Multi-element packet stacking.

[Tonyroid]

Take all the little bubbles in a pipe and convert them into a few big bubbles. And... a few related pipe tricks.

 

 

[nakomaru]

Great info. The shutoff/valve was new to me.

The last stacker might get stuck in some cases (imagine: CO2/Cl alternating waiting to remerge, but from then on is only O2) but you probably won't need to worry about it. Seems great for a general prefilter before merging to your main sorting/storage.

[Nightinggale]

It looks to me like the shutoff valve and the valve stacker is the best one. It does however require that you sort your pipe content. You can do that with a looping pipe (needs at least one bridge or similar for flow direction). With element sensor and shutoff valves, you can filter without the filter power usage. Since it's a loop, anything missed due to a full pipe will take another round and not block the pipe.

I would add that I have mods, which can be used for this purpose.

Pipe Pressure Valve: a stacker put into a single 1x2 building. It stacks up to two elements perfectly, though with 3 it might not fill completely anymore due to limited internal storage (by design. It's a compactor, not a storage building).

High Flow Storage adds multiple inputs and outputs. You can have one pipe input and use just one output. If you use the pipe mass sensor (Sensory Overload), then you can filter out full packets. Any non-full packets can be looped back to another input. The internal storage will only have one entry for each element, meaning they will stack and eventually create full packets.

[abud]

I didn't even realize that valve and shut-off behave differently before. I always thought shut-off can merge if there is same element in the output.

[Neviiir]

Hmm, would you be able to remove the bridge madness and just run everything through the reservoir to manage stacking?

[lunazone]

Very informative, great video!

[Tonyroid]

2 hours ago, nakomaru said:

Great info. The shutoff/valve was new to me.

The last stacker might get stuck in some cases (imagine: CO2/Cl alternating waiting to remerge, but from then on is only O2) but you probably won't need to worry about it. Seems great for a general prefilter before merging to your main sorting/storage.

That's true. I need to take the time to figure out how to make that work really well.

1 hour ago, Neviiir said:

Hmm, would you be able to remove the bridge madness and just run everything through the reservoir to manage stacking?

That seems like a reasonable way to go. I was really hoping to avoid using a reservoir at all. I just hate having to make space for a big ol' building all the time.

1 hour ago, Nightinggale said:

It looks to me like the shutoff valve and the valve stacker is the best one. It does however require that you sort your pipe content. You can do that with a looping pipe (needs at least one bridge or similar for flow direction). With element sensor and shutoff valves, you can filter without the filter power usage. Since it's a loop, anything missed due to a full pipe will take another round and not block the pipe.

I would add that I have mods, which can be used for this purpose.

Pipe Pressure Valve: a stacker put into a single 1x2 building. It stacks up to two elements perfectly, though with 3 it might not fill completely anymore due to limited internal storage (by design. It's a compactor, not a storage building).

High Flow Storage adds multiple inputs and outputs. You can have one pipe input and use just one output. If you use the pipe mass sensor (Sensory Overload), then you can filter out full packets. Any non-full packets can be looped back to another input. The internal storage will only have one entry for each element, meaning they will stack and eventually create full packets.

The valve/shutoff approach isn't bad, perhaps I should have shown the extended design for multiple elements. I dislike that it has to be configured for every element you want to handle, but in the video my fancy stacker wasn't putting on much of a show anyway. Below is an example of how I set up the shutoff/valve approach to handle 4 elements. After some experimentation, I ended up preferring to put all the valves on the left and all the shutoffs on the right to avoid needing to use bridges to manage flow. But this is less viable as you build it to handle more elements. Also, it's pretty dependent on preference.

[Lilalaunekuh]

1 hour ago, Neviiir said:

run everything through the reservoir to manage stacking?

I will test it later when I can play, but maybe someone can enlighten us:

Does the gas/liquid reservoir still emit the biggest possible package of a stored element ?

[Tonyroid]

1 hour ago, Squeegee said:

Very informative, great video!

Thanks bro.

1 minute ago, Lilalaunekuh said:

I will test it later when I can play, but maybe someone can enlighten us:

Does the gas/liquid reservoir still emit the biggest possible package of a stored element ?

It did yesterday. But there was an update to the test build, so who knows.

I was just thinking about this, and there may be a way to use just one reservoir and no other stacking at all. I tried pretty hard to avoid using a reservoir, but it might turn out to be a really elegant solution.

[Nightinggale]

4 minutes ago, Lilalaunekuh said:

Does the gas/liquid reservoir still emit the biggest possible package of a stored element ?

In short: yes.

The internal storage consist of entries, each with an element, temperature and mass. When something new is added from input, if the element already exist in the list, then it's added to mass (and some temperature magic). If it isn't in the list, then it's added to the end of the list.

Output starts at the top and each time it outputs, it move one step down. At the end, it will go back to the top. Each time it releases something, it will take as much mass as possible.

I don't think that will ever change. It's simple, well tested and it works well for gameplay mechanics. In fact when it turned out that the solid storage didn't do this, Klei updated it to work like I just described. That clearly tells us that it's intended behavior.

[Lilalaunekuh]

1 minute ago, Nightinggale said:

Output starts at the top and each time it outputs, it move one step down. At the end, it will go back to the top. Each time it releases something, it will take as much mass as possible.

=> If I sort my pipe content and use a reservoir for every filtered output, all packets should be max sized ones.

[I only need to prevent my reservoirs from running emtpy and releasing the last "not stacked" packet. The worst case would be the need to keep the reservoir full at all times and just open the output if an overflow is triggered.]

[Nightinggale]

31 minutes ago, Lilalaunekuh said:

[I only need to prevent my reservoirs from running emtpy and releasing the last "not stacked" packet. The worst case would be the need to keep the reservoir full at all times and just open the output if an overflow is triggered.]

High flow storage has a logic output port on all reservoirs. This allows you to build a reservoir on top of a door and connect them with a logic wire. Set the reservoir to below 500 kg and the door will open whenever there is less than 500 kg stored. When the door is open, the reservoir outputs will be disabled, but the inputs are still working.

I have no idea how to maintain a certain amount in a reservoir without modding, hence the reason why I saw the need to allow it with a mod.

[Lilalaunekuh]

2 minutes ago, Nightinggale said:

I have no idea how to maintain a certain amount in a reservoir without modding, hence the reason why I allow it with a mod.

Ok there are ways using automation to keep an excat amount inside, but that´s more effort than you really want to invest.

 

An overflow [2 brigdes behind each other the 1. leading to the reservoir and the 2. leading to an element sensor and a way back to the reservoir] will detect if the reservoir is full, and that is all we need.

=> Just enable the reservoir output if the reservoir is full.

[You will never use the content of the reservoir, but it´s just an one time investment.]

[Nightinggale]

7 minutes ago, Lilalaunekuh said:

=> Just enable the reservoir output if the reservoir is full.

[You will never use the content of the reservoir, but it´s just an one time investment.]

I'm not changing it now because

1. it works with the above/below slider (removing it is more effort than just keeping it)
2. I know of at least one  useful case where I want to trigger on a number other than full/empty

[Yunru]

16 minutes ago, Lilalaunekuh said:

Ok there are ways using automation to keep an excat amount inside, but that´s more effort than you really want to invest.

 

An overflow [2 brigdes behind each other the 1. leading to the reservoir and the 2. leading to an element sensor and a way back to the reservoir] will detect if the reservoir is full, and that is all we need.

=> Just enable the reservoir output if the reservoir is full.

[You will never use the content of the reservoir, but it´s just an one time investment.]

You can make it even smaller, just run it through the tank's input, the sensor, and then bridge it back before the input. 

[Lilalaunekuh]

21 minutes ago, Nightinggale said:

I'm not changing it now

Don´t get me wrong, I didn´t want your build to look worse (or even make you change it ...).

 

Never touch a running system.

 

[Nightinggale]

1 minute ago, Lilalaunekuh said:

Never touch a running system.

Truer words have rarely been spoken. I'm going to write that on a sign and put it up on a high voltage transformer

[Yunru]

3 hours ago, Nightinggale said:

Truer words have rarely been spoken. I'm going to write that on a sign and put it up on a high voltage transformer

Why would you encourage people to touch it so? 

[TLW]

7 hours ago, Neviiir said:

Hmm, would you be able to remove the bridge madness and just run everything through the reservoir to manage stacking?

Consider trying to merge two pipes with this method. So each input pipe goes to a reservoir, then junction-joined into one output pipe.

Pipe A has a constant flow of 1g/packet CO2. Pipe B has a constant flow of 999g/packet O2.

Steady-state ends up with the output alternating 2g CO2 packets with 1kg O2 packets, and the O2 input backing up. Overall your pipe sits at ~50.1% utilization.

Ideally, your output is 999 1kg O2 packets followed by 1 1kg CO2 packet, and nothing backs up.

This gets worse as the number of junctions increases. Join 4 pipes into one? Be prepared for 4g / 4g / 4g / 1kg, for an overall ~25.3% utilization.

4 hours ago, Lilalaunekuh said:

An overflow [2 brigdes behind each other the 1. leading to the reservoir and the 2. leading to an element sensor and a way back to the reservoir] will detect if the reservoir is full, and that is all we need.

=> Just enable the reservoir output if the reservoir is full.

[You will never use the content of the reservoir, but it´s just an one time investment.]

Alas, it's not so simple. The element sensor does not work for multiple elements.

There are ways around this, but nothing compact.

4 hours ago, Yunru said:

You can make it even smaller, just run it through the tank's input, the sensor, and then bridge it back before the input. 

This ends up with reduced throughput in steady-state in a lot of cases, assuming you mean what I think you mean.

[badgamer123]

6 hours ago, Lilalaunekuh said:

I will test it later when I can play, but maybe someone can enlighten us:

Does the gas/liquid reservoir still emit the biggest possible package of a stored element ?

i did one 2 reservoir swap SPOM in my very old base(QoL3) to stack gas package in order to save energy for gas filter,i can confirm it will output max package ,as long as you put a pairs of shutoff/door to disable the reservoir (mine just clock and not gate).

7 hours ago, Tonyroid said:

 

That seems like a reasonable way to go. I was really hoping to avoid using a reservoir at all. I just hate having to make space for a big ol' building all the time.

 

smaller gas reservoir has been requested b4.it just too big right now....

[Yunru]

4 hours ago, TLW said:

This ends up with reduced throughput in steady-state in a lot of cases, assuming you mean what I think you mean.

Only when the tank's full, which is kinda the point... If you're trying to say what I think you are? 

[Tonyroid]

12 hours ago, Lilalaunekuh said:

=> If I sort my pipe content and use a reservoir for every filtered output, all packets should be max sized ones.

[I only need to prevent my reservoirs from running emtpy and releasing the last "not stacked" packet. The worst case would be the need to keep the reservoir full at all times and just open the output if an overflow is triggered.]

Yeah, but once you sort all the elements then there's not really a reason to use the reservoir any more. Just use a regular simple one-element packet stacker.

[Lilalaunekuh]

16 minutes ago, Tonyroid said:

Yeah, but once you sort all the elements then there's not really a reason to use the reservoir any more.

That´s how this idea started:

15 hours ago, Neviiir said:

Hmm, would you be able to remove the bridge madness and just run everything through the reservoir to manage stacking?

=> I didn´t claimed that reservoirs would be a good/optimal solution, just that they could do the job.

[avc15]

A reservoir doesn't solve the problem of only sending large packets to output. It's a pretty major feature of his design.

So yes you could do something like set up a "full reservoir" logic and only send packets out once the reservoir is full. This will output stacked packets with two main downsides:

- It will still send small packets on occasion.

- It has to buffer 150 kg worth of gases to start producing an output (over half a cycle on one pump)

Two major design features of this one are that (1) it hardly buffers anything (2) it only sends 999g packets

 

[Nightinggale]

11 hours ago, Yunru said:

14 hours ago, Nightinggale said:

Truer words have rarely been spoken. I'm going to write that on a sign and put it up on a high voltage transformer

Why would you encourage people to touch it so? 

This way it will only take a few generations before natural selection have ensured people will only do as I tell them to do. Now I only need to figure out eternal life to make sure I live long enough for this to kick in and my plan for world domination is complete.