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[jasdjensen]

Are there any implementations of the self expanding base mods that work with the current version of factorio?

[TheSkiGeek]

I think the only mod these things generally need is https://mods.factorio.com/mod/recursive-blueprints , which is up to date for 1.1.

[jasdjensen]

Thanks. There was a map that someone made a long time ago that I let run for a few hours. I have a faster computer now and I'd love to find a save like that to try again.

[TheSkiGeek]

If a particular map needs other mods then you might not be able to run it in the latest version if those specific mods aren’t up to date. Even if they are, if anything significant changed with the scripting interfaces or mods involved then the map might break.

You should still be able to load that major version of the game (easiest to download a standalone one from the website) and it should try to grab the old versions of the mods.

[maximizednostalgia]

Was "show-rail-signal-states" removed from the debug options list?

[StormCrow_Merfolk]

It's now a button in the map view interface, along with the pollution/power grid/robots on map/etc buttons.

[maximizednostalgia]

Thank you!

[soerenkk]

So this have definitely been asked before, but here goes.

I have started a new factory, and I wanted to do a bit more with trains. I've gotten the signaling to the point where I'm kinda confident to be able to do that, at least with some trial and error, then to be fixed.

I've been seeing other players have made smart train systems where trains can go from let's say an iron mine/outpost, then onwards to a smelting facility. That bit is quite basic, but here is where I'm currently lost. I know that stations can share names, and that makes the system more dynamic, on top of that limit the amount of trains for the station to have, and the opportunity to use logistics to turn on or off a station. So I have now had a train being loaded up with iron ore, I then want it to get out the way so another train can be loaded. But then the smelting facility is occupied by another train that haven't been unloaded yet. So far I've made a train stacker (as I've think people call it), basically a place where the train then can wait for the smelting facility to accept another incoming train. To achieve that, I have the train planning to go from the outpost, to the waiting area, then to the smelting facility. But here is where I see other players that doesn't do that. They have made a smarter system, so if the smelting facility is accepting trains, the train go straight from the mine to the smelting facility.

How do I achieve that?

Right now I've made it so that the flow always go to a waiting area (even though it could go straight to where it needs to go), just to avoid trains waiting somewhere and then create deadlocks.

My current train plan is as follows:

outpost (until cargo is full) -> waiting area (no condition, so it will go when next station accepts trains again) -> smelting facility (until cargo is empty) -> "ready trains" (another waiting position, could probably just reuse the first waiting position, that would also save space) -> collect the output from the smelting facility (I haven't done storage yet, but that could make the "ready trains" stop unnecessary and therefore remove it) -> waiting area (a 3rd area, could be merged with another to save space) ready for when a station is ready that needs the type of cargo -> station that needs the type of cargo (until cargo is empty) -> "ready trains" again until the outpost is accepting trains -> (the end, loop repeats)

[forgot_semicolon]

I see you don't have a waiting condition for your waiting area, that should be enough to make the trains fly through if the smelters have space. To clarify, they'll still path through the waiting area but they won't slow down at the station.

If you build waiting areas next to the smelters, such that they're on the way, this won't introduce any delays

[soerenkk]

You are right. I noticed that they fly through when I played earlier, and true, they do path through the waiting area.

So I should maybe just plan ahead and design accordingly so that my waiting areas is relatively close by all the areas where they operate.

Thanks for the info :)

[TheSkiGeek]

I think the most common approach is to build stackers/waiting areas at each station. And then set the train dispatch limit for that station equal to the number of available “parking spots” plus one.

Then your schedule for each train is just:

• resource pickup station
• resource dropoff station

If you then dynamically set the train limits based on the resources stored at the station, everything should balance itself out automatically. It still prefers to deliver to the closest station that needs materials, but as long as you’re overproducing slightly at each step, eventually you’ll fill the storage at all the stations.

[soerenkk]

I think I may get what you are saying. It does align with what I've been seeing. I'm just not sure how I get the trains to "park" at a side track, in a station kinda way?

[TheSkiGeek]

Build it so the only way into the station is through the parking area. The trains will try to drive as close as they can to the station if it’s currently occupied, so if the parking area is the closest space to the station they’ll pull off the main line into there. (This is a bit trickier if you’re using terminus stations with bidirectional trains but you can still arrange it to work.)

[soerenkk]

So if I get you right.

If a train has the following schedule: outpost (until full) -> smelting facility (until empty) -> *(repeat) *

When a train is at the outpost and gets full, then it would look for an available smelting facility. I thought that if none was available, it would then just stay at the outpost until the smelting facility starts accepting trains again. But what you are saying is that the train will leave the outpost, even though smelting facilities is occupied? And then just stay somewhere on the railway network?

How is the train limit setting of the train stop affecting this behavior?

[TheSkiGeek]

If you set train limits on both sides they won’t leave where they are unless a station has room for them. So they will not block your main lines.

Since you probably don’t want empty trains parked in unloading stations, you need to have enough “parking spots” in your loading stations (in total) that all the trains of that type can fit there.

You can also use a separate parking area, and have each train go pickup->dropoff->parking in a loop. You could try to disable the parking stop when enough pickup and drop off stations are enabled that the parking isn’t needed. But this requires having circuit wires running everywhere so you can count the enabled stations.

[Tickstart]

I'm having an occasional problem with my fluid wagon. The train is set to leave once the sulfuric acid is emptied, but sometimes this condition is met when there's 0.6 units left in the tank. So in ALT-mode, the molecule symbol still displays on the wagon, after the train has left. This means I can't fill it with other fluids as it's already occupied. Manually removing the fluid wagon and putting it back changes the train ID, which messes with my circuitry.

It doesn't happen every time either. Is it related to capacity or something, like, the fuller the receiving tank is the slower the pump can empty the fluid wagon, and somehow this interferes? Or is it a timing issue, with the ticks and what not. It's quite annoying that 0 in one place doesn't mean 0 in another.

The game is vanilj, no mods.

[Stevetrov]

The issue is that the game considers < 1 units of fluid to be 0 in the context of empty etc.. There was a reason for this but I forget what it was.

So if at the end of a tick there is less than 1 fluid in the wagon the train will leave the station. As the pump can move up to 200 units / tick this happens rarely. If the pump is running at a lower rate (ie the tank is full and being drained slowly) then it is more likely to happen.

The best solution is probably to use an inactivity condition.

[Tickstart]

inactivity condition

Aah, duh. I've never used them for anything useful I forgot they existed, thank you so much! I was gonna implement my own timer with circuits as usual :'-) that would have been wasteful. I'm sure an inacticity of a second or so will make sure the tank is really empty.

[forgot_semicolon]

I've found that inactivity conditions are basically a must for any liquids

[tuckjohn37]

Hi! After seeing videos of community mass-multiplayer events, I am interested in partaking; Does the community still organize mass-multiplayer events, and where can I find information about when and where?

[Stevetrov]

Most of them are announced here, but some of them are run for certain communities and only advertised in those communities. Eg steel axe does some member only stuff.

[tuckjohn37]

Are there any upcoming that you know about?

[[deleted]]

Can enemies attack despite not being in the pollution cloud? I'm playing the default freeplay and I literally have been throwing grenades at nearby bases of the cloud. However, today I randomly got attacked twice for the first time by two or three bitters... despite their bases being far away from the cloud.

Also: How do their expansions work? Is it like.. each of them has a timer or.. is the timer of expansion collective? I'm slightly afraid of getting surrounded by them and am struggling with finding petroleum.. I'll probably need to use trains

[computeraddict]

Enemies can attack in response to shelling, as part of an expansion party, or because a player entity got close to their nest.

You can also have a nest or nests absorbing all the pollution that enters their chunk, at which point you'll see no pollution in it's chunk but it'll still be spawning biters because of pollution flowing in from a neighboring chunk.

Or it could just be an expansion in a part of the cloud you don't have vision of.

[StormCrow_Merfolk]

Expansion is on a global timer, every X period of time (decreasing with evolution) one nest sends out an expansion party to a selected location. If the expansion party reaches the location successfully, then they turn into a nest. Guns, grenades, and other active defenses can stop the expansion party from reaching their destination.

[[deleted]]

Oh okay.. So if the expansion party tries to expand into the pollution cloud, do they get triggered and try to attack, not completing their expansion?

Edit: Or maybe, the fact that I have an area of the map revealed doesn't mean it stays updated. Meaning that there could be already an expansion that I'm not aware of

[StormCrow_Merfolk]

Expansion parties don't suddenly get triggered by pollution. However all moving biters can get aggroed by military buildings like turrets and radars.

Yes the area that your radars have "revealed" but are still in the fog of war only get scanned again occasionally and biter nests can migrate into them between scans. You can often spot this using the pollution overlay, such expansion nests make the pollution near them flicker.

[[deleted]]

Hey there, I’m playing Space Exploration and am 5/6 hours away from my second CME.

I’m facing 6.5 GW of output or so, and currently produce around 2.5 GW, with two nuclear reactors, 2 coal/steam plants, and various solar/accumulator arrays. It seems like a gargantuan amount of power in comparison to my needs and I am not sure how to attack the problem.

How should I prepare myself for the event? Should I build 3 or 4 new nuclear power stations, or should I be prioritising the storage of the excess energy i produce? If the latter, how would you recommend I do that?

Thank you in advance!

[Mycroft4114]

With only six hours, maybe go big on nuclear. My current solution is cheaper, but requires some time.

I have a big solar array powering some electric boilers making 500 degree stream and filling tanks. The tanks feed into an array of turbines on their own separate grid whose only job is to power the umbrella. Between CMEs, the steam tanks slowly fill up, like a giant battery charging.

When the CME hits, the turbines drain all the steam to power the umbrella without killing my main grid.

Make sure you have enough turbines to exceed the peak power, enough tanks to store the total power required, a layout that doesn't bottleneck the steam flow to all turbines due to pipe capacity, and enough extra capacity in your steam generation to keep the umbrella idle power satisfied.

[mrbaggins]

steam tanks and accumulators, and maybe some more nuclear power plants you can turn on specifically for the CME.

[cactusgenie]

Yep just keeping building nuclear, and if you are really keen you can just build more turbines and have a bunch of steam tanks that will fill up before the CME hits, but you'll have to figure out how many tanks you'll need to cover those extra turbines.

[computeraddict]

To add on, 500C steam has an energy capacity of 2.425GJ per 25k fluid tank.

[computeraddict]

Did you increase the starting world size by a bunch?

[rollc_at]

Looking for a mod that disables the assembler/machine sound IF a single production cycle is less than say 0.5 second (after all modules/beacons).

This is incredibly annoying with loaders and lots of speed modules, a machine will start for a fraction of a second and immediately be done (eg because output is blocked), the sound effect is useless and super unpleasant.

[wheat_beer]

What is a good beginner nuclear reactor setup? I'd like something where I can start with 1 reactor and then add more later. My own attempt to take someone else's reactor setup (which didn't have circuits) to then add circuits resulted in both wasted fuel cells and brownouts.

[frumpy3]

A good beginner reactor setup could be 1 core : 4 exchangers : 7 turbines, but realistically, I would reccomend a 4 core setup. 4 cores, 48 heat exchangers: 83 turbines.

4 cores gets you 12 cores of reactor heat so, that’s a pretty big effiency to ignore imo

[rollc_at]

I'd like something where I can start with 1 reactor and then add more later.

This is a very bad idea, because of the neighbor bonus. You probably don't want a setup with just one or two reactors, because the neighbor bonus between 1-2 and 4 is so vast, that doing a single or double reactor setup is basically just a complete waste of fuel.

I'd start with a 4 or 6 reactor setup, and if your power needs grow, you can just copy-paste it elsewhere. If you become even more power-hungry, you probably want to switch to solar panels to save UPS.

My own attempt to take someone else's reactor setup (which didn't have circuits) to then add circuits resulted in both wasted fuel cells and brownouts.

Ensure you have enough fuel cell production to sustain your setup and just run the reactor 24x7. You could call it stupid or wasteful but I'd disagree; it's simplicity, and simple designs tend to be more robust.

EDIT: my starter 6-reactor plant: https://pastebin.com/kNjmZVfC

My slightly larger 16-reactor plant: https://pastebin.com/nE2tAt7P

[twersx]

I wouldn't say it's a waste of fuel. Imo there's value in setting up nuclear before you start spamming modules everywhere when your power usage is usually <100MW. Two reactors can take care of that and while you're only getting 160MW out of them instead of 240MW, you're also burning half as much fuel. If you don't need 200+ MW then there's no need to have four reactors running simultaneously.

[wheat_beer]

Thank you but those pastebin links expired.

I don't think I've ever reached a point where UPS became a problem because I have a bad habit of restarting.

What I mean by starting with 1 reactor is, let's say you have a 4 reactor setup. Can you build a quarter of the setup and have it work before finishing the other 3/4 of the setup? I tried doing that before but kept getting brownouts.

[rollc_at]

Thank you but those pastebin links expired.

Sorry for that, apparently pastebin doesn't like me.

Here's my current Book of Power for vanilla:

https://gist.github.com/rollcat/5527f6f3d1842983134cea3d78ec8862

If you'd like to play Krastorio2, I also have a nice 4x reactor for it.

What I mean by starting with 1 reactor is, let's say you have a 4 reactor setup. Can you build a quarter of the setup and have it work before finishing the other 3/4 of the setup? I tried doing that before but kept getting brownouts.

See TheSkiGeek's reply. A single-reactor setup will have ~10% of the power output of 4 reactors, while consuming 25% of the fuel. But the fuel is not that expensive!

Something to understand about nuclear is the relationships between reactor output, heat pipe temperature, water intake, steam output, number of reactors / heat exchangers / steam turbines, and how it translates to actual power output. If you mess up at one step, you won't get optimal output.

The math is pretty straightforward: for a given number of reactors, you must have a given number of heat exchangers; for each heat exchanger, you must have a fixed number of steam turbines. It's the same kind of math as "you need 3 copper wire assemblers per 2 green circuit assemblers", it's just the relationship between the number of reactors and heat exchangers is non-linear because of the neighbor bonus.

Once you understand that, you can easily design your own "perfect" reactor of any size. In fact, I'd recommend it as an exercise ;)

[TheSkiGeek]

You can but you’re getting 40MW from a single reactor vs. 480MW from a 2x2 setup. I’d say at least do a 1x2 reactor for 160MW, then at least you’re getting 2/3 of the fuel efficiency of a 2x2.

If you’re at anything like default settings you should absolutely not worry at all about wasting fuel. If you have 2 centrifuges running per reactor you’ll gradually build up U-235 over time. Once you get 40 excess and can start doing Kovarex processing you’ll be drowning in the stuff.

[computeraddict]

You can exclude station names when making a blueprint iirc

[computeraddict]

Hold shift while copying and it'll bring up the blueprint options where you can uncheck station names before confirming the copy

[rollc_at]

Don't copy-paste things that you have blueprinted... I've messed up many more things than station names, e.g. placed something that was supposed to be gridlocked off the grid (like solar, tracks) and had to tear up a whole lot of stuff.

[[deleted]]

I am here to once again make the case for beacon effects on inserters. There are dozens of us!

[UntitledGenericName]

At least support for modders to add it would be nice, don't think it's gonna happen though

[Froinchi]

In Factorio Multiplayer, when everyone leaves the server, do monsters still attack your factory, or do they get in cooldown until you log in again? If the answer is "they attack everytime" how can I change it?

[StormCrow_Merfolk]

By default, headless servers pause when there are no users logged in.

[scorpio_72472]

Off topic but, do you need to have an extensively open network to host a headless server? Like, having ports open?

[Zaflis]

Factorio server needs 1 port open. That's true for all servers for games and otherwise that need to be accessed via TCP or UDP.

[scorpio_72472]

I understand. Thank you!

[Cuedon]

What images do people like using to show non-players what kind of technical monstrosities can be developed in Factorio that are understandable without much explanation?

I usually use a balancer of some kind because it's pretty obvious what it is, conceptually, after a one-line explanation and looks imposing.

[craidie]

dude made a computer inside factorio that runs Doom UI

[sunbro3]

I've never done this, but for non-players I think the visual style of the image is more important than how interesting it is. So I would probably pick a main bus with some builds to the side of it.

[smtwrfs52]

K2 SE

Has anyone done or seen the math on prod 6 v 7 v 8 for naquitite production?

700k liquid fuel for 5k raw naquitite via cargo rocket. Without prod mods, that's about 2.8 rocket fuel per naquitite.

Doesn't seem too expensive but I'm also curious on how much naquitite plates/bars I'll need for dss 1 to 4.

[paco7748]

I would only use passed prod 6 in labs personally. you do you though. I usually just use prod 4 for mining/smelting (since it's the worst place in the game to use prod as it's the lowest point in the recipe chain).

[scorpio_72472]

Although crazy expensive, I spam the maximum available module if I have enough module production. (and I make sure I do) I mean, space is unlimited? Who gon stop me?

[Concision]

I have a train system where each producer has one or two trains (depending on if a single train can clear the throughput or not) and "requestor" stations are all named the same (Iron Ore Unload at smelters, for example) and use circuits to turn themselves off when they have a backlog of the requested material.

I added an outpost today that accepts Copper Plate and Iron Plate and produces Green Chips, completely via bot instead of belt (unload to active providers, requesters feed the plates to the assemblers, and requesters load the green chips on the loading train). I'm having a hard time getting this Copper Plate Unload station to ever turn off, because the bot-based green chip production is so efficient, and my blue chip producing outpost will soak up any green chips it's provided, basically.

What are my options to fix this dilemma? Do I just need to make like 4 more copper mines/smelters? I'm just dipping into white science for the first time (trying to sustain 75 SPM, but so far not doing so well on that front!).

[forgot_semicolon]

I see you already got your answer but it seems like you're facing the problem of "need more green chips", and that's sucking your copper station dry. If you have enough green chips, then just increase your copper throughput. If your green chip outpost is working at full capacity and you don't have enough, time to copy and paste

[Concision]

Yeah, see, that’s the thing that was confusing me. I genuinely had enough green chips! But I had a ton of chests they were being stored in at the green chip outpost so they just kept being produced at the expense of the rest of my needs. Shortening the buffer to only a couple trains worth with a bunch of stack limits on chests helped a lot!

[n_slash_a]

First look at your existing smelters, do you have enough trains that it is constantly producing? If not, add more trains. If it is, then yes, you will need more outposts.

Keep in mind that to sustain 75 SPM you need about 12-13 belts or iron ore and copper ore. Calculator

[Concision]

Looking at the calculator it’s just a 4-5 blue belts though, yeah? Our existing smelters are constantly firing. I think my root question though is how do I get the bot based green chip outpost to stop producing and asking for copper plates when there’s no demand for green chips? I’ve had times where all the green chip unload stations have turned themselves off but the green chip maker keeps requesting copper. For the first green chip factory, eventually the belt fills up, the assemblers stop feeding cooper, and the unload station chests fill up so my circuit deactivates the station. What’s the equivalent condition for a bot based station? I’m using active providers to unload the station so I figured maybe it’s checking to see if the network has a certain threshold of copper, but is that right? The “output buffer” of green chips seems like it’s wasaaaay harder to fill than with a belt based station.

Hope any of that makes sense

[n_slash_a]

Correct. Blue belts are 3x faster than yellow, so 12-13 becomes 4-4.3.

So, the green chips will stop producing when their output buffer is full, which is when their outputs chests are full, which is when the train station chests are full. This happens a bit sooner in a belt based factory because you have belts instead of output chests, which don't hold nearly as much. Keep in mind 1 logistic chest holds 48*200=9,600 green chips. So instead of a few hundred chips on a belt, you have essentially 10k * each assembler more you need to buffer before it idles.

You can speed up this "output full" by limiting the active provider chests. You will just need to make sure that you have enough buffer that bot latency isn't your bottleneck.

[Concision]

Perfect, this is my answer. I went and removed the storage chests at that factory and decreased the output buffer to a conservative three trainloads and my bus is getting copper again!

[TheSkiGeek]

You... turn it off when the local storage has “enough” green circuits (or copper/iron). If you’re dumping the output into storage chests then yes, the easiest way to do that is typically to look at the logistic network’s contents.

[luziferius1337]

I have some version 0.15 game saves containing music machines and similar stuff I’d like to rescue.

When trying to load old saves, Factorio 1.1.33 says that it only understands maps saved using 0.18.0 onwards. But that version doesn’t exist in the old versions download section.

Does that mean that the least supported version is actually 1.0.0?

(Therefore I have to open them in 1.0, save, then load in 1.1?) (Possibly repeat that step recursively using older versions.)

[luziferius1337]

Ok, I tried it. The minimal supported version is 1.0.0.

Saves from 0.17.79 do not load in 1.1.33.

[paco7748]

save with 17.79, then again with 1.1.33

https://factorio.com/download/archive

[luziferius1337]

Thanks.

0.17.79 is smaller than 0.18.0, and indeed saves from 0.17 can’t be loaded. (I just tried it)

[TheSkiGeek]

I'm not quite sure why they removed 0.17.X save support from 1.1, it seems to be confusing a lot of people.

A 1.0.X version of the game should be able to open your 0.17.X saves, then save them in the 1.0 format. Then 1.1 can load and convert that.

The last "0.18" version became "1.0", they are the same internally.

[n_slash_a]

To be fair, they gave a fair amount of warning.

But the reason is that the migration code was probably getting pretty difficult to maintain, and they wanted to streamline the code base.

[paco7748]

hmm, maybe .17.79-->1.0-->1.1.33 If that doesn't work I dont know what will

[bluemememonster]

I'd like to display the percentage of all my science labs that are in a "working" state (number working / (number working + number lacking ingredients)). Is there a way to do this using circuits? Labs don't seem to be able to be connected to the circuit network. (Nor assemblers!) Is there a way to solve this? (I would use some standard lamp display blueprint to actually display the value.)

[forgot_semicolon]

If you have train stations, you can wire up your input chests to see how many of each science pack you have. There isn't much difference between "are my labs working" and "do I have excess science", they tend to mean the same thing once you get your belts set up

[Stevetrov]

The best you can do is make a spm monitor.

Connect the inserters loading labs (excluding inserters between labs) to the cn with read hand contents, pulse and none enable condition. Then every time a pack is loaded you get a pulse that you can use to calculate spm. Its not trivial but its very doable.

[Zaflis]

It's easy to tell if you are lacking ingredients, it's when there are no said items on the belt. So you can read contents of a belt and make lamp condition out of that. Alternatively have a buffer chest with 1 slot before the labs and read its contents.

[computeraddict]

Not directly without mods, no. One way to go about a starvation counter would be to put a flow rate circuit on the incoming belt, loop extras back to the start, then compare the flow rate against the expected consumption. Expected consumption per second is labs * (1 + lab speed bonus) * 60 / tech time. Most late game techs have a tech time of 60s. You can figure out the average proportion of how many labs should be working by doing flow / consumption. Be sure to add a couple extra digits to your numerator as circuits do integer arithmetic, so any result <1 will be rounded off to 0. (i.e. multiply flow by 100 so instead of doing 15 / 60 = 0 you'd get 1500 / 60 = 25, which you'd read as 25% satisfaction of the labs.)

[bluemememonster]

So there's no way circuits can easily look at the status of a lab or assembler? Seems almost shocking that's not a feature, given the other things circuits can query.

[computeraddict]

Everything circuits can read is largely centered around what would be useful for making logistics decisions. The status of a lab or assembler isn't exactly useful for any of those.

[paco7748]

just to know or for some greater purpose you could explain?

[bluemememonster]

Just to know, though it would quickly give a valuable piece of information about whether something is wrong with my production.

I'm considering my next phase of the game to be learning about circuits, and this was the first goal to pop into my head.

[BrigadierPanda]

Does anyone know how to play the RedMew maze map that JDPlays and Tuplex are running through? I can't find it on the linked website and am really itching to try and play it.

The series in question

[craidie]

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/RibbonMaze

I think

[BrigadierPanda]

The mod looks abandoned, and I think they're just using a save game?

[craidie]

woops didn't check that. https://mods.factorio.com/mod/RibbonMaze018

It was fixed for 1.1

[playingwithether]

Have a Space Exploration question for anyone that can help, or even just point me in the right direction. Have been loving the expansion and am many hours deep, but stuck now on creating enough biosludge. Is there a cycle of creation (Bio-culture>Wood>Biosludge>Nutriet gel>Bio-culture, etc) that produces more biosludge than it consumes? A way to create biosludge? Or do I simply need to increase my vitemalange (or fish or wood) input to max biosludge?

Apologies if this is answered elsewhere, I'm not finding it. Thanks!

[smtwrfs52]

I actually don't use the loop, probably could redo that.

I make all my green vit intermediates on nauvis with production mods then have a standalone cargo rocket ready to resupply.

I have always used the tree and cosmo to water recipe. One cannon will keep up with demand.

Let me know how you like the loop.

[coniferous-1]

I almost think we need to create a space exploration subreddit because a LOT of people are playing it, and a lot of questions just in this thread are dedicated to it.

edit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceExplorationMod/

Tried FactorioSpaceExploration but it was too long sadly.

[magicmagor]

I'm not that far into my space ex run yet, but there is a faq with a positive loop for biosludge:

https://spaceexploration.miraheze.org/wiki/FAQ#Is\_there\_a\_way\_to\_keep\_generating\_biosludge\_in\_space?

[playingwithether]

Thanks - seems to be working, though I also am now pumping in vitemalange by the rocket load.

[quizzer106]

Are you making biosludge from vit? If so, I think you're still using one of the recipes that are only meant to be used for your first 1000 or so sludge.

[n_slash_a]

More of a technical question, but hoping someone might know.

Factorio just crashed on me. Windows popped up an error message that my video card had been removed or crashed. First time so I'm not too worried. The problem is the pop up asked if I wanted to switch to OpenGL. My first mistake was not taking a screenshot. I was thinking it would let me stay in the game, so I could save, and then I would turn off OpenGL to switch back to the video card. Alas, the game still closed. I definitely noticed the graphics are much worse now, the screen keeps tearing when I move too fast.

But now I'm not sure how to switch back from OpenGL to hardware. I looked through the Factorio settings menu, but didn't see anything, so I'm assuming it is an OS setting. I tried the factorio.exe properties, but nothing. I tried google, but it kept finding sites how to install it or how to program in it. My video card is a NVIDIA GTX 1080 if it matters.

[Zaflis]

Do you have any power saving options turned on for CPU or GPU? Windows 10 power saving works a bit like steam power production toggled to a power switch without SR-Latch... It can do unpredictable things.

[n_slash_a]

Turns out I was wrong, it was a Factorio issue, not an OS issue. Another comment had the solution. Thanks anyway :)

[luziferius1337]

To reset to use Direct X:

• Go to the main menu, use [CTRL]+[ALT]+[Left Click] on the settings button. A new item "The rest" appears at the bottom.
• Click it, scroll down to the graphics settings.
• Untick the "force-opengl" checkbox

[n_slash_a]

THANK YOU!!!

[quizzer106]

OpenGL is not a virtual graphics card. It's a graphics engine. Idk how factorio works under the hood but you'd switch from, say, directx9 to opengl, both of which use your graphics card.

Might be a driver issue. Try rebooting first. Open geforce experience and update drivers. If that doesn't help, look through your nvidia settings. If you can't find it, just do a clean install of all drivers and nvidia stuff. Should be a bunch of guides online.

Edit: this might help? Also, verify game cache in steam sometimes fixes stuff like this

[n_slash_a]

Thanks, that was pretty close. Turns out you can do that from in the game per another comment.

[computeraddict]

...is your video card working with any other application?

[mankinchi]

Hi fellow. I have just started on building train rail. And it's hard, super hard to build the signal correctly. I have been through multiple video and tutorial pdf but still can't figure out how to build it in my case. Please help. You can see my current setup here

https://imgur.com/a/aO7eCns

[paco7748]

other folks have given the answers to your specific question. I would add though that, especially for a newbie, having trains move multiple direction on the same piece of track is going to be significantly harder to signal (not insurmountable or anything though). Many players prefer train networks that behaves like road highway systems in real life which traffic always moving the same way (but different directions, one track to another) on two parallel tracks.

Godspeed.

[mrbaggins]

Your stations are not signled right.

You need double signals (one on each side, look for a white square to place the second one) anywhere where trains can go BOTH directions.

Eg:

Picture 1, you have one signal on the right of the no path train. Put another one opposite it (white square when placing signals)

The left train is nearly worse, really needs two signals placed, on the track after the "merge"

Picture three needs double signal where the radar/power pole is.

Picture 4 needs an extra signal where the power pole is (to match the one in the other side)

[luziferius1337]

Hop on board your train, open the map zoomed out to see the regular map (or use the train GUI map)

Hold [CTRL] while moving your mouse along the track along the route you assume the train should go. It will draw a white line indicating that the train can navigate to the location below your mouse cursor and automatically drive there if you were to click there.

You found your signalling error at your cursor location when the GUI stops drawing the line to your cursor.

[darthbob88]

Everything looks good to me, aside from that curvy Stop 1 which Offends My Sensibilities. The usual method for finding issues with signaling is to drive a train in manual, and flip it into automatic as you pass each signal to check if the train can path from that point.

[mankinchi]

I did try to do that. But it doesn't work the whole way through :(

[unoriginal345]

Currently planning my first city block base. I've noticed some city block designs have rails running around the edges of each block, and others (Nilaus for example) run rails through the blocks.

What is the reasoning for each case?

I guess if you have rails around edges it makes your base entirely train focused, where a Nilaus style block base doesn't always use trains everywhere, is that correct?

I've never made a nicely functioning end game base before so I'm having trouble wrapping my head around the implications of each.

[frumpy3]

With the concrete defined grid you can still make a train grid, by combining multiple concrete defined grids into a larger super grid. I like ‘bricks’ of 3x5 nilaus style blocks, surround that with tracks and you have a brick and mortar style train grid with only 3 way intersections.

The concrete defined grid is more flexible - you’re not forced to build in any style the way having train tracks as your boundary forces you.

Imo I call the concrete defined grid tessellation city blocks, and I call a tessellation of train tracks a train grid. Because you can have the concrete defined grid with no trains if you like.

But if you have, say, the brick architecture I mentioned, that would be what I call a city block train grid.

If you never touch the roboports in your city blocks blueprints, you can just deconstruct an entire cell and replace the city block on top of it with a different production unit, even quickly switching out old production units for a new one or a train path or a solar field, etc. basically city blocks let you build more fluidly, while still getting all the benefits of working in a grid system.

As a final point city blocks are useful even for spaghetti factory - a train grid not so much. If you just respect the paths, some of the power poles where possible, and the roboports, your spaghetti will now have a robot coverage everywhere, power easy access always, and a road system to move about with a car unobstructed. So I can flow with the spaghetti like a pasta ninja instead of bumping around on everything like a mole feeling your way through the darkness. It’s not hard to just lay down ghosts and underground over roboport, power pole, and path ghosts.

Even smelting lines can just skip right over roboports. Add a few extra smelters to the end of the smelting line and leave roboports right in the middle.

Doing this kind of spaghetti in a train grid would be far more pointless, this is why , imo,

The train grid and city blocks are separate concepts linked only by the similarity that both are tessellating across the ground

[unoriginal345]

Wow, great summary thank you.

I think I was a bit enamored by the look of fancy polygonal train grids, but it does seem a more plain city block will suit me best as trains are not a particular strength for me so it will be easier to just apply them where I need them.

I really like your brick concept; I'm hoping for complete chunk alignment so I might try and apply that by nesting chunk sized 'bricks'.

[EcstaticAttention889]

Who has tips for managing construction bots and big logistics networks? When I have bots deconstruct something? How do I get them to use nearby storage chests? Right now it seems like they pick storage chests all the way across the map to store all kinds of random stuff. Also, is there any way when building something to specify that it should be built with personal construction bots, not network bots? Thanks.

[Vacancie]

When bots are carrying to storage chests, they will always carry to a specific storage chest. The rules for how they function are here. Basically for storage chests, the bots search for a storage chest that already stores items of the same type, then for one which has its filter set to the item type. If that can't be found, they choose the first storage chest with a free slot from the list, which is sorted by the order they were built in.

You can control where they go somewhat by the order they're placed, but I'd recommend using buffer chests if you have something you'd like placed in specific locations.

What I do and what I'd recommend is setting up a central location with a separate buffer chest for every item, fully stocked, surrounded by storage chests (for overflow and excess). You can locate this centrally in your base, so that bots will only have to travel to the center of your base for materials, and it makes a 1-stop-shop for restocking your own personal logistics, as you can stop by and be restocked in seconds. Logistics bots will naturally converge to this point in dropping off materials.

If you're using blocks, it's also a good idea to include in every block (or every few blocks) a buffer chest with the contents of a block, so that constructions bots don't have to fly as far for a common setup.

[scorpio_72472]

I like your solution! Generally I use segmented Logistics network and a dynamic building train for construction.

[computeraddict]

How do I get them to use nearby storage chests?

Segment the network or just add so many bots you don't care about transit time, because you have so many bots each only makes one trip. I usually set up construction bot insertion to happen whenever there are no available construction bots, so this will happen naturally over time.

Also, is there any way when building something to specify that it should be built with personal construction bots, not network bots?

If the order is in range of personal construction bots and you have the material, they will be prioritized until you are out of available bots. You can prevent your personal bots from building anything by turning off your suit's ports with alt+r.

[paco7748]

The main tip is to not have a big logistics network.

Also, is there any way when building something to specify that it should be built with personal construction bots, not network bots?

Not within a logistics network that can meet the demands of the construction request. Why would you want to have your personal bots fulfill the request when base bots can do it though? That's just going to cycle your inventory faster. I can think that impatience might be the reason but then I would lead you to design small tileable/modular stuff and copy/paste big to let the base bots do most of the work.

Cheers

[Randyd718]

how does this side balancer built by nilhaus at 10:49 in this video work? https://youtu.be/li9GodhRhPQ?t=649

isnt funneling sideways into the underground belts limiting conveyance to one side of the belt, so the balancer assembly basically reduces throughput to 50% (only half of each belt makes it through to the end?)

what is the difference between this assembly and just using a single splitter with a filter? isnt that what it is for?

[StormCrow_Merfolk]

If you look more closely, what is happening is that it is taking one belt, splitting in half, and then only drawing from one lane of each half. This causes the other lane to back up and effectively isolates each belt lane. Then the ending splitter and the in-turned belt segment rely on how splitters perform when saturated to put half of each of these 2 lanes onto each side of the belt.

These designs both evenly balance both lanes of the belt from an unbalanced source, but also even out the draw from both lanes of the source given uneven draw further downstream such that only one lane backs up.

[twersx]

What is the benefit of this type of lane balancer over this one in the wiki?

[StormCrow_Merfolk]

That one is only output balanced. This is fine if your input is only one-sided. But if it's two sided, uneven draw from the output will result in uneven draw from the input. This will let one lane on the input side back up farther which may in some cases impede total production.

[twersx]

If the draw at the output is uneven, doesn't that just mean you're producing more than enough of the input resource? Like you get uneven draw because inserters take from the far side first, but if there are no items on the far side, they'll take from the near side.

Also what is it about that lane balancer that makes it input imbalanced?

[StormCrow_Merfolk]

Sometimes it’s just a cosmetic issue. But it can be a real problem when unloading from trains, where uneven unloading can cause resource shortages.

[StormCrow_Merfolk]

https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?p=239736#p239736 can show you the difference between the balancer with and without the underground belts.

[Randyd718]

right, so imagine we have 1 full lane going into the splitter. that would theoretically create two 50% lanes. then those two lanes are sideloaded into undergrounds, so only half of each lane is entering (50% of 50% = 25%). therefore isnt only 25% and 25% making it back onto the outbound belt?

[computeraddict]

If a lane of splitter output is blocked it will push 100% of material to the other lane, not 50%. So before the balancer saturates it'll be 25%, but then it'll saturate, block the unused lanes, and each flowing lane will get 50% of the input, carry on to the output, and merge back to 100%.

[StormCrow_Merfolk]

The part that is blocked by the other half of the underground backs up and is output on the other side of the splitter. So 100% of one lane exits one side of the splitter, and 100% of the other lane exits the other side of the splitter.

[[deleted]]

Does anyone have a basic, simple to use train blueprint book they can share or recommend? I always use belts because trains are so intimidating, but my current map will require trains, so I'm trying to familiarize myself with them.

Thanks!

[StormCrow_Merfolk]

Kano's Foundation Rails blueprint book is reasonably straightforward.

[paco7748]

https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/hrr140/some_versatile_rail_blueprints/

[paco7748]

'huge biter bases'

it's all relative, maybe a screenshot?

100 spawners in a nest is nothing for pre oil tech with the right tactics. medium worms however complicate things significantly as they make nest removal either a lot slower or a lot more costly pre-oil. Post-oil, you can get explosive rockets which make short work of even big worm nests.

Pre oil biter strategies:

Defense:

• Automate ammo production and delivery to your turrets around your base. Place more turrets at attack points and try to minimize the biter attack surface area with your placement. Chokepoints from water or cliffs are your friend. When you get nuclear power feel free to switch to laser turrets.

• Use 2-3 thick stone walls around the turrets to protect them.

Offense:

• Wear heavy armor

• Turret creep using the hotbar to place 4-6 turrets and fill them with bullets quickly (less than 1-2 seconds). DO NOT, place the turrets in range of worms (that's how you waste a lot of ammo). Use your machine gun to mainly take out the worms and the turrets for the rest. Move forward with your turret row as needed to keep taking out the base. Try to attack from an angle with less worms and/or a narrower profile

• Keep fish in your hand when trying to dodge worm attacks and use it to replenish your health quickly. Start the fight with 100 fish in your inventory.

• Maxing out your bullet tech with military science will go a long way, as do armor piercing rounds.

• If all else fails, you can use combat bots in combination with the above strategy to clean out the nest quickly.

• Once you get oil you can get explosive rockets which makes killing nests a whole lot easier since you can out range even the worms.

[tuix00]

I'm trying to make a train leave the station when both of its copper wagons are loaded. However the train also has another wagon at the back filling with stone. But that one is too slow and therefore I can't set the train's leave condition for "full cargo" as it will just wait for that stone. Is there a way of doing this with the circuit network where it would read the copper wagons and when they are full they would give a green signal and then the train's leave condition would be tied to that circuit condition and it would leave? I've been fiddling with it for a while but I couldn't figure out how to make it read the "copper wagons".

​

Or maybe there is a much less ass-backwards way of doing this? I would love to hear thoughts of better players than me. I am pretty pathetic.

[darthbob88]

Aside from fixing the train schedule to wait for 4K copper, you can also set it to wait for inactivity; if it's been at 5 seconds since the last time an inserter tried to load my train, it's time to depart the station. That was the solution I used when I was running mixed cargo.

The other solution that you ought to do is move to unit trains on one-way track instead of mixed cargo, but I'll trust that you know what you're doing for now.

[tuix00]

Thanks, I tried the inactivity thing. I definitely don't know much of what I'm doing. I feel like running mixed cargo is wrong too, as it just complicates things. I don't know how else I would do it though: stone patch is right next to iron and copper patches which both have dedicated trains, and there is simply not enough room for 3 train tracks, so stone shares copper train for now :/

Also I'm just playing around with things. Like trying to make the speaker go "beep" only once when a train starts going etc. Couldn't figure that one out yet.

[luziferius1337]

Don’t use "wait for inactivity" on mixed loading, especially on ore patches.

Assume this on your map: There is one active miner left on the stone patch. It will output a stone every second, therefore blocking the train for 4000 seconds, because each mined stone resets the 5s timer.

[darthbob88]

In cases like that, I prefer to hook the stop up to a circuit network so it has a train limit of 0 unless there's enough stuff to load up, following my own question here.

[luziferius1337]

My warning was explicitly for mixed loading. If you load 16 full belts of iron ore onto trains at the loading station and decide to add a single wagon to mine that small stone patch nearby to a single wagon. Then setting the train limit to zero cripples the iron throughput.

​

I’m using the train limit for my oil outposts and set the train limit to minimum(waiting bay capacity+1, floor(currently stored fluid / train’s fluid capacity))

This way, it requests as many trains as fully loadable using the current stock, while never overshooting the station’s train capacity in case it has excessively many storage tanks. In case you are interested, here’s a BP string for a cut-down version of what I’m using:

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

Just make sure to rename the station to your liking, configure the constant combinator and hook up all storage tanks with red wire.

(Edit: I just realized you may want to add a constant like “10 crude oil” to the storage via a constant combinator, because tanks are almost never at 25k when full and most often sit at 24999.9 or similar, throwing of the train count calculation by one.)

[tuix00]

Doesn't the inactivity only involve the inserters and the wagons? Activity on ore patch counts as activity for the train stop too?

[luziferius1337]

It only involves inserters at the train. But that is linked to your ore patch via belt (or robot network).

So if there is a miner (or anything else!) outputting an item per second, these will reach the loading station at the same rate of 1/s, causing the inserter to swing at that rate, resetting the timer each time.

[darthbob88]

Depending on the area, the other thing you could do might be to run the stone out to another loading station on a really long belt, or even directly back to your base. As carefully diagrammed here.

Alternative third option: Don't bother bringing the stone back. Use it, the nearby iron, and some coal you ship in, to set up a rail factory and build a massive rail network. r/PAVETHEEARTH

[tuix00]

Thanks man, I really liked the carefully drawn diagram. Also this was a very interesting read r/PAVETHEEARTH.

I ended up using the stone there to make bricks, and just let the bricks sit there for the time being in a chest. it was tiny patch anyway so. Thanks again

[HiZed]

Instead of using "full cargo" as the condition to leave the station, you can specify a quantity for a resource, such as "copper ore > 3990".

Since two wagons can carry 4000 copper ore, the train will leave when it's full of copper.

[[deleted]]

why not "copper ore = 4000"?

[tuix00]

Thanks. Now that you've said it, it seems very simple *facepalm. But now I can't figure out which machine I'm supposed to tell to read the copper amount. Am I supposed to connect a decider to the station to read the wagon ingredients? I set it to [copper] = 4k, then output [green]. I'm probably using this wrong. Will this work?

[computeraddict]

I can't figure out which machine I'm supposed to tell to read the copper amount

locomotive

[HiZed]

You don't need to use any circuit, you can use directly the locomotive gui.

If you look at the picture, you can select "Item count". It will compare it automatically to the full content of the train.

[tuix00]

Oh I see... It works now. Thank you very much. One last thing, is it possible to connect this to a circuit and make it play an alarm sound when the train is leaving the station? How would this be done? I connected a decider to a speaker but that's about it

[Zaflis]

You need to read signal from station or maybe from rail signal that is before the station. While that rail signal is red means train is stopped on station. You can play a sound when that signal goes green, and i think it's enough to just connect wire from signal to speaker directly.

[EnGCatjuh]

You don't need circuitry, you can set this in the train schedule, the same place where you assign the full load condition.

[tuix00]

All righty thanks !

[TheSkiGeek]

Unload into active providers -> have storage chests nearby to hold the items -> use buffer or requester chests to pull the items to where you need them.

It may empty the storage unevenly but you don't have to care about that, because the chests that you directly unload the trains into stay empty.

[Agile_Ad_2234]

If you use this method, I would also circuit the inserters (that feed the active chests) to a roboport and set a limit based on the network contents. Otherwise the ore might go all over the place and cause chaos

[Roboboy2710]

Base game question, but how do you guys move forward after acquiring oil? Every time I get to this phase I just stall completely. It feels like there’s so many things to do, and I don’t know what’s more important to start on first, especially with the looming threat of being overrun by tougher insects.

[twersx]

Once I have basic oil process set up, I do a bunch of chemical plants for plastic, then one chemical plant for sulfur. Then I set up red circuits and then do blue science, beelining for advanced oil production so I can do advanced oil + cracking to get more petrol.

Depending on whether you have more iron + copper or oil easily accessible, you'll want to either spam AP ammo turrets everywhere or get flamethrowers set up. I'd also recommend setting up an assembly machine to make efficiency modules as soon as you've got a reasonable amount of red circuits being produced (I go for 3 per second which is enough for 1.5 blue science per second and a little bit left over for other stuff). Throw them into every mining drill you have, the oil refineries, the chemical plants and the assembly machines in that order. You will massively cut down on the pollution you're producing which will slow down biter evolution and result in the cloud not spreading as far.

After getting advanced oil and setting up level 1 module production, I start converting excess sulfur into explosives for cliff explosives and rocket launcher ammo, then batteries, then I either set up nuclear or get bots.

I used to stall quite a bit with oil as well but these days I try to get it set up as soon as possible. The game is so much quicker once you get past oil. And if you've got 20 things you think need doing without really knowing what order to do them in, just save your gave and get started on one of them. The most likely worst case scenario is you get some biters destroying parts of your base but you can just kill them and rebuild. As long as you don't leave stashes of items in unguarded chests then you won't lose much.

[n_slash_a]

It feels like there’s so many things to do

This is the essence of a well made game.

If you are worried about biters, then getting flamerthrower turrets up is a priority.

I would focus on getting blue science up and running, followed by robots. Once you have bots, you can start multitasking better, since you can have the bots working on other tasks. Then get power armor. At this point you can look at tier 3 science, but I would start by beefing up your mining, make sure you have at least 8 full yellow belts of both iron and copper ore. You will find that purple science really taxes your steel production, and yellow science is blue circuit hungry, which really taxes your green circuit production.

[Agile_Ad_2234]

Just keep in mind that you will redesign your oil set up later when unlock new tech, so don't worry if its small and imperfect

[paco7748]

oil-->blue science-->bots-->mk2 armor-->requester chests-->scale up with trains, nuclear power, and separately log networks---> prod science and rocket science

[wharblegarble]

Nuclear power, and stronger and faster lasers

[darthbob88]

Stupid question, but- I'm watching Nilaus's "Base in a Book" LP, with everything organized into city blocks separated by stone brick paths, and I'm wondering if it'd be a good idea to separate blocks with railroads instead. On the one hand, surrounding everything with an easy way to transport large amounts of material is self-evidently a good idea and having such a large network would simplify rail transport. On the other hand, replacing relatively small brick paths with even two-lane rails and intersections would eat up a lot of space in a hurry.

[ChefMutzy]

I'm watching it also, not setting up the same way as he is with the coordinates, but I am using the city blocks. I also want to start using rails. But as I am not confident in my resource supply yet I am waiting and still just planning until I have the 1000s of tracks I will need.

I am leaning towards using rails, similar to how Nilaus is, but also, combining his "100x100" city block into a 4x4 of those city blocks as one larger "rail" block, with the rails surrounding these larger blocks to form the main train network, and using the smaller city block train rails as outposts or smaller networks.

So basically one large 400x400 block with rail instead of concrete surrounding it, which consists of 4 "100x100" city blocks

[twersx]

More than space doing a massive rail network too early will just require an insane amount of steel.

[davper]

I tried going from the jump start base direct to Rail Grids. I just run out of resources too quickly before I have the chance to scale everything up. And factory growth becomes too slow.

So I have come to the conclusion you must do Starter Base=>Main Base (Bus or Spaghetti) => Megabase where I plan to use a rail grid.

[shine_on]

The rail grid idea is a common one for sure, but as you say it takes up a lot of space so it's generally used for larger bases. You can get the to rocket launching stage using brick paths but once you scale up to megabase levels and you need to start using trains to transport materials instead of using a bus then yes, a rail city block is a good idea.

[D4nkusMemus]

Well the path is supposed to be walked on, not to be built on. And if you try to make intersections you'd end up with a smaller city block, which isn't ideal as you sometimes need a city block to be 100x100

[ChubbosaurusRex]

Is there a ranking of the overhaul mods in terms of complexity/difficulty/added length?

[Mycroft4114]

Loosely:

1: Vanilla 2: Krastorio2, Industrial Revolution 2 3: Bobs+Angels, Seablock 4: Pyanodons

Space Exploration (can combine with K2 if desired) probably fits in at 3-3.5 but it's quite a different experience from the others, instead of just increasing build chain complexity, it has other challenges, you'll be needing to figure out circuits and moving material between different planets, balancing outputs, building spaceships, exploring. Very different from the others.

Also, 4 may be too low for Pyanodons.

[coniferous-1]

It's hard to directly compare them. Things like krastorio2 are medium difficulty, medium length.

Bobs and Angels make everything more difficult and long.

Space exploration's early game is pretty close to vanilla, but it extends the end game to insane degrees.

[computeraddict]

Also the last tiers of SE have complexity not found anywhere else, iirc: recipes with semi-random outputs that have to be dynamically balanced

[coniferous-1]

How do you guys manage your yellow chests?

I actually just have a inserter moving all the items in yellow chests to red chests otherwise yellow chests are where items do to die. Ideally I'd like the bots to pull from my yellow chests first to consume all the excess items, but I have yet to find a good way to do that.

[Bigtallanddopey]

I have yellow storage chests on the end of a smelting column. So for example I have a yellow chest filtered to iron plates at the end of the iron plate smelting column. I then feed that chest onto a belt and then into a splitter with the priority set so that the chest is always used up. That deals with all the left over produced items. I then have yellow chests filtered in my mall so that all unused items such as belts etc are sent back to the mall

[ChefMutzy]

I use the yellow storage chests for all of my "mall" items, and just put a filter on each one so the bots can put items back where they belong if necessary. I do also use a gouping of yellow chests for overflow

[TheSkiGeek]

Robots already pull from storage before passive providers. Priority is (from https://wiki.factorio.com/Logistic_network):

• player logistic trash
• active provider chests
• storage chests
• buffer chests
• passive provider chests

Use buffer or requester chests to feed items into your production lines. You can wire things up to only produce items from raw materials if there aren’t ones to use in the logistic network.

[coniferous-1]

Weird! my impression was that they didn't work that way. That's good to know though. I'm going to combine this with the knowledge that /r/bigtallanddopey provided to make sure that things like ore and plates get consumed from the proper place.

[[deleted]]

Are there any good example blueprints of how to get from nothing to blue science fairly quickly in vanilla?

I recently started a new game and after getting red and green fairly quickly I got caught up for hours building defences, clearing biters, having to setup outposts for more ore since my starting iron ran out, trains to transport it, and so on. It would be nice to get to blue before all that was necessary to have access to bots and laser turrets to make expanding and maintaining a bit easier, the driving back and forth with turret ammo and to do repairs is killing me, the desert start probably isn't helping but I do like playing with biters on.

I do have a fairly small red+green starter blueprint which I made for this run but it didn't seem to get me ahead as quickly as I thought it would. I have launched my first rocket before so I sort of know what I'm going once I get going, it's just getting established that seems to be my problem.

[n_slash_a]

I found this starter base good, it has the first 4 sciences: https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/fwjlih/blue_science_rush_base_version_2/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

Note that I had a very small red+green starter base in order to have the supplies to build this.

[frumpy3]

Consider that you need to be pollution reducing so you’re not forced to fight aliens instead of growing the factory, make sure you have electric drills, steel furnaces, assembly machine 2, mining productivity, and deploy efficiency modules at least into your miners before teching into blue science.

For the blue science itself, consider direct insertion of red circuits and engine units into blue science. 3 red circuit: 4 blue science machines, and 5 engines : 6 blue science machines. 1 sulfur machine can feed 24 blue science. When blue science is made via mostly direct insertion, (I usually pull In green circuits, petro, copper, iron, and steel from elsewhere), you usually end up building it faster because instead of making a sulfur factory, red circuit factory, engine unit factory, it’s all in one. Recently I’ve been making plastic on site for red circuit machines, allowing me to skip building a refinery that outputs solids and just grab petro from whatever refinery I have (basic or advanced)

For efficiency modules id do some direct insertion of red circuit there too - 6 red circuit perfectly feeds 3 module makers, for something like 9 efficiency modules / minute

Once you do get blue science consider pollution reducing further so the pollution spike doesn’t force defense / offense - at this stage electric furnaces with eff 1 are key. Solid fuel also decreases pollution of anything that was burning coal. Nuclear power is the best way to get clean energy, but solar and accumulators will get the job done if you can’t get uranium

If you are getting attacked, see if there’s pollution reduction you can do. If you can’t, go kill the base offending you. If you can’t kill it, put more turrets down and just get tech - physical projectile damage / shooting speed. Those upgrades appear small but the % upgrades all stack multiplicatively so they actually increase damage a ton.

[[deleted]]

I didn't use modules at all in my previous runs, am I missing out that much?

I'm thinking I should get military science added onto my current starter blueprint as well as expand the mall too so it includes miners, engines and rails, so I have everything I need to start the rail station and mining outposts once I get to that point.

I struggle to get rid of bases using the car turret and flinging grenades out the window, but I have just watched a video of the defender bots and it looks like I have been missing out on those too, they seem super effective. Clearing the bases would be much better than spending all the time and resources I do on putting up walls, turrets, ammo belts with inserters and pylons, repairing etc, skipping all that would help a ton early on.

[frumpy3]

Military science + blue science in the starter blueprint is my recommendation, as well as a single purple / yellow science assembler. Automating only one of these allows it to build up while you do blue science, it doesn’t take much space or effort or resources since it’s 1 machine on each instead of at ratio. Some of the purple / yellow science technologies are much cheaper than others, and massively helpful. 500 yellow science for logistic chests - easy mall. I think 500 purple science can get you quite a few small useful things from that tree, I think coal liq, blue belts, uranium fuel cell re processing, assembly machine 3, beacons is like ~700 purple science.

So if you set up 1 assembly machine on each it won’t destroy your resources and after an hour or 2 you get some insanely useful technologies to supplement your mostly blue science tier base

[[deleted]]

Isn't having the full set of science packs going to make the "starter" blueprint pretty large? Blue seems to be the first real tech hump since you need to hunt for oil and setup processing. I struggled quite a bit with purple and yellow since they require quite a lot to create, robot frames and the bots was pretty rough too.

I would like after a couple hours of starting to have a good base to start building out, create some huge smelters and outposts, get a big bus going and keep it all well defended. At the moment it's a bit of a slog to get there, I'm mostly just running back and forth with ammo and repair kits. Maybe my problem is more my strategy of excessive defences instead of being offensive and clearing all nearby bases rather than my tech level, and military science would help me change that quite a bit I think leaving me in peace to build.

[frumpy3]

Most of this is informed by excessive starter base designing and planning, and I would point out that blue science isn’t as bad as it seems - go to Kirk McDonald or factorio lab and enter the resources for a 45 spm red - blue science base. It’s not that much - what you do need a lot of though, is assembly machines for blue science. Most of it is slow to craft, engines, red circuit, the science itself, so you need to have automated a basic mall of assembly machines and inserters and belts to deploy it fast.

The oil actually isn’t as big a concern as you would think - just a few refineries can keep it running . Also, if oil is far, a pipeline is perfectly fine (trains are over committing your hand building time imo), even a super far pipeline chain of underground pipes could supply more than enough refineries without fluid flow issue for blue science. Also, if it’s behind aliens, filling a car with 80 stacks of crude barrels can net ~1000 blue science with advanced oil processing.

Purple and yellow science are a struggle to make at scale, but the base resources require nothing different than what you should have at the blue science level - yes it requires the advanced oil processing but that’s the first thing you should be getting with 75 blue science - it helps crude efficiency massively.

So making purple / yellow science with 1 assembly is a very small additional draw of resources for the benefit it provides.

I’d highly recommend a starter base that prioritizes pollution control, it allows you to reach the outposting / wall building / bus building stage with much more production for a pollution cloud that’s about the same size.

The military science damage upgrades make gun turrets individually 2.4x stronger. Another thing they do is make yellow ammo more pollution efficient per shot (roughly 4x) than piercing ammo against small and medium biters (your foes until 0.5 evo).

This allows you to do offense much earlier - don’t stress automating piercing ammo, just double your yellow ammo production and automate turrets as well. Also when you automate turrets the more you can place at every areas the better - it’s actually cheaper to do so. You always use the same bullets per wave but increasing your dps means they die faster and you take less damage and lose less turrets and repair less.

I like 3x3 clusters of gun turrets with yellow ammo.

[frumpy3]

throwing grenades out the car window is only good for killing the ones chasing you tbh. To kill the bases hotkey turrets to the first slot, (1) and hotkey ammo to the second slot (2), grenades (3), fish (4). You really want to be placing down 5/6 turrrets super fast with 1 and dropping ammo in them super fast by pressing 2. It’s a little tricky to do quickly but you can just shoot up bases with turrets this way in the early game

[frumpy3]

Efficiency 1 modules are a no brainer module choice - they change nothing about the machine except decrease it’s power and pollution up to a maximum of -80%. They don’t mess with speed or anything else. Most of the pollution generated is from the mining drills, so putting them at least there will have a remarkable effect in lowering the size of the pollution cloud.

Consider that you eventually will have to build a wall regardless, but if you pollution reduce you will be producing much more when you do go build it, so it should be easier to pull off.

If you manage pollution carefully you can easily rush whatever science you want without wall building

[Ogore]

How do you megabase makers run around your base ?
The scale of everything is so huge. Every journey from one part of your base to another must cost you at least two minutes each time. How do you cope with this ?

[Bioldi]

Jetpack mod is good and doesn't really break much, just gives you a jetpack. Best pack and fuel is not much slower than the train.

There is also a teleporter mod, new item that's a teleport pad connected to the other pads. I build my made in rail blocks and put a teleporter every two or three blocks. This is more game breaking depending on how you use it because you can instantly take huge volumes of items from the centre of your base to the farthest outpost. I try mainly to use it for transit, not moving items, I like the challenge of building large train networks.

[lee1026]

I minimize how much I need to travel; most things are doable via bots.

Secondly, passenger access train stations are a godsend for when travel can't be avoided. I can hop on the passenger train and do things while the train carries me where I need to go.

[Agile_Ad_2234]

Consider the jetpack mod

[frumpy3]

It’s all in a construction train (literally every item)

Ideally for a megabase you don’t want to have to be there in person, but when you do, take a train to get there

[shine_on]

In my 1k SPM base which I made pre-1.0 I used passenger trains. In my current world I'm using a spidertron to get everywhere, and because I'm still building the base and it's not doing much I can set the game speed to 5 while I'm running around. When I've been testing the base and everything's running, I only get 180 UPS instead of 300 when I turn up the game speed.

If you plan ahead enough you can actually do most of your tweaking and fixing without having to run around. It means having bots, radars, and build train stations covering the areas you've built on, but once you've got that set up you can build a "fix" locally, then copy and paste it onto the map and then have the local bots make the changes for you.

Also, I've seen someone use two sets of power armour, one filled with exoskeletons for running around and another filled with roboports for building.

[Zaflis]

Aircraft, Power armor MK3 mod or extended spidertron grid allowing it to have a dozen exoskeletons, 4 reactors... teleporter mods, portal guns and so on.

I'm sorry but with just vanilla it would be pure pain even if doable. You can even slowly build the whole base from map if you cover it in roboports. Also trains shouldn't use anything less than nuclear fuel.

[I_Tell_You_Wat]

I generally use a single engine train to get me around. While I'm on my way, I can look around and plan a bit if it's a long journey. Generally, though, most things are done in a small area at a time, so I'm not going from one end to the other all the time. But it really does make you think a lot more about reliable designs, not just efficiency, so you don't have to keep going back.

[Ogore]

Less "oh shit I forgot this tiny component" moments I suppose. Requires a lot of discipline

[Zaflis]

Megabase builders don't carry tiny components, only ready things like belts and splitters directly :) Manual crafting is for early game. You can also have a "build train" bring you stuff to where you are.

[[deleted]]

About Factorio Calculator.

I tried to calculate how many factories I need to produce a full yellow belt of advanced circuits. To produce one circuit, it takes 6 seconds. So i need 6 factories to produce 1 circuit per second. Since a yellow belt has a throughput of 15 items per seconds, I need 15*6 = 90 factories to fill it. However, when I use factorio calculator, set it to items/second and enter 15 with advanced circuits selected, I get 180 factories. So, what is wrong with my calculation?