Jump to content

Auto Hatch Feeder


Recommended Posts

I've discussed this before as a concept but I decided to go and build one to see how it plays out. Presenting the automatic hatch feeder:

image.thumb.png.5e7e61b4d6594eb74a5ce8251603310d.png

The smart compactor hold whatever you want to feed the hatches and the upper loader is set to accept the same. The arm takes an item and shuts itself down after 0.1s (via the buffer gate), causing it to drop the item. The weight plate throttles the whole system to whatever rate the hatches are eating at and the bottom sweeper collects the coal. I'm loading the upper compactor manually currently but it's easy enough to set up a sweeper arm and conveyor system to feed it. I plan to use this to centralise my coal production (currently I have hatches all over the place and I ship coal in from all over the world).

Link to comment
https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/88306-auto-hatch-feeder/
Share on other sites

Just now, Lutzkhie said:

why use heavy wire?

Hatches don't care about decor and I wasn't that bothered about saving a few hundred kg of metal on this map. I've built pretty much everything I want to build and I've barely scratched the metal veins I've revealed so far.

7 minutes ago, Neotuck said:

why have a loader in the upper right side of your build? wouldn't a storage compactor work just as well and those don't need power

Good point. I'll change it.

Although loaders only draw power when they're pushing items onto a conveyor.

 

Edit -

Oh I remember now. I wanted storage that allowed me to disable manual loading so dupes didn't put stuff in there. Even with sweep only they might sometimes put junk in it when I sweep up after rebuilding some stuff. I guess though I could lock it behind a door. Sweepers will still try and dump items into storage without line of sight.

Just now, JonnyMonroe said:

How's that?

I assumed because of what you said here

48 minutes ago, JonnyMonroe said:

I've built pretty much everything I want to build and I've barely scratched the metal veins I've revealed so far.

and I agree sweepers sometimes get into conflict with dupes if they try to move or sweep items that's meant for your sweeper, that's why I always keep them out of reach by dupes.

I learned this when I tried to have sweepers pick up harvested crops and use a conveyor rail to send them to my kitchen to be cooked.  However sometimes the sweeper would ignore the dropped crop and my farmer would carry it all the way to the kitchen and cut time better used for the farm station.

I fixed this by restricting doors access to my kitchens and green houses so only cooks can go into the kitchen and farmers into the greenhouses.  Now sweepers picks up crops 100% of the time

Just now, Neotuck said:

I assumed because of what you said here

No, I mean 'how's that now I've changed it.'

And yeah sweepers conflicting with dupes is annoying and I think klei should just allow sweepers to steal sweep jobs from dupes. This issue with this specific setup is the right hand loader has to be higher priority than the compactor so dupes WILL try and move items from one to the other if they can.

Just now, Neotuck said:

oops, some reason the picture didn't show up when I read that, looks good!

I'm not saying this is definitely what happened, but it's totally possible that I posted it and forgot to put the screenshot in then edited it in afterwards.

 

Just a theory.

I have found that it's better to have a door built on top of the switch and keep hatches stuck in the door. When they don't wander around they are faster to take a snack. Unfortunately it only works for up to four hatches per switch, otherwise they get over the maximum value that can be set for the switch.

1 hour ago, Kasuha said:

I have found that it's better to have a door built on top of the switch and keep hatches stuck in the door. When they don't wander around they are faster to take a snack. Unfortunately it only works for up to four hatches per switch, otherwise they get over the maximum value that can be set for the switch.

You could forgo the switch entirely and throttle the system with a 2nd smart compactor where you gather your coal, and send new material in when there is space in that compactor.

Or set up a clock based on your desired throughput. 

Or ignore throttling the system and let it run as fast as you can provide material.

This is my feeder.

SOD4FfJ.jpg

Spoiler

fNf1ikn.jpg

The entry has a compactor because the receptacle can only hold 100 kg and if the feeder locks up, it stops the whole conveyor very soon. The output end has a compactor too because I found that it sometimes forgets to deliver to a loader. And it sometimes does a delivery, so there's another always-on arm that then empties the compactor to a loader, and another always-on arm that empties the receptacle and feeds the compactor.

The logic is there so that the leftmost 'empty enough' cage gets a bite because I don't want all three arms to be battling of the same compactor - it kinda doesn't work well.

Lots of bad experience went into this but in the end it has reasonable function. The only problem is that whenever I look somewhere else in the map for long enough, it stops feeding and the fertilizer only ends up in the compactor. Auto sweepers still have some issues to fix. Though I guess we might lose their auto-feeding function with that.

10 minutes ago, Kasuha said:

This is my feeder.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

fNf1ikn.jpg

The entry has a compactor because the receptacle can only hold 100 kg and if the feeder locks up, it stops the whole conveyor very soon. The output end has a compactor too because I found that it sometimes forgets to deliver to a loader. And it sometimes does a delivery, so there's another always-on arm that then empties the compactor to a loader, and another always-on arm that empties the receptacle and feeds the compactor.

The logic is there so that the leftmost 'empty enough' cage gets a bite because I don't want all three arms to be battling of the same compactor - it kinda doesn't work well.

Lots of bad experience went into this but in the end it has reasonable function. The only problem is that whenever I look somewhere else in the map for long enough, it stops feeding and the fertilizer only ends up in the compactor. Auto sweepers still have some issues to fix. Though I guess we might lose their auto-feeding function with that.

like many things when a new update happens a lot of creative builds become obsolete.  Now there is a critter feeder20180308151235_1.thumb.jpg.dfbda7a7a7f18928b93d7b392c18f237.jpg

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Please be aware that the content of this thread may be outdated and no longer applicable.

×
  • Create New...