A minor factory annoyance

[Fishbreath]

I've been setting up a production line in the hopes of starting to move my little friends-and-family server away from pure creative mode, and have been running into a little issue with the way that factories pull blocks. To wit: factories always pull as many materials of each type as they need for a full production tick. This causes issues when materials are a limiting factor. Consider a simple production setup for white hull blocks: three basic factories, one producing white paint, one producing gray hull, and one producing white hull from the previous two materials. The first two will build as quickly as they can—call it 50 units per tick. White hull takes three white paint per block, though, so the third factory, pulling from the first two, only produces 16 white blocks per tick. The remaining 34 gray hull blocks per tick, instead of staying in the gray hull factory, instead are pulled to the white hull factory.

I feel like it would make more sense for factories to count their accessible, required materials, and only pull as many as is required to produce the number that can actually be produced.

 

[kiraen]

First, look into factory enhancers so you can produce 3 paint per tick.

Second, set up storage pull to remove excess materials.

 

[StormWing0]

The problem with a storage pull to remove extra resources is that the factories won't let go of them until turned off. >_>

 

[kiraen]

umm...no.
I always set up my factories with this. It works just fine.

 

[papachabre]

First, look into factory enhancers so you can produce 3 paint per tick.

Second, set up storage pull to remove excess materials.

I just produce as much paint as possible since you can't use those caps for anything else besides paint.

But yeah you should use factory enhancers in the correct ratios for things like ingots and crystals for advanced and crystal armor to ensure that the correct amount of each material is made. And you can try using logic to force factories to halt production if they run out of one material. That's what I'm working on now. I have an activation block that switches on my ingot factories as well as my advanced armor factories, and if the armor factories run out of standard armor then I want the ingot factories to shut down so they don't waste caps on ingots. It seems possible but I haven't had a ton of time to screw around with it so I can't say for certain.

 

[Fishbreath]

First, look into factory enhancers so you can produce 3 paint per tick.

Second, set up storage pull to remove excess materials.

I know how to do both of those things, but they're workarounds that add more complication. Here's why they're insufficient solutions.

I have a generic factory setup: three basic factories, three standard factories, and two advanced factories in a row, each with a blade of factory enhancers behind them. Each factory is linked to all the previous factories in line, and to the capsule refinery. Set them up in order to make all the precursor objects to any object, and you can build anything. The reason I don't want to mess with storage pull or factory enhancers is that I'd have to change the ratios and the storage pull settings for every different production, which defeats the purpose of a generic factory in the first place. (I'm already doing storage pull, since it's the least bad solution.)

The behavior where factories only pull the amount of materials they can use seems like the correct behavior to me, moreso than the current behavior.

 

[Edymnion]

So make multiple factories.

I have 4 sets in my station. 1x, 10x, 100x, and 1000x. If I need a lot of something, its the 1000x system. If I only need three or four, its then 1x system.

And they're all set to have storage pulls back into my main storage room so that nothing ever gets left in the factories.

I like it this way, it rewards people who spend extra time designing and setting things up. Thats how it should be, those who put in more effort get better results.

 

[Fishbreath]

So make multiple factories.

I have 4 sets in my station. 1x, 10x, 100x, and 1000x. If I need a lot of something, its the 1000x system. If I only need three or four, its then 1x system.

And they're all set to have storage pulls back into my main storage room so that nothing ever gets left in the factories.

I like it this way, it rewards people who spend extra time designing and setting things up. Thats how it should be, those who put in more effort get better results.

You already get rewarded for designing things and setting them up better. That wouldn't change. Generic factories like the one I've set up are always as slow as the slowest material to make; a factory with a designated purpose will always be more time-efficient for a given block count. I'm not asking for that to change, I'm just asking for a tweak that'll make things better for everyone. Neither of us would need the excess-material storage pulls, because factories would either contain their recipe output or nothing. Your factories would still be much faster, because each step is built to take in exactly as many materials as the preceding step puts out, and mine would be a little easier to retask, because they don't have any optimization built in to the system.

Adding excess material storage pull isn't a sign of better design, because it doesn't actually affect factory throughput at all. It doesn't matter whether a factory's inputs are in the factory's inventory (as they end up with the current factory pull behavior) or in an inventory linked to the factory (as they would end up with my suggestion) for production speed. The only difference is that storage pulls make it a little bit more convenient to clean up after you've finished a production run and want to change to another one. That's a quality-of-life improvement that makes production better for everybody, and removes some currently-pointless busywork.

(Note: I'm not saying that storage pulling is never a sign of better design. For finished materials, say, or for moving things between factory areas or factories and shipyards, it's definitely better design. Excess material pulling in a single factory is a special case, because it doesn't move materials in any productive way, toward a finished product or a ship. It just reorganizes them in the context of a single factory setup.)

 

[Edymnion]

But see, my point is that I consider it better game design to give people generic building blocks and letting them build specific things out of them. I don't think its better game design to have highly specific things that do exactly one thing very well but can't do other things.

And honestly, the timeframe where you are actually limited by not having enough mats to make something is pretty short.

You should ideally already be setting up storage mass pull networks to auto-sort your stuff anyway, so hooking your factories into that system is pretty trivial. For example, I have storage that pulls everything from all factories in a given set, and then my master inbox pulls from those secondary storage layers. The master inbox then gets automatically sorted into storage.

With or without perfect pulls for the factories, I would still be setting up all of those same auto-pulls just to keep from having to sort pirate loot and mining income. Just hooking one extra box per factory set into the main sorting algorithm isn't really an inconvenience.

 

[Fishbreath]

But see, my point is that I consider it better game design to give people generic building blocks and letting them build specific things out of them. I don't think its better game design to have highly specific things that do exactly one thing very well but can't do other things.

I don't see how this critique applies. (For the record, I agree with you, and that's why I love the weapons system and rails.) This change wouldn't make blocks more special-purpose, it would just make them work in a more sensible way. The behavior as is is kind of unintuitive. Factories take x input from their precursor inventories to make y output, and also take x input to make y / 2 input, if something else is limiting.

With or without perfect pulls for the factories, I would still be setting up all of those same auto-pulls just to keep from having to sort pirate loot and mining income. Just hooking one extra box per factory set into the main sorting algorithm isn't really an inconvenience.

Right, but no matter what your designed inventory system is (good design, since it affects things down the line), you need the excess materials pulling blocks. It's redundant and always required for any kind of sorting, which is poor game design. It's like if we had to link weapons systems in the entity panel, and then also link all the secondary and support blocks to the main computer.

 

[StormWing0]

Although we could use some new things like an auto shut down we can turn on and off if the factory tries to pull more than it can make. Also maybe a number based limit we can set to make it turn off if it reaches a number we select. That said the factories should send signals to logic for this kind of thing so we can hook the factories into them. This would solve the argument here in a heartbeat and give both sides what they want.

 

[kiraen]

Have capsules, AMM, and CC be pulled to a single storage (S1). (from Refinery and Factories)
Have everything else be pulled to a single storage (S2).

Set all factories to pull from both storage.

When your grey hull starts to pile up in S2, turn off that factory. When it runs out, turn it back on.

Yes, it's a work around, but it's how the current system works. For other production runs, you may need to split S2 into 2-3 additional storage depending on how often you clean it. At that point, you also might want to convert to a whole Sorted Storage set up. But that gets tedious, imo.

I, personally, set up a dedicated factory chain for every block I make. This allows me to leave the grey hull in the factory that made it, then pull from there for wedges, etc.
Factories and enhancers are cheap and I never really have enough stuff to justify a huge station so I gotta fill it with something.

If you are not looking for a workable solution, but an actual change to how the game works, this thread should be moved to Suggestions.
You might want to check out this thread specifically and lend your support. That may not be exactly what your are looking for, but I think it will still solve your problem.

I think it is important to note that Sapsun is also used for Overdrive and the Shield-recharger. A few other things to, but those are the important ones. You might want to find a different color unless you are swimming in the stuff.

 

[Fishbreath]

Thanks for the tips/thread link.

A limit would be sufficient, I think—I'm asking for pretty much the same thing, just automatic, in a sense.

As for sapsun, I don't build very big, and I have a pretty hefty mining multiplier set on my server. I like the idea of production and all, just not enough to want to invest a lot of time/money into it. :P

 

[Andir]

I am currently falling on whatever side says that a factory should only pull up to the amount of material needed to produce one run of a particular item and no more until needed to produce one more run. Currently the factory will continue to pull items endlessly and while you can clean out the factory each tick, it feels like busy work and doesn't fit the "smart" factory motif. I imagine an item teleport beam can count considering you have to specify how many to pull per tick. This could have a few side effects that could be added (easily?) The factory could be linked to a logic block like the rails currently so that an active factory would trigger an AND block (all inputs valid/available) sitting next to it and a factory missing items but having some could trigger an OR block. You could then determine which factories are active and which are missing items based on some simple logic.

Looking at it from the "modern" (read: today) factory level though, if you consider the pull mechanic like a conveyor belt and you are not routing the goods overflow back to the system then you are most definitely going to get a backup (IE: all the goods will continue to pour in and jam up the system). This only really feels right if the goods are visually represented moving from one block to another which is extra work and I don't feel like it really needs that visualization.