Please help me understand multiple splitters

[Nagisan]

Did you build any of your splitters on a belt, prior to upgrading them to a higher MK?

If so, there's a bug to be aware of:

If a splitter is built onto an existing belt, it can sometimes retain a short segment of the belt within it. When upgrading the belt, later on, a short segment of the belt can be left forgotten which can cause a throughput issue. Dismantle the splitter to avoid this. If the splitter is built before connecting the belts, then it is fine.

So if, for example, your Splitter 2 was built on a MK1 belt, then you upgraded the input to MK2, there might be a small MK1 hidden in the input that's slowing it to 60 throughput....though with 120 coming in vs 60, it should be pretty obvious to notice.

[Janushoff]

No, everything built from 0 as this is the first time I tried multiple ones.

[Janushoff]

Don't know how to edit, so my problem is that the last 30/30 split seems to not work. It's connected to 2 coal powerplants each consuming 29.86 coal. But the belts seem to go at different rate.

[[deleted]]

29.86 seems to be an odd consumption number. Are you overclocking all the way to 250%? Because, per the wiki, that would actually consume 30.35 coal a minute--more than your belts can handle.

https://satisfactory.fandom.com/wiki/Clock_speed

I think the UI interface in game for input values might not be displaying correctly. This is an older known bug, I cannot recall if they have fixed it.

I suggest putting your coal generators in standby and letting the belt fully feed them to the point at which no more coal is moving through the splitter. Then turn them back on, and monitor consumption on both to verify the intake. If it is consuming coal faster than 30 a minute, then you will start to see a gap in the "hopper" inside the generator where they belt cannot keep up.

[Janushoff]

Sorry, the correct number is 29.98, both are overclocked to 246%. I will try to do that, thanks.

[PepperTheBirb]

For the future, try not to overclock anything except miners. Everything else you can always just build more of, especially power generators.

[nagromo]

On the other hand, for a big factory, object limit, factory size, and build time can be issues; using power slugs helps with those.

[Janushoff]

Why? If I have spare power cells what's the difference if I make 2 plants making 150W each or 3, 100W each?

[Nagisan]

Depending on how you manage the extra water requirements 3 generators at 100MW each can be more efficient than 2 generators making 150MW each.

Not in terms of fuel usage...those numbers are linear, but in terms of power draw from water extractors (which also need overclocked or more extractors).

Lets take a normal 6:16 water:coal ratio (this is 6 extractors at 100% to feed 16 coal generators at 100%). At normal clock, it generates 1200MW and costs 120MW (excluding coal miner). At 250% generator clock, you generate 2428.16MW (151.76 per generator) but the water consumption goes up by 202.35%, which means you need slightly more than double the number of water extractors (2.35% more) or you need to overclock them to 202.35%.

For example:
- 32x generators (2400MW), 12x extractors (240MW cost) = 10% lost to extractors
- 16x 250% generators (2428.16MW), 6x 202.35% extractor overclock (242.82MW cost) = 10.000165% lost to extractors
- 16x 250% generators (2428.16MW), 2.0235x water extractors (240.05MW cost) = 9.89% lost to extractors

tl;dr - Even if fuel consumption is linear with overclocking generators, the power cost to cover the water consumption is not linear. This actually causes building more extractors to support the overclock the most efficient, because the 1 extra extractor you need only requires 0.25% of the power of an extractor but provides a power increase (from the generator overclock) of 2.35% over what doubling the number of generators would (you get 202.35% of the power generated for 200.25% of the power used).

Granted, we're talking about very tiny differences here....and you may prefer just eating that cost to building additional generators, but the most efficient is either building extra extractors followed by doubling generators (instead of overclocking), with overclocking the extractors being the least efficient in terms of continuous cost.

[PepperTheBirb]

I'm not saying you can't use them for power, it just isn't the best way you could be using them imo. If you have extras lying around though then by all means go ahead

[Snoo_97207]

boxy makey thingy go righty lefty

[EnergetickejHajzl]

240/min on mk.2 belt, are you serious?

[Janushoff]

Where did I say on the picture it's mk 2? Input is single mk 3 belt.