Cargo unloader system; sorter blocks not pulling?

Hello everyone!
My first posts on the forum as a new member of the SE community! Nice to be here!

So, I've been trying to create a automatic goods offloading station to ease goods transfer. I basically want to dock a ship and it will automatically empty and goods sorted appropriately. The goods within the system move as expected, for example, ore in the ore container will be refined and travel to the ingots. Ingots will be processed and the components end up in the components container. All good. However; The problem is with unloading a vessel. Firstly, it doesn't unload automatically. Secondly, it doesn't even see the appropriate containers as connected (i.e. I cannot even manually unload, at the moment).



All sorters are set to 'Drain all' and whitelisted for the necessary goods. The initial sorter isn't set with any criteria of goods, just 'Drain all'.

Any suggestions? Thanks!
GC

 

First, connect with armor blocks the cargo container in the upper right to the conveyor box. If you are unable to do that, then the problem is its somehow disconnected from the station, even though it looks connected. You'd have to rebuild everything from the sorter on up. If it DOES connect, then try rebuilding just the sorter; it should be able to be placed without issue, so long as the armor blocks are keeping the cargo connected to the main base.

 

Hi Ulfsark, thanks for your help. I'm afraid I don't understand what you suggest, though.

Referring to the top right sorter, it is red because it is turned off. That's because the container hasn't been allocated goods yet. This is on purpose, so please ignore that. The problem is with the rest of the system. The other 5 containers don't get any goods from the ship. I want them to offload automatically but I cannot even transfer them manually, at the moment. Everything is built and functional.

Do the sorters have to be next to a conveyor block? Right next to a container? How about the piston? Do they have certain issues or requirements? Is there a rule about sorter/piston placement that isn't explained anywhere? Thanks!

 

@Guru Cube ...... oh. Hmm. So the sorter on the piston is NOT pulling. That's .... fucking weird. I see no reason for it not to. Try switching the piston and the sorter; have the connector attached to the piston, which is then attached to the sorter. I'm wondering if it being part of a seperate grid has anything to do with it.

Also, you can publish the world to steam and give me the link if that doesn't work, so i can try tinkering with it. Or, to make things easy, load a copy of the game in creative, and start messing with different combinations. The sorter SHOULD work no matter WHERE you have it. Wait, do you have that first sorter on the piston set to white list or blacklist? If its whitelist, and you have nothing selected, then it won't pull anything because nothing is whitelisted. Have it set to blacklist instead.

 

I had something here to critique your design, but I decided against it. I figured I would do a better job by explaining the rules for sorter blocks and let you figure it out how to design your station better. Your questions show you don't fully understand how they work. Your image clearly shows you are using more sorters than you need to.

A conveyer sorter does 4 things:

1. It is a block capable of conveyer actions. Things can be pushed or pulled through it. A refinery can, without sorters, pull ore in and push ingots out. It does so on its own so it can keep running until it runs out of ore. A refinery can pull ore through a sorter, and push ingots out through a sorter. An assembler can work with sorters. Other blocks can work with sorters.

2. It is a one way route. Anything pushed or pulled through it can't go back. Not unless it had a different way back. It could be another sorter block pointing the other way. This was possible before sorter blocks. It was a connector block launching stuff into space pointed in the direction of a collector block (which can collect stuff from space). In fact, a connector could be built pointing directly into a collector, and built so close you couldn't possible put anything in the way.

3. It can push and pull things on the conveyer network all by itself. This too was possible with a connector/collector combo.

4. It can filter what is allowed through it. This was hard before better tools came along. The sorter block is the latest option and easiest to use. A programing block can do complex stuff, but you would need programing skills for that (or know a friend).

Tips:

1. Put the sorter pointing into a cargo container. This removes all doubt of where the cargo will end up. If the sorter is placed earlier in the conveyer network where there are multiple possible destinations, then the cargo could wind up at any of those destinations. There are biases to where things go depending on how the conveyer network was built, but that is difficult to control hence one reason why sorters are handy.

2. Use black list to select items you don't want to get through, and while list to select items you do want to get through. Black list = allow all except. While list = block all except. You can add to the list general things like "ores" which affect all ores or add to the list very specific things like "iron ore" which will only affect iron ore.

3. Use drain all when you want the sorter block to move stuff. For instance, empty a ship of cargo. If you don't need to move stuff, it is probably best to leave it off. Fewer moving parts.

4. If you open a cargo container and can stuff from and to the cargo container, then so can a sorter block.

5. Be careful to avoid infinite loops. It won't break anything, but it can prevent the system from doing anything meaningful. For instance, having a sorter block having direct access to the same cargo container it will dump to. It will pull goods in, then put them back. It'll keep doing that forever or until stopped.

Examples:

I used to have trouble with refineries. You can cause problems if you have too many blocks of the same type directly connected to each other. One time I had a line of refineries (10, maybe 20 lined up in a row) with a single conveyer tube in. Those refineries kept on stopping work because they tried to dump their ingots into the nearest cargo container with room, which just so happened to be each other. It was annoying to have to manually dump their inventory every so often. I had switched to using different base designs until the sorter block came along. A sorter block can pull those ingots from the refineries and send them into a cargo container that won't gum up the works. To prevent an infinite loop, the ore in route has a sorter block that has ore on it's white list.

I have a dedicated disassembly station. I bring a ship with components I want my assemblers to disassemble and then connect the ship to the station. The sorter block will pull every object except construction components (takes a long time build) and oxygen tanks (I don't like wasting oxygen). Due to a bug, assemblers set to disassemble mode can't be left to manage their own pull requests, so I have a sorter block pulling components from general storage and pushing them into the assemblers. I then have another sorter block pulling raw materials out and putting them into storage. The disasemblers may reset progress every time something is put in their inventory, and the system is prone to working on the smallest items first (when I would rather the largest go first), but it gets the job done. I stop by every so often with a ship that has its own sorter that will pull the raw materials in.

 

Thanks for your replies, guys. I'll upload a copy when I next get a chance.

In the meantime, thanks for the summary DivineWrath. What you have put is what I already thought, though. In terms of not understanding, you are probably right. But, that's because the game has very little in the way of detailed guidance and the public wiki's are useful but still don't give me anything I don't know. Now, I get the theory that they should pull stuff, which I why I do not understand why they are not.

So, do I have too many sorters?
Following what you said, I would suggest that I can remove the one on the docking connector. The other 6 are there to filter the goods, with 'Drain All' selected. It is my understanding that I did not have one of them, the container would fill with everything. The sorters on the outside are purely there to ensure one way flow out of the containers and prevent back flow. All the sorters at the bottom right, following the refinery/assembler system, are working as expected. I may be able to remove one from each conveyor line but, as it currently stands, they are working correctly. It's the 'front side' of the containers that seem to be failing to work correctly.

Even with the current setup, with my understanding, I believe the first sorter by the docking container should move every item possible out of the ship (set to blacklist, nothing blacklisted, and 'Drain All'). Then the 6 container sorters (well, 5, as one is turned off) pick up the bits from there and filter them out to containers.

Please, do explain if I am misinterpreting something here but I still don't see what I've got wrong. Of course, I am also aware it could be bugged but I think it's probably a set up issue in this instance. :rolleyes:

GC

 

I believe there's a bug with the sorters. If you leave them at default to white list everything then perform an operation like turning them on/of etc., they tend to break and not pull anything or allow anything to pass through.

There is an easy fix.

Always have your sorters set to something specific rather than leaving the field empty. If you want to white list everything then select all of the *Groups* of items as being white listed. Even if your block isn't allowing anything through at the moment this should fix your problem.

This bug infuriated me until I figured out a work around. Cutting out 20 sorters and replacing them took the better part of a day in survival.

 

Thanks Ronin, I'll give that a go later. I'll report back!

 

Sorry about the delay. I was busy.

I did some tests not long ago. You can have several sorter blocks pointing towards each other. They won't dump their cargo into each other. They will try to skip conveyer sorters ahead of them to try to reach an actual cargo container. It doesn't matter what their settings are. It seems they will deliberately try to avoid dumping cargo into each other. It seems that having 10 sorters pointing into each other (like a long line of conveyer tubes) is as effective as having 10 sorters side by side. A single conveyer sorter will move 1000 L of goods at a time, so a line of 10 conveyer sorters will move 10 times that.

I was worried that they would move their cargo into to the next conveyer sorter, so a line of several dozen sorters would be as effective as one. Thankfully that is not true. It makes managing them a little bit easier.

Anyways, I think your grasp of flow of goods is just fine. What you didn't grasp was that drain all will grab everything it can reach from anywhere in the conveyer network. The only time a sorter couldn't move something was if you couldn't move the thing the same way.

Something that hasn't really come up and get discussed yet in this thread is that conveyer sorters can move 1000 L of goods at a time. If you watch it work, it will fill with itself with 1000 L of goods, and then empty itself, then repeat. I think this happens once every second (I don't know for sure). So a single sorter should be able to move 100k L of goods in little over a 100 seconds. If you wanted to reduce that time, you could add more sorters doing the same work. At the other end of the spectrum, a sorter that is moving far less than 1000 L of goods doesn't need another a second sorter to help it. Your lone refinery for instance, only needs 1 sorter since you couldn't possibly refine enough of anything to justify more sorters. I think you would need nearly 100 refineries refining just iron ore to justify a second sorter to keep up.