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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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
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 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. ;)
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 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.
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!
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.
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
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.
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.
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?
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!
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 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.
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 :)
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.
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.
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.
Been playing for years, take breaks, and forget the finer details, started this video to remember how to set up the sorter, imeadiatly went and installed an antenna
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
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.
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
oooooooh, awesome cheers for tip i was wondering why my conveyor stone ejection system was not working that might have been why, i'll have to remember that one thanks i'll bear that in mind.
@@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?
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
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:
How do you stop assembler from accumulating ingots, I tried drain all but the ingot is just sitting there and if its full it will not make components made from ingot that it has access to but is not in the inventory of assembler.
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 :)
Im having a problem where my Main Large Storage container is blinking. The sorters on set to pull from my drop box, then the sorter than lets me have when I ask is set to drain all 'off' but my storage is very quickly blinking its contents into the sorter thats set to drain all off.
That's because you've got a return loop, so the sorter sees the storage container as being both before and after itself. Either break it or have a sorter that you can toggle on and off on the return part so you can use it when needed
Good tutorial. Things explained well. Thank you. But, I am having issues. When I que up something to be built, it gets built, then disappears into the nether.. I have checked all cargo containers. I have checked all inventories of everything connected. They are gone. I have tried making Gatling Turrets, a welder for a ship, and ammo for the Gatling Turret. What am I missing? Please help.
Try creating something then searching by keyword instead. If it's still not there make sure the assembler is set to assemble not disassemble as that's the only thing I can think of 🫤
Is there any way to sort Hydrogen/Oxygen gas using the sorters? For example, I want to devise an automatic refueling station for hydrogen vehicles: One end of the "pump" draws hydrogen from a transport vehicle, such as a tanker rover or freighter, the other end of the "pump" gives it back to vehicles parked at station pumps/landing pads like a gas station would. My current understanding is that Hydrogen just kind of freely moves between tanks so far. And I want to avoid using [Stockpile] since it: 1.) Prevents hydrogen distribution to the vehicle itself (IE: Thrusters). 2.) Drains other neighboring parked vehicles. 3.) Is annoying to remember to check it on and off before departing.
I can't seem to get ammo pulled into my ship containers. Ive made an assault cannon drone and it has a sorter inside but it doesn't pull the ammo from the connector into the small cargo containers. I can manually put the ammo trough so there are no problem with a conveyor part missing and the sorter is going torwards the small cargo containers. Edit: The items are jumping between the connector and sorter. Edit 2.0: I had made the convayors loop having access to both 2 ports of the weapon inventory. I fixed it by only the 2nd set of cargo containers having access to one of the gun's inventory ports.
If there's a loop then sorters will constantly pull, you need to make sure that any loop is something you can switch on or off depending on need so that the sorter isn't constantly pulling items from itself
This really helps me think a little more like Satisfactory, which while this is a bit more tedious to set up, will let me actually make a nice clean factoy. And also not have to manually draw ore out of my mining ship.
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 have a question. I am trying to build a ringed station. The ring will be the docking port, but have decoys in it. So if I get attacked I release the decoys. I also want a conveyor to pull everything out of the ring so it won't get destroyed. I thought a sorter can do this but with it how could a put items into the conveyor system on the ring? Would it not go through?
If you have a sorter in the opposite direction that's turned off, you could turn it on when you need to pull things through and then back off when no longer needed - but to make it work nicely you'd possibly want to use a timer block to simultaneously activate the return sorter while turning off the pull function from the other sorter. The reason for this is that without turning off pull you'll end up with items moving constantly in a loop :P
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.
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 :)
do anyone know why sorters are backing up even where there is no loop? i tried to make main line and sort everything to specified containers but somehow thats dont work
If the sorters are managing to pull from the containers they're meant to be dumping in then you have a loop somewhere, check it over again and make sure there are no conveyors that link back as that's the only reason I know of that can allow that to happen
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.
If you're attempting to place medium cargo containers they're only available in small grid so can't be built on a station, if you've got a small or large cargo container out then you can change the grid size by pressing the number on your hotbar again to toggle between :)
Could you do a new tutorial about that? Cuz i have an issue with the connector, i have enabled throw out but it doesnt do that. I mean i have ice loaded and i want that in the O2 processor. But it doesnt work.
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
So I have two sorters set up do far. One for components and one for ingots. The one for ingots keeps bouncing back and forth between the sort and the storage unit. How do I stop that? The one for components is working properly.
If there's a return loop then you'll end up with that situation since the sorter will keep pulling from the storage since it sees the storage as being on both sides of itself
@@Splitsie I ended find where it was. Took me forever to see it. I didn't even mean to put it there. I went looking for answers everywhere I could. A lot of what I found pointed to it being a big. I rebuilt it in another world to make sure, and it turned out to be a loop running beside it. I forgot to change the settings on another sorter. So basically, it was just another pipe. For the longest time, I couldn't find, and ended up adding a third sorter to compensate. Only made it worse. Finally, I took the whole thing down to start fresh. Still going off the original design, and found the problem. All good now though.
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
Can someone's helps me out , i have made a mining ship , and i used sorters to separate ores from stone , but by some reason i dont know the sorters are being ignored. And all items are going on to my ores cargo container , the real thing thats freaks me off was the ship worked when i firts build it , so a ctrl+x the ship to create a blue print , so when a spawned the ship onses again the sorters system of the ship arent working anymore , pls help me out , i arredy make everythink , remove and replace the blocks , reconfig , putting out and in a group , turn on and off to tried updated the state of block but nothing works, yeah i already checked with any conveyor aren't in contact with others blocks from stone separation system. Firts time i make a nice workable and functional ship and the sorters are being ignored :(
Make sure to check the blacklist/whitelist toggle. Anything connected by a conveyor port or tubes is just a single inventory. You don't need to separate the stone between your drills and storage. If you try to do that you're going to end up getting your drills just plugged up with stone and then you can't mine anything else. You have dump the stone from a connector.
@@tyty8484 i don't know what happened but i kind created a balance between white list and black list , them my entire system got to work well once more , like if a need ore on a cargo conteiner them a add a black list blocking the flux of stone and a create a white list in other sorter to take the stone to other cargo container them take out from the system , like if i only use white list or black list the system crash
@@NovemberAutumnFalls It just sounds like it's overly complicated. Maybe you had a conveyor connected to the same inventory on both sides? I haven't actually tried that to see what happens tho.
If that's happening you've got a loop and need a filter on the return loop to prevent the ammo moving around in a circle (so another sorter with ammo set to blacklist)
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
What does turning off a sorter do? I was hoping this would allow for it to act like a normal conveyor when I want, but apparently it's still directional even when off.
As you saw they're always directional, I thought turning it off would block that circuit altogether, but maybe it just turns off the blacklist/whitelist function (off the top of my head I'm not certain and I'm not able to test it at the moment)
Maybe this is outdated but I played "Learning to Survive" and build a ship with a Large Cargo Container and it did all of this without any sorter setup. Just simple conveyors/junctions. Ice got pulled into the H2/O2 Gen, Ores into the Refinery and Ingots into the Assembler.
Some blocks can push/pull things, the goal of the system here was to show what could and couldn't be done with sorters, it was never something that was necessary to do, just as tool for teaching/learning 🙂
@@Splitsie ahhh ok I was kinda confused by it. I really hope that Keen updates the Inventory System. I never liked the huge amount of Storage Container that you need to manage. I guess that Sorters help with that a little bit.
I know this video is old, but I tried and tried last night to stack assemblers together and a refinery and I could not get the assemblers to pull inventory from the refinery. It wasn't large scale so there was no storage attached, but it didn't make sense that I would need to do a conveyor system when I want to just stack the units together. I lined up their smaller openings when placing and couldn't get them to share inventories. Is there anyway someone could guide me to a video showing this so I can see what I did wrong, or just tell me how to do it?
The smaller openings on refineries and assemblers are not conveyor ports. Those smaller ones are for upgrade modules, I suspect that's where most of your troubles have come from. The conveyor ports are the larger ports that nearly take up a full grid cube surface. On the assembler there are some parts that have both on the same square as well. Hopefully that'll get you back on track :)
sooo.. if i want to dock my orbiter to load off ore AND refuel with uranium and Hydrogen... I cant do that over the same conveoyr tube? I would need to connect to two seperate connectors at the same time. right?
Or have sorters operating in two directions, one to allow uranium to move back (and nothing else) and one to drag all the ore off the ship onto the base, with both hooked up to the connector. Be mindful with that sort of setup that you don't create a loop as it'll lag your game a fair bit and keep things moving so you can't easily grab them :/
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 😭
Gi ther one thing do you think if color coding youre conveyors, junctions, sorters and cargo so that you can easily see what does what and example blue for ice hidrogen and o2 green for ore red for ammo and tools yelow for components. So if simething doesnt work lije say the components dont get past assembler you can easily gind the problem?
@@Splitsie hi ther thanks for responding took me a while,to see my notification sistem,doesnt,work lol. I,actually created this with color,coding so,i,have it ingame as a template to see as i am,building my survival respawn ship so i can do it as compact as posible,without messing up the sistem really gratefull for this tutorial love all youre videos and youre way of talking to us the spectators is really soothing and nice, clear and easily understandable after watching youre tutorials the game becomes so easy. Now my problem is to get the ships to not to look as bricks by practice making progress now on my 10 iteration of my ship,design the first 9 failed mmiserably. Some didnt,work,others didnt have enough power for engines to,work,some,were so,hideous i just got rid of them mabe this last one,is actually showing progress mabe i mange to do,it at least simple,and nice to,the eye and,functional thanks,a lot for youre work i apreciate all,youre efforts. Keep,up,the great work a big thumbs for you my sir. 👍
I have 2 connectors on a station. I have ships docked to both of them. Whenever I get into one of the ships and undock it, it undocks the other ship at the same time. Is there a way to make this not happen?
Are you using the 'P' key to undock/dock? Unfortunately the game has always been a bit buggy with how that behaves. You can usually get more consistent performance by using a hotkey for lock/unlock with the connector on your hotbar - while in the ship press G then drag the connector to a spot on your hotbar (or right click on it to make it fill the first empty slot) then select lock/unlock :)
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 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!
Great video..really helped me. But I'm having trouble with the bottles like some others are having. I did your setup to a T and it only keeps the bottles and never returns them :(
That was always a bit of an issue with this setup, what you need to do is set up a return loop with a sorter coming back from the O2 H2 generator. If you have a timer block set up to switch that sorter on when it turns the one that takes the bottles to the generator off you'll be able to bring them back without creating an infinite loop with the bottles just moving back and forth :)
@@Splitsie I tried doing what you suggested, and its not working. Maybe I'm misunderstanding your instructions, or I'm not setting stuff up right. Iv tried all day yesterday and I'm pretty burnt out trying to make it work. But I appreciate your reply!
ive watched this tutorial about 5 times now and i still cant get my system to work unless i follow it to the T. Am i too stupid for SE? Does everything have to split at the first container? trying to get everything to go through connector>refinery>assembler>storage1>storage2 with the way my base is setup but sorters in the places i need them just create a constant pulling cycle or prevent normal backwards access.
I find it much easier to have a redundant system. Have a sorter pulling what you want into a large cargo container, then the other stuff like refinery, assembler, h2/o2 gens, etc just connected to that without sorters so they can just pull from that as needed. It's much more simple.
@@Blue-ke5sb mm but when assembler gets full i need it to connect to my main storage again, but it makes a circuit. can scripts do something about this? never used them before
@@RfLARedBeard I'm sure there are scripts for something like that, but I'm not an expert with them myself. I just have a circuit. Yes, the storage will pull from itself, but this has been pretty harmless to me, I always have the ability to pull what I need on demand.
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've found my assemblers are "overfilling" with ore, like the input part of the inventory is just taking an entire stack of iron because I have a ton of it available in my storage, but then it doesn't have room left over for the other materials it needs to make stuff... is there a way to fix this with sorters? Without scripts ideally?
@@Splitsie Thanks for the answer still! I searched around a lot, it's good to at least know now I wasn't missing something. I'll look into scripting solutions instead ^^
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
Seven years later and still a great video! Thank you for the explanation!
Thanks so much :)
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 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.
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.
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.
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?
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 :)
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.
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.
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
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.
Cant stop binging these videos. Thanks for so much help
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. ;)
Your videos are the only reason I can do anything in this game. Thank you!
You're very welcome :)
good to see this video is still arround. after a couple years of break, the madness began again, and i knew what i did wrong at the 2 minute mark xD
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 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.
This is probably my favorite of the series so far, thanks.
You're very welcome :)
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!
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 :)
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 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
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 :)
for a new player such as myself, this is incredibly helpful, thank you!
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.
These are by far the best Space Engineers tutorials
Thanks so much :)
Best space engineers videos on the internet!, thanks mate 👍
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?
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 :)
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 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.
Hoy, Im in my first 10 hours of Space Engineers. Thank you for this!
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 :)
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
these videos are awesome :)
Thanks!
Splitsie your a legend when it comes to SE always use your guides.
Thanks :)
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 :)
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.
without your outstanding tutorials,this game would be really frustrating for me.
thanks!
You're very welcome, I'm glad they've been useful :)
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.
Been playing for years, take breaks, and forget the finer details, started this video to remember how to set up the sorter, imeadiatly went and installed an antenna
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
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.
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
oooooooh, awesome cheers for tip i was wondering why my conveyor stone ejection system was not working that might have been why, i'll have to remember that one thanks i'll bear that in mind.
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?
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
Thanks for clearing up sorters and storage for me. Confusion reduced!
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 :)
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:
How do you stop assembler from accumulating ingots, I tried drain all but the ingot is just sitting there and if its full it will not make components made from ingot that it has access to but is not in the inventory of assembler.
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.
Somehow my items are not being pulled I’ve followed everything I am able to manually pull ingots to assemblers but can’t do it automatically
Im having a problem where my Main Large Storage container is blinking. The sorters on set to pull from my drop box, then the sorter than lets me have when I ask is set to drain all 'off' but my storage is very quickly blinking its contents into the sorter thats set to drain all off.
That's because you've got a return loop, so the sorter sees the storage container as being both before and after itself. Either break it or have a sorter that you can toggle on and off on the return part so you can use it when needed
Good tutorial. Things explained well. Thank you. But, I am having issues. When I que up something to be built, it gets built, then disappears into the nether.. I have checked all cargo containers. I have checked all inventories of everything connected. They are gone. I have tried making Gatling Turrets, a welder for a ship, and ammo for the Gatling Turret. What am I missing? Please help.
Try creating something then searching by keyword instead. If it's still not there make sure the assembler is set to assemble not disassemble as that's the only thing I can think of 🫤
Wonderfully clear and concise. Thank You
Thanks :)
Is there any way to sort Hydrogen/Oxygen gas using the sorters?
For example, I want to devise an automatic refueling station for hydrogen vehicles:
One end of the "pump" draws hydrogen from a transport vehicle, such as a tanker rover or freighter, the other end of the "pump" gives it back to vehicles parked at station pumps/landing pads like a gas station would.
My current understanding is that Hydrogen just kind of freely moves between tanks so far. And I want to avoid using [Stockpile] since it:
1.) Prevents hydrogen distribution to the vehicle itself (IE: Thrusters).
2.) Drains other neighboring parked vehicles.
3.) Is annoying to remember to check it on and off before departing.
Unfortunately gasses can't be sorted by the vanilla sorters :(
@@Splitsie Guess I'll have to tinker a bit to see what is possible... thanks for the response none the less!
I can't seem to get ammo pulled into my ship containers. Ive made an assault cannon drone and it has a sorter inside but it doesn't pull the ammo from the connector into the small cargo containers. I can manually put the ammo trough so there are no problem with a conveyor part missing and the sorter is going torwards the small cargo containers.
Edit: The items are jumping between the connector and sorter.
Edit 2.0: I had made the convayors loop having access to both 2 ports of the weapon inventory. I fixed it by only the 2nd set of cargo containers having access to one of the gun's inventory ports.
If there's a loop then sorters will constantly pull, you need to make sure that any loop is something you can switch on or off depending on need so that the sorter isn't constantly pulling items from itself
@@Splitsie I'm quite the newb to this game I now have about 40h in game. My question is how do I switch a loop on and off compactly?
This really helps me think a little more like Satisfactory, which while this is a bit more tedious to set up, will let me actually make a nice clean factoy. And also not have to manually draw ore out of my mining ship.
"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
is there any way to pull all items into the right container but let them access from all of the doors?
Thanks dude honestly could figure this out in my own
I have a question. I am trying to build a ringed station. The ring will be the docking port, but have decoys in it. So if I get attacked I release the decoys. I also want a conveyor to pull everything out of the ring so it won't get destroyed. I thought a sorter can do this but with it how could a put items into the conveyor system on the ring? Would it not go through?
Could I only pull stuff out from the ring?
If you have a sorter in the opposite direction that's turned off, you could turn it on when you need to pull things through and then back off when no longer needed - but to make it work nicely you'd possibly want to use a timer block to simultaneously activate the return sorter while turning off the pull function from the other sorter. The reason for this is that without turning off pull you'll end up with items moving constantly in a loop :P
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.
i tried this system but my ships wont refuel am i doing something wrong???
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 :)
The ingots in the cargo cantainer are not being pulled into the assembler, why is that??
do anyone know why sorters are backing up even where there is no loop? i tried to make main line and sort everything to specified containers but somehow thats dont work
If the sorters are managing to pull from the containers they're meant to be dumping in then you have a loop somewhere, check it over again and make sure there are no conveyors that link back as that's the only reason I know of that can allow that to happen
so hard to rember all but at least we got this to come back to
for the wheel and spoke design, can't you put 2 conveyor sorters in line, one set to black list ice, the other white listing *ores*
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 :)
I don´t understand i can´t place cargos containers to my station grid, it place them automatically free... And they move every where.
If you're attempting to place medium cargo containers they're only available in small grid so can't be built on a station, if you've got a small or large cargo container out then you can change the grid size by pressing the number on your hotbar again to toggle between :)
Could you do a new tutorial about that? Cuz i have an issue with the connector, i have enabled throw out but it doesnt do that. I mean i have ice loaded and i want that in the O2 processor. But it doesnt work.
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
So I have two sorters set up do far. One for components and one for ingots. The one for ingots keeps bouncing back and forth between the sort and the storage unit. How do I stop that? The one for components is working properly.
If there's a return loop then you'll end up with that situation since the sorter will keep pulling from the storage since it sees the storage as being on both sides of itself
@@Splitsie I ended find where it was. Took me forever to see it. I didn't even mean to put it there. I went looking for answers everywhere I could. A lot of what I found pointed to it being a big. I rebuilt it in another world to make sure, and it turned out to be a loop running beside it. I forgot to change the settings on another sorter. So basically, it was just another pipe. For the longest time, I couldn't find, and ended up adding a third sorter to compensate. Only made it worse. Finally, I took the whole thing down to start fresh. Still going off the original design, and found the problem. All good now though.
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 :)
Can someone's helps me out , i have made a mining ship , and i used sorters to separate ores from stone , but by some reason i dont know the sorters are being ignored.
And all items are going on to my ores cargo container , the real thing thats freaks me off was the ship worked when i firts build it , so a ctrl+x the ship to create a blue print , so when a spawned the ship onses again the sorters system of the ship arent working anymore , pls help me out , i arredy make everythink , remove and replace the blocks , reconfig , putting out and in a group , turn on and off to tried updated the state of block but nothing works, yeah i already checked with any conveyor aren't in contact with others blocks from stone separation system.
Firts time i make a nice workable and functional ship and the sorters are being ignored :(
Make sure to check the blacklist/whitelist toggle.
Anything connected by a conveyor port or tubes is just a single inventory. You don't need to separate the stone between your drills and storage. If you try to do that you're going to end up getting your drills just plugged up with stone and then you can't mine anything else. You have dump the stone from a connector.
@@tyty8484 i don't know what happened but i kind created a balance between white list and black list , them my entire system got to work well once more , like if a need ore on a cargo conteiner them a add a black list blocking the flux of stone and a create a white list in other sorter to take the stone to other cargo container them take out from the system , like if i only use white list or black list the system crash
@@NovemberAutumnFalls It just sounds like it's overly complicated.
Maybe you had a conveyor connected to the same inventory on both sides? I haven't actually tried that to see what happens tho.
Issue with the conveyor is pulling an item out of my ammo storage then putting it back in how I stop from happening
If that's happening you've got a loop and need a filter on the return loop to prevent the ammo moving around in a circle (so another sorter with ammo set to blacklist)
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
What does turning off a sorter do? I was hoping this would allow for it to act like a normal conveyor when I want, but apparently it's still directional even when off.
As you saw they're always directional, I thought turning it off would block that circuit altogether, but maybe it just turns off the blacklist/whitelist function (off the top of my head I'm not certain and I'm not able to test it at the moment)
Maybe this is outdated but I played "Learning to Survive" and build a ship with a Large Cargo Container and it did all of this
without any sorter setup. Just simple conveyors/junctions. Ice got pulled into the H2/O2 Gen, Ores into the Refinery and Ingots into the Assembler.
Some blocks can push/pull things, the goal of the system here was to show what could and couldn't be done with sorters, it was never something that was necessary to do, just as tool for teaching/learning 🙂
@@Splitsie ahhh ok I was kinda confused by it. I really hope that Keen updates the Inventory System. I never liked the huge amount of Storage Container that you need to manage. I guess that Sorters help with that a little bit.
I know this video is old, but I tried and tried last night to stack assemblers together and a refinery and I could not get the assemblers to pull inventory from the refinery. It wasn't large scale so there was no storage attached, but it didn't make sense that I would need to do a conveyor system when I want to just stack the units together. I lined up their smaller openings when placing and couldn't get them to share inventories. Is there anyway someone could guide me to a video showing this so I can see what I did wrong, or just tell me how to do it?
The smaller openings on refineries and assemblers are not conveyor ports. Those smaller ones are for upgrade modules, I suspect that's where most of your troubles have come from. The conveyor ports are the larger ports that nearly take up a full grid cube surface. On the assembler there are some parts that have both on the same square as well.
Hopefully that'll get you back on track :)
@@Splitsie ahhh, that makes sense.
sooo.. if i want to dock my orbiter to load off ore AND refuel with uranium and Hydrogen... I cant do that over the same conveoyr tube? I would need to connect to two seperate connectors at the same time. right?
Or have sorters operating in two directions, one to allow uranium to move back (and nothing else) and one to drag all the ore off the ship onto the base, with both hooked up to the connector. Be mindful with that sort of setup that you don't create a loop as it'll lag your game a fair bit and keep things moving so you can't easily grab them :/
Will these two systems pull ice out of engines and H2/CO generators?
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 😭
Gi ther one thing do you think if color coding youre conveyors, junctions, sorters and cargo so that you can easily see what does what and example blue for ice hidrogen and o2 green for ore red for ammo and tools yelow for components. So if simething doesnt work lije say the components dont get past assembler you can easily gind the problem?
Yeah, colour coding is a very sensible idea if you're building a network like this :)
@@Splitsie hi ther thanks for responding took me a while,to see my notification sistem,doesnt,work lol. I,actually created this with color,coding so,i,have it ingame as a template to see as i am,building my survival respawn ship so i can do it as compact as posible,without messing up the sistem really gratefull for this tutorial love all youre videos and youre way of talking to us the spectators is really soothing and nice, clear and easily understandable after watching youre tutorials the game becomes so easy. Now my problem is to get the ships to not to look as bricks by practice making progress now on my 10 iteration of my ship,design the first 9 failed mmiserably. Some didnt,work,others didnt have enough power for engines to,work,some,were so,hideous i just got rid of them mabe this last one,is actually showing progress mabe i mange to do,it at least simple,and nice to,the eye and,functional thanks,a lot for youre work i apreciate all,youre efforts. Keep,up,the great work a big thumbs for you my sir. 👍
For the ore sorters excluding ice why dont you put another sorter just in front of it that blacklists ice??
Because I was silly :P
Basically, that's a very reasonable solution that I didn't think of at the time...
I have 2 connectors on a station. I have ships docked to both of them. Whenever I get into one of the ships and undock it, it undocks the other ship at the same time. Is there a way to make this not happen?
Are you using the 'P' key to undock/dock? Unfortunately the game has always been a bit buggy with how that behaves. You can usually get more consistent performance by using a hotkey for lock/unlock with the connector on your hotbar - while in the ship press G then drag the connector to a spot on your hotbar (or right click on it to make it fill the first empty slot) then select lock/unlock :)
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 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!
How did I miss this video.this video helped out alot
Glad it was handy :)
Great video..really helped me. But I'm having trouble with the bottles like some others are having. I did your setup to a T and it only keeps the bottles and never returns them :(
That was always a bit of an issue with this setup, what you need to do is set up a return loop with a sorter coming back from the O2 H2 generator. If you have a timer block set up to switch that sorter on when it turns the one that takes the bottles to the generator off you'll be able to bring them back without creating an infinite loop with the bottles just moving back and forth :)
@@Splitsie I tried doing what you suggested, and its not working. Maybe I'm misunderstanding your instructions, or I'm not setting stuff up right. Iv tried all day yesterday and I'm pretty burnt out trying to make it work. But I appreciate your reply!
Is it possible to transfer hydrogen from one tank to another? I had a tank I was filling up, but I want to reposition it on my base
Yep, set the one to be filled to 'stockpile' and ensure that the one to be emptied has that set to off and the gas will transfer between them :)
ive watched this tutorial about 5 times now and i still cant get my system to work unless i follow it to the T. Am i too stupid for SE? Does everything have to split at the first container? trying to get everything to go through connector>refinery>assembler>storage1>storage2 with the way my base is setup but sorters in the places i need them just create a constant pulling cycle or prevent normal backwards access.
I find it much easier to have a redundant system.
Have a sorter pulling what you want into a large cargo container, then the other stuff like refinery, assembler, h2/o2 gens, etc just connected to that without sorters so they can just pull from that as needed. It's much more simple.
@@Blue-ke5sb mm but when assembler gets full i need it to connect to my main storage again, but it makes a circuit. can scripts do something about this? never used them before
@@RfLARedBeard I'm sure there are scripts for something like that, but I'm not an expert with them myself. I just have a circuit. Yes, the storage will pull from itself, but this has been pretty harmless to me, I always have the ability to pull what I need on demand.
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've found my assemblers are "overfilling" with ore, like the input part of the inventory is just taking an entire stack of iron because I have a ton of it available in my storage, but then it doesn't have room left over for the other materials it needs to make stuff... is there a way to fix this with sorters? Without scripts ideally?
Sadly not, it's a bug that they've always suffered from :(
@@Splitsie Thanks for the answer still! I searched around a lot, it's good to at least know now I wasn't missing something.
I'll look into scripting solutions instead ^^