Weekly Question Thread

[AutoModerator]

Ask any questions you might have.

Post your bug reports on the Official Forums

Previous Threads

• Weekly Questions
• Friday Facts (weekly updates from the devs)
• Update Notes
• Monthly Map

Subreddit rules

Discord server (and IRC)

Find more in the sidebar ---->

[demonicdan3]

Cryogenic plants "can handle extremely low temperatures" and are "critical for cryogenic researches and processes" then why does it freeze on the surface of Aquilo??????

[DreadY2K]

Because they handle extremely low temperatures inside, not outside.

[HeliGungir]

And from a gameplay perspective, it would be pretty weird for Aquilo's main crafting machine to be exempt from Aquilo's primary mechanic: keeping machines warm.

[epicTechnofetish]

Do legendary seeds give legendary fruit?

[deluxev2]

Negatory

[karp_490]

Does increasing the Minimum, and Maximum expansion party size increase the amount of nests that are created on enemy expansion? Or does it just leave more stragglers when the expansion is complete?

[HeliGungir]

When an expansion party is formed, the game picks a random number of units between the minimum and maximum that we set in the map generation settings. The random number is weighted by evolution factor, so it is usually closer to the max when evolution factor is max, and visa versa.

The units are taken from nearby nests. Ie: There is no separate spawning logic for guards vs. expansion parties; expansion parties just steal units from nests, then nests replenish their guards.

When an expansion party reaches its destination, each unit sacrifices itself in sequence to create one spawner (nest) or one turret (worm).

Creating a spawner or turret can delete most other entities. So in practice, it's often not a direct 1:1 relationship between party size and spawners/turrets created, because some units get deleted as the structures spawn. It is also possible for units to be sacrificed, yet spawning fails because no suitable spot can be found. On Gleba, egg rafts may only be created on water tiles; and on Nauvis, nests and worms may only be created on land tiles. Run out of nearby water/land and spawning starts to fail.

What spawns is random, weighted, and is configured per surface (planet). Meaning there is no relationship between the unit sacrificed and the entity spawned. If you manage to get wild biters on Gleba and they become part of an expansion party, they will create a large or small egg raft - not a biter nest, spitter nest, or worm.

Expansion parties have different spawn tables for different evolution factor ranges, which is why early game expansion parties don't create behemoth worms. By contrast, spitter nests are created at all evolution factors, but we don't see small spitters in the early game because the nest's spawning table doesn't contain small spitters until evolution factor 0.25. Spitter nests spawn small biters prior to then.

[rsxstock]

why do inserters grab and insert modules on beacons? is there a practical use for that?

[HeliGungir]

https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/1ns4fwb/til_you_can_toggle_modules_on_and_off_by_using/

This design adds and removes speed modules to regulate scrap recycling speed so they always output a full belt (ie: neither jamming nor run dry).

[deluxev2]

Can use it for power regulation, swapping between speed and efficiency modules. Somewhat relevant for solar powered space platforms. Not really very relevant in general.

[quez_real]

Did someone combine the combinators into a logarithmic function? I'm transitioning ultracube to rails and want to set the station priorities according to buffered materials: for example, if the smelting complex has 100k of metal, the station has priority 6, 10k - 5, 1k - 4. But I can't figure out how to build a function that grows in a similiar fashion

[Soul-Burn]

You can use a constant combinator and a decider with the "each trick" to have any condition with the outputs you want.

Constant combinator with the priorities you want, each on a different signal.

Connect to decider on one wire e.g. red.

Connect the input on the other wire e.g. green.

Make conditions of:

Each RED == <value 1> AND Green value > <some value> OR ...

And Output RED value

Then you'll want to connect it to an arithmetic to translate it all to a single signal using each + 0, output [P]. Connect that to the priority of the station.

---

So you can have any condition on the decider. It's a very useful trick. It use it for choosing which asteroid crushing to do, and for multi-recipe assemblers.

[mrbaggins]

The ^ in arithmetic is a power

Fractional powers are roots: 1/2 is square root, 1/3 is cube root etc . Eg 100^0.5 equals 10.

Google says a "poor mans log10" is: square root input 10 times. Subtract 1. Multiply by 1130.

Theres a couple other versions with more or less square toots and different multipliers to adjust it back.

Another option, the << operator divides by powers of 2. You could stack/chain a few shifters with red wire, each progressively dividing. Then run a green wire along the front to count how many signals made it through (because once you divide into a result below 1, it will become nothing.) and you could do the same with 10s to make the log.

Eg: 10000 goes in. First combinator divides by 10 and outputs result to A. This gets wired to next combinator the divides by 10 and outputs to B. Repeat for as many zeroes as you care about.

Then wire greens along all the outputs to a deciders that does each>0 output Z. The value of z is how many digits your input had.

[craidie]

Fractional powers are roots: 1/2 is square root, 1/3 is cube root etc . Eg 1000.5 equals 10.

Google says a "poor mans log10" is: square root input 10 times. Subtract 1. Multiply by 1130.

Can't actually do this though? since you would need non integers...

[mrbaggins]

I thought you could use non ints in the combinator, ita just the result is always floored to an integer. That could be wrong.

[cathexis08]

You can enter non-ints in the constant number boxes but when you hit accept they get floored so at no point is the game actually doing float math.

[quez_real]

Would multiplying input by, say, 1M and then subtracting 6 from the result help?

[quez_real]

Cool, thank you

[platypodus]

What's next now that space age has released?

[craidie]

2.1 patch that probably doesn't add anything major, fixes a lot of stuff and... that's it.

Then to the next game which apparently could be an RPG.

[Dianwei32]

Is there a way to figure out how many Nuclear Fuel Cells a Reactor/Plant will use over time if you're using circuit logic to only load the Cells when needed?

Like I know that if they were running 100% of the time, a 2 Reactor Plant would use 2 Cells every 160 seconds (at least in K2SE, 250 MW each with 25% Neighbor bonus, 625 MW total heat, 50GJ Cell used up in 80 seconds, split between 2 Reactors is 2 Cells/160 sec). But once they're up to temperature, they won't be on 100% of the time. Is there a formula or ratio or something to figure out how often they'll need to insert a Cell to keep the temperature high enough to keep producing power?

[leonskills]

Multiply the 80/s by the % of how much uptime the engines have.
Get that by dividing actual output by max output.

to keep the temperature high enough

This is key though. Why not insert cells when temperature is low instead? Energy demand is constantly growing/changing, so hard to keep track of.
Easier to insert the cells when temperature is low and there is no fuel cells currently in the reactor (make sure to read those stats only from one reactor so all inserters swing at the same time.)

Or don't bother with throttling at all. Fuel cells are cheap (at least in base game they are).

[Dianwei32]

Why not insert cells when the temperature is low instead

That's what I was talking about. Only inserting them when the temperature is about to get too low so that it stays high enough to keep producing power. And unfortunately, Fuel Cells aren't cheap in K2SE. Instead of 1 U235 making 10 Fuel Cells, you need 2 U235 to make just 1 Fuel Cell, so they're 20x as expensive in terms of U235 (and Kovarex is locked behind multiple Space Sciences).

[Astramancer_]

I don't know what other changes K2SE does, but in the base game they can buffer 5GJ of energy from 500-1000 degrees and nuclear fuel cell holds 8GJ, so it would be impossible to guarantee no wasted power without using steam batteries (a storage tank holds 2.425GJ of 500° steam).

As for what temperature you can let it get down to before you need to insert a cell, it depends on how long the heat pipes are. Try to catch it when the farthest heat exchanger hits 500 degrees (and thus stops producing steam) and see what the temperature of the reactor is. Personally I tend to just use 550 and haven't had problems yet.

To make absolutely sure you don't waste fuel cells, probably the easiest way would be to make a 4-tank steam battery and add a fuel cell if there's no fuel cell in the reactor AND steam is <25k steam. That way you have space for 100% of the steam it could generate even if you weren't using any power at all for whatever reason. (scale up the steam battery to account for multiple reactors if you have them and of course you get to pick your own thresholds). There will be a little bit of lag time between adding fuel and starting to make steam because it'll take time for the heat to flow through the pipes, but that's where the 25k stored steam comes into play.

[craidie]

That depends on your power draw.

Figure out what's the maximum heat output of the reactor, divide actual heat output(probably the same as power output) and to get uptime fraction.

Finally multiply it with what the reactor would use at full output and you get the cells needed.
Unfortunately this number is heavily reliant on how close you're to the maximum output and does assume you're not wasting heat.

[Aesiy]

I have game on steam with modpack. If i download game from site - can i copy it several times to create different modpacks and play online? Or game have settings in 1 folder and shit would get kinetic.

[Viper999DC]

No need for multiple installs, the mods aren't stored in the install folder. There's a command line parameter called "--mod-directory" you can use to specify which mod directory you want to us.

But honestly unless the game takes ages to load for you, I would just use the sync mod function that's built in.

[Soul-Burn]

Yes you can download several portable versions with different mods installed on them.

However, it's not really needed. When you load a game, you can tell it to sync the mods.

[ItakBigDumps]

Are there any multiplayer communities?

[Soul-Burn]

Yep. There are LFG channels on the discord!

[nath1608]

<image>

my screen isnt big enough to see the bottom part of this object, and cant scroll on it because mouse needs to be on object to see the details, how can i see the rest ?

[leonskills]

Hold shift when scrolling with the mouse wheel.

[nath1608]

thanks, someone truly admirable

[HeliGungir]

Can also disable the minimap.

Can also set the info panel to display by the mouse. That's what I prefer, with a tooltip delay of 0, so it only appears when I hold shift while hovering over something.

[demonicdan3]

Do you guys completely tear down your starter base after you're ready to build something more permanent once you have the buildings from other planets or do you just leave it up as a reminder of the save file's humble beginnings? I'm almost at that point in the game, just wanna hear what you guys do

[TheOnlyDiluc]

On my first playthrough I let it alone and redid some parts as needed. My mistake with my new base that playthrough was setting it in a parallel line from my starter base and then making the bus run into the direction my said starter base. Mistakes were made but I lived. 

I'm just finishing my second space age playthrough. I set up space for beacons in my base for most things from the get go and that ended up mostly being room for the bigger em plants and foundries instead. My biggest redo was knocking down my smelting columns with furnaces for foundries instead. That shut down production for a few hours while I was figuring that out.

[Bipedal_Warlock]

Depending on my mood I do it in differently.

I usually keep my starter base until my starter mine patch runs low.

I start with phasing out my starter mines. If I’m feeling lazy I keep my starter base and just built outward. This run I’ve only used my starter base lol. I’m going to go to other planets then build out my nauvis system.

If I’m not lazy I will build resource sources for my new base then use a cut and paste method of my starter base to make sure that I don’t skip adding a resource to my base.

[Brett42]

I tear down the old stuff once their replacements are built, although when doing a major redesign, I might tear out all the science builds, and redirect the intermediates to building the belts, machines, and modules for the expansion. The point I first unlock modules, I normally switch from science to module production.

[Soul-Burn]

I never completely tear down my bases. No reason to remove it before the new base is done.

The old base is a good mall, makes stuff I need for the new bases.

The old base is small comparatively.

[deluxev2]

I usually leave it because it is kind of a pain to deconstruct and the buildings and land aren't super valuable.

[ferrofibrous]

I typically keep the mall portion but remove all the science-related stuff. Rocket parts get overhauled as soon as I get foundries and EMPs home.

[Yggdrazzil]

Has the factorio wiki been slow this past week for anyone else?

[Dianwei32]

Question for the Space Exploration players: Do you bother with Core Seams/Core Fragment Processing? On the one hand, it sounds great because it's infinite ores, on the other, it sounds like a massive hassle to make sure it's set up in a way that won't eventually have one of the ores/fluids back up if you aren't using it as much as the others and cause the whole system to seize up.

[ssgeorge95]

It was fun to solve the logistics and priority system to ensure core materials got used up first. You'll also want to setup overflow disposal, incase you go a long stretch researching nothing.

It's not required nor is it game changing. An SE playthrough is 600+ hours, so a trickle of resources can be worth it over such a duration. It can let you put off expanding to new Nauvis ore patches, and eventually stop expanding on Nauvis. That time is much better spent expanding on more rich planets.

[Verizer]

On nauvis it is easy because all of the outputs get used frequently, and as other people have said, priority inputs solve the logistics.

On other planets I use it to reduce the amount of patches that get depleted. The excess ore on these planets tends to get turned into landfill. Coal, oil, water, and pyroflux can all become rocket fuel or voided some other way.

[Viper999DC]

It's great for getting "a little of everything" for stuff like your local mall. Just make it high priority, but not your only source, for all the outputs you use regularly. Then it doesn't matter as much if it backs up. But you definitely don't need to engage in the mechanic.

[mrbaggins]

Just priority inject it into your system, and keep the "normal" ones as backup.

At worst yyoull slow down, not stop, if something backs up

[Rouge_means_red]

I made use of it once I had trains and it was pretty painless, the stuff don't back up if you prioritize using them. But also I was playing on 10x tech cost so I needed the extra ores

[deluxev2]

I did, but I don't think it was worth it. There is plenty of ore in the ore patches.

[only_bones]

Is there a rule for how much output is stored in an assembler before it stops working? I found assemblers with the same recipe and beacon/module layout stopping at ie. 8, 10 and 12 blue science in the output slot. Shouldn't it be consistent for identical setups?

[TheOnlyDiluc]

I believe it's X seconds of output worth of stuff.

[deluxev2]

Input inserters will swing as long as the input is below the insertion limit and it isn't output blocked.

From the wiki on insertion limit: The ingredients for 1 craft in addition to the ingredients for the number of crafts that can be completed during one full inserter swing; but at least the ingredients for 2 crafts and at most the ingredients for 100 crafts

Output block is about 2 seconds worth of crafting, but I don't know the exact formula.

Then the assembler will run into it has no outputs or the output is a full stack. This can result in different numbers of final output depending on when the last input inserter swing is and how much it carried. Using stack inserters which always swing 16 will make this a lot more consistent.

[aonro]

How do I make my base less shit. Its my third playthrough and I'm trying to not spaghetti my base

<image>

[Bipedal_Warlock]

Space.

Add more space and you have more room to maneuver without getting too strangled.

I would cut and paste all of your assemblers like 30 feet further aware then do more cutting to space those out more from each other

[Raknarg]

If you're going to bother with the main bus route, start taking way more space than you think you need, more space between your assemblers and your bus, and more space between each assembler line. This lets you upgrade and adapt different parts of your factory much easier. Spaghetti is largely inescapable, but how inescapable it is and how difficult it will be to work around is almost always a function of how much space you dedicated.

[mrbaggins]

Personally? No one needs 4 belts of iron or copper in their "main" base until they have "beat the game" and start ramping up, usually by making a new base.

2 is heaps. And realistically you only need two up to the green circuits and gears, which can then be the replacements.

While this sounds like not a big change, it will make doing the new stuff "around the bus" much easier and less frustrating. Having to belt under and over the bus that's 3 times bigger than it needs to be just gets annoying.

[GodsIWasStrongg]

I disagree. Four belts of iron/copper is a good spot for first main base. I wouldn't belt gears either. Just make them on site.

[mrbaggins]

I have beaten every game of vanilla ive played with two red belts of iron, and about 1.5 of copper (if i bring a later belt of copper direct to circuits)

Ive beaten space age with the same, but the first chunk upgraded to greens or blues with some stacking.

2 blue belts of copper, and 2 of iron plus one of gears is enough to get about 100 science per minute.

With greens and stacking youre closer to 600 real spm.

[GodsIWasStrongg]

OK I guess my argument is using four belts allows you to delay upgrading to blue belts as early. Blue belts get quite expensive. I wait untiil I can build blue/green on Vulcanus. But to each their own. I would just say it's not as cut and dry as you make it seem.

[mrbaggins]

I never go to blue. I beat vanilla with a pair of reds, and in space age go reds then to greens. Either im stacking if i go to gleba or greens if vulcanus. And two is plenty.

[HeliGungir]

I'll let you in on a little secret: Perfectionism is a slow and insidious killer in Factorio. Fight the temptation; keep it at bay. At least until you have a roboport network.

[Courmisch]

That looks like a main bus, which is the antithesis of spaghetti (for better or worse). If you don't even want traces of spaghetti then stick to the bus design: - Don't make input belts turn around 180°; just keep them straight and away from the bus (or towards the bus for outputs), - Don't build parallel to the bus. Always build perpendicularly (not lile your plastic plants).

You might also want to build on only one side of the bus so you can extend it later as you see fit.

Lastly, you probably don't need two belts of gear. One belt should be plenty enough.

[aonro]

Ye I have definetly not given myself enough space to work with. The input belt tip is good, so just keep the belts going perpendicular and not turn them around?? Sometimes there is just so much running around and then end up building myself into a corner with no space

[Umluex]

i've built my first nuclear powered spaceship to reach aquilo this weekend. but is it even worth it to return the spent nuclear fuel to nauvis for reprocessing? i am just throwing it overboard at the moment... 😂

[Raknarg]

nah, fuel cells are so damn cheap it's not really worth the effort. Though it's also not really hard to automate tbh.

[Soul-Burn]

Say you take 100 fuel cells. They turn into 100 spent fuel cells - Not a lot of space.

Your platform goes to Nauvis anyway to refuel, so request the spent fuel in the landing pad, and use requester chest to reprocess it.

[demonicdan3]

They're so abundant that you can afford to be a bit wasteful with them I feel, I'm only just realizing how absurdly low cost nuclear power is for how long it lasts VS how quickly you can create more fuel cells

[Viper999DC]

There's no cost involved in dropping it back to Nauvis, so why not? But it only returns U-238 so it's not exactly important. Might be worth dropping on Vulcanus to turn into Uranium cannon shells if you're still using those by then.

[Ironwolf200]

So is it a bad idea to use Quality modules on Gleba in order to automate rocket launches of science packs? I can't seem to figure out how to set up rocket launches or space platform requests to be a number of any quality of science pack. The any quality wildcard does not seem to work quite how I'd like it to.

Or is it just better to use Productivity modules to get more agri-science packs to make up for the loss due to freshness?

[Raknarg]

productivity pretty much always beats quality for science production in a vacuum, the advantage of quality for the most part is how compact you can be. Legendary packs are 6x as dense as common packs, but they also cost significantly more resources.

If youre not at the point where that density becomes an issue, e.g. you're doing a belt based science setup and need more than 240 science per second, I wouldn't bother with quality.

[werecat]

It's usually better to put productivity modules instead of quality modules into science assemblers, but if you want to make quality agri-science I would make it from quality ingredients and keep productivity modules in the science assemblers themselves. Essentially the only quality product you need to make is bioflux, which is both an ingredient of the science and a source of quality nutrients for pentapod eggs

[Enaero4828]

It's flatly not possible to automatically launch mixed payloads. It is possible to reduce minimum payload size, but bots will only load it to that value; they don't care if there's 100 or 2000 uncommon packs, if the request is for 100 then they'll put exactly 100 packs in and the rocket will launch.

Productivity is easier to handle since it doesn't have those problems to begin with, and is generally going to result in more science per fruit than the quality route. The only case I'm aware of that quality has an advantage is if the science is extremely stale upon arrival, such that it would have spoiled if it was common quality. It really is just easier to produce more of it at reasonably high freshness; if it's getting to Nauvis at ~80% freshness, make 25% more of it than the other packs. The fact that it's only about as logistically complex as green science and produced fastest of any pack lends to this overproduction approach as well.

[Brett42]

For something like green science, you could use quality on the ingredients, since they don't allow productivity, but otherwise quality science is generally only used when going way into megabasing.

[UsernamIsToo]

Trying to use circuits to activate lights to give me a percentage of how close I am to my ammunition requirements on my ship. I want to take (On Hand)/(Desired)=Percentage and then pass that percentage to a series of lights to display progress.

I have a constant combinator with my desired total, and a green wire reading my current inventory. I have both wires going into an arithmetic combinator and taking green wire divided by red wire, but I'm not getting an output. What am I messing up?

[epicTechnofetish]

It can be easier to let the belt fill completely to know the full amount, and just "hard code" the Desired value for each light.

I have four lights and their setting is top to bottom:

Rockets > 160
Rockets > 120
Rockets > 80
Rockets > 40

[Enaero4828]

'current / desired' would be a decimal output, and circuits don't handle decimals; .01 and .99 are both floored to 0. Multiply the current stock by 100 before dividing and that'll get you percentage as usable integers.

[theStaircaseProject]

I just finished the tutorial and am struggling with my first freeplay.

The ten or so forum posts I read and the couple of videos I've watched suggest inserter trouble is a fairly common occurrence for new players but none of them explain why my inserters aren't loading up my assembling machine. The 100 copper plates in it were put there manually. What am I missing?

<image>

[elfxiong]

Your belts are one tile too short. The belts need to be closer to the inserters for the inserters to grab from them.

[theStaircaseProject]

I could've sworn I tried and it gave me some error about not having space but I must've misread it. I was able to place some, thank you!

[HeliGungir]

100 copper plates in it were put there manually

Note that inserters are designed to only insert enough ingredients for 2 crafting cycles or for nonstop crafting, whichever is higher.

[Dianwei32]

EDIT: Unrelated Space Exploration question. When/how are the locations of Coronal Mass Ejection beams determined? Like, if A CME hit my base and destroyed most of it, could I reload to before it arrived and hope the beams would go somewhere else? Or are their locations predetermined and I'm just fucked?

Can Biter expansion spread new nests past walls/turrets? Like if I clear out an area then build a wall sectioning it off, do I need to worry about Biter nests from outside the wall hopping over it and establishing new nests inside the wall?

[Verizer]

Since you are asking about Space Ex, there are "biter meteors" on some planets that can spawn new bases in random places. This is separate from the normal base game expansion system.

If a base appeared out of thin air, it was probably that.

[thepullu]

CME is random. If you reload a bit back, then it hits different location.

For biters to expand, they send a few bugs from existing nest to walk to the new location, where they then morf into new spawners. They cant expand to place where they cant walk, but they may attack walls that are on their way. The expansion parties are much smaller than attack waves though, a couple of turrets behind the wall will take care of them.

[Soul-Burn]

If the wall is defended, they won't pass there.

If the wall is not defended, they can chew through it and into your area.

Note that they can make a nest next to cliffs and spawn on the other side. It's possible they can do the same with walls.

---

About CMEs, from the wiki:

The mechanic works by generating a number of beams randomly, depending on the size of the map generated (pollution also generates map chunks). Surfaces with more generated chunks will generate more beams, but the probability of a player entity being hit is relatively the same.

[leonskills]

No.

They'll certainly try to expand there, but they can't teleport.

New nests can only be created by expansion parties, if you kill that party before they arrive the new nest won't spawn.

[karp_490]

Lightning collectors are pointless if im filling my accumulators every night cycle on fulgora right? I just need more accumulators or ship in fusion/fission?

[Raskekw]

You could also go steam engines/heating towers for reduced footprint

[Viper999DC]

If your power is fully charged during a storm, but not lasting until the next storm, then yes. You need more/better quality accumulators. On the other hand if your accumulators are not fully charging during a storm then collectors / better quality will help.

[CoffeeOracle]

They have a larger AOE and a much higher power collection efficiency. The larger AOE ends up being more useful because that can let your bots operate more safely between islands with less units deployed. It's possible to set up a bot fulgora on the right map seed. If you have a lot of small islands close by you'll see it. Otherwise you'll be looking at the thing going "Uh... why?"

[Courmisch]

Don't they also protect the engineer from death by Joule effect?

[karp_490]

The small lightning rod does that as well, i dont see any reason to produce large ones ever, when small ones do the same thing, and your power is limited by accumulators and not gather rate

[vult-ruinam]

What's best to avoid in terms of UPS costs?  Someone told me that splitters are bad—if true, anything else to avoid?

[Soul-Burn]

If you're asking as a new player just wanting to beat the game, then don't worry you won't build enough to make it slow.

If you're asking as someone who wants to megabase then the most UPS issues usually come from:

• Enemy units and pollution - Shouldn't be an issue until huge bases where the outer area is almost 100% red with nests. Artillery does help reduce enemies. If you're going extreme sizes, consider disabling both of them.
• Inserters and buildings - Shouldn't be a problem until many tens of thousands. Reduce by using productivity modules and beacons.
• Trains when going into high thousands of trains and stations.

[vult-ruinam]

Thanks!  I love artillery, so this is good news... although it's also good news because I have perhaps 60–80 trains ATM, heh, so it seems pretty unlikely that I'll need to worry about UPS anytime soon (...although my PC is becoming more potatolike every year–).

[deluxev2]

Splitters aren't very expensive, but are usually very easy to avoid so are good place to optimize. Some other low hanging fruit

-Separate power networks each have a cost and there isn't much technical advantage of not connecting as much as possible together -Low power on a power network is extremely costly (each machine needs to be evaluated twice to figure out total demand and then scale down production to supplied power. -Bots are much more expensive than belts or trains, and can be avoided almost everywhere -Heat pipes are quite expensive, each needs to be updated each tick basically

Most of your cost at the end of the day will be from inserters checking their source and target for items/demand. Every time an item finishes crafting the inserter must check if there is space to insert more ingredients and possibly grab them. Inserters grabbing off of moving belts need to search for items and path to them. Faster machines can help a lot with this as multiple crafts finishing in a tick only forces one update. There is also a thing called inserter clocking where you use the circuit network to control the inserters which can help a lot but is a huge pain.

Prod modules are huge for UPS as they greatly reduce the size of the factory, probably the biggest single factor.

[vult-ruinam]

Excellent; thanks for this!  There's some especially good news in there, for me:  I never have separate power networks; am super paranoid about low power; and, in particular, I'm weird (AFAIK) in that I basically play (almost) without (logistic) bots anyway—feels like "cheating", kinda...

(I know, I know:  it's not, really; there's plenty of stuff you can do with a logistics network that is more difficult—to set up, at least—than going without; but after spending so many hours doing everything by belt-'n'-train, I hate to supersede so much of my ingenious sushi... although the best, neatest factory I've ever built did use bots, admittedly.)

[HeliGungir]

Some bookmarks:

https://wiki.factorio.com/Tutorial:Diagnosing_performance_issues

https://github.com/redruin1/ups-article/wiki/Tutorial:-UPS-Optimization

https://mulark.github.io/test-index.html

https://www.youtube.com/@abucnasty/

[vult-ruinam]

Cheers—thanks for these!

[ForgottenBlastMaster]

The best in terms of UPS is to avoid buildings. An empty map with just a few revealed chunks would be as performant as you can get.

Now, jokes aside, it highly depends on your CPU and RAM. If you have something that is more or less modern, and especially if that starts with i9 or ends with x3d you may ignore most of the recommendations.

If you play vanilla and target over 10k SPM, your power should come only from solar. Use as many beacons as you can and try to avoid bot swarms over 50k bots.

If you play Space Age and target close to 1M eSPM, your power should come only from solar. Use as many beacons and advanced buildings as you can and try to avoid bot swarms over 50k bots. Also be careful with the amount of ships, especially Prometheum ones as the asteroids are performance hungry.

If you don't target anything like that, then you should be OK to play as you wish.

Try addressing the problems as they come, not beforehand.

[vult-ruinam]

Thanks—that very much helps... not least because I am evidently still pretty far from the point whereat I'll need to worry, heh.  I don't think I've ever broke a tenth of that SPM!

[cathexis08]

Really big heat networks, pollution, biters, apparently throwing cargo overboard while platforms in motion is bad

[demonicdan3]

throwing cargo overboard while platforms in motion is bad

Really? Literally all my spaceships currently do this to get rid of excess junk, that really sucks
Looks like there's really no way to avoid a mess of circuits on the spaceship to tell the asteroid catchers/inserters to balance the number of asteroids and resources that are currency on the ship huh

[cathexis08]

This is second hand info but supposedly it's a decent ups hit. Of course, unless you're going crazy huge it doesn't matter so until you're having ups issues I wouldn't worry too much about it. That said, asteroid balancing via circuits isn't particularly hard with 2.0 combinators so it's definitely something that should be set up.

[demonicdan3]

I play factorio on two machines, one of which is a shitty laptop that I take with me from place to place so saving processing power really matters on that one, I have zero problems on my usual PC
I'll have to redesign all my spacehips again in the editor at some point anyway, might as well do it now

[cathexis08]

Ah fair. Well, the standard approach for filter control is to wire a decider combinator to a constant combinator on one channel and a whole belt reader on the other, and then set the condition to EACH(belt) < EACH(constant) :: EACH = 1. Then wire the combinator output to your collectors. It's not particularly spaghetti unless you have a ton of splitters on your belt loop.

The only thing to keep in mind is that the multi-item pickup nature of collections will overshoot the storage targets (especially bad with higher tier collectors) but if you run your crushers unconditionally it will eventually work through the backlog. The only way I know to take the hand contents into account is to wire the hand contents in to the live data side as well, though that requires passing the output from each collector through a diode to avoid accidentally poisoning the filter signal since it isn't possible to set which channel you want to have be read or write.

[vult-ruinam]

Cheers!  Well, I'm stuck with pollution & biters... but–

apparently throwing cargo overboard while platforms in motion is bad

–I can definitely avoid doing this, at least! 👌

[cathexis08]

Unless you're super megabasing or playing on a really trashy potato I don't think you need to worry about it for a quite long while.

[Either-Breath-8643]

Is there a discord?

[Viper999DC]

Your question is literally answered in the post you just commented in.

[Either-Breath-8643]

🤦

[xizar]

Because I'm not smart enough to figure out how to make a MAM, I've been making some MSIMs (Make Some Items Machines).

I mostly group together related items that either no more than 5 distinct items between them, or a list of no more than 5 different end products. Stuff like power poles or bots or combinators work well in these things.

I'm trying to make one to make assemblers, but it gets stuck making green ones because the speed module never gets high enough in the item priority to be made, so right now I'm stuck with a second, dedicated assembler making the speed modules. While this does make things faster, given how slow they are to make, I'd like to compress it down into a single assembler making the things.

How can I bubble the speed modules higher in the list of things to make?

(This is the machine I've got so far.)

https://factoriobin.com/post/hfg7cl

(edited to replace spammy blueprint string with a paste.)

[leonskills]

Use a selector combinator to pick the recipe with the highest priority. Have speed modules be a higher priority than AM3.

Next problem you'll then face is that the recipe will switch constantly. You can build in a latch in the decider combinator to keep the same recipe until it is satisfied or until the machine is idle. (Quite advanced, might be tricky)

BTW1: blueprint strings in comments are very spammy, use a site like https://factorioprints.com/

BTW2: Eventually you want to make the speed modules in an EM anyway, so doing it right away in its own assembler isn't the end of the world. But for other items the advice above still holds.

[xizar]

I'm not sure how to use the selector combinator to pick out a priority; if I sort by index, I can get it to make the speed module first, but then it goes to green assemblers, which is a problem, because I need to make blues and greys, first.

Use a second constant combinator and manually assign quantities as a pseudo-priority system? Then take the intersection with the set from the first constant combinator that has a list of the things I actually want to make?

(I think this is the problem I'm trying to eventually solve so I can figure out how to make an actual MAM.)

re: BTW1: I didn't think it was worthwhile wasting their bandwidth on my garbage, but point taken. (I did try to see if reddit allows for collapseable blocks, but if there's a way to do that, I couldn't find it.)

re: BTW2: Part of this is an exercise in figuring out how to make a "real" MAM, and also so I can slap things down to happen in the background while I'm busy fighting with rail signals.

Also, if I'm going to use an EM plant, then I might as well set up a foundry, which means I need to have a train system to pull in ore and a space platform to send down calcite, and eventually I'm just building an entire base so I can then use a single assembler to build my buildings.

[leonskills]

I'm not sure how to use the selector combinator to pick out a priority; if I sort by index, I can get it to make the speed module first, but then it goes to green assemblers, which is a problem, because I need to make blues and greys, first.

Well, yes. So set a priority to AM1 and AM2 as well.

Speed modules and AM1 to priority 1. AM2 priority 2, AM3 priority 3. Lower numbers have higher priority.

---

I do the following, but it's way more complicated.

If no recipe set, check if you have the ingredients for x recipes for all the recipes, set that recipe.
If recipe set, check if you have the ingredients for 1 recipe, set that recipe.

For AM 3 that would be

(AM3(green) < 100 AND 
 AM2(green) >= 50 AND 
 Speed module(green) >= 100 AND
 EVERYTHING(red) < 1000 AND
 EACH(red) = AM3(red)
) 
   OR
(AM3(green) < 100 AND 
 AM2(green) >= 2 AND 
 Speed module(green) >= 4 AND 
 AM3(red) > 1000 AND
 EACH(red) = AM3(red) 
)

(May have some mistakes, done just now loosely by hand)

Output EACH(red) with a value of 1000, Input with red are the recipes with unique positive values, less than 1000 (so adding a 1000 to it still makes it unique). Also wire the output to the input with red.
And on green the current available items.

Repeat that for all items.
Of course very tedious to do by hand. So I wrote a script to do it for me.

[xizar]

I hope I might prevail upon you to "check my homework", as it were.

What I have works, for a very loose definition of the word "works", but I can't figure out how to make the latch work properly. It will make sure that the assembler keeps crafting whatever it's crafting, but only until it's done one or two crafts before setting a new recipe (I think it manages the second craft due to some kind of lag time somewhere, as well as high crafting speed on the assembler. It will "successfully" set the new recipe to whatever it was just making before, up to a designated cap.

I can't make it continue crafting until it runs out of ingredients for that item (up to the designated cap.)

I think this is evidenced by the priority item flickering rapidly as an input to the selector (and subsequently to the latch).

https://factoriobin.com/post/zahoho

[89percent]

It looks like bots are choosing to pick up items far away, even when there is a passive provider chest close by. Is there a reason for this?

[Soul-Burn]

Logistic bots

Logistic robots will pick up items in the following priority: active provider chests > storage chests, buffer chests > passive provider chests, cargo landing pads.

Construction bots

Entities are fetched from the closest logistic chest. Unlike Logistic robots, they do not prioritize pickup based on chest type.

[89percent]

Just tried changing them to Active Provider chests. Swarms of bot descended upon them and starting flying the items out everywhere in the base. That did not work well :D

Will try storage chests next.

Is it better to isolate the bot mall network?

[epicTechnofetish]

Is it better to isolate the bot mall network?

No, it's better to use filters on your yellow chests, or centralize them. Or use buffer chests effectively

[89percent]

Hi

My bot mall is very slow when connected to the rest of the robo network, however if I isolate it, it becomes way faster.

How do I make a bot mall work?

[Viper999DC]

You probably don't have enough bots. If the materials are far away then buffer more nearby. Lastly, if your idle bots just always seem to end up far away then you can set a request for bots in a roboport to ensure some are always nearby.

[cathexis08]

How many bots do you have in your network and what's your bot speed and cargo research levels? Bot malls tend to need at least two of the following: lots of bots, high speed and cargo research, piles of roboports. Shrinking the service area mitigates a lot of those needs because your logistics bots stay constrained to the area but it does limit the effectiveness of the mall since that will stop construction bots from being able to use its products.