Component Assembly Line

The Component Assembly Line (CoAL) is a UV tier multiblock for bulk crafting component parts such as motors, pumps, and even field generators. Despite its name, the CoAL does not require ingredients to be inserted in any particular order--everything can go in a single input bus/hatch. No datasticks or optical hatches are required either. The reason for using the CoAL for component parts over the regular Assembly Line is that all recipe costs are reduced by 25%, including the length of the recipe itself. The only limitation is that components are made 64 at a time which may be quite expensive, especially for field generators, when entering a new tier. Regardless, this multiblock offers an immense amount of savings and should be the only source of component parts for a UV+ base.

The Component Assembly Line has a fixed-length and does NOT consist of any "slices" like the regular Assembly Line or Circuit Assembly Line. The component assembly line casings are a tiered component that determine the maximum tier of recipes and the speed bonus for lower tier recipes. The glass must be UV+ but has no effect on the operation of the machine. Items enter through an input bus on the front of the structure and leave out the back of the structure. Fluids are limited to the casings on the bottom edge of the structure. Crafting input buses and buffers are supported for large crafts, and multi-amp and laser energy hatches are supported for serious overclocking. Use the Multiblock Structure Hologram Projector to visualize/build the structure with subchannels "glass" and "component_casing" to specify the tier of those components.

Structure

• Controller: Front center, 8th layer
• 516-646 Advanced Iridium Plated Machine Casing
• 280 UV+ Tiered Glass
• 126 PBI Pipe Casing
• 124 Advanced Filter Casing
• 55 Assembly Line Casing
• 43 Component Assembly Line Casing (Tiered)
• 30 Assembler Machine Casing
• 2-4 Tungstensteel Frame Box
• 1+ Energy Hatch: Any outer iridium casing on the 2nd to top layer
• 1 Maintenance Hatch: Any casing around controller
• 1+ Input Bus: Any casing or frame box at front of conveyor belt
• 0+ Input Hatch: Any side bottom edge casing
• 1+ Output Bus: Any casing at end of conveyor belt

Wallsharing

CoALs may wallshare each of their sides to save on casings, glass, and buses/hatches. Overlapping the top layer with another one directly overhead and upside down is the most effective and highly recommended because it shares an entire set of component assembly line casings.

The tier of component assembly line casings on a CoAL determine which recipes it can run; the casing tier must be greater than or equal to the components parts being crafted (e.g. UV parts require at least UV component assembly line casings). For every casing tier above the minimum requirement of a recipe, the recipe time is halved.

The following table lists some of the largest costs associated with obtaining 43 of each component assembly line casing. Everything listed is mutually exclusive (e.g. the circuit costs are NOT included in the ingot costs or other circuit costs). Casings below ZPM are not included because those should all be fairly easy to craft--and probably not worth it---by the time the player can even build the CoAL. There is an assumption that the UIV casings are made with the infinity recipe for hot proto-halkonite steel parts and that the UXV casings are made with the eternity recipe for saturated phononic crystal solution.

Skipping Tiers

Due to the high cost of these casings, it is common to skip some tiers to save on both time and resources. The 25% discount from the CoAL does not always "pay back" the cost to make a specific tier of casing.

The first tier often skipped is UV. The high neutronium cost for UV components and UV superconductors pushes the player away from making very many before proceeding to UHV. Additionally, UHV wetware mainframes can and should be crafted with ZPM superconductors which only requires ZPM casings to save on wetware circuits and europium.

The second tier often skipped is UIV. UIV components are not used too much and require lots of transcendent metal, which is very expensive until eternal coils are obtained. At that point, the UMV CoAL is reasonable, so the UIV CoAL is not worth it.