The implementation of #45 isn't the most ideal. about mindustry HOT 12 CLOSED

Just tried this out for the first time with a friend in multiplayer, and I have to say I don't like it at all. The way buffers work is confusing unless someone has explained it to you: often, the smelter would clog up for seemingly no reason, when the real problem was with one of the input buffers being full of iron/coal.

There's two problems, currently: One, the capacity bar above smelters is misleading, as the smelter can be clogged without having a full capacity bar. This doesn't match how other blocks (like extractors) work, where a full capacity bar means it's full of one type of input items.
Two, I feel like the system is un-intuitive and difficult to maintain, especially for new players (and older ones like Luxray who are used to a one-conveyor system).

Here's the 'fixes' I came up with: To begin, stop displaying the output buffer and pool together both input buffers, so a "clogged smelter" is always one with a full capacity bar. Perhaps even create a display where each input resource is displayed by color on the smelter.

Then, implement one of these two options:

1. Make extra unbalanced items be automatically discarded, with a particle effect to indicate that the smelter is doing so. That is, if you have 20 coal and 1 iron enters the smelter, 1 coal will be thrown away. This seems like a hacky method, and probably is not the best choice.
2. Change how smelters (and crucibles?) work altogether. Instead of requiring 1 coal + 1 iron to make one steel, have coal be used as fuel for the smelter, where one coal will increase the "burn time" of the smelter, just like it works in a coal generator. In this system, one coal could be used to smelt more than one unit of iron if set up correctly. Also, a maximum throughput speed could be put on the smelter, to increase building more of them.

The latter system, I think, is better in two ways: One, it solves half the problem with clogging, as there will always be more coal needed (as fuel is consumed regardless of iron contents), therefore a surplus of coal on your conveyor belt will always eventually get processed.
Two, it makes more sense. While it's still completely unrealistic, burning the coal to make steel seems more reasonable than just mashing a chunk of coal and iron together. It's also more intuitive: the idea of separating conveyors for fuel and input comes more naturally than separating conveyors for two different inputs.

What do you guys think?

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The implementation certainly isn't ideal. How else would you solve it though?

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Yep, works just fine ...

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from mindustry.

@BeefEX green bar issue fixed as of merged PR #49.

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@Tener I would normally have one conveyor with all items flowing in for compactness. I don't see why that has to be avoided.

(game version after eed70fe)

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I see now. You have to use one line for one type of item instead of one for all items in resource input. Acceptable but still makes things less compact and more complicated.

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90%+ efficiency and workload

Too much work for one smelter, so i put two

from mindustry.

I agree with you on the second one. It seems more reasonable and you don't have to modulate the coal collection that much. It also works well if you spawn in a map with not so much coal, if you have WAY more iron than you do coal, or you want to have a whole giant supply of steel constantly.

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Smelter rework is in place right now. Closing.

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