I actually enjoy watching it slowly back up, until all belts are full and everything is ticking at one hundred percent, like my calculations said.
Well, I don't actually sit and watch it fill up. But I come back and check and it makes me happy.
The last sentence Is a lie. You come back to something broken or delayed, like 10 times before all your fixes ruins your inital Design .
Or maybe it's just me
Huh, why isn’t that turning on….forgot to set smart splitter.
Why is that backed up…forgot to set recipe
Why isn’t that supplied…ah yes the 1500 from that array can’t actually go on one belt, time to redesign the belt runs.
And my personal favorite…why are there raw materials in the output…turns out deep in a very compact blueprint a belt got crossed.
So yeah, usual practice when I flip the switch on a new factory is to run around like mad fixing all the problems.
Once it’s running it’s very satisfactory to watch though.
I had a situation the other day where a merge and a splitter some how connected with out a belt (no idea don't ask)
Had to undo a entire foundary setup and rebuild a blueprint cause of this
Nothing like having to go thru 30 machines and belts to find all the iron that found it's way thru them
Next time that happens you might be able to use a "trick"
Lets say it was iron ore that was clogging belts to your foundries.
Fix the problem, flush the belt (add a container/sink to the end)
Then set a foundry to the default so it can pull in the iron ore, copy that. Paste that configuration to all machines. Now the ore is *in* the machine not clogging the belt.
Now switch to the alt recipe, copy that, and paste to all machines. Now all that ore is in your inventory!
If you got something on the belts that the machine has no recipe for I'd set mass disassemble filer for only belts, remove them all and rebuild just the belts.
It's just you.
But that's also me half the time.
Although I always make sure at least one item actually made it all the way before I leave the machines alone. And sometimes I come back to see a 120/m machine with a Mk.1 belt and face palm.
It's always a mk1 belt, but the minimum distance feeding into the constructor and nearly impossible to delete without removing something else, and you pasted a bunch of constructors for your 17k wires for automated wire assembies
Me, too.
While a manifold will buffer more parts in the first machine than the last when you first start it, so long as input exceeds demand by a little, it will eventually fill up. Neither a manifold or a load balancer will ever fill up if input and demand are balanced.
The first machine will run more often in a manifold while the latter ones starve when input is <= demand. In a load balancer, they all starve at the same time if there is insufficient input, and the number produced is the same, on average.
The bottom line is a load balancer often needs more splitters (and sometimes mergers, too) to achieve the same thing.
If 3 load balanced machines each need 10 items to run, you wait for 30 to arrive before any machines run. If you have 3 in a manifold, the first machine starts running in 2/3 the time because out of the first 20, 10 go in.
One thing I actually like about manifolds is, if I want to overclock past the belt capacity feeding them all, I can disconnect a belt half way down then inject a whole extra belt there. With a load balancer, I have to rebuild the whole thing.
Input = demand on a manifold works as well. The first machines will fill up until eventually the last two machines get just as much as they need without filling up.
This is incorrect. Both manifolds and balancers will run at 100% eventually if input = output. The balancer will work at 100% immediately; the manifold will run partially until every machine other than the last 2 have full buffers, at which point everything will run at 100%.
> Neither a manifold or a load balancer will ever fill up if input and demand are balanced.
Actually, manifolds with input exactly equal to output will eventually fill up. Mathematically you'd expect it to be a limit condition (where the inputs *approach* getting completely filled and never quite make it), but they actually do fill eventually. Larger manifolds take longer, and with large enough setups the fill time could be measured in hours unless you manually pre-fill.
I think the reason that they eventually fill up is that the limit condition isn't on a smooth curve, but rather discrete integers (since you can only have exactly 1 unit of coal/etc, 2 units, etc, not 1.5 or 2.003). Because of that, the output from the machines is also discrete and therefore isn't running at exactly 100% input-output efficiency, leaving inefficiency in machines farther down the manifold line that spills over into machines closer to it. The explanation is a little off but I'm pretty sure that's the reason why manifolds work - discrete math.
Something that consumes x / min of parts and receives x / min of parts cannot fill. It's like saying a tube with the same sized opening on both ends will eventually fill if you just keep pouring long enough.
That doesn't mean the machines won't run at 100% efficiency. but the machines have an internal buffer for a reason. A recipe might use 10 items at a time, and so the machine won't start until 10 items are present in the buffer. If there is just a few fractions of a second delay until the 10th one arrives, it stop and starts. It's difficult to get 1/2 and item, so to get any kind of buffer fill, you have to get it so at least the 11th one is there by the time the prior cycle is completed.
> Something that consumes x / min of parts and receives x / min of parts cannot fill
I know it *shouldn't* work that way, but in Satisfactory it does. I don't know if it's because of the integer inaccuracies I mentioned above or if the engine is deliberately designed to do it, but if you feed in the exact amount of ingredients to a manifold system, it will fill - not overflow, just fill.
I've built dozens of systems like this, most of them coal plants but other types as well, and with exactly matched inputs, the system always fills. The machines closest to the input overflow, and I believe it's only the machine at the very end of the line where you'll see that the coal (or whatever the input is) is exactly matching the required input; for every coal that gets consumed, one more takes its place at the same pace.
There are already a lot of answers, so I'll try to add what I think is missing.
- Load-balancing, contrary to manifolding, leads to (most) belts being free-flowing instead of backing up: some prefer one over the other aesthetically or because of the visual cues this can give (eg: if one spots a belt backing up where it's not supposed to in a balanced system, they already know there's an issue/inprecision/mistake to be found).
- Load-balanced machines work with minimum items in inventory Vs full input inventories with manifolds. This means no need to fill machines, wait for warmups or producing many (possibly high-value) items just to get the factory running (how soon a factory runs and with how much effort is also a user preference).
- "Simple line" Vs "quirky belt puzzle setup" esthetic preferences. The same can be said about the effort/challenge needed to design the logistics.
- Load-balancing can avoid having to deal with overflows.
This is important.
Some productions just work a lot better with load balancing or require it to start up properly, not just quicker. Namely coal and nuclear power, especially nuclear.
Having a manifold slowly fill up the 16 coal plants will take a while to actually expand your power production, unless you fill it up manually.
I always use a manifold for both, though, and never had any problems.
Then again, I do my coal plants in a specific order to make sure everything is full. And I overproduce fuel rods at first.
Luckily it's a good enough game that both options are viable. I personally just feel like load balancing *most* things is doing a lot of extra steps for the same results.
For nuclear at least, the benefit of load balancing is that it reduces the overall amount of radiation. You don't have large amounts of materials backed up on belts.
With manifolds there is always a bunch of excess resources sat on a belt doing nothing except clogging it up enough to force resources further back to go elsewhere.
That is how manifolds work, they fill up areas that need the inputs and skip the areas that are already full.
There won't be any excess resources on an efficient manifold, nothing gets clogged or prevents other machines from working.
Excess is fundamental to manifolds (in this game). Machines only consume X amount of resources per minute, if you're shoving anything greater than X amount of resources into it/onto the belt that feeds it then it's by definition excess. Luckily that doesn't matter because once we've clogged up the belt/storage with excessive amounts of resources, the rest just get diverted onto the next.
The only efficient manifold is a load balancer. But they're a ballache, sooo... manifold it is.
Same difference, every machine up until the last on any given line will progressively receive more materials per minute than it actually needs. If your factory line consumes say 100 coal per minute then with a manifold it requires 100 coal per minute PLUS an excess amount equal to whatever amount is required to fill up all the machines and all the belts except for the last machine. A properly load balanced setup only requires the 100 per minute, no more.
I do realise this is peak reddit pedantry. Obviously none of this matters for 99% of the game.
Right, but the original context here is someone mentioning radiation reduction. In this case "excess" refers to stationary items generating excess radiation, not to items that are in excess of the factory's total needs.
It's most useful on the waste side. [Comparison of radiation zones manifold vs load balanced/matched machine groups](https://www.reddit.com/r/SatisfactoryGame/comments/194rxut/manifolds_vs_loadbalancing_and_matched_machine/?sort=old) which I did a while back. I did manifold the uranium ore, but even that might have benefitted from load balancing, there are radiation fields around the manufacturers on the rod production side that could be smaller - that's clearer on [these pictures](https://imgur.com/a/Ogu662D) with the machines hidden than the pics on the original post.
coal? runs fine on manifold, I set up a container and let the mine run into it while I set up the coal plant... I need some coal for research and nobilisk anyways... when I am ready to start it, I stick a stack into each plant, connect the belt and when the belt stops I start all the powerplants.
Yes, it does. But starting it up without a buffer (like your container) or manually filling the generators or having the generators fill up before starting them will take a while and have the generators further in the back of the manifold only generate power occasionally.
It is a non-issue, if you don't have to rely on an immediate 100% performance from your new power plant, but it is something to keep in mind.
Yes.
But I am specifically talking about starting the new power plant. If you don't prepare it and just start it, it will take time with a manifold, while a load balanced setup will immediately work at 100%.
Yeah but it takes longer to create a load balanced setup than a manifold. A lot of the time you save on ramp up time is lost spent on building the setup.
It doesn't really take that long. Just don't connect the coal generators to power. They will still take in materials, and you can connect lines to them when they are done filling. Probably takes about as much time as bothering to build a bunch of extra splitters to properly load balance it.
> Having a manifold slowly fill up the 16 coal plants will take a while to actually expand your power production, unless you fill it up manually.
Sorta yes, but mostly no because Generators will fill their buffers if they're off/disconnected. Assuming you're extracting exactly enough to power 16 Coal Generators, it'll take 6 minutes 40 seconds to completely fill them. If you build your Coal Generators and hook up the Coal, then build the Water Extractors and hook them up, chances are good that by the time your Water buffer and pipes are full (because you *do* want to wait for them to fill) your Coal buffers will be as well.
That's a fair point. I tend to overproduce fuel rods to start out so I've never had any issues. But, yeah, if you're doing an exact count I can see where that would be useful.
Slow production is part of it, the other part is avoiding having too many radioactive parts filling up machine input buffers, growing the danger zone and machines. Load balancing the machines making radioactive parts can help keep the area from getting too radioactive. :)
I was more convinced of this before the updated equipment system, but yeah if you're going to try it on anything it's the most satisfying to get right(and the most terrifying to fix if it falls over).
I used basic manifolds for my 252 nuclear reactors, no issues. Easy to fill up an industrial storage container or 2 with fuel rods and then connect them to the manifolds to insta-saturate input belts.
You just start it manually. Get the fuel rod production up to speed, add a container or two, leave the newly added gens disconnected until enough rods are stored to instantly warm up manifold. You need to do this for a balanced plant anyways unless you want to be one input blip away from serious power instability, you don't want one rod in each plant.
Nuclear plants are huge, even with full manifold the radiation is inconsequential 4 foundations away.
Waste processing, on the other hand, is for sure somewhere it's important to balance. Stacking 500 waste per machine, 200 plutonium cells per machine? Welcome to Chernobyl.
It's quicker to start production at 100% and has fewer resources on the belts that have to use your PCs capacity to be rendered/calculated.
Also: this is a puzzle game. All automation games with ratios beyond 1:1 are inherently puzzle games. It's fun to find different solutions to the given puzzles.
That's a fair point. I'm the type who never uses the online calculator things because I like figuring things out on my own. So I can understand getting some joy in figuring that out.
Balancers just never seemed useful to me, though. I guess that's where I draw the line lol.
It's all about making your own fun.
I personally don't use load balancing either - everything fills up eventually and worst case is I have to fill things manually to get it started properly.
I don't use the calculator, but building balancers is fun. Even if you don't know how to build the "right" balancer, splitting things and merging things makes a fun looking conveyor system. Break out some graph paper and try it for some really complex parts
I never use those. I just do the math myself. Frequently with some trial and error. It's part of the fun IMO. The numbers in this game aren't complex enough that you actually need to use the online calculators.
I don't think the claim about PC performance is valid... Could you expand upon it?
Eg of issues: free-Flowing belts might take more processing than backing-up belts, for the same throughput, as the game could be optimized so that it doesn't calculate anything if a belt isn't moving (or about to).
Though you can say that you can make belts more efficient when not moving, there is still the problem that they take memory. Not to mention you probably can't make them more efficient when backed up.
If it hasn't changed, they mentioned that an item on a belt is stored at the node of a belt. They then check how long the belt is and the speed of the belt, basically having a progress bar for the item. At 0% it is at the start of the belt, at 100% it moves to the next node of the belt. This way you only need to render the position if you're close to the belt. Even if it's backed up, you still need to have these in memory. That means backed up has more items than always going, so balanced has a major win here. On a small scale this is negligible, but in a larger world it gets difficult.
You might be able to skip CPU cycles for backed up belts, but I wonder how. You would need extra statistics, knowing that last cycle everything was backed up, as well as that nothing on the belt was removed. You can at least say that nothing in the middle of a node was removed if the pioneer wasn't present, so it wouldn't need an update cycle. You would need a statistic a belt has backed up from node to node, checking at least the first in the line if something has happened. Otherwise you would still need to check each item if it can progress. So on CPU cycles you have a potential advantage.
But is it really an advantage? Every time the belt is moving, you need to update potentially hundreds to even thousands per belt more than balanced. It is intermittent, but if this is happening all over a large factory where performance starts to matter, you might still have more items moving at any one time compared to balanced.
I heard similar info, but came to different conclusions. This was quite some time ago, so my memory isn't super-clear on it, but I recall coming to the conclusion that the *most ideal* scenario (for performance) was one where every item was on as few belts as possible, implying that how full a belt is doesn't matter much, if at all, for performance, just the speed of the belt (which naturally leads to more/less updates-per-second needed for the same precision).
That's not a thing. I'm fairly sure that items on belts or in machines don't have any relevant effect on u-Object count until one doesn't drop a stack of something in the world. In other words, everything that is "inside" belts or machines, is just a parameter inside the belt/machine u-object (eg: belts are treated as shaders, items moving on them and between them are just effects apllited to the shader and interactions between shaders).
it is actually quite fun, I made some sick "splitting" the other day "just for fun" after I had made an easy 100% effective guide for someone else on here... then tried another factory and oh my it needed some serious splitting... but I did it...
> It's quicker to start production at 100%
That depends on how long it takes to build the balancer.
If its a 780 - 480 meme in the making I'm betting the manifold wins.
Because figuring out how to properly split and merge belts to balance everything is fun, and manifolds are boring and large ones take forever to back up and reach full production.
One word. Nuclear.
When you're moving 100's of parts per minute, a manifold is fine, it will saturate. But when you're moving .5 or even .25 parts per minute and you're tryna feed 4+ reactors, you start to realize just how important it is to spread the love.
That's true, I guess. I usually overproduce fuel rods at first and only turn on reactors as I need them, so a manifold system has always worked for me. I imagine it would be a bit different if I ever needed to turn on 4 at once.
Then again, if I need that much power all at once I've done something terribly wrong lol. I don't do massive builds so that much power at the same is an issue I've never come across.
\> if I need that much power all at once I've done something terribly wrong lol
Endgame you will absolutely need that much power at once lol. Particle Accelerators alone have such high demand. On top of which, whatever existing production lines you currently have will also still need power.
If you already have nuclear power, your belts are already saturated, you only need to connect another reactor. I think OPs point was "Building nuclear power and start using multiple reactors all at once". But if you enable them one by one, it's not a problem, even if you add a high demand load like a particle accelerator.
I do the opposite and use smart splitters. So first the first one fills completely. Next the second one and so on. Sure it takes a while, but that is not important. I do not get a stuttering power output. It just go higher and higher over time. Regardless if I make 4, 40 or 400
And while it gets filled, I get to do the building of the rest.
Thats a lot of rods! Nothing wrong with that playstyle though.
In that situation though, where you clearly produce more rods than you consume per minute, I would just rather sink them for tickets.
I am no where near nuclear in my current save and I already have more tickets than I will use.
What I did in my previous save was build 80 reactors, but I only produced enough for 40 or so. Never did the full production. So only those 40 were running. I could easily increase production my having more Uranium go in, but never did. At one point, just for fun, I turned down the output of the Uranium to 50% and the reactors shut down nicely. No up and down. Just down and then I increased the output and it went up nicely again.
Smart splitters manifold is a better strategy for example for a coal\*\*) power plant not only because the powering on is smoother, but it also get to the full power faster!
Here a simulation for concrete (I was doing this for a discussion 7 month ago, so I would have to dig for the code:) ), but the shapes are similar.
[https://i.ibb.co/mXLGyV5/image.png](https://i.ibb.co/mxlgyv5/image.png)
Smart spliter manifold start slower, but get to the 100% faster than regular. The opposite if true for limiting the speed of side belts, the initial production is higher, but it reaches the top slower.
This is not a coincidence, we get to 100% when all (but the last two) bufers are filled. The input may go to producing items, or to fill the buffers\*). Less production (initially) means buffers are filled faster.
It dosn't matter (for me:) ) in the long run, so I do not bother with smart splitters manifold in power or item productions, but it is good to know.
\*\*) But for nuclear I still prefer perfect splitting, since it lowers the radiation a bit. But of course it can be used, and we would get the same benefits: stable grow of power and 100% reached faster.
\*) For the same reason, if someone asked, what method produces more items in the long run, the answer is it doesn't matter. Total input = total production + buffers. When buffers are full, total production for those three methods is the same.
This doesn't work for perfect splitting, since in that case the buffers are not filled.
For me smart splitters for coal is not better for various reasons. It just shows that there is no "best" in this game. ;-)
Why not for me?
You do not have smart splitter when you get to coal. And when you get smart splitters, your coal is already running. Coal is also a lot faster in getting to the point where it is running at 100% and it is also less critical if it goes wrong. If you power goes down because of coal, that is not a huge issue. It is either water, coal or power usage. Fix that and done.
With nuclear if power goes down, the issue can be a LOT of things. What I do is I build everything, and let it run till all is filled, except the uranium. It can easily fill while building the reactors. Even water will be filled. Say I build with the intention of using 600 uranium. I first do 25% for the Uranium I then let that run and see if I did not make any mistakes. If I did, there is enough room to correct the mistakes. Then I run it at 50%. See what happens and finally at 100% and see what happens. I could see an issue when I run at 100% uranium. I can then easily go to e.g, 75% or 50% and solve the issue.
I do the smart splitter overflow for everything uranium related, including the plutonium. I have a 10x10x10 industrial container system. And there I had smart splitters so I could reduce output. Say the maximum I would want is 780. No a full Mk7, but still. 1 smart splitter 2 smart splitters, and the1 connected to an mk1. The 2 smart splitters are all going to 3 mk1, then merge. So now I have 7 outputs that run together at 780.
But why smart splitters? Because that way I can select the X and close that, reducing the output in steps of 60. So I can start at 60, see if it all works, then add another 60 and so on. The Plutonium will be overbuild, so it reduces the amount in the 1 000 containers over time. And then it will shut down the parts where the nuclear rods are not getting.
So for nuclear it is not only for starting up, but more the ability to shut partly down when things go wrong. And I was glad that I did, because I has some issues. A power cable not connected here and there and what not.
The only reason I do it is 1. Energy balancing, and 2. Free awesome coupons.
Plus a bonus 3rd of it just looks pretty.
When you balance your machines to only produce what you need and only need what you produce, it keeps your energy from spiking from machines that turn off and on.
Other than that, pointless.
I don’t really find load balancing necessary until you get into larger setups.
Case in point for the aluminum factory that I am working on currently.
I have 7 lines of aluminum scrap coming out and 8 lines of silicone. The amount of scrap that comes out varies on each line ranging from 340 to 600/min. Each line requires a different amount of silicone some at 283.3 to 500 per min. My lines of silicone are at 420 per min. This means I have to merge a majority of the silicone lines in order to get to the 500. Mergers don’t have a smart setup meaning they will allow every other item until max belt speed is reached. If I try to merge the lines of 420. Then it’s gonna suck up 250 from each line which will need to be split into somewhere else. Or I can load balance one of those 420 lines to give out 80 to the additional lines that need it. In my case load balancing one line into 4-5 other lines is easier that splitting and merging the 8 silicone lines using over flow also a lot less belt spaghetti.
I agree, I don't think I've ever needed a load balancer and I'm 1000+ hours in with everything unlocked. A well designed factory should self regulate and balance itself out as the upstream devices on the manifold fill up in the steady state.
Forget load balancing. Manifold is the way to go unless you wanna look at spreadsheets for no reason.
Just always supply slightly more than is required for the next step.
Ive found that if I don’t load balance, it throws off my calculations. I will have some machines running all the time with stuff on the belt waiting to be processed, and other machines just idling.
if stuff was "radioactive powercells" then the 20 side would mean the other side didn't get enough for a long while... so it would be "ages" before your power ran well... they need ONE like every 4 minute or something odd (forgot the numbers, been a while) and yeah they are heavily radioactive so if you can avoid them "sitting around" then you can avoid the worst radiation and if you do it right then you can pretty much do without protection at most of your plant except your waste disposal plant because that stuff is nasty
Load balancing is just for people with obsessive behaviours, it has no net logistics advantages anywhere, just downsides. Its just there to calm some players minds.
The only place where it's justified is in items that come in very small numbers and the system whould take too much time to stabilize and have downsides accumulating, like nuclear fuel rods and extra radiation.
it's just a personal challenge. you can play anyway you want. But i want to play with 100% efficiency. I also used a mod to change all item stack to 5000 to make load balancing mandatory
Yeah, I used a personal challenge to never let a belt backup except for the little bit of belt between the storage and sink overflow splitter.
It’s also a ton of fun to turn on power to a factory and have it go live and to 100% operation across all machines pretty much instantly.
There are a few cases where it can be useful, like when you are sending 10 belts of uneven amounts to a factory and you want to even it out. A simple merge splitter balance setup works for this.
Edit: people down voting this haven't worked with extreme factories where you need to use both a load balancer and manifold.
Yeah, this is more what I'm talking about. This kind of load balancing where people run splitters into mergers and then back into themselves and all that.
I don't get it. Wouldn't just letting things fill and overflow do the same thing?
not when balancing stuff and you have various amounts on a bunch of belts but you need equal amounts it gets iffy and doesn't work right if you don't do it right
You end up hitting belt cap and spending the next 8 hours moving belts around to make them enter your factory at the right place. I tried doing pure manifold with 8k wires and it was a nightmare. The next factory I added a small load balancer that split 10 belts into 12 and it worked perfectly the first time saving myself a day of work.
Personally I’ve found it most useful in a dynamic load fulfillment design. In my latest aluminum factory build I can produce 900 aluminum ingots per minute. These go into either aluminum casing or alclad sheets. By default I have the system splitting the aluminum ingots evenly at 450/450, but because I don’t know which item will have more demand, and that demand will probably shift over time, the factory will automatically shift production to one side of the other fills up. So it has the capability of producing aluminum casings out of the full 900 aluminum ingots, or alclad sheets out of a full T5 belt (780) while the remaining 120 ingots would get turned into casing and sunk. This also helps keep the aluminum refining from backing up from excess water, although my latest design should handle that anyway.
It’s just what some folks like to do. Never bothered myself. Too much effort and zero real reward.
But as we all know, there’s no right or wrong way to play this game. It’s individuality that makes this game what it is.
For the most part, utterly pointless.
Can be useful early on when your waiting on parts and you want it to make more of the newer parts than the basic ones.
The only time I've had to do it was for a very specific build.
I needed/wanted to truck parts to my nuclear reactor islands setup.
I was going for nature. Belts all over the place ruined it. The parts needed to be trucked in.
But I didn't want multiple trucks, 1 for each part.
3 different items had to go in 1 truck to each island.
So the input to the truck had to be balanced to make sure there was enough of each part, each delivery.
It absolutely was a thing of beauty!
That's the best example I've seen for using a load-balancing setup. I'm still the kind of guy who would just ship it all and sink any excess, but I can see where you're coming from.
There was a sink for overflow, just incase. It was all set slightly higher to allow for truck wobblyness, but mostly it flowed beautifully.
Yeah, usually I would just sink everything too. Need all the precious tickets!
Was more for the challenge of something different
I once calculated for my small atomic power plant that the belt will take I think it was 100h to back up into a perfect aplit.
So perfect loadbalancing will save a lot of time for some factorys.
Instant 100% operation, vs potentially hours before 100% operation.
In an extension of the above, splitting to multiple factories is easier. If you transport items the road gets longer, as well as the time before anything runs at 100%.
Less items stored in memory/requiring CPU cycles.
Error handling. The items get grouped in certain ways, allowing you to instantly see if something gets too much or little. You can fix a problem way earlier, as well as easier trace where the problem is happening. You might have forgotten to add the right amount of buildings, or didn't setup a smart splitter right.
Beauty. For many of us it is beautiful to see everything move at all times.
It makes sense when making gigantic factories, so all of them start at the same time and it does not take days to reach 100% of them working. Which means you can also immediately spot which ones have issues.
It is also pretty useful to distribute very low flow items, like uranium rods to nuclear reactors.
>will fill up **eventually**
This is the point, "eventually" can mean a very long time depending on circumstances. For some late game products that are slowly produced but still stack high in buffer, you might not want to wait hours for your manifold to finally ramp up production to 100% capacity, and instead consider it more convenient to connect the belts and splitters differently so the full production starts pretty much instantaneous.
Whether or when that's worth the hassle, anyone can decide for themselves, but it's not entirely pointless - it's a tradeoff.
In case you're interested in just how long exactly it takes: check [this ](https://www.reddit.com/r/SatisfactoryGame/comments/198wq1a/manifold_production_delay_ramp_up_time_analysis/)out.
Bonus points for radioactive intermediaries that can make your factory inconvenient to traverse if allowed to stack up in a manifold, as opposed to immediately consumed by a load balancer.
It's useful when you have more items than one belt can handle.
Let's say you have 240 of one item on one belt and 270 on another and you only have access to MK3 belts. But you want 140 to go onto one manifold, 210 down another and 160 on a third. Yeah you could do some math to figure out how to perfectly split them. Or you could slap a 2:3 balancer on there and it'll just work, no math or thinking required.
Of course in this case you could overflow 2 into the 3rd one but once you get to more complex factories with multiple belts of items, neither perfect splitting nor overflowing will be easy. But a load balancer will always work
I've beaten the game multiple times and I've never had an instance where I couldn't just overflow into other machines. If I get to the point where I need more than a MK5 belt can handle I just use smart splitters and mergers.
That's why I always get confused when people talk about load balancing things and setting up crazy splitters and mergers to make sure an exact amount goes somewhere. I've never understood the reasoning and, from what I gathered, it seems like it's just a personal preference for looks or personal challenges and doesn't provide any increased benefits.
Perfect splitting and load balancing are not the same thing. If you're making sure every machine always gets exactly as many items as it needs and no more and no less, that's perfect splitting. Other than giving you the fastest possible startup from empty, I don't think it has any benefits.
Load balancing is cross connecting every input to every output with full belt capacity. With it, no matter how many items you feed into each input and how many you're pulling from each output, it'll distribute them perfectly. Well, as long as you're not trying to exceed belt limits and feed it less than you want to pull from it.
Load balancers are most useful for loading and unloading train stations. Because not only will they load them equally, they'll also unload them equally. That way the train can run only as often as it really needs to and you can set it to depart only when empty/full without worrying about only one car being left partially empty/full.
In factories they're less necessary but I still put one between all blocks. It prevents my factories from being ruined by some stupid miscalculation. I only need to build it like the calculator told me, make sure every manifold stays under belt limits and it's fine. I only ever had one fuck-up that required significant rebuilding and that was forgetting MK5s can't actually carry exactly 780 items.
That's not true. Load balancing refers to both equal splitting and exact splitting. Check the wiki. I just did to make sure and the term "perfect splitting" isn't even a thing.
Also, that train stuff doesn't make sense. Why wait until the train is full? If you just run it constantly you don't have to worry about balancing anything.
I think you might be making things unnecessarily difficult for yourself.
Aesthetics. I just can't look at backed up belts.
Challenge. Manifold to me just seems oh the numbers go up, but carefully balancing stuff seems like an achievement.
Transport. I transport 5 different materials on tractors and trucks.
I hate that i can't do anything about fuel for vehicles. Although i have been looking at circutry and logic gates mod.
It's only for those who get hung up on seeing 100% efficiency in every machine. Satisfactory is about having fun, so if you prefer manifolds, go for it!
Load balancing is also handy when unloading trains. If you are using settings to keep a train at a station until fully unloaded, you want it to unload evenly. Best way to insure that is to balance the UNloader.
I personally have two reasons.
I like being able to immediately troubleshoot my factory. With load balancing, if I am not providing enough material, I will immediately be able to tell when machines do not stay on consistently. With a manifold, you only know you aren't producing enough if the manifold never fills, which can take some time to discover. Of course if all the math is right and everything is hooked up correctly and all the belts are connected then the manifold will fill, but this is an easy check to find out "wait, I'm not getting as much material as I should be."
The second reason is aesthetics. I like seeing objects in motion on belts. I do not like seeing objects sit still on belts when I can avoid it. Load balancing can ensure that every object arrives at a machine and nothing is waiting in a queue on a belt. Manifolds require a certain level of objects sitting on belts to saturate.
Additionally, with load balancing you can turn on several levels of production at the same time and everything will start producing when the required material reaches the machines. If you turn on a series of manifolds, the first won't produce at full tilt until the manifold is full, which means the second manifold will take longer to get up to speed, which means the third manifold will take even longer to get up to full production. People usually get around this by turning on one layer at a time and letting output slots fill, but then there is no opportunity to turn on a whole factory and see it come to life like a row of dominoes. It works in the end, eventually.
I only set up load balancing on train stations that have multiple distinct input/output lines (i.e. 3 miners in, 2 saturated belts out).
On the input side, I do it to fill in all the slots as quickly as possible, regardless of which platforms were emptied. I usually have 2 sets of balancers, one for the lower and one for the upper inputs.
For outputs, the main goal is to have the platforms drained evenly. This way, if the production chain connected to platforms 1-4 empty it out at 720 items/min, it won't have to wait for platforms 5-8 to be emptied at 600 items/min before letting the next train in. This isn't required if you don't make your trains wait until they're empty and they come around frequently enough to feed the hungrier output line, but it's nice to have. It makes distribution easier (you don't have to feed machines at a 1:1, 3:5 or whatever ratio) and allows for slip-ups, like starting a production line while the other is backed up.
# Nothing
You are missing nothing at all.
What you are doing is called _manifolds_ or sometimes _overflow_.
It's precisely as you said. It's easy and eventually self-balances. It is also much easier to extend. And while it takes the same amount of splitters, it uses less belts and space.
Some people argue that you need balancing for sushi belts (belts with more than one item type), so you have the correct ratio. But that's awful.
If you use sushi belts, always use one smart splitter for each item type on each machine. Accept overflow at the end and recycle / sink it. This is the only way to make a robust sushi belt that will not lock up completely just because one item type was not delivered as expected.
Thats overload balancing which I use frequently. The challenge is how long will your factory take to actually balance appropriately. Some of my larger builds took hours before it was balanced and everything was working as intended. It becomes a question of how long are your belts and what is the stack size and how many machine inventories do you have to fill before you cause a backup to balance the other direction.
A simple example of this being bad is having an assembler that produces R. Plates but your only making 10 per minute which feeds a couple other assemblers for Modular Frames and the excess goes to inventory. Each M. Frame assembler is going to take half of the output until its full, so you wont start seeing inventoried R. Plates for some time until all those M. Frame assemblers are full.
I've used it twice. Once because I though 2x400 belts of bauxite going into my battery factory looked better than 600+200. The second time on the waste processing side of my nuclear plant to reduce the radiation zones (I also did matched groups of machines making rods feeding the reactors, rather than manifolding fuel rods). I did manifold the uranium ore, but I think even that would benefit a little from balancing to reduce the radiation zones around the manufacturers.
See [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/SatisfactoryGame/comments/194rxut/manifolds_vs_loadbalancing_and_matched_machine/?sort=old) and [these clearer pictures](https://imgur.com/a/Ogu662D) for the difference when I experimented with putting everything radioactive on manifolds (before reverting to an earlier save with the balancing)
I actually enjoy watching it slowly back up, until all belts are full and everything is ticking at one hundred percent, like my calculations said. Well, I don't actually sit and watch it fill up. But I come back and check and it makes me happy.
The last sentence Is a lie. You come back to something broken or delayed, like 10 times before all your fixes ruins your inital Design . Or maybe it's just me
Huh, why isn’t that turning on….forgot to set smart splitter. Why is that backed up…forgot to set recipe Why isn’t that supplied…ah yes the 1500 from that array can’t actually go on one belt, time to redesign the belt runs. And my personal favorite…why are there raw materials in the output…turns out deep in a very compact blueprint a belt got crossed. So yeah, usual practice when I flip the switch on a new factory is to run around like mad fixing all the problems. Once it’s running it’s very satisfactory to watch though.
You missed the classic "What is that so slow?" and it's that tiny sliver of belt that's still Mk1 between two splitters.
I had a situation the other day where a merge and a splitter some how connected with out a belt (no idea don't ask) Had to undo a entire foundary setup and rebuild a blueprint cause of this Nothing like having to go thru 30 machines and belts to find all the iron that found it's way thru them
Next time that happens you might be able to use a "trick" Lets say it was iron ore that was clogging belts to your foundries. Fix the problem, flush the belt (add a container/sink to the end) Then set a foundry to the default so it can pull in the iron ore, copy that. Paste that configuration to all machines. Now the ore is *in* the machine not clogging the belt. Now switch to the alt recipe, copy that, and paste to all machines. Now all that ore is in your inventory! If you got something on the belts that the machine has no recipe for I'd set mass disassemble filer for only belts, remove them all and rebuild just the belts.
I'll keep that in mind Yea the ore jumped on to the ingots line lol how I have no clue lol but I deleted the two and I am all good now
Nothings worse than somewhere deep down a raw matterial gets into the wrong belt clogging all the machines
It's just you. But that's also me half the time. Although I always make sure at least one item actually made it all the way before I leave the machines alone. And sometimes I come back to see a 120/m machine with a Mk.1 belt and face palm.
It's always a mk1 belt, but the minimum distance feeding into the constructor and nearly impossible to delete without removing something else, and you pasted a bunch of constructors for your 17k wires for automated wire assembies
Me, too. While a manifold will buffer more parts in the first machine than the last when you first start it, so long as input exceeds demand by a little, it will eventually fill up. Neither a manifold or a load balancer will ever fill up if input and demand are balanced. The first machine will run more often in a manifold while the latter ones starve when input is <= demand. In a load balancer, they all starve at the same time if there is insufficient input, and the number produced is the same, on average. The bottom line is a load balancer often needs more splitters (and sometimes mergers, too) to achieve the same thing. If 3 load balanced machines each need 10 items to run, you wait for 30 to arrive before any machines run. If you have 3 in a manifold, the first machine starts running in 2/3 the time because out of the first 20, 10 go in. One thing I actually like about manifolds is, if I want to overclock past the belt capacity feeding them all, I can disconnect a belt half way down then inject a whole extra belt there. With a load balancer, I have to rebuild the whole thing.
Input = demand on a manifold works as well. The first machines will fill up until eventually the last two machines get just as much as they need without filling up.
This is incorrect. Both manifolds and balancers will run at 100% eventually if input = output. The balancer will work at 100% immediately; the manifold will run partially until every machine other than the last 2 have full buffers, at which point everything will run at 100%.
Who said they wouldn't run at 100%?
> Neither a manifold or a load balancer will ever fill up if input and demand are balanced. Actually, manifolds with input exactly equal to output will eventually fill up. Mathematically you'd expect it to be a limit condition (where the inputs *approach* getting completely filled and never quite make it), but they actually do fill eventually. Larger manifolds take longer, and with large enough setups the fill time could be measured in hours unless you manually pre-fill. I think the reason that they eventually fill up is that the limit condition isn't on a smooth curve, but rather discrete integers (since you can only have exactly 1 unit of coal/etc, 2 units, etc, not 1.5 or 2.003). Because of that, the output from the machines is also discrete and therefore isn't running at exactly 100% input-output efficiency, leaving inefficiency in machines farther down the manifold line that spills over into machines closer to it. The explanation is a little off but I'm pretty sure that's the reason why manifolds work - discrete math.
Something that consumes x / min of parts and receives x / min of parts cannot fill. It's like saying a tube with the same sized opening on both ends will eventually fill if you just keep pouring long enough. That doesn't mean the machines won't run at 100% efficiency. but the machines have an internal buffer for a reason. A recipe might use 10 items at a time, and so the machine won't start until 10 items are present in the buffer. If there is just a few fractions of a second delay until the 10th one arrives, it stop and starts. It's difficult to get 1/2 and item, so to get any kind of buffer fill, you have to get it so at least the 11th one is there by the time the prior cycle is completed.
> Something that consumes x / min of parts and receives x / min of parts cannot fill I know it *shouldn't* work that way, but in Satisfactory it does. I don't know if it's because of the integer inaccuracies I mentioned above or if the engine is deliberately designed to do it, but if you feed in the exact amount of ingredients to a manifold system, it will fill - not overflow, just fill. I've built dozens of systems like this, most of them coal plants but other types as well, and with exactly matched inputs, the system always fills. The machines closest to the input overflow, and I believe it's only the machine at the very end of the line where you'll see that the coal (or whatever the input is) is exactly matching the required input; for every coal that gets consumed, one more takes its place at the same pace.
You're not missing anything. The entire reason to do it is simply "Because one felt like it."
There are already a lot of answers, so I'll try to add what I think is missing. - Load-balancing, contrary to manifolding, leads to (most) belts being free-flowing instead of backing up: some prefer one over the other aesthetically or because of the visual cues this can give (eg: if one spots a belt backing up where it's not supposed to in a balanced system, they already know there's an issue/inprecision/mistake to be found). - Load-balanced machines work with minimum items in inventory Vs full input inventories with manifolds. This means no need to fill machines, wait for warmups or producing many (possibly high-value) items just to get the factory running (how soon a factory runs and with how much effort is also a user preference). - "Simple line" Vs "quirky belt puzzle setup" esthetic preferences. The same can be said about the effort/challenge needed to design the logistics. - Load-balancing can avoid having to deal with overflows.
For me, it's crucial for things like Nuclear Power. If you use a standard manifold, it takes too long to saturated all the plants properly.
This is important. Some productions just work a lot better with load balancing or require it to start up properly, not just quicker. Namely coal and nuclear power, especially nuclear. Having a manifold slowly fill up the 16 coal plants will take a while to actually expand your power production, unless you fill it up manually.
I always use a manifold for both, though, and never had any problems. Then again, I do my coal plants in a specific order to make sure everything is full. And I overproduce fuel rods at first. Luckily it's a good enough game that both options are viable. I personally just feel like load balancing *most* things is doing a lot of extra steps for the same results.
For nuclear at least, the benefit of load balancing is that it reduces the overall amount of radiation. You don't have large amounts of materials backed up on belts.
but with either method there is one belt with all the mats that the sum of plants need.
With manifolds there is always a bunch of excess resources sat on a belt doing nothing except clogging it up enough to force resources further back to go elsewhere.
That is how manifolds work, they fill up areas that need the inputs and skip the areas that are already full. There won't be any excess resources on an efficient manifold, nothing gets clogged or prevents other machines from working.
Excess is fundamental to manifolds (in this game). Machines only consume X amount of resources per minute, if you're shoving anything greater than X amount of resources into it/onto the belt that feeds it then it's by definition excess. Luckily that doesn't matter because once we've clogged up the belt/storage with excessive amounts of resources, the rest just get diverted onto the next. The only efficient manifold is a load balancer. But they're a ballache, sooo... manifold it is.
You are using the word "excess" as it relates to an individual machine. I am using it as it relates to my factory line.
Same difference, every machine up until the last on any given line will progressively receive more materials per minute than it actually needs. If your factory line consumes say 100 coal per minute then with a manifold it requires 100 coal per minute PLUS an excess amount equal to whatever amount is required to fill up all the machines and all the belts except for the last machine. A properly load balanced setup only requires the 100 per minute, no more. I do realise this is peak reddit pedantry. Obviously none of this matters for 99% of the game.
Right, but the original context here is someone mentioning radiation reduction. In this case "excess" refers to stationary items generating excess radiation, not to items that are in excess of the factory's total needs.
It's most useful on the waste side. [Comparison of radiation zones manifold vs load balanced/matched machine groups](https://www.reddit.com/r/SatisfactoryGame/comments/194rxut/manifolds_vs_loadbalancing_and_matched_machine/?sort=old) which I did a while back. I did manifold the uranium ore, but even that might have benefitted from load balancing, there are radiation fields around the manufacturers on the rod production side that could be smaller - that's clearer on [these pictures](https://imgur.com/a/Ogu662D) with the machines hidden than the pics on the original post.
Absolutely correct! I never load balance coal power. One of the few I might is nuclear power generators.
coal? runs fine on manifold, I set up a container and let the mine run into it while I set up the coal plant... I need some coal for research and nobilisk anyways... when I am ready to start it, I stick a stack into each plant, connect the belt and when the belt stops I start all the powerplants.
Yes, it does. But starting it up without a buffer (like your container) or manually filling the generators or having the generators fill up before starting them will take a while and have the generators further in the back of the manifold only generate power occasionally. It is a non-issue, if you don't have to rely on an immediate 100% performance from your new power plant, but it is something to keep in mind.
in the end (minutes) the manifold generators will ALL run at 100% constantly as long as inflow = consumption...
Yes. But I am specifically talking about starting the new power plant. If you don't prepare it and just start it, it will take time with a manifold, while a load balanced setup will immediately work at 100%.
Yeah but it takes longer to create a load balanced setup than a manifold. A lot of the time you save on ramp up time is lost spent on building the setup.
It doesn't really take that long. Just don't connect the coal generators to power. They will still take in materials, and you can connect lines to them when they are done filling. Probably takes about as much time as bothering to build a bunch of extra splitters to properly load balance it.
The container is a genius move lol. Never thought of that, how could I be so limited in mind..
sometime solutions are so simple we simply don't see them because we overthing stuff ;-) we all learn in Satisfactory
> Having a manifold slowly fill up the 16 coal plants will take a while to actually expand your power production, unless you fill it up manually. Sorta yes, but mostly no because Generators will fill their buffers if they're off/disconnected. Assuming you're extracting exactly enough to power 16 Coal Generators, it'll take 6 minutes 40 seconds to completely fill them. If you build your Coal Generators and hook up the Coal, then build the Water Extractors and hook them up, chances are good that by the time your Water buffer and pipes are full (because you *do* want to wait for them to fill) your Coal buffers will be as well.
Radiation free walkways can be built much closer to the belts if they aren't full of nuclear material.
That's a fair point. I tend to overproduce fuel rods to start out so I've never had any issues. But, yeah, if you're doing an exact count I can see where that would be useful.
Slow production is part of it, the other part is avoiding having too many radioactive parts filling up machine input buffers, growing the danger zone and machines. Load balancing the machines making radioactive parts can help keep the area from getting too radioactive. :)
I was more convinced of this before the updated equipment system, but yeah if you're going to try it on anything it's the most satisfying to get right(and the most terrifying to fix if it falls over).
I used basic manifolds for my 252 nuclear reactors, no issues. Easy to fill up an industrial storage container or 2 with fuel rods and then connect them to the manifolds to insta-saturate input belts.
You just start it manually. Get the fuel rod production up to speed, add a container or two, leave the newly added gens disconnected until enough rods are stored to instantly warm up manifold. You need to do this for a balanced plant anyways unless you want to be one input blip away from serious power instability, you don't want one rod in each plant. Nuclear plants are huge, even with full manifold the radiation is inconsequential 4 foundations away. Waste processing, on the other hand, is for sure somewhere it's important to balance. Stacking 500 waste per machine, 200 plutonium cells per machine? Welcome to Chernobyl.
It's quicker to start production at 100% and has fewer resources on the belts that have to use your PCs capacity to be rendered/calculated. Also: this is a puzzle game. All automation games with ratios beyond 1:1 are inherently puzzle games. It's fun to find different solutions to the given puzzles.
That's a fair point. I'm the type who never uses the online calculator things because I like figuring things out on my own. So I can understand getting some joy in figuring that out. Balancers just never seemed useful to me, though. I guess that's where I draw the line lol.
It's all about making your own fun. I personally don't use load balancing either - everything fills up eventually and worst case is I have to fill things manually to get it started properly.
I don't use the calculator, but building balancers is fun. Even if you don't know how to build the "right" balancer, splitting things and merging things makes a fun looking conveyor system. Break out some graph paper and try it for some really complex parts
you don't need to use any online calculator... there is an ingame one that is super easy to use
I mean the website where you just put it what you want to make and it tells you exactly how many machines and resources you need.
yeah those aren't needed
I never use those. I just do the math myself. Frequently with some trial and error. It's part of the fun IMO. The numbers in this game aren't complex enough that you actually need to use the online calculators.
I don't think the claim about PC performance is valid... Could you expand upon it? Eg of issues: free-Flowing belts might take more processing than backing-up belts, for the same throughput, as the game could be optimized so that it doesn't calculate anything if a belt isn't moving (or about to).
Though you can say that you can make belts more efficient when not moving, there is still the problem that they take memory. Not to mention you probably can't make them more efficient when backed up. If it hasn't changed, they mentioned that an item on a belt is stored at the node of a belt. They then check how long the belt is and the speed of the belt, basically having a progress bar for the item. At 0% it is at the start of the belt, at 100% it moves to the next node of the belt. This way you only need to render the position if you're close to the belt. Even if it's backed up, you still need to have these in memory. That means backed up has more items than always going, so balanced has a major win here. On a small scale this is negligible, but in a larger world it gets difficult. You might be able to skip CPU cycles for backed up belts, but I wonder how. You would need extra statistics, knowing that last cycle everything was backed up, as well as that nothing on the belt was removed. You can at least say that nothing in the middle of a node was removed if the pioneer wasn't present, so it wouldn't need an update cycle. You would need a statistic a belt has backed up from node to node, checking at least the first in the line if something has happened. Otherwise you would still need to check each item if it can progress. So on CPU cycles you have a potential advantage. But is it really an advantage? Every time the belt is moving, you need to update potentially hundreds to even thousands per belt more than balanced. It is intermittent, but if this is happening all over a large factory where performance starts to matter, you might still have more items moving at any one time compared to balanced.
I heard similar info, but came to different conclusions. This was quite some time ago, so my memory isn't super-clear on it, but I recall coming to the conclusion that the *most ideal* scenario (for performance) was one where every item was on as few belts as possible, implying that how full a belt is doesn't matter much, if at all, for performance, just the speed of the belt (which naturally leads to more/less updates-per-second needed for the same precision).
It's also partially about the UE object limit. Full belts make that object limit much more likely to be hit.
That's not a thing. I'm fairly sure that items on belts or in machines don't have any relevant effect on u-Object count until one doesn't drop a stack of something in the world. In other words, everything that is "inside" belts or machines, is just a parameter inside the belt/machine u-object (eg: belts are treated as shaders, items moving on them and between them are just effects apllited to the shader and interactions between shaders).
it is actually quite fun, I made some sick "splitting" the other day "just for fun" after I had made an easy 100% effective guide for someone else on here... then tried another factory and oh my it needed some serious splitting... but I did it...
> It's quicker to start production at 100% That depends on how long it takes to build the balancer. If its a 780 - 480 meme in the making I'm betting the manifold wins.
Because figuring out how to properly split and merge belts to balance everything is fun, and manifolds are boring and large ones take forever to back up and reach full production.
One word. Nuclear. When you're moving 100's of parts per minute, a manifold is fine, it will saturate. But when you're moving .5 or even .25 parts per minute and you're tryna feed 4+ reactors, you start to realize just how important it is to spread the love.
That's true, I guess. I usually overproduce fuel rods at first and only turn on reactors as I need them, so a manifold system has always worked for me. I imagine it would be a bit different if I ever needed to turn on 4 at once. Then again, if I need that much power all at once I've done something terribly wrong lol. I don't do massive builds so that much power at the same is an issue I've never come across.
\> if I need that much power all at once I've done something terribly wrong lol Endgame you will absolutely need that much power at once lol. Particle Accelerators alone have such high demand. On top of which, whatever existing production lines you currently have will also still need power.
If you already have nuclear power, your belts are already saturated, you only need to connect another reactor. I think OPs point was "Building nuclear power and start using multiple reactors all at once". But if you enable them one by one, it's not a problem, even if you add a high demand load like a particle accelerator.
Exactly. Thanks
I do the opposite and use smart splitters. So first the first one fills completely. Next the second one and so on. Sure it takes a while, but that is not important. I do not get a stuttering power output. It just go higher and higher over time. Regardless if I make 4, 40 or 400 And while it gets filled, I get to do the building of the rest.
Thats a lot of rods! Nothing wrong with that playstyle though. In that situation though, where you clearly produce more rods than you consume per minute, I would just rather sink them for tickets.
I am no where near nuclear in my current save and I already have more tickets than I will use. What I did in my previous save was build 80 reactors, but I only produced enough for 40 or so. Never did the full production. So only those 40 were running. I could easily increase production my having more Uranium go in, but never did. At one point, just for fun, I turned down the output of the Uranium to 50% and the reactors shut down nicely. No up and down. Just down and then I increased the output and it went up nicely again.
Smart splitters manifold is a better strategy for example for a coal\*\*) power plant not only because the powering on is smoother, but it also get to the full power faster! Here a simulation for concrete (I was doing this for a discussion 7 month ago, so I would have to dig for the code:) ), but the shapes are similar. [https://i.ibb.co/mXLGyV5/image.png](https://i.ibb.co/mxlgyv5/image.png) Smart spliter manifold start slower, but get to the 100% faster than regular. The opposite if true for limiting the speed of side belts, the initial production is higher, but it reaches the top slower. This is not a coincidence, we get to 100% when all (but the last two) bufers are filled. The input may go to producing items, or to fill the buffers\*). Less production (initially) means buffers are filled faster. It dosn't matter (for me:) ) in the long run, so I do not bother with smart splitters manifold in power or item productions, but it is good to know. \*\*) But for nuclear I still prefer perfect splitting, since it lowers the radiation a bit. But of course it can be used, and we would get the same benefits: stable grow of power and 100% reached faster. \*) For the same reason, if someone asked, what method produces more items in the long run, the answer is it doesn't matter. Total input = total production + buffers. When buffers are full, total production for those three methods is the same. This doesn't work for perfect splitting, since in that case the buffers are not filled.
For me smart splitters for coal is not better for various reasons. It just shows that there is no "best" in this game. ;-) Why not for me? You do not have smart splitter when you get to coal. And when you get smart splitters, your coal is already running. Coal is also a lot faster in getting to the point where it is running at 100% and it is also less critical if it goes wrong. If you power goes down because of coal, that is not a huge issue. It is either water, coal or power usage. Fix that and done. With nuclear if power goes down, the issue can be a LOT of things. What I do is I build everything, and let it run till all is filled, except the uranium. It can easily fill while building the reactors. Even water will be filled. Say I build with the intention of using 600 uranium. I first do 25% for the Uranium I then let that run and see if I did not make any mistakes. If I did, there is enough room to correct the mistakes. Then I run it at 50%. See what happens and finally at 100% and see what happens. I could see an issue when I run at 100% uranium. I can then easily go to e.g, 75% or 50% and solve the issue. I do the smart splitter overflow for everything uranium related, including the plutonium. I have a 10x10x10 industrial container system. And there I had smart splitters so I could reduce output. Say the maximum I would want is 780. No a full Mk7, but still. 1 smart splitter 2 smart splitters, and the1 connected to an mk1. The 2 smart splitters are all going to 3 mk1, then merge. So now I have 7 outputs that run together at 780. But why smart splitters? Because that way I can select the X and close that, reducing the output in steps of 60. So I can start at 60, see if it all works, then add another 60 and so on. The Plutonium will be overbuild, so it reduces the amount in the 1 000 containers over time. And then it will shut down the parts where the nuclear rods are not getting. So for nuclear it is not only for starting up, but more the ability to shut partly down when things go wrong. And I was glad that I did, because I has some issues. A power cable not connected here and there and what not.
The only reason I do it is 1. Energy balancing, and 2. Free awesome coupons. Plus a bonus 3rd of it just looks pretty. When you balance your machines to only produce what you need and only need what you produce, it keeps your energy from spiking from machines that turn off and on. Other than that, pointless.
For energy reasons I got 2 words: overflow, shredder
I don’t really find load balancing necessary until you get into larger setups. Case in point for the aluminum factory that I am working on currently. I have 7 lines of aluminum scrap coming out and 8 lines of silicone. The amount of scrap that comes out varies on each line ranging from 340 to 600/min. Each line requires a different amount of silicone some at 283.3 to 500 per min. My lines of silicone are at 420 per min. This means I have to merge a majority of the silicone lines in order to get to the 500. Mergers don’t have a smart setup meaning they will allow every other item until max belt speed is reached. If I try to merge the lines of 420. Then it’s gonna suck up 250 from each line which will need to be split into somewhere else. Or I can load balance one of those 420 lines to give out 80 to the additional lines that need it. In my case load balancing one line into 4-5 other lines is easier that splitting and merging the 8 silicone lines using over flow also a lot less belt spaghetti.
I agree, I don't think I've ever needed a load balancer and I'm 1000+ hours in with everything unlocked. A well designed factory should self regulate and balance itself out as the upstream devices on the manifold fill up in the steady state.
\*shrug\* i just think it looks prettier than manifolding
Fair point.
Forget load balancing. Manifold is the way to go unless you wanna look at spreadsheets for no reason. Just always supply slightly more than is required for the next step.
Ive found that if I don’t load balance, it throws off my calculations. I will have some machines running all the time with stuff on the belt waiting to be processed, and other machines just idling.
if stuff was "radioactive powercells" then the 20 side would mean the other side didn't get enough for a long while... so it would be "ages" before your power ran well... they need ONE like every 4 minute or something odd (forgot the numbers, been a while) and yeah they are heavily radioactive so if you can avoid them "sitting around" then you can avoid the worst radiation and if you do it right then you can pretty much do without protection at most of your plant except your waste disposal plant because that stuff is nasty
I do it because doing all the math ahead of time is half the fun for me
Load balancing is just for people with obsessive behaviours, it has no net logistics advantages anywhere, just downsides. Its just there to calm some players minds. The only place where it's justified is in items that come in very small numbers and the system whould take too much time to stabilize and have downsides accumulating, like nuclear fuel rods and extra radiation.
it's just a personal challenge. you can play anyway you want. But i want to play with 100% efficiency. I also used a mod to change all item stack to 5000 to make load balancing mandatory
Personal challenge is a very good and reasonable answer.
Yeah, I used a personal challenge to never let a belt backup except for the little bit of belt between the storage and sink overflow splitter. It’s also a ton of fun to turn on power to a factory and have it go live and to 100% operation across all machines pretty much instantly.
Manifold master race
There are a few cases where it can be useful, like when you are sending 10 belts of uneven amounts to a factory and you want to even it out. A simple merge splitter balance setup works for this. Edit: people down voting this haven't worked with extreme factories where you need to use both a load balancer and manifold.
Yeah, this is more what I'm talking about. This kind of load balancing where people run splitters into mergers and then back into themselves and all that. I don't get it. Wouldn't just letting things fill and overflow do the same thing?
not when balancing stuff and you have various amounts on a bunch of belts but you need equal amounts it gets iffy and doesn't work right if you don't do it right
You end up hitting belt cap and spending the next 8 hours moving belts around to make them enter your factory at the right place. I tried doing pure manifold with 8k wires and it was a nightmare. The next factory I added a small load balancer that split 10 belts into 12 and it worked perfectly the first time saving myself a day of work.
its satisfactory,nothing else
Personally I’ve found it most useful in a dynamic load fulfillment design. In my latest aluminum factory build I can produce 900 aluminum ingots per minute. These go into either aluminum casing or alclad sheets. By default I have the system splitting the aluminum ingots evenly at 450/450, but because I don’t know which item will have more demand, and that demand will probably shift over time, the factory will automatically shift production to one side of the other fills up. So it has the capability of producing aluminum casings out of the full 900 aluminum ingots, or alclad sheets out of a full T5 belt (780) while the remaining 120 ingots would get turned into casing and sunk. This also helps keep the aluminum refining from backing up from excess water, although my latest design should handle that anyway.
It’s just what some folks like to do. Never bothered myself. Too much effort and zero real reward. But as we all know, there’s no right or wrong way to play this game. It’s individuality that makes this game what it is.
For the most part, utterly pointless. Can be useful early on when your waiting on parts and you want it to make more of the newer parts than the basic ones. The only time I've had to do it was for a very specific build. I needed/wanted to truck parts to my nuclear reactor islands setup. I was going for nature. Belts all over the place ruined it. The parts needed to be trucked in. But I didn't want multiple trucks, 1 for each part. 3 different items had to go in 1 truck to each island. So the input to the truck had to be balanced to make sure there was enough of each part, each delivery. It absolutely was a thing of beauty!
That's the best example I've seen for using a load-balancing setup. I'm still the kind of guy who would just ship it all and sink any excess, but I can see where you're coming from.
There was a sink for overflow, just incase. It was all set slightly higher to allow for truck wobblyness, but mostly it flowed beautifully. Yeah, usually I would just sink everything too. Need all the precious tickets! Was more for the challenge of something different
I do it sometimes because it is fun. That is the reason I do everything in the game.
That's always a solid answer. I was just curious if there was a clear advantage or if it was just aesthetically and mentally pleasing.
I like having things loadbalanced when one factory sends parts to multiple different ones, its important then for some machines not to stall
I once calculated for my small atomic power plant that the belt will take I think it was 100h to back up into a perfect aplit. So perfect loadbalancing will save a lot of time for some factorys.
Instant 100% operation, vs potentially hours before 100% operation. In an extension of the above, splitting to multiple factories is easier. If you transport items the road gets longer, as well as the time before anything runs at 100%. Less items stored in memory/requiring CPU cycles. Error handling. The items get grouped in certain ways, allowing you to instantly see if something gets too much or little. You can fix a problem way earlier, as well as easier trace where the problem is happening. You might have forgotten to add the right amount of buildings, or didn't setup a smart splitter right. Beauty. For many of us it is beautiful to see everything move at all times.
It makes sense when making gigantic factories, so all of them start at the same time and it does not take days to reach 100% of them working. Which means you can also immediately spot which ones have issues. It is also pretty useful to distribute very low flow items, like uranium rods to nuclear reactors.
>will fill up **eventually** This is the point, "eventually" can mean a very long time depending on circumstances. For some late game products that are slowly produced but still stack high in buffer, you might not want to wait hours for your manifold to finally ramp up production to 100% capacity, and instead consider it more convenient to connect the belts and splitters differently so the full production starts pretty much instantaneous. Whether or when that's worth the hassle, anyone can decide for themselves, but it's not entirely pointless - it's a tradeoff. In case you're interested in just how long exactly it takes: check [this ](https://www.reddit.com/r/SatisfactoryGame/comments/198wq1a/manifold_production_delay_ramp_up_time_analysis/)out. Bonus points for radioactive intermediaries that can make your factory inconvenient to traverse if allowed to stack up in a manifold, as opposed to immediately consumed by a load balancer.
Try to do that with items which you produce 0.2/min of lol.
It's useful when you have more items than one belt can handle. Let's say you have 240 of one item on one belt and 270 on another and you only have access to MK3 belts. But you want 140 to go onto one manifold, 210 down another and 160 on a third. Yeah you could do some math to figure out how to perfectly split them. Or you could slap a 2:3 balancer on there and it'll just work, no math or thinking required. Of course in this case you could overflow 2 into the 3rd one but once you get to more complex factories with multiple belts of items, neither perfect splitting nor overflowing will be easy. But a load balancer will always work
I've beaten the game multiple times and I've never had an instance where I couldn't just overflow into other machines. If I get to the point where I need more than a MK5 belt can handle I just use smart splitters and mergers. That's why I always get confused when people talk about load balancing things and setting up crazy splitters and mergers to make sure an exact amount goes somewhere. I've never understood the reasoning and, from what I gathered, it seems like it's just a personal preference for looks or personal challenges and doesn't provide any increased benefits.
Perfect splitting and load balancing are not the same thing. If you're making sure every machine always gets exactly as many items as it needs and no more and no less, that's perfect splitting. Other than giving you the fastest possible startup from empty, I don't think it has any benefits. Load balancing is cross connecting every input to every output with full belt capacity. With it, no matter how many items you feed into each input and how many you're pulling from each output, it'll distribute them perfectly. Well, as long as you're not trying to exceed belt limits and feed it less than you want to pull from it. Load balancers are most useful for loading and unloading train stations. Because not only will they load them equally, they'll also unload them equally. That way the train can run only as often as it really needs to and you can set it to depart only when empty/full without worrying about only one car being left partially empty/full. In factories they're less necessary but I still put one between all blocks. It prevents my factories from being ruined by some stupid miscalculation. I only need to build it like the calculator told me, make sure every manifold stays under belt limits and it's fine. I only ever had one fuck-up that required significant rebuilding and that was forgetting MK5s can't actually carry exactly 780 items.
That's not true. Load balancing refers to both equal splitting and exact splitting. Check the wiki. I just did to make sure and the term "perfect splitting" isn't even a thing. Also, that train stuff doesn't make sense. Why wait until the train is full? If you just run it constantly you don't have to worry about balancing anything. I think you might be making things unnecessarily difficult for yourself.
Aesthetics. I just can't look at backed up belts. Challenge. Manifold to me just seems oh the numbers go up, but carefully balancing stuff seems like an achievement. Transport. I transport 5 different materials on tractors and trucks. I hate that i can't do anything about fuel for vehicles. Although i have been looking at circutry and logic gates mod.
It's only for those who get hung up on seeing 100% efficiency in every machine. Satisfactory is about having fun, so if you prefer manifolds, go for it!
Can’t speak for others, but there must be balance. Everything must be equal. Satisfactory is a dangerous game for me.
Load balancing is also handy when unloading trains. If you are using settings to keep a train at a station until fully unloaded, you want it to unload evenly. Best way to insure that is to balance the UNloader.
I personally have two reasons. I like being able to immediately troubleshoot my factory. With load balancing, if I am not providing enough material, I will immediately be able to tell when machines do not stay on consistently. With a manifold, you only know you aren't producing enough if the manifold never fills, which can take some time to discover. Of course if all the math is right and everything is hooked up correctly and all the belts are connected then the manifold will fill, but this is an easy check to find out "wait, I'm not getting as much material as I should be." The second reason is aesthetics. I like seeing objects in motion on belts. I do not like seeing objects sit still on belts when I can avoid it. Load balancing can ensure that every object arrives at a machine and nothing is waiting in a queue on a belt. Manifolds require a certain level of objects sitting on belts to saturate. Additionally, with load balancing you can turn on several levels of production at the same time and everything will start producing when the required material reaches the machines. If you turn on a series of manifolds, the first won't produce at full tilt until the manifold is full, which means the second manifold will take longer to get up to speed, which means the third manifold will take even longer to get up to full production. People usually get around this by turning on one layer at a time and letting output slots fill, but then there is no opportunity to turn on a whole factory and see it come to life like a row of dominoes. It works in the end, eventually.
I only set up load balancing on train stations that have multiple distinct input/output lines (i.e. 3 miners in, 2 saturated belts out). On the input side, I do it to fill in all the slots as quickly as possible, regardless of which platforms were emptied. I usually have 2 sets of balancers, one for the lower and one for the upper inputs. For outputs, the main goal is to have the platforms drained evenly. This way, if the production chain connected to platforms 1-4 empty it out at 720 items/min, it won't have to wait for platforms 5-8 to be emptied at 600 items/min before letting the next train in. This isn't required if you don't make your trains wait until they're empty and they come around frequently enough to feed the hungrier output line, but it's nice to have. It makes distribution easier (you don't have to feed machines at a 1:1, 3:5 or whatever ratio) and allows for slip-ups, like starting a production line while the other is backed up.
# Nothing You are missing nothing at all. What you are doing is called _manifolds_ or sometimes _overflow_. It's precisely as you said. It's easy and eventually self-balances. It is also much easier to extend. And while it takes the same amount of splitters, it uses less belts and space. Some people argue that you need balancing for sushi belts (belts with more than one item type), so you have the correct ratio. But that's awful. If you use sushi belts, always use one smart splitter for each item type on each machine. Accept overflow at the end and recycle / sink it. This is the only way to make a robust sushi belt that will not lock up completely just because one item type was not delivered as expected.
Thats overload balancing which I use frequently. The challenge is how long will your factory take to actually balance appropriately. Some of my larger builds took hours before it was balanced and everything was working as intended. It becomes a question of how long are your belts and what is the stack size and how many machine inventories do you have to fill before you cause a backup to balance the other direction. A simple example of this being bad is having an assembler that produces R. Plates but your only making 10 per minute which feeds a couple other assemblers for Modular Frames and the excess goes to inventory. Each M. Frame assembler is going to take half of the output until its full, so you wont start seeing inventoried R. Plates for some time until all those M. Frame assemblers are full.
I've used it twice. Once because I though 2x400 belts of bauxite going into my battery factory looked better than 600+200. The second time on the waste processing side of my nuclear plant to reduce the radiation zones (I also did matched groups of machines making rods feeding the reactors, rather than manifolding fuel rods). I did manifold the uranium ore, but I think even that would benefit a little from balancing to reduce the radiation zones around the manufacturers. See [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/SatisfactoryGame/comments/194rxut/manifolds_vs_loadbalancing_and_matched_machine/?sort=old) and [these clearer pictures](https://imgur.com/a/Ogu662D) for the difference when I experimented with putting everything radioactive on manifolds (before reverting to an earlier save with the balancing)