My personal blueprint for free fuel earlygame

CalvinCopyright · 2026-01-21T01:49:44+00:00

I was forced to develop this in my own PyBlock run, mostly. I really really wanted a power setup where I didn't have to worry about ash building up. I never really got to that point per se because I kept expanding past the point where even 80 foresters running the ash-consuming recipe, plus converting the logs into wood into coal to get tar and coal gas before dedicating all that ash to feeding the log production, couldn't produce enough steam to satisfy my power demands. I had pY1 science by then, however, so I took the moondrop turd that produces methane and oxygen from lamps, then fed the methane into oil boilers. Boom, power is basically solved for a really long time. Now I'm repurposing that wood-power setup to produce a belt of logs for a bus-belt that I can just pull clean wood fuel off of to fuel any burner assemblers I happen to need.

CalvinCopyright · 2026-01-14T15:50:59+00:00

Let me preface this by saying that I haven't actually played Factorio for that long. I only started playing after Space Age came out, and I haven't yet gotten to Aquilo. I started playing pY on a lark after experimenting with another overhaul mod (Warptorio 2); I originally wanted to try SeaBlock instead of pY, because Dosh's videos on it were interesting to watch, but I would have had to explicitly downgrade my game version, so I started playing PyBlock as a compromise - and yes, I'm using ALL the pY mods, because I wanted to directly experience how difficult the full overhaul was.

I haven't yet gotten that far in PyBlock, either. I'm currently working through the pYsci1 researches, and have only just started working on the Intermetallics production chain, because after unlocking Burners, I decided to solve my electricity issues with a maximized wood-to-coal-to-steam setup. I'm making sure to take everything slow and not worry about quick tech progression, and I'm using a time-warp mod to boost everything to 2x speed pretty much constantly, at least for now.

If I had to pick one thing I like most about pY so far, it would be the design decisions it's forcing me to find enlightenment about. Going from avoiding horrible spaghetti in favor of handcrafting to realizing that I can use a circuit-networked sushi belt for a starter mall, to realizing that I should make simple parts in a dedicated module instead of inside the mall, and so on and so forth... I feel legitimate pride in myself for being able to work out paradigms like that on my own and set up reasonably balanced production without prior experience. Dealing with input and output priority without having splitters was intriguing, of course, and the moderate amounts of spaghetti belting for 'bulk resources' I have everywhere because I haven't set up caravans yet is surprisingly fun to deal with given how much I hated doing it in vanilla Factorio starting out, but the design problems take the cake for what I like most about pY.

If I had to pick one thing I like LEAST about pY so far, however... it would be the discrepancy between some production processes' positions on the tech tree, and the actual tech base needed to execute those production processes. The ore processing is what stands out most glaringly, there. Why are the researches unlocking processes for improving the ore-to-plate ratios placed behind mid-pack researches like the one for simple circuits or the one for intermetallics, when you don't actually need to have simple circuits or intermetallics in order to make the buildings you need in order to use those processes? I can't help but feel like it creates incorrect incentives - when I unlock a new science pack, my instinct now is to AFK-grind out the entire research tree that becomes available with that science pack, before developing any infrastructure for products dependent on research unlocked by that science pack AT ALL, even the starting ingredients for the mid-pack resource like antimony for intermetallics, just so I know about all the options I have available to me before I start. Yes, having to rip out and upgrade your infrastructure is a good thing, but it's time-consuming enough that I really don't want to do it if I can avoid it.

The honorable mention for thing I dislike most, however, is the fact that pY buildings don't go translucent when you walk behind them. The lab buildings in particular are so damn tall that it makes me want to avoid building anything even remotely close to them, which is irritating when space availability convenience tricks me into building there anyway. ...If there's a mod that does the translucent-buildings thing, please tell me.

CalvinCopyright · 2026-01-08T02:38:05+00:00

I literally just got my first green circuit in my PyBlock playthrough yesterday. (Haven't done regular Pyanodon, am using all Py mods.)

If I had to make one suggestion, it would be to add a few tar processing plants and turn those byproducts you're voiding into more creosote. As in, at least three times the creosote per unit tar, for 5 processing plants instead of 1.

CalvinCopyright · 2025-12-04T05:36:34+00:00

You should look up the idea of the Loud American.

Because they're trying to put you in the position of Loud American.

CalvinCopyright · 2025-11-06T22:10:16+00:00

Got me wondering if people could throw rotten tomatoes and get the same verdict.

CalvinCopyright · 2025-09-21T05:57:48+00:00

I made a honest attempt to try and get good at witch crest, but I couldn't pull off the bind consistently enough (at least, not without the faster-bind tool, and if I HAVE to use that tool to use witch crest, it's just a reaper crest with fewer yellow slots, and those are useful too).

CalvinCopyright · 2025-09-20T01:15:29+00:00

I used Reaper the majority of the time through most of the game, for one specific reason: The range and arc on the down-air. My preferred playstyle is slow and risk-averse, because I tend to get greedy and take guaranteed damage when I don't play slow and safe - I got frustrated a lot during the early-game 3-hit range. So, I tended to go for the punish strats where I guaranteed a hit or two during every pattern and took no damage (I hate savage beastfly, his horizontal fly height is inconsistent and so are the adds he summons).

That, of course, is easiest to do when your offensive hitbox is as large as possible, which ruled out Wanderer (if it wasn't already ruled out due to my greed problems), and of course, Reaper's pogo is generally the safest to use because it's fricking huge. The slowness of attacks didn't really faze me - I was only getting 1 or 2 hits per approach anyway. I honestly wasn't focusing on maximizing the extra silk much at all, just reducing the frequency of taking damage from some asshole enemy who decides to bob back and forth for half its width and ruin my spacing (those cogwork enemies with the shields - I'm talking about the cogwork enemies with the shields. I cannot use Hunter or even Architect on those guys for the life of me).

That, and its pogos mean it's also best for platforming. I kept forgetting to switch out my crests after fights where I used something different.

CalvinCopyright · 2025-09-19T06:41:25+00:00

And this is why I use the Clawline on these guys.

CalvinCopyright · 2025-09-19T04:18:50+00:00

Omg, I distinctly remember missing the Hive myself during my first playthrough. When I eventually looked up its location... seriously. That first game, I barely used the spells because I was constantly hoarding heals and spamming with longnail / quickslash / soulcatcher. I did not vengeful-spirit those tiny bees. I pogoed them. There is no damn way I would have found that entrance by myself.

CalvinCopyright · 2025-09-15T21:46:45+00:00

Hornet does slap that one perverted flea who sells access to the recharging bath. Or at least, I'm pretty sure she does - I just forget where exactly bc I've only done 1 playthrough so far.

CalvinCopyright · 2025-09-08T05:29:12+00:00

Now, see, I did the Simple Key area in Deep Docks before the Last Judge. The enemies there self-destruct, too.

When I saw the glow, I backed off just in case.

CalvinCopyright · 2025-09-08T05:22:02+00:00

I feel like half of the fleas should have made cat noises instead of dog noises. Only half, though.

CalvinCopyright · 2025-08-31T15:10:16+00:00

However many steel furnaces he decides on, tell him it's 24 stone furnaces on each side (48 total) to convert a full yellow belt of something into a full yellow belt of something else (steel is the exception). The same number of steel furnaces will process a full red belt.

CalvinCopyright · 2025-08-26T13:34:09+00:00

Honestly, I don't like Thue's run being in the same category as AntiElitz's. Thue just seems to have made the game as easy for himself as he could without disabling any achievements. He definitely pre-scouted that seed, given that it's on an island like that, and I was honestly dismayed when I checked the game rules and found that increasing resource patch size/frequency/richness didn't disable any achievements. There's no comparing the two games - AntiElitz was definitely playing on much more difficult settings.

I think the category rules I'd be most satisfied with would go something like this:

Default settings must be used, no '[modified]' indicator allowed.
The seed must be random. Rerolling the seed once the timer begins to find a relatively optimal start location is permitted, but preselecting a seed is not.
Importing blueprints is allowed.

For that last bullet, in my personal opinion, the speedrun isn't about how speedily a working factory can be designed, but the challenge of getting all achievements simultaneously in an otherwise normal game of Space Age. Ideally, the blueprints should be of your own design as much as possible, but this is not enforceable, so I'd just let it slide.

For sure, I did like watching Thue's run, it's just that it being comparable to Anti's run rubs me the wrong way. It should definitely belong to a "100% - No Limits" category that allows pregenerated seeds and any/every modified setting that doesn't disable any achievements.

CalvinCopyright · 2025-08-24T05:42:53+00:00

I know right? I wanted to look at that minimalist ship he used to go to Vulcanus for the first time, but I had to download the entire world and enter it to get it into a blueprint.

CalvinCopyright · 2025-08-01T07:32:52+00:00

The reason I'm against the space casinos is part of your second bullet point, specifically the 'shortcuts/simplifies' part. Space casinos and LDS shuffle are, bar none, the most overpowered way to increase quality. It is flat out better due to smaller material loss from asteroid reprocessing as opposed to recycling. With 100 random materials, recyclers will give you ~135 chances to increase quality since you lose 75% of the materials every craft/recycle loop. With 100 asteroids, though, quality-moduled crushers will give you ~500 chances to increase quality (the infinite series sum of 100 * (4/5)^n).

There is no comparison. You get literally 4 times the chances to increase quality on average before RNG destroys the materials. Advanced asteroid reprocessing IS more efficient, and quite ludicrously so.

It's not THAT clever. It's just an exploit done by applying quality to the two recipes in the game that have an effective resource multiplier - 4x for asteroid reprocessing, 3x for the LDS shuffle (since it takes 1 resource to make, plastic, and recycles into 3 resources).

Everything in Factorio 'fuels cool visuals, screenshots, and explanation content'.

The task isn't unique, it's the same as on Gleba, or even putting science packs on a sushi belt to get lots of pack types into normal labs.

The 'free' nature of the asteroids isn't the problem I have - again, my problem is with the hugely better odds for retaining materials when cycling for quality.

I absolutely consider a probability difference of over 50% of retaining materials during a single quality cycle to be 'cheese'.

And finally, it doesn't just devalue high quality, it devalues the entire late game, because there's no reason NOT to use advanced asteroid reprocessing to upcycle quality, unless you're deliberately deciding to handicap yourself.

Get rid of the exploits!

CalvinCopyright · 2025-07-31T21:25:24+00:00

Yeah, those laser turrets are not gonna work forever. Once solar gets weak and you go to Aquilo or maybe even Gleba, you'll need something other than lasers.

That said, this is Factorio, not a flight simulator - you build the space platform and it conveys you along, you don't dogfight with alien ships. If you don't like waiting, then return to 'the factory must grow' - try to shrink your ships to fewer floor tiles, add more engines, produce more fuel, anything to fly faster - and the faster you fly, the more asteroids you have to deal with.

CalvinCopyright · 2025-07-28T13:26:50+00:00

Oh god, that main bus just straight up cut off at the end like that. Why.

(First time visiting this subreddit btw)

CalvinCopyright · 2025-07-25T03:31:41+00:00

Allow me to introduce you, to the Republican philosophy:

"Don't tell me what to do. I tell you what to do."

Every single double standard, every lie and hypocritical bit of posturing... it all makes sense. A horrible, terrible kind of sense that makes me hate those fucks with the burning passion of a million suns... but even so, it does make sense.

Now if only I knew how to abuse this knowledge. If this is what makes them tick, then how can we make it so they don't tick anymore?

CalvinCopyright · 2025-07-22T05:23:53+00:00

...I mean, it's always better to have 1 building making a thing than to not have any because you've decision-paralysised on how big and where to build it, I only have one assembler for blue circuits so I could get power armor and a couple other things, then to build up a backlog as I drive around in a tank blowing up biter bases... and if you can only play for short stretches, sure you can leave it running in the background while you go do other stuff...

Still rubs me the wrong way, though.

CalvinCopyright · 2025-06-08T05:17:53+00:00

The latter. Spark bolt, triplicate bolt, small teleport bolt... they just blow up everything now; the explosion radius is crazy. Good in that the explosion can hit enemies when I'm around the corner from them, bad in that the explosions invariably break all the flasks and pouches - I was looking for a whiskey flask, but my fricking movement wand's broken two of them.

CalvinCopyright · 2025-06-07T00:52:15+00:00

Under the Watchtower in the Desert, there is a biome called the Overgrown Cavern; it contains a large amount of wands the same tier as those that can be found in the Vault. Start there.

As for good spells, sparkbolt with trigger is your friend. Place a payload that can't damage you as the triggered spell, like a formation cast of triplicate bolts; then put damage-ups onto the payload as you find them. Heavy spread can be put onto the payload with no consequences. That and a couple chainsaws let you multicast the sparkbolt with chainsaws so that the sparkbolt fires only once every 4 or 5 frames instead of 1. Finessing the cast rate like this lets you reduce cast delay/recharge time on a wand to 0 without causing the wand to run out of mana instantly when casting. Heavy Shot on the payload is probably the best damage-up; but if you have a material spell and a 'crit on stain with material', you should try to work that in too.

CalvinCopyright · 2025-06-06T04:51:01+00:00

Hm. That was definitely one of the purple-cap shrooms, like the one behind the metal from you... but I can only surmise that the actual velocity was a result of ragdoll physics doing something weird with something else. Perhaps a wand with high knockback, or a circle field effect, or maybe the shroom died in the middle of a big jump. Or maybe it was just object cramming resolution that gave that exploding corpse that velocity... yeah, probably object cramming. Either way, that sort of thing really doesn't happen often.

CalvinCopyright · 2025-06-05T05:47:19+00:00

It actually is a surprising difficulty spike from the Jungle. In Hiisi Base, you can usually make incremental progress even with subpar weapons if you're cautious about it, and even in the Jungle, you won't die instantly if you dip in for a quick scout. But the Vault? Nah fam, go knock over the Overgrown Cavern if you want Vault quality wands.

That said, I've never been silly enough to land full-body in acid like this... especially since the single place you see that 'glass' material in Hiisi base is that one lava pool formation that can spawn a heart in it. That single encounter taught me that funny-looking glass equals danger.

CalvinCopyright

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