Advanced splitter overflows and item shredder

Question

In short, I'd like to see one or both of the advanced splitters to have an overflow option and new building that destroys whatever is fed into it.

I seen one post that talks about the overflow a bit, but has a lot of other things mixed into it too, so I chose to make this one to have just the overflow issue highlighted and the connected item disposal.

This issue came up early in the "Let's do something clever" stage of my experience, after getting the basics done very efficient. I found the first alternate recepies and that suddenly changed my needs for iron rods and plates, more of one, less of the other. So I came up with an idea of a smart factory. Feed in iron, then setup constructors that feed into a central bus and at the end, sort the bus (which I did per level of the factory, had 4 levels of it at the end). So if my needs change, I can just flip some constructors from one to the other item, and the rest would work just fine.

That of course works until one of the item outputs back up. As a simplified example: Two constructors, one makes plates, one rods, both merge into one output. Smart/programmable splitter goes into two storages, rods is full, plates not, belt to the splitter is filled pretty evenly mixed with both. Now the splitter stops because the rods belt will back up into the splitter, and it will no longer output plates, even if that storage is empty.

So a sensible step would be to have an overflow setting, which would take an item it cannot sort, even though it has a specific port for it, and dump it into the overflow port. There you could have large storage for overflows or the second part of this suggestion.

So while having the overflow is fine, there is then a problem, what to do with the overflow items, as they will just accumulate somewhere else until that backs up. So that's where a shredder would be interesting.

Building Suggestion: Molecular Deconstructor

Has one input, a smallish size (8x8 would fit well) and uses a medium to large amount of power while deconstructing. It has an item/min deconstructon rate (slowish, perhaps 10-20/min) which can be overclocked. It only can handle one item at a time (no stacks or buffer internal) and doesn't require configuration, it just destroys whatever is fed into it.

This could also be useful for getting rid of Nuclear waste. As such it could be on tier 7 or tier 8, or even tier 9+ so players have to struggle with the nuclear waste issue for a while before getting a solution to it. If nuclear waste has another method already pegged for handling it long term, then this could be a much lower tier item, around the same level as the smart splitter.

Comments

Another option for the overflow system would be a priority system with that you can sy at first try to go to the left, then to the right, and when both outputs are stuck go to the middle or something like this.

Would be also nice if there is a mk1, mk2 and mk3 version of the molecular deconstructor that can deconsturct faster and more items so that nuclear waste can p. ex. only be destroyed by the mk. 2, but something like iron rods or plates can be destroyed by the mk1.

I wanted to build a warehouse with the smart/programmable splitters, but I got stuck with the same problem, so please add this very soon!

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Just "if full go here" would already be enough for the basics of this suggestion.

But having the option to sort by priority, as in "feed into 1 until 1 is full, then feed into 2" would also be great. I think the programmable splitter would be predestined for this advanced stuff. I would encourage you to write a seperate suggestion for just that, or find one that does already suggest this and upvote it.

Answer 1

Overflow handling would be very nice.. As in "send stuff to left output ONLY when center output is full".

Automatic destruction... I'm not sure FICSYT management would appreciate it if you wasted company resources by first consuming resources and power to make something then just throw everything in the bin. That's not very efficient. ;-)

It's a built in "issue" with smart splitters that at some point in time you will need to manually intervene to solve blockages.

Also an automatic removal facility would make nuclear waste handling probably too easy. (I'm not even convinced the nuclear waste is useful, it's not that hard to periodically go somewhere and ctrl-click an empty entire container into the void never to be seen again).  I'd much prefer it it nuclear waste CAN'T be destroyed and would require a nuclear waste treatment. (this can be done in reality, nuclear energy companies just don't want to because it's cheaper to store the waste and buy new "fuel" rather than treat it).

Comments

Your description of "send stuff to left output ONLY when center output is full" is pretty much what I'd like to have as one part.

I agree, the automatic deletion is maybe not perfect, which is why I added the thing about energy. I was wondering if there would be another way to "give back". Like your example of waste treatment, that would be great, then maybe you recover some uranium cells from that, which you can feed back into the construction cycle. I'd love that. But that is specific to that one item. So having something that can handle any item is a bit more tricky. What would be the output be? Maybe it could output partly what was used in the input? But then you have to feed that back and it could also lead to blockage, which is the point of this building suggestion in the first place, to be a black hole that swallows up anything at all.

The idea that you have something that is impossible to delete (currently on experimental, you can't) and damages you as well, is more than a bit of a bummer. Otherwise the solution is to build a huge tower in the void somewhere consistenting of basically just a bunch of huge storages connected to each other.