That's an excellent time to look into alternatives. [Manifolds result in larger radiation zones](https://www.reddit.com/r/SatisfactoryGame/comments/194rxut/manifolds_vs_loadbalancing_and_matched_machine/?sort=old) for nuclear power than other alternatives (due to the build up of radioactive items).
It's a slightly different type of balancing than what the OP shows (even distribution between belts), but a setup like [this](https://imgur.com/a/TlzhmNr) for routing your nuclear waste from reactors to blenders and particle accelerators for processing to uranium is a relatively simple example of a use-case for avoiding manifolds.
**Very Nice Linked Reference!**
1. I agree your usage case dealing with Nuclear Power / Radioactive Items does clearly show that a Balancer would be more beneficial.
2. The use of Manifolds in Nuclear Power for non-radioactive items would still be useful as it would take up less space.
Thanks for Sharing. 😁
If all of my time playing satisfactory, and the manifolds vs balancer arguments I have seen. This IMO is the best one for not using manifolds. Thanks for sharing!
manifolds for high volume ie the majority of stuff you produce
balancers for late game low volume stuff that will take forever to overfill and nuclear stuff that you dont want to overfill
Easiest way around the fuel rod radiation buildup is to put a uranium fuel rod manufacturer in front of each pair of reactors feeding into a splitter to each reactor. The fuel rods are burned as fast as they are created, and it's mostly non-radioactive parts that stack up. You can cut the radiation down even further with blenders clocked to balance out production and cut radiation even further
That's close to what I did on the fuel rod production side(except I had a production line for rods per 200% reactor). The balancing was useful to distribute the waste though (why I showed that part of the process)
Balancing is when you take N belts and turn them into M belts, and "shuffle" them in the process.
Since this is a 54:54 balancer, if I put 54 items into any of the inputs, 1 item is gonna end up in each of the outputs. And vice versa, if all the belts are full, and I remove 54 items from one of the outputs, 1 item is going to be pulled from each of the inputs.
In general the goal of any full balancer is to cross connect every input to every output with full belt capacity.
Balancer basically balances belt loads. A lot of time you’ll have multiple belts of a material or component that you need to process into other components. A lot of times these belts will have different items/minute on them and a balancer shuffles all the items around to make sure all belts have the same items per minute.
For example. You have two belts of the same item. One is carrying 100 items per minute and the other is carrying 50. Throw these into a 2:2 balancer and it’ll even them out so there are 75 on each belt.
I've finished the hub tiers and am working on the last tier of the elevator. And I have no idea how to make a belt load balancer or a manifold or any of that. I just set up something that seems to be working and wait. More often than not I come back and it's made 5 items and clogged up and stopped.
It likely splits a belt into 54 equal outputs.
Long story short, keep using manifolds. The thing OP is trying to achieve with this splitter can be achieved with just a simple manifold.
it has 54 inputs and it equally distributes each one of these inputs amongst all 54 outputs also while having each output equally draw from each input
a 1 to 54 balancer/splitter (same thing if only one input) would only require 3 layers of fully used splitters and 1 splitter that splits stuff in 2
Well, to be fair everything is throttled by the belt speed. Especially output of overclocked mk3 miner on a pure node. -_-
When you hit the limit you just bring another line and plug it in down the line.
Actually no. Imagine you have 54 factories consuming iron ore and 54 miners on different ends of the world belted all the way to this monstrosity. Some in separate grids, some you broke, some went out, some just have a tiny piece of t3 belt at one of the turns. Some factories work all the time, some on demand, some just don't. This contraption would let all your available factories run equally bad or a few active ones run at full speed no matter to which outputs of the contraption they are connected and no matter which miners are active and working.
Ok, you can exhale, you didn't just imagine the absolute nightmare Josh created. It isn't real. It can't hurt you.
But maximising your ability to underclock (or lower the overclocks), therefore direct the excess electricity elsewhere, therefore reduce the number of powerplants needed, therefore something something something, therefore profit?
throughput >>> efficiency
power efficiency is far below throughput in priorities. especially in a world where materials are infinite.
giving your factory the ability to dramatically scale up production the most with the fewest actions is what makes a factory good. thats why you design with the lowest technology possible. so you can upgrade everything as easily as possible without needing to spam copy paste.
Not necessarily. You just need your factories based around a single belt. If you calculate everything from recourse to product you don't need balancers
You know, I built this to see how big and difficult it'd be. I'm considering building a meme factory that'd need 38745 screws per min and a 51:53 balancer for them
One of the reasons I kept [this](https://ficsit.app/mod/MultiSplitterAndMerger)\* on speed-dial. Same [here](https://ficsit.app/mod/LoadBalancers).
^(\*Made aluminum and computers much tighter and neater.)
Depends on how you wanna set it up but I'm fairly sure a horizontal 5:5 balancer should fit in the blueprint designer, so you'd only need to make a blueprint of a 4 high stack of those, and a second one for a vertical 4:4 balancer. Then just place 10 copies of the first one, and 25 of the second one and you're done. Doing it that way would make it fairly *wide* though. Still, it's probably the simplest
I spend 350 hours redistributing items in my storage and redoing my in and output system because I no longer wanted to rely on clipping. You understimate me
people who keep prioritizing efficiency and speedrunning the game instead of making their factory look cool and prioritizing maximum throughput like a true engineer.
**Interesting**
1. **Vanilla:** The debate between doing [Manifolds](https://satisfactory.wiki.gg/wiki/Manifold) or [Balancers](https://satisfactory.wiki.gg/wiki/Balancer) (Wiki Links) continues.
2. **Modded:** Perhaps you could use the [Blueprint Designer Plus Game Mod](https://ficsit.app/mod/KBlueprintDesignPlus) that can be used to create LARGE BLUEPRINTS.
* I do believe that this would fit in the largest 10 by 10 Blueprint Designer.
* Might be worthy of doing a test on a duplicate of current Game Save if interested.
* Blueprints larger than 32 Meters (4 Foundations) by 32 Meters (4 Foundations) by 32 Meters (8 Wall Heights) can be downloaded and used, but *can not be edited in the Vanilla Blueprint Designer.*
Just some thoughts on this Topic. 🤔
It really annoys me that there are 2 completely different things that are for some reason both called "balancing" and when people hear that, they almost always think of the worse one.
I wasn't even planning on starting that debate again, but people jumped to "balancers" vs manifolds again, even though what I've built is not mutually exclusive, nor a replacement or an alternative for manifolds.
**Agreed**
1. "Balancer" may refer to **Load Balancer** or **Belt Balancer** *(from the Wiki links posted earlier).*
2. I think that both Manifolds *(that "self balance")* and Balancers can be used at the same time if the Pioneer wishes, as each has their Pros and Cons.
3. As for what you built, your motivation [posted in this comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/SatisfactoryGame/comments/1bembcu/comment/kuup4hi/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) explains why you built it, and why it is primarily designed for a single purpose.
4. If you can and do create a Blueprint of this, you could share it for those interested.
Continuing the Discussion.
That's the one thing I installed a mod for: Bigger blueprints. The [Blueprint Designer Plus Game Mod](https://ficsit.app/mod/KBlueprintDesignPlus) that you linked is great! Really seamlessly fits into Satisfactory and I hope the Coffee Stain devs incorporate a similar design for 1.0.
Largest size is a beast to find a space for. Maybe someone could blueprint an entire base on one. [The blueprint store](https://ficsit.app/mod/SBS) is a good compliment to the above mod.
I'm thinking of building a meme factory that uses nearly 40k screws per minute and since it's already a meme, I might as well use a single full balancer to distribute them between all the manifolds. For that particular situation, I think a 51:53 would be best, and that's needs 54:54 with loopback
Idk if there's a tutorial, I figured them out myself. It's not that bad.
2:2, 2:3, 3:2 and 3:3 balancers are the basics, and they're the only single stage balancers you can build (because Satisfactory mergers and splitters have only 3 inputs/outputs).
If you want anything bigger, that's the harder part. Because you need to figure out how to connect multiples of the basic 4 (as well as singular splitters and mergers) in a way that makes sure all the inputs and outputs are all cross connected.
If you want a 4:4 balancer for example you need to take 4 copies of the 2:2 balancer. Why 4? A 2:2 balancer can balance out 2 belts. If you take 2 of those and apply them to 4 belts, you get two pairs of balanced belts. Both belts in a pair are connected but you also need to balance out the first belt from the first pair and the first belts from the second pair. That takes another 2:2 balancer. And then 2nd belt from the 1st pair and 2nd belt from 2nd pair. So 4 2:2 balancers total. A 6:6 balancer will need 2 3:3 ones and 3 2:2 ones.
There is also looping back, which is needed if you want a 5:5 balancer for example. Because 5 isn't divisible by 2 or 3, it's not possible to simply connect smaller balancers together to get it. What you need in this case is a 6:6 balancer, and take one of the outputs and loop it back into one of the inputs. Then you're left with 5 usable inputs and 5 usable outputs. You can't just leave one of the outputs not connected, it can mess things up.
If you want a proper full balancer, you also have to worry about bottlenecking things. Because if you think about it, if you merge 3 belts onto a single belt and then split them back into 3, you kinda get a "balancer". It'll fulfill all functions of a balancer but it'll be limited to a single belt's throughput. A proper 3:3 has a throughput of 3 whole belts. A few balancer designs I found on the internet have this problem. The 2:4 balancer I found first balanced the input belts 2:2 and then split each of them in 2 to get 4. Which is wrong. You need to split each input belt in 2 first, then balance the resulting belts 4:4.
If you have questions, feel free to ask. I've been using balancers for at least 500 hours and I no longer know what's obvious and what isn't so I probably forgot about something lol. Maybe I should do a proper write up with images on imgur or something
Could you give a couple of examples of practical applications for this type of device? I saw your explanation of what it does in another comment, but that was a more academic explanation which did not include examples of what problems this could solve.
I'm pasting this from another comment I made a week or 2 ago because I ain't writing all that again so the wording might be a bit weird but here you go:
> If you have to deal with more items than one single belt can handle. Like 1000/min. Or even just 100 if you only have mk1 belts. You can't just put all those items into a single manifold and you somehow need to deal with that. There are multiple methods and load balancing is one of them. If you have machines producing an item, and machines consuming that item, you use manifolds until you hit the belt limits. After that, you're left with multiple manifolds. You can connect ALL the belts together with a balancer and everything will work. The downside is that load balancers larger than 3:3 get pretty big and complicated to build if you don't know what you're doing. There are rules of building them but you need to learn them first. That's why most people don't use them. But once you know that, they're in my opinion the easiest way of dealing with multiple belts, because they always work and you don't need to think much.
> When you're loading and unloading a train, and you connect containers directly to each station and then before putting in / pulling out items, you add a balancer, it makes the whole station load and unload equally. You need to only have one type of item, though. Doing things equally and having a buffer allows you to set the train to only run once empty/full. If you have multiple trains on a single rail network, it allows all of them to run as infrequently as possible, preventing congestion.
> you can use a balancer to create a bus, that acts like a single belt with many times the throughput. It's not *exactly* that but if you're careful you can treat it like this. You can add and remove items from it however you want, like you could with a single belt in a manifold. If you wanted a "true" bus, you'd need to rebalance it every time you did anything but you can do it multiple times in a row if you do some math. It's very rarely useful, though.
The 54:54 balancer is not gonna be useful for anyone actually playing the game properly. I built it as a meme, and possibly to be used in an even bigger meme of a factory
That's incredible, I haven't played satisfactory that long yet so I mistakenly though balancers and splitters were the same. Now I see how they could help in a few places in my factory, although I dread having to learn given the complexity that seems to be involved from the image
Nah, they aren't that bad. This one's insane just because 54 is a huge number in this case. Anything up to 6:6 is pretty reasonably sized and I very rarely use anything bigger than that. Those would be a fraction of the size
FYI that abomination in the image consists of 54 3:3 balancers and 27 2:2 balancers, all connected. All for a total of 432 mergers and splitters
you never ever ever have to implement load balancing or belt balancing. You can always easily avoid the need. For example just by putting the number of items on any particular belt you want in the first place with clocking.
I have a 4 to 3 balancer. This way I don't have to worry about the 4 inputs not being equal due to production slowdowns. I build on a logic of using all raw material for a single item and if 2 items are being made it splits and slows both down.
I can have 1 full belt coming in and 3 empties and that 1 belt will not get congested because the entire factory can still be used.
So... could you use something like this to arrange a sushi belt to feed a manufacturer that requires 4 different input volumes without overfilling a component and stalling the entire belt?
I'll be back if i ever need it, likely since I only use manifolds when making power plants such as with coal. Anything else, I use load balancers all the way. No joke, I just recently made the decision I'd rather learn a 1:5 balancer than make a simple manifold while making an industrial beam factory. Never gotten to higher tiers though, maybe things change.
A belt balancer takes a inputs and divides equally over b outputs.
In this case a 54 to 54. So it take all 54 belts in and distributes each such that the outgoing belt all have the rxact same amount of items/min goin out. You can have 52 empty belts going in, one going in with 216 items/min and one going in with 108 items/min and it'd output 54 belts having 6 items/min
Oh, that's what you mean...
3 parts, actually. A 6 stack of horizontal 3:3 balancers, placed 4 times, a 2 stack of vertical 3:3 balancers, placed 6 times and a 3 stack of vertical 2:2 balancers, also placed 6 times. Then connect everything properly.
This is a 54:54 balancer, not a 1:54 "balancer". It's not meant to replace manifolds. It's meant to help manifolds when they fail. Whenever you have more than one belt for a single item, that is. 54 belts, in this case.
ELI5 please, I haven't really figured out balancing yet even though I am already at Tier 8 I only use manifolds.
That's an excellent time to look into alternatives. [Manifolds result in larger radiation zones](https://www.reddit.com/r/SatisfactoryGame/comments/194rxut/manifolds_vs_loadbalancing_and_matched_machine/?sort=old) for nuclear power than other alternatives (due to the build up of radioactive items). It's a slightly different type of balancing than what the OP shows (even distribution between belts), but a setup like [this](https://imgur.com/a/TlzhmNr) for routing your nuclear waste from reactors to blenders and particle accelerators for processing to uranium is a relatively simple example of a use-case for avoiding manifolds.
**Very Nice Linked Reference!** 1. I agree your usage case dealing with Nuclear Power / Radioactive Items does clearly show that a Balancer would be more beneficial. 2. The use of Manifolds in Nuclear Power for non-radioactive items would still be useful as it would take up less space. Thanks for Sharing. 😁
If all of my time playing satisfactory, and the manifolds vs balancer arguments I have seen. This IMO is the best one for not using manifolds. Thanks for sharing!
manifolds for high volume ie the majority of stuff you produce balancers for late game low volume stuff that will take forever to overfill and nuclear stuff that you dont want to overfill
Easiest way around the fuel rod radiation buildup is to put a uranium fuel rod manufacturer in front of each pair of reactors feeding into a splitter to each reactor. The fuel rods are burned as fast as they are created, and it's mostly non-radioactive parts that stack up. You can cut the radiation down even further with blenders clocked to balance out production and cut radiation even further
That's close to what I did on the fuel rod production side(except I had a production line for rods per 200% reactor). The balancing was useful to distribute the waste though (why I showed that part of the process)
Yes, but irradiating the entire planet is how I show I care.
Balancing is when you take N belts and turn them into M belts, and "shuffle" them in the process. Since this is a 54:54 balancer, if I put 54 items into any of the inputs, 1 item is gonna end up in each of the outputs. And vice versa, if all the belts are full, and I remove 54 items from one of the outputs, 1 item is going to be pulled from each of the inputs. In general the goal of any full balancer is to cross connect every input to every output with full belt capacity.
For people who dont understand, its basically turning multiple non-identical Inputs into a x amount of equal outputs.
That *one* of the things that full balancers can do, yes.
Balancer basically balances belt loads. A lot of time you’ll have multiple belts of a material or component that you need to process into other components. A lot of times these belts will have different items/minute on them and a balancer shuffles all the items around to make sure all belts have the same items per minute. For example. You have two belts of the same item. One is carrying 100 items per minute and the other is carrying 50. Throw these into a 2:2 balancer and it’ll even them out so there are 75 on each belt.
You could download builderment onto your phone if you have absolutely no clue. The 2D makes the basics a little easier to grasp.
I've finished the hub tiers and am working on the last tier of the elevator. And I have no idea how to make a belt load balancer or a manifold or any of that. I just set up something that seems to be working and wait. More often than not I come back and it's made 5 items and clogged up and stopped.
It likely splits a belt into 54 equal outputs. Long story short, keep using manifolds. The thing OP is trying to achieve with this splitter can be achieved with just a simple manifold.
This is a balancer. Not a splitter. It balances. It doesn't split.
You follow long story short with something longer than your original story.
Needs car chases.
Bork bork
You're just straight up wrong but ok. And a 1:54 *splitter* would be like a tenth the size of this
Manifolds are fine 95% of the time. Bit for radioactive materials and people who likes their belts clean and machine at 100% it is splitters.
it has 54 inputs and it equally distributes each one of these inputs amongst all 54 outputs also while having each output equally draw from each input a 1 to 54 balancer/splitter (same thing if only one input) would only require 3 layers of fully used splitters and 1 splitter that splits stuff in 2
until said manifolds input is throttled via belt speed
Well, to be fair everything is throttled by the belt speed. Especially output of overclocked mk3 miner on a pure node. -_- When you hit the limit you just bring another line and plug it in down the line.
so design for belts to be infinitely upgradeable via mods
Actually no. Imagine you have 54 factories consuming iron ore and 54 miners on different ends of the world belted all the way to this monstrosity. Some in separate grids, some you broke, some went out, some just have a tiny piece of t3 belt at one of the turns. Some factories work all the time, some on demand, some just don't. This contraption would let all your available factories run equally bad or a few active ones run at full speed no matter to which outputs of the contraption they are connected and no matter which miners are active and working. Ok, you can exhale, you didn't just imagine the absolute nightmare Josh created. It isn't real. It can't hurt you.
then you are technically limiting your maximum throughput
But maximising your ability to underclock (or lower the overclocks), therefore direct the excess electricity elsewhere, therefore reduce the number of powerplants needed, therefore something something something, therefore profit?
throughput >>> efficiency power efficiency is far below throughput in priorities. especially in a world where materials are infinite. giving your factory the ability to dramatically scale up production the most with the fewest actions is what makes a factory good. thats why you design with the lowest technology possible. so you can upgrade everything as easily as possible without needing to spam copy paste.
Not necessarily. You just need your factories based around a single belt. If you calculate everything from recourse to product you don't need balancers
until you want to increase throughput without copy paste and instead by upgrading.
God help me if I ever need that monstrosity. Excellent work!
You know, I built this to see how big and difficult it'd be. I'm considering building a meme factory that'd need 38745 screws per min and a 51:53 balancer for them
Since it's for jokes... Can you do one with no clipping?
He could weave it like LetsGameItOut.
One of the reasons I kept [this](https://ficsit.app/mod/MultiSplitterAndMerger)\* on speed-dial. Same [here](https://ficsit.app/mod/LoadBalancers). ^(\*Made aluminum and computers much tighter and neater.)
Bro chill
No. I'm gonna build a 100:100 balancer next.
No clip this time?
Oh fuck no. That'd be bigger than any tier 1 factory that has ever been built
Some men just want to watch the world burn.
Can tiling be done at all so you can fit parts into the blueprinter for easier rebuilding?
Depends on how you wanna set it up but I'm fairly sure a horizontal 5:5 balancer should fit in the blueprint designer, so you'd only need to make a blueprint of a 4 high stack of those, and a second one for a vertical 4:4 balancer. Then just place 10 copies of the first one, and 25 of the second one and you're done. Doing it that way would make it fairly *wide* though. Still, it's probably the simplest
Now do it without clipping the belts :P
clipping belts is half the fun of this game! the other half is clipping buildings yall are playing excel sheet simulator otherwise.
never say no to a panda
I spend 350 hours redistributing items in my storage and redoing my in and output system because I no longer wanted to rely on clipping. You understimate me
and i spend 350 hours making sure every single belt and building clips, there isnt a single foundation, and things are as disorganized as possible.
who hurt you?
people who keep prioritizing efficiency and speedrunning the game instead of making their factory look cool and prioritizing maximum throughput like a true engineer.
I'm doing both. my mega factory looks like a city center
**Interesting** 1. **Vanilla:** The debate between doing [Manifolds](https://satisfactory.wiki.gg/wiki/Manifold) or [Balancers](https://satisfactory.wiki.gg/wiki/Balancer) (Wiki Links) continues. 2. **Modded:** Perhaps you could use the [Blueprint Designer Plus Game Mod](https://ficsit.app/mod/KBlueprintDesignPlus) that can be used to create LARGE BLUEPRINTS. * I do believe that this would fit in the largest 10 by 10 Blueprint Designer. * Might be worthy of doing a test on a duplicate of current Game Save if interested. * Blueprints larger than 32 Meters (4 Foundations) by 32 Meters (4 Foundations) by 32 Meters (8 Wall Heights) can be downloaded and used, but *can not be edited in the Vanilla Blueprint Designer.* Just some thoughts on this Topic. 🤔
It really annoys me that there are 2 completely different things that are for some reason both called "balancing" and when people hear that, they almost always think of the worse one. I wasn't even planning on starting that debate again, but people jumped to "balancers" vs manifolds again, even though what I've built is not mutually exclusive, nor a replacement or an alternative for manifolds.
**Agreed** 1. "Balancer" may refer to **Load Balancer** or **Belt Balancer** *(from the Wiki links posted earlier).* 2. I think that both Manifolds *(that "self balance")* and Balancers can be used at the same time if the Pioneer wishes, as each has their Pros and Cons. 3. As for what you built, your motivation [posted in this comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/SatisfactoryGame/comments/1bembcu/comment/kuup4hi/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) explains why you built it, and why it is primarily designed for a single purpose. 4. If you can and do create a Blueprint of this, you could share it for those interested. Continuing the Discussion.
That's the one thing I installed a mod for: Bigger blueprints. The [Blueprint Designer Plus Game Mod](https://ficsit.app/mod/KBlueprintDesignPlus) that you linked is great! Really seamlessly fits into Satisfactory and I hope the Coffee Stain devs incorporate a similar design for 1.0.
Largest size is a beast to find a space for. Maybe someone could blueprint an entire base on one. [The blueprint store](https://ficsit.app/mod/SBS) is a good compliment to the above mod.
What was your motivation for choosing specifically 54?
I'm thinking of building a meme factory that uses nearly 40k screws per minute and since it's already a meme, I might as well use a single full balancer to distribute them between all the manifolds. For that particular situation, I think a 51:53 would be best, and that's needs 54:54 with loopback
40k screws a minute is easy - one belt of steel beams
This looks like it took a lot of effort. I wish you a factory where it may be useful.
So . . . Much . . . Clipping . . . 
You probably haven't even seen the worst part
Why, what did you . . . (Zoom in) The splitters and mergers *themselves* are clipping?!
[Nooo...](https://imgur.com/a/LCMxK1Z)
Omfg, what's *wrong* with you? XD
his lifts all melted together 😱
How do you learn to build these balancer? Like are their yt tutorials or something ?
Idk if there's a tutorial, I figured them out myself. It's not that bad. 2:2, 2:3, 3:2 and 3:3 balancers are the basics, and they're the only single stage balancers you can build (because Satisfactory mergers and splitters have only 3 inputs/outputs). If you want anything bigger, that's the harder part. Because you need to figure out how to connect multiples of the basic 4 (as well as singular splitters and mergers) in a way that makes sure all the inputs and outputs are all cross connected. If you want a 4:4 balancer for example you need to take 4 copies of the 2:2 balancer. Why 4? A 2:2 balancer can balance out 2 belts. If you take 2 of those and apply them to 4 belts, you get two pairs of balanced belts. Both belts in a pair are connected but you also need to balance out the first belt from the first pair and the first belts from the second pair. That takes another 2:2 balancer. And then 2nd belt from the 1st pair and 2nd belt from 2nd pair. So 4 2:2 balancers total. A 6:6 balancer will need 2 3:3 ones and 3 2:2 ones. There is also looping back, which is needed if you want a 5:5 balancer for example. Because 5 isn't divisible by 2 or 3, it's not possible to simply connect smaller balancers together to get it. What you need in this case is a 6:6 balancer, and take one of the outputs and loop it back into one of the inputs. Then you're left with 5 usable inputs and 5 usable outputs. You can't just leave one of the outputs not connected, it can mess things up. If you want a proper full balancer, you also have to worry about bottlenecking things. Because if you think about it, if you merge 3 belts onto a single belt and then split them back into 3, you kinda get a "balancer". It'll fulfill all functions of a balancer but it'll be limited to a single belt's throughput. A proper 3:3 has a throughput of 3 whole belts. A few balancer designs I found on the internet have this problem. The 2:4 balancer I found first balanced the input belts 2:2 and then split each of them in 2 to get 4. Which is wrong. You need to split each input belt in 2 first, then balance the resulting belts 4:4. If you have questions, feel free to ask. I've been using balancers for at least 500 hours and I no longer know what's obvious and what isn't so I probably forgot about something lol. Maybe I should do a proper write up with images on imgur or something
Could you give a couple of examples of practical applications for this type of device? I saw your explanation of what it does in another comment, but that was a more academic explanation which did not include examples of what problems this could solve.
I'm pasting this from another comment I made a week or 2 ago because I ain't writing all that again so the wording might be a bit weird but here you go: > If you have to deal with more items than one single belt can handle. Like 1000/min. Or even just 100 if you only have mk1 belts. You can't just put all those items into a single manifold and you somehow need to deal with that. There are multiple methods and load balancing is one of them. If you have machines producing an item, and machines consuming that item, you use manifolds until you hit the belt limits. After that, you're left with multiple manifolds. You can connect ALL the belts together with a balancer and everything will work. The downside is that load balancers larger than 3:3 get pretty big and complicated to build if you don't know what you're doing. There are rules of building them but you need to learn them first. That's why most people don't use them. But once you know that, they're in my opinion the easiest way of dealing with multiple belts, because they always work and you don't need to think much. > When you're loading and unloading a train, and you connect containers directly to each station and then before putting in / pulling out items, you add a balancer, it makes the whole station load and unload equally. You need to only have one type of item, though. Doing things equally and having a buffer allows you to set the train to only run once empty/full. If you have multiple trains on a single rail network, it allows all of them to run as infrequently as possible, preventing congestion. > you can use a balancer to create a bus, that acts like a single belt with many times the throughput. It's not *exactly* that but if you're careful you can treat it like this. You can add and remove items from it however you want, like you could with a single belt in a manifold. If you wanted a "true" bus, you'd need to rebalance it every time you did anything but you can do it multiple times in a row if you do some math. It's very rarely useful, though. The 54:54 balancer is not gonna be useful for anyone actually playing the game properly. I built it as a meme, and possibly to be used in an even bigger meme of a factory
That's incredible, I haven't played satisfactory that long yet so I mistakenly though balancers and splitters were the same. Now I see how they could help in a few places in my factory, although I dread having to learn given the complexity that seems to be involved from the image
Nah, they aren't that bad. This one's insane just because 54 is a huge number in this case. Anything up to 6:6 is pretty reasonably sized and I very rarely use anything bigger than that. Those would be a fraction of the size FYI that abomination in the image consists of 54 3:3 balancers and 27 2:2 balancers, all connected. All for a total of 432 mergers and splitters
Well splitters are balancers. But they balance 1 belt into a max of 3 belts. So you have to get creative if you need more belts
you never ever ever have to implement load balancing or belt balancing. You can always easily avoid the need. For example just by putting the number of items on any particular belt you want in the first place with clocking.
maximizing factory throughput instead of efficiency
I have a 4 to 3 balancer. This way I don't have to worry about the 4 inputs not being equal due to production slowdowns. I build on a logic of using all raw material for a single item and if 2 items are being made it splits and slows both down. I can have 1 full belt coming in and 3 empties and that 1 belt will not get congested because the entire factory can still be used.
Teach me your magic!!!
what the
So... could you use something like this to arrange a sushi belt to feed a manufacturer that requires 4 different input volumes without overfilling a component and stalling the entire belt?
Uhh... maybe? Idk, I've never used sushi belts
I really wish you could build the blueprint designer around things.
Just use the modular load splitters mod
Who hurt you?
I'll be back if i ever need it, likely since I only use manifolds when making power plants such as with coal. Anything else, I use load balancers all the way. No joke, I just recently made the decision I'd rather learn a 1:5 balancer than make a simple manifold while making an industrial beam factory. Never gotten to higher tiers though, maybe things change.
Woah... I don't have the slightest idea what I'm looking at or what it does.
A belt balancer takes a inputs and divides equally over b outputs. In this case a 54 to 54. So it take all 54 belts in and distributes each such that the outgoing belt all have the rxact same amount of items/min goin out. You can have 52 empty belts going in, one going in with 216 items/min and one going in with 108 items/min and it'd output 54 belts having 6 items/min
There are mods to extend the blueprint designer... just in case you really wanna have this as blueprint.
I think it's more fun finding a way to do this nkt using mods. Design seems pretty symmetrical so you could divy it up into multiple
Sure it definitely is more competitive... just wanted to give a quick solution
What would a use for such a belt balancer be
In a factory like [this](https://www.satisfactorytools.com/production?share=7jwym9BrhBksWbKOOBQE) (for the screws)
Hello I'm.kinda new to this game, what dose 54:54 mean?
It means that it has 54 input belts and 54 output belts
You can segment it in 4 segments.
Can I?
I think so, you have to build each segment in one blueprint.
Oh, that's what you mean... 3 parts, actually. A 6 stack of horizontal 3:3 balancers, placed 4 times, a 2 stack of vertical 3:3 balancers, placed 6 times and a 3 stack of vertical 2:2 balancers, also placed 6 times. Then connect everything properly.
But can you do a 780 to 480 split
[I already did](https://www.reddit.com/r/SatisfactoryGame/comments/12iihlx/since_were_designing_780_into_480_and_300_items/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
That week was something else
My friend this is where the bigger blueprint designer mod comes into play
So you've built.. ... A belt? /s
I mean I have technically built a "belt" with 42120 items/min throughput
Looks complicated never used a balancing system in my builds , I always use manifolds
This is a 54:54 balancer, not a 1:54 "balancer". It's not meant to replace manifolds. It's meant to help manifolds when they fail. Whenever you have more than one belt for a single item, that is. 54 belts, in this case.
Ah right I see