Recently downloaded this mod and so far having some real fun with it. I keep getting caught by the rotation though. If you look at just about every other similar combinator (every one I've seen and the way I would do it anyway) the proper orientation should be with the circuit network terminals pointing away from the assembler and I keep placing them backwards as a result.

I think my only other suggestion based comment/question would be, it would appear you've built the crafting combinator with an internal chest...any reason why it isn't an option to use for the overflow? Seems like a waste of a chest to me to not be able to use it for that.

Not directly related to any ideas or suggestions, but how does the overflow work exactly? I think I get it, but I want to make sure I'm not missing anything since I haven't really used that feature either. One thing I noticed it doing which I rather like and might make more use of, is a place for items which would otherwise be discarded when switching recipes. I've generally been adding them to existing machines so far (that have existing output methods) but will the finished products route there? If so, can that be shut off or in other words, have the extra items and such from switching recipes gets routed to it, but the finished product only goes out "normal" methods? I've done some limiting on the recipe side, but most of my production limiting is on the output side...if my normal output is full I don't necessarily want it to start filling an overflow output. The amount of lost raw inventory is typically going to be negligible...I'd even settle for a "No Chest" option if it came down to it.

Yeah... I'll probably flip the combinators at some point, since you're not the first to complain about it and apparently everyone does it the other way around. It's just not something I really thought about...

The overflow chest has been the source of a lot of my headaches with this mod. It's purpose is purely to avoid deleting items when switching recipes, though it now also tries to insert them back into the assembler so you don't have to do that yourself with inserters, which used to be quite painful... If you don't want to use it tho, the combinator has an option to just discard the items instead.

As for why it doesn't use the internal chest? That's a whole saga of it's own... In short, there are two main problems with it: First is you can't choose what kind of chest it's going to be, meaning you're out of luck if you want to use bots, and the second is that modules would get mixed in with the overflow items, which you don't want for obvious reasons...

There are quite a few threads on here discussing this issue, so you can read through those if you want more details :P

Awesome. That helps me understand what is going on a lot and I'll have to make more use of the overflow then I think. (Plus it's something to do with all my old smaller chests.) That actually works perfectly for what I've been doing with the combinators including reinserting the overflow items. So far I haven't been doing major changes to what is being produced (though I now have some thoughts I might play around with.) Instead I've just been switching between items with the same base ingredients (for examples, the lamp and Dectorio's Glow lamp which even have the same recipe or the medium and large power poles which have the same ingredients but in different quantities) so putting the ingredients back in is perfect. I will say since I don't need it connecting to the logistics network at that point per se, having an option for the internal chest would be even better...one less object to find space for in sometimes tight quarters. IMHO, the internal chest with the options for external chests work perfectly together. If you just need someplace to store ingredients from recipe switches, use the internal chest. If you need logistics connectivity, use an external chest, type of your choosing...problem solved. Not sure about the module issue you indicate. I have a couple machines with modules in them and changing the recipes doesn't seem to be removing them and if I were using recipes that NEED modules (upgrading a module, or the rocket control unit as examples) yeah, I actually would want the modules to be "mixed in" and reinserted.

Anyway, I'll take a look at some of the other threads. I did a quick skim and didn't see anything about the orientation so I made a new one. The rest I didn't actually even look for anything existing yet. Thanks!

Well, the threads about the chest usually came as a result of some other problem, so they're kind of buried, but here is one fairly comprehensive one.

With the modules I'm specifically talking about switching to a recipe that can't be used with the ones in the machine. Say you're making bots with all their subcomponents in one assembler and want to use productivity for the circuits and stuff - you need to take the modules out somehow when you get to the actual bots then...

Ahhh...I've heard of that problem, but so far haven't run into it myself. Aside from not building complete units in a single machine like that so far, I'm pretty sure I haven't been making as good use of the modules to begin with as I can or should be. I'm pretty new in the grand scheme of things and so far just haven't needed to. (I've used a lot of speed modules, and some efficiency modules in beacons to counteract the energy increase here and there, but productivity has seemed especially pointless to me as I usually want the item faster and don't care as much about getting an extra item for the same resources.)

Well, once power isn't a concern anymore, I find prod modules wherever possible with speed in beacons better. The extra 40% is actually quite good, especially for more complex recipes like blue circuits, where you can apply it like four times in the process - the effect multiplies in chains like that, whereas speed just stays the same... I think you only need like 35% the amount of green circuits for blues as you would without prod modules... You can forget about perfect ratios tho, it becomes a mess really quickly :D

Thanks, I'll try that out. For my test map at least, power definitely isn't a problem. Probably have to consider it on my other maps as they're new and haven't gotten them as far yet. I've seen posts about the optimal ratios for things, and yeah, I always take them with a grain of salt. So much seems to have as much to do with how you have your logistics set up as it does with producing x number of this thing for every y number of that thing, it changes as the game goes along and more items are added, and combined together it means things change based on play style.