Freight Elevators

[Old_Wolf]

I have a problem with Freight elevators. I have two products going into the elevator at the bottom, let’s say Steel and Concrete for this example. And at the top I need twice as much Steel as Concrete. At the bottom both conveyor lines going in are full. At the top I have two Filter loaders one for the Steel line and one for the Concrete line. The Concrete conveyor line at the top is full and moving slowly. But the steel conveyor is empty, every once and a while some steel will pop out but no where near enough to keep the conveyor line full enough to supply my needs. I don’t need that much that a lev 1 conveyor should easily supply the steel I need. But the Freight Elevator is not bringing the steel up fast enough.
Am I doing something wrong or missing something?
Is this a bug and there is something wrong with the Freight Elevators?
Or are the freight elevators programmed to balance the load. In other words, they bring up one Steel and one Concrete and they don't bring up the next load until the concrete is emptied from the elevator, which starves the steel line.

[Phoenix Cat]

There are two different levels of Freight Elevators. Each has it's own limits. Are you supplying enough steel for what your wanting?

[wkitty42]

i think i would attempt (since i'm not at this point yet) two elevators... one for Steel and the other for Concrete... that would seemingly allow both to run as fast as they can... idk, though... i'm only 24 hours in and have just started (manually) building the green Science Packs by manually digging down and manually digging the rock needed so i can finally research and build the elevators and figure out how to get my automated miners down there while getting the product to the surface...

[Stellar Remnant]

OP, I assumed that freight elevators are designed for a single product in each direction. Just build two of them adjacent, they're very cheap to make.

Originally posted by wkitty42:

i think i would attempt (since i'm not at this point yet) two elevators... one for Steel and the other for Concrete... that would seemingly allow both to run as fast as they can... idk, though... i'm only 24 hours in and have just started (manually) building the green Science Packs by manually digging down and manually digging the rock needed so i can finally research and build the elevators and figure out how to get my automated miners down there while getting the product to the surface...

why are you torturing yourself in that way?!?

the rock can be easily automated with miners. Do a vertical stack of building block down to power then a ramp out. use explosives to clear the area and the ramp out

[barbrady123]

As already said, I wouldn't mix materials in the same elevator in the same direction (one up, one down is fine)...so 2 elevators is best. Even if you could get a single one working, it would start to have issues once one of the belts backed up.

That being said, have you tried adding 2:1 loaders (3 total) to the input side also, that might cause the elevator to bring twice as much of one material up, but I haven't tested it.

Honestly just building two of them is the best bet.

[Shadin]

I have always only used one item per elevator. Don't let back end coding mess things up for you.

[jbailey]

In the older itch version, I found trying to get multiple types of items on a elevator didn't work. If one item gets bogged down, it blocks other items. I wound up just sticking to one elevator/one item.

I have elevators in the EA, but haven't gotten to a point yet to try out multiple types on an elevator, but sounds like the same issues as previous.

[Salamander]

As mentioned, freight elevators don't really work too well with more than one thing going in one direction. You can consider them to be basically a very large vertical T2 conveyor (or T3 conveyor for the T2 freight elevator), that goes both directions.
That said, if you don't want to make two freight elevators and you *definitely* have 2:1 steel/concrete use, you could try downgrading a piece of the concrete conveyor, and merging both it and the steel line with a balancer just before the input. Bear in mind, this will limit conveyor throughput and the steel line will only be 2/3rds full and the concrete 1/3 full.
This is assuming you are using T2 conveyor input belts with a T1 freight elevator, or T3 conveyors with a T2 freight elevator.

A third option that I was briefly testing earlier today, is to have balancers on the elevator output with priority output as the 'real' line you care about, and overflow output fed back into the freight elevator in reverse.
On the 'actual' input side, the filtered overflow coming back through the elevator is balanced as priority-input to their respective belts.
I didn't fully test it, but it seemed to prevent the elevator from getting clogged, and would just round-robin between the two types every second.
It's complicated, unwieldy, and almost certainly worse than just having two elevators, but.. maybe useful in some really weird edge case?

[Pascal]

try to use 2 storages for each item after the output. So it doesnt block after few items output

[wkitty42]

Originally posted by MiniHerc:

OP, I assumed that freight elevators are designed for a single product in each direction. Just build two of them adjacent, they're very cheap to make.

Originally posted by wkitty42:

i think i would attempt (since i'm not at this point yet) two elevators... one for Steel and the other for Concrete... that would seemingly allow both to run as fast as they can... idk, though... i'm only 24 hours in and have just started (manually) building the green Science Packs by manually digging down and manually digging the rock needed so i can finally research and build the elevators and figure out how to get my automated miners down there while getting the product to the surface...

why are you torturing yourself in that way?!?

the rock can be easily automated with miners. Do a vertical stack of building block down to power then a ramp out. use explosives to clear the area and the ramp out

thanks! i was thinking i could do that... i have explosives recipe but not made any, yet... i dug straight down over a deposit about 20 levels deep... vertical shaft 4 blocks square... when i hit rock, i took a bunch and then dug 45 degree a ramp/stairs up and out... have power HVP there and two machines but no miners yet... i guess i need to make a large enough cavern to hold foundation blocks and miner house... probably have to run HVP power down the vertical shaft? maybe... will find out when i load in and try after thinking about it for a day

[Pr0fesseur]

what you could do is put a balancer on the input and select the priority to the item you want more of

[Daz the Lemur]

Originally posted by wkitty42:

Originally posted by MiniHerc:

OP, I assumed that freight elevators are designed for a single product in each direction. Just build two of them adjacent, they're very cheap to make.


why are you torturing yourself in that way?!?

the rock can be easily automated with miners. Do a vertical stack of building block down to power then a ramp out. use explosives to clear the area and the ramp out

thanks! i was thinking i could do that... i have explosives recipe but not made any, yet... i dug straight down over a deposit about 20 levels deep... vertical shaft 4 blocks square... when i hit rock, i took a bunch and then dug 45 degree a ramp/stairs up and out... have power HVP there and two machines but no miners yet... i guess i need to make a large enough cavern to hold foundation blocks and miner house... probably have to run HVP power down the vertical shaft? maybe... will find out when i load in and try after thinking about it for a day

I just clear out ample space around the midpoint of the ore patch explosively.... only takes about a dozen or so explosives... but be careful, Xenoferrit apparently isnt blastproof (i assume same goes for technum). There are underground xeno and tech patches and clearing them out is a PitA since you can use explosives on them if you want to keep the patch intact.

[Stellar Remnant]

Originally posted by Daz the Lemur:

I just clear out ample space around the midpoint of the ore patch explosively.... only takes about a dozen or so explosives... but be careful, Xenoferrit apparently isnt blastproof (i assume same goes for technum). There are underground xeno and tech patches and clearing them out is a PitA since you can use explosives on them if you want to keep the patch intact.

huh? all ore patches are blastproof. I liberally use explosives directly on the ore blocks and nothing happens to the ore

[Daz the Lemur]

Originally posted by MiniHerc:

Originally posted by Daz the Lemur:

I just clear out ample space around the midpoint of the ore patch explosively.... only takes about a dozen or so explosives... but be careful, Xenoferrit apparently isnt blastproof (i assume same goes for technum). There are underground xeno and tech patches and clearing them out is a PitA since you can use explosives on them if you want to keep the patch intact.

huh? all ore patches are blastproof. I liberally use explosives directly on the ore blocks and nothing happens to the ore

Weird.... I used explosives on an xeno patch and some ore blocks vanished. I suppose you did research the mining depth (the one that lets you get deeper with drill and explosives)?
Cus i had the first node researched when I tried to free up the xeno patch that was inaccessible beforehand and lost some ore blocks to that (I just reloaded an autosave).

[Stellar Remnant]

Originally posted by Daz the Lemur:

Originally posted by MiniHerc:

huh? all ore patches are blastproof. I liberally use explosives directly on the ore blocks and nothing happens to the ore

Weird.... I used explosives on an xeno patch and some ore blocks vanished. I suppose you did research the mining depth (the one that lets you get deeper with drill and explosives)?
Cus i had the first node researched when I tried to free up the xeno patch that was inaccessible beforehand and lost some ore blocks to that (I just reloaded an autosave).

Ore patches can have rock blocks scattered in them. That's what vanished.

[Daz the Lemur]

Originally posted by MiniHerc:

Originally posted by Daz the Lemur:

Weird.... I used explosives on an xeno patch and some ore blocks vanished. I suppose you did research the mining depth (the one that lets you get deeper with drill and explosives)?
Cus i had the first node researched when I tried to free up the xeno patch that was inaccessible beforehand and lost some ore blocks to that (I just reloaded an autosave).

Ore patches can have rock blocks scattered in them. That's what vanished.

I knew you'd say that, but it was an entire vertical layer the explosive shaved off cleanly, not some random stone blocks inbetween. I'm gonna test that on an ore patch later