Splitters as the bus - The Splitter Bus

[vampiricdust]

Video for sights & insights. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iE_YH_OLbh4

Concept: This idea is taking advantage of a long straight away where you need lots of resources to move as quickly as we can. If you're welling to invest some serious resources into your production line, the Splitter Bus might be up your factory. So are they faster? Oh boy, just watching them go is thrilling. Not only is it a double lane speed way, it makes adding and access as simple as moving the spliters needed aside and balancing as desired. It does eat a lot of resources to make, this heavy hitter is a big investment but is fun. End game level, but usable when you get a good production of red splitters going.

Advantages: Uses the items moving faster over the length of the splitter, the longer it goes, the greater the advantage. Will supply more fast inserters then same speed belt if using spliters splitting into 4 every other time. It is easy to scale to a huge backbone.
Disadvantages: The costs are pretty hefty. The belts are choke points for a splitter bus. The cost is a difference ratio of ~4:1 yellow, ~3:1 red, and ~8:1 for blue.

Got ideas? Feeling inspired? Share your saves and I may feature them in future build experiments.

[ssilk]

Nice

There is also a short comment in the wiki:
https://forums.factorio.com/wiki/inde ... her_Usages

an empty splitter transports items faster, they disappears on input side and dive up on output side, "jumping" over about half a tile. It is questionable, how this behavior could be used. A good usage is to make something like a "micro-buffer", or a "spread-buffer" with that, because a line of 10 splitters can store about 60 items - a half stack - and the first items are delivered very fast, but the last items have the normal belt speed to move through the splitters; so the items are spread on the belts.

I need to note also: This doesn't increase the throughput, it increases only the speed. The max. throughput keeps the same.

[vampiricdust]

You are right. I got an actual advantage when I used all splitters and made them alternate 1-2 at the extraction point. It ended up being way more than it's worth but it's fun to be able to spike items over a long distance.

[ssilk]

Well, I haven't followed this idea longer, cause basically it is the same principle as if you use two splitters, one at the begin, one at the end and make to lines, one directly connecting the end, the other goes a bit around. More or less like so:

Code: Select all

       >>>>>>v
       ^     v
  >>>S>^     >>S>>>>
  >>>S>>>>>>>>>S>>>>

Ok, this is not exactly the same function, but nearly.

The main advantage is just the speed. But where do you need that, and what is the price for it?