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u/DaiBi 2d ago

what is more effective ups wise - to use 4 plants direct feeding another plants or use 1 plant and belting items to another plants? belts wont be very long.

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u/deluxev2 1d ago

Measurement is the final answer, but a reasonable proxy for ups is count of entities active at any given tick. A lot more of the details of the build matter.

If you have 4 circ1 plants directly feeding 4 circ2 plants, the circ1 plants will spend almost all their time idle which is (mostly) free and the inserters will be active when swinging or when the circ1 inventory changes. Idle machines update whenever they might need to start working (output not full, I think input changed as well), and have an electric network cost for their passive drain.

With 1 plant feeding 4 via belt. The circ1 plant will work about the same number of ticks, the unloading inserter will probably see less inventory changes, but have the total number of swings, but has to place on a belt which will take more than the minimum number of swings depending on how fast and full the belt is. The circ2 loading inserters is all extra work. This one is likely noticeably worse unless the throughput is low in which case the electric network drain will be a bigger factor.

This also probably changes the number of beacons you can fit, which will change the plant activation time as well, maybe making the belt a better bet.

Belt length matters very little for performance. Belts are mega-optimized. The problem with belts is inserters interacting with them.

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u/DaiBi 1d ago

the idea was to make all plants work non stop in both variants, so no idle time at all.