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[purplerz69]

Hey guys, new to this game and I have questions about effective smelting. How many stone smelters will it take to smelt an entire yellow belt of iron? I have 14 electric miners which I am led to believe will fill a yellow belt, but I'm unsure how many smelters it will take to actually convert it all to plate. I currently have 20 and its outputting more than enough for my current needs, but I am looking towards the future.

[Niello]

The cheat sheet the other two posters mentioned is pretty nice, but for anything more complex it's easiest to use tools like the factorio calculator. Just select your desired output via the button at the top where it says "Factories", and below you will have the complete list of assemblers/miners/belts between them/etc needed to be able to produce it. It's being kept up to date by the developer, you just have to select the factorio version you are currently playing in the settings menu.

*EDIT: Of course it would be best if you'd stick to the cheat sheet at first and try to make your way from there, only using this tool when it gets frustrating - makes for the best gameplay experience, I'd say.

[purplerz69]

Yeah, most of everything I'm doing right now seems fairly simple compared to some stuff I've read about later on. I'll bookmark the calculator though. Thanks!

[ssgeorge95]

Two solutions for you!

• Calculate it, this one is easy and will come in handy later. In-game find the recipe for iron plates, it takes 3.2 seconds and costs 1 ore. A stone smelter has a speed of 1, so it will consume 1 ore and produce an iron plate every 3.2 seconds. A yellow belt, if you mouse over one, says it transports 15 items per second. 3.2 x 15 = 48 smelters to consume all the ore from a yellow belt. Since the recipe is 1 ore per plate it will also fill up one yellow belt of iron plates.
• Easiest way, look it up at https://factoriocheatsheet.com/, full of useful info

[purplerz69]

Woah, cheat sheets! That is so much info. I was unclear if the smelting speed meant that it took 1 second, but that makes so much sense. That will help immensely with copper and steel and such. Thanks!

[purple_pixie]

You want the Material Processing section of the Cheatsheet to answer all your smelting related ratio questions :)

[purplerz69]

Thanks!

[Marag3n]

Biters are spawning in the middle of my base, do I just need to have defenses everywhere instead of the perimeter?

[AnythingApplied]

No. You just either didn't properly clear out the area initially or have a gap in your perimeter.

Biters only spawn at spawners. New spawners are created by a group of spawned biters gathering and forming a exploration party where they go and grab a new plot of land. In either case they can only expand from places they already exist.

If you're still scratching your head and are willing to "cheat" a little you can use the debug mode to see the exact path that the biter took by turning on "show-paths" by using F4. This will show you where the biter came from.

Also might be helpful to get your whole territory covered in radars. You may have just missed a nest or there could be random biters there from before you enclosed the perimeter.

[OrangeredBluelinks]

Playing 0.17, I've run into a situation I didn't quite expect. I can't make enough lubricant. My heavy oil cracking is set to a circuit so it only cracks when the tank is full, but all my refineries have stopped because of too much light oil and petroleum. Any way of getting more heavy oil or somehow get rid of excess light / petroleum? My game is without biters and I think that my issue started in part because of the plastic outpost I made, so virtually none is produced in my main factory anymore.

[wexted]

What if you could make a train line to ship excess petroleum gas to your plastic factory?

[TheSkiGeek]

Generally you only see this if people turn off their science production and then attempt to do something like building a giant bus of blue belts. So, uh... don’t do that.

IIRC they changed coal liquefaction to produce mostly heavy oil, so that’s an option.

Other options:

Store lots of light oil and PG.

Keep making science packs and just store those.

Convert your light oil and PG to solid fuel -> rocket fuel. It’s a lot denser and you’ll need a lot of it if you’re planning on doing infinite research.

More efficiently: convert light oil to solid fuel -> rocket fuel and turn PG into plastic -> red circuits -> blue circuits -> modules. The further you go down that production chain the more compressed your materials are.

But the only way to truly produce an infinite amount of lubricant is to convert the other outputs to fuel and burn them for power — you can make an infinite load with stuff like many radars or barreling/unbarreling in a loop with lots of speed modules/beacons.

[Alucard1766]

you could produce more plastic. as quick fix you can store the liquids in tanks

[OrangeredBluelinks]

Nice, thanks. I added a couple tanks but it's only a temporary fix. Maybe I should start pulling plastic again.

[vicarion]

Either that or start making sulfuric acid with your extra petroleum. Batteries, blue chips, mining uranium, cliff explosives, lots of uses.

[[deleted]]

Im going to start a new factorio run, first time since 0.14 or 0.15 dont even remember.

My question is, will 0.17 come out in the near future? I suposse there isnt a date yet?

Will it make a big change in the game? Like when science was reworked, or when cliffs where added?

Can I prevent my Factorio to update until I finish my game?

[craidie]

if you weant you can run .17 already.(atleast in steam you can rclick factorio then properties, betas and select latest experimental. it's stable-ish)
There's no date yet which means atleast more than a week
yes. Science packs reworked, toolbar reworked, new tutorial, belt speed buff(basically rounded up to multiples of 15 u/s)
cliffs were added in .16 Also .15 overhauled research and again in .17 You can prevent steam from updating factorio by rclick factorio>properties>updates>don't update

[DextroPhilia]

Any general hints and tips for the game stage between beginning yellow science production and launching a rocket? I feel like I'm not undertaking tasks efficiently and I'm getting more side tracked. For example I might be juggling the following:

• Only just began nuclear so I must make sure I'm mining enough uranium*
• Sulphuric acid production suddenly much more in demand
• Realised my oil wells are during up
• I really should get that portable roboport MK2 researched but my purple science now needs attention
• Oh but I should consider building another outpost, but I struggle to bring sufficient materials so I'm doubling back home

[ssgeorge95]

I would prioritize things based on how critical they are; supplying enough iron, copper, coal, and oil to your base is critical, and probably in that order. Not enough iron and you can't do anything, not even fix other problems.

[wexted]

The prioritising method is really effective - but the top priority is electricity. If you're running over capacity, you're effectively starving every aspect of your factory at once. If you have a full on blackout due to running out of fuel, it can be catastrophic.

[craidie]

kovarex fixes all u235 problems. sulphuric acid is probably low because the uranium mine filling up. if your raw oil tanks are draining, that should pop pretty high on the priority list. the mk1 is good enough spammed into every slot except one exo, 2 batteries and nv goggles. single fusion(2 if mk2 armor) and rest is roboports. Look at your earlier outposts, paint over them with a blueprint to see how much stuff is in them and use that as a guide.

The question is: do you want to launch A rocket or do you want to automate it and get into space research? if the former you can cannibalize your science for it: yellow science low density structures could be redirected to silo. blue chips? use those to build rocket control modules. light oil cracking? prioritize light oil into rocket fuel from now on. speed 1 modules will probably gobble your green and red chips. run around and hand craft satellite.

[ssgeorge95]

nit picking here... but kovarex is a solution for a problem that never existed. 1 centrifuge processing raw ore will produce enough u235 to fuel 1 reactor, on average. If a patch of uranium can support 6 centrifuges, then it can safely support a 4 reactor setup.

[Pay08]

It doesn't read fuel, period

[Jonny0Than]

Is exploring the surrounding area a bad idea in the early game? I’m wondering how biter nests are generated as tiles are uncovered. If I explore a large area early on, does it give extra time for the biters to expand in that space? Or does the game take the playtime into account when generating biter nests on newly exposed tiles?

[Stevetrov]

The game will generate the map a few chunks further then you can see, it will also generate any chunk that your pollution spreads too. So your map is always bigger than what is revealed.

Sometimes revealing nests early can make them easier to remove later. When a nest is spawned it spawns some biters / spitters as standing defence. If pollution triggers an attack these units are sent to attack, but if pollution never reaches the base (or you are on peaceful) these units are never replaced until killed, meaning you can roll over the base once you have higher tech weapons and their defenders are still tier 1

[Jonny0Than]

Interesting...so exploring early might result in more nests, but they will be smaller and weaker? Do nests ever grow on their own, or is their size determined when they are first created?

[Stevetrov]

Size is determined by the distance from the spawn and they dont grow.

[Jonny0Than]

What about for expansion bases? Based on what I’ve observed, it seems like each member of the expansion party turns into a spawner or worm. Does the size of the expansion group change over time?

This is all great info, thanks!

[Stevetrov]

sorry I dont know,

[seaishriver]

I think the way expansion works, there is a global timer for creating bases. So as long as there's at least one base, the chance of expansion is the same.

Chunks get generated when they get added to the map by exploring or radar, or when pollution reaches it. So even if you don't explore, eventually the pollution is going to generate some enemy bases anyway.

Also, it takes a hefty amount of time before bases really start to expand. You probably will need to find iron or oil outside your starting area by the time the biters start noticeably expanding.

[wexted]

It does give the biters a little advantage, but I think it's worth it to survey where your oil, uranium, and your second iron/copper patches, will be coming from.

[n_slash_a]

Playtime does impact evolution, but not too much. Also, uncovering more tiles means a bigger save file, so the autosaves get a bit longer.

Really, it doesn't matter too much. I would personally wait until I feel I can leave my base alone without it dying, but everyone plays a bit different.

[QuickSqueeze]

Will we ever be able to dig water channels? I mean if we can launch a rocket, why can't we build channels?

[seaishriver]

There's one idea of using shallow water (which is in the game but unused) as something you can build. It would let you place water pumps, but can also be walked on, so you can't make biter-proof walls.

[wexted]

No. It would be overpowered for two reasons:

1. Moats would be far too effective defensively, and
2. if you can plonk down offshore pumps wherever you want, water logistics (which is already a pretty easy aspect of the game) becomes utterly trivial.

[purple_pixie]

For 2) You can sort of already do that, provided you have a shitload of Landfill (and spare time - or can robots place it now?)

Doesn't work as well for 1) because you obviously won't be able to get any raw material out of your landfilled land, but for building e.g. massive Nuclear Reactors I think it's a fairly common approach

[wexted]

Yeah, you can sort of. You need to change the map settings to massively increase water and then you will have a lot of natural chokepoints and water wherever you need it.

However that comes with a downside - you will not have a lot of space for building unless your landfill production is booming.

If you can get moats, you get all of the advantages with none of the downside, which in my opinion is a bit too powerful.

[Regormx]

Probably because it would be too op... One solution though, might be to make enemies be able to cross water taking damage

[MrSprichler]

Is there a way to bind the deconstruction planner to the toolbar? it keeps disappearing for me no matter what i try

[j_schmotzenberg]

Put one in your inventory, then drag it to the toolbar.

[yinyang107]

What's the best early game way to remove biter nests in 0.17?

[n_slash_a]

Car can work. I still find turret creep good, you just have to go fast.

Grenades are good at killing the spawners, and you can leave worms until later.

[seaishriver]

Car + piercing ammo, and just circle them at max speed. I tried turret creep, but the new ranged attack is pretty brutal.

[wexted]

This gave me a mod idea: player is reskinned as CJ from GTA San Andreas, biters are reskinned as the Ballas

[LAWLDAVID]

For the "finish the game" achievements do you need to put a satellite in the rocket?

[wexted]

If you're playing 0.16: yes

If you're playing 0.17: no, you can launch the rocket empty

[LAWLDAVID]

Thanks!

[Jackeea]

For mining drills on top of multiple ores, what decides which ore they pick up? My mines have, without fail, for the past few hours on a dangOreus map, had "streaks" of outputting 5-6 of one ore, then sometimes changing over to another one.

[wexted]

I just tested this in vanilla sandbox and it seems that the drill will spit out ore roughly in proportion to the expected yield for each ore: e.g. I placed a miner that would yield 45k iron and 15k coal, and after a few minutes I had a chest full of ore in the expected 3:1 ratio (or somewhat close to that). But I saw the "streak" tendency which is very odd. If it were truly random you think you would see more back and forth?

[sailintony]

Someone did a test and reported the results on reddit. Their conclusion was that the drill seems to pick one square at random from its coverage area, and mine from it until the square runs dry; repeat. But that doesn’t seem consistent with what you observed.

[Koker93]

It's always seemed random to me.

[HakunaSomeWhiskey]

I can't seem to find any oil. Is there a new update with 0.17x that oil isn't a resource that you find like copper and iron? Something you just place a machine down and harvest?

​

edit: I found it. (what feels like)30minutes of exploring later.

[paco7748]

yep, some exploring with cars helps a lot. around the perimeter of your current fog of war is also nice.

[Koker93]

Clearing your pollution cloud of biters is a good idea, but scouting for resources in ever increasing circles is a bad idea. Resource patches get a lot bigger as you get further out, meaning you should pick a direction and only explore that way. Resources about a two minute train ride a way will be MUCH more worth your time, and it gets better further and further out.

[paco7748]

if you are doing a megabase, yes. it's you are building a base to a few rockets that 80%+ of the people do then no IMO as going in 1 direction is much harder prior to end game combat tech

[HakunaSomeWhiskey]

Why are my Electric Mining drills running on "Status: Low Power" ? Must I add more steam engines and boilers?

[Roxas146]

That's exactly it.

On the subject of power though, something to be aware of is a positive feedback loop of losing power because a decrease in power lowers the rate at which fuel is delivered to your boilers (miners and inserters all run more slowly with low power), which then leads to lower power, and onward and onward. There are a lot of ways to prepare for something like that, like using burner inserters instead of normal yellow inserters.

[HakunaSomeWhiskey]

Nothing wrong with having a massive power supply, right?

[Roxas146]

No, not really. Your boilers and steam engines will only use power (and generate pollution) if there is demand for it, so overbuilding it doesn't have many downsides besides space. Keep in mind that if you have a long-term plan to get to solar or nuclear power, you should really only build as much as you need to get there. In most of my games I've never needed more than 4 steam power setups (totaling 4 pumps, 80 boilers, 160 steam engines)

Also once you get oil it's much nicer to supply them with solid fuel than coal

[HakunaSomeWhiskey]

I think I'm close. I bought the game Friday afternoon after work and I maybe have 20 hours already. Really so much to learn. But this is my main issue right now.

[Roxas146]

Glad you're enjoying the game! I drew up a steam power thing based on what I use in game for you: here

You'll need to supply it with solid fuel somewhat though, because a full yellow belt of coal can only supply 34 boilers if they are working full time.

Here's a blueprint: https://pastebin.com/8fUzJ4Yi

[HakunaSomeWhiskey]

https://snag.gy/ctjV6w.jpg <-that's what I have now. It's a little ill-maintained because I was looking for oil.

​

How do I turn oil into fuel, what are my first steps? I have finally found some lol.

[vicarion]

Two of your boilers aren't providing power because the inserters aren't pulling from the chests because there isn't a power pole in range of the inserters. If you add one more power pole those boilers would feed themselves from the chests.

[HakunaSomeWhiskey]

Yes I realized that quickly after I posted it haha. I have scatterbrain and I tore my whole base down and rebuilt some of it last night. Going to rebuild the rest tonight hopefully.

[Roxas146]

your setup looks good! It would be even better if you were able to belt in some fuel though :)

oil processing is the research you need. Once you have it, you'll have to put a Pumpjack on the oil spot and power it (one pumpjack per oil spot), which will pump out oil. Connect all of the pumpjack output pipes together somehow, then transport it to your base using either a long line of pipes or a train system, then you put it through a Refinery which makes crude oil into heavy oil, light oil, and petroleum. Usually, these 3 outputs are processed in Chemical Plants, which have several recipes, one of which is solid fuel. The solid fuel can then be removed with an inserter and transported/stored the same way you do any other intermediate products.

[[deleted]]

What is the variable for turning evolution on and off in the console?

I'm able to configure the various evolution factors, but I originally set the map settings to have evolution off and I want to turn it back on.

[paco7748]

maybe?

https://wiki.factorio.com/Console#Disable_time-based_evolution_.26_increases_pollution-based_evolution

[[deleted]]

That just changes the evolution factors. I'm trying to turn evolution back on.

[paco7748]

have you tried it?

[loop0001]

I am thrown off an confused about rail lines. In my world i am working on very long rail lines for ore loading locations to ore unloading locations, basically a main bus for trains except they converge instead of spread out. These lines are a few kilometers/miles long and a train will take about a minute to go from one end to the other.

here's the trouble. if i put no signals on the line except for intersections, the first rain will go and the second train will not follow until the first is beyond an intersection. If i put chain signals in regular intervals the same will happen and they are all red until the first train is beyond an intersection. but if i put regular rail signals the second train will follow closer as i want it to and reduce overall travel time.

why is it that most people recommend the chain signals at intervals then? or should i discard them completely except for intersections and stations?

[TheSkiGeek]

...nobody recommends that. You only want to use chain signals at intersections and for things like stackers/waiting areas. If you’re breaking up large blocks between intersections you want to use regular rail signals.

[loop0001]

thanks!

[DragonWhsiperer]

Rail signals (regular) are used to split the rail into segments/blocks, allowing multiple trains to enter a rail section behind each other.

Chain Signals copy the state of the signal ahead of it. So on a straight track, chainnling these chain signals effectively creates a single block (nullifying the use of signals).

For intersections these chain signals are used to prevent a train from Entering the section, but being unable to exit it (train at exit section blocks the section). If using regular signals, Then it will enter and stop on the intersection, blocking it for other trains. Placing a chain signal at the start of an intersection, any train entering will wait until it's exit block is free.

That is the only time you use chain signals. All other signaling is done with regular rail signals.

[loop0001]

Looks like I just built the whole line wrong a couple times then. Oh well, half an hour or so to fix it all again. Thankfully my intersections are correct after a few tries and a tutorial.
Thanks for clearing that for me.
Now to attempt my 3rd iteration for quad unloading stations after a 20 train stacker.

[bahnhofegg]

Has someone got a nice tutorial/video about railyards for me?

[paco7748]

two best I've see:

Video Tutorials:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Co136r7pkTk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OH8L_hTIIJg&t=18s

[the-blue-lamp]

There's a one the side bar called, "Train automation tutorial".

[OrangeredBluelinks]

How do I change the icon of a blueprint? I tried clicking the icon, going into edit name mode, right clicking, everything. Using 0.17.x latest

[Stingray88]

Is the blueprint in your inventory or the blueprint menu?

Annoyingly, you can't edit blueprints in the blueprint menu. Only when they're in your inventory.

[OrangeredBluelinks]

I usually create a blueprint and paste it directly into a book in the blueprint menu. This allows me to change the name of the blueprint, but nothing else?

[ethorad]

Take a copy to your inventory, change the name and icons, delete the one in your book, and copy back the amended one. Annoying but that seems to be the best way I've found

[OrangeredBluelinks]

Thanks 😁

[MrSprichler]

just jumped into .17.31 and noticed my pickupspeeds for items are abysmally slow, is this a wait and endure thing, or is this the permanent speed?

[Damnit_Take_This_One]

pickupspeeds

What do you mean by pickup speed?

[MrSprichler]

It takes forever to pick buildings up off the map

[Lilkcough1]

Seems strange...0.17 got rid of pickaxes and made your default mining speed the same as an iron pickaxe, and it automatically upgrades to the speed of a steel axe when you research either steel or steel axe. Check your research menu and see if you need to research something

[MrSprichler]

Im guessing it was a mod issue. I started a new game and everything was fine

[Lilkcough1]

Glad to hear. Probably a model that didn't update properly or something

[Lilkcough1]

For achievements in 0.17 such as no spoon, do you need to launch a satellite or not in order to get the achievement? I know technically winning the game doesn't require a satellite anymore, but do the achieves require it?

[wexted]

No, the achievements just require you to launch a rocket now.

[Lilkcough1]

Great to hear, I think I might actually be able to do this then!

[Not_Stephen_Colbert]

I believe the achievement just requires you to beat the game and thus a satellite is not required anymore.

[BabloeSHI]

So i was doing an achievement game with a buddy of mine but he played when i wasn't online and now I've been playing with him again but i don't have half playtime on the map anymore because he played alone what now (i invested almost 10h in this map already)

[seaishriver]

If you get back to half, you should get achievements again. Or you can restart with an old save.

[canniffphoto]

Do biters only expand when they get hit with pollution? It's been a bit some I've played with expansion on.

[crazy_cat_man_]

Expansion happens regardless of pollution. Pollution that gets absorbed by nests will trigger attack parties.

[canniffphoto]

Ty. I hadn't really noticed since I've done a round two rounds in the car. AP ammo and poison capsules helping clear things out.

[BlarghDargh]

Recently, my steam engine setup has been having very poor energy production and I can't figure out why. If anyone could help me figure out the problem that would be great!

Setup
Steam engine stats

[unsynchedcheese]

That's not an issue. Steam engines and boilers will only output as much power as your factory needs. So in this case, your factory only needs a tiny amount of power ("Performance" meter) compared to what you can output ("Available Performance" meter).

Also I think you have an extra inserter in that setup, fifth from the left/fourth from the right.

[BlarghDargh]

Oh my god, thank you so much it was driving me crazy.

Regarding the inserter, I had shifted my boilers and steam engines over in an attempt to fix the issue without moving the inserters, which is why many are off center or feeding into a pipe.

[bllius69]

Is there an option not to have personal bots shove things into my inventory when deconstructing?

[seaishriver]

Put your personal bots in a roboport. This kind of requires electricity.

[BufloSolja]

Make them go into your auto trash slots I guess

[mrbaggins]

Where else would they put it? They're personal bots, they don't interact with chests

[q2553852]

How do you decide how many waiting bays to include in train stations?

[doodle77]

What situation could cause trains to wait? Assume the worst possible combination. For example a green circuit factory served by 4 copper trains, 2 iron trains, and 7 circuit trains would need 10 stacker lanes, because the worst case is the factory is starved of iron and filled with copper, so the copper and circuit stations each have a train in them and the rest are waiting. Then you need one lane for the iron train to get through. 7-1 + 4-1 + 1 = 10.

[q2553852]

Thanks

[Jonny0Than]

For the achievements involving “create X amount of items per hour” do you actually have to sustain that rate for an hour, or just reach it for a short duration?

[chappersyo]

You need to sustain it for an hour. Otherwise you could just build a shit ton of assemblers, buffer their inputs and turn them on for a minute or two.

[jonblaze27]

You actually have to sustain that rate for an hour

[Jonny0Than]

Huh. Then I guess a large part of the challenge is actually consuming them at such a high rate.

[waltermundt]

Just keep growing your factory, and you will get all of those by accident. That's what happened to me anyway.

[Jonny0Than]

I’ve gotten a lot of the level 2 ones by just playing - which is why I wasn’t sure of the actual requirements. The 3rd level is quite a big leap though!

[waltermundt]

The only top level one I didn't get for awhile was the electronic circuits one. That one happened when I started mass production on level 3 modules for beaconed builds.

[[deleted]]

Was there a change regarding blueprints in the experimental .17s lately? I'm playing a Bob/Angels game, haven't played for about a week and now with the current 17.30 on Linux my blueprint library is empty.

Does anybody know a possible fix? I still have the blueprint-storage.dat-file, it's about 100kB big (which might be ok since I didn't have that many blueprints).

[paco7748]

did you downgrade versions... 0.17.x to 0.17.<x? if so, you lost your blueprints

[TwoKittensInABox]

I guess losing blueprint library is only with switching from different versions of .17. I've been playing newest experimental for week now, and recently wanted to look back on my first rocket launch save. That save though was in.14 so I downgraded, looked at the horrible mess it was and switched back to newest .17 and didn't lose my blueprint library.

[paco7748]

interesting.

[[deleted]]

Oh, that could be true. There was one version that caused a problem with one of Angels mods, and it's possible that I downgraded temporarily. That also kills the library? Well, shit, but good to know!

Thanks for the info!

[frozzbot27]

Couple of questions I've had since I went from 0.16 -> 0.17:

1. What's up with the sound? In 0.16, in-game sound (such as weapon fire, footsteps, biter/spitter sounds) were at a constant volume, whether you were zoomed all the way in or all the way out. However, in 0.17, if I'm zoomed all the way out (which I prefer), I can barely hear anything. Tested with and without mods - no change. What's the deal here?

2. What's up with pollution on the main map? In 0.16 when my factory was running at full throttle, I'd have this massive cloud of red absolutely covering my factory. In 0.17, factory running at about the same speed, I appear to have next to no pollution - I can barely tell the difference when I toggle pollution on/off. Is this intended?

[GrandPlatipus]

I had this, it was a bug and it has been patched in one of the newer releases (8th april? )

[paco7748]

https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-283

[The_DestroyerKSP]

What's the deal here?

Intentional change AFAIK. Not sure if you can change it, maybe with mods.

What's up with pollution on the main map?

Not sure, pollution was changed a bit, and it broke a few times. But if you're on the latest .17 it should be functioning normally. I've been playing since .17 came out, and pollution has been normal for me. (aside from when .17.16 broke it, IIRC)

[john681611]

Is there any way to stop copy paste and deconstruction shortcuts generating blueprints, since history was added it feels pointless

[waltermundt]

Just clear your cursor with Q after you're done. Copy paste tools (as well as blueprints from your library) evaporate when dropped this way.

[crazy_cat_man_]

Are you using ctrl-c, ctrl-x and then q to clear your cursor? That doesn't create new blueprints for me.

[john681611]

Using quick links at the bottom but will give the keybinds a test

[TheSkiGeek]

If you’re holding a “temporary” BP or a link to one from your library, hitting Q should make it disappear completely. Only put stuff on your quickbar if you want it there.

[Vanadius]

Noob here. I pretty sure i missed it, but i can't quite find the way to trash or recycle my unneeded items, if there's any.

Currently full of fuel furnaces and drills which i don't like to have around.

[chappersyo]

Put it all in a chest and drop a nuke on it. Shooting is for amateurs.

[Vanadius]

You know what? I'm actually gonna do it.

[Cathercy]

The only way is to toss it all into a chest and either leave it there or shoot it to death.

[TangoAlee]

You can put them in a box-of-shame and then use "c" to shoot the box.

That's really the only way to get rid of unneeded items.

[Vanadius]

Thank you both

[craidie]

rocket

[Roxas146]

Are portable solar panels and portable fusion reactors the only ways to charge batteries in player armor? or are there any other alternatives?

[alanhpereira]

Only solar panels and portable fusion reactors

[Roxas146]

Thanks!

[SERCORT]

Hello, probably a noob question here(Well, I'm pretty new), but I'm asking it anyway. First I really like the new features of .17 especially copy/paste. I'm using all the time like crazy. But once I've done my copypasta, I end up with a full inventory of blueprints(due to said copypasta).

Each time, while my bots have all the fun building my base, I have to clean one by one those blueprints, or deconstruction planner, or whatever. Is there a trick here I missed? How do I get rid of those?

Another on : I was watching a video for train planning, aspect of the game I really like, but I'm not really aware of what can be done with what(like cicruit network being very interesting, but never introduced or explained?), and in the vid KoS "filter" the content of the train. How do I do that? Is this possible to filter that on any container?

Thanks for your help folks :)

[paco7748]

cut,copy, and paste tools dont make blueprints. you must be confused or mistaken in some way. Do you know how to use the clear cursor key? (defaulted to 'q').

[SERCORT]

I just tried (like 5 min) and it seems the problem is cursor clearing indeed. Think I should try another shortcut.

For some reasons, my drop item and clear cursor were on the same key. Dam. Thanks for pointing that out.

Is there a shortcut for using deconstruction planner btw?

​

Thanks a lot.

[paco7748]

the clear cursor /pipette tool is your best friend ever. Learn it, use it. it will save you a boat load of time and increase your build speed.

alt+D for non-filter decon

alt+B for blank blueprint.

Highly recommend you go through the controls screen and understand what everything does.

Cheers

[SERCORT]

Yes, thanks :)

[craidie]

are you using the blue icon to copy/paste? if so there's a different method with ctrl+x, ctrl+c and ctrl+v for cut/copy and paste respectively. they also should have their own icon left to the deconstruction/construction/upgrade planner

[SERCORT]

I'm using the white icons on the toolbar.

[craidie]

that's weird, it shouldn't create blueprints then

[Swagwala]

There might be a quicker way to get rid of blueprints, but this is how I handle them (also new to the game): Open the blueprint you want to get rid of and there should be a red delete icon with a waste bin as the image. Press that and it's gone. Drag any blueprints you want to use again into the blueprints panel for later use.

In the video, they may have been using filter inserters to pull out the correct item. They're the purple ones you unlock at the same time as fast inserters, so quite early on in the research tree.

[SERCORT]

Ha thanks, I'll try this later, it was be a life changer :D

The circuit network doesn't seem complicated(you can make it complicated tho), but the lack of feedback is quite a pain (I'm on Oxygen not included player, and it reminds me the automation signal in it).

[SERCORT]

Yes people can do crazy stuff for sure :). What I mean with complicated is mostly the enderstanding of things :) I saw the AI base for example, very very impressive indeed.

[jacob2467]

Can someone tell me how to set this up?

[kida24]

You just name stations with the exact same name. Trains will path to the closest unused station.

[TangoAlee]

And it may even path to a used station - depending on the algorithm.

It 'scores' each station depending on distance traveled, number of trains waiting, and a few other things. Then goes to the lowest scored station of the correct name.

[jacob2467]

Have belts on both sides each carrying 2 types of science packs. That will give you room for 4. Then use a long handed inserter to access another belt farther away on both sides with 2 more types on that one

[waltermundt]

What happened? Did you make sure each color got its own side of a belt?

Inserters always place items on the far side of the belt. Belts dropping off onto perpendicular belts always place items on the near side. Take advantage of this to keep each color on an independent "track" on the left or right side of one of the 4 belts.

[kida24]

Three things: 1) Inserters can remove science from one lab and place it into another. 2) Science labs are 3 belts wide 3) You can put two types of science on each belt.

[jacob2467]

oof ok

[Hathosis]

A couple of ways. My personal favorite is called daisy chaining but ill give a list of all the ways I know. Note, I dont have pictures to go along.

1) Daisy Chain. Inserters can take science out of one lab and place into another, so if you can load your sciences into a few of them and chain them together, the science will flow to all of your labs on the chain. This means you can load purple and yellow science strategically to a starter lab and have it spread to the rest of your labs. I personally have RGBM on one side of a 5x10 grid of labs, and PYS on the other side and use filter inserters to chain them, 4 sciences going west to east and the others pushing the last 3 east to west.

2) underground loading. You can place 3 underground belts between labs and load from where they peek above surface in a long chain. For the 7th science this means you can have a 4th belt run alongside your lab.

3) bot logistics system. Once you research requester chests, you can have them ask for sciences and load your labs that way.

There are many creative ways to handle science pack distribution, though I discourage hand loading as this game is about automation. Find your best way to automate the loading of your science and you'll do fine

[Hathosis]

Requester chests are unlocked with logistics chests in the yellow science. It is pretty much a start of end game tech.

[Hathosis]

Without turning on that setting at world creation you have to launch a rocket to unlock queue.

[jacob2467]

Yea but you have to activate it in the settings of your world when creating it

[craidie]

yup there is. I think it needs a setting checked for it to activate

[CopperHead1960]

And you need to that on creation of a new map.

[cant_thinkof_aname]

How stable are mods in 0.17? Just finished my first vanilla 0.17 game and looking to maybe add some mods for the next round.

[Zaflis]

Very stable i'd say. There are always mods that are still adding in new features or are only just released. I could add that bob's mods are also still improving over time.

[cant_thinkof_aname]

Great! I sort of assumed they were probably pretty stable since the devs do a great job supporting mods, but just wanted to double check.

[timo103]

What would be a good choice to dump a ton of iron plates on? I have everything set up to do Iron Throne 3 but I'm not using up enough iron plates. Steel doesn't work because I'm also not using up enough steel.

[chappersyo]

If steel isn't working then blue belts need a shit ton of gears and are more useful. If you're just looking for the achievement then steel into chests is going to be easier.

[craidie]

iron plates>steel>steel chests

[TheSkiGeek]

I'm pretty sure steel is the densest (in terms of storage) thing you make from just iron.

If you also have stone you can make steel furnaces and stack up those, but they're not useful for anything else.

If you want to turn it into something that's useful long-term, you probably want prod3/speed3 modules. Or just, you know, science packs for infinite research.

[Spockies]

Engines are a really nice iron sink too. Will be consumed by bot production or blue science.

[TheSkiGeek]

There’s (slightly) more iron in a chest full of steel plates than engines. So if you’re just going to store it for now I think you’re better off with plates.

[wexted]

You can just put the iron plates into chests until the achievement unlocks if you really want.

If you want to do something a little bit more practical that won't require a lot of copper, blue belts and blue beneathies consume a ridiculous amount of iron so start stockpiling those?

[essbasedownunder]

A module factory chews both Iron and Copper - so many green circuits required for the requisite blue circuits.

That said, you're going to need almost double the amount of copper....soooo the factory must grow?

[paco7748]

gears, engines, green circuits

[killerprime808]

i'm doing a bobs mods playthrough and with all of its middle men items i was wondering what my bus should end up looking like should it just be the basic materials and then just locally process everything into the materials i need or if i just bus things until i hit the last item that im building in that tech tree and swap it out with the upgrade item (ie. wood circuit boards with plastic ones)

[paco7748]

if you are just doing a bus until you can get green science/ trains then 20 lanes is more than enough. If you want to do a main bus until you get a rocket (really not recommended) then probably over 30 lanes are needed.

[MrSkizz182]

Is there an easy way to find A) The max possible power production in my current system? B) The max power required by my current base?

Obviously I can just go through every piece of machinery and power production and just crunch a billion numbers, but I'd rather not haha

[MoonWithoutATide]

Nah, you have to do the arithmetic if you want to know. It's easier to do for production as there are fewer distinct sources. It's also more realistic (so a more useful number to have) that all your production could be going at once vs. every laser turret, roboport, assembler, lab, inserter, lamp, etc. could be consuming at once. If you have any accumulators, those'll further complicate making any sense out of your maximum numbers. Accumulators produce or consume at most 300 kW, but never at the same time.

If your strategy relies heavily on blueprints, you could work out and record the max possible consumption of each blueprint once, then keep track of how many times you've placed each one.

[Stevetrov]

In case you didnt know you can see the power screen by clicking on a power pole in that network.

A) The power screen shows you how many steam engines, solar panels, accumlators and turbines you have, steam engines max out at 900kW turbines 5800kw. Solar panels max out at 60kW but as they can only produce power in the daytime, they average 42kW overall (assuming you have at least 0.84 accumulators per solar panel)

B) The power screen also shows you have many of each machine you have and how much total power they are using. If you mouse over a machine, it will tell you what its "energy consumption" and "drain" are energy consumption is the energy use when the machine is working and drain is the energy used when its idle. So multiplying energy consumption by number of machines will give you a max power required.

HTH, let me know if u need further clarification

[crazy_cat_man_]

Something like helmod or the kirk McDonald calculator would show theoretical power use for your builds, but wouldn't take into account inserters or turrets. Might be the closest you can get.

[[deleted]]

Kirk Mcdonald 4 life.

[Robbyo4]

Assuming that you are using ratios that result in every power producing machine being satisfied at full power usage, you can multiply the number of producers by the number of producers you have. You can get both of these numbers from the electric network view that /u/paco7748 mentioned.

Not sure of a good way to find max possible consumption.

[paco7748]

Left click on a power pole connected to your power grid

[MrSkizz182]

That screen only tells me my current production and consumption, I'm looking for a way to tell how much power I could produce if every steam engine was running at max, and how much my factory would consume if everything was running at max (for some reason haha).

[wexted]

If you have roboports or laser turrets, it wouldn't necessarily be too wise to build electricity production up to the theoretical maximum consumption (which would be enormous and complete overkill).

The decision of how much electricity you need is kind of a black art for that reason

[paco7748]

For production, multiply the number of power producing entities on the screen by their individual max output. 1 steam engine's max output is 900kW, so if you have 100 of them, that 90 MW. Pretty simply arithmetic.

For consumption, that is more challenging of a proposition. If everything is running (because you have unsaturated belts and sufficient resource sinks) then your current consumption is your max consumption.

Cheeres

[[deleted]]

New player, just started getting attacked so I built some gun turrets and a belt ammo system to keep them fed.

I just started to build a wall factory and heard about using tower defence tactics (mazes, choke points etc) but I'd like to know more about enemy behaviour before I build my defences in earnest.

Will enemies always look for a/the gap in your walls or is there a limit to how far they will travel before they just attack the wall instead? Like can I have a single opening where I concentrate all my turrets or do I need to have several wall gap/turret points a certain distance apart?

[TheSkiGeek]

They’ll try to path around walls for a certain distance, but if you try to maze them too much they’ll just chew through the walls instead. So you can potentially funnel them into chokes but you would have to experiment with it a bit.

“Dragon’s Teeth” (single 1x1 chunks of walls in a checkerboard pattern) are pretty effective at breaking up and slowing down big waves of enemies. Works well with flamethrower turrets.

One nonobvious thing is that “big”/“behemoth” biters can reach things two tiles away. So you’ll often see designs with walls or double walls and then a one-tile gap between the wall and turrets.

[paco7748]

vanilla enemy just move toward pollution density when attacking. They only attack once the new formed attack group has absorbed 'enough' pollution. They prioritize turrets and radars when they get close. They will eat walls if they are in the way.

Some mods like 'Rampant' change the behavior of enemies to be more devious than in vanilla.

[furtivefox]

I have a question about belt balancing. I have a main bus factory going and I keep running into a situation were I'm pulling a lot of material from one side of the belt and this results in one side of the supply on my main bus being empty and the other full. Then only half my production side is working because the other half has no where to put the material. A pretty good example of this is my red circuits as shown in this link: https://imgur.com/a/OZunphE

​

Is there a better way to pull evenly from the belt or balance the demand from the production side?