How to deal with Automatic Dispenser?

[abud]

I never actually use Automatic Dispenser beyond stacking abyssalite (and few other materials) in the hole. This time I want to store 20t sandstone in a storage bin and put excess sandstone in the hole. After looking at unexpected behavior where my dupes emptying all storage bins, I recreate in a sandbox world.

Searching bug reports, I found this pending report. How to deal with this?

My last option is to avoid using automatic dispenser until I have a sweeper. Any better idea?

Spoiler

 

[mathmanican]

Bugs.. 

[abud]

17 minutes ago, mathmanican said:

Bugs..

I hope this one effective

Spoiler

img source: wikipedia

How usually people use it? Just put everything in the hole without any spare?

 

[snoozer]

IMO the bug is that Dispensers act like the Critter Feeders and not like Containers.

This is how I use them

Spoiler

 

[abud]

56 minutes ago, snoozer said:

This is how I use them

Thank you very much, when my dupes a bit smarter I will make something like this, based on your design. With different liquid for airlock of course.

Spoiler

 

[DemainaNyx]

Not ideal, but I use Sweep Only with it.  Let's me control where they'll place everything and prevents them from infinitely sweeping and depositing things.  I build a crazier setup later, but this work well for most of the game.

[Mojo Filter]

12 hours ago, DemainaNyx said:

Not ideal, but I use Sweep Only with it.

This is what I ended up doing. I put one in above my pacu pond so my dupes could pick up pacu eggs and they would drop into the pond. What I did not realize was that I created an infinite loop where the dupes would climb down into the pond to pick up the dropped eggs and put them back into the dispenser again. I did not see it until my calorie count started to drastically fall and found my cook doing nothing but picking up pacu eggs and putting them in the dispenser again and again all cycle long.

Setting it to sweep only solved my problem, but it does not seem like a very practical item as it stands.

[abud]

I don't mind using sweep only for temporary measure just like DemainaNyx. Didn't want to use it like that for long.

[KittenIsAGeek]

16 hours ago, abud said:

I hope this one effective

  Reveal hidden contents

img source: wikipedia

How usually people use it? Just put everything in the hole without any spare?

 

Early in my game I use them with 'sweep only' so that I can make clean floors in my living area, but otherwise don't bother grabbing materials.  Later in the game, I use them to move specific materials out of the dupe's reach.  

[Lafara]

how about assign automatic dispenser dropping Critter Egg into an empty room.

make that room inaccessible for dupes but have 1 slot (horizontal opened door) for baby-borne critter to crawl out.

once baby critter crawl out to Pet Stable just outside that empty room set da dupe to wrangle those baby critter to respect type of Critter Ranches.

 

1 empty room to incubating any type and any morph critter egg per several ranches feeding them.

[abud]

42 minutes ago, Lafara said:

how about assign automatic dispenser dropping Critter Egg into an empty room

Thank you for your suggestion, although I didn't look for stable but storage

 

[Skaidrojumi]

17 hours ago, abud said:

Thank you very much, when my dupes a bit smarter I will make something like this, based on your design. With different liquid for airlock of course.

  Reveal hidden contents

 

How did you get the liquid in that example to only occupy the door? This is the first time I've seen that.

[Aelfled]

It's viscounts-gel, it exists primarily to make liquid locks like this, and you get it from space.

 

[nakomaru]

21 minutes ago, Aelfled said:

It's viscounts-gel

Viscount's Gel, similar to Royal Jelly. Fed to noble babies.

[Lifegrow]

Pesky auto correct making me get a craving....

[Skaidrojumi]

2 hours ago, Aelfled said:

It's viscounts-gel, it exists primarily to make liquid locks like this, and you get it from space.

 

Ahh gotcha, much cleaner than making a natural liquid airlock

[Xuhybrid]

I use sweep only and store everything in one tile. Having huge rows and rows of storage just gets annoying and ugly after many colonies doing that. I bet your problem revolves around the Priorities window. That is used before building priority.

[AndreyKl]

On 18.08.2019 at 5:12 AM, abud said:

This time I want to store 20t sandstone in a storage bin and put excess sandstone in the hole.

Dispenser drops only once it has signal, so: place smart compactor, connect signal output of smart compactor to automatic dispenser (through And gate? depends onto you system), set smart compactor to emit signal when full (or better - half-full, see below). Result: when compactor is full sandstone will be dropped, when compactor is not full dupes will store sandstone in dispenser first, but dispenser won't be emptied and as result the rest of the sandstone will go to compactor.

The biggest issue with such system is that it moves ore by 200Kg, yet trained dupes can move a lot more mass around, so:

1. I wouldn't recommend setting compactor to emit at full, better to use some low value, like 10t and low priority and set up a secondary normal compactor nearby with lower priority and rest of the mass, this way if dupes decide to transport 1t of sandstone, they will be able to (because second compactor still has 10t to go), instead of moving only 200Kg to top it.

2. Compactor to dispenser still is limited to 200kg, which means more running for dupes, this will need sweeper earlier or later, but having sweeper means that you can build more energy efficient system, so this suggestion is temporary at best. But since there is no more permanent thing than temporary, use at your own discretion)

 

On 18.08.2019 at 5:12 AM, abud said:

This time I want to store 20t sandstone in a storage bin and put excess sandstone in the hole.

P.S. to clarify, do you mean a hole as 'not accessible to dupes' or 1-2 tile deep one, that will still be accessible? Second case probably will need two compactors. I assume it is the first, since otherwise you won't need a 20t storage nearby.

[Lifegrow]

26 minutes ago, AndreyKl said:

1. I wouldn't recommend setting compactor to emit at full, better to use some low value, like 10t and low priority and set up a secondary normal compactor nearby with higher priority and rest of the mass, this way if dupes decide to transport 1t of sandstone, they will be able to (because smart compactor still has 10t to go), instead of moving only 200Kg to top it.

Sadly thats not how it works. A dupe will see the job for "Sweep item into dispenser" and will only attempt to pick up the maximum that the dispenser can hold at that exact moment.

They won't be intelligent and think "oh, there's a compactor nearby that can hold the rest of this material, so i'll pick up excess and kill two birds with one stone...."

If only the dupes were that intelligent, I believe we'd all have a lot less lag and a lot more productivity. This is the sort of bad decision making that has an effect on pondering as far as i've observed.

[AndreyKl]

1 hour ago, Lifegrow said:

Sadly thats not how it works. A dupe will see the job for "Sweep item into dispenser" and will only attempt to pick up the maximum that the dispenser can hold at that exact moment.

They won't be intelligent and think "oh, there's a compactor nearby that can hold the rest of this material, so i'll pick up excess and kill two birds with one stone...."

Dispenser will be full, so dupe won't see the "Sweep item into dispenser" job, only "sweep to compactor" job. 

Example: we have a compactors with 9.9t of sandstone, and dispenser which is full, but not dropping (because compactor is blocking dispenser). Now, you mark 1t of sandstone for sweeping (or pick it up automatically), dupe goes long way to the mining area, picks up 1t, goes long way to compactors, delivers sandstone. Now compactors are at 10.9t. Compactor changes state of dispenser, dispenser starts dropping, dupes go to compactor and deliver from compactor to dispenser, which is a very small journey. Eventually compactor drops below 10t and blocks dispenser again.

There still will be a chance for a dupe to try delivering 200kg from afar to unblocked dispenser, but it can be avoided as well (like locking a dupe with compactor and dispenser or by confining your cook to base and forbidding anyone else but cook access to dispenser), but it might work right as is with right priorities (if job of delivering to compactor is higher than job to delivering to dispenser, dupes should first deliver to compactor and then from compactor to dispenser). 

[Lifegrow]

13 minutes ago, AndreyKl said:

Dispenser will be full, so dupe won't see the "Sweep item into dispenser" job, only "sweep to compactor" job. 

Example: we have a smart compactor with 9.9t, and dispenser which is full, but not dropping (because compactor is blocking). Now, you mark 1t of sandstone for sweeping (or pick it up automatically), dupe goes long way to the mining area, picks up 1t, goes long way to compactor, delivers sandstone to smart compactor. Now compactor is at 10.9t. Compactor changes state of dispenser, dispenser starts dropping, dupes go to compactor and deliver from compactor to dispenser, which is a very small journey. Eventually compactor drops below 10t and blocks dispenser again.

But in that case you're handling materials twice.

Thats the same as just sweeping everything to some high priority sweep only compactors nearby the dispenser, then just dropping it all on the floor to be swept again. Doesn't seem like you'd achieve any bonus to using this high tech new equipment  

 

[AndreyKl]

11 minutes ago, Lifegrow said:

But in that case you're handling materials twice.

Thats the same as just sweeping everything to some high priority sweep only compactors nearby the dispenser, then just dropping it all on the floor to be swept again. Doesn't seem like you'd achieve any bonus to using this high tech new equipment  

 

1. Compared to dispenser by itself:

- Dupe that moves 1t of sandstone to dispenser from area 500 tiles away will have to travel 5000 tiles, because dupe will have to do job 5 times (5*(2 directions*500)).

- Dupes that moves 1t of sandstone to compactor 500 tiles away and than from compactor to dispenser travels 1000 tiles of first trip + 30-100 tiles of 5 trips from compactor to dispenser. So having a compactor is more efficient time wise and dupes rarely mine less than 1t of material (usually more), trained dupes lift 1t on average. That's a lot of a bonus and the more material your dupe can carry in one setting the more of a bonus you will get.

2. This suggestion was not about efficiency but about solving issue OP is having (aka no sweepers, but I need a buffer).

P.S. If you happen to have 153kg of sandstone somewhere, dupe will still deliver 200kg to dispenser from compactor, but this part can be improved, like: disable dispenser when storage is at 15t, enable at 20t, so that dupes will be encouraged to optimize.

[Lifegrow]

I don't think you're reading what i'm saying. You're proposing to over-engineer with a smart compactor/and gate logic - i'm saying that what you proposed is the same as just slapping down some basic storage bins and sweeping to those, then handling again to the dispenser. 

I wasn't responding to the OP, I was responding to you  I was trying to explain dupe logic to you, but it may be best if you just go and do a little tinkering yourself.

 

[AndreyKl]

34 minutes ago, Lifegrow said:

I don't think you're reading what i'm saying. You're proposing to over-engineer with a smart compactor/and gate logic - i'm saying that what you proposed is the same as just slapping down some basic storage bins and sweeping to those, then handling again to the dispenser.

1. Dispenser won't stop until storage is empty which is the problem, this system stops it. Dispenser does not respect storage priority, so even if storage is of higher priority than dispenser, dispenser still empties storage. OP asked for a system that leaves 20t inside storage and rest goes to dispenser. Do you have a better suggestion of stopping dispenser before it consumes all ore? Normal storage bit+dispenser will result in storage bin being completely emptied leaving no sandstone for dupes to build with.

47 minutes ago, Lifegrow said:

then just dropping it all on the floor to be swept again

2. I might have misunderstood this part when I read it first time. According to OPs requirements, dispenser won't be dropping ore to be 'swept again', ore will be dropped into hole where dupes can't access it. Aka: early quantum storage. Dupes will just collect tons and tons of ore under dispenser and ore will stay there. (not that this part is important… there are a number of ways to implement this system)

34 minutes ago, Lifegrow said:

I was trying to explain dupe logic to you, but it may be best if you just go and do a little tinkering yourself.

How is this related to dupe logic? The problem remains even with sweeper - dispenser does not respect storage priority, thus empties everything.

[AndreyKl]

P.S.

52 minutes ago, Lifegrow said:

i'm saying that what you proposed is the same as just slapping down some basic storage bins and sweeping to those, then handling again to the dispenser.

In OPs post there is a bug report, in there user posted basic compactor system (second comment): high priority compactor, low priority dispenser, and it doesn't work, however that system use 'accessible' storage, so its a bit different case.