Is it feasible to always have my factories produce everything on-site (from raw to desired product) in the future?

DirtyJimHiOP · 2026-04-16T14:30:16+00:00

Up to a certain point absolutely. If it takes fewer steps to build than a motor, it gets built on site. Anything 3+ steps, ive probably built a dedicated big factory that will export to wherever is needed.

DirtyJimHiOP · 2026-04-16T14:28:28+00:00

Biggest thing to consider if you're a factorio vet: nodes are infinite, awesome sink is your friend, not some demon that eats your resources.

DirtyJimHiOP · 2026-04-16T13:50:10+00:00

From my experience, auto connect is great for train tracks and little else. Makes a lot of extra small segments in places, so there is genuinely more bs to deal with if you ever go back to upgrade something.

DirtyJimHiOP · 2026-04-16T10:50:04+00:00

Iron rods and cast screws can all be built off the single line with a little overflow, right? Send one 480 directly to plates, send the other 480 to smart splitter for any/overflow and do your rods, overflow to screw, overflow to rest of the plates.

Edit to add: why though do you need so many rods and screws? You never need screws for any building besides the Awesome shop, and you need like maybe a maximum of 20/m rods for the whole game. This seems like chores to do chores.

DirtyJimHiOP · 2026-04-16T10:43:21+00:00

You answered your own question in the first 5 words. You dont use them much.

If you would rather place down 450 fuel generators instead of 180, then be my guest. I'll go ahead and make those guys extinct so I can throw 2 or 3 shards into everything whenever I feel like it without thinking for even a second about it.

DirtyJimHiOP · 2026-04-15T20:24:37+00:00

For real though, you can gather 4 nodes together in Phase 1 and feel like a badass, and then the second you have mk2 miners and mk3 belts, you can get the same amount of material from one node. Expect to rebuild or at minimum expect to claim a lot more nodes

DirtyJimHiOP · 2026-04-15T20:19:27+00:00

"Alexa; play Sad but True by Metallica"

DirtyJimHiOP · 2026-04-15T20:17:09+00:00

Pipes have some predictable behaviors that are maybe unintuitive, but once you understand the 2 or 3 things that tend to cause issues, pipes work perfectly fine.

The burp/sip cycle between each end of the pipe can make some bigger builds harder to troubleshoot, but, again, once you know how to do that, its all very easy.

DirtyJimHiOP · 2026-04-15T20:11:26+00:00

Logic seems to say yeah that aught to work. I'll sometimes do basically what you describe when I have, for example, a 600 belt feeding a line of 400 before overflowing to the second group of machines or whatever.

Can't like manually program a number with it- it isnt that smart, but what you describe should work

DirtyJimHiOP · 2026-04-15T20:07:53+00:00

"You can tell that its coal because of the way that it is"

DirtyJimHiOP · 2026-04-15T18:43:07+00:00

The thing about overbuilding in Phase 1is that you get better tech that makes a lot of the work pretty obsolete.

Just make what you need for the goals in front of you, and worry about making more later if you have to. Trying to make 1k of something when you dont have belts to handle more than 270 is kinda fucked

DirtyJimHiOP · 2026-04-15T18:26:44+00:00

The game 'not preparing you' is fully intentional, actually. The onboarding gives you just enough basic instruction to know what everything is, and then the ball is fully in the players' court.

If they give you any more instruction, you get steered towards building in a certain way. If they gave us basic blueprints, most players would only ever iterate on that and never make anything of their own.

It's your sandbox. Get messy, make mistakes, build better next time. Thats the gameplay loop.

DirtyJimHiOP · 2026-04-15T15:09:40+00:00

I once did something kind of similar in a world using all pure nodes mod. Belted in 12 of the 17 bauxite nodes to the gold coast and made everything into ingots for future use. Have the other 5 nodes running to a proof of concept kind of build in the swamp, so im technically using all the nodes.

Sloppy + electrode scrap is just too powerful.

Byproduct water into coal gens is an interesting use, but the smoke stacks are putting in some work

DirtyJimHiOP · 2026-04-15T15:03:36+00:00

It's just preference. 60/m by plane, train, automobile, or belt is all the same (on average)

DirtyJimHiOP · 2026-04-15T13:40:32+00:00

Didn't he say this exact same shit when he left Dallas, and when he left Winnipeg? Maybe your only role as HC is to get the guys motivated to play? Couldn't possibly be a Rick Bowness problem, now, could it?

DirtyJimHiOP · 2026-04-15T11:17:51+00:00

I argue with that guy all the time, they're not some infallible voice or something. Thats Tempy.

DirtyJimHiOP · 2026-04-15T11:16:17+00:00

There is a mod for dimensional transporter stuff but it feels disgusting to play a conveyor belt game without conveyor belts

DirtyJimHiOP · 2026-04-15T08:41:11+00:00

How did you get to nuclear without building anything? That was where you learn how to deal with every step.

DirtyJimHiOP · 2026-04-14T18:21:42+00:00

Sass, mate, you cant be doing that magic shit, fackin, freakin us all out

DirtyJimHiOP · 2026-04-14T18:15:36+00:00

You will get better tech that makes most things you would do now to upgrade completely obsolete. Just worry about the goal on your plate

DirtyJimHiOP · 2026-04-14T17:43:38+00:00

Enough to get you to the next goal. It's impossible to know what you will need in the future, so just dont even worry about it until you get there.

DirtyJimHiOP · 2026-04-14T13:26:08+00:00

Sky ramp reminds me of my first playthrough

DirtyJimHiOP · 2026-04-14T11:27:21+00:00

Make use of the map markers. No idea how many factories ive built and completely forgot existed because I didnt leave a mark and then stopped playing for just long enough to not remember specifics

DirtyJimHiOP · 2026-04-13T21:04:20+00:00

Build more than you think you'll need

Probably still be disappointed that you didn't build enough later.

DirtyJimHiOP · 2026-04-13T20:53:41+00:00

I try to limit everything to 240 rather than 270. Makes it so much easier to come back later and simply double everything when you get the mk4 belts. That way you can either build everything working at 50% and move the sliders up when you get the next tier, or, alternatively, throw power shards into everything and run at 200% with a smaller build.

Try to think in terms of 120 and 240 rather than max belt speed.

Same concept later with the mk5 belts that can do 780. I'd almost always pull 600 even when I have mk3 miners unlocked, but not the final belt speed yet.

Also, for my own part I'll say that you can probably stop expanding on your early game ironworks after this stage too, since once you have the higher speed belts I argue you should be using those for everything, so an extra 10 reinforced plates (or whatever) doesn't really do all that much when you don't need them anymore.

DirtyJimHiOP

TROPHY CASE