Warning to all Pioneers: FICSIT belt speed false advertising!

[sinuswutz]

First: The title is tongue in cheek, I am not accusing Coffee Stain or anyone else of anything nefarious. I've simply noticed certain “behaviors” of belts (and pipes) I want to make my fellow Pioneers aware of before they waste as much time on it as I did.

Belts (and pipes) do not necessarily carry as many items/units per minute as you're told. This isn't really noticeable until you reach MK4 belts and MK2 pipes. Basically once you go over 270 items per minute or 300m³ per minute, you get into twilight territory where strange things happen.

A MK4 belt should be able to carry 480 items per minute but it doesn't. One widely spread “wisdom” is to avoid screws as much as possible. You should be able to turn 10 iron rods per minute into 40 screws per minute. A MK4 can carry 480 items so obviously you should be able to build 12 constructors making screws and merge their output on a single MK4 belt... but nope.

The math checks out: 12*40=480. However, if you actually build that factory, at least one (usually more) of your machines will choke because the produced screws are not removed fast enough. No more 100% efficiency. This might take some time, especially with screws, wire or copper powder which come in stacks of 500 but it happens with all items.
Worse, some of the machines down the line who need those 480 screws per minute starve because there aren't actually enough screws per minute on the belt.

If you build something huge and complicated, these periods of choking and starving can oscillate into a mess that becomes very frustrating to debug. Especially with fluids involved.

Therefore my advice: Do NOT use belts past MK3 or the MK2 pipes to capacity. Yes, if you do the math and planning and the recipes line up just perfectly for those 780 items per minute... do NOT use a single MK5 belt, use two MK4s instead.

I've just had this problem again with the new MK6. Thankfully I was aware of this already and did some testing before actually building the rest of my factory. I am building a uranium fuel rod refinery utilizing a normal (600/m) node to the maximum. The alternate recipes I decided to use require me to produce and use 2520 quickwire per minute. That is three MK6s.

So I had 42 quickwire constructors ready to roll and see how the MK6 does removing the wire. For the record, a single MK6 should be able to carry the produce of 20 constructors (20*60=1200.) It didn't go well.
What struck me dumbfounded and made me write this wall of text was this: Use an industrial container with two inputs. Have two MK5 belts with 10 machines each (600/m) feed the container. Have one MK6 exit the container into a sink. Even THAT doesn't work. The single 1200/m MK6 belt cannot keep up. The container slowly fills with wire because more comes in than goes out. At some point it will be full, overflow and choke the factory. This also means you don't actually get 1200 items per minute out of a storage container with a MK6, you get just a little less.

You want a happy 100% efficient factory? Don't use belts to their capacity, always leave a few percent free. Rather use two belts (or pipes) than deal with this headache.

[Still B0r3d]

You need a better CPU. You can start loosing items on belts due to floating point errors, but pretty sure your cpu just isnt keeping up because you are loosing items at 300/min LOL.

[Cerodil]

I try* to build my factories to exact ratios every time and whenever I notice inaccuracies in outputs it's always because I made a mistake. Missed placing a belt, placed the wrong type of belt, wired something wrong, forgot to set a recipe/set the wrong recipe or I just simply calculated things wrong from the start.

[Loco]

I always fill belts to their limit. If there's a hiccup it's something I did wrong and then fix it.

Are you dropping splitters/mergers in the middle of belts? It doesn't remove the belt piece it replaces, which causes the belts to slow down a bit because they try to fill the belt while the splitter/merger tries also.

If so, place mergers/splitters, then connect the belts. Or if you have to place the merger first, then place it and deconstruct the belts it's on and reconnect them.

[Soylent_Boob]

yes, belts and mergers seem very wonky
I noticed it on 1.0 release trying to merge 2x 600 items belts into 1x 1200 belt but it's not possible, the merger chokes the 2 incoming belts and output is only around 1150..... if you cannot trust the numbers the game tells you, you can't build an efficient functional factory

[Lawn-Mower]

Thankfully, I've not experienced issues as described.

[dEAdOnE77]

i had a problem at a splitter once, where the item would come out but just barley and then do a 180 to go back in and then come out again this time fast. it was visible wrong and i could rebuild the belt and splitter and then all work fine.,

[sinuswutz]

Hey, I am just warning Pioneers. When you build a factory so big you might saturate a MK4, 5 or 6 belt with production machine output (miners seem to work fine) … rather use two.

Once you get to the MK4, 5 and 6 belts, your math will be good, your design will be good but it still might not give you that craved 100% efficiency. Because these belts (and MK2 pipes) don't always seem to deliver what FICSIT wrote on the tin.

If you reach endgame and go full alternative recipes it becomes a bit of a moot point anyway because very rarely will you ever saturate any of the belt types.

[NocheLuz]

I like how most people already know what is wrong with OP.

Edit:

Sorry about the earlier post. I kind of hit that post before I could finish writing.

Back to the topic. I think I encountered the problem OP said. But TBH, the product from all those factories still counts as 270 on my mk.2 belts (mostly from 9 Smelters). Even if some of the smelters did stop working, it still outputs 270 ingots and my whole supply chain can still make all the products at 100% efficiency.

There are known bugs, however. Especially with Merger and Splitter that you built ON the belt. Instead of build on anything else (including on top of each other). The output from those Merger and Splitter will be lower than expected, ex. from 600+600 down to 1100 instead of 1200. The quick way to solve this is to delete the connected belt and rebuild it. Or rebuilt the bugged Merger and Splitter entirely.

[TH3R4BB!T]

Reading this, the only conclusion for me it that: mergers, splitters and containers have an in- and outputting slower than the high speed belts

This kind of solves why some items went to the sink that should have been on the belt instead

[kLuns]

I'm feeding 1200 coal from 2 merged normal nodes on a single belt to a particle accelarator running at 100% efficiency.

[Zak]

Originally posted by sinuswutz:

Warning to all Pioneers: FICSIT belt speed false advertising!

No, the belts are fine. There are some people claiming that the new belt Mk6 doesn't carry full 1200 items, but kLuns here says otherwise and I believe him. I only unlocked Mk6 belts yesterday so I don't know myself if there are any issues with it.

And yes, I don't place in-line mergers and splitters directly on belts. There were some issues with that during EA, I think, not sure. So I just got into a habit of building mergers and splitters first and then attaching belts to them. Maybe there is something to that?

Pipes Mk2, on the other hand, are known to carry less than 600m³ though, more like 580m³. This is an old issue. And this still seems to be true in 1.0 as I can't keep a fully overclocked reactor full of water at 600m³ even with a full large tank buffer that was pre-filled before the reactor was turned on. The devs don't consider this a bug but a side effect of their fluid mechanics, so "working as intended".

[sinuswutz]

Screw the free placed mergers or splitters on belts. That is obviously not what I am talking about. Because that is what we do at tier 9 while going nuclear, placing our splitters on belts or naked ground.

I am telling you: Build 20 well fed quickwire constructors and make that run 100% efficient with a single MK6 output belt. Hah! One step easier, build 13 fully fed quickwire constructors and make that run 100% efficent on a MK5. These builds will most likely choke on the wire sooner than later.

This isn't really a bug in the game.

The problem isn't the belt. The problem is getting your items ON THE BELT. The room is there, in theory. But in praxis, when the engine ticks, when it is time for the merger to move the item, there might be no room. And the next engine tick, the belt has already moved so far, there is now a one item gap. So no more 1200/m, only 1199.9/m. And this adds up.

Same thing happens with the MK5 and 4 belts, just not as often.

All I am really saying is: If you want to avoid a terrible headache, do not use a belts full capacity. If your build produces 775 items per minute, instead of using a single MK5, I suggest you use two MK4. Is all I am saying. It will prevent so much headache.

[kLuns]

It seems you play a different game than me. Belts work fine at full capacity.

[dcy665]

Mine keep up. Do the math, clear the input cache on a machine, poof refills in the time expected.

[Zak]

Originally posted by sinuswutz:

All I am really saying is: If you want to avoid a terrible headache, do not use a belts full capacity..

But... how can I avoid something that never happens to me in the first place??? Do not assume that everyone has this problem, because we clearly do not.