Hi, great mod so far! How do you get started with the AI Cores? I can see the unlocks which I assume speeds up the crafting, but to begin with it takes 40 seconds to craft a stable AI Core and the unstable one it takes to craft blows up after 30 seconds. I'm stuck :)

Hi, once a craft has started, it won't blow up, so the whole challenge is to prevent unstable cores to be created faster than you can accept them as ingredients. In my test, I made each stable assembly behind an unstable assembly, and connected the two machines so that unstable's crafting is only active when the ingredients are ready and the machine is free to go. There might be other ways though.

Like this image
https://assets-mod.factorio.com/assets/b80e16820479a40ff899c0e075b054c998c352af.png
But as you see, I was sloppy and they still blew up.

I've been trying to make a combinator wired to an inserter that only inserts 1 every 40 seconds but I can't get it working (I'm new to combinators). Would that be the solution?

What I did was even more basic: just connect the two machines, set the second to "read ongoing recipe", which will output a stable core signal when it's creating one, and set condition "only active when stable core signal = 0"

Do you have a blueprint? I'm still fighting with this.

Something like this for example

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

It's probably not foolproof, but it's a start!

Here's how I solved it.

The Decider Combinator checks that the receiving Data Processor has enough data in it no cores being worked on and that the output chest has room for another core

After spending far too long on this problem, I thought I would post my solution that actually works as intended. The problem with other solutions is that either 1) the machine making the unstable core needs to wait until the product is finished before starting again, effectively adding another 10 seconds to the 40-second crafting time (so 25% longer), or 2) the unstable core beings to spoil the second the machine beings crafting it. This means that if the process is paused long enough (which will happen if it is lined up to make every 40 seconds), the crafted unstable core will instantly despawn instead of being crafted. Here is the blueprint - from my testing, it needs to be taken from the structure making the holo core, or from a chest.

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

When I saw the timings - 40s to produce an unstable AI core and 10s to produce a stable AI core model, I immediately came up with an idea of a stopwatch to help me out. Basically just 2 Decider combinators. The first one is only a clock, counting from 0 to 2500 (40 seconds + a bit). The second one is telling all Yellow inserters (so that I can produce multiple unstable AI cores at the same time) when they can work. Once the timer reaches 2450, the inserters get a "go" and insert only 1 Holographic cube (with a stack signal set to 1) to the Data processor. These 50 ticks (until 2500) allow them to swing just once. And the whole process repeats.

Everything works like a charm. The production of unstable AI core starts while the other Data processor is still chewing its 40 seconds. No delay between the processes, the stable item is finished about a second before the Data processor receives a new, unstable AI core.