U-shape Balancer

U-shape Balancer

Allows distributing and prioritizing products using any of its two input and output ports.

Construction	8
Electricity	20 KW
Footprint	2x2
Cargo	Loose products
Required Research	Transports Balancing
Designation	Transports
Variants	Flat Balancer Molten Balancer Pipe Balancer

The U-shape Balancer is a transport with 8 U-shape Conveyor [II • III] ports. Its serves two different but important roles: To allow you to pick priority Input(s) and Output(s) of the balancer and to allow for the (strict) evening out of the resources between multiple inputs, multiple outputs, or both.

Each of the 8 ports can be either input or output (or neither). The direction of the port is determined by the direction of the U-shaped conveyor connected to it.

The U-shape Balancer works as a balancer, without any options toggeled - it will balance any inputs and outputs (with the same level of priority), effectivly acting as an (double) OR Gate. The U-shape Connector has the same effect, thus being the preferred option for this use case (since the patch v0.4.13).

The U-shape Balancer can only be connected to U-shape Conveyors [II • III], it can not be connected directly to buildings.

Balancer UI

The player can open the balancer's UI by clicking on the transport.

Two toggles are available under "Even I/O ratios":

• Enforce strictly even inputs
• Enforce strictly even outputs

Under "Prioritization" each port can be prioritized and it also dislpays whether it's an input or output port. It is possible to prioritize none, one, two, ... , or even all of the ports simultaneously, depending on the desired use case.

On the right side of the UI is "Priority", which sets the power/manpower/maintenance priority for this building. It is advised to keep this fairly high for any of the balancers, as they will severely damage any resource chains when out of order and they do not actually consume any of manpower nor maintenance, only 20 KW of power.

Strictly Even inputs or outputs

If both the first and the second toggles are activated, the transport will only pull equally from connected input ports and push equally to connected output ports, effectivly acting as an (double) AND Gate.

Which means that if one of the output ports is full (blocked) then any resources won't be sent through any other output ports either.

Similiarily when an input port is lacking resources, no resources are brought in from any other input ports.

Enforcing strictly even inputs/outputs resets any priorities set for the ports.

Priority input or output

Any prioritized port is prioritized over a nonprioritized port. All nonprioritized ports are equal, all prioritized ports are equal.

Example use cases

• Priority input: to ensure that a Loose Storage is emptied before accepting stock from a main conveyor line.
• Priority output: to ensure that sufficient Coal is used to continuously run a Boiler (Coal) making Electricity before allowing a Basic Distiller to be fed.
• Strictly even inputs: to ensure that Uranium Ore brought in from a Cargo Ship is pulled equally from multiple Loose Modules.
• Strictly even outputs: to ensure that PCBs from an Assembly (Electric) are equally fed into two of the same making Electronics.

See also

• U-shape Conveyor [II • III]
• U-shape Sorter
• U-shape Connector
• Pipe Balancer
• Molten Balancer
• Flat Balancer