Automated Crushers


Adds three new Crusher variants which can select their recipes automatically. No more need to filter asteroid chunk belts.

Tweaks
18 days ago
2.0
178
Manufacturing

i Only Reprocessor

4 months ago

Great idea but I have an issue with decisions made.
I didn't download the mod for one reason, furnace like behavior is great for reprocessing but bad for other processes. My explanation is simple, in my current save I am exploring the concept of excessive space mining and found that (due to saved space from belts, inserters, machines and reduced asteroid consumption) using adaptive crushers is the best way to refine asteroids.

In conclusion, I love preprocessors, as furnace like behavior makes them superior to circuit controls or static recopies however rock breaker and grinder are inferior to vanilla methods since you need way more crushers to match vanilla production capacity even after accounting for idle time from recipe swaps. I decided to not download the mod purely to avoid having two machines I'll never use yet have them present in game memory and in menus.

My suggestion is to either abandon rock breaker and grinder or have a separate mod only for reprocessing especially asteroid upcycling. I understand that it would be nice for each inner planet to have its own crusher, but it just adds pointless content bloat.

4 months ago

I can look into adding optional toggles for each kind of additional grinder, if having extra machines bothers you. Shouldn't be that difficult, just a pain in the ass doing the same thing three times across like four files. Check back in the next few days.

More on point, though - what makes you think that Rockbreakers and Grinders are that much inferior to Vanilla Crushers? I understand the added delay when switching recipes, but that shouldn't be THAT much. Sounds like you have an additional issue with their performance that I don't quite see. If you could explain, I could tweak them to maybe improve performance.

4 months ago

Rock breakers and Grinders are a bit faster that vanilla, but they can't switch between basic and advanced making them far less space efficient than compensating for the downtime with one or two extra machines between recipes in a regular setup.
I don't see a solution to my issue since Rock breakers and Grinders would have to be merged into one machine that can switch modes between basic and advanced, but that adds extra difficulty since now I'd have to both stop inserters from putting wrong chunks in and switching modes in the machines making them harder to use than vanilla grinders.
If you are interested in exploring the Breaker and Grinder problem I can provide screenshots, invite you to my save to present a working system or anything in between, however I'd advise against putting too much effort into it as in my opinion only Reprocessing works better than vanilla on a furnace type entity.
I downloaded your mod and cut out those two and am very happy with the reprocesor, it is much better at balancing chunks than vanilla methods.

4 months ago

Ah. I take it you're using Signals to swap recipes between Basic and Advanced crushing on the same line? If so, I can see why dedicated Breakers and Grinders would be less useful for you. Unfortunately, there's no way to do both in one machine. Furnaces determine their recipe by input ingredient, so I can't have two recipes with the same input on the same furnace. I could potentially do something like Loaders Modernised, where an additional toggle button hotswaps between two entirely different buildings, but... For one, I don't know how to do that, and for another I don't think it would address your issue.

Either way, I had some spare time before the next hospital visit, so I went ahead and implemented the original proposal. 1.0.1 now has toggle buttons for all three machines. If all you want is the Reprocessor, then simply disable the other two. That's a pretty comprehensive change, as it will also not make changes to any of the Crushing / Advanced Crushing recipes, won't add their respective categories to the Crusher, won't include the one unique tech, etc. Just make sure you leave at least one of them toggled on, else you're disabling the mod :)

As a bonus, I caught and fixed a stupid bug. The Crusher Grinder was set to an output inventory of 2, which is not enough for the 3 results of each Advanced Crushing recipe. It still worked, but would likely clog itself early and lose performance. It also wasn't showing proper "made in" attributions in Factorypedia, which it does now.

Give me a sec to upload a new version and try that out.

4 months ago

I use secondary loops that take from a main loop from collectors to keep all three chunk types and read hub contents to know what to make. This design lets me use all crushers for one process. With 150–300 crushers on a ship it allows for insane output to a point where I was forced to use proxy container cargo bays to load raw products for shipping.
In circuits I define the desired amount, block basic if advanced is also needed and prioritize the biggest deficit, that way one machine can be used for all 6 recipes.
There are also small dedicated modules for reprocessing to balance the main loop, but they weren't great since they only worked well with around 20 crushers before loosing consistency.

4 months ago

Not sure I follow, but fair enough. Hopefully the option to disable the Crushers you don't like will help.

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