WolfLink comments on Some idiot once told me I shouldn't use conveyors because conveyors don't scale

[–] WolfLink@sh.itjust.works 3 points 4 weeks ago (7 children)

What’s random about them? In my factory they seem extremely reliable.

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[–] warm@kbin.earth 3 points 4 weeks ago (6 children)

They dont have consistent speeds. They can take 60s to make a journey, then 59s to make the same then 62s. They should use their variable power, to keep a consistent speed, making deliveries predictable, when the game revolves around pm calculations, it falls short on this.

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[–] WolfLink@sh.itjust.works 3 points 4 weeks ago* (5 children)

If that level of variability is dropping your throughput you should add another train or more cars.

The way I view it is the train has a max throughput that is / which is generally pretty high compared to belts. If the train is the bottleneck, you can simply add more cars or trains to boost the top of that ratio. I am to keep the theoretical throughput of my train system above what I actually use so there is some buffer.

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[–] warm@kbin.earth 2 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

I'm not saying there isnt work arounds, I'm saying that it's impossible to achieve peak efficiency, a train might randomly run slower and it might deliver at 1199.99pm instead of 1200pm, that happening just one time has cascading effects on the whole production chain.

Trains that share the same lines that were previously spaced out to avoid interferring, will suddenly be queuing. If you prefer this jank and randomness, they could leave a toggle in and then update it to be consistent otherwise. I should be able to make an actual timetable and carefully weave trains, it would look so cool seeing trains not need blocks because they are on a schedule and all dodge each other.

Same for fluids too, give me less annoying predictable fluids instead of someones attempt at "realism", put a toggle in for the diehards to keep the current one.

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[–] OwOarchist@pawb.social [S] 2 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

Same for fluids too, give me less annoying predictable fluids instead of someones attempt at “realism”

Man, that was really bothering me on this run, too. 90% of the time, I can just avoid pumping fluids at all by always having the extractor and the destination at about the same level. But there was one spot where I needed to get water to the top of a factory building, and that was just a huge pain. I'd get it working, get it flowing ... and then it would randomly stop for no apparent reason? Even after making the pipeline more pumps than pipe, it still kept happening. I'd get back from doing something else to find that particular factory backed up and shut down because the water pumps had stopped working again. And only flushing the entire pipeline could get it to (eventually) work again, after waiting for the water to slowly make its way up from the extractor again.

Normally I don't bother at all with the fluid packaging/unpackaging tech, but in that instance, I was considering actually packaging the water and using a conveyor to get water containers to the top instead.

(In the end, adding a couple of fluid containers at the top seemed to fix the problem ... or at least delay the problem enough that I never ran into it again.)

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[–] warm@kbin.earth 3 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

It's really old code that I think the devs are scared to touch in case they break something. It uses floating point numbers, so you can never fully utilise a pipe, it'll be 599.999pm instead of 600pm. You can't keep the fluid flowing because it takes it in chunks.

I had multiple factories working fine, but after many many hours of it slowly being 0.00001 off somewhere due to a rounding error, it stopped working and brought many lines to a halt.

It needs updating really badly. But I just think the devs are content with how it is now and don't want to risk breaking things more than they already are. Which is unfortunate. I mean if they release a DLC, I really hope they tackle all the issues first.

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[–] OwOarchist@pawb.social [S] 1 point 3 weeks ago (1 child)

I had multiple factories working fine, but after many many hours of it slowly being 0.00001 off somewhere due to a rounding error, it stopped working and brought many lines to a halt.

Why not just give your fluid pipelines some margin for error?

For example, if a set of machines needs 200 units per minute, make sure the production and pipeline supplying them can supply at least 210 units per minute. Your fluid production won't be quite 100% utilized all the time, but it means your fluid-dependent machines will never have this 'rounding error' issue and it will never slow down the rest of the factory.

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[–] warm@kbin.earth 3 points 3 weeks ago

I do, but its still not good enough sometimes, especially if height changes are involved. In my most recent factory i had a surplus of 5pm in a pipe and the fluid still slowly went missing. It's too buggy. The point is, I shouldnt have to. If I put 600pm into a pipe, 600pm should come out.

You can work around things as much as you want to "finish" the game. If you want to actually sandbox and build a factory, you end up fighting the game more than actually building.

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