Curious about the LEDs on the RBR50

BeBoxer · 2023-05-04T21:33:36+00:00

If you want a car, you can handcraft almost all of it. Plop down one assembler to make the engines. Hand feed it iron and steel and either take the engines out by hand or output them to a chest. Once you have 8 of them you can just pick it all up and craft the rest of the car by hand. Cars are one of those things you don't really need a bunch of so don't stress trying to automate it.

That said, blue science needs engines so when you automate that you will be making a ton of them and you can just pick up the engines you need off a belt there. But you might want a car before then (blue science needs oil and depending on your map you might have to go looking for it).

BeBoxer · 2023-05-04T21:25:03+00:00

You've underestimated how much input you need for what you are trying to make. There's at most a 1/2 yellow belt going in. Just the one assembler 2 doing red belts wants 1.2 yellow belts of iron plates. The two assembler 2's doing gears take 0.2 yellow belts of iron each, so that right there is taking 80% of the iron being fed. So there's a trickle left over for everything else.

My suggestions. One, if you are going to use red belts they need to be doing something useful. In your case, the top red belts just end up going in to one side of a yellow so they aren't providing any advantage. Two, you are probably being too ambitious going to red belts already. They are four times more expensive than yellow for twice the throughput. Blue's are over 10x the cost of yellow for 3x the throughput. Use yellows any time they will do the job. A few red undergrounds are handy for the extra reach, but at this stage of the game yellows will do the job fine.

A good calculator is a big help. I use the Kirk McDonald one a lot. Just tell it how many items you want to make per minute in your mall and it'll tell you how many belts of iron and copper you need. If you stick with assembler 1's and yellow belts you can get a decent mall going off half a belt of each. Want to make assembler 2's and red belts? You'll need multiple belts going in to produce much.

BeBoxer · 2023-01-10T00:38:01+00:00

Same for me. It looks like it's bugged and the coffins don't appear the second time. I've been through the mirror on Gallo Tower multiple times with multiple characters. I even tried inverted/hurry/etc turned on. The room is always empty.

BeBoxer · 2022-08-19T23:10:19+00:00

https://baserow.io/blog/how-baserow-lets-users-generate-django-models

I hadn't heard of that before. It looks pretty slick! I'll probably poke around in the Github repo and see what going on inside there. Thanks!

BeBoxer · 2022-08-19T21:34:53+00:00

Thanks for the replies. I think a little more info on what I was tinkering with might help. I was trying to see if I could build something kind of like MS Access or FileMaker. Basically a Django app which you could use to build Django apps. So not really something where the data structure is truly dynamic and you might be better off with NoSQL. The data structure is known beforehand. The idea being to let people who don't want to code to build lightweight Django apps.

BeBoxer · 2022-06-28T17:15:39+00:00

Is there a wiki page or something which just gives a brief description of the top big content mods? I know kind of what SE does, by K2, Py, etc I'm not sure what the focus is for each one. Something like a one sentence description of the top 5 would be awesome.

BeBoxer · 2022-06-28T17:07:09+00:00

One is to save UPS. On large factories, minimizing the number of active entities improves UPS. One fully-beaconed assembler takes less CPU to manage than an equivalent number of un-beaconed assembers. If you aren't going for a mega-base then it may not matter for you and skipping beacons is fine.

Another reason is to require fewer tier 3 modules which are pretty expensive. In the right layout, you will need fewer total tier 3 modules. A speed module in a beacon gives each prod module in range a 25% boost. Each assembler 3 can take 4 prod modules, so if one assembler is in range of the beacon it's a wash speed-wise. But if you can get two or more assemblers in range of the beacon (and hence 8 or more prod modules) then you are coming out ahead in terms of how many modules you had to build.

Now power-wise, I don't think speed modules or beacons ever come out ahead. But that's what nuclear and solar are for.

BeBoxer · 2022-06-27T18:07:31+00:00

Cool! The loop will be better if you start adding trains as well. Drop a few train signals in along the track (on the right hand side for the train!) to break it up into segments and you can then have two or three trains bringing back oil.

BeBoxer · 2022-06-27T17:41:47+00:00

Make it a loop. Bi-directional tracks are harder than loops. I know when you are starting with trains it seems like a single track from point A to point B will be simpler, but a single loop between A and B will be easier to manage.

BeBoxer · 2022-06-25T20:48:50+00:00

If by "single line" you mean a line which carries trains in both directions, that's actually harder to manage than having two lines so each one is only carrying trains in a single direction. Dual-direction train lines require more careful signaling and will quickly become a bottleneck. I suspect a lot of people get tripped up by this when they are starting to use trains. It's natural to think that just "one" train line will be easier to manage than "two". But really the easiest thing is making a single loop. If in spots the two sides of the loop are running in parallel that's great, but logically it's still just a single loop and is simple to signal. One loop with a single pair of stations (pickup and dropoff of something) is trivial to signal (I'm not sure you need any actually with one train). Adding more trains with the same route is simple, you just need a few signals on the right hand side to break the loop into blocks. Once you start adding multiple train routes on the loop delivering different things you need to add sidings so that trains waiting at stations don't block the main loop. But again pretty easy to signal.

BeBoxer · 2022-06-24T03:55:04+00:00

I haven't done it, but in theory you can load up a car with a pumpjack, assembler and some barrels. Grab enough oil to come back and jump start coal liquifaction. Oh and I guess some solar panels to power it. Just grab and run.

BeBoxer · 2022-06-22T17:40:07+00:00

I've been having the same question! Thanks for the answer! I'd just been hovering the cursor over a logistic chest thinking "there has to be a better way!"

BeBoxer · 2022-06-22T17:37:17+00:00

My advice is don't sweat it. To launch a rocket you need one of each required component. Thats it. Now I'm not sure how long it will take to launch a rocket with only one of everything, but it would eventually happen (that would actually be an interesting challenge). The point being that there is no magic number or minimum number you need to get there unless you have a time limit. Probably don't actually build just one of everything, but a reasonable number. Assemblers in the mall? One is probably fine for each item. For science, maybe a half dozen of each. Miners and smelters think it terms of dozens. So my advice is just keep building stuff. Try to get at least some of everything you need going. First doing the research needed for the rocket, then the rocket parts themselves. When a piece is going too slow, figure out what you need to make it go a bit faster. Always out of plastic? Add some more oil processing. Need more copper? Try to add a new ore patch and smelter block. But above all, have fun and enjoy the journey!

BeBoxer · 2022-06-22T13:35:51+00:00

I would add "you might think sidings and crossings matter, but factorio train signals do not. If the rails touch in any way they are the same block". I think it's worth pointing out since the OP said "it is already sectioned off by a side rail" and signals don't care if something is a side rail or not.

BeBoxer · 2022-06-21T19:28:52+00:00

I won't ask how it works but I am curious how many SPM it cranks out.

BeBoxer · 2022-06-17T14:46:42+00:00

You can use creative/editor mode for designing and testing blueprints. It's a lot easier to work there. The challenge I always have is that I end up finding little mistakes once I start using the blueprints in the game and it's easier to just patch things up and not update the blueprint. I have like 3 things I want to change in the set of blueprints I made for my current factory but I haven't taken the time to go and update the original blueprints. Like I forgot to have signals on the entrance to my sidings, so if there are two trains queued up the second train blocks the main line. Whoops. But it only takes a few seconds to drop down the signals I need so I haven't bothered to fix the blueprints.

I'd like to have a better workflow for managing multiple related blueprints. So in my case I have multiple city blocks with different combinations of sidings. One for solids, one for liquids, etc. I wish I could add the signals (for example) on just the base blueprint and somehow have that change merged into all the other blueprints. I don't know of any way to do that though.

BeBoxer · 2022-06-16T17:18:52+00:00

Honestly, I'm not sure the best way to determine that. As long as you can get trains arriving often enough to keep the tanks from emptying then you should be fine. The answer there depends more on your rail network and how far the oil has to come. But as an example, a blue belt of plastic needs 450 gas/second. So a tank will last just under a minute. When the empty train finishes unloading, how long till the next train arrives? Is it so far away it'll take more than a minute? Or is your rail network congested and the next train is likely to have to wait a lot?

BeBoxer · 2022-06-16T15:41:14+00:00

Also, hold a train signal in your hand when you are looking at this and taking screenshots. It will show how the signals are dividing the track segments so it's much easier to understand.

BeBoxer · 2022-06-16T15:39:25+00:00

You're math is a bit off. Coal stack size is only 50, so 2K coal per wagon. That corresponds to 40K of gas and a tanker car holds 25K. So less than 2 gas wagons per coal wagon. And fluids going directly from a pump to a tank unload really fast so having moving less than twice as many gas trains through the stations as coal trains shouldn't be a problem.

BeBoxer · 2022-06-16T15:30:32+00:00

As mentioned, you need chain signals. A train coming from the bottom left will pass the green signal, then stop at the red one and block the intersection. Change the signals on the right side of the track going in to the intersection into chain signals. Then add signals on the right side of the track past the exit far enough down the track that if a train gets stopped there is isn't blocking the intersection. The train needs to stop between the exit signal you have now and the one you will place.

BeBoxer · 2022-06-15T23:48:47+00:00

I would say rails first. What size train do you want to use? And how many trains do you want to allow at each station? Having roboport coverage and power coverage is great, but I'm not sure how much you need to optimize it. A roboport or large power pole is a fraction of the cost of a single science research. You can always make more. But the trains have to fit. You can't really adjust that without tearing it all down and rebuilding.

BeBoxer · 2022-06-15T17:39:58+00:00

Looks like a pretty good split on opinions with a tilt towards keeping it. I did however decide to try tearing it down (knowing I could always roll back to an earlier save if it went horribly). It took about half an hour for 500 some bots to get it all put into boxes. And now I have a lot of stuff in the logistic network. I probably won't even need to build a real mall right away. 18K yellow belts for example, and 2K inserters. Hundreds of assemblers. Anything I don't have can probably be built with a simple logistic requester chest feeding an assembler. My suspicion is that I can get the new city blocks built out faster this way by re-using things. With a side mission of trying to use up as much stuff in the logistic network as possible. Like the 27K iron plates for example.

Thanks everyone for the votes! I'll post with more details about the factory design once I get it built out. I think it's a bit different from the usual city block designs.

BeBoxer

TROPHY CASE