yeh it's my favourite style

The most labour intensive though. Try setting up a heavy modular frame factory with that style, you'll end up tearing your hair out lol

I'm sure it's going to look great! You'll have to send over some screenshots or let me do a FFF episode on it when it's finished!

Mario Martinez thanks! This means so much to me! I’m glad I’m able to help you out, like you said this games amazing and I’m looking forward to developing this channel for the community, I’m in the process of building a website to go alongside these videos and I’ve got some plans to help make the videos even better when the games released to steam ☺️

Check out kibitz he's pretty awesome too

@@drewdebrocke2656 I saw couple of his videos, I don't like him... he's shouting all the time. I prefer @TotalXclipse, he's more chill

@@MarioMartinez_ true but he is informational like him and has awesome worlds like xclipse

You can wire things from below, and I've covered that in a video but my prefered method is using wall joints, if you join me for the 5x5 challenge on twitch at some point (next week Wednesday and Friday 6pm - 10pm BST ) you'll see how nice you can make the wiring in factories... It's a challenge build so you have to be very careful with all the positioning. I think you'll appreciate it if you liked the underfed belts. :)

I'm glad I could help you out!

Thank you! I'm glad you felt the content worthy enough for a subscribe! I have a new guide that will be released on Wednesday and hopefully another on Thursday :)

Yep thats a really good point, which I should have mentioned in the video! Thanks :)

Manifolds only become efficient when all except the last two machines are full of items. Doing this helps to get more machines running sooner, but more machines running means less excess to fill machines, so this actually makes manifolds even slower than normal. the fastest manifold setup is with high speed belts everywhere and smart splitters set to overflow down the manifold, so the machines fill one at a time. One exception to this would be if each machine needs exactly 60 or 120 items/min, but that's pretty rare if you do any underclocking.

░▒▓█▇▆▅▄▃▂Gous▂▃▄▅▆▇█▓▒░ I’m glad I could help you out with some suggestions! Such an awesome game with so many possibilities

@@TotalXclipse Very true its a Lovely Game for sure, you can do much and build so many things in different ways, one of the best i have Played too

Hey thanks for the message, the only video I have on getting Items to a centralised storage area is by train, if you want I can link you the video but I'm not sure if that's what you're looking for. A how to "bus" items to the factory is on the (long) list of videos to do though

@@TotalXclipse i'm just trying to setup my first coal plant. a single burner was easy to do, but despairing a bit with connecting pipes and cross-junctions to swimming non-aligned machines now. also finished all research and upgrades until end of tier4 except for quartz and of course oil. while waiting endlessly for the items to finish that i have to send to space, i tried reorganizing my factory and building some easily accessible storage (because requirements changed all the time and i often didn't know where to get or drop items from my inventory), which (to me) is more difficult than everything else :-) :-( building a bus (group or stack of belts) is easy, but how do i connect it efficiently and easily accessible to "storage in/out" ? and of course trains are not available yet either. oh well, finding out everything yourself should be the goal, but i currently try to get some shortcuts to this from yt when running out of patience because i can't quickly/easily build, delete and move setups by using blueprints (10k+ hours on factorio :-)

Thanks! I really appreciate it! I try to make them as concise and easy to follow as possible... I obviously have places where I can improve on them but I'm happy knowing that they're heading in the right direction :)

Hey! You’re absolutely right you could potentially cover the whole manifold in foundations from f industries or even just the outputs and then use the d ramps to clip through the build to cover it up depending on your appeal ☺️

I'm not quite sure I understand, could you send a screenshot of one and tag me in the post on my discord, I'd be really interested in seeing your suggestion! :)

Glad to help ☺️

The exterior is more or less the same just above it is different (covered in a let's play) but we'll be changing it again.

Honestly never had that issue personally, not sure why it would only limit you to two high

Hey! I'm so glad you're finding the guides helpful, there are a few really helpful content creators for satisfactory :) to answer your first question I recommend taking the smallest items on the buses so don't smelt copper ingots at source and then turn them into wire there only to send them on, same with screws. Do that at the factory. Iron and copper can be taken to the factory as it's 1 ore to 1 ingot, but things like caterium that requires 3 ore to 1 ingot if you're transporting over longer distances I'd smelt at the source. As for manifolds vs load balancers they're as good as each other you just have to give the system time to warm up (the manifold has to be fully saturated) but providing you have the correct ratio of machines to ingredients, it's should be as efficient as a load balancer

@@TotalXclipse Thank you for taking the time to answer 😊 I just discovered caterium yesterday, so I didn't smelt any yet to see the ore to ingots ratio. But yes, if it's 3 ores for 1 ingot it's definitely worth smelting where I mine it. And about manifolds, they seem like load balancers but without the hassle and with a warmup time. I can definitely live with a warmup time, so I'll do them from now on.

For item localisation it depends entirely on items, for example I'd never bulk produce screws unless they're in the factory they need to be used as transporting x number of screws at lower tiers is impossible due to conveyor throughput, but more advanced items, yes. I'm working on a build currently, that always returns items to a storage after manufacturing before heading to a new factory, I find it useful for keeping things organised and that way I have some in storage and a load heading to where they need to be :)

@@TotalXclipse As a guy who works in data I like that, hah. Basically more of a central "Distribution Center" sort of model.

Never, ever mix items and ressources on belts, it's super messy and leads to clogs that will affect your entire system. Imagine you feed a belt with 4 different items for 4 different types of production, and just one of those stops (maybe because the container it feeds into fills up), now you've shut down all 4 productions, instead of just the 1.

🤡

JesusCasintra yes so if you’re putting everything onto a bus after you can use a manifold with mergers the same way as we did with the splitters behind the constructors

As a split in 25% bits is pretty easy anyways and I'm simply too lazy to calculate any more complex scenarios I just wanna point out something. In the 1/3 splits you have Overflows at the beginning and the End. It is thereby kind of like feeding the System from both ends. (First 33,33% and last one 29,63%) even tho this effect decreases over the total amount of machines used. If you want to go one Step further i would recommend the following setup: First Splitter in thirds Second Splitter in thirds Third Splitter in HALF. This results in: First Machine 33,33% (66,66% sent on) Second Machine 22,22% (44,44% sent on) Third Machine 22,22% (22,22% sent on) Fourth Machine 22,22% Think about it that way (when transfering to what ever split you are trying to attempt without giving away significant amounts of space): Overflow on first machine will always be. Overflow on last machine is preventable.

Tim a really interesting idea - thanks for sharing, however this would only work on the basic single line set up correct? Although I suppose you could place a splitter before and with the use of elevators take 2/3rds of the items off the first splitter and merge them back either on the next part of the line or the one after that. It’s something I’d like to try out!

@@TotalXclipse TotalXclipse Yeah i was thinking about a basic single line setup specifically. To be honest, I haven't played the Game yet as I'm stuck on the other side of the World due to Covid, so I don't know what kind of splits / amount of machines are common in an actual setup. I primarily wanted to point out that you can use the 3rd Output of the Splitters in order to spread the items more evenly, reducing the "Boot Time". Thereby you keep the spacial advantages of the Overflow Method, whilst taking some of the benefit of load balancing. Your idea sounds great, but in order to make it a viable option you should keep in mind how much space 'proper' load balancing would cost and if its worth using the compromised version or not. Maybe we will find something like decision rules when and where to split, but especially with longer setups which have more machines it sounds like a good idea to split of 2/3 right away and refeed from the top a little later. Edit: You would need to use a splitter infront of the first splitter. Splitters have 3 outputs, one going to the machine and 2 beeing the 2/3 you want to refeed later leaves you with no output continuing the main feeding belt. Thats why I originally made the commenct of keeping the spacial requirements in mint. I was thinking about some way of displaying the actual benefit/increase in efficency during boot time and feel like I'm lacking the practical experience of the game regarding this. You could go thru it assuming you are having a 120/min feeding belt going into 4 machines each using 30 items per minute. Therefore production time would be 2 seconds/item for each machine. Then you can go and either measure or calculate the item input rate. (For each machine) When the first machine is on overflow, it's at 100% all the time. But the machines storage has to fill up first before the Situation changes. After that you are going to have a new Situation. The first machine takes 30 items/minute off the 120/minute feeding belt, leaving it as a 90/minute for the other 3 machines. Therefore we need to recalculate the split rates for this new situation until machine 2 is full and working at 100% efficency. Having done this for each stage and having calculated / experimented the total booting time you could compare the only 50% split and the 1/3 split method by their total booting time and overall efficency over time and therefore show exactly how much of a difference it makes. (Using a graph for this would make sense) I don't want to write a book about it right now, but as soon as I'm back to my gaming PC i'll probaply make a spreadsheet and some measurements providing an exact comparison.

Firstly, I hope you’re okay where you are! I know the issues with being away from home and Covid-19 I’m returning to the UK today thankfully (taking as many precautions as possible not to increase the risk of catching/spreading the virus) As for the theory, it’s a really interesting take of the manifold design - the maths is a little much for me to comprehend but I think I might test your theory out and do a further video on this topic - it’s not something I’ve really considered but it would be interesting to see how well it runs. I look forward to the spreadsheet - if you’ll let me have a peek and maybe publish it on the discord and maybe the website as a tool for people to use ☺️

That's a big video to undertake! - Sounds like it could be a big headache... and fun so sure! I'll get round to it, but I may have to wait to have wifi as that'll be a long one and I'm not sure my data will handle it! I'd recommend using a storage system to pool Items from one factory to your main factory and from there maybe use load balancers to get the number of items required per minute in order to run more complex manufacture lines at 100% clock :)

Good luck! I try to keep it condensed and full of information Maxthecatfish also has some great stuff!

It depends how you want to play . I wouldn’t do one array for everything, but If you did, split the lines right at the beginning between the three resources then setup the manifolds. What I tend to do is workout how many rods/plates I need then do a smelting array just for that section

@Prince Hector BOT

@Kendrick Blaze you aswell

Good point, well said

I've always railed against balance systems because they are not perfectly balanced, lag, programming, etc. will never be able to be perfectly balanced, an overflow system design allows for errors and an occasional extra part makes things more efficient.

@@TheBaldr also! Having that supply buffer of the manifold filling machines nonstop acts as a buffer to keep machines working consistently, making your power use much more stable and predictable, which is double important for power generation too (and running the miners slightly faster than the powerplants to keep power output from jumping around, building a 3 miner 24 coal plant powerplant has been a interesting learning experience, and my friends get 1800 megawatts more power as a bonus to keep us from constantly overloading our power grid... at least for a day or two

It could be you're slightly too close, try pushing the constructors back by one space or you may need to attempt to connect the manifold by connecting the lift from the constructor to the manifold or perhaps try doing it from the manifold to the constructor.

I had the same problem just now. The thing was that the elevator can't go down when you make the first connection to the smelter. Instead it has to look like it's going up. When you've made the first connection you should be able to go down and make the second connection to the splitter just fine.

Short cut keys for inventory Hold CTRL and left click to move items to be deleted

It's still first person, however I use the photo mode to record. press P, then middle mouse button. In videos where I use overhead shots for time lapses, I'm playing on two separate games at the same time.

Hey! You're right to a certain extent, at first the last constructors wont receive the items they need, however once the first constructors line is fully saturated, the extra items will over flow to the next splitter, and this will eventually feed to the last constructors. So long as the line is running at the correct ratios to constructors then eventually the factory will run at 100% :)

You're right it would certainly be easier to tell the difference, but you can do the same here, the splitter has three grey sides to one "coloured" and the merger the opposite, like you pointed out :)

I use it in all my games, so it should work for you too, maybe you're slightly too close or too far. Depending on the manufacturer you may need extra space between inputs and outputs

Nope, no mods for changing the look of them I'm afraid :s

@@TotalXclipse so it's just that they are painted white? how do you have them painted white when placing?

@@CyberStyleZ open your color gun, edit your using preset and apply the changes. should automatically update all building with that newly edited colour-scheme.

@@CyberStyleZ Once you unlock the colour gun, you can set different colours to be used. The default colour used on everything is the very first option is that one, if you change that colour it changes everything that's preset to the default to the new colour :)

like you have at the 18:00 mark

You can set it up providing you have a at least 1 large foundation depth but I like to do these double manifolds under the floor along half-pipes.

Cut off the input and let the items get used up then delete and rebuild. Elevators can be mk1 you’ve just got to unlock the milestone first

/ NuclearJeday \ I’m working on it! Hahaha 😅☺️

I'm constantly developing the channel, I'm hoping over the next few weeks the guides will become easier to understand as the editing improves but also as the website is released to run alongside these.

TotalXclipse i understand, i’m not trying to be rude in any way just as i see you are a big channel for tips on a complicated game. i suggest when showing off builds you can tell us how many items we are going to use, what we are going to make or what can we make with these designs, how it all actually works as in show us around the build where each item is leading to and where are the inputs and outputs. either way your videos are helpful and keep up the great work and keep on improving because i believe this channel will be the main source for tips on this game.

so are there any items on the conveyor elevator? If so you know the input is fine and that it's the output thats the issue. a big clue as to whether the out put is inline is to listen for a little beep when you're in the right position. if you have no beep, check that they're connected. If you're a place out you may need to connect the output or input with a conveyor.

Thanks so much for the reply! I think I've got it, atleast I do in the above ground configuration. I am using foundations from Moar Factories and I think I was mixing them up which may have caused an issue. The Items were going into the splitter, and then stopping at the lift. There were no items traveling through the lift (The items were not visible in the uncovered portion of the lift) and there was not enough space to connect with a conveyer. Im gonna jump in game now and see if I can make it work with consistent foundations. Thanks again! Really love your content.

@@jamesdodson5554 No worries, I always try to reply :) Yep that could well have been the issue , the other possibility is if you placed the splitter onto the belt rather than connecting the belt to the splitter, sometimes it doesn't register a segment of belt! Thanks for the kind words :) we''ll have plenty more content coming this week :)

I don't believe it's changed, it could depend entirely on whether you're connecting the elevator from the splitter or the constructor/assembler though

I have the same issue.. cant get the elevator to connect (not enough space)

NVM, you have to connect to the constructor first

@@b.delacroix7592 could be the lifters are slightly (although not visibly) away from the machine. Try hovering between the lifter and the machine with your mouse to see if you can place a conveyor between the 2. You may not see the conveyor but you will hear the snap sound.

@@GeorgeGoosen Yea, they don't quite line up so you have to fiddle a bit to get it going. I'm also using the half pipes underneath so I can walk under if I want to updgrade the conveyor and thus not deal with having to defloor the area when that stage comes along. Thanks.

I go by conveyor speed or end item production requirements, if I'm running MK2 conveyors I know I can have 120 items on a single manifold or 240 on a hybrid (splitting the first splitter between the start of the line and the end of the line) so on a single manifold I could say run 8 constructors creativing rods (15pm) or on a hybrid or I guess an inverted manifold is probably a better name I could run 16 constructors. If however I have an item that needs 150 rods to be built. Then I know my manifold needs a total of 10 constructors and I'll need to find a way to fit 150 iron ingots along that bus

@@TotalXclipse Hmm I think I get what you're saying. So by your example you want 120 rods a minute to come out, you just put the right amount of ingots on the input and as long as you have enough constructors it sort of just works itself out in the end and eventually you get the output you want? No matter if the first constructor gets 100% efficiency and the last constructor only gets 10% it eventually works out. Do you then have to manifold ore into ingots? Or do you generally load balance the smelting process that and only manifold the constructor phase and beyond?

@@MonkEsquire There is a "warm up period" but once the belt is saturated - and it will if you fill the conveyor with the same amount of input resources as your constructors require. All will eventually run at 100% efficiency. You can manifold for any instance that you might use a load balance :)

@@TotalXclipse Ah so it'll always saturate if you input the right amount? That makes sense. But how do you know how many constructors you need for a given manifold? In your example with 8 constructors and 120 items how do you work out the required amount of constructors?

@@MonkEsquire I look at the recipe in a constructor. Say i need 180 iron rods. I'll go to a constructor and see how many rods a constructor makes per minute. which is 15. so I then divide the 180 by the 15IPM which leaves me with 12. That's the amount of constructors that I'll need for that line. I'll also need to use mk3 belts

For more difficult recipes you could calculate if you want, but one sheet is make from 2 ingots, which is 20 / min. For 100 refineries you need at least 2000 input. if you dont have that many, how would you even use 100 refineries to make those sheets. AND... why do you need a bazillion sheets anyway... Sorry but you confuse me Brian, can you explain pls, would be apreciated.. Thanks!! Jake.

@@JakeSimmer if you have 3 lines of 780 coming in you aren't gonna load balance that into 100 refineries. or even 1 to 33. you are just gonna put them in series and let them overlow to the refineries

@@nostrum6410 haha, did not expect that many, LOL. Im still wrestling with oil recipes.. But why so many sheets... Is that to fill the next crazy factory? That should be it... ;-)

@@JakeSimmer i was probably using them to make ai limiters, circuit boards and rotors

@@nostrum6410 I just found a small channel, interesting start, hope you like it... ukposts.info/have/v-deo/q6ihbad7Z32Vk2g.html

In case you want to walk around the factory at factory level. If you don't want to though it's fine, game is to be played the way you want to play.

You're right but once the line fills up it should run as fast as a load balancer. (which we'll no doubt be covering in another guide at some point :D as for space usage it tends to be fine for the the first 1-9 splits but if you're running somthing like a 2-13 split it seems to get complicated quickly - infact a compact load balancer series might be a good shout! Thanks for the inspiration :D

Nah bro it's cool. It's how we learn and excel. I think I restarted like 5 times. Tho I havent made it past tier 5 yet lol..

Good question

merge the 10 miners together on one line (if you have a fast enough conveyor) from their you can run them to the smelter line - note that smelters tend to consume less than a miner produces so you'd probably need 20 smelters, it would be best to do this in a few buses.

​@@TotalXclipse What I wrote above is for example. It won't work for me. Production will not be effective. The case looks like this: Train station (10) -> smelters (100-300) "I don't know exactly, still under development) -> other buildings. So if I want 10 conveyors with a constant flow of material I have to divide it into 10 outputs but I have to do it so that the material from one input can come out from each of 10 outputs. I can seend screen about what I meen.Thank you for your answer.

@@djanek5017 Send me a screen shot but I'm pretty sure the best way would be to use a load balancer for that situation, you just have to make sure that you're able to input enough items per minute for it to reach said outputs

So at the start of the video I do the first intake from the bottom like I show at the end and the other intake from the top. it's the same method used, just line the inputs with splitters, (place down the splitter first if it's easier in the middle of a foundation) then place the assembler 2 steps away from the splitters. If you're doing two manifolds from above they need to be stack 3 and 4 splitters high :)

But, once it's warmed up it's just fine, have a little coal powerplant with 24 reactors that are all bus/manifold fed, I just kept a couple of the reactors early in the lines off until all the rest saturated, then started up fully and our multiplayer server is 1800 megawatts richer. I dread how many 100s of slugs I will need to overclock it though, 4500 megawatts sounds great but so many slugs....

It sounds like your splitter or merger is too close to the input/output

Attempting to add the elevator causes it to appear in red, partially merged with the wall, and no amount of fiddling changes that.

Same issue, I cannot get it to connect - encroaching no matter what I do. :(

@@CDLHamma I'm only a week in and found I needed some tips and found this video. What worked for me was laying the splitters LAST. When I tried to put them first, I also was prevented from doing so by the collisions. Hope it works for you :)

a manifold is a way to bus items to a factory and then split the items off using splitters. I Use them 90% of the time and I mention why within the first 2 minutes, they're much more efficient spacially compared to load balancers and also much easier to scale up :)

manifold is 'many-fold' like the pipes in your engine - there is a manifold directing air from a single intake to every piston. A fork in the road is a kind of traffic manifold.

I'd be up for that but I know a lot of others aren't interested in the combat aspect of the game.

The manifold is simply a conveyor line that splits items to inputs one after the other rather than a load balancer that splits items accord to ratio

Absolutely right, perhaps I should employ you to rewrite my scripts 😅☺️

@@TotalXclipse My boss does the same, and that in three languages lol. Always happy to help ;)

@@InservioLetum Good to know I'm not the only one :D

That depends on how large your manifold is

@@TotalXclipse 4 is already too much at belt lvl.3

I've no idea unfortunately, sorry I can't help you out!

the last splitter will split evenly between the two or three connected factories.

90% of the videos do have a script

LordStaszko i could buy these videos are for everyone and some people don’t like using mods ☺️

@@TotalXclipse ye they might be right to not to,but i think its not cheating to use mods on unfinished game, item throttle or adjustable internal buffer on each machine should be in game but its not

@@LordStaszko it's not about whether something is considered cheating or not, some people just don't want the headache of messing with mods.

@@nova31337 have you seen Satisfactory Mad Loader? This soft is so ez to use

Hey thanks for the suggestion - this was recorded whilst travelling and I had to do them in segments which made it so they didn't work particularly well together, the more recent guides give a better interpretation of my work in my mind :) but I'm also always working and improving on what we have. :)

thanks my man!

Hey sorry you felt so sick watching that shake, I rarely do the shake these days as I’m able to do more with the game, prior I was on my laptop which meant my ability to edit was greatly reduced but now that I’m home I rarely If ever shake the Camera during videos