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RetroACE135 has Space Engineers

11 hours ago

Trying to wrap my head around sorting and organizing

I'm wanting to build a huge refinery addition to my base where I can smelt multiple ores all at once in dedicated refineries (about 9 total), then dump them back into a "catch-all" storage for both raw ore and finished ingots.

I thought I could get away with a dedicated input for each ore with the output coming out of the refineries going into a single pipe with a single sorter set to "Drain All" to pull the finished ingots out of all refineries into the storage area.

Alas, I had backflow from the refinery that I started up first, which bled into other refineries and had them refine the first ore that got to it, instead of the input side. The most obvious fix for that would be to have individual sorters to pull the ingots out of each refinery to stop backflow, but that will add a lot of PCU and cost more materials in survival.

My question is, has anybody found out if there is a better way of avoiding backflow? Or am I supposed to put a sorter on each refinery "outlet" to avoid unwanted crossflow?

Here's a few screenshots of what I'm trying to do. I know this is only 6, but I figured I would test it out in a creative world before I go all in with my survival save. The first one shows the top pipe, which is input, the second is the output. Yes, all refineries have yield mods on them.

Input
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3826834720

Output Piping
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3826835243

In addition, I'm thinking of trying to figure out a way to toggle priorities for one bank to focus entirely on any ores that take longer to refine, such as Gold, Cobalt and the like. Iron and Stone seems like it refines the fastest, so I would probably ignore that.

I've got a feeling that I'm just going to have to nip it and use individual sorters to act as one way valves for the output.

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Showing 1-5 of 5 comments

Glow

7 hours ago

The cheapest way? I mostly used 4 refineries. Two separate lines: one for Fe, Si, and Ni, Ag and another for Au, Co, Pt, and Ur. I arrange the ore in a container in a specific sequence, calculated according to my needs - for example: 20k kg of Au, 10k kg of Co, then 20k kg of Au again. The most time-consuming part was figuring out the build order, timeline and the required quantities. I don’t even use sorters or scripts anymore.

ShadedMJ

7 hours ago

Dedicated refineries (one for each ore) is an incredible waste no matter what. Refinery for only platinum will spend most of its time not being used (not having platinum ore) or have a huge backlog that will take forever (having platinum ore).

I use methods similar to Glow. One or more cargo containers in an ordered line (Ore 1, Ore 2, Ore 3) with similar ore examples, and other cargo containers as needed with random ore. If I feel like it, one or more sorters to pull ingots out into ingot storage.

If I'm excessively picky or frequently gone, ingot storage has sorters to pull each ingot type out into individual ingot storage containers.

RetroACE135 has Space Engineers

2 hours ago

Originally posted by ShadedMJ:
Dedicated refineries (one for each ore) is an incredible waste no matter what. Refinery for only platinum will spend most of its time not being used (not having platinum ore) or have a huge backlog that will take forever (having platinum ore).

I use methods similar to Glow. One or more cargo containers in an ordered line (Ore 1, Ore 2, Ore 3) with similar ore examples, and other cargo containers as needed with random ore. If I feel like it, one or more sorters to pull ingots out into ingot storage.

If I'm excessively picky or frequently gone, ingot storage has sorters to pull each ingot type out into individual ingot storage containers.

So do you think it would be better to have them set to pairs or banks with sorters to mass refine specific ore on demand?

I'm really floating the idea of using sorters and buttons to create a "shift" for refineries to swap between what ingots I need on demand. Each bank set up on 6-9 sorters that feeds into them, then buttons to choose which ore I want or need refined at that time. I've found that even with Gold, about 3 refineries are able to refine the amount needed to make 120 superconductors in short time. I haven't tried it with any other ore.

I'm wanting to do this to try out acquisition contracts and such.

ShadedMJ

1 hour ago

My suggestion is what Glow and I said before. It might need some block restructuring though.

I have the closest cargo container to the refineries called "Large Cargo Container XO1" and all the refineries will pull from there first. If I want a particular ore to have priority I put it first in that container. Other ore containers are XO2-XO9 or more numbers. In the inventory screen I search for XO and see the XOs in order and rearrange the ore. On the other half of inventory is a search for REF to see all the refineries and I can take out those ores and put them in the XO2-XO9 and refinery will pull from XO1.

Captain Canard has Space Engineers

40 minutes ago

Originally posted by RetroACE135:
I'm wanting to build a huge refinery addition to my base where I can smelt multiple ores all at once in dedicated refineries (about 9 total), then dump them back into a "catch-all" storage for both raw ore and finished ingots.

Why? It's a sincere question - what is the problem you are trying to solve?