I always try to do belt bases, as I prefer them. Gleba is damn near impossible. I tried to at the start but the spoilage and nutrients are just too much to handle for me. Bots to the rescue!

  • Socket462@feddit.it
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    1 month ago

    Could you elaborate the shutdown startup phase please? I have to do it manually at the moment.

    • HeckGazer@programming.dev
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      1 month ago

      For shutdown I have a few circuits monitoring the inputs/outputs to check if we’re getting backed up or running dry on either of the fruits. If that’s the case the input belts are stopped, egg->egg duplicator inserters are disabled and the chests that hold the one egg being recirculated go into trash mode.

      There is a separate unit that constantly ensures there are at least a couple eggs avaliable and “requests” (buffer chest) any excess and is surrounded by turrets.

      During startup (science below limit and ingedients on input belts) the spoilage->nutrient inserter is enabled which priority feeds just the first three chambers that make flux. Once any flux has been made (>0 flux on the belt || flux->nutrient machine working) the spoilage inserter stops. That’s enough for the flux->nutrient machine to start and the whole system becomes self sustaining.
      As part of startup a requester chest requests 1 egg, the rest of the egg duplicators are setup in such a way that they propagate down the line (a direct inserter between them is enabled if the recirculating chest for the next chamber is empty and the egg->sci inserter gets disabled). Once there are eggs in the recirculating chests the startup is considered complete and the requester chests turn off.

      There’s also a chest that pulls from the main nutrient line to make sure there’s always loads of spoilage ready for a restart.

      • Socket462@feddit.it
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        1 month ago

        Very interesting, thank you. I built something similar except for the eggs which I have to manually find and put into a chest to kickstart egg production. This is because if the factory is powered off there are no nutrients being made and spoilage eventually will finish and eggs will spoil. So I left that part manual.

        I wonder if you found a way to produce nutrients even with the factory powered off.

        • HeckGazer@programming.dev
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          1 month ago

          There’s a small machine at the resource inputs that gets full resource priority and keeps a couple chests full of spoilage handy as well. Eggs decay fairly slowly so it doesn’t take that much to keep one circulating.
          It’s not a perfect solution but saves needing manual intervention for at least as long as it takes me to look back there again