Well I figure he does want control.
Also, if theres two competitors and both could give more than a 2x return, then its a safe bet. The only way its an unsafe bet is if they can both fail, but hes clearly not thinking about that kind of thing.
VLC icon, obviously.
VLC’s agenda has always been being the only traffic cone. It even stands for Very Large Cone.
Don’t fall for Big Cone’s agenda.
A bunch are work from home setups.
I have built something very like this and fluids are a huge pain.
Thankfully they can be filtered now, but its a mess.
Mine relies on the network, the design needs 2 roboports to get requests and contents without them intermingling. I have a Quality buffer chest and conditions to do the same thing shown here. It’s input and output, so things like gears and cables are available as soon as they’re crafted.
I then have a second buffer chest requesting all the different fluid things that are produced the more traditional way, sulfur, electric engines, and the like, and its input-only.
There’s other details, but the space is tight enough that pumping in 1000 sulfuric acid (since I’d be getting it via underground pipes) for a few blue chips isn’t worth it.
I’m sure there’s a better implementation than mine though.
You can but only if you set it up so that it uses all the liquid, or accept waste.
For instance, processing units require 5 sulfuric acid. In an automated setup, you could set up your logic to only craft processing units in batches of 10, so that you use up the whole 50 units of sulfuric acid you’ll get from 1 barrel.
You could also accept the loss of up to 45 sulfuric acid per craft, if the automated system only needs the 1 processing unit, but that isn’t complication-free. When an assembler changes its recipe, if a connected pipe can take the fluid, it will. So crafting 1 of these blue circuits can get 45 sulfuric acid pushed into a pipe that should’ve been empty.
I’m not actually sure if it gets pushed back like that if you connect a barrel-emptying assembler directly to another assembler. The emptying assembler might also take that fluid back if it’s compatible, or might not, and void it. If its voided, then you could accept the waste of fluids by sacrificing a whole side of your crafter to a fluid unloader, and then also configure that fluid assembler to unload only exactly the fluid needed, and change that recipe via circuit as well, destroying the unwanted fluid.
Worth testing, although I hate the thought of deleting that fluid. As soon as you save fluid for later though, you have nearly all the same issues as having all the fluids piped in though.