Manifold and Load Balancing ADVANCED Tips | Satisfactory

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

omg, I love you

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).

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.

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.

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 ❤

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

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)

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

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 🤔

Is this a re-upload?

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

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

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.

How come you had to reupload this one?