Option to lower stockpiling in production buildings to single production cycle amount

Question

Currently, every construction building stores a complete stack of its input resource(s). It would be nice to have the option to let it only store exactly enough beforehand to prepare the next production cycle, e.g. for reinforced iron plates: only 4 iron plates and 24 screws instead of 100/500.

As I am using a main bus and overflow method, my factory would benefit greatly from this option. Currently, I either have to wait a very long time until the factory reaches its true efficiency potential or manually fill all the input storages once.

It should probably not be available from the start though, maybe make it unlockable in a medium tier?

Comments

If you dont have enough supply full, you still wont have enough supply empty. Same with the output. If you dont have enough demand, the machine buffer will still run full, and production will stall. In the end, this leaves a power graph that looks like an EKG readout vs a flat line. This leads to huge power spikes and shutdowns. The challenge of this game, IMHO, is to balance supply and demand across the factory.

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My main bus design does not focus balancing of supply and demand at all. ;)

For my approach, it's just "i have these amounts of ore to start with, try to build everything out of that until storage is full" with first-come-first-serve principle.

Buffers running full because of missing demand is totally intended in this design. I am fine with conveyor belts acting as such a buffer, i just wish the input buffers of the construction buildings could be minimized.

edit: changed "disabled" to "minimized"

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I want this for a different reason:  If you want to change your factory all these full stacks of items overflow your inventory very quickly.   There's really no purpose to having full stacks of buffering beyond the very early game before you have belts.

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To anyone who also uses the overflow/manyfold pattern to take care of the balancing: Check out the mod "SlowItDown", it is perfect to tackle the issue I described.

Answer 1

The ultimate design goal of the game is to create enough supply where your machines can occasionally idle down and wait for more load (demand). You don't want all of your machines running all the time at full tilt and never stopping. For one that would be terrible on your computer's FPS in large factories to the point you wouldn't be able to walk around in production areas without hitting 10-20 FPS.

Comments

I do not really understand your answer, how does the option I proposed lead to machines running all the time?
Nothing really changes here, the machines will still idle down at the same point: When the output buffer is full and the output conveyor belt is also completely full and is not moving anymore.
The whole idea of my design is that the belts eventually stop moving at the paths that do not need anymore supply, so higher amounts can flow to other paths. I rely on that to do the balancing for me in the long run. Having the proposed option would just make the whole process feel way less sluggish.

edit: balancing is probably the wrong word here, at no time does this give me a fair or optimal distribution. As i said it is more of a first-come-first-serve principle.

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Currently machines can idle down under two scenarios: Input buffer is full, and output buffer is full. You want to remove the input buffer so machines will only have exactly the amount of product they need to work on the input side, removing the input buffer entirely. If you do this then machines will only be able to idle down under one condition: Output buffer is full. This will reduce the overall efficiency of the entire factory operation.

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Okay, i probably phrased this wrong. I do >not< want to remove the input buffers entirely, I just want them to be way smaller, so only the very next production cycle can be prepared beforehand. The scenarios for idling down stay the same.
As Leuf said in his comment, there is not really a purpose for these big buffers, it is just handy in the early phase of the game.

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In summary, you want to reduce the stack size of the input buffer. You want to do this so that you are preloaded, for just what you need to start the first cycle of production.

The purpose: To remove all ramp up/down.

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You may want to be aware that a long time ago earlier this year Satisfactory at one point did not have an input buffer as we do now, nor an output buffer. It used to be exactly what we needed for either input or output. But then later at one point they released an update and added buffers to each side of every machine. It is unlikely that they will ever go backwards on patches. It's probably here to stay forever.