Satisfactory Tips 4: Load Balancers

Friendship ended with Load Balancer. Now Manifold is best friend!

[amycox]

Here’s the trick. Turn all the machines off except the one at the very end, let it get overfilled, then turn on the next one, rinse and repeat and you’ll have the whole line balanced in a fraction of the time

[Dohyden]

The resources in Satisfactory are infinite, so the overflow spin up time is almost always worth it.

[GreenedBeens]

I’m getting flashbacks of waiting 2 hours for a factory to reach full capacity and then realize I messed up my math

[monawoka]

In factorio I’m a balancer guy. In satisfactory I’m a manifold guy

[rorakee]

Seeing older folks enjoying video games always makes me happy- even more so when they’re good at them!!!

[Drummerx]

You can start a manifold distrubution from the center to help it spool up faster. You can also use belts of slower speeds to prevent the early machines from sucking up all the materials. Many inputs need under 60 items per minute.

[Saradamon]

I always use manifolds, but I've contemplated vertical load balancers, using vertical conveyors up to splitters/mergers to use up the usually wasted vertical space while maintaining the footprint of a manifold

[AquaZero_]

I just really like the look and satisfying part of sending exactly enough resources down a belt and splitting it just right so all belts are constantly moving. Down side is if something screws my production fluctuates so much more than the manifold

[TheBlueberryWhite]

I really like your Shorts. They are super informative and clear. Thank you, Doc

[betterlifeexe]

there are 2 approaches to solving the manifold problem. one is to turn off the machines and turn them on one at a time, starting from the back. this allows them to start up quickly. the other way is to split the problem in 1/2, or 1/4, by adding back in layers of load balancing to the individual manifold lines. the key here is that even just placing a manifold at the end of the branching pattern, you allow the system to be slowly scaled without redesign.

[SerunaXI]

I love manifolds. If you need to, you can always split just before the manifold starts and run the split down the line to merge in and balance distribution more. Or, if you have space for it, you can also run machines on either side of the splitter, then just manifold merge and wrap one line around at the end to merge into the other(if you need to).

[dragonwaz]

Load balancing is the only way for me. I've found it's a lot easier to compact them with lifts.

Place a lift on the output with the top facing back towards the output, place a splitter directly on the head of the lift, place two more lifts either going up or down to the right and left of the splitter, and place more splitters on the output head of those lifts and you have an easy 4 way balanced split that only takes up one to two splitters worth of space.

The direction the lift exit is pointing will edge the splitter you place on it in that direction slightly the only time you want it pointing towards where you're taking the line is at the end of the splits cause a splitter on a lift can't spit out resources in the opposite direction the lift is pointing.

[selensewar]

Manifolds take some time to spin up, but they're so convenient.

[weirdowithacello]

I used to do this with my coal plants back when they didn't need water. I started with a few on what I now know is a manifold. Then when I needed more power, I'd build a new plant and extend it. I got it up to 20 plants on one coal node by the time I stopped playing that save.

[pakachakawaka]

1. You can make both manifolds and balancers more compact and free up floor space by using vertical lifts for all solid inputs and outputs.
2. When you have a very long line of machines such as what is shown in the video, you can COMBINE both forms of conveyor formats (the brackets only mark the splitter that comes immediately after the MainSplitter to help you read my illustration better:

Balancer: Biggest drawback when upgrading, you have to delete, re-arrange, and rebuild, which is time consuming.
MainSplitter
/ \
(Sp.1) (Sp.2)
/ \ / \
Sp.1A Sp.1B Sp.2C Sp.2D

Manifold: Biggest drawback is if your line is too long and/or your belt speed is not fast enough, it can stall or slow overall production quotas.
MainSplitter - (Sp.1) - Sp.2 - Sp.3 - .... Sp.13

Combined:
MainSplitter
/ \
Sp.1 - Sp.2 - Sp.3 - Sp.4 - Sp.5 - (Sp.6) (Sp.7) - Sp.8 - Sp.9 - Sp.10 - Sp.11 - Sp.12 - Sp.13

Incase you couldn't read / understand my illustration above and by using the video as an example:

-Place your MAIN splitter just as you see it in the beginning of the video (you will align it either at the half way point between an even number of machines or align with the middle machine as seen in the video of 13 constructors), but place your other splitters thereafter in a manifold sequence as seen starting at 0:22.

-Connect the left side of your MAIN splitter with the 6th splitter "(Sp.6)" and the right side of the MAIN splitter with the 7th splitter "(Sp.7)".

What this does is rather than take a long time to distribute the whole input to 13 constructors sequentially, it will divide the input between 2 smaller lines of 7 and 6 splitters. You can take this a step further when dealing with even more machines than 13. When you do 20, you can use the MAIN splitter to divide the load to (Sp.10) & (Sp.11), depending exactly on what you're splitting. If you're dealing with more than 20, or you find that it doesn't work with 20, then unfortunately I've not the solution for this other than to upgrade vertically (up to another floor) or simply pick either balancer or manifold.

An even more compact format is if you put your MAIN directly between (Sp.X) & (Sp.Y):

Sp.1 - Sp.2 - Sp.3 - Sp.4 - Sp.5 - (Sp.6) - MainSplitter - (Sp.7) - Sp.8 - Sp.9 - Sp.10 - Sp.11 - Sp.12 - Sp.13

NOTE: I do very much love this game as many of you do as well and even though i have 1300+ hours and around 12 saves since update 4, I don't consider myself neither a beginner or an intermediate FICSIT employee. More like the world's OKAYEST in-betweener. So feel free to correct me or suggest better. TEACH ME PLEASE. :D

[Fooma]

This so effectively told me the difference between these two, very helpful. Big thanks

[WiiDSCube]

Load balancing is useful if you have a centralized power plant. It's important to have all generators running together before filling up with excess fuel, especially if it ever happens to run out and everything shuts down

[otislima]

So glad you mentioned the manifold method. It's one of my favorite methods for balancing incoming resources. Like you said it takes a minute to spin up but because I use a more modular building style it doesn't really bother me that much considering I spend a lot of time traveling from location to location/setting up vehicles to bus outputs to a localized storage. Really awesome stuff here Doc keep it up.

[DSDXV.]

i’ve honestly always used a load balancing layout but this manifold one is looking really nice 👀

[stefan_toft]

I love manifolds in satisfactory, also love them for helping my factory recover from when i accidentally cut a coal line or fprgrt to fill the biomass in the early stages