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by setr
1367 days ago
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> Can you imagine all the piles of green chips everywhere if the assembler just kept dumping them until it clogged? Isn't that effectively the same thing as when the belt stops? You've just added a bit more buffer before everything seizes up, and some extra cleanup. I'm not even sure you can say factorio has backpressure; the factory getting overloaded doesn't trigger slower production rates in prior parts of the system. The queue gets full and stops accepting input, and the prior machines stop sending input as a result (they could alternatively send input and it be dropped & deleted ala software systems, but that's just making it harder to debug because you don't see the whole thing freeze; the problem/solution is still the same) |
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That is backpressure...
Interestingly I think if Factorio didn't have backpressure, and unconsumed items disappeared when they reached the end of the conveyor, the game would be easier because you could just put every kind of items on a single belt. Un-balanced consumption wouldn't stop down the next production stage because the conveyor would keep running, whereas now if you're not consuming one type of item from a mixed stream you will block it preventing you from getting the other types of items.