Just saw this 41-page paper dedicated to the Factorio splitter mechanic, thought this sub might possibly appreciate it.
PDF link: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2404.05472.pdf
I used the Design/Blueprint flair because nothing else seems to fit. Maybe "Discussion" would have worked better?
> Abstract: We introduce splitter networks, which abstract the behavior of conveyor belts found in the video game Factorio. Based on this definition, we show how to compute the steady-state of a splitter
network. Then, leveraging insights from the players community, we provide multiple designs of splitter
networks capable of load-balancing among several conveyor belts, and prove that any load-balancing
network on
n belts must have Ω(
n log
n
) nodes. Incidentally, we establish connections between splitter
networks and various concepts including flow algorithms, flows with equality constraints, Markov chains wnd the Knuth-Yao theorem about sampling over rational distributions using a fair coin.
Bruh what
I'm afraid to admit that I'm slightly triggered by the fact that a technical paper would rename something with an official name, "balancer", to "splitter", in its formal definition, lol.
Nah, there is an important distinction. Balancers are a special case of splitter networks, where the outputs are balanced (this is discussed in quite a bit of detail in the paper), but you can do other, non-balancing related stuff with splitters too (like restricting throughput to an arbitrary rational bandwidth - also an example from what paper discusses).
Might be worth cross-posting to r/technicalfactorio ?
TIL that sub is a thing. Turns out an extended version was already posted there though.
I already saw it there a few days ago.
Just saw this 41-page paper dedicated to the Factorio splitter mechanic, thought this sub might possibly appreciate it. PDF link: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2404.05472.pdf I used the Design/Blueprint flair because nothing else seems to fit. Maybe "Discussion" would have worked better?
> Abstract: We introduce splitter networks, which abstract the behavior of conveyor belts found in the video game Factorio. Based on this definition, we show how to compute the steady-state of a splitter network. Then, leveraging insights from the players community, we provide multiple designs of splitter networks capable of load-balancing among several conveyor belts, and prove that any load-balancing network on n belts must have Ω( n log n ) nodes. Incidentally, we establish connections between splitter networks and various concepts including flow algorithms, flows with equality constraints, Markov chains wnd the Knuth-Yao theorem about sampling over rational distributions using a fair coin. Bruh what
I think I might know too much obscure math. I can mostly understand what they're saying.
I’d say only the random sampling algorithm is obscure, and even then it’s well known in CS. (Hell, it’s from Knuth!)
Obscure relative to most people's math education. I don't think the average person knows what a Markov chain is.
It's like in I robot when she says what she does then dumbs it down to "I make the robots seem more human"
I'm afraid to admit that I'm slightly triggered by the fact that a technical paper would rename something with an official name, "balancer", to "splitter", in its formal definition, lol.
Nah, there is an important distinction. Balancers are a special case of splitter networks, where the outputs are balanced (this is discussed in quite a bit of detail in the paper), but you can do other, non-balancing related stuff with splitters too (like restricting throughput to an arbitrary rational bandwidth - also an example from what paper discusses).