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Shokubai wrote:With the advent of rail tankers I only do local barreling for logistic bot use. I do not transport barrels by rail.

A working example of this.

• Train delivers petro to my main base and is offloaded to tank in proximity.
• Petro is canned and output inserters monitor X amount of canned petro in network
• Requester chests feed a decanner by my Plastic/Sulfur/acid factory.
• Empties are reintroduced to the system
• Elsewhere Cans are made to some network threshold.

This works well if you wish to avoid piping through your base and don't want to transport cans.

This needs fluid bots with request and provider tanks.

mrvn wrote:

Shokubai wrote:With the advent of rail tankers I only do local barreling for logistic bot use. I do not transport barrels by rail.

A working example of this.

• Train delivers petro to my main base and is offloaded to tank in proximity.
• Petro is canned and output inserters monitor X amount of canned petro in network
• Requester chests feed a decanner by my Plastic/Sulfur/acid factory.
• Empties are reintroduced to the system
• Elsewhere Cans are made to some network threshold.

This works well if you wish to avoid piping through your base and don't want to transport cans.

This needs fluid bots with request and provider tanks.

Didn't I say that specifically " local barreling for logistic bot use".

Yeah, I think fluid bots would just spoil the fun

the rail tanker makes barrels for long distance transport mostly unneeded, which is nice since manageing empty barrels across multiple sites was annoying - although you still have the option to use barrels to increase throughput at the cost of added complexity.

Using barrels locally in combination with logibots makes a lot of sense, although in my current setup I only use logibots for very short distances, so I just pipe fluids around from the station to where they're needed.

Since 0.15 I don't have to! YAY!

cpy wrote:Since 0.15 I don't have to! YAY!

that's great, but this thread is about using barrels.

Before 0.15 came out i would make the correct amount of barrels by hand then put them in the cargo wagon. Take it where I want and have filter insters taking out the full oil ones on one side of the wagon and the empties going back on the other side

The problem is the classic deadlock: How do you fill a train with full barrels if it's already full of empty barrels.

Because the train isn't the problem. It's the economy, stupid.

1. Regulate empty barrel production. Make them at the refinery, and only inject new barrels if the standing supply at the station drops below 200 per wagon. Full barrels take a while to process, so you only want to manufacture more if there's a clear shortage, rather than a temporary lull.

2. Regulate the number of barrels at supply outposts. Not just the empties, but the empties AND fulls. You only want 300-350 barrels TOTAL per wagon at most. Why? You want the outpost to 'circulate' barrels, not choke on them. Every time a train arrives, the station should need more empty barrels. If there's a train load of full barrels, there should be no empties. You can use more assemblers to process barrels faster between train visits, but you should cap the total barrel population at any one outpost based on train capacity. Don't let them choke like you do the rest of your factory.

3. Allocate space on the wagon. If you regulated the outposts, even just 1-2 dedicated spots to full barrels is enough to begin circulation. I suggest 25% dedicated, with the rest 'free'. 50/50 splitting halves your throughput, but with proper circulation, you can get higher delivery utilization.

That's it. If you have one pumping station, the train can hang out for a while, but if you have multiple stations, you can make fast, short stops and lower their maximum barrel counts.