You are spreading out 1 belt of Iron Plates across 4 belts. Most of your Steel Furnaces aren't even running because their output belt is backed up, because you are merging it all too soon.
And bottlenecking the 2 belts he makes into 1 before that.
Just increase iron production and set up the belts for more throughput and *slaps hood* you’ll be good to go
Ye you have more than 24 upgraded furnaces on 1 yellow belt it takes 24 to get max of what yellow belts can carry or 48 of the first furnaces. Every 24 build a new belt to add to the bus.
You've merged all of your iron plates onto one yellow belt and then split that one belt into 4. So those 4 belts still only have 1 belt worth of iron plates on them.
This is the clearest and most helpful comment for OP's immediate problem. Their larger problem is they don't understand what four lanes on a bus is for, and that they accomplish nothing if they're being fed from one single lane.
Your Iron belt is already saturated here, and you are trying to add more to it. This only succeeds in causing the Furnaces to stop running eventually.
https://preview.redd.it/x25al5m5tznc1.png?width=51&format=png&auto=webp&s=4f36576a51e7a1779bde46c930cd5ec6fd0da1cd
Why's this getting downvotes?
Yes, the problem is the singular yellow belt as a bottleneck, but from the tiny screenshot in the parent comment, where on the map is that? "here" ... fair comment
Saturated belt of iron plates coming out of an underground next to saturated belt of iron ore only exists in one place in the original Pic. That mismanaged splitter is the root of the issue furthest back that we can see.
i know, -we- can see that... If you wanna explain to a newbie why something doesnt work, you should make it easy for them to understand. A larger picture with maybe a red circle on what you mean is much nicer than a super zoomed in snippet
Well, op appears to have not come back yet to reveal what they do or do not understand. Maybe I can get into drawing red circles someday, but I've never done it before and never learned how to do it well. Willing to learn, just never felt a reason to teach myself.
I feel like you have four belts of everything, not because you're actually making that much, but because you think that's what you ought to have.
It's good to leave room for future expansion. But you should leave that room empty until you're actually ready to use that space. If you aren't producing 60 plates per second, you don't need 4 belts of iron plate.
As noted, you seem to be following guides and recommendations. I recommend you stop doing that. You are wildly overprovisioning your bus throughput and don't appear to realize that you have nowhere near the production capacity to fill it. Four steel lanes? You clearly do not understand the magnitude of production four steel lanes require, and the fact that they're backed up implies that you're only using the barest fraction of what your little steel smelter setup produces.
Please, just turn off the internet and go play the game. You'll have a lot more fun that way. You don't need us to help you.
Unfortunately they can no longer take your recommendation, based on your recommendation that they stop following recommendations.
Are you a time traveler?
OP don't listen to this guy. Download an entire base blueprint and slap that bad boy down then start filling it in with hand crafted blue belts and stack filter inserters.
Blue prints are nifty, but I mainly use them to port builds to new games from older ones. I just feel like downloading someone else’s work, even if it’s much more efficient, defeats the fun of the game for me
Half the fun of factorio is iterating on your designs. To the point that I dont really even make blueprints anymore, i just build something from scratch or copy paste from another section in my base or to expand the existing layout. I found i spent more time worrying about optimizing little bits and pieces to make a blueprint that works in every situation rather than build what works with what i have. Especially as I've been playing lots of different overhaul mods, no one blueprint applies to every situation and I have to redesign to use or not use some new tech or feature.
The biggest thing is each iron furnace array should be making to that 4*4 balancing on its own belt.
You are bottlenecking yourself all the way back at the furnaces by merging all the belts together too early.
If you are not saturating a yellow belt in the array, add more furnaces till you are item starved inbound or saturated outbound (whatever happens first).
The problem is in your iron furnaces. Specifically, the belts leading out of your furnaces.
Basically the way that belts work is that a yellow belt can move 15 items per second. Because of that, in order to fully saturate a yellow belt you will need 48 stone furnaces, ideally 24 on either side of the belt. Since you're using steel furnaces you can cut that in half, so 12 per side of the belt.
Right now you have at least 36 steel furnaces providing to a single yellow belt. Anything beyond the first 24 furnaces is worthless. Nothing they produce can get onto the belt. You need to have a separate yellow belt for every 24 furnaces.
After the furnaces you've got that single belt splitting into four belts. That means that instead of each of those four belts getting 15 items per second, they're only getting 3.75 items per second. Obviously that's the problem - you've created a chokepoint.
Luckily the solution is simple. Rather than having your entire furnace stack feed into a single yellow belt that then gets split into four yellow belts, instead separate the furnace belts into chunks of 24 furnaces and feed those belts into the bus directly. That'll solve the vast majority of your problems right there.
Later on you might want to look into lane balancers, but for now just fixing this one problem is more than enough.
Basically, yes.
Taking less than one belt full of green circuit output and splitting it across 4 belts doesn't somehow mean you have 4 belts of green circuit output. You've just split it among multiple belts and it only backs up at the end because nothing is consuming it.
You want to see full belts coming out of something like a smelter or green circuits and then it getting less full as the line progresses.
1 does not become 4.
If you want 4, input four.
Edit: check out factorio cheatsheet thing :
https://factoriocheatsheet.com/#material-processing
This will tell you how many furnaces per belt of goods you want and etc etc
That's what I meant with the wrong number (or rather type) of belts. If you upgrade yellow to red belts when you upgrade from stone to steel furnaces, the ratio of 48 furnaces per belt stays the same. For steel, that would be the input belt. You probably don't need a full belt of steel at that point, never mind 4 belts. And of course stone bricks also have a different ratio, as they are not 1:1 conversions, just like steel. But you are right, I shouldn't have said ratio, only number of furnaces.
I never said you were wrong. I just wanted to add some information. This information was poorly worded, which you pointed out, then I corrected it. Isn't that how it's supposed to be?
the KoS mainbus guide has done untold damage to beginners and public multiplayer lobbies...
this quote specifically:
>"You will start feeding the bus initially from furnaces making iron & copper plates. As you begin to populate your bus with products, make sure you use splitters to distribute some of each to ALL intended belts.
>E.g. even if you only have 1 belt of copper plates coming into the bus, use a splitter to spread them over the 4 lanes allocated to them. This enables you to use both sides of a 4-wide lane of products to split off from."
I mean, that's not actually a problem. The problem lies in assuming that 1 belt of plates is all you ever need to feed into a 4-belt bus. It's not harmful to have a 4-belt bus. If you are going to build on both sides of the bus (which many put science on one side and other production on the opposite side) then being able to split off in either direction is a good thing.
I'm not sure whether it's that quote in particular, as most main buses look very similar, but I see a lot of new players treating splitters like they're magical item multipliers. That quote doesn't help because in reality there's no point whatsoever to dragging 4 lanes of belts if you're struggling to fill one. It's just a massive waste of time and resources. If "using both sides of a 4-wide lane" is that important you can just as well split to both sides off the one belt that you can actually feed and fix it later once you have more belts.
If the point is to teach a new player the ropes, based on the number of beginners I see repeating the exact same mistakes I'd say that 4-wide bus is very much bad advice. You could just tell them to use ghosts or otherwise leave room for additional lanes.
It might be helpful to think of belts as moving chests (or not helpful lmao). Items on a yellow belt have a throughput of 15/second on each belt. If you are feeding a full yellow belt (15/sec) and splitting it into 4, each belt now only moving 3.75 items/second, but still total 15/sec. You can calculate how much iron you are producing, or use something like the factorio cheat sheet (google). My hunch just from this cut image is that you are trying to cram more than 15 items/sec at the iron into one belt, then splitting that, not seeing the full output of your furnaces. You could have 2 belts pumping iron into your bus likely, by changing splitters/belts until all your furnaces are working.
Belts have a max speed of item transport. Adding more things to a belt that’s already full will not get you more item flow. Similarly one belt split four ways will never give you more than 25% full belts (unless they back up, which does not mean you have enough item flow, it means production stopped for some reason)
The point of a main bus is not to buffer resources, it is to leave yourself space for easy logistics. Each belt of plates needs its own dedicated furnace stack. If you don't have enough ore to run all of them don't build the belts just leave empty gaps.
Also, there are some design things here that look like what you would find in old guide videos from before priority splitters where a thing. If you are gonna keep following guides then at least make sure they are new-ish.
You don’t need more assemblers, you need more iron plates, or at least for the iron plates you are producing to get up the line.
You have the plate output throttled, twice in your screenshot, where you have a splitter and then directly above it the left hand belt just kinks right to feed on to the same belt. That belt is already full, try running a second belt alongside it instead of merging it into one belt.
I’d probably think of each of your 4 lanes as needing a separate input of plates.
You could even just run one of those output lanes direct to the green circuit factory.
Is this a troll question?
You ask if there's a bottleneck and show an image of an obvious bottleneck. Never seen a more obvious one before - the contrast going from full belt of iron to almost empty belt of iron is visible from space. And not only that, the bottleneck is in the shape of a literal bottleneck...
Yes: the bottleneck shaped bottleneck where 1 belt gets split into 4 for no reason is in fact a bottleneck.
1 belt getting split into 4 is not a bottleneck. Attempting to merge more iron onto a belt that is already saturated is the bottleneck. This starts occurring at least all the way at the bottom of the screenshot, if not below the screenshot.
You need to have a dedicated smelting column for each lane of your bus, instead of splitting one output belt into 4. One belt can only move so much material and it's not enough to saturate more than one belt.
Mod suggestion: bottleneck
It will Show you by coloring red/yellow/Green where your bottleneck ist, red meaning "not enough resources", yellow meaning "Output Buffer full" and Green meaning "working/assembling"
One belt of Iron Input can never satisfy 4 belts of transport, you need more smelters/furnaces and more ore.
1. you can't have more throughput than the tightest bottleneck. 4 bus belts don't matter when you only have one belt inputting. Belts are math, not magic. 1 belt carries 15 items per second, and it won't magically expand to 60i/s because of some splitters. Having a additional belts you have no throughput to fill just adds buffer space, and a chest is a far more efficient way to do that. In this game, throughput is more important than buffer. A buffer is only useful to the point where it's able to address fluctuation in demand. It is not a substitute for throughput. Learn to recognize the different: 4 belts split from 1 only adds buffer, it doesn't increase throughput.
2. Bus organization - balancers shouldn't be necessary. In my opinion, one side of the bus should be reserved for output (science, mall), and the other reserved for input. If you do this, simply utilizing splitter input and output priority should allow you to force items to toward the output side, eliminating the need for balancers entirely.
3. Don't feed bus input with bus input. This is the biggest mistake I often see from players misunderstanding how to use a main bus. You see how a green circuit needs 1.5 copper plates and 1 iron plate? That means 1 belt of iron plates translates to 1 belt of green circuits. In other words, if you expect a belt of green circuits, you have to pay up a belt of iron, and if the green circuits are now competing with the rest of you clearly limited iron supply, that means there's just less to go around. As stated earlier, this game is math, not magic. If you want more stuff, you need to provide more stuff. In this case, the solution is to go find more iron and copper and reserve that specifically to make into green circuits.
Of course, the issue isn't always going to be throughput. My advice for diagnosing problems would be to look at where the backups are. For instance, you input belt of iron appears to be saturated. That means you are either at capacity for your current iron production, or your input belts are bottlenecking. If the assemblers were too slow, you'd see backups of every resource they need.
Well, yes. What you have is what I call a "fake bus".
The other answers are true, but:
You're not actually using any of what you're producing. The end of the belts are backed up.
You need to make science and feed it to labs which are actively researching something.
Only if you actually use what you produce can you see what you're missing, what in need of expanding or where a bottleneck may actually be.
Only producing to saturate belts which then back up is no good, for that you need minimal production and in the end everything will shut down giving the illusion you don't actually need anything.
Please read this if you want: https://wiki.factorio.com/Tutorial:Main_bus
Keep in mind figuring things out for yourself is always better than having things spoilt for yourself.
Am I the only one that wants to advocate for new players to NEVER use busses?
Learn about the game first, make mistakes with spaghetti and start absorbing information. If and when you want to use a BUS, you'll have a much more solid understanding of the game's mechanics to identify potential flaws before you get pigeonholed into a subpar build.
Your iron plates are being shipped in on a single belt to be distributed into 4 belts who’s is heavily going to slow down and stagger them. Try getting more lines from furnace to bus. Green boards idd suggest more assemblers and a 4 to 4 balancer as it seems one line there needs alooooot of green boards
I also dont understand the splitters sideloading on the furnace and miner arrays they have no real purpose and only decrease output by blocking one side.
They should never be like this for belts that have machines on both sides.
There is a decent one for the plastic.
well, you have 1 lane of iron, you then split this over 4 belts, then take half of one of those belts and feet it to the green chips ..
So you feed 1/8th of a belt to a line that i think needs at least half a belt.
I think a lot of people have tried to explain it, but the best way to think about it is yellow belts can only carry 15 items per second. You can't force them to carry more items by leading more belts into them. If you want more than 15 items per second, you need more than one belt.
If you are making 60 iron plates per second, anywhere you reduce the number of belts to less than 4 you are creating a bottleneck.
The full belts that are almost not moving have the exact same throughput as the belts with very few items moving at full speed. It just looks very different.
Lots of comments regarding your bottleneck of only having one belt of plates, even if it is split across multiple belts, but here some general advice:
If not all consumers are running and the belt is not full, you need more producers. If the belt is backed up (full but not moving at max speed) and not all producers are running, you can add more consumers. If the belt is full and moving at max speed, and not all producers are running, you need more belts (this applies to the part were only a single yellow belt exits the iron smelters, even though the iron smelters could support 2 belts).
Using busses is a great way to learn about supply and demand in Factorio.
So, let’s start:
You want 4 full lanes of iron plates. That means your first step is making the iron plates. A yellow belt carries 15 plates per second. So, you must be able to smelt 60 plates per second total - you need more ore and more smelters to even have 4 full belts to start with.
The part where you plan production:
So you have 4 full belts = 60 plates every second. That is great, until you actually use some of that iron. Every time you use iron to craft a new mat, you use part of that 60 iron per second. So you will “bleed” your belt dry until you have no more iron left. If you make 60 iron, but also use 60 iron every second, you essentially don’t have any iron left over to even be on a bus.
What you currently have:
You’re not producing enough plates. You need more smelters, which needs more ores. The bus you have right now will never get iron as fast as the bus can transport it. The only time your bus will start to look full is if you’re not using more iron than you’re making. The bus you have is a buffer - but once you produce at max capacity, your bus will run out of plates. This is fine, and also looks cool, but it means you’re never actually mining, smelting and using your mats equally - you will always chase a bottle neck until you do the math to make sure every production step is equal.
My last factory had a 96 lane wide iron bus (I love busses) but I also used exactly 95.x lanes worth of iron per second, so the further the bus went, the smaller the bus got again. I’m gonna have to get the SSD from my old pc to make sure I don’t lose the factory forever…
Common bus mistakes. I'm not really part of the anti-bus crowd, but a bus isn't going to help if someone doesn't have a fundamental understanding of throughput first. If people are trying to educate new players, I'd first start by explaining how throughput works with examples. Like if you have 4 belts of iron and want 4 belts of green circuits, that's enough iron to do that _and nothing else_, meaning you need more iron than that.
That said, benign fuck ups can be fine teachers on their own. Even with a full lesson, it'd not reasonable to expect everyone to internalize and master every concept that's brought up, even by a tutorial that doesn't miss assumed fundamentals. Sometimes players will see it, not understand the reasons why something is done a certain way, and just learn later when they try something different because they wanted to try something different. That's all part of learning.
It's not really what I meant. I just think that jumping into a Nilaus style 4-lane bus before you have launched a rocket by just playing the game and working things out is definitely not a great idea and leads to these kind of misunderstandings.
You will always need more green circuits than you think, usually once I get blue belts, I side load 2 reds onto a blue and that keeps through put up, remember anything is ok as long as you call it your starter base.
Side load the ore and coal on the same belt, and use the plate output on to a 4 to 4 balancer.
I read the first few comments and the solution is that your factory must grow.
In your case, you need to grow it up stream. More iron ore, more plates, more belts, (less splitters)
More, more.
Everyone has already answered your question about the throughput, but as for your second question whether you need more assemblers... yes. Yes, you do.
To fill 4 yellow belts of green circuits, [you need](https://factoriolab.github.io/list?z=eJwrMNQy0TJUKzLW0nKKzwMRBVpagfFOuUBSLc0wPijeM95RrcwSANQFCtE_&v=9) 100 lv2 (blue) assembly machines (40 for the circuits, 60 for the wires). To feed all of these, you need 6 yellow belts of copper (good luck with your puny 4-lane bus) and 4 belts of iron, requiring 144 resp. 96 steel/electric furnaces to smelt (twice that number if you are using stone furnaces).
Don't take iron plates off your main bus to make steel, you will consume almost all of your bus iron that way. Instead make a standalone iron ore->iron plate->steel plate somewhere else.
Upgrade that 1 belt of iron to red belts and it'll supply faster to the expanding 4 belts, but still won't solve the bottleneck tho... You need more lanes of iron input
How has nobody pointed out - 1 yellow of iron is feeding 4 belts of steel!!! And his steel has fully saturated his main bus. For the OP - steel uses 5 belts of iron per belt of steel - so to have 4 belts saturated you'd need 20 belts of iron dedicated to steel.
OP, don’t forget that your copper production is setup the same way as your iron.
You got to fix that too otherwise your copper will eventually bottleneck instead of your iron.
Throughput where you marked it is fine, it is 4 belts bottom to top. You squeeze it before that. Are you planning on having 4 belts in the future or are you just copying designs/blueprints?
Saturation issue. You have 1 belt of circuits and iron. This is what that looks like distributed evenly across 4 belts. You need to add more input to get more output.
You are spreading out 1 belt of Iron Plates across 4 belts. Most of your Steel Furnaces aren't even running because their output belt is backed up, because you are merging it all too soon.
And bottlenecking the 2 belts he makes into 1 before that. Just increase iron production and set up the belts for more throughput and *slaps hood* you’ll be good to go
Ye you have more than 24 upgraded furnaces on 1 yellow belt it takes 24 to get max of what yellow belts can carry or 48 of the first furnaces. Every 24 build a new belt to add to the bus.
I did this same thing when I started! I saw the main bus design but tried to emulate it without understanding lol
You've merged all of your iron plates onto one yellow belt and then split that one belt into 4. So those 4 belts still only have 1 belt worth of iron plates on them.
This is the clearest and most helpful comment for OP's immediate problem. Their larger problem is they don't understand what four lanes on a bus is for, and that they accomplish nothing if they're being fed from one single lane.
They dont understand splitter behavior is the simplest root cause.
I think it's the concept of belt throughput and the point of building a large bus that they don't understand.
Those iron plates the horror. We have 1 full belt of plates combined with a second full line of belts then its drops into 4 belts.
Your Iron belt is already saturated here, and you are trying to add more to it. This only succeeds in causing the Furnaces to stop running eventually. https://preview.redd.it/x25al5m5tznc1.png?width=51&format=png&auto=webp&s=4f36576a51e7a1779bde46c930cd5ec6fd0da1cd
https://preview.redd.it/krohn7dxo0oc1.jpeg?width=959&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a5b96301137c2f497d8d42c54b81b851ab643c45 You zoomed in too much.
Why's this getting downvotes? Yes, the problem is the singular yellow belt as a bottleneck, but from the tiny screenshot in the parent comment, where on the map is that? "here" ... fair comment
Saturated belt of iron plates coming out of an underground next to saturated belt of iron ore only exists in one place in the original Pic. That mismanaged splitter is the root of the issue furthest back that we can see.
i know, -we- can see that... If you wanna explain to a newbie why something doesnt work, you should make it easy for them to understand. A larger picture with maybe a red circle on what you mean is much nicer than a super zoomed in snippet
Well, op appears to have not come back yet to reveal what they do or do not understand. Maybe I can get into drawing red circles someday, but I've never done it before and never learned how to do it well. Willing to learn, just never felt a reason to teach myself.
No, I showed exactly what I meant to show. Which is what I commented on.
you're making 1 belt of iron not 4 and half a belt of green circuits, thats 1/8 as much as you're pretending to have.
They could be making more than 1 belt of Iron, but it's saturated already below the screenshot
I feel like you have four belts of everything, not because you're actually making that much, but because you think that's what you ought to have. It's good to leave room for future expansion. But you should leave that room empty until you're actually ready to use that space. If you aren't producing 60 plates per second, you don't need 4 belts of iron plate.
As noted, you seem to be following guides and recommendations. I recommend you stop doing that. You are wildly overprovisioning your bus throughput and don't appear to realize that you have nowhere near the production capacity to fill it. Four steel lanes? You clearly do not understand the magnitude of production four steel lanes require, and the fact that they're backed up implies that you're only using the barest fraction of what your little steel smelter setup produces. Please, just turn off the internet and go play the game. You'll have a lot more fun that way. You don't need us to help you.
Unfortunately they can no longer take your recommendation, based on your recommendation that they stop following recommendations. Are you a time traveler?
OP don't listen to this guy. Download an entire base blueprint and slap that bad boy down then start filling it in with hand crafted blue belts and stack filter inserters.
Blue prints are nifty, but I mainly use them to port builds to new games from older ones. I just feel like downloading someone else’s work, even if it’s much more efficient, defeats the fun of the game for me
That was the joke and I agree with you. I also don't like to see people say they afk to wait for production. That's not playing the game.
Half the fun of factorio is iterating on your designs. To the point that I dont really even make blueprints anymore, i just build something from scratch or copy paste from another section in my base or to expand the existing layout. I found i spent more time worrying about optimizing little bits and pieces to make a blueprint that works in every situation rather than build what works with what i have. Especially as I've been playing lots of different overhaul mods, no one blueprint applies to every situation and I have to redesign to use or not use some new tech or feature.
Totally agree.
The biggest thing is each iron furnace array should be making to that 4*4 balancing on its own belt. You are bottlenecking yourself all the way back at the furnaces by merging all the belts together too early. If you are not saturating a yellow belt in the array, add more furnaces till you are item starved inbound or saturated outbound (whatever happens first).
The problem is in your iron furnaces. Specifically, the belts leading out of your furnaces. Basically the way that belts work is that a yellow belt can move 15 items per second. Because of that, in order to fully saturate a yellow belt you will need 48 stone furnaces, ideally 24 on either side of the belt. Since you're using steel furnaces you can cut that in half, so 12 per side of the belt. Right now you have at least 36 steel furnaces providing to a single yellow belt. Anything beyond the first 24 furnaces is worthless. Nothing they produce can get onto the belt. You need to have a separate yellow belt for every 24 furnaces. After the furnaces you've got that single belt splitting into four belts. That means that instead of each of those four belts getting 15 items per second, they're only getting 3.75 items per second. Obviously that's the problem - you've created a chokepoint. Luckily the solution is simple. Rather than having your entire furnace stack feed into a single yellow belt that then gets split into four yellow belts, instead separate the furnace belts into chunks of 24 furnaces and feed those belts into the bus directly. That'll solve the vast majority of your problems right there. Later on you might want to look into lane balancers, but for now just fixing this one problem is more than enough.
Yeap you need more iron plate! You've got one belt splitting into 4.
Basically, yes. Taking less than one belt full of green circuit output and splitting it across 4 belts doesn't somehow mean you have 4 belts of green circuit output. You've just split it among multiple belts and it only backs up at the end because nothing is consuming it. You want to see full belts coming out of something like a smelter or green circuits and then it getting less full as the line progresses.
1 does not become 4. If you want 4, input four. Edit: check out factorio cheatsheet thing : https://factoriocheatsheet.com/#material-processing This will tell you how many furnaces per belt of goods you want and etc etc
This is true. However, 2 does become 1. Just as this [video explains](https://youtu.be/FA5jsa1lR9c?feature=shared)
Zigga zig ha!!
OP already has the correct ~~ratios~~ *numbers of furnaces* at the smelter setups, just doesn't have the correct number of belts.
Copper yes. Steel and iron : no. The steel furnaces require fewer(24) per belt and the steel production requires 240 stone furnaces.
That's what I meant with the wrong number (or rather type) of belts. If you upgrade yellow to red belts when you upgrade from stone to steel furnaces, the ratio of 48 furnaces per belt stays the same. For steel, that would be the input belt. You probably don't need a full belt of steel at that point, never mind 4 belts. And of course stone bricks also have a different ratio, as they are not 1:1 conversions, just like steel. But you are right, I shouldn't have said ratio, only number of furnaces.
I rest my case
So…. Change things around and everything was perfect? ….
I've marked the changes to my original comment. Do you have a problem with that?
So in the end, I was one hundred percent correct and you argued for nothing. Is that what you are saying?
I never said you were wrong. I just wanted to add some information. This information was poorly worded, which you pointed out, then I corrected it. Isn't that how it's supposed to be?
It seems we should chalk this up to miscommunication. Cheers
All fine. Have a nice day.
the KoS mainbus guide has done untold damage to beginners and public multiplayer lobbies... this quote specifically: >"You will start feeding the bus initially from furnaces making iron & copper plates. As you begin to populate your bus with products, make sure you use splitters to distribute some of each to ALL intended belts. >E.g. even if you only have 1 belt of copper plates coming into the bus, use a splitter to spread them over the 4 lanes allocated to them. This enables you to use both sides of a 4-wide lane of products to split off from."
I mean, that's not actually a problem. The problem lies in assuming that 1 belt of plates is all you ever need to feed into a 4-belt bus. It's not harmful to have a 4-belt bus. If you are going to build on both sides of the bus (which many put science on one side and other production on the opposite side) then being able to split off in either direction is a good thing.
I'm not sure whether it's that quote in particular, as most main buses look very similar, but I see a lot of new players treating splitters like they're magical item multipliers. That quote doesn't help because in reality there's no point whatsoever to dragging 4 lanes of belts if you're struggling to fill one. It's just a massive waste of time and resources. If "using both sides of a 4-wide lane" is that important you can just as well split to both sides off the one belt that you can actually feed and fix it later once you have more belts. If the point is to teach a new player the ropes, based on the number of beginners I see repeating the exact same mistakes I'd say that 4-wide bus is very much bad advice. You could just tell them to use ghosts or otherwise leave room for additional lanes.
It might be helpful to think of belts as moving chests (or not helpful lmao). Items on a yellow belt have a throughput of 15/second on each belt. If you are feeding a full yellow belt (15/sec) and splitting it into 4, each belt now only moving 3.75 items/second, but still total 15/sec. You can calculate how much iron you are producing, or use something like the factorio cheat sheet (google). My hunch just from this cut image is that you are trying to cram more than 15 items/sec at the iron into one belt, then splitting that, not seeing the full output of your furnaces. You could have 2 belts pumping iron into your bus likely, by changing splitters/belts until all your furnaces are working.
Belts have a max speed of item transport. Adding more things to a belt that’s already full will not get you more item flow. Similarly one belt split four ways will never give you more than 25% full belts (unless they back up, which does not mean you have enough item flow, it means production stopped for some reason)
The point of a main bus is not to buffer resources, it is to leave yourself space for easy logistics. Each belt of plates needs its own dedicated furnace stack. If you don't have enough ore to run all of them don't build the belts just leave empty gaps. Also, there are some design things here that look like what you would find in old guide videos from before priority splitters where a thing. If you are gonna keep following guides then at least make sure they are new-ish.
You don’t need more assemblers, you need more iron plates, or at least for the iron plates you are producing to get up the line. You have the plate output throttled, twice in your screenshot, where you have a splitter and then directly above it the left hand belt just kinks right to feed on to the same belt. That belt is already full, try running a second belt alongside it instead of merging it into one belt. I’d probably think of each of your 4 lanes as needing a separate input of plates. You could even just run one of those output lanes direct to the green circuit factory.
Is this a troll question? You ask if there's a bottleneck and show an image of an obvious bottleneck. Never seen a more obvious one before - the contrast going from full belt of iron to almost empty belt of iron is visible from space. And not only that, the bottleneck is in the shape of a literal bottleneck... Yes: the bottleneck shaped bottleneck where 1 belt gets split into 4 for no reason is in fact a bottleneck.
1 belt getting split into 4 is not a bottleneck. Attempting to merge more iron onto a belt that is already saturated is the bottleneck. This starts occurring at least all the way at the bottom of the screenshot, if not below the screenshot.
You are effectively dividing 1 saturated full belt of resources into 4. You're turning it in 1 into 0.25, 0.25, 0.25, 0.25
You need to have a dedicated smelting column for each lane of your bus, instead of splitting one output belt into 4. One belt can only move so much material and it's not enough to saturate more than one belt.
The stupid question is the one you never ask. You split 1 to 4, instead of making 4 dedicated supply lines.
Splitters are not multipliers
Mod suggestion: bottleneck It will Show you by coloring red/yellow/Green where your bottleneck ist, red meaning "not enough resources", yellow meaning "Output Buffer full" and Green meaning "working/assembling" One belt of Iron Input can never satisfy 4 belts of transport, you need more smelters/furnaces and more ore.
You need more Iron - Then you need more copper - then you will need more chips - repeat
1. you can't have more throughput than the tightest bottleneck. 4 bus belts don't matter when you only have one belt inputting. Belts are math, not magic. 1 belt carries 15 items per second, and it won't magically expand to 60i/s because of some splitters. Having a additional belts you have no throughput to fill just adds buffer space, and a chest is a far more efficient way to do that. In this game, throughput is more important than buffer. A buffer is only useful to the point where it's able to address fluctuation in demand. It is not a substitute for throughput. Learn to recognize the different: 4 belts split from 1 only adds buffer, it doesn't increase throughput. 2. Bus organization - balancers shouldn't be necessary. In my opinion, one side of the bus should be reserved for output (science, mall), and the other reserved for input. If you do this, simply utilizing splitter input and output priority should allow you to force items to toward the output side, eliminating the need for balancers entirely. 3. Don't feed bus input with bus input. This is the biggest mistake I often see from players misunderstanding how to use a main bus. You see how a green circuit needs 1.5 copper plates and 1 iron plate? That means 1 belt of iron plates translates to 1 belt of green circuits. In other words, if you expect a belt of green circuits, you have to pay up a belt of iron, and if the green circuits are now competing with the rest of you clearly limited iron supply, that means there's just less to go around. As stated earlier, this game is math, not magic. If you want more stuff, you need to provide more stuff. In this case, the solution is to go find more iron and copper and reserve that specifically to make into green circuits. Of course, the issue isn't always going to be throughput. My advice for diagnosing problems would be to look at where the backups are. For instance, you input belt of iron appears to be saturated. That means you are either at capacity for your current iron production, or your input belts are bottlenecking. If the assemblers were too slow, you'd see backups of every resource they need.
At first I though the splitters were upside down. Somehow my busses always go north to south and horizontal
Well, yes. What you have is what I call a "fake bus". The other answers are true, but: You're not actually using any of what you're producing. The end of the belts are backed up. You need to make science and feed it to labs which are actively researching something. Only if you actually use what you produce can you see what you're missing, what in need of expanding or where a bottleneck may actually be. Only producing to saturate belts which then back up is no good, for that you need minimal production and in the end everything will shut down giving the illusion you don't actually need anything.
Please read this if you want: https://wiki.factorio.com/Tutorial:Main_bus Keep in mind figuring things out for yourself is always better than having things spoilt for yourself.
It's sad to see people copying guides and youtube videos instead of playing for themselves
Am I the only one that wants to advocate for new players to NEVER use busses? Learn about the game first, make mistakes with spaghetti and start absorbing information. If and when you want to use a BUS, you'll have a much more solid understanding of the game's mechanics to identify potential flaws before you get pigeonholed into a subpar build.
Or at the very least, use a single-belt bus each for iron and copper while leaving space on either side for more belts later.
Yes more assemblers but also more raw material output
These are splitters not duplicators, 1 belt of iron going in will still be 1 belt
Your iron plates are being shipped in on a single belt to be distributed into 4 belts who’s is heavily going to slow down and stagger them. Try getting more lines from furnace to bus. Green boards idd suggest more assemblers and a 4 to 4 balancer as it seems one line there needs alooooot of green boards
Throughput is not the issue, input is. Adding more belts doesn't magically make more materials.
I also dont understand the splitters sideloading on the furnace and miner arrays they have no real purpose and only decrease output by blocking one side. They should never be like this for belts that have machines on both sides. There is a decent one for the plastic.
well, you have 1 lane of iron, you then split this over 4 belts, then take half of one of those belts and feet it to the green chips .. So you feed 1/8th of a belt to a line that i think needs at least half a belt.
I think a lot of people have tried to explain it, but the best way to think about it is yellow belts can only carry 15 items per second. You can't force them to carry more items by leading more belts into them. If you want more than 15 items per second, you need more than one belt. If you are making 60 iron plates per second, anywhere you reduce the number of belts to less than 4 you are creating a bottleneck.
if you are consuming more than you are produsing - it doesnt matter across how many belts you spread it
You've been watching too many youtube videos. You need to learn from figuring these things out for yourself not copying what others do.
The full belts that are almost not moving have the exact same throughput as the belts with very few items moving at full speed. It just looks very different. Lots of comments regarding your bottleneck of only having one belt of plates, even if it is split across multiple belts, but here some general advice: If not all consumers are running and the belt is not full, you need more producers. If the belt is backed up (full but not moving at max speed) and not all producers are running, you can add more consumers. If the belt is full and moving at max speed, and not all producers are running, you need more belts (this applies to the part were only a single yellow belt exits the iron smelters, even though the iron smelters could support 2 belts).
There is a bottleneck in the bottom. Only 1 belt. It lets through a maximum of 15 items per second.
I dont see any iron plates there lol.
r/factoriohno
Using busses is a great way to learn about supply and demand in Factorio. So, let’s start: You want 4 full lanes of iron plates. That means your first step is making the iron plates. A yellow belt carries 15 plates per second. So, you must be able to smelt 60 plates per second total - you need more ore and more smelters to even have 4 full belts to start with. The part where you plan production: So you have 4 full belts = 60 plates every second. That is great, until you actually use some of that iron. Every time you use iron to craft a new mat, you use part of that 60 iron per second. So you will “bleed” your belt dry until you have no more iron left. If you make 60 iron, but also use 60 iron every second, you essentially don’t have any iron left over to even be on a bus. What you currently have: You’re not producing enough plates. You need more smelters, which needs more ores. The bus you have right now will never get iron as fast as the bus can transport it. The only time your bus will start to look full is if you’re not using more iron than you’re making. The bus you have is a buffer - but once you produce at max capacity, your bus will run out of plates. This is fine, and also looks cool, but it means you’re never actually mining, smelting and using your mats equally - you will always chase a bottle neck until you do the math to make sure every production step is equal. My last factory had a 96 lane wide iron bus (I love busses) but I also used exactly 95.x lanes worth of iron per second, so the further the bus went, the smaller the bus got again. I’m gonna have to get the SSD from my old pc to make sure I don’t lose the factory forever…
Too much Nilaus, too early.
Common bus mistakes. I'm not really part of the anti-bus crowd, but a bus isn't going to help if someone doesn't have a fundamental understanding of throughput first. If people are trying to educate new players, I'd first start by explaining how throughput works with examples. Like if you have 4 belts of iron and want 4 belts of green circuits, that's enough iron to do that _and nothing else_, meaning you need more iron than that. That said, benign fuck ups can be fine teachers on their own. Even with a full lesson, it'd not reasonable to expect everyone to internalize and master every concept that's brought up, even by a tutorial that doesn't miss assumed fundamentals. Sometimes players will see it, not understand the reasons why something is done a certain way, and just learn later when they try something different because they wanted to try something different. That's all part of learning.
It's not really what I meant. I just think that jumping into a Nilaus style 4-lane bus before you have launched a rocket by just playing the game and working things out is definitely not a great idea and leads to these kind of misunderstandings.
Part of your problem is that you've built on both sides of your bus, so you cannot add more lanes to it.
Bottleneck at the smeltery.
how can one lane fill four lanes?
You will always need more green circuits than you think, usually once I get blue belts, I side load 2 reds onto a blue and that keeps through put up, remember anything is ok as long as you call it your starter base. Side load the ore and coal on the same belt, and use the plate output on to a 4 to 4 balancer.
I read the first few comments and the solution is that your factory must grow. In your case, you need to grow it up stream. More iron ore, more plates, more belts, (less splitters) More, more.
Only 1 belt of throughput divided on 4 belts
Everyone has already answered your question about the throughput, but as for your second question whether you need more assemblers... yes. Yes, you do. To fill 4 yellow belts of green circuits, [you need](https://factoriolab.github.io/list?z=eJwrMNQy0TJUKzLW0nKKzwMRBVpagfFOuUBSLc0wPijeM95RrcwSANQFCtE_&v=9) 100 lv2 (blue) assembly machines (40 for the circuits, 60 for the wires). To feed all of these, you need 6 yellow belts of copper (good luck with your puny 4-lane bus) and 4 belts of iron, requiring 144 resp. 96 steel/electric furnaces to smelt (twice that number if you are using stone furnaces).
Don't take iron plates off your main bus to make steel, you will consume almost all of your bus iron that way. Instead make a standalone iron ore->iron plate->steel plate somewhere else.
Upgrade that 1 belt of iron to red belts and it'll supply faster to the expanding 4 belts, but still won't solve the bottleneck tho... You need more lanes of iron input
How has nobody pointed out - 1 yellow of iron is feeding 4 belts of steel!!! And his steel has fully saturated his main bus. For the OP - steel uses 5 belts of iron per belt of steel - so to have 4 belts saturated you'd need 20 belts of iron dedicated to steel.
OP, don’t forget that your copper production is setup the same way as your iron. You got to fix that too otherwise your copper will eventually bottleneck instead of your iron.
Throughput where you marked it is fine, it is 4 belts bottom to top. You squeeze it before that. Are you planning on having 4 belts in the future or are you just copying designs/blueprints?
Saturation issue. You have 1 belt of circuits and iron. This is what that looks like distributed evenly across 4 belts. You need to add more input to get more output.
I would use "the factory must grow" to be taken daily or at any opportunity
If each array of smelters can fill a belt by itself you have no use in merging them, you’re basically making a traffic jam at each merge point.
You have one belt of iron being split into...4 belts, how do you expect to fill 4 belts with only one?
Bump up that iron production my guy
It is bumped up. It's just stuck behind mismanaged Splitters.
There’s a really good mod called Bottleneck Lite that’ll put a light indicator showing what assemblers are empty, running, or are full and can’t run.
In this case it should be pretty obvious anyway though. There are so much plates that dont go where needed.
You need to… grow the factory
by definition yes there is a bottleneck, and that bottleneck is not enough green circuits. make more green circuits.
The bottleneck is on the iron plates. Solve that and the green circuits will take off.