Manifold and Load Balancing ADVANCED Tips | Satisfactory 

I just want to point out two things - It's obvious when you sit down and think about this, but I think a lot of people don't realize this for quite a while. Besides splitters and mergers, the game also has a hybrid of the two. The Industrial Storage. Has two inputs *AND* two outputs. Only thing you have to keep in mind is that its behavior can be kind of odd if you're using a mixed resource belt. Storage units only output from the last stack. When choosing between a manifold and a balancer, there's a third option - You can hybridize the two. Suppose you're feeding an array of 12 machines. There's nothing saying that you can't split the feed into 4 mini manifolds of 3 machines. Pros and cons sit right between the two options.

I appreciate the detailed information on load balancer theory. I'm not a Math Person myself, so when a video is like "here's an example of a load balancer" and shows off some pre-made assemblage of splitters and conveyors with little explanation of why it is built the way that it is, it doesn't help me understand how to actually implement one. This video helped tremendously. Thank you!

I've been playing the game since inception and there's a couple things here I've even been overlooking in my maths of committing to load balancing. Couple of my latest load balancing builds just were not running up to snuff when I knew they should have been so I switched them to Manifold. Now, that worked and I won't be going back but I could have possibly tried some of your fixes and kept load balancing. I will keep these fixes in mind for future when I get back to the game when 1.0 is released. TY!!

Glad to see this uploaded again! It'll get better every time. 🤠

I think the most correct way to tell whether you'll need loopback belts is that if *every* prime factor is 2 or 3 you can skip them, rather than if *one* prime factor is 2 or 3. Your text restatement around 5:40 says the same as your original statement :)

Fantastic explanation and will be used by me as my maths is not great! I also stage my factories: build a section, prime it with materials Then I use a throughput mod and dump the output into a sink to see how that section performs Once sorted, I move onto the next, leaving space for an overflow smart splitter should my calculations be wrong (they usually are... I love overflow splitters)

4:57 There may be a mistake here, or maybe a miscommunication. The loop back belt returns 60 materials a minute, and the total input stabilizes to 360 to compensate. I know this after applying an infinite geometric series formula to the problem (learned it in calculus 2). The formula is S = a/(1-r). r is the common ratio which is 1/6. a is 50 at the first iteration of our 300's division. Plugging it in and doing the math, we find that 50 becomes 350, then divides, and adds to the next 300 to become 358.33. This continues, slightly larger every time, 359.72, and again infinitely, until you approach the value of S, which is =60. Therefore your topmost conveyors need to take another 60, not 50, which is equal to your non-feedback output members.

Very nice video. As an enthusiast of logistics, I find it both enjoyable and informative and appreciate you taking the time to (re)make it despite having covered the topic already. Well done. As a sidenote, most of the concepts covered could be extended to mixed belt (sushi) scenarios. Mixed-item manifolds (aka "sushifolds") can be commonly seen (especially at higher tiers and lower throughputs) and possibly confuse new players. And, even if with much more niche usage than mixed manifolds, even mixed belts can be load-balanced in different ways and even make use of loop-backs in some scenarios (just like normal balancers, but with more than one kind of item). If interested in covering the subject, I can provide more in-depth info (afaik, the only (rudimentary) video on the subject is on my channel, atm).

Appreciate the time you take to do make these videos. It's interesting to see others understanding of these methods, I agree you should use use whatever you are happy with, though given I always "load balance" first, it always seems that the disadvantages of "manifolds" are understated and those for load balancing exaggerated. Especially the space taken, which is usually more, but your 1 input to 10 output example, probably expanded to illustrate the loopback mechanism, can be built on the one 4m wide strip of tiles next to the machine inputs, so the same as allocated for a manifold. The power of load balancing also goes beyond the simple one input to multiple outputs shown in your videos, to distributing a common source in the exact amounts required by multiple processes. There is some math involved with this and needs to be done out of game, same as working out what splitter/merger assemply is required to do this, but can be used whenever the same ratios are present, whether you're making 10 parts per minute or 100. I unfortunately do have to remark on the Balancing: Loopback Overflow section. If overflow is required in the normal running of a process then balancing is not being done.

One video addon to this that I would love for someone to do is explaining how machines also impact how many items fit on a belt. Far FAR too many people keep asking for ratio splitters because they 'only want 24 of x item down this line' as that's 'all that line needs' When if the machines on that line only need 24, then only 24 will fit on that belt line. There's no point nor need to ever tell a splitter how many items to allow on a belt. It may sound simple and common sense but many are not getting it. So something to show and explain how machines through put effects the amount of items on a belt would be great. Bonus, is also adding that just because a belt says 480ipm, don't mean every mixed item that gets added is also 480ipm each, then don't understand why their mixed belt isn't giving them the throughput they want. Some people just need to see thus stuff for themselves. I wish I could do it myself as MMMGH some of these people are too insistant... but my desktop only records gameplay footage at the rate of a slide show.

One thing I do, on any type feed system, is to power all buildings, then switch them until the input(s) is full. I then turn on the buildings one at a time from closest to source to farthest.

8:18 that plus 1 machine isnt taking up more space than all those splitters and mergers for the loopback

A note about the first two chapters, regarding how to reduce the "startup time" of manifolds. There's 2 preferences I'd like to highlight: wanting all machines to produce/reach 100% efficiency as soon as possible, or wanting to have output items come out of the system as soon as possible (these can lead to different results). Trying to have all machines in production, with a manifold, means that all machines (minus one or two) need to have an inventory full of input items. The QUICKEST ways to do so are (from the fastest): 1) Manual prefill. 2) Smart splitters in the manifold. 3) Normal manifold. 4) Manifold with low-tier input belts for machines (exception being when the belts' throughput matches the input requirement exactly, aka "balancefold", or the main belt has more input than the line of machines need so it can "overfeed" all inputs). What's a bit counterintuitive, is that method (4), while being the best at satisfying the second preference mentioned earlier, it's also the one that takes the longest to fill up all machines with input items. The reason for that is that since more machines start running while the whole system fills up, more input items will be consumed, thus needing more time for the main belt to provide the items to fill up machines AND feed the ones already consuming. On the opposite end, using smart splitters leads to the least items produced AND consumed by turning on machines one by one. Addition: if one dislikes manually filling machines but still wishes to speed up a normal manifold, they can add one or more container(s) and connect them to the manifold via (temporary) mergers. When provided with items, the containers will "refill" the manifold at the merging points, ideally after it has too few items/min on it as they're being used to fill up the first few machines of the production line.

Ya, nah, i'll stick with the manifold. ot enough problems with math to use the loadbalancing type lol Great video. followed you until the load balancer

Top level balancers and 4 splitters manifold, works reasonably well

I thought for a moment that you had Drew Scanlon guesting on your video from that thumbnail.

I'm good with math but i really don't like the bunch of splitters, mergers and belts (and in some cases spaghettiness) needed for load balancing, i fell in love with "modular load balancers" mod, it's very aesthetic and easy to learn to use for everyone, a must have for lovers of order and minimalist design ❤

If want you can use manifold input also center so example 4 smelters your input is between 2 and 3 working maybe little bit better 🤔

In my opinion, a complex loop-back system is better than under-clocking because we have an abundance of space for the footprint but only a limited amount of power. Conveyors don't suck up any power (THANK YOU for that magic Coffee Stain!) so spamming them like a pile of spaghetti is only aesthetically problematic.

I linked an imgur gallery of load balancer designs to the last vid, but it looks like my comment was removed before the last vid was taken down. Are links like that not allowed? Also, good vid. I've recently switched to using manifolds myself, but I find balancers to be more aesthetically pleasing.

omg, I love you

Great... I'm ahead of progress then UGH and last belt is on last 2 elevator upgrade, and I just spend hours on mini factories setup, luckily not too detailed, but still. edit: figured it out, will do extra steps, but need shift the 1/5 later part.of the chain, phew

I use load balancing and underclocking for inputs to all machines, it makes me feel wasteful to let all machines load up And use manifold only when produce has to be only stored and not sent to another machine

For the overflow, if you don't need the additional overflow, could you just sink it? Like, if you had 120 output, but only needed 115, instead of looping back the extra 5, it'd just get sunk.

How come you had to reupload this one?

I just use Manifolds... they are so much simpler

Is this a re-upload?

Not for nothing but I've never felt the need to use balancers instead of manifolds. Takes time to saturate? And? you'll set it up once and walk away. All the funky math around loop backs on balancers? slap a manifold on it and walk away lol

One additional way to remove the manifold warm up is to just manually put a full stack in each machine. Load balancers are for perverts imho.

Why does anyone even care to use a load balancing system?