Conveyor Overhaul (efficient design)

[Smithe37]

The Problem
Currently, it is impossible to set up a fully automated warehouse capable of supplying materials to far away building locations.
If you need a specific set of resources then the storage containers need to be within the range of the loader and you have to specify what resources are to be loaded in.
 

If the containers with those resources are out of range then the container resource storage must be specified and they must be loaded manually into the loader requiring dupe time and micro management.
The supply rails also get clogged up until all the containers are empty of the Loader resource.
 

Due to the micro management,clogging and build time I do not think that it is worth setting up loader/receptacles systems for supplying building areas with materials and is only worth it for specific resource chains (like slime to distiller, coal to generator or food to food storage).

The Solution

I propose that rather than having the loader specify resources to be loaded onto conveyors, that the receptacle specifies what resources are to be loaded onto conveyors.  This would allow us to build a multi purpose conveyor systems where any loader in the warehouse could load the resource required by the receptacle and allow us to build supply network where we weren’t restricted to just a few resources.
 

I’m not sure how/whether you could code the receptacle to only request the amount of resources required to fill the receptacle but if you could, this would make conveyors a more viable option for long distance building supplies and also prevent conveyor clogging.
 

It might be the case that a multi purpose supply warehouse was never the purpose/intention of conveyor systems.
I may also be missing something on the construction of conveyor systems.
In either case I would love some input. I can also post some screenshots with annotation for further explanation.

[BlueLance]

I am not gonna lie, I thought the purpose of these was to deal with Supply and Demand Jobs, I mean construction jobs etc could be good, but usually a dupe can deliver more, quicker, and doesn't involve you having to build a conveyor system to the point of construction?

I wouldnt mind if you are able to send a picture of what you are meaning though in-case I am misunderstanding what you are looking for.

[Kasuha]

I think we could specify on both - on the loader what the sweeper should fill the loader, and on receptacle what should it pick from the belt while the rest would be free to move on. It would be also nice to have conveyor "filters", sending selected material one way and the rest the other way. Best if it could be filtering by material type (mineral, ore, metal) beside exact material.

[BlueLance]

I agree with you there Kasuha.

[Supraluminal]

You can basically do all of this with the parts currently available in the game, but it's cumbersome. The most awkward part is allocating storage in the warehouse - I haven't been able to figure out a way to handle that dynamically. But, assuming you assign enough storage space for each resource, you can fully automate the rest of it, from sorting and storing incoming materials to distributing materials to where there's demand for them.

The key technique is to use sweepers/loaders as your conveyor filters. If you want to branch a rail and send sandstone east and gold south, terminate your rail in a receptacle, build a sweeper and two loaders (set to accept sandstone and gold respectively) in range, then continue your rails from there.

The other part of it is using automated storage to enable/disable upstream loaders so that you're only sending an appropriate amount of material at one time. In conjunction with a regular storage locker for a buffer, that lets you use a single rail for an arbitrary number of resources without clogs. In theory anyway; as long as the automated lockers are buggy about their logic outputs the whole thing is prone to clogs and breakdowns.

[TheExceed]

It would be nice to get a filter  or a three way bridge filter for transporting. like liquid and gas filters. Maybe with more filters than the gas/liquid since there are WAY more resources than gas/liquids.

[Smithe37]

 

7 hours ago, Supraluminal said:

You can basically do all of this with the parts currently available in the game, but it's cumbersome. The most awkward part is allocating storage in the warehouse - I haven't been able to figure out a way to handle that dynamically. But, assuming you assign enough storage space for each resource, you can fully automate the rest of it, from sorting and storing incoming materials to distributing materials to where there's demand for them.

The key technique is to use sweepers/loaders as your conveyor filters. If you want to branch a rail and send sandstone east and gold south, terminate your rail in a receptacle, build a sweeper and two loaders (set to accept sandstone and gold respectively) in range, then continue your rails from there.

The other part of it is using automated storage to enable/disable upstream loaders so that you're only sending an appropriate amount of material at one time. In conjunction with a regular storage locker for a buffer, that lets you use a single rail for an arbitrary number of resources without clogs. In theory anyway; as long as the automated lockers are buggy about their logic outputs the whole thing is prone to clogs and breakdowns.

Sure, you could do this but the point of building systems in ONI is to make things more efficient. At this stage that takes more effort and dupe time while it is more efficient and easier to just move things by hand or use local resources.

[DyingCrow]

Itd also be great if sweepers could be mounted on rails. This makes me think of a new room, the werehouse. nothing special, just a bunch of storage, but the only room where the railed sweeper could be built, while other rooms could only have the regular fixed sweepers. This and the above would allow for a really good, organized supply and demand network.

[Supraluminal]

2 hours ago, Smithe37 said:

 

Sure, you could do this but the point of building systems in ONI is to make things more efficient. At this stage that takes more effort and dupe time while it is more efficient and easier to just move things by hand or use local resources.

It's a question of time scale, right? It's a big upfront investment of time and resources to build out a warehouse and distribution system, but if you play long enough it eventually pays for itself by significantly cutting dupe time spent on deliveries.

I will agree that the current game balance means that the large initial cost makes it more practical as a late-game project for after you've mostly stabilized on basic needs. It's hard to invest in it while you're scrambling to survive. But, once you get to the stage of digging to the far corners of the asteroid to see what's out there, it becomes more appealing.

8 minutes ago, DyingCrow said:

Itd also be great if sweepers could be mounted on rails. This makes me think of a new room, the werehouse. nothing special, just a bunch of storage, but the only room where the railed sweeper could be built, while other rooms could only have the regular fixed sweepers. This and the above would allow for a really good, organized supply and demand network.

Yeah, I've thought about that as well (or maybe I saw it suggested before, I forget). It would be a nice convenience and could make the upfront cost of this kind of project more reasonable. I think the rail content filtering is the biggest bottleneck right now though; the costs (both up-front metal and ongoing power) for running the receptacle-sweeper-loaders setup we have to use now are very high.

[Smithe37]

2 hours ago, Supraluminal said:

It's a question of time scale, right? It's a big upfront investment of time and resources to build out a warehouse and distribution system, but if you play long enough it eventually pays for itself by significantly cutting dupe time spent on deliveries.

I will agree that the current game balance means that the large initial cost makes it more practical as a late-game project for after you've mostly stabilized on basic needs. It's hard to invest in it while you're scrambling to survive. But, once you get to the stage of digging to the far corners of the asteroid to see what's out there, it becomes more appealing.
 

Even in the late game I don't think it's worth it. Say I was to excavate a geyser and pipe the contents somewhere. I could simply use locally available resources. In the time it takes to set up a supply to that area I would have easily already built all the piping and the sealed room

2 hours ago, DyingCrow said:

Itd also be great if sweepers could be mounted on rails. This makes me think of a new room, the werehouse. nothing special, just a bunch of storage, but the only room where the railed sweeper could be built, while other rooms could only have the regular fixed sweepers. This and the above would allow for a really good, organized supply and demand network.

I love this idea of a "warehouse room" with mobile sweepers. That combined with receptacles requesting a fixed amount (maybe increase their storage capacity too) would be awesome. Perhaps they could even give some sort of storage bonus to any containers within the warehouse.
They also need to fix the current exploit using receptacles/loaders as food storage. If you put a loader/receptacle in a pit with CO² you end up with 20k food storage that never spoils.

[Supraluminal]

11 hours ago, Smithe37 said:

Even in the late game I don't think it's worth it. Say I was to excavate a geyser and pipe the contents somewhere. I could simply use locally available resources. In the time it takes to set up a supply to that area I would have easily already built all the piping and the sealed room

I love this idea of a "warehouse room" with mobile sweepers. That combined with receptacles requesting a fixed amount (maybe increase their storage capacity too) would be awesome. Perhaps they could even give some sort of storage bonus to any containers within the warehouse.
They also need to fix the current exploit using receptacles/loaders as food storage. If you put a loader/receptacle in a pit with CO² you end up with 20k food storage that never spoils.

The way I've done it before is to just set up a few supply depots spaced roughly evenly around the outside of my base, not trying to build one right next to every project I have going. That way you get benefit of shorter delivery times without overbuilding your infrastructure.

That being said, I honestly don't know how likely it is that you'd break even on the investment over a course of a normal playthrough. It's hard to even assess since it's not a direct comparison (material + dupe time cost + ongoing power for warehouse system vs. pure dupe time savings). It might be that it only pays for itself if you play for hundreds or thousands of cycles.

For me, though, efficiency is only part of the appeal. More importantly, it's just a cool thing to build once you've handled the immediate survival challenges of the early game.

[Ambaire]

If you're doing a remote build site, the best way I've found is to do a high priority compactor for each material needed, set to the amount you need.

What would be fun is if one could have separate requested amounts in the same compactor... would require a rework of that UI, though.

[TheExceed]

I would love to see a shipping shut off.
Where I would use this would be keeping slime from sublimating by putting the the shipping lines through water.
Keep it off and inside the water while an algae distiller runs or while a farm is not in need of slime. (mushrooms)

[Kasuha]

1 hour ago, TheExceed said:

I would love to see a shipping shut off.
Where I would use this would be keeping slime from sublimating by putting the the shipping lines through water.
Keep it off and inside the water while an algae distiller runs or while a farm is not in need of slime. (mushrooms)

You can put the receptacle under water - that way I believe the slime won't even have time to outgas while the sweeper feeds it to the distiller. And you can even switch off the sweeper, though if you do so, have it above water as well so that the piece of slime it may hold at the moment falls to the water and not on the ground.

[TheExceed]

3 hours ago, Kasuha said:

You can put the receptacle under water - that way I believe the slime won't even have time to outgas while the sweeper feeds it to the distiller. And you can even switch off the sweeper, though if you do so, have it above water as well so that the piece of slime it may hold at the moment falls to the water and not on the ground.

Hmm, will give that a go. It would be nice to get some automation with the shipping though.
Could you link the post where you talk about 4way gas split for atmo?

 

[Kasuha]

1 hour ago, TheExceed said:

Could you link the post where you talk about 4way gas split for atmo?

 

Well, the 4-way part was not the most important thing on it.

 

[TheExceed]

54 minutes ago, Kasuha said:

Well, the 4-way part was not the most important thing on it.

 

I just saw you mentioned about the topic and I wanted to read up on it. Thanks

[Kaboom3009]

if you put the resource list on the receiver and remove it completely from the loader ... you could actually have a useful conveyor that will supply your deoxidzer's various filters ... food coal generators etc .... and all you need do is build a line to your resources and sweep them onto the loader ... all of them ... then run a circuit of conveyor belt around your base and deliver what needs to be delivered and store the rest ..... and with loaders in the storage area you can use automation controls to pull resources as required ... this would make conveyors a good use of limited resources and helpful ... for freeing up dupes to do actual work like making food and building and what not ... instead spending 75% of their time supplying everything before they do any actual work
The priority of the receiver and loader should only be for what you want first ... not to make stuff move .... seriously ... a loader at 5 and a receiver at 5 should always work but it doesnt ... you have to boost the receiver just to get materiel movement ... then pray the sweeper actually loads all of it into a storage bin ... which yet again has to be even higher priorty to get it to work for a few resources.

at this point conveyors are pretty much useless as they bog up all the time and literally are so buggy they arent worth even building
.
btw the electrolizer is fubar ... H20 .... is 2 parts hydrogen and 1 part Oxygen NOT 4 parts Oxygen  to 2 parts hydrogen ... yet another useless item for power ... not bad for oxygen ... they really need to be reset to 200g of Hydrogen and 100g of oxygen ... then they become useful and worthwhile in all aspects

speaking of the metric system ... 1,000 Kg is actualy 1Mg ... or 1,000,000 ... the numbers showing for various levels of resources including oxygen dont actually reflect what is present ... they are off by a factor of 1,000 ... they debugger works fine but once a resource is placed on the map like O2 of 10Kg ... you actually get 10,000Kg ....
 

[ArunPrasath]

On 4/4/2018 at 3:35 PM, Kasuha said:

I think we could specify on both - on the loader what the sweeper should fill the loader, and on receptacle what should it pick from the belt while the rest would be free to move on. It would be also nice to have conveyor "filters", sending selected material one way and the rest the other way. Best if it could be filtering by material type (mineral, ore, metal) beside exact material.

I think it would be nice to get some acknowledgement somewhere to see that the development team is reading all this. I do get that they are quite busy; but a small like here or there will go a long way to see that they are reading out posts and suggestions.