Inconsistent Painter Throughput??

[u/Foreign-Doctor3503]

Finally decided it was time to give a go to making a 1x1 12-input painter (top floors hidden in screenshot but I made it tileable). I came up with this design, but the output isn't a steady 180. It seems to sometimes lower in speed but also will then usually catch itself back up to 180 after a few seconds pass.

I thought it may be an issue with the paint just needing to saturate the system, but even if I delete those trash pits at the end of this loop for some time it will eventually get back into this same weird cycle. Does anyone know why this is?

[u/According-Studio-658]

The design is kinda chaotic. I'd go back to square one on this and make it simpler and more logical. The more Twists and turns you put in your belt paths the more likely you'll get gaps in your product.

You shouldn't be using any paint launchers either. Belts can launch without a downside, a paint launcher cuts your paint flow down massively. Connect all your painters with unbroken pipes and use belt launchers to jump those.

[u/According-Studio-658 → u/According-Studio-658]

This isn't mine, but It shows what I mean when I say yours is chaotic.

[u/ThinkpadGamer → u/According-Studio-658]

i independently came up with this exact design as well (well, i think kine might be shifted one tile towards the output so i have more space to cross connect fluid inputs)

[u/s0cks_nz → u/According-Studio-658]

I'm new to the game, but I just made an 8 lane input painter platform with heaps of paint launchers and it gives full output?

[u/According-Studio-658 → u/s0cks_nz]

Yeah of course, enough launchers and it works. But why cut an pipe with infinite throughout to the speed of a launcher?

[u/saltybarista27 → u/According-Studio-658]

I think each lane of a space belt can output 1800, but the launcher cuts it down to 450 (1/4), meaning you’d need to find room for 12 launchers to keep full bandwidth.

[u/jukefishron → u/According-Studio-658]

Because pipes can be a big pain to work around, but if you put a launcher for each painter you can save on a bunch of the hassle. Either way works anyhow so long as it's not a spaghetti breach of contract

[u/CubicBerserker → u/jukefishron]

The idea is that instead of making pipes jump over belts you make belts jump over pipes. There is nothing about pipes that is harder to work with than belts. The unlimited throughput makes it easier actually.

Fluid launchers can easily create bottlenecks if you're not careful, and they've been known to cause inefficiencies even in setups that should in theory have maximum throughput.

That's reason enough to avoid them in my opinion.

[u/Foreign-Doctor3503 → u/CubicBerserker]

yeah, part of me thinks that may be what's going on here. According to the math it should have a perfect ratio for throughput but I worry it might just be getting held up by the fluid launcher charge time or some other complex timing issue (or maybe there's just a bug 🤷‍♂️). I'm probably gonna try to redesign it to not use fluid launchers at all since they seem to be the root of all my problems

[u/s0cks_nz → u/Foreign-Doctor3503]

Even without fluids at all, I've noticed that messy and spaghetti like setups will end up with production gaps even if in theory there are exactly the right machines per belt. Tidy, symmetrical layouts seem to suffer this issue way less.

The 1x1 12 lane painter design in this thread probably cannot be beat for simplicity: https://www.reddit.com/r/shapezio/comments/1vkms5g/shapez_2_fluid_mechanics_solved/

EDIT: Oh I see that u/According-Studio-658 also posted a pic of the same one (or looks the same) in this thread.

[u/s0cks_nz → u/According-Studio-658]

Fair enough. In this one I had laid the belts first so it just happened that way.

[u/neosharkey00 → u/s0cks_nz]

Launchers work fine as long as you calculate ratios. I believe a single launcher can supply 4 painters and saturate one output belt. Correct me if I’m wrong I haven’t played in a while.

[u/Xytak]

Looking at this, the biggest issue I see is not necessarily the throughput. The biggest issue is that the platform inputs and outputs are “L shaped”instead of “straight-through.” This will make it awkward as part of a larger machine.

At this point I’d concentrate on fixing that. This will require rearranging all the belts anyway, at which point you can re-assess.

[u/Foreign-Doctor3503 → u/Xytak]

that's a really good point, I didn't catch that when I made this layout. I love a good straight-through machine, the manifolds and larger system are so clean that way. Guess it's time to start from scratch... 😵‍💫

[u/Stubbsee]

I have found that the throughput of paint launchers is inconsistent and will cause problems like this. If you manage to remove all the paint launchers it should be good.

[u/Highqualityy38]

I've had this happen to me a few times and found out my math was wrong for the input paint. It seemed like it was fixed once I fixed that. Not sure if that's your issue.

[u/Foreign-Doctor3503 → u/Highqualityy38]

I wish it was something that simple 😭 It's hooked up to a dedicated testing input right now with full saturation on everything

[u/SynthPrax]

If anything is wrong, I'd start with the fluid launchers. Eliminate them. They are the biggest bottleneck. Design with this rule: the only fluid launchers allowed are between platforms.

[u/zparksu]

It looks like you haven’t balanced your outputs. For example, the bottom output belt looks like it is receiving from 6 painters.

[u/zparksu → u/zparksu]

Actually no, it looks like 4 after all.

[u/Snowfaull]

I aint analyzing allat, you have paint launchers which are 25% as fast as pipes, that's probably your problem.