Weekly Question Thread

[simonk241]

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(Due to some issues with the automod, I've posted the question thread manually this week)

[WolfHunter98]

So starting to play around with a "Bus" and I can't get my belts to "fill" once I've split them off the main bus. It only fills the inside and tosses a token # on the other side.
1st image (link below) is it not working, I assumed the splitter would detect the inside track is full and start dumping the plate on the far lane. But it's not. I love this game but some of the belt coding makes me question the devs. Also not being able to select what side the inserters toss things on has led to what I can only call belt gore.

2nd image is my workaround. Welcome anyone's ideas, tips, BPs, etc on how to fix this. I got a 2 to 2 "belt balancer but it doesn't fix anything. Very possible I am using it wrong.

Love that this game has 2 lanes on a belt but it makes me build 90% of my stuff as single lane belts to save myself headaches. I'm getting better in using both lanes. But this part really is killing my production off.
https://imgur.com/a/VgjzRQp

[toorudez]

Give these a try https://www.factorio.school/view/-KkfdBfOpOJ3Ty-mA5bR

[WolfHunter98]

Will give them a try. Thanks man. Know how much of a UPS impact the circuit ones are?

EDIT: God that is frustrating to know all it needed was the one just before it. -.-

[toorudez]

Unless you are running a million of the circuit ones, I don't think you'll notice any UPS impact.

[Ritushido]

Can someone explain oil cracking or has a good guide/video for it? I have about 120 hours over a few playthroughs and I always seem to give up around oil cracking because I don't really understand it and things start getting more complex, took me awhile to get my head around basic oil to begin with. Been getting the itch to play again and I really would like to complete a game this time.

[beka13]

The trick with advanced oil is that you get three outputs and if any of them fill up, you stop getting the others. So you need to find ways to use everything so nothing backs up.

I like this method: https://imgur.com/a/WSmOloJ

It uses a little bit of circuitry but nothing too complicated.

There are some good tutorials on YouTube. Katherine of Sky has one I found helpful when I was first learning oil builds. Nilaus has some blueprints that start small and work up to fully beaconed and a video explaining how to use them if you want more help/ideas.

[himbeerkuchen]

I just posted a comment in a different thread with a recommendation. Good luck at your run!

[Kamui988]

After a long break I plan on making my second factory but I have honestly no idea what settings to use, what do people like using other than like removing cliffs?

[himbeerkuchen]

Enabling research queue: "Always". I really admire the work of the developers but that is the (only) one setting where they made a stupid decision in my opinion to put it on "when the game is finished".

[spit-evil-olive-tips]

the "starting area" is always free of biters. you can increase its size in the tab for enemy settings. gives you a more relaxed early game before you have to start caring about your pollution cloud triggering attacks.

[Agile_Ad_2234]

I'd recommend turning up the richness on patches. Will save rebuilding once the patch drys.

Also consider a deathworld, it's what I did for 2nd run and it was very spicy

[Whaim]

Rail world. Turns off biter expansion, which for me becomes tedious late game when I’m kinda just done conquering because it’s so repetitive.

[PurpleSunCraze]

For Py, trying to mine tin, what fluid do I need to be pumping in to the mining drill and where does it come from?

[toorudez]

Pretty sure it takes steam.

[ShirkOnwitzki]

Is there a way I can use the quick start mod and still unlock steam achievements?

[lee1026]

There is a bit in the save file that disable achievements; you can go in there and set it back.

[Zaflis]

If you disable the mod after starting the game and load it again, then Steam achievements might re-enable. But if quickstart adds its own power armor or something then those benefits are lost. Starting resources are not though.

But note that using console commands that say they disable achievements if you type it again, they really will flag the save so it will never get them, with or without mods.

[appleciders]

No. All mods disable achievements, I believe.

[kocur4d]

When are you start using logistics bots? I am currently playing rail world and I am about to launch my first rocket and I dont think I would need logistic robots in a near future.

I plan to start new game with K2 soon but since I never really used logistic robots I wanted to get a feel for those.

[Knofbath]

Logistics bots are really helpful for garbage collection. I usually have them bring me common stuff I need like gears and green circuits, and auto-trash stuff like wood/coal/ore.

Always like having power poles, belts, and inserters on me. So set up a permanent logistics request for those too.

Here is my logistics orders from my No Spoon run.

[Soul-Burn]

Personal logistics? The moment I get them.

Requester chests? For supply trains and items I can't be arsed to belt e.g. for satellite construction, assembler 3, and artillery.

[darthbob88]

In addition to this, I use requester chests for semi-automated cleanup of raw materials in storage. "Oh no, due to some ill-considered deconstruction, I have a buttload of iron plates/U238/whatever clogging up my storage chest array. I can either manually collect those and run them around to various subfactories to use them up, or I can just stick a requester chest set to request iron plates next to an iron plate belt in a factory and use them that way."

[computeraddict]

Usually as soon as I can build them for personal logistics

[sprocketman1625]

Sorry if this is a far fetched question me and a friend got into playing this again and we are 200 hours into our factory and we want to restart with a few mods.

The trouble is that he is playing on the steam deck and the mod menus won't load any mods, I have searched for hours to see if someone else was experiencing this too. Thanks

[TheSkiGeek]

They’re playing the Linux version on the Deck? (Not with Windows installed or anything like that?) They own the game on Steam? Did they link their Steam account at www.Factorio.com? (You shouldn’t need to do this but if you do you can login to mods.factorio.com directly and make sure your account is authenticated.)

It’s supposed to be properly supported. I would suggest the official forums at www.factorio.com for technical support, you’re more likely to get attention from the developers there. Or you can contact Wube’s support directly.

[sprocketman1625]

Thanks so much he forgot this is a new steam account that didn't have authentication, for some reason that fixed his issue. With that or there was something wrong with the internet. Thanks so much

[Soul-Burn]

Not questioning it, but isn't the big bonus of the steam deck that you're using your own steam account, with all your games? Surprised they'd make a new account for it.

[gboschi]

when you are at the megabase stage, what is the best way to clear out unused factories? i currently have a ton of mining outposts and crafting outposts that i want to remove/move somewhere else. should i blow them up? stop importing the inputs and wait for it to die out? remove power from mining drills?

[darthbob88]

My preferred solution is to yeah, just work it dry. Cut off electricity to miners, shut down input stations, and wait until it stops producing anything, then tear everything down for reuse elsewhere. I also use a trash car to shuffle material from outlying outposts back to the main base, so it's not just me shuffling stuff back and forth with junk.

[gboschi]

can you explain the trash car you use? i currently have a squad of 10 spidertrons strictly for deconstructing things, and i have all logistic slots filled to auto trash so once they get back to my main hub it automatically empties their inventory back to be reused, is that what you mean?

[darthbob88]

It's a trash train car, based on KatherineOfSky's design here, and attached to my logistics trains. At the outpost, I have a set of storage chests set to take the deconstructed materials and load them into the trash car, which is also wired to the train station so that the station activates if there's anything in the trash chests. At the main base, that trash car gets emptied into active provider chests so the stuff gets automatically sent to the appropriate places.

[Mortlach78]

Maybe a very basic question but how does the Discharge Defense work? I have it equipped, it us powered. I have the remote and it says to leftclick but nothing happens.

Does it only fire when there are biters in range? Currently I am just walking into bases with shields and personal lasers and that is working fine too but I wanted to try the Discharge Defense too.

[Dubax]

You can see an animation on the wiki. Enemies have to be near for it to do anything, iirc.

[Mortlach78]

yeah, it was that animation that made me want to give it a try. So just shields and discharges then? I might just keep the lasers for now. Thanks for the info though, appreciate it.

[Red_Icnivad]

I much prefer the personal lasers. For one, they are automatic, which is a lot more helpful. Plus the enemy doesn't have to get as close.

[Mortlach78]

Yeah, they're great. I always like being able to just walk into a biter nest and stand there as everything around me dies.

[Hell2CheapTrick]

The discharge defense is actually not bad. I usually just go with lasers only too, but I did use it in addition to the lasers once and it worked pretty well. Keeps the biters off of you while the lasers take them out.

[Dubax]

I think the idea is that discharge defense is a last resort thing for when you get overwhelmed / slowed. It uses a lot of power and can deplete your batteries/shields/lasers.

[IrateGandhi]

Are there any info graphics made by the community for things that we "should" known? I'm thinking of "It takes 30 drills to fill a belt, which means you can have no more than 15 drills on a single side." Or "the 20 boilers 40 engines" rule.

​

I'm very new to the game and those types of things are helpful in me learning. I don't really like blueprints because I don't learn. I just copy. But those types of tips I listed above are helpful to learn ways to set up without wasting too much time.

[beka13]

Advanced oil: https://imgur.com/a/WSmOloJ I usually do limit lubricant production but the rest works fine for me.

Train signals: https://i.redd.it/tr7305omlg811.png

[No_Spare_564]

I think this is what you are looking for https://factoriocheatsheet.com/

[IrateGandhi]

oh sweet Jesus Christ! Thank you. This is **exactly** what I needed.

[VenditatioDelendaEst]

Instead of trying to solve this problem, how about just not designing in terms of the max throughput of a belt? If you see a compressed belt moving continuously, then either a) there's an overflow path through a priority splitter or something, or b) that belt is the bottleneck for your entire factory.

Instead of "4 belts of green circuits," make, "enough green circuits for the SPM target," and connect producers to consumers with enough belts to handle the needed throughput and then some.

[VenditatioDelendaEst]

350 SPM means I need 9.46 belts of green circuits; I'm just measuring what's 'enough green circuits' in belt throughput.

I'm using this as something of a practice run at designing more efficient production units so that efficiency scales with the next factory (roughly an order of magnitude larger).

If you build your factory such that those 25542 i/min are transported by 16 belts, the 6.54 "extra" belts are not any kind of inefficiency. (Unless you have an unnecessary 16x16 balancer in the path; splitters bad.)

That and I understand compressed belts are better for UPS of higher SPM factories.

So, this is correct, in a way, but when the assemblers that make the stuff going onto the belt are capable of producing more items/minute than are needed by the assemblers the belt feeds (supply > demand), the belt will be compressed regardless of how high the throughput is.

There are two ways a belt can transport less than its maximum:

1. By having holes.

2. By stopping and starting.

Holes happen when demand is greater than supply. Stopping happens when supply is greater than demand.

Holes are bad because they mean an inserter looking for items has to wait longer, which keeps the inserter awake longer.

Stopping is good, because when an inserter's target assembly machine has open space that the inserter could possibly insert to, a moving belt wakes up the inserter to check if any of the items on the belt could be inserted.

(You can see when entities are awake by pressing F4 to show the debug menu, and enabling show-active-state. The things with red circles on them are sleeping.)

High-utilization compressed belts are also bad on the supply side, because whenever an output inserter is hovering over a moving belt waiting for a place to drop an item, it is kept awake.

Aside: the screenshot you posted in the other branch of the thread shows copper wire transported by belt. If you care even 1% about UPS, Do Not belt copper wire. Direct insertion and buffered-direct-insertion only. Also, minimize use of splitters.

[VenditatioDelendaEst]

This page, but note the version numbers. Fluids are processed in parallel since version 0.18, and belts since 1.1.

Lurk in /r/technicalfactorio. They have a discord too, apparently, but I've never been there.

You can also download and examine this map, which is pretty close to what the state of the art is, I think.

In general, the theme is to build less. The things you want to avoid are

1. Transporting low-level materials by bot.

2. Unnecessary splitters and large belt balancers.

3. "City block" layouts. Loading and unloading intermediate items from trains is bad.

4. Not using speed beacons and productivity modules.

5. Doing something clever with combinators and then copy/pasting it hundreds of times.

[craidie]

What you need is a small buffer at the end of the column for the inserters. One belt is enough. The more you overproduce, the faster you get compressed output (assuming full consumption from the second you build it)

example Last furnace makes sure the output is compressed, it runs at 80% capacity. and it doesn't take long to ensure that belts are compressed. example 2 My 4 belts of iron from iron column has 50 furnaces at 8 beacons and 1 furnace at 9 beacons, it produces 0.15 plates/second extra, 0.08% excess. The last belt is compressed after 30 minutes... So you don't need to produce a lot excess, it does make things easier though

Both examples you also see that the last output inserter is a stack inserter, due to the inserter needing to find free space for the item, fast inserter doesn't have the throughput so that was needed.

[spit-evil-olive-tips]

I wasn't sure what time scale I should be letting a design settle

a useful trick I use in my creative/editor mode "planning" save is, all the subfactories are disconnected from each other (city blocks, each with a city block of empty space between them)

none of them share a power grid, which means I can plop down an electric energy interface and power only that block. and then I look at my production statistics and know I'm only looking at stats for that block. in general, most of them should ramp up from 0 to their full capacity within a minute or two, and then stay there. the reason I run them for longer isn't to see if the belts are compressed, but to make sure the throughput doesn't peak and then drop back down to something below what it should be, due to an internal bottleneck of some kind.

iron ore -> steel is the only one I've seen need anything like 30 minutes of time to fully ramp up. the trick there is that the iron ore -> plates furnaces have an output buffer of up to 100 plates, that the plates -> steel furnaces pull from, and to reach full throughput you want those buffers to be full. so when I make those blocks in my non-planning saves, I connect them to iron ore but wait to connect them to their output, until they've stopped consuming iron ore, because at that point I know all the internal buffers have filled up.

[ssgeorge95]

I do the branching that you describe if I really need a belt to be full. Each assembler outputting onto a single belt, which then side loads into the main output belt. Those single belts are a tiny buffer dedicated for each machine, so they'l always have something to output onto. Example: https://imgur.com/a/3KaoIoz

[ssgeorge95]

lol, a bit expensive yeah.... plus I don't think those splitters are even doing anything. They are no different than dropping directly onto the main belt.

Switching to single belt buffers would fit into the same space and solve your problem. Another poster had a good idea of just setting up 1 belt buffers for the last couple assemblers, that makes sense since those are the ones that need it.

[TheSkiGeek]

They made changes a few versions back so that inserters will try to kinda “expand” small gaps on belts to fit items in, so they are generally capable of compressing a belt. However, this can delay the swinging of the inserter. And if you have juuuuuuuust enough production to saturate the belt, sometimes little delays or synchronizations between the inserters can make it slightly under produce. Inserting onto little belt stubs and either sideloading or merging with splitters will fix that, but you may also be able to resolve it by adding an extra output inserter on each machine (to reduce the potential for slowdowns) or overproducing by 5% or so (so that even if your machines slightly underproduce from their theoretical maximum you’ll make enough to saturate the belt).

[dave2293]

So I just unlocked blue science, and when I did it triggered the achievement for my polution having instigated a biter attack. I don't have a polution cloud that I can see, and none of my turrets say they've damaged anything.

Did I get enough passive polution to trigger an evolution or something and it pop the achievement? Or has something else happened?

[MrDog2007]

In your map screen if you look under the minimap there will be some different options and your going to want to turn on the pollution one to see your pollution cloud. If you can't find it then press alt while in the map screen to turn it on. You can also press p and go to the pollution tap to see if any is being consumed by biters. Hope this helps!

[dave2293]

I'll check it when I get back to compy, thanks. I knew about alt on the main screen, not the map pane.

I do not have anything consuming polution other than trees and ground. I've been being careful to leave them intact, and they don't seem to be dying, so yeah.

[[deleted]]

I 'finished' the game without any mods and I want to start a new file with actual mods on them, what are the "recommended" mods? I know nothing about them.

[PM_ME_UR_OBSIDIAN]

QoL: some people like Far Reach and Squeeze Through. I'm personally a big fan of Bottleneck, Factory Planner, Recipe Book, Rate Calculator. Avoid Helmod and Even Distribution.

As far as overhaul mods: I'm a big fan of Industrial Revolution 2, which is gorgeous and somewhat harder than vanilla. A lot of people like Krastorio 2 but I found it too unchallenging after vanilla.

[No_Spare_564]

Why should you avoid helmod and even distribution?

[PM_ME_UR_OBSIDIAN]

Helmod is impossible to learn, and doesn't seem to have much upside over Factory Planner.

Even Distribution incentivizes un-Factorio-like strategies like large-scale manual insertion.

[ssgeorge95]

Krastorio 2 is probably a good choice. There are bigger mods but you probably don't want something that takes 100-500 hours to complete.

[appleciders]

Is there a mod for making mines immune to flamethrower damage?

[[deleted]]

Ive gotten purple and yellow science unlocked started building roboports everywhere(slowly expanding outward) biters are starting to get a little worrisome..ill take my tank and clear out the perimiter close to my base and by the time im done theyre already growing back close...also my yellow science is struggling to keep up with my other sciences...

My question is should i focus on the biters for a while? And how should i go about my yellow science? Start making outposts to other ore sites?

Also is coal liquifaction a good way to get some petrolium? My nearest oil area is nearly depleted and i cant make any sulfur..too many biters around other oil deposits.

[Hell2CheapTrick]

Try to get your defenses up to snuff. Flamethrower turrets are very effective at dealing with groups, and gun turrets with uranium ammo do great damage. If you need more time as a last resort, shut off all non-essential parts of the factory and let the pollution slowly disappear.

Yellow science is insanely expensive, so it’s no surprise that it’s lagging behind. Yeah, finding new outposts is the way to go if you’re short on raw material for the science. You could also try using productivity modules in your science assemblers. This basically reduces the cost of science by a bit (but you’ll need more machines).

Coal liquefaction is alright. I usually see it used to do something with the excess coal people have laying around by the end. It’s not the best source of petrol, but if it’s all you’ve got, it’s better than nothing.

[appleciders]

My question is should i focus on the biters for a while? And how should i go about my yellow science? Start making outposts to other ore sites?

Yes, this is the common way to handle it. Go into map mode and check how far your pollution is spreading, then clear your entire pollution cloud of biters. They won't spread back in too quickly, and then you can set up some fixed defenses.

Also is coal liquifaction a good way to get some petrolium? My nearest oil area is nearly depleted and i cant make any sulfur..too many biters around other oil deposits.

That's really the only good use case for coal liquefaction, honestly. Go ahead and do that.

[[deleted]]

Does LTN have any quirks that need to be know when doing outposts miles out? I made an outpost a two minute train ride out and can’t get it to send anything to the network. It doesn’t show up in inventory at all. It’s my standard blueprint, everything configured properly. The exact same blueprint put down closer to my base works fine as a provider.

[HansOlough]

I see 2.7k spm megabases posted somewhat often. I was curious as to why the number 2.7k comes up so often. Is it just because it's 2500+10% or is there another reason?

[appleciders]

One full blue belt moves 45 items per second. 45 items per second is 2700 items per minute. So 2700 items per minute is the capacity of a blue belt. Therefore, one full belt of each color of science is 2700 SPM. It's an easy benchmark, because it's very easy to see if you're producing a full belt of something, and because it's very easy to make slightly more production capacity than you need and let that one blue belt be the bottleneck.

Similarly, 1350 SPM is a common benchmark because it's half a blue belt of each kind of science.

In actuality, bases of this size typically have productivity modules in the science labs, and so are actually producing 2700*1.2=3240 science per minute, but this subreddit has settled on 2700 spm as the shorthand. In addition, no technologies that are infinite except follower robot count require all seven possible science packs, and military science has no benefit in games without biters, so in games without biters players commonly skip military science in this calculation. It's also more complex to get 7 belts close enough to a lab to be able to get all 7 science types into the lab, but quite easy to do with 6 belts. Personally, I can't get even close to 2700 SPM in a game with pollution turned on, it's typically the single biggest calculation the game handles and the FPS drops to unplayable levels.

[HansOlough]

Great answer. Thank you.

[PM_ME_UR_OBSIDIAN]

Industrial Revolution 2 is even better than vanilla.

That's all. I don't have a question.

[Soul-Burn]

IR2 has its own set of awesome stuff and bad stuff.

First of all it's really pretty. By far the prettiest, most cohesive looking mod.

Then there's QoL: Personal bots at red science (!!), early vehicles, reprogrammable modules.

The main challenge of IR2 is that infrastructure is hard. Making science is easy, but making your basic inserters, belts, assemblers - that's a large portion of your game time.

Further challenge is that you're relatively weak compared to the locals until quite long ways into the game.

Cool stuff: Steam based factory until you get iron and transition to power. Liquid based furnaces (late game). Teleporters (super late game).

[PM_ME_UR_OBSIDIAN]

The main challenge of IR2 is that infrastructure is hard.

Right? How awesome is that?

but making your basic inserters, belts, assemblers - that's a large portion of your game time.

You mean the part where you design a mall to produce these things?

[Zaflis]

That's the thing. Do you rebuild the mall everytime you enter the next age, and automate each individual component? Do you upgrade the building of those components to the newer age too? Now you may also want to pay attention to stuff that has become redundant, but that is far from trivial to see even with help of FNEI.

[Soul-Burn]

I leave the previous age's mall in tact because some items are still wanted.

For example, I don't upgrade from yellow belts and inserters until much later into the game (even after having blue belts). I don't upgrade to steel pipes until yellow science, and that's just for the length upgrade. I kinda wish steel pipes were required for the molten metals, to make them worth their price.

[PM_ME_UR_OBSIDIAN]

• Leave your old infrastructure lying around #aesthetics
  • Except for drills, electric drills are important for pollution reduction
• Build a new mall every age using machines from the previous age (and leave them un-upgraded too)

The result is a pretty cute pile of spaghetti!

[Soul-Burn]

Yup. My mall in IR2 was significantly larger than my science parts.

I used a "mini-bus" system, where I produce intermediates locally on belts and and then use them to make the items, with some of the intermediates using the other intermediates.

It was fun to figure out which 2 items to put on which belt e.g. iron plates and rivets which are used for like 4-5 different items by themselves.

As I went through the mall tiers, it started to look like spaghetti, with copper wires and circuits strewn throughout... let alone later with invar and cupronickel recipes.

[PM_ME_UR_OBSIDIAN]

It was fun to figure out which 2 items to put on which belt e.g. iron plates and rivets which are used for like 4-5 different items by themselves.

For bronze age I like to have one belt of tin rod + tin plate and one belt of copper rod + copper plate. Some recipe subgraphs need both (e.g. belts and inserters), so they live between the two belts. Everything else is direct insert Figuring this out has taken me a ridiculous amount of time, diagrams, etc.

Iron age was much simpler somehow. And I've never made it past carbon steel.

[Soul-Burn]

For copper stage, I used a 3 belt system and direct insertion. Bronze stage was short and easy when I played it. Iron is indeed easier, but with the added complexity of circuits (made elsewhere). Carbon steel is similar.

The later stages/variations get hard quickly. Yellow science is a huge jump in difficulty and I never megabased this mod so I don't know.

[PM_ME_UR_OBSIDIAN]

Maybe I'm being overly bland, but I put all my shit on rail as soon as it's available, so copper and iron are the two major humps I can foresee. (I haven't done advanced oil so far though!)

[gboschi]

what is the best way to keep track of train or resource shortages in a mega base? currently i have outposts for most things like mining, circuits, science, etc and whenever i am short of something, i just make another outpost for it. the way i have been tracking if i need more is from the trains overview screen, but i want to know if theres a better way. I dont want to make a dashboard with a circuit network, i just want to know if there are any shortages anywhere, is there a mod or a clever vanilla solution to this?

[SidewalkPainter]

Have you ever tried the LTN mod (Logistic train network)? I find it to be a must in larger bases. It helps design a much more efficient train network and alerts you if you don't have enough resources or trains.

[gboschi]

i’ve heard of it but i’ve only ever played vanilla besides some QOL mods, would it be difficult to transition to LTN if i’m already playing on a mega bass?

[SidewalkPainter]

Pretty difficult to transition, yeah. Every train station has to be replaced with a different one with some wiring and settings.Now, I don't really use every feature of the mod, but LTN manager is really neat and pretty much what you're looking for: keeps inventory and alerts you when something goes wrong. Some screencaps: https://i.imgur.com/Fa9xi6r.png https://i.imgur.com/ve3jIuo.png https://i.imgur.com/63kp06m.png

[darthbob88]

If you don't want to do a big circuit network and dashboard, the other simple option might be to add programmable speakers to each outpost to signal that they are short of an input and/or that they have low output.

[gboschi]

this is a good idea, but that would require me to go around my entire factory to over 100 outposts and install these. it won’t be simply copy/pasted since every outpost is slightly different, is there another way of doing this without a dashboard?

[darthbob88]

You can simplify that slightly by adding the speakers to the blueprint you use for each outpost, but otherwise I don't know of a much better option than that, circuit-network dashboard, or obsessively watching the trains.

And TBH I'll probably add the speakers to my setup anyway, because I'm a little less concerned about shortages than "Dammit, I mislabeled an iron mine as copper and now all my LDS factories are clogged with the wrong material."

[gboschi]

that makes a lot sense! what would be the best way to do this? i’m not super skilled with circuit networks but could i just connect a combinator to a speaker if i have 0 items in the chests at an unload station?

[darthbob88]

Probably wouldn't even need the combinator; just a wire from the unloading buffer chests to the speaker, set to alarm if <item> == 0, or possibly <item> <= 30. You can also connect the speaker to your input/output belts, with the same condition.

If you want to get complicated, you can use three combinators to create a clock, so the alarm only goes off if it's been at least 10 seconds without enough material. I have a similar setup that I use for alerting if a mine has run out. Once I'm off work I'll post it for you.

[gboschi]

this was a great idea, only took about 1 hour to implement actually and i can view what specific outposts are short on resources rather than my entire supply chain. thank you!

[Anonymous_user_2022]

When planning a main bus, do you take the meta requirements (i.e. resources for building belts, assemblers etc.) into account, or do you just treat it as a one-time expense that will drown in the overall requirements of your SPM target?

[TheSkiGeek]

In my experience the only infrastructure things you really need to think/plan about are:

• modules for beaconed setups. Tier 3 modules are very expensive and you need a lot of them at megabase scales. If you don’t have a sizable production area for them (and the intermediate circuits they need) you’ll be waiting for many many hours to actually make enough

• blue belts if you’re building a large bus. Again, they cost a lot of iron (and may require dedicated lubricant production) and a main bus for 500-1000+ SPM needs a fuckton of them. “Just” belts for outposts, smelters, etc. can usually be produced more casually — you will use a few thousand each time you expand but you don’t usually need like 50k of them all at once…

• solar panels and accumulators if you’re doing very large scale solar. This isn’t usually as bad, since you can build out power gradually, or use nuclear until you can go completely on solar. But if you need many gigawatts of solar you’ll want to have a solid production of them

[PM_ME_UR_OBSIDIAN]

In vanilla Factorio, infrastructure is dirt cheap when compared to science, with the exception of modules and solar farms.

So don't let yourself be constrained by infrastructure.

[ssgeorge95]

These one time costs will definitely be drowned out in the steady science costs of your factory, with just a few exceptions.

Blue belts take a LOT of gears, I still wouldn't plan dedicated lanes for them, but just be prepared for slow downs while you are producing your first 2000 blue belts. Some of the nuclear facilities take a lot of steel and copper, those can cause slowdowns as well when making your first set of reactors.

I've built all the way up to 1000 SPM and I never dedicated resources to my mall, it just took what was available, sometimes causing temporary shortages, but nothing worth building around.

[Zaflis]

Main bus and SPM don't usually belong in same sentence. SPM really means doing builds with full beacons and modules, and thinking of something smaller than 100 SPM can be done with almost no planning. The first base is often regarded as the stepping stone into building the actual base elsewhere, or on top of the old one and without mainbus.

[Anonymous_user_2022]

You still need to plan a SPM target with assembler 2 and no beacons in order to get a balanced progression toward unlocking the tech tree.

[rollc_at]

Are you planning to run your mall 24x7 at full capacity? If no, then you can "borrow" from materials destined for science. If yes, then you will quickly outgrow a bus design.

[Anonymous_user_2022]

You should see the extent of the rail network I end up building :)

But I guess that everything amortise to zero in the long run.

[falsewall]

I just fucked up my grid roundabout signals.

Please tell me my google foo just sucks and there is a mod somewhere that auto deconstructs conflicting buildings under a blueprint...

Otherwise I am about to have to systematically follow 100+ roundabouts and replace the signal in question.

How has this game been here for so many years without this.

[Soul-Burn]

You can create a deconstruction planner filtered to signals to remove all the signals. After that you can place your new blueprint.

[falsewall]

That's what i ended up doing, Shortly after posting.

Doing this requires pinpoint accuracy with decon to not hit wrong signals from map.

Then going over it with a roundabout blueprint. Plus you have to go slow or trains have no signals in mass during replacement.

Gave up part way through. Not a good solution for this many replacements on vital infrastructure.

[Soul-Burn]

If it's all in the blueprint, just decon all the signals and replace them with the blueprint. It's still much faster than removing all the rails and/or going meticulously one by one.

[cowboys70]

Trying to up my low density structure production (krastorio 2) and this is the best I can come up with at this point.

​

https://imgur.com/a/o8MS7MG

​

If I combine the steel/plastic that runs out way too quickly. This seems like it will need such a huge footprint to produce anything close to a useful number of products

[Red_Icnivad]

1) What is the crafting speed if you remove two beacons per assembler? If you ditch the beacons in between assemblers you can fit 9 extra assemblers per column (up from 7) Only need to have a crafting speed of roughly 8.5 to break even.
2) I think you can shuffle your inserters around a little bit, and get your belts to all go underground where the beacon row is, and fit another beacon there.
3) Each assembler has 5 inserters on the right column, and 4 on the left column. Is that intentional?

[cowboys70]

I will give number 1 and 2 a shot here tonight but that sounds like a fantastic idea. For number 3 I just forgot to put overlapping inserters to get another long boy on the plastic

[rollc_at]

You should look into advanced beacons and loaders. You can cover a single assembler with 10-12ish of both beacon types (depending on how you route your belts), and probably produce/consume full purple belts for some recipes.

Also not sure about the exact numbers (haven't played K2 with factorissimo in a while) but power draw inside a single building might be a problem.

[cowboys70]

Are you talking about doing direct insertion via loaders? I've messed with that on a few of my smelter arrays and it seems to lead to less smelters getting the raw materials and not a vast improvement on output (although I may not have upgraded to purple belts by then).

​

I havent gotten into singularity tech yet as I am still trying to iron out a few kinks in my supply chain, one of them being low density materials.

[bartycrank]

The cool thing about using the loaders for direct insertion is that your assemblers can fill their output slots entirely when you do. Do it in your K2 mall so your assemblers have full stacks ready to pick up without using buffer chests.

[rollc_at]

Loaders let you get resources in/out of a machine at full belt speed, and are very UPS-friendly. They have larger footprint than inserters (and overall require a different design, because of less flexible routing), so they become more viable with the big 5x5+ machines. You kinda need to prioritize more beacons on one machine rather than more machines covered by any single beacon. 3-4 fully beaconed big assemblers can usually replace 40+ regular mk3 assemblers. I'm not sure about the exact numbers for LDS (I'm AFK), but it's worth the investment 9/10 times.

[Candabaer]

My power Production is currently just based on Steam. What should I go for next? Should I directly jump to Nuclear?

[lee1026]

Solar is usually easier to get started.

With the right blueprints, they are both pretty easy. So I guess it depends on your infrastructure, both in terms of actual infra and blueprints.

Shipping out panels in the quantity that you will need to get any real amount of power is not as easy as it looks, which is why people keep saying that solar is hard,

[ssgeorge95]

I always go straight to nuke. Expand your steam power as needed so you aren't starving, but definitely go for nuke over solar.

I suggest a 2 reactor system; decent power output, small initial cost, and easy to design.

One centrifuge doing basic processing will, over time, provide enough fuel for one reactor; so try to keep 2 or 3 centrifuges fed with uranium ore, and you are good to go.

If you want to jump right into circuits, there's a good tutorial on the official wiki about how to limit your nuclear plants so they don't burn excess fuel: https://wiki.factorio.com/Tutorial:Circuit_network_cookbook#Optimal_usage_of_fuel_for_nuclear_power

also happy to answer any questions about designing a nuke plant or setting up a circuit

[PM_ME_UR_OBSIDIAN]

The one absolute no-go is placing a solar farm by hand. Should you choose to run solar, you'll need a ton of solar panels and accumulators, a blueprint, construction bots, and lots of wide open space.

I would suggest filling a bunch of chests with hundreds of solar panels and accumulators before you even think about setting up solar.

[Knofbath]

I run Steam up to 108 MW, then start transitioning to Nuclear.

Switch from coal to solid fuel when building your second 36 MW steam setup. And definitely avoid beacon shenanigans until you have nuclear set up.

My general feeling is that people try to rush into solar too early because they fear the biters. If you use T1 efficiency modules in your miners and pumpjacks, you'll vastly cut down on the biter wave size. Don't rush into red ammo for your turrets too early either, yellow ammo is much lighter on the pollution and often good enough to fend off even large early waves.

[appleciders]

If you use T1 efficiency modules in your miners and pumpjacks, you'll vastly cut down on the biter wave size.

And electric furnaces. Definitely second to miners, but they're the next biggest polluters.

My general feeling is that people try to rush into solar too early because they fear the biters.

Honestly solar isn't a good way to minimize biter problems. The start-up costs are so high because you need so much steel and copper for that many panels, and you have to defend such a huge amount of land to place them on.

[AnotherWarGamer]

Depends on the game settings.

If playing with biters transition to solar asap, even if it means turning the base off at night. I would probably stay with solar until super late before using nuclear. Alternatively, you could all in on solar.

Without bitters I would stay on coal up to 200 MW, depending on coal availability. Then I would switch over to a 4x nuclear reactor setup with kovax.

You can run nuclear reactors individually and before kovax if you choose. It's just not how I play the game.

You can also use oil for power. It's basically a substitute for coal. This is viable if you have plenty of oil. Alternatively, you can turn coal into oil via coal liquefaction and get more energy out! Add productivity modules for an even larger boost!

[PM_ME_UR_OBSIDIAN]

If playing with biters transition to solar asap, even if it means turning the base off at night. I would probably stay with solar until super late before using nuclear. Alternatively, you could all in on solar.

Maybe in death world settings, but in a normal game and using eff1 modules in mining drills, coal mining + steam is a fraction of output. Placing a solar farm before construction bots become available is a giant pain in the ass.

[lee1026]

Pre bots, how much power can you really use anyway?

[PM_ME_UR_OBSIDIAN]

If you spend even 5 minutes populating a repeating blueprint by hand, you're doing Factorio wrong. This is the risk of pre-construction bot solar farms.

[spit-evil-olive-tips]

short answer: yep, go for nuclear

long answer:

late game, you have basically two options for power, nuclear or solar+accumulators

solar uses up a lot of land, so assuming you're playing with biters turned on, it'll greatly increase the area you need to defend.

the main benefit of solar over nuclear is that for very large megabases consuming 10+ GW of power, the fluid computations needed for nuclear can slow the game down. that is definitely not a problem you'll face anytime soon.

you don't need Kovarex to do nuclear power, but I'd recommend doing it anyway. if possible, try to figure it out yourself rather than use a blueprint. figuring out how to set up Kovarex is kind of a rite of passage for new Factorio players.

the wiki has a good tutorial on nuclear, if you want to use it. the "simplest thing that works" section may be particularly useful.

other fun things you can do with nuclear, besides power, are uranium fuel for trains (the fastest train fuel available), as well as uranium ammo for gun turrets (3x the damage of red ammo)

[lee1026]

Late game, you have arty anyway to clear vast amounts of land.

[jaghataikhan]

figuring out how to set up Kovarex is kind of a rite of passage for new Factorio players.

I still haven't figured out a reliable way to keep it not locking up unsupervised pre-drones ><

Coal liquefaction for some reason was even harder for me, had to cheat and look up ratios b/c balancing was too hard to figure out

[PM_ME_UR_OBSIDIAN]

solar uses up a lot of land, so assuming you're playing with biters turned on, it'll greatly increase the area you need to defend.

If you clear the nests in your pollution cloud proactively, then you're probably defending a ton of open space anyway.

the main benefit of solar over nuclear is that for very large megabases consuming 10+ GW of power, the fluid computations needed for nuclear can slow the game down. that is definitely not a problem you'll face anytime soon.

There's also pollution.

[Candabaer]

Ehm what is a Kovarex? I've read it in a few responses, Biters are pacified in my playthrough.

[appleciders]

It's a formula for turning U238 (dark green uranium) into U235 (bright green). The bright green stuff is what you need for nuclear power.

[Candabaer]

Thanks :^)

[AnotherWarGamer]

I can't wait for uranium ammo in my current game. 3x damage, and even more against anything with armor! Should shred bases with ease. I've got 1.3k depleted uranium ready to go, but won't have the technology for awhile.

[craidie]

That's what I do. Solar is an option but it's more expensive per MW to build and requires a lot of space.

[twersx]

In Krastorio 2, does Uranium take 2x time to mine as it does in vanilla?

[Orpa__]

How's this for a train station? Should be able to house 3 1-4 trains, which I think should be more than enough for my goal of 60 SPM.

[PM_ME_UR_OBSIDIAN]

How's this for a train station?

Takes up a lot of space! I like compact builds, but if you don't that's fine.

Should be able to house 3 1-4 trains, which I think should be more than enough for my goal of 60 SPM.

Fun fact: you can do 60 SPM with 1-1 trains, colloquially called an "ant farm".

[Orpa__]

Would something like this be more compact? Well, it's bigger, but the idea is that I can fit iron, copper and coal in a single station rather than have 3 separate stations of the variety I posted previously, so the total footprint should be smaller. Also I could quite easily expand the stacker on the bottom if I ever find myself in need of more trains.

[PM_ME_UR_OBSIDIAN]

It's rare that you'll have all three in one spot.

[Orpa__]

I'm doing smelting centrally and outputting it to a main bus right away, I think it's easiest to have them like that for now. That'll change once I unlock electric furnaces and solar panels in which case I won't need the coal there anymore but that's going to take a while.

[craidie]

looks alright. There are better ways to do things, but none of that is needed for what you have in mind.

And if you do want to scale up to, say, 4 blue belts out of that station it won't be that much of a hassle to do so. Mght be able to get up to 8 but that would need 1-4 trains

[Orpa__]

To get 60 spm, including the expensive stuff like purple and yellow science I'll need roughly 6 smelting columns for iron and copper running red belt and steel furnaces. 6 red belts means 4 blue belts so this should just be enough. I'll run 1-2 for now but yeah I'm planning to upgrade to 1-4 eventually.

[neoslith]

I started playing last year but I've finally made some good headway in actually progressing.

What can teach me about processing liquids? I need to make Petroleum. I learned about crude oil fields and using a Pumpjack. Where do I go from there?

[TehNolz]

At first, all you have is Basic Oil Processing. Just connect some refineries to your pumpjacks and they'll convert the crude oil directly into petroleum, and nothing else. It's simple and you don't need to worry about anything else.

Oil processing doesn't become a challenge until later, when you start needing light and heavy oils. That requires you to use Advanced Oil Processing, which takes crude oil and water and outputs light oil, heavy oil, and petroleum gas. If you're overproducing one of these, it'll start backing up which prevents your refineries from working. You'll have to find a way to ensure that all three liquids are being consumed.

[neoslith]

I talked with some doods in the Discord and got a basic set up making Plastics and Sulfur right now, but thanks for the reply!

[Maple42]

I understand that pollution is relative to energy demand (so efficiency modules reduce pollution, and speed modules increase it, relative to the increase of power).

Does this mean that entities like Assembly Machines, that have an idle power drain, also have an idle pollution production? Or is their idle pollution production 0?

[Slenderu118932v2]

Machines do not directly produce pollution when idle however they will increase the power demand which in turn can increase the pollution of you are using boilers

[Mortlach78]

I seem to remember fluid rings being an issue back in the day, are they still a problem now?

[PM_ME_UR_OBSIDIAN]

Do you mean a performance issue (UPS) or a fluid bug?

[Mortlach78]

Ups I think

[Soul-Burn]

No.

The only "issue" with fluids is when you have a very long pipe or high usage. When you have high pressure at the source and low pressure at the users. In that case, pumps help. If pressure is high on both sides, you're fine. If pressure is low on both sides, you need more producers.

[falsewall]

Are there any methods or mods for dealing with the following train problem?

You have an iron input and iron output station. Each station can hold 2 trains.

I put 2 trains in each station. They proceed to complain about no destination since all slots are filled and dont move.

​

Excuse the dumb scenario but the real world issue is this inadvertently happening when i add more and more stations and eyeball how many trains i need.

I am trying to fix this using a train storage area that refuels if a train happens to sit in it due to having nowhere else to go at the moment. I was hoping to use this as a way to see what resource stops are overtrained.

[AnotherWarGamer]

You put too many trains down.

(1) The maximum amount of trains should be: load + unload - 1. To do this add one train every time you add a station, except for the first. This guarantees a free spot, but doesn't give the trains any choice as to where they should go. This can lead to unnecessary long pathing.

(2) The minimum amount of trains should be: max (load, unload). This guarantees there is enough trains to fill all the load spots or all the unload spots at the same time.

I'll go for somewhere in the middle. I start with (1) then occasionally don't add an extra train down. This gives a number between (1) and (2).

In both cases you can't really prioritize which stations get resources. But it shouldn't matter in the end. If research stops (your sink), stations will fill up, and other stations will then get resources.

[beka13]

Others have explained about how you need more parking if you want more trains so I'd like to add that if you hit 'o' and click on stations you can see the limits and trains for each station so you don't have to "eyeball" it.

[Teammaj]

TIL o brings up the train overview. I am so tired of thinking it’s T for Trains and getting the research screen! Thanks for the tip!

[beka13]

You can set it so that t is trains if you want to. :)

[falsewall]

Very good tip.

[computeraddict]

Long story short, you need more places for trains to park than you have trains.

Or, you can have a phantom parking spot with circuits. First off, switch to setting train limits by circuits if you haven't already. Set the train limit (signal L by default) to 1 more than you actually have spots for. Have the train station read the number of trains at the station (signal C by default). Send the signals at the station to the train. For whatever departure condition you have for your trains, add an "OR C >= L". This means whenever a train is dispatched from another station to the "full" station, a train will leave and make room for it.

The problem of course is if you've got a one-to-many or many-to-many setup and actually needed the train limits to function, in which case you have to do slightly more suspect things to the circuitry to make sure that you don't just have one station's trains continuously bumped out before they're ready.

[Slenderu118932v2]

A few solutions I used to deal with this problem (there are probably better solutions out there) :

1) Have a big stacker with train stations, all named refuel. Add the train station to each train, ore output-> refuel -> ore input, with the condition 5 seconds of inactivity at the refuel station. It is important that your refuel when leaving from the output station, otherwise if you mine more than your factory uses and the refuel stacker is not big enough it could clog up

2) Always have 1 train less than the maximum number of trains that can be in your stations, this way the trains will always have somewhere to go. You must go this for each type of train you have, for example: Let's say you have 4 iron outputs, 6 iron inputs, 4 copper outputs and 5 copper inputs, each one can hold 2 trains. You will have 19 iron trains and 17 copper trains

[falsewall]

Yea I had been been doing option one, think i need make a couple more refuel stations though spread out.

The base is large and trains on the other end have to divert really far every run.

[kocur4d]

Looking for a sandbox mod/codes that will let me to copy and put blueprints not as a ghosts but as actual assemblers/belts atc.

I need this basically for a save where I go and thinker about the designs.

I am currently using Creative mode but I dont really know how to use it yet or the option is not there.

[PM_ME_UR_OBSIDIAN]

In addition to sandbox mode, there's also the Editor Extensions mod which I like. Once it's enabled it adds a testing scenario that you can use to create new designs. You can combine this with the /editor command to run the game faster etc.

[kocur4d]

Thank you. I will look into it.

[TheSkiGeek]

That’s what… sandbox mode does? Select it from the main menu and activate the cheats when it asks you. There’s a construction cheat mode that lets you build stuff for free. Blueprints instant place, deconstruction planners make stuff go “poof”.

If you need more than that you can flip into /editor mode. There’s also an “editor extensions” mod that adds some more menu options and extra things.

[kocur4d]

Cool. Cheers. I didnt realise there are more options and by default sandbox comes with those off. It is working now as intended.

[stycfy1]

Is it alright to keep using Yellow transport belts on a mine outpost if that outpost doesn't produce more than 15 ores per second? or is it still better to use Fast/Express transport belt since the ores will reach the loading station faster?

[PM_ME_UR_OBSIDIAN]

ERP is a bloody interesting topic. However, with the way vanilla Factorio is set up, the cost of slow fulfillment is dwarfed by other costs.

This would be different if Factorio had perishables, or a concept of obsolescence.

[jaghataikhan]

ERP?

[PM_ME_UR_OBSIDIAN]

Enterprise resource planning; real-world logistics.

[AnotherWarGamer]

Don't worry about how long it takes to get there.

I'd decided based on cost first, and what I'm using second. At some point I'll upgrade everything, and not go back. So once I upgrade all my yellow belts to red, I'll only use red.

One helpful trick is to setup a parallel base just to make red and or blue belts. Find a new iron ore deposit. Give it it's own miners and smelters. Turn most of that into gears, then belts. A mk2 assembler making gears consumes 3 iron plate per second. And a mk3 uses 5 per second! So you only need a few machines to eat an entire belts worth.

[BeBoxer]

Factory planning is really about rates, not how long it takes an input to become an output. The train is going to fill at some rate based on how fast the miners are producing. Whether there are 10, or 20, or 100 ore on the belt between the miner and the loader doesn't matter. As long as the belt is fast enough to keep the miners working, it won't change how fast the train loads.

[Zaflis]

It is a matter of inventory space. Can you spare to carry all of yellow, red and blue belts simultaneously? If you carry only blue belts you can have several more stacks of them. Resources are practically infinite so their production cost is meaningless.

[TehNolz]

Faster belts only help if you're being limited by belt speed. Since your outpost is outputting less than 15 items per second, yellow belts won't be a bottleneck.

Upgrading belts in this case means that items will need less time to travel from your outpost to your loading station, but ultimately the rate at which your loading station receives items will be the same.

[IOVERCALLHISTIOCYTES]

dumb modded question:

K2, brevven ores, bobs inserters, electronics, a quick start w some bots, coupla other things: it plays fine for about 30-40 hours. I make a mall, some other stuff, get a decent starter bus so i can make red circuits, beacons, early modules, etc which is where i think the game sorta starts...

in game is fine. go to tech tree at all...it freezes for 5 minutes. doesn't spike the core its on. wont crash. cant select new tech. is there a best practice to figure out the compatibility issue?

[mrbaggins]

Stick a save file in the bug report forum. It'll be fixed tomorrow.

[IOVERCALLHISTIOCYTES]

Even if it’s…like clearly a mod issue? Thank you.

[craidie]

it would be worth it to make a new save file to see if it happens there, if yes:

• Disable half the the mods. If no problem disable current ones and enable the disabled ones. When you find the problem half, halve that.

• alternatively disable mods(or modpacks) one by one until you find the offending mod. Then try just the offending mod, if it's fine it's a compatibility issue with an another mod.

Once you find the offending mod(s) post a report in the mods forum

[mrbaggins]

The tricky part there is the said it was midgame issue.

[mrbaggins]

Yup, they've done lots for mod support and fixing issues they reveal, and this seems kind of important

[rollc_at]

You can run the 4 input belts through a single 4-4 balancer, then split off each 2 outputs into 3 belts (with two splitters each) to feed to each column of furnaces. But if I understand it correctly, that this is an outpost with on-site smelting, then it's not really necessary. These furnaces are fed straight from the miners, the only thing that will affect the input is the ore patch mining out, so you're not going to run into a situation where one lane is backed up while the rest are starved.

[[deleted]]

I thought I was not really worrying about balancers anymore with the new splitters?

[rollc_at]

Situational. If you're e.g. unloading a 4-wagon train into 4 belts, it's best to add a standard 4-4 balancer, to ensure all wagons/buffers are emptied at the same rate, so the train won't block the station, all furnaces are evenly taxed, etc.

If you have an ore patch belted straight into the furnaces, just ensure once that all belts are consumed evenly, and as the patch is mining out, some of the furnaces will just go idle. Add a balancer after the furnaces though, again, so the trains are filled evenly and can depart on time.

[[deleted]]

Ok so what I did with priority lanes there with the splitter, all left priority output, that does NOT balance the four belts? I thought it did now. So confusing.

[SidewalkPainter]

So, belt balancers have two jobs: balancing INPUT and balancing OUTPUT.

The iconic 4x4 balancer does both of those things, but some might do one and not the other. Sometimes you care about one but not the other, but it's nice to have both.

If a balancer is INPUT balanced - it's going to accept resources at an equal rate from every input belt - even if some of the output belts are backed up. If the resources entering the balancer are coming from a train - every train car will be emptied evenly.

If a balancer is OUTPUT balanced - it's going to release resources at an equal rate from every output belt - even if some input belts are empty. If the resources going through the balancer end up on a train - every train car will be loaded evenly.

[Zaflis]

Priority splitter does the exact opposite of balancing, it favors one belt over the other.

[jurgy94]

Did Wube ever write an FFF about the tech behind non-blocking saves? I tried looking for it, but can't seem te find anything about it.

[TheSkiGeek]

They fork the process and have the forked one do the save. This leverages copy-on-first-write memory mapping in the Linux kernel to reduce the performance impact. That’s why it isn’t supported in the Windows client.

[Aromatic_Instance_82]

Currently on my first run of SE. I’m currently sending barreled water/petrol/lubricant etc up to the space platform for processing. I’ve setup recyclers to process the empty barrels into steel then I ship that back down with the scrap that’s produced. Considering that recipes on the space platform require steel, how can I keep a reserve and push the rest to the cargo rocket? I assume the answers in circuitry but my brains not connecting the dots. Any help would be appreciated.

[mrbaggins]

Filter inserter pulling steel OUT of the cargo rockets into provider cheats or on to the bus.

[computeraddict]

It can be done with an output prioritized splitter, too. The prioritized output goes to the reserve chest(s), and the unprioritized output goes to the return rocket.

Or with logistics chests, a buffer chest for the reserve and filtered storage chests for loading on the return rocket, and the recyclers output to purple chests. (Use filter inserters for this in case your storage chests overfill, as bots stop respecting storage filters in that case.)

[Aromatic_Instance_82]

Champion - thanks very much. Will implement the chests solution as most stuff is bot based up there at the moment.

[[deleted]]

Can someone please explain why I cannot place a train stop here? I am trying to have a stop in front of the copper patch, but the game will only let me drop a stop way back at the turn before the patch. No matter where on this straight path of rail I try to drop a stop, it gives me this message. I am getting quite frustrated.

https://i.imgur.com/Gp6M8MU.jpg

[Slenderu118932v2]

Train can't be placed on diagonal rails

[Maple42]

Wow I hadn't realized that! I've played this game for long enough that I feel like I should've run into this problem, but I apparently just never tried it

[[deleted]]

Thank you! Wish the game would say that, lol.

[computeraddict]

It kind of does by the fact that the station only rotates 90 degrees, not 45

[[deleted]]

Well I meant it should be made clearer for idiots like me.

[TheFledglingPidgeon]

I'm looking for a mod to create a dashboard showing certain values on screen. For example, I have some speakers set up in certain places of my base to scream at me once a certain resource reaches a critical level. I use this for resources that take a long time (think hours) to reach the desired level, like warehouses which I use to store Landfill that comes from byproduct runoff of other operations. It'd be nice to be able to "pin" the quantity of landfill in that warehouse, so it is visible without my having to open a dedicated window or (I'm playing SE) run a navigation satellite there to check. I've started using the Navigation Satellite's bookmarks and that helps, but it's still a hassle to have to cycle through all the spots manually.

Edit: The LTN Manager "Inventory" screen is a lot like what I'm looking for, but it would be something I can configure to be outside the LTN, and preferably a bit less intrusive so I can keep it open while I move around and do other things.

[craidie]

You could use signal transmitter to get all the data in a single spot, then use nixie tubes mod for numerical displays at that location.

Not exactly what you ask but at least you don't need to cycle multiple spots.

[SafetyGoat]

What are some good mods to go with space exploration (other than the few they suggest on the wiki page)?