

[Kage Goomba]

Originally posted by Rusty Shackleford:

Originally posted by Kage Goomba:

This pretty much.

Only thing i can think of, is he is maybe trying to load balance instead of using manifolds, and thinking he needs something for the problems resulting from this. Could be wrong, but almost 1k hours in this game running miles of manifolds and not once have I needed mergers to prioritize items for something.

Even with load balancing its still more or less the same outcome.

There's little to no difference between a manifold.

Manifolds take less space and require saturation to fully be up to speed.
Load Balancers take much more space but will load all machines equally and they start up quicker as a result by defitnition.

Neither results a change in output as that's on the machine itself and not the input.

So long as you meet the required intake rate - you will get the outtake rate posted on the machine.

Frankly most problems if not 99% of them are resolved by dealing with order of operations on the input - output is output - short of "sorting" - no need for prioritization what-so-ever as it can be dealt with upstream.

[Porked!]

It would be nice if there's something like that. But right now all you can do is to overwhelm the outside belts via series of mergers, preferably just right before each input port of the machine to slow down those outside ratios and utilize them elsewhere. Wish we had a valve for belt heh.

I'm running a no-sink-except-for-dna save right now so I got these things going on in my head for quite a bit now.

[Daz the Lemur]

It's about prioritising the use of byproduct from smth like the aluminium production over just destroying it. An alternate recipe for circuit boards and high-speed connectors uses silica and aluminium produces it as byproduct, which both can then be used to make radio control units.
Or better example yet: The aluminium ingot production. It always uses abit more silica than the solution production puts out as byproduct.
I know you could argue: "Then use the alternate recipes!" and i agree, i use them too, but lately I am working on compact, self contained fabrication stack blueprints that take raw resources and put out complex products like heavy frames, computers, aluminium parts and radio control units. I am trying to fit this on a small as possible footprint. So far i was able to squeeze a heavy frame production on a 3x5 space with wet concrete as an alternate recipe.
Now i'm trying to see if i can do the same with the radios. my goal is also to have as few different required resource inputs as possible.
Ofcourse using manifolds and just build lines of factories with a main bus is the meta, but its a pretty braindead approach and i wanted to play around with verticallity more.

Also a priority fluid junction would massively help with fluid byproducts cus those cannot be destroyed "easily" (as in just plopping down a sink and a belt with a smart splitter)...
Whats wrong with wanting to get full use of byproducts? You're acting like i'm shaking at your foundations of believe xD
Sinks are incredibly bulky and arent great use for my goals of compact factory complexes.

[Kage Goomba]

Originally posted by Daz the Lemur:

It's about prioritising the use of byproduct from smth like the aluminium production over just destroying it. An alternate recipe for circuit boards and high-speed connectors uses silica and aluminium produces it as byproduct, which both can then be used to make radio control units.
Or better example yet: The aluminium ingot production. It always uses abit more silica than the solution production puts out as byproduct.
I know you could argue: "Then use the alternate recipes!" and i agree, i use them too, but lately I am working on compact, self contained fabrication stack blueprints that take raw resources and put out complex products like heavy frames, computers, aluminium parts and radio control units. I am trying to fit this on a small as possible footprint. So far i was able to squeeze a heavy frame production on a 3x5 space with wet concrete as an alternate recipe.
Now i'm trying to see if i can do the same with the radios. my goal is also to have as few different required resource inputs as possible.
Ofcourse using manifolds and just build lines of factories with a main bus is the meta, but its a pretty braindead approach and i wanted to play around with verticallity more.

Also a priority fluid junction would massively help with fluid byproducts cus those cannot be destroyed "easily" (as in just plopping down a sink and a belt with a smart splitter)...
Whats wrong with wanting to get full use of byproducts? You're acting like i'm shaking at your foundations of believe xD
Sinks are incredibly bulky and arent great use for my goals of compact factory complexes.

You're missing the point.

We aren't arguing recipes.

We're telling you to rethink your production line approach and use splitters to prioritize.

Recycling byprdocuts/reusing materials is smart.

But your approach is quite literally backwards in terms of thinking.

Also you can build a priority fluid junction easily (hint - gravity is your friend). It's a well known strategy.
Maybe do a bit more research before you mak conclusions?

[Daz the Lemur]

Originally posted by Kage Goomba:

Originally posted by Daz the Lemur:

It's about prioritising the use of byproduct from smth like the aluminium production over just destroying it. An alternate recipe for circuit boards and high-speed connectors uses silica and aluminium produces it as byproduct, which both can then be used to make radio control units.
Or better example yet: The aluminium ingot production. It always uses abit more silica than the solution production puts out as byproduct.
I know you could argue: "Then use the alternate recipes!" and i agree, i use them too, but lately I am working on compact, self contained fabrication stack blueprints that take raw resources and put out complex products like heavy frames, computers, aluminium parts and radio control units. I am trying to fit this on a small as possible footprint. So far i was able to squeeze a heavy frame production on a 3x5 space with wet concrete as an alternate recipe.
Now i'm trying to see if i can do the same with the radios. my goal is also to have as few different required resource inputs as possible.
Ofcourse using manifolds and just build lines of factories with a main bus is the meta, but its a pretty braindead approach and i wanted to play around with verticallity more.

Also a priority fluid junction would massively help with fluid byproducts cus those cannot be destroyed "easily" (as in just plopping down a sink and a belt with a smart splitter)...
Whats wrong with wanting to get full use of byproducts? You're acting like i'm shaking at your foundations of believe xD
Sinks are incredibly bulky and arent great use for my goals of compact factory complexes.

You're missing the point.

We aren't arguing recipes.

We're telling you to rethink your production line approach and use splitters to prioritize.

Recycling byprdocuts/reusing materials is smart.

But your approach is quite literally backwards in terms of thinking.

Also you can build a priority fluid junction easily (hint - gravity is your friend). It's a well known strategy.
Maybe do a bit more research before you making conclusions?

Firstly how is it backwards? How is one therotical priority merger "backwards" from a manifold of awkwardly placed normal merges in "hope" that it "drowns out" the outside input? that approach is incredibly impractical and never going to use 100% the throughput of the byproduct and backlog is always guaranteed. No idea why we're still having this conversation...
secondly, faffing about with gravity and doing awkward loops and such in the pipes is also counterproductive of trying to build a compact complex.

Also whats wrong with comparing it with DSP? IMO they solved this problem much better and satis could take examples from it. Honestly the Satis merger/splitter system is the least convenient of the bunch so far imo.