[0.7.7.3] Having multiple refineries cycles the target for resources while using fabricators

[Lord Zarnox]

I first noticed this with my current factory set up: I have two refineries, one between the silos of unrefined resources that leads to the fabricators, and one on the loop that sends unrefined resources back to the conveyors located just after the first refinery. Every tick of the conveyor system (the time it takes to move resource chunks from one conveyor to the next) it would alternate which refinery was calling for unrefined resources, which caused excess resource chunks to clog up my factory line, as well as refineries ignoring the needed resource chunk.

 

[ZeroGravitas]

This is a months old bug. And having several refineries alternating like this can cause large bases to lag-out horrendously, too.

Also, you can get a dithering effect happening with just a single refinery (also reported here):

It's appears to be caused by the two alternative pathways for refined and unrefined resources, separated (unnecessarily) by filter conveyors, while the (one) silo has some of each (refined and unrefined). The system dithers between requesting one, then the other. As demonstrated here:

So not an issue with (too) many silos. Snapshot and save of this setup attached (in mid dither).

If you have a save file or video of this happening, that would be helpful to demonstrate, and possibly later to pin it down (when coding time is allocated to #FixCrafting). I'm leaving this thread unmerged as I don't see a previous report explicitly about alternating between two refineries. Although I did mention talk of it on Steam, in the above linked thread:

And there's a similar/related issue where assigned refinery alternates between 2 possibles, thus allowing raw resources to slip past them. As talked about in this Steam thread. (Possibly on forum too, couldn't find it.)

 

[Lord Zarnox]

If you try to fabricate something using the base in this save it should cause the bug. The bug occurred for me with a slightly different setup, and you might need to add a refinery inside the loop, but it should occur. I used the GeoCorp fabricator when the bug occurred, so that one may demonstrate it better.

 

[ZeroGravitas]

OK, I finally took a look at your save. I added a second refinery...(?) and moved stuff around a little to make this Gif and updated save file (attached) of the toggling process in action:

Note that the silo shuffle, with the rubber on the right, does cause deadlock, but isn't necessarily part of the problem. It can be stopped, here, by simply removing the closest silo.

 

[Lord Zarnox]

OK, I finally took a look at your save. I added a second refinery...(?) and moved stuff around a little to make this Gif and updated save file (attached) of the toggling process in action:

Note that the silo shuffle, with the rubber on the right, does cause deadlock, but isn't necessarily part of the problem. It can be stopped, here, by simply removing the closest silo.

It is still a problem that should be fixed, the confusion for the silos is due to the stupid refineries alternating. Maybe just make the game recognise if there is a loop in the conveyor system, or at least, if there are resources on conveyors that will be able to reach the target destination if they aren't currently being called elsewhere.