5 years and these are still an excellent reference for me. I tend to take long breaks and forget everything when I come back, this series always has the answers I need 👍
honestly hate watching a "how to" and the guys just fumbling around trying to figure it out on the fly in the video. Or just throws everything together without explaining, skipping steps. These videos are good.
Started playing SE about a week ago (though it's been in my steam library for going on three years) and your videos have been a great aid to me! I'm a science teacher and I recognize a good teacher when I see one. Well done.
Sat in my library a while to as was complicated but I would say definitely put the time into SE is my fave relaxing and so creative always something to do lol.
Do you mean making ships that can add to the list of cargo ships so they'll spawn and fly through space around you? Or do you mean something automated that will move cargo from one base to another, or automated to go mine then return to base? I could definitely do a tutorial on adding your own cargo ships to the game, MacGabhann showed me how to make something automated that would move from one connector to another (and his design worked in atmosphere as well). But as far as I'm aware a fully automated mining drone hasn't been made successfully, I think the part that's stumping people is using the raycast system to find ores in a way that doesn't completely kill the sim speed.
Splitsie the second one I think a connection would be cool. Maybe an unconnected miner ship, manually put it into a container that will then take that to different connectors of your choice automatically if that makes sense
It should all be possible using the autopilot function so I'll work on a tutorial for that which might include some timer functions as well. If that turns out to be too big for one video I'll take a look at autopilot, timers and an automated cargo ship as 3 separate videos. I'd love to say it'll happen soon but it might take a few weeks to get all that together :P
@@rachels587 If you are going to do that, keep an eye on the drone. I lost a few when I tried to do that. I am not sure what happened to it. Ether got shot down by the cargo ships or despawned.
I'm really into having very organized storage, so this video has definitely helped me design a more optimized storage layout! One thing I think might help to prevent the ore sorters from pulling ice is to have another sorter before it blacklisting ice. Sequentially speaking, the ores would move from whatever storage they are in, pass through the Ice Blacklist sorter, and then pass through the Ore Whitelist sorter. This should allow the ores to reach the refineries while keeping the ice out of the way, and this should save from having to manually whitelist each individual ore in the whitelist sorter. I always feel a constant strive to improve efficiency, especially in Space Engineers, and your videos are really aiding in that. Keep up the good work!
@@Splitsie The less "working" blocks you have, the better your fps will be. If you don't want to add all the different ores in one block, one time, you are lazy. It's just a few clicks.
Back when sorters first appeared in Space Engineers, I was obsessed about making a good sorting system that would supply all production blocks with what they need. I built a system similar to yours, but inability to disassemble components was a serious flaw. When I tried to make a two-way connection between the assembler and component container, the sorter kept infinitely drawing components from the container and putting it back there again. There were also problems with one refinery (out of many) hoarding all ores and needing constant manual supervision. In the end, I came to the conclusion that a system based only on sorters is impractical. A good hands-off approach requires TIM or AIS, in my opinion. Maybe if Keen added two-way sorters and refinery cooperation in the same way assemblers work, it would be more functional.
Yeah, the lack of ability to balance refineries is a bit of a bugger, last I looked though the assembler cooperation mode was still flawed though but a functional system like that would be good. There were some timer based systems that used to work but they're all broken now. I couldn't come up with a way to make the ores balance but if I come across one I'll be sure to post something about it.
Some Guy If you're already using TIM, you don't need any special tricks. Add [TIM AUTO] to the refineries' names and the script takes care of everything. It's kind of a bummer actually, that a solution so simple is so superior to all others that it practically kills all ingenuity.
Splitsie Timer-based systems are broken because the conveyors move all resources at once, so everything goes to the refinery that happens to be accessible. If the items moved bit by bit, they'd work and conveyor systems would be more interesting to work with. You could, for example, build several next to each other to increase throughput. I think they used to work that way, but Keen changed it to optimize the game.
Ah, that must have been back when the conveyors used to cause some sim speed drops. I hadn't played with those systems before they made that change so I hadn't noticed that it was particularly gradual. I did notice the performance problems though so I guess they made the right choice :P
I bought this game on a sale in 2017 with Medieval Engineers. Started to play this in the fall of 2021. It's been a learning curve. I have around 40 hours of playtime at the moment. I'm now learning about this layout from the video. I haven't been to space in my survival world yet lol A great tutorial, and I saved the layout on MS paint so I can look at it later. Also learning about blueprints too. The game is fun.
Your tutorials sent me and my friend from struggling to build a survival kit to building an interplanetary ship with retractable landing gears and ramp
I think there may be a simpler solution to the problem you identified at the 22:17 mark, with the Sorter pulling all Ore, including Ice, into the Refinery Container. Rather than having to Whitelist all of the allowable Ores separately, leave it to pull all Ores but place another Sorter behind it which is set to Blacklist Ice. I haven't tried it, but I reckon that the Sorter closest to the Refinery would attempt to pull all Ores but the one furthest from the refinery should block the Ice from getting through.
Actually that's a good idea, but place the blacklist one in front of the ore pulling one. Then the one that pulls ore can only pull everything except the ice. The problem with having the sorters the other way round is that some ice may sit in the ore sorter's inventory and not be able to move because of the ice blacklist one.
Well said Mick! That's a very good point - I'm just going to go sit quietly in the corner while I contemplate this groundbreaking change in my perception... Oops!
It's honestly not that much more of a hassle to simply whitelist the ores you want to go into the Refineries, and exclude Ice from that list. In my setup, I've got Sorters pulling ore from a massive ore silo that feed either an array of Refinieries (several pairs, each pair processing its own mineral so there's always *something* being done about any given ore), Oxygen Generators, or Arc Furnaces. I've also got an array of Assemblers meant specifically for assembly, and one lone Assembler for disassembly, as I don't typically need to do so on a large scale. If you needed to, however, you could simply have a bi-directional Sorter setup as Splitsie's shown in his video, and have one or the other toggle on or off from a Control Panel to control how materials flow throughout the Conveyor system.
I am so glad you make these videos. I was watching Dragon Nation Gaming until I realized he was a massive ass to everyone in his comment sections. You have much more charisma and intelligence, and I thank you for the work you put in to these.
A great tutorial, as always. The use of the antenna to show names of objects was a fine idea, but I couldn't read them on my poxy screen (or is it just my aging eyesight). In this case, I think colour coding the lines would have been visually appealing as well as showing the paths of the items. I colour code all of my conveyor systems on ships and stations as I find it helps me to better trace lines if there is something that is not working as it should. One glitch in the demo that you may not have notice: At the 16:59 mark, when your ship made the docking connection, all of the sorters turned off, meaning that none of the sorting should have happened. I presume that this is a Creative mode glitch.
Thanks Mick :) I noticed that as well, but I couldn't figure out whether it was supposed to happen because there was nothing that could be moved from the small ship or if it was a bug as Some Guy said. Either way the sorters still functioned as I expected so I just kinda ignored it :P I think the idea of colour coding your lines is a really good one, the text is pretty small in the recordings and it probably doesn't help that I play in 1440p and record in 1080p so some of the text might get shrunk a little bit and make it worse. Even if you can read it, having that many markers on your hud is a bit overwhelming so I'd go for colour coding any day (or the build vision mod).
Even with the Build Vision mod you would have to select each component in a line where as colour coding enables you to trace a line to detect the root of a problem.
Yep, no argument from me. I guess that's why electricians do that whole colour coding thing... When I take a look at some of these inventory mods in the future I might highlight this little tip from you Mick :)
Yeh! The game can get a bit hectic with multiple pipes, equipment, connectors and storage containers. But with colour coding I can see at a glance which containers and pipes are moving and or storing, oxygen, hydrogen, components, ores etc.
I really appreciate your tutorials. Your thinking is fairly easy to follow. I like your conversational style. I also like that you make mistakes and talk us through what to do about it.
I could hear the fear and pain in your voice during the intro to this video, Splitsie. I can relate. I've just spent the last two hours trying to solve a sorter blockage, to no avail, which is why I'm here. On behalf of all of us, thank you for your brave service. ;)
I typically go incoming (blacklist ice) -> prestorage (whitelist and blacklist ore) -> ore and main storages. Blacklist ice goes to whitelist ice then a free conveyor to both the o2 genny bank and the main storage (allowing you to pull ice/h2 tanks for ships). Ore storage goes to refinery bank, ingot storage, assembler bank, main storage. Main storage loops back to incoming. I also design ships with a one way small cargo container for ice, so you can feul them as required without the main base pulling the ice in. Any ice or ore stuck in main storage is pulled by a seperate puller to the prestorage area, while since the 'goods incoming' loop is all on pull, any items stuck in the incoming line will be pulled through.
1. you have no backflow means in the first setup if a ship happens to need to refuel. There are also times you may need some of the items stored on one of the one-way paths. One option to get around these drawback is switches so you can switch between sorting and 2-way access. (IE if you flip a switch it'll turn off the path to take ice from the ice storage tank and turn on the block that pulls it in from everywhere else). As for mining vessels you can do a double sort block for them too, where as you can turn on one that'll pull what you want from those ships on/off so the connector is more universal.
Splitsie you Can also have a disassembly function to this Conveyor system without touching anything that's already automated. What you do is stick another conveyor junction after the conveyor sorter leading to the components Storage. And have another conveyor sorter on the branch off lead to another assembler which will be dedicated to disassembly with the sorter white listed only for components. This will make it a one way to allow you to manually move it over to the Assembler Named Disassembler without it going back to the cargo container for components. Then Connect the Disassembler with a Conveyor leading to the ingots storage with a sorter with Ingots white listed and and Drain all Checked then all you got to do is move the components you want to Disassemble into the Disassmbler and Disassemble the components and it will then transfer all harvested ingots back into ingot storage for use in the Assembler.
I appreciate the blow up version of these descriptions. I need this type of information to be where I want to be in the game. From this video I see some of my many mistakes and see I now much redo all of my failed production that did not work. I will be watching more your videos for sure.
I love this video. I always forward it to people who have questions. In my version, I add a second assembler for disassembling only and name it accordingly.
I find sorters to be rather inflexible. I don't know if it is a bug but the sorters seem to blacklist anything that isn't on the whitelist; even then it is a one way direction. You even demonstrated that when you docked the ship and wanted to move components. This was still quite helpful as it shows I'll need a 3x3x1 space to easily support 3 sorters. More if I want to add redundancies in anything that might be, occasionally, taking fire.
This is one of the major parts of why I enjoy SE. I'm the type of guy who can fiddle for hours just to come up with a neat little setup for a rover, base or even space ships. This game makes my OCD tickle with joy. I try to not use to many scripts so I also enjoy doing setups like these, even though Izzy makes it hard to resist taking a little shortcut.
Thank you so much for this video. I've got a hydrogen based drilling ship that's been plagued with conveyor gremlins. I think i have a better understanding of this system now.
I was struggled with one issue. I have a bit different setup. I built all production facilities in one building with sorters in and out (plus individual sorters for facilities). If I set pull all on input sorter it occured that it moves forward and back bottles as it's stored in in H2/O2 generator. Finally I built additional sorter that pulls only ores and next sorter that disallows pulled ores back as closer then storage is docked rover. With this video you remined me about oxygene and hydrogen tanks. When I build it outside production facility, probably additional sorters will not be needed anymore as only thing allowed to be moved in will be ores.
It's really tough trying to come up with a fool proof system using sorters alone, especially when you know that sometimes the system needs to loop back on itself because then you end up with items moving constantly in a circle (which is probably what was happening when you saw the bottles moving back and forth). I haven't got any great solutions to that, other than a button somewhere to turn the return sorter on and off so it's only on when you need it
@@Splitsie Yes, it's exactly what happened. Solved it, as described above - built tanks outside and now only ores go into produciton facility. Now I have similar issue with ingots moved by refineries to assembler as it's closer then ingots storage. If I turn on draining on sorter attached to this storage it takes ingots from storage and put it back there all the time. I guess I will search for mods to solve that.
Thankfully most of the core systems haven't changed too much over time so ones like this are still mostly accurate, so I'm glad they're still helpful :)
Great tutorials! Im watching them all as a marathon right now ^^ quick lazy tip: For the component&tool&ammo (main) storage (Assembler exhaust) just blacklist the ingots and you are good to go since you already filtered it down before it connects to the assembler so you can only pull ingots except that what you want. So it is just 2-3 less clicks but less clicks nevertheless. Also you can set-up a disassembler with an ingot exhaust and a direct connection to the main storage since you already sorted it not to contain ingots, connect the dissassembler to the assembler (or it's intake sorter but it sometimes takes more than it has to dissamble and it keeps adding up if you leave it unchecked)
Those are some really nice ideas, especially the point about just blacklisting ingots given the prior filters, I'll have to remember that if I set up a shorter system in my let's play base :) Also, thanks! Glad you're enjoying them
The sorter going from the assembler to storage can be set up with blacklist for ingots as well, as ingots are the only things going into them. That means there will only ever be ingots and whatever the assembler creates in that pipeline. As for disassembly, I would probably go with a dedicated disassembler, an assembler set to "disassemble" with its own storage and a "drain all" sorter with an empty blacklist. Anything going into the container goes to the assembler, gets disassembled and then just ship the components over to the component storage from there. Disassembly is mostly a manual process anyway, it is very rare to use any form of automatic disassembly when you're so late in the game that you have a fully fledged sorting system going. And the little automatic disassembly you may want would be for things like destroyed enemy ships anyway, so those would be easy to just hook up a connector to your disassembly container.
This system could definitely use some upgrades, my intent with it was to come up with something workable, that would provide the means to teach about how sorters work. Nice idea with the assembler setup though, I've often wanted to build a base with a full advanced sorter setup rather than using an inventory management script, maybe one day I will :P
Man your a life saver bro been playing on Xbox and with no scripts gotta use sorters was having a hard time figurreing it out till this video ty bro!!!!!!
Wow, this is awesome! I'm super late to the SE party, but now that I'm here, these videos remind me of Paradox games...they make no, or terrible, tutorials for rather complex games, then popular youtubers have to make those tutorials. YOU da man for this game! They should pay you!
A few things. The first is that I never need to make missiles, but I play only in singleplayer and I like to snipe the turrets of the cargo ships to keep resource gain high. Takes longer, but it's worth it. The second is that I make 4 large storage containers for each group of items. Steel plates, Dumb components (steel tubes for example), Smart components (computers and other electronics), and other (ammo, bottles, parachutes). I do this for bases that I build. Outposts and mining stations just use the one. And the third is that I recommend setting up a disassembler when you have enough resources. That way you don't have to set the assembler back and forth.
A disassembler is especially handy if you have spawn with tools on and play with a friend who likes to die and leave his new tools lying all over the place :)
Thanks yet again Splitsie. A tutorial that was thought out and presented like you know what you are doing, unlike alot of others which just seem to be some Rando that's only just started playing the game and spends half the time yelling "Hey look at that! I t looks like um... dunno but it's cool huh, wow I love this game already". Good on ya.
Thanks, I do try to put some time into working out what to include and what to leave out when making these tutorials. I just wish Keen would hurry up and release their second 'warfare' update as I'm waiting on it before making a new bunch :)
Thanks man !!! Im new in this game and i was struggling for couple of hours to figure out how to unload my miner and sort things out. This is exactly what i was looking for :)
dont get me wrong, you are the best youtuber to watch content for space engineer but for starters its really hard to find information about something specific. I hate how youtube is changing to worse every month. But there is rarely information on how to build things. i always only get presented the finished vehicle or building and never see you or anyone building this stuff. For example Mining towers: i saw various forms of mining tower, from you too but never are these concepts explained and im stuck here with my wobbly piston tower. it looks awful. i dont have 200 hours freetime to figure out what is possible and what not. Also transitions from big grid to small grid or the other way round are single headache. Why is this game made so complicated? it looks simple but when you start building there are tons of problems
im new to this game as well but the wobbly piston tower is 1: to many pistons. or 2: not "share inertia tensor" enabled. this is only possible if you have experimentel mode on. i just found this out. i wasnt able to find "share inertia tensor" as a option. please use google to find out how to put experimentel mode on. its hard for me to explain. this game is complicated because enginering on its own is complicated.
Wow Splitsie, I really appreciate your videos. You have helped me in creating a foundation to build on. I wish the game developers would implement more like this directly into the game itself so we don't have to rely on scripts or mods (not that I'm against them). They seem to break sometimes when the game gets updated. I hope support for this game continues. I think it has real promise to become even better than it is now. Keep up the good work my friend!
Sorry for the old comment, but HOW do you target a container?? I know it's something stupid but I can't find a way. Your comment is one of the only places google found that exact phrase lol
thx for the tips. i was having trouble with the "Drain All" button. i was interpreting it as a one time purge of items rather than automatic or manual override
@@Splitsie I am making a new base right now as the original one is not close to any Ores. But things have started to slow down and I am starting to have issues with fliers not working. stuff just does not respond. I might have built too much maybe?
I actually use large grid small cargo storge containers instead of conveyors. It's extremely resource expensive, but it increases storage density massively.
It does, but there are also performance downsides to using them as they act like a conveyor junction which means when you get to larger sizes you'll start to see it negatively affecting sim speed (or if you have multiples of the same grid present in your world). Not normally a problem in single player, but something to keep in mind if you start seeing issues :)
I use a conveyor and fork system to multiple refineries for gold, platinum, and silver then one for Iron, one for cobalt, one for silicon, and one for nickel. Makes life so much easier not having to wait. Setup is easy just conveyor blocks in a row with in/out sorters pushing and pulling each individual ore and returning it to main to be pulled by assemblers. Its so much faster
This setup was definitely not intended to be optimal, just a nice way to illustrate how sorters work, so taking a different approach like you have is probably a good idea :)
@@Splitsie there is no wrong way as long as you get the desired result. Ore>ingots; ingots>components. Its just different flavors of the same pizza my dude!
The later example has one flaw. Your reactor should be hooked into the Cargo at Assembly since Ingots are pulled there, not Main like it is. TY though, finally learned how to get bottles too and from with this.
That's the part of the lesson I was going for, this system has more than just that one flaw in it, mainly I built it to illustrate how sorters worked :)
I think the sorters do class it as an ore, but it's been a while since I've checked that so it's probably worth testing before accidentally spewing out all of your ice or ore by accident :P
Any time you have a one way connection (like to your Ice storage or to your component storage) you really need to complete the loop using a switched off sorter. In your scenario you mentioned that you cannot disassemble components. You can also not get ice out of your storage for example if you put an o2 generator on a ship and wanted to fill it from storage. In your assembler loop a connection from the main storage to the assembler using a switched off sorter would allow you to toggle the existing sorter off, the "new" sorter on and manually move components back into the assembler for disassembly. You need this reverse loop in any one-way system or it can be a real pain.
A proper tip that im now a bit more versed in Space Engineers, if you're wanting specific refineries to input and output specific ores, you need to make sure the conveyors are sorted coming out of them, if you link all the conveyors at the end the refineries without sorters forcing a flow it will use those conveyors to autobalance the inventories of the refineries. Very big oopsie on my part trying to design a bespoke factory that processes the low yield ores with more yield modules and the higher yield ores with speed modules, and finding that my design just had them all autobalance 😭
Absolutely, if you had a large grid mining ship that did a little bit of refining as well. You could also set things up so you have access to the ingot storage if you later want to get access to them for transfer to ships with assemblers. This setup was mainly to demonstrate an early game option and so people could get a handle on how the sorters work - I'm pretty awful at systems setups (my factories in factorio are a mess) so I'm pretty certain there are huge upgrades you could make to this design :)
This a great video, it is exactly what i was looking for many thanks. easy way to to stop ice going to refinery but a blacklist ice sorted before the ore sorter
Refineries can Pull Ice, and the Bottle Filter is capable of working with less Lag by using the Blacklist on Ore. Also, Gravel is considered an Ingot of Stone, a useful bit of knowledge. Also, some modded Components use Ice for their Assembly.
For the ore issue around the end with the wheel-and-spoke system, you could set a second sorter in front of the main one (probably even just directly connected to main storage) that's got ice blacklisted so it can't drag it through.
@@Splitsie I'm having problems, I dunno if you'll see this. But I don't know if your design allows for ice to go back to ships' O2/H2 Generators? I tried to set it up like yours, and when I allow Ice to flow back from the ice cargo container, then I get an infinite loop of ice flowing into and out of the cargo container. It still fills up O2/H2 Generators, but in this case will get in the way of actually unloading ice from a mining ship. Big fan, watching your videos a ton lately. :thumbsup:
I usually perfer a proper bus system when it comes to conveyors. So everything can access everything. If I want automation, I use a programmable block ^^
Sorters can suck? Welp, thanx once again for teaching me something I didn't know. This gives me loads of ideas and I'll have to restart work on the server I was building. But that's ok. I loved the asteroid base I was building, but at the same time there were a few things I wanted to change, but never got around to it because it would have involved dismantling a majority of the bassbecause of how tightly I compacted some of the systems together
One thing to watch on the loops is automatically pulling items will cause the system to pull a small amount constantly moving it through the system in the loop. It is better to have sections of the loop able to toggle manually or at least have a sensor or timer trigger the loop when needed.
i have a quite similar setup - with a few tweaks: i play with weapons disabled (yes, i'm lame), so i have no use for all the guns, ammo and pleb hand tools. i put an assembler (called "pacifist") in front of the refineries in order to disassemble generally useless stuff (and send the ingots to the storage right away) i got a script to evenout the ores between refineries and i placed a seperate assembler on my system labeled "manual disassembler". it is set to disassemble anything you put in it (by hand / conveyor) oh, also: colourcoding makes this kind of system a lot easier for others to understand.
It's a tweakable game, play it however you find most fun :) That's a nice idea having an assembler that's just for breaking down items that's early on in the loop, and colour coding is a very good idea - I really wish I'd thought of that before the video :P
Great tutorial video, thanks Splitsie! One comment though - on your hub-and-spoke design, it looks like you have the reactor connected in to the main "spine" conveyor. Don't you actually want that to be connected in to the storage container that the assembler is connected to and using for ingots? Otherwise it won't be able to share the uranium ingots with the assembler, and the "drain all" on the ingots sorter will starve the uranium out of the system for the reactor. Also, the other comment about allowing access for the uranium would still need to apply to the ingot storage side. Thanks again for the great video!
The right one seems better to me, if move the O/H section between the storage's of component/main and ore (with 3D compacting, maybe remove the ice ore storage and add an arc refinery). Also less sorters and conveyors than the left one. It can be (size wise) compacted much more of course. Even more by thinking in 3 dimensions and swap out cargo containers with filters(+conveyors) and loop back. Then if need more storage just leave expansion space to add cargo containers (and again 3D give expansion in at least 6 directions, for the different type of equipment.)
I completely agree that moving to 3D to allow for extra compacting is a smart move, I didn't want to confuse myself while creating this though :P Hopefully I covered enough that people can make their own systems that are a whole lot better than what I came up with. When I've played factorio (and other similar games) my designs lack the finesse of a lot of the others that I've seen :P
15:15 good video so far. though i just started playing space engineers, still having a hard time struggeling with the beginning set up and i allready can tell, that i use the disassembler function a lotta times. espacially at the moment when im about to finnish my first rover, end phase of Stone gathering, there's the point where i want to upgrade my storage from maybe 6-7 k total to + 40-60 k when you see " sh*t, i need cobald to build that stupid big storage thing xD" so, i have to avoid using the big storages, wich means, the first rover ressource supply fully loaded with +50k is blocking up the beginner refinery. in order to prevent that from happening, i pushed out 20 medium sized small grid Containers in a row wich i locked in place on a hight so my rover could be used to transport materials wich started blocking up the inventory space between the assembler, the refinery, and the first connector (6-7 k) (as you won't have big grid containers at this stage) i realy liked your sorting system here, but it would be cool to see how to do a set up wich includes the disassembling, might be realy usefull for planning out spaces for further production lines in the future for newbies in this game. could prevent them from having to rebuild the entire starter setup later on. thumb up, nice vid, good quality.
Want a challenge? You have three refineries, an arc furnace, and an oxygen generator. The refineries have different modules. You want to send as much Uranium, Gold, and Platinum to the high-yield refinery as will fit, as much Iron and Nickel to the Arc Furnace as will fit in it, Cobalt to the high-yield refinery if there's enough room after the U, Au, and Pt, and the Arc furnace if there's not, everything else (including Au, Pt, Fe, Ni, and Co, but NOT U) to the high-efficiency refinery if there's room and the high-speed refinery if there's not. And of course Ice to the Oxy generator, but that's easy. You also have four buffering containers, one for each of the three refineries and one for the arc furnace, to hold ore that there's no room to process yet. You don't need to pull ore out of a refinery or furnace when a miner arrives and dumps a higher-priority ore for that refinery/furnace into the system, but you do need to redistribute ore among the buffering containers so that anything the refinery pulls after new ore arrives will be of the "right" priority for the currently available set of ore. You can do this with seventeen sorters. Have fun figuring out how.
With one "trick" you can make the sorter count even smaller. Here's the trick: When stuff is "pushed" into a conveyor it always goes to the different faces of the conveyor (if they're connected to something where there's room) in the same sequence. So if you have a connector on face #1, and you dump a bunch of ore in, whatever can go through the outward-facing sorter on face #2 will, before the outward-facing sorter on face #3 has a chance to sort anything. Whatever can go through the sorter on face #3 will go through that, before the outward-facing sorter on face #4 gets anything, etc. Just experiment a little to figure out the sequence of the faces. I can never remember, so I always experiment and then leave colored pipes on one in sequence (Red Orange Yellow Green Blue Purple White) as a reminder to keep track of which are which while I'm putting stuff together.
This is definitely going underneath my base tomorrow. Been looking for an easy way to do this, been hand sorting everything but now my operation is getting too big for that xD
Good luck with the construction and I'd certainly recommend something others have said - paint each link a different colour, at least while setting it up :)
I’m extremely late, but I personally would have added another sorter right next to the last one you placed with uranium whitelisted and as a non drain, allowing your ship to automatically refuel its reactors if it has any (which is quite probable for late game players). Would have added one to the mining ship as well !
Oh yeah, this system has more than a few flaws. I mainly set it up as a way to illustrate how sorters work so people could come up with something much better :)
@@SplitsieYes indeed. With the new update I’m trying to make an automated drone system that brings different materials to my processing base. I’ve done a few tests in a test world, and stumbled on your video to change from scripts because they have non standard behaviors that I used to fix by myself but drones can’t. I’ve done some tests and definitely found a few flaws with the current system. I was talking about uranium because literally minutes ago I had a drone craving right after taking off. Also there’s the problem of disassembling, which I use quite a lot due to my scavenging habits. There were a few ways proposed in the comments, but none really fit how I want them to, so I’ll try some other ways on my side using the event controller block I think
what i do for ore filters into the refinery is I use 2 sorters in-line, one blacklists ice, the other whitelists ores, doesn't matter the order, and it only allows actual ores through, if you want it can also block stone if you don't want it to pull stone.
That's a very good way of doing things, I wish I'd thought about doubling up before making this tutorial as it would have been a nice concept to help people really get their head around how sorters work :)
@@Splitsie I've been livestreaming my progress of learning this game and once I think I've got a thing understood I watch your tutorials on it to make sure :P So thanks for these :)
Is there a video on, or can someone explain having this loop but with being able to pull ice out to fill hydrogen tanks for hydrogen thrusters on ships landing on the connectors?
why not create a convey that reaches the drop off point from the main storage so that you can move items back and forth to bypass the sorter. the sorter grabs all ores so if you pull ore from the storage you will lose it immediately, but everything else should be able to be taken without needing a second connection point for grabbing items. that way you connect to the drop off point and can grab what you want and move on without detaching and going to the pick up point (unless you want to grab ores).
One thing I do is have a pair of dedicated refiners set up for platinum and uranium refining. I have them filled with yield modules, so I want only uranium and platinum refined in them, and everything else goes to my speed module refiners.
You forgot one thing. Uranium for your ships. You need a connection to the top of the reactor going to your main connector with a sorter white-listing uranium. that way when you are connected you can access the reactor and pull uranium out to put in your ship.
If you move the ore-pulling sorter to inside the loop rather than before it, like it is in your optional setup, one could just dock to the two-way connector and still have the ores drained out of the ship while retaining restock capabilities, thus eliminating the need for two connectors, right? I'm a little confused what the added value is of having a sorter right behind the connector. Great tutorial otherwise, thank you.
Spaghetti! ;) Nice video and well explained. I never used the sorters like this because I always had scripts that did the job for me. They basically came out too late in my opinion. This also reminded me that I always wanted to write my own sorting script that is a bit more light weight and easier to manage than TIM.. Maybe I'll find the time some day ;)
Well now I know what I'm having for dinner! :) If you ever do manage to write a lightweight sorting script I would certainly be interested, I don't understand the details of the changes to the modAPI that Rexxar's been working on but maybe there's something in the next major update that will make a lightweight sorter even more lightweight, or slightly easier... man I wish I'd actually learned something when I did software design at school
School didn't help me at all.. All my knowledge of coding is purely self learned. As a hobby I do coding since I was 10 years old or so ;) And I learned C# with space engineers because I always felt that the scripts that are online lack some features I needed, so I decided to write my own ;) I read rexxar's post and the changes seem to be very useful and could even improve and simplify my script's code. The thing I'm most exited to see is self running programmable blocks that don't need a timer anymore. This should make script timings and the setup process for the user even better..
School definitely didn't help me either - I still am and have always been, completely hopeless at learning any language, whether that's a programming language or spoken :P Nice to hear that the changes are likely to be useful, I'll be needing to redo my 'how to use scripts' video once the update comes out and people have updated their scripts, probably a few other videos I'll have to revisit at some point, thruster damage comes to mind...
I have a question about conveyor networks; what non conveyor blocks can be used as conveyors? Large reactors on Large grids seem very poor at pass-through, are there blocks that work better? Is there a way to use the blocks with better pass through as a way to save space and mass? So may questions.
All blocks with multiple conveyor attachments can be used as pass through. I'd never noticed the reactor being slow to move things through but it doesn't entirely surprise me. I'd always noticed they were very slow to pull uranium when it was available. To be able to reliably test whether the blocks slow down transit you'd be best using sorters on the far side of each block to pull a set amount of material. Sorters seem to be the fastest at grabbing material and moving it, probably refineries are next in terms of the size of the chunks of ore I've seen them grab
Splitsie thanks for the reply. A list or ability to view "grab chunk size" stat would be crazy useful, that is exactly the planning information i was asking about.
Great really helpful video, 2 questions tho, What would you use as the main interaction with he system? And how would you connect a medical room to this to replenish hydrogen?
After 5.5 HOURS I found out by redit post that Conveyor Junction blocks messes with Sorters blocks near it - fix was to delete the conveyor junction block
This is EXACTLY what I needed to know. Many thanks. I have a question though; how do I prevent the assembler pulling too much of one ingot and not enough of another e.g. loads of iron but not leaving space for silver etc.? I have to keep manually adjusting assembler inventories. With 10 assemblers this will become a nightmare. Thanks.
Sadly I've never come up with a reliable system to balance things with sorters, there are a number of good scripts out there for inventory management that almost completely eliminate the need for sorters, not as much fun to use them but if you really need things balanced it's the only way I've managed to work it out. The two that I'd recommend and have used are Isy's Inventory Manager and Yet Another Inventory Manager
from the connector I've put a conveyor junction and then split that with sorters one way with ores (-ice) and another with ingots. from The refinery it goes back to the same junction with the ingots. After the assembler I put a Large cargo container which fills up with the extra ingots. Might also work with a small one instead if you have 10 (?!) assemblers connected. Don't know if that helps you at all. I'm very new to the game so mine conveyor systems might need some work. but so far it works for me.
Do you have a video about PCU? I just started paying attention to this and realize I've been very inefficient with long runs of conduit, etc. I also noticed things like small cargo having same PCU as large cargo and less CPU than a conveyor junction, even though a small cargo works just like a junction as well. What? Anyway, I'd love a video explaining this PCU, should I worry about it, tips to optimize it, etc.
I don't at this stage, but now that you mention it, a video about how to optimise your builds for performance might be a good one to add to my to-do list :)
5 years and these are still an excellent reference for me. I tend to take long breaks and forget everything when I come back, this series always has the answers I need 👍
You are great! i dont know why but you are the first to properly explain AND show how to setup these things. 10/10
Awww, thanks!
I'm glad it came across clearly - I'm always unsure because even when it makes sense in my head, once it's in video form... :P
honestly hate watching a "how to" and the guys just fumbling around trying to figure it out on the fly in the video. Or just throws everything together without explaining, skipping steps. These videos are good.
spot on . tnx for great creations creator
Started playing SE about a week ago (though it's been in my steam library for going on three years) and your videos have been a great aid to me! I'm a science teacher and I recognize a good teacher when I see one. Well done.
That's very high praise, thank you :)
Sat in my library a while to as was complicated but I would say definitely put the time into SE is my fave relaxing and so creative always something to do lol.
I don't know if you have knowledge about it but player made drones (like cargo ships or small miners) would be a great addition to your tutorials
Do you mean making ships that can add to the list of cargo ships so they'll spawn and fly through space around you? Or do you mean something automated that will move cargo from one base to another, or automated to go mine then return to base?
I could definitely do a tutorial on adding your own cargo ships to the game, MacGabhann showed me how to make something automated that would move from one connector to another (and his design worked in atmosphere as well). But as far as I'm aware a fully automated mining drone hasn't been made successfully, I think the part that's stumping people is using the raycast system to find ores in a way that doesn't completely kill the sim speed.
Splitsie the second one I think a connection would be cool. Maybe an unconnected miner ship, manually put it into a container that will then take that to different connectors of your choice automatically if that makes sense
It should all be possible using the autopilot function so I'll work on a tutorial for that which might include some timer functions as well. If that turns out to be too big for one video I'll take a look at autopilot, timers and an automated cargo ship as 3 separate videos. I'd love to say it'll happen soon but it might take a few weeks to get all that together :P
@@rachels587 If you are going to do that, keep an eye on the drone. I lost a few when I tried to do that. I am not sure what happened to it. Ether got shot down by the cargo ships or despawned.
I'm really into having very organized storage, so this video has definitely helped me design a more optimized storage layout!
One thing I think might help to prevent the ore sorters from pulling ice is to have another sorter before it blacklisting ice. Sequentially speaking, the ores would move from whatever storage they are in, pass through the Ice Blacklist sorter, and then pass through the Ore Whitelist sorter. This should allow the ores to reach the refineries while keeping the ice out of the way, and this should save from having to manually whitelist each individual ore in the whitelist sorter.
I always feel a constant strive to improve efficiency, especially in Space Engineers, and your videos are really aiding in that. Keep up the good work!
That's a good point, definitely something that could optimise a system like this :)
@@Splitsie The less "working" blocks you have, the better your fps will be. If you don't want to add all the different ores in one block, one time, you are lazy. It's just a few clicks.
Back when sorters first appeared in Space Engineers, I was obsessed about making a good sorting system that would supply all production blocks with what they need. I built a system similar to yours, but inability to disassemble components was a serious flaw. When I tried to make a two-way connection between the assembler and component container, the sorter kept infinitely drawing components from the container and putting it back there again. There were also problems with one refinery (out of many) hoarding all ores and needing constant manual supervision. In the end, I came to the conclusion that a system based only on sorters is impractical. A good hands-off approach requires TIM or AIS, in my opinion.
Maybe if Keen added two-way sorters and refinery cooperation in the same way assemblers work, it would be more functional.
Yeah, the lack of ability to balance refineries is a bit of a bugger, last I looked though the assembler cooperation mode was still flawed though but a functional system like that would be good. There were some timer based systems that used to work but they're all broken now. I couldn't come up with a way to make the ores balance but if I come across one I'll be sure to post something about it.
TIM with tag 'ore 1000' as an example... works fine ;)
Some Guy If you're already using TIM, you don't need any special tricks. Add [TIM AUTO] to the refineries' names and the script takes care of everything. It's kind of a bummer actually, that a solution so simple is so superior to all others that it practically kills all ingenuity.
Splitsie Timer-based systems are broken because the conveyors move all resources at once, so everything goes to the refinery that happens to be accessible. If the items moved bit by bit, they'd work and conveyor systems would be more interesting to work with. You could, for example, build several next to each other to increase throughput. I think they used to work that way, but Keen changed it to optimize the game.
Ah, that must have been back when the conveyors used to cause some sim speed drops. I hadn't played with those systems before they made that change so I hadn't noticed that it was particularly gradual. I did notice the performance problems though so I guess they made the right choice :P
I bought this game on a sale in 2017 with Medieval Engineers. Started to play this in the fall of 2021. It's been a learning curve. I have around 40 hours of playtime at the moment. I'm now learning about this layout from the video. I haven't been to space in my survival world yet lol A great tutorial, and I saved the layout on MS paint so I can look at it later. Also learning about blueprints too. The game is fun.
Still using this as a "blueprint/template" for my base in 2020, thanks Splitsie
You're very welcome, glad it's been useful for so long :)
@@Splitsie are you the third coming of christ?
Your tutorials sent me and my friend from struggling to build a survival kit to building an interplanetary ship with retractable landing gears and ramp
I'm glad they got you over that initial steep learning curve and hopefully to the point where you're having lots of fun :)
Yeah he makes the best tutorial vids for this game
I think there may be a simpler solution to the problem you identified at the 22:17 mark, with the Sorter pulling all Ore, including Ice, into the Refinery Container. Rather than having to Whitelist all of the allowable Ores separately, leave it to pull all Ores but place another Sorter behind it which is set to Blacklist Ice. I haven't tried it, but I reckon that the Sorter closest to the Refinery would attempt to pull all Ores but the one furthest from the refinery should block the Ice from getting through.
Actually that's a good idea, but place the blacklist one in front of the ore pulling one. Then the one that pulls ore can only pull everything except the ice. The problem with having the sorters the other way round is that some ice may sit in the ore sorter's inventory and not be able to move because of the ice blacklist one.
It all depends upon your perception of front and back. I view the front as the pointy end of the chevrons..
Well said Mick! That's a very good point - I'm just going to go sit quietly in the corner while I contemplate this groundbreaking change in my perception... Oops!
It's honestly not that much more of a hassle to simply whitelist the ores you want to go into the Refineries, and exclude Ice from that list. In my setup, I've got Sorters pulling ore from a massive ore silo that feed either an array of Refinieries (several pairs, each pair processing its own mineral so there's always *something* being done about any given ore), Oxygen Generators, or Arc Furnaces. I've also got an array of Assemblers meant specifically for assembly, and one lone Assembler for disassembly, as I don't typically need to do so on a large scale. If you needed to, however, you could simply have a bi-directional Sorter setup as Splitsie's shown in his video, and have one or the other toggle on or off from a Control Panel to control how materials flow throughout the Conveyor system.
*yawn* I just put a blacklist Ice sorter between ore silo and refinery. Refinery pulls ores automatically.
I am so glad you make these videos. I was watching Dragon Nation Gaming until I realized he was a massive ass to everyone in his comment sections. You have much more charisma and intelligence, and I thank you for the work you put in to these.
A great tutorial, as always.
The use of the antenna to show names of objects was a fine idea, but I couldn't read them on my poxy screen (or is it just my aging eyesight). In this case, I think colour coding the lines would have been visually appealing as well as showing the paths of the items. I colour code all of my conveyor systems on ships and stations as I find it helps me to better trace lines if there is something that is not working as it should.
One glitch in the demo that you may not have notice: At the 16:59 mark, when your ship made the docking connection, all of the sorters turned off, meaning that none of the sorting should have happened. I presume that this is a Creative mode glitch.
Not only creative... and They work, it's just a 'graphic issue' or however You like to call it...
Thanks Mick :)
I noticed that as well, but I couldn't figure out whether it was supposed to happen because there was nothing that could be moved from the small ship or if it was a bug as Some Guy said. Either way the sorters still functioned as I expected so I just kinda ignored it :P
I think the idea of colour coding your lines is a really good one, the text is pretty small in the recordings and it probably doesn't help that I play in 1440p and record in 1080p so some of the text might get shrunk a little bit and make it worse. Even if you can read it, having that many markers on your hud is a bit overwhelming so I'd go for colour coding any day (or the build vision mod).
Even with the Build Vision mod you would have to select each component in a line where as colour coding enables you to trace a line to detect the root of a problem.
Yep, no argument from me. I guess that's why electricians do that whole colour coding thing...
When I take a look at some of these inventory mods in the future I might highlight this little tip from you Mick :)
Yeh! The game can get a bit hectic with multiple pipes, equipment, connectors and storage containers. But with colour coding I can see at a glance which containers and pipes are moving and or storing, oxygen, hydrogen, components, ores etc.
I really appreciate your tutorials. Your thinking is fairly easy to follow. I like your conversational style. I also like that you make mistakes and talk us through what to do about it.
Not a new player, i have 700+ hours, but took a long break from it and your types of videos are fantastic to new and old players!!!
Thanks so much :)
Cant stop binging these videos. Thanks for so much help
You're very welcome :)
Your videos are the only reason I can do anything in this game. Thank you!
You're very welcome :)
I could hear the fear and pain in your voice during the intro to this video, Splitsie. I can relate. I've just spent the last two hours trying to solve a sorter blockage, to no avail, which is why I'm here. On behalf of all of us, thank you for your brave service. ;)
I typically go incoming (blacklist ice) -> prestorage (whitelist and blacklist ore) -> ore and main storages. Blacklist ice goes to whitelist ice then a free conveyor to both the o2 genny bank and the main storage (allowing you to pull ice/h2 tanks for ships). Ore storage goes to refinery bank, ingot storage, assembler bank, main storage. Main storage loops back to incoming. I also design ships with a one way small cargo container for ice, so you can feul them as required without the main base pulling the ice in. Any ice or ore stuck in main storage is pulled by a seperate puller to the prestorage area, while since the 'goods incoming' loop is all on pull, any items stuck in the incoming line will be pulled through.
1. you have no backflow means in the first setup if a ship happens to need to refuel. There are also times you may need some of the items stored on one of the one-way paths. One option to get around these drawback is switches so you can switch between sorting and 2-way access. (IE if you flip a switch it'll turn off the path to take ice from the ice storage tank and turn on the block that pulls it in from everywhere else). As for mining vessels you can do a double sort block for them too, where as you can turn on one that'll pull what you want from those ships on/off so the connector is more universal.
for a new player such as myself, this is incredibly helpful, thank you!
For give me for this but: i think you have everything sorted out here...
Thank you for doing these videos, they have really helped me with this game
lol
You're very welcome :)
Splitsie you Can also have a disassembly function to this Conveyor system without touching anything that's already automated. What you do is stick another conveyor junction after the conveyor sorter leading to the components Storage.
And have another conveyor sorter on the branch off lead to another assembler which will be dedicated to disassembly with the sorter white listed only for components.
This will make it a one way to allow you to manually move it over to the Assembler Named Disassembler without it going back to the cargo container for components.
Then Connect the Disassembler with a Conveyor leading to the ingots storage with a sorter with Ingots white listed and and Drain all Checked then all you got to do is move the components you want to Disassemble into the Disassmbler and Disassemble the components and it will then transfer all harvested ingots back into ingot storage for use in the Assembler.
This is probably my favorite of the series so far, thanks.
You're very welcome :)
I appreciate the blow up version of these descriptions. I need this type of information to be where I want to be in the game. From this video I see some of my many mistakes and see I now much redo all of my failed production that did not work. I will be watching more your videos for sure.
I'm glad it was able to help out :)
I love this video. I always forward it to people who have questions. In my version, I add a second assembler for disassembling only and name it accordingly.
I find sorters to be rather inflexible. I don't know if it is a bug but the sorters seem to blacklist anything that isn't on the whitelist; even then it is a one way direction. You even demonstrated that when you docked the ship and wanted to move components. This was still quite helpful as it shows I'll need a 3x3x1 space to easily support 3 sorters. More if I want to add redundancies in anything that might be, occasionally, taking fire.
This is one of the major parts of why I enjoy SE. I'm the type of guy who can fiddle for hours just to come up with a neat little setup for a rover, base or even space ships. This game makes my OCD tickle with joy. I try to not use to many scripts so I also enjoy doing setups like these, even though Izzy makes it hard to resist taking a little shortcut.
You're so right, I used to love making these setups but the temptation of scripts (and having a friend who breaks this stuff) is often too great :D
Thank you so much for this video. I've got a hydrogen based drilling ship that's been plagued with conveyor gremlins. I think i have a better understanding of this system now.
Best space engineers videos on the internet!, thanks mate 👍
Hoy, Im in my first 10 hours of Space Engineers. Thank you for this!
I was struggled with one issue. I have a bit different setup. I built all production facilities in one building with sorters in and out (plus individual sorters for facilities). If I set pull all on input sorter it occured that it moves forward and back bottles as it's stored in in H2/O2 generator. Finally I built additional sorter that pulls only ores and next sorter that disallows pulled ores back as closer then storage is docked rover. With this video you remined me about oxygene and hydrogen tanks. When I build it outside production facility, probably additional sorters will not be needed anymore as only thing allowed to be moved in will be ores.
It's really tough trying to come up with a fool proof system using sorters alone, especially when you know that sometimes the system needs to loop back on itself because then you end up with items moving constantly in a circle (which is probably what was happening when you saw the bottles moving back and forth). I haven't got any great solutions to that, other than a button somewhere to turn the return sorter on and off so it's only on when you need it
@@Splitsie Yes, it's exactly what happened. Solved it, as described above - built tanks outside and now only ores go into produciton facility. Now I have similar issue with ingots moved by refineries to assembler as it's closer then ingots storage. If I turn on draining on sorter attached to this storage it takes ingots from storage and put it back there all the time. I guess I will search for mods to solve that.
you're the best space engineer youtuber you should have million's subscribers so you can do it full time
Thanks, you're too kind :)
I know your series of tutorials are kind of old.. But they are still the best tutorials out there... Thanks
Thankfully most of the core systems haven't changed too much over time so ones like this are still mostly accurate, so I'm glad they're still helpful :)
Great tutorials! Im watching them all as a marathon right now ^^
quick lazy tip: For the component&tool&ammo (main) storage (Assembler exhaust) just blacklist the ingots and you are good to go since you already filtered it down before it connects to the assembler so you can only pull ingots except that what you want. So it is just 2-3 less clicks but less clicks nevertheless.
Also you can set-up a disassembler with an ingot exhaust and a direct connection to the main storage since you already sorted it not to contain ingots, connect the dissassembler to the assembler (or it's intake sorter but it sometimes takes more than it has to dissamble and it keeps adding up if you leave it unchecked)
Those are some really nice ideas, especially the point about just blacklisting ingots given the prior filters, I'll have to remember that if I set up a shorter system in my let's play base :)
Also, thanks! Glad you're enjoying them
The sorter going from the assembler to storage can be set up with blacklist for ingots as well, as ingots are the only things going into them. That means there will only ever be ingots and whatever the assembler creates in that pipeline.
As for disassembly, I would probably go with a dedicated disassembler, an assembler set to "disassemble" with its own storage and a "drain all" sorter with an empty blacklist. Anything going into the container goes to the assembler, gets disassembled and then just ship the components over to the component storage from there.
Disassembly is mostly a manual process anyway, it is very rare to use any form of automatic disassembly when you're so late in the game that you have a fully fledged sorting system going. And the little automatic disassembly you may want would be for things like destroyed enemy ships anyway, so those would be easy to just hook up a connector to your disassembly container.
This system could definitely use some upgrades, my intent with it was to come up with something workable, that would provide the means to teach about how sorters work. Nice idea with the assembler setup though, I've often wanted to build a base with a full advanced sorter setup rather than using an inventory management script, maybe one day I will :P
Man your a life saver bro been playing on Xbox and with no scripts gotta use sorters was having a hard time figurreing it out till this video ty bro!!!!!!
Wow, this is awesome! I'm super late to the SE party, but now that I'm here, these videos remind me of Paradox games...they make no, or terrible, tutorials for rather complex games, then popular youtubers have to make those tutorials. YOU da man for this game! They should pay you!
These are by far the best Space Engineers tutorials
Thanks so much :)
Splitsie your a legend when it comes to SE always use your guides.
Thanks :)
so hard to rember all but at least we got this to come back to
A few things.
The first is that I never need to make missiles, but I play only in singleplayer and I like to snipe the turrets of the cargo ships to keep resource gain high. Takes longer, but it's worth it.
The second is that I make 4 large storage containers for each group of items. Steel plates, Dumb components (steel tubes for example), Smart components (computers and other electronics), and other (ammo, bottles, parachutes). I do this for bases that I build. Outposts and mining stations just use the one.
And the third is that I recommend setting up a disassembler when you have enough resources. That way you don't have to set the assembler back and forth.
As for the ice problem, what you could do is at a blacklist sorter that denies Ice before the ore sorter. Just don't set it to pull things.
A disassembler is especially handy if you have spawn with tools on and play with a friend who likes to die and leave his new tools lying all over the place :)
@@Splitsie yes. Or you nick something a little too fast.
Thanks yet again Splitsie. A tutorial that was thought out and presented like you know what you are doing, unlike alot of others which just seem to be some Rando that's only just started playing the game and spends half the time yelling "Hey look at that! I t looks like um... dunno but it's cool huh, wow I love this game already". Good on ya.
Thanks, I do try to put some time into working out what to include and what to leave out when making these tutorials. I just wish Keen would hurry up and release their second 'warfare' update as I'm waiting on it before making a new bunch :)
@@Splitsie Cheers mate.
Thanks man !!!
Im new in this game and i was struggling for couple of hours to figure out how to unload my miner and sort things out.
This is exactly what i was looking for :)
You're very welcome, glad it helped :)
Only video out there like this thank you. I was stuck. I’m not anymore. 10/10
dont get me wrong, you are the best youtuber to watch content for space engineer but for starters its really hard to find information about something specific. I hate how youtube is changing to worse every month.
But there is rarely information on how to build things. i always only get presented the finished vehicle or building and never see you or anyone building this stuff.
For example Mining towers: i saw various forms of mining tower, from you too but never are these concepts explained and im stuck here with my wobbly piston tower. it looks awful.
i dont have 200 hours freetime to figure out what is possible and what not.
Also transitions from big grid to small grid or the other way round are single headache.
Why is this game made so complicated? it looks simple but when you start building there are tons of problems
im new to this game as well but the wobbly piston tower is 1: to many pistons. or 2: not "share inertia tensor" enabled. this is only possible if you have experimentel mode on. i just found this out. i wasnt able to find "share inertia tensor" as a option. please use google to find out how to put experimentel mode on. its hard for me to explain.
this game is complicated because enginering on its own is complicated.
Wow Splitsie, I really appreciate your videos. You have helped me in creating a foundation to build on. I wish the game developers would implement more like this directly into the game itself so we don't have to rely on scripts or mods (not that I'm against them). They seem to break sometimes when the game gets updated. I hope support for this game continues. I think it has real promise to become even better than it is now. Keep up the good work my friend!
Thanks and it seems like Keen aren't rushing to drop Space Engineers any time soon so we should keep seeing improvements I hope :)
these videos are awesome :)
Thanks!
without your outstanding tutorials,this game would be really frustrating for me.
thanks!
You're very welcome, I'm glad they've been useful :)
"Spawn into targeted container" option will help you a lot. Congrats for the tuto.
Yes, that would! Thank you! :)
Facepalm at myself for being so stupid :P
No way! I am glad to help and thankfull for your nice job. Please, kindly ask you to keep these kinda Tuto!
Sorry for the old comment, but HOW do you target a container?? I know it's something stupid but I can't find a way. Your comment is one of the only places google found that exact phrase lol
I started painting my pipes and cargo containers according to what goes through them. Helps a lot with orientation.
That's always a good idea :)
thx for the tips. i was having trouble with the "Drain All" button. i was interpreting it as a one time purge of items rather than automatic or manual override
more than 2 years and the P isnt still sorted :)
Love your videos. Thank you very much
You're very welcome and thanks! :)
@@Splitsie I am making a new base right now as the original one is not close to any Ores. But things have started to slow down and I am starting to have issues with fliers not working. stuff just does not respond. I might have built too much maybe?
I actually use large grid small cargo storge containers instead of conveyors. It's extremely resource expensive, but it increases storage density massively.
It does, but there are also performance downsides to using them as they act like a conveyor junction which means when you get to larger sizes you'll start to see it negatively affecting sim speed (or if you have multiples of the same grid present in your world). Not normally a problem in single player, but something to keep in mind if you start seeing issues :)
I use a conveyor and fork system to multiple refineries for gold, platinum, and silver then one for Iron, one for cobalt, one for silicon, and one for nickel. Makes life so much easier not having to wait. Setup is easy just conveyor blocks in a row with in/out sorters pushing and pulling each individual ore and returning it to main to be pulled by assemblers. Its so much faster
This setup was definitely not intended to be optimal, just a nice way to illustrate how sorters work, so taking a different approach like you have is probably a good idea :)
@@Splitsie there is no wrong way as long as you get the desired result. Ore>ingots; ingots>components. Its just different flavors of the same pizza my dude!
Thanks for clearing up sorters and storage for me. Confusion reduced!
The later example has one flaw. Your reactor should be hooked into the Cargo at Assembly since Ingots are pulled there, not Main like it is. TY though, finally learned how to get bottles too and from with this.
That's the part of the lesson I was going for, this system has more than just that one flaw in it, mainly I built it to illustrate how sorters worked :)
You are a tutorial God for this game. Also ICE IS AN ORE?!.... welp back to the drawing board
I think the sorters do class it as an ore, but it's been a while since I've checked that so it's probably worth testing before accidentally spewing out all of your ice or ore by accident :P
Any time you have a one way connection (like to your Ice storage or to your component storage) you really need to complete the loop using a switched off sorter. In your scenario you mentioned that you cannot disassemble components. You can also not get ice out of your storage for example if you put an o2 generator on a ship and wanted to fill it from storage. In your assembler loop a connection from the main storage to the assembler using a switched off sorter would allow you to toggle the existing sorter off, the "new" sorter on and manually move components back into the assembler for disassembly. You need this reverse loop in any one-way system or it can be a real pain.
That's a really good point, it would allow for much more flexibility but only when it was needed, nice idea :)
Keep up the videos, I've been recommending them to new players on Steam. The one you did on refinery efficiencies help someone just today.
Cool, nice to know they're actually helping people :)
A proper tip that im now a bit more versed in Space Engineers, if you're wanting specific refineries to input and output specific ores, you need to make sure the conveyors are sorted coming out of them, if you link all the conveyors at the end the refineries without sorters forcing a flow it will use those conveyors to autobalance the inventories of the refineries. Very big oopsie on my part trying to design a bespoke factory that processes the low yield ores with more yield modules and the higher yield ores with speed modules, and finding that my design just had them all autobalance 😭
For a "dis-assembler" just make a 2nd one with its own dedicated sorters for ingots and components
That's probably the best way to go :)
You could allow ingots at the main entry connector sorter, this will allow mining ships with integrated refineries to unload ingots as well.
Absolutely, if you had a large grid mining ship that did a little bit of refining as well. You could also set things up so you have access to the ingot storage if you later want to get access to them for transfer to ships with assemblers. This setup was mainly to demonstrate an early game option and so people could get a handle on how the sorters work - I'm pretty awful at systems setups (my factories in factorio are a mess) so I'm pretty certain there are huge upgrades you could make to this design :)
This a great video, it is exactly what i was looking for many thanks. easy way to to stop ice going to refinery but a blacklist ice sorted before the ore sorter
Thanks, glad it was helpful :)
Refineries can Pull Ice, and the Bottle Filter is capable of working with less Lag by using the Blacklist on Ore. Also, Gravel is considered an Ingot of Stone, a useful bit of knowledge.
Also, some modded Components use Ice for their Assembly.
How did I miss this video.this video helped out alot
Glad it was handy :)
For the ore issue around the end with the wheel-and-spoke system, you could set a second sorter in front of the main one (probably even just directly connected to main storage) that's got ice blacklisted so it can't drag it through.
That's a good point, depending on your ship design you could even include it onboard to drag ice into the generator and not let it out
@@Splitsie I'm having problems, I dunno if you'll see this. But I don't know if your design allows for ice to go back to ships' O2/H2 Generators? I tried to set it up like yours, and when I allow Ice to flow back from the ice cargo container, then I get an infinite loop of ice flowing into and out of the cargo container. It still fills up O2/H2 Generators, but in this case will get in the way of actually unloading ice from a mining ship.
Big fan, watching your videos a ton lately. :thumbsup:
I usually perfer a proper bus system when it comes to conveyors. So everything can access everything. If I want automation, I use a programmable block ^^
Sorters can suck? Welp, thanx once again for teaching me something I didn't know. This gives me loads of ideas and I'll have to restart work on the server I was building. But that's ok. I loved the asteroid base I was building, but at the same time there were a few things I wanted to change, but never got around to it because it would have involved dismantling a majority of the bassbecause of how tightly I compacted some of the systems together
Wonderfully clear and concise. Thank You
Thanks :)
Thanks dude honestly could figure this out in my own
One thing to watch on the loops is automatically pulling items will cause the system to pull a small amount constantly moving it through the system in the loop. It is better to have sections of the loop able to toggle manually or at least have a sensor or timer trigger the loop when needed.
Very true
i have a quite similar setup - with a few tweaks:
i play with weapons disabled (yes, i'm lame), so i have no use for all the guns, ammo and pleb hand tools. i put an assembler (called "pacifist") in front of the refineries in order to disassemble generally useless stuff (and send the ingots to the storage right away)
i got a script to evenout the ores between refineries and i placed a seperate assembler on my system labeled "manual disassembler". it is set to disassemble anything you put in it (by hand / conveyor)
oh, also: colourcoding makes this kind of system a lot easier for others to understand.
It's a tweakable game, play it however you find most fun :)
That's a nice idea having an assembler that's just for breaking down items that's early on in the loop, and colour coding is a very good idea - I really wish I'd thought of that before the video :P
Great tutorial video, thanks Splitsie! One comment though - on your hub-and-spoke design, it looks like you have the reactor connected in to the main "spine" conveyor. Don't you actually want that to be connected in to the storage container that the assembler is connected to and using for ingots? Otherwise it won't be able to share the uranium ingots with the assembler, and the "drain all" on the ingots sorter will starve the uranium out of the system for the reactor. Also, the other comment about allowing access for the uranium would still need to apply to the ingot storage side. Thanks again for the great video!
16:57 "Press P to park" ? Man, older tutorials hit different hehe :-) something tells me you wouldn't say that today!
Thanks for this. was trying to figure out a sorting system
You're welcome :)
The right one seems better to me, if move the O/H section between the storage's of component/main and ore (with 3D compacting, maybe remove the ice ore storage and add an arc refinery). Also less sorters and conveyors than the left one.
It can be (size wise) compacted much more of course. Even more by thinking in 3 dimensions and swap out cargo containers with filters(+conveyors) and loop back. Then if need more storage just leave expansion space to add cargo containers (and again 3D give expansion in at least 6 directions, for the different type of equipment.)
I completely agree that moving to 3D to allow for extra compacting is a smart move, I didn't want to confuse myself while creating this though :P
Hopefully I covered enough that people can make their own systems that are a whole lot better than what I came up with. When I've played factorio (and other similar games) my designs lack the finesse of a lot of the others that I've seen :P
15:15 good video so far. though i just started playing space engineers, still having a hard time struggeling with the beginning set up and i allready can tell, that i use the disassembler function a lotta times. espacially at the moment when im about to finnish my first rover, end phase of Stone gathering, there's the point where i want to upgrade my storage from maybe 6-7 k total to + 40-60 k when you see " sh*t, i need cobald to build that stupid big storage thing xD" so, i have to avoid using the big storages, wich means, the first rover ressource supply fully loaded with +50k is blocking up the beginner refinery. in order to prevent that from happening, i pushed out 20 medium sized small grid Containers in a row wich i locked in place on a hight so my rover could be used to transport materials wich started blocking up the inventory space between the assembler, the refinery, and the first connector (6-7 k) (as you won't have big grid containers at this stage)
i realy liked your sorting system here, but it would be cool to see how to do a set up wich includes the disassembling, might be realy usefull for planning out spaces for further production lines in the future for newbies in this game. could prevent them from having to rebuild the entire starter setup later on.
thumb up, nice vid, good quality.
Thanks, I'm restarting my tutorial series with the release update so sorter systems will definitely get some love again, including disassembly :)
Want a challenge? You have three refineries, an arc furnace, and an oxygen generator. The refineries have different modules. You want to send as much Uranium, Gold, and Platinum to the high-yield refinery as will fit, as much Iron and Nickel to the Arc Furnace as will fit in it, Cobalt to the high-yield refinery if there's enough room after the U, Au, and Pt, and the Arc furnace if there's not, everything else (including Au, Pt, Fe, Ni, and Co, but NOT U) to the high-efficiency refinery if there's room and the high-speed refinery if there's not. And of course Ice to the Oxy generator, but that's easy. You also have four buffering containers, one for each of the three refineries and one for the arc furnace, to hold ore that there's no room to process yet.
You don't need to pull ore out of a refinery or furnace when a miner arrives and dumps a higher-priority ore for that refinery/furnace into the system, but you do need to redistribute ore among the buffering containers so that anything the refinery pulls after new ore arrives will be of the "right" priority for the currently available set of ore.
You can do this with seventeen sorters. Have fun figuring out how.
If that's possible to set up I would love to see the blueprint, there would be much I could learn from it :)
With one "trick" you can make the sorter count even smaller. Here's the trick: When stuff is "pushed" into a conveyor it always goes to the different faces of the conveyor (if they're connected to something where there's room) in the same sequence. So if you have a connector on face #1, and you dump a bunch of ore in, whatever can go through the outward-facing sorter on face #2 will, before the outward-facing sorter on face #3 has a chance to sort anything. Whatever can go through the sorter on face #3 will go through that, before the outward-facing sorter on face #4 gets anything, etc.
Just experiment a little to figure out the sequence of the faces. I can never remember, so I always experiment and then leave colored pipes on one in sequence (Red Orange Yellow Green Blue Purple White) as a reminder to keep track of which are which while I'm putting stuff together.
This is definitely going underneath my base tomorrow. Been looking for an easy way to do this, been hand sorting everything but now my operation is getting too big for that xD
Good luck with the construction and I'd certainly recommend something others have said - paint each link a different colour, at least while setting it up :)
i have to try doing this. im new to this game but i enjoy it alot
I’m extremely late, but I personally would have added another sorter right next to the last one you placed with uranium whitelisted and as a non drain, allowing your ship to automatically refuel its reactors if it has any (which is quite probable for late game players). Would have added one to the mining ship as well !
Oh yeah, this system has more than a few flaws. I mainly set it up as a way to illustrate how sorters work so people could come up with something much better :)
@@SplitsieYes indeed.
With the new update I’m trying to make an automated drone system that brings different materials to my processing base. I’ve done a few tests in a test world, and stumbled on your video to change from scripts because they have non standard behaviors that I used to fix by myself but drones can’t. I’ve done some tests and definitely found a few flaws with the current system. I was talking about uranium because literally minutes ago I had a drone craving right after taking off.
Also there’s the problem of disassembling, which I use quite a lot due to my scavenging habits. There were a few ways proposed in the comments, but none really fit how I want them to, so I’ll try some other ways on my side using the event controller block I think
You´re the best! Thank you so much! (New in this game and have to learn so much!)
Thanks and you're very welcome :)
thank you for all your help!!
You're very welcome :)
1.000 times better then the ingame tutorials
Helped me out a lot. Thank you!
You're welcome :)
what i do for ore filters into the refinery is I use 2 sorters in-line, one blacklists ice, the other whitelists ores, doesn't matter the order, and it only allows actual ores through, if you want it can also block stone if you don't want it to pull stone.
That's a very good way of doing things, I wish I'd thought about doubling up before making this tutorial as it would have been a nice concept to help people really get their head around how sorters work :)
@@Splitsie I've been livestreaming my progress of learning this game and once I think I've got a thing understood I watch your tutorials on it to make sure :P So thanks for these :)
You deserve the title Engineer by application.Not engineer just for gaming.
Thank you for saving me a massive headache
Is there a video on, or can someone explain having this loop but with being able to pull ice out to fill hydrogen tanks for hydrogen thrusters on ships landing on the connectors?
why not create a convey that reaches the drop off point from the main storage so that you can move items back and forth to bypass the sorter. the sorter grabs all ores so if you pull ore from the storage you will lose it immediately, but everything else should be able to be taken without needing a second connection point for grabbing items. that way you connect to the drop off point and can grab what you want and move on without detaching and going to the pick up point (unless you want to grab ores).
One thing I do is have a pair of dedicated refiners set up for platinum and uranium refining. I have them filled with yield modules, so I want only uranium and platinum refined in them, and everything else goes to my speed module refiners.
That's a pretty reasonable setup :)
You forgot one thing. Uranium for your ships. You need a connection to the top of the reactor going to your main connector with a sorter white-listing uranium. that way when you are connected you can access the reactor and pull uranium out to put in your ship.
Very good point! It would have taken me a while of playing before I realised that little issue, well spotted :)
If you move the ore-pulling sorter to inside the loop rather than before it, like it is in your optional setup, one could just dock to the two-way connector and still have the ores drained out of the ship while retaining restock capabilities, thus eliminating the need for two connectors, right? I'm a little confused what the added value is of having a sorter right behind the connector. Great tutorial otherwise, thank you.
Spaghetti! ;) Nice video and well explained. I never used the sorters like this because I always had scripts that did the job for me. They basically came out too late in my opinion. This also reminded me that I always wanted to write my own sorting script that is a bit more light weight and easier to manage than TIM.. Maybe I'll find the time some day ;)
Well now I know what I'm having for dinner! :)
If you ever do manage to write a lightweight sorting script I would certainly be interested, I don't understand the details of the changes to the modAPI that Rexxar's been working on but maybe there's something in the next major update that will make a lightweight sorter even more lightweight, or slightly easier... man I wish I'd actually learned something when I did software design at school
School didn't help me at all.. All my knowledge of coding is purely self learned. As a hobby I do coding since I was 10 years old or so ;) And I learned C# with space engineers because I always felt that the scripts that are online lack some features I needed, so I decided to write my own ;)
I read rexxar's post and the changes seem to be very useful and could even improve and simplify my script's code. The thing I'm most exited to see is self running programmable blocks that don't need a timer anymore. This should make script timings and the setup process for the user even better..
School definitely didn't help me either - I still am and have always been, completely hopeless at learning any language, whether that's a programming language or spoken :P
Nice to hear that the changes are likely to be useful, I'll be needing to redo my 'how to use scripts' video once the update comes out and people have updated their scripts, probably a few other videos I'll have to revisit at some point, thruster damage comes to mind...
The second option is like the bus line we use in electronics.
I have a question about conveyor networks; what non conveyor blocks can be used as conveyors? Large reactors on Large grids seem very poor at pass-through, are there blocks that work better? Is there a way to use the blocks with better pass through as a way to save space and mass? So may questions.
All blocks with multiple conveyor attachments can be used as pass through. I'd never noticed the reactor being slow to move things through but it doesn't entirely surprise me. I'd always noticed they were very slow to pull uranium when it was available.
To be able to reliably test whether the blocks slow down transit you'd be best using sorters on the far side of each block to pull a set amount of material. Sorters seem to be the fastest at grabbing material and moving it, probably refineries are next in terms of the size of the chunks of ore I've seen them grab
Splitsie thanks for the reply. A list or ability to view "grab chunk size" stat would be crazy useful, that is exactly the planning information i was asking about.
Great really helpful video, 2 questions tho,
What would you use as the main interaction with he system?
And how would you connect a medical room to this to replenish hydrogen?
After 5.5 HOURS I found out by redit post that Conveyor Junction blocks messes with Sorters blocks near it - fix was to delete the conveyor junction block
If you want to use Whitelist and Blacklist at the same time, just use two Sorters in a Row.
Then again, it does sound stupid, doesn't it?
It's not stupid if it works :P
@@Splitsie
*_True_*
This is EXACTLY what I needed to know. Many thanks.
I have a question though; how do I prevent the assembler pulling too much of one ingot and not enough of another e.g. loads of iron but not leaving space for silver etc.?
I have to keep manually adjusting assembler inventories. With 10 assemblers this will become a nightmare.
Thanks.
Sadly I've never come up with a reliable system to balance things with sorters, there are a number of good scripts out there for inventory management that almost completely eliminate the need for sorters, not as much fun to use them but if you really need things balanced it's the only way I've managed to work it out.
The two that I'd recommend and have used are Isy's Inventory Manager and Yet Another Inventory Manager
from the connector I've put a conveyor junction and then split that with sorters one way with ores (-ice) and another with ingots. from The refinery it goes back to the same junction with the ingots. After the assembler I put a Large cargo container which fills up with the extra ingots. Might also work with a small one instead if you have 10 (?!) assemblers connected.
Don't know if that helps you at all.
I'm very new to the game so mine conveyor systems might need some work. but so far it works for me.
Do you have a video about PCU? I just started paying attention to this and realize I've been very inefficient with long runs of conduit, etc. I also noticed things like small cargo having same PCU as large cargo and less CPU than a conveyor junction, even though a small cargo works just like a junction as well. What? Anyway, I'd love a video explaining this PCU, should I worry about it, tips to optimize it, etc.
I don't at this stage, but now that you mention it, a video about how to optimise your builds for performance might be a good one to add to my to-do list :)