Objective:
This setup was designed to achieve direct insertion, almost-perfect ratio, almost-1-BC, almost-perfect-belt-ratio, and almost-perfect-UPS and has been discussed at length and run past a bunch of guys.
Features:
- 2290 blue circuits/minute.
- Excellent belt efficiency using a carefully constructed set of prioritized taps. Only the outermost lanes of iron and copper will stall from perfect throughput, and only by a fraction of a lane.
- Kirk McDonald ratios are here: https://kirkmcdonald.github.io/calc.html#cp=3&min=3&belt=express-transport-belt&dm=p3&db=s3&dbc=16&items=processing-unit:r:2290&modules=copper-cable:;s3:18,processing-unit:;s3:18
- Carefully considered each inserter and optimized behavior. https://wiki.factorio.com/Inserters#Belt_to_Chest_.28facing_inserter.29
Bottlenecks:
- Coil ASM > Green ASM currently has 1 stack inserter pair, and a 1 stack, 1 long inserter pair. The long inserter can't quite keep up. This causes a ~4.6% slowdown from 1 full BC.
- Plastic requires 2.041 belts for 1 belt of BC. This causes a ~2.1% slowdown from 1 full BC.
- UPS consumption is 53% inserters, 22% crafting machines, 9.6% pipe.
Possible Future Exploration:
- It's possible that a 12-beacon setup may outperform this for UPS, but it won't be by much because of the increased inserter requirements to move material between ASMs. All of the 12-beacon setups we tested performed worse.