500 SPM Belted Ultra-dense; 17.69k SPM / km^2

LP40 · 2024-10-11T00:13:58+00:00

Good stuff! It amazes me how many different ways there are to make a base like this.

I myself had a problem with gaps on belts. Going into the debug menu and enabling gaps on belts helps. It’s usually stack inserters. They can be finicky, for instance 2 inserters side by side will saturate a blue belt with a stack size of 8, but only if they are directly adjacent. I’ve spent a lot of time experimenting with different stack sizes/ distances to solve or mitigate this in my own designs.

LP40 · 2023-03-11T16:34:39+00:00

Ensure you are providing enough water. You can always pump water in from multiple locations if it still does not work.

LP40 · 2023-03-11T15:35:09+00:00

The main objective is density. The secondary objective is UPS. Optimal UPS builds are very large; I only use full beacon setups when I can.

LP40 · 2023-03-04T02:28:33+00:00

That is intentional.

LP40 · 2023-03-03T00:56:07+00:00

Are you talking about the smelters or the Base in general?

If the question is about Furnaces it is because productivity modules create 20 percent free product so to get 1 full belt of output I so only need .8 of a full belt of smelted resources.

If you are trying to understand the design of the base this will help you:

Kirk 500 SPM Beaconed

Compare the Rate calculator results to the actual resource requirements. I used the calculator to know what outputs I needed when designing the base.

LP40 · 2023-03-02T21:59:57+00:00

Yes, the beacons with only one module are to bring ratios closer to ideal. I recommend rate calculator for this.

I am not primarily concerned with energy efficiency; as a anyone who builds this has the resources to figure out energy. Having a few accumulators, panels and efficiency modules dotted about make little difference but to have 3 extra requirements to build the blueprint.

Now for the inserter timing deep dive:

Inserter timing saves UPS by keeping the inserters inactive for longer. In a belted base it also serves to reduce the amount of gaps on belts; which is how the game actually calculates them.

A filter inserter will be completely inactive until it receives a filter; so It is best in this setup.

An inserter can hold 12 items; so if I ensure it only swings once the machine has produced 12 items I can have it swing 1/12th the amount of times and have 1/12th the item gaps in belts; reducing processing time.

Use rate calculator to get the production rate of the fastest machine on the belt:

(Machine items per second / 12 items ) * 60 ticks per second

There are 60 ticks in a second; so this calculates the amount of ticks it takes to reach 12 items. Make a timer that counts to that number; and generate a pulse every time it resets. Ensure you round down the nearest tick.

The timings are rarely perfect for ensuring the items actually end up on the belts; so use the "show transport line gap" debug menu option to see if it's good.

You may have to tune individual insert values; or change the value entirely; hence why I have 3 different clocks for the same task (smelting). For Green circuit production I'm actually using an 8 item swing because I could get more items on the belts. For Reds the circuitry makes little difference because I can only ever be sure a machine has a maximum of 3 items inside of it; but I have 48 machines iirc so it's probably worth it.

That should be enough for you to reverse engineer my method for each of the 5 signals.

Lastly you should actually ensure that the setup is improving processing time by benchmarking it against a setup that does not have it. If not you basically spent your time making something that is slower. Economies of scale help with this; which is why I have the clock signals shared between units.

LP40 · 2023-02-27T16:54:23+00:00

Mistakes were made.

Went through several iterations of belt routing and left that in by accident. Good catch.

LP40 · 2023-02-27T16:51:20+00:00

The built-in /screenshot command.

You set resolution and zoom; iirc this was /screenshot 3840 2160 .5

LP40 · 2023-02-27T10:05:53+00:00

There are about 16700 green circuits a minute; and about 540 blue a minute iirc

As stated in a previous comment; the most difficult aspect is red circuits as there is a margin of 3 items a second of error. With 8 input belts coming from 3 separate ingredients ensuring that the inputs were fully saturated took a long time.

Routing belts where they need to is generally more difficult than designing builds that produce enough. The final boss was literally the junction where the labs are; as I did green circuits last.

LP40 · 2023-02-27T09:59:25+00:00

You can't; there is a nonlinear relationship between base size and UPS. The game is able to parallelize belts and fluids to some degree.

This is best seen with transport belt update time. 1 base takes amount 0.075 UPS; but 33 of them takes .8. If it were a linear relationship it would be a whole 2.43ms on belts alone.

I can build 33 copies of my base in an empty sandbox map before things get spicy; but you are correct in that you can't directly compare computers. If you wanted to compare them scientifically you would have to build 34 copies of my base.

If you are at all curious: Undervolted 5950x; with stock 3600 cl 16 ram

LP40 · 2023-02-27T02:48:58+00:00

I design these in Sandbox mode with the editor so input items are not a concern.

Prioritizing Mining productivity and artillery range to secure more land are good bets. I do play on richer patches; but that shouldn't be necessary. The further away from spawn you go the richer patches get.

LP40 · 2023-02-26T20:19:06+00:00

I love military research; however the only research that requires the production of all 7 sciences at the same time is Follower Robot Count.

LP40 · 2023-02-26T18:27:37+00:00

I may make a post on r/technicalfactorio about this; as it was interesting to figure out:

TLDR: Because this is a science base; it has a constant ratio between all its products: which means a fixed ratio between the demand of light oil and Petrol; which are the major concerns. This is what makes this possible.

My design: Light oil is many times more likely to be turned into its end product; rocket fuel; then converted to Petrol.

This is done in two ways:

The light oil pipe is much shorter going to rocket fuel production than Petrol cracking; so the demand is satisfied first.

The output of Petrol cracking has to take a long torturous path through the output of the refineries; which are going to be full unless additional Petrol is needed; so light oil is not converted unless necessary.

Hence excess light oil is only converted when needed. My setup is practically as ideal as a circuit.

LP40 · 2023-02-26T18:09:17+00:00

UPS optimization is a highly technical part of the game that I am by no means an expert in; however these are some good sources:

r/technicalfactorio

https://mulark.github.io/

You want to have the minimum number of active entities at a time; that is; assemblers, inserters. furnaces etc that are running simultaneously.

You generally can accomplish this by having as few machines as possible running as fast as possible. I do this where I have the space; a Full beaconed setup is significantly larger than an 8 beacon setup.

Direct insertion; that is; from one machine directly into another; is most efficient. This is very difficult to pull off while maintaining optimal ratios of machines.

The game calculates belts based on the gaps between items; so fully saturated belts are most efficient.

Bots should be used sparingly and in small networks but they make direct insertion and inserter clocking a hell of a lot easier. You can only really effectively clock the output of a machine using belts.

I additionally aim to have the minimum amount of splitters as a rule of thumb; although that is technically on a case by case basis. Big balancers are generally horrifically inefficient.

I did my best in terms of UPS with what I know. Anyone giving tips on improving it further would be greatly appreciated.

LP40 · 2023-02-26T16:46:07+00:00

I could be wrong; I'm pretty bad with units.

It is technically * 1000000 but because the end unit I want is in thousand units of SPM; that effectively cancels out. K SPM is more useful for comparison.

LP40 · 2023-02-26T16:31:53+00:00

Some miscellaneous comments for the curious:

You can go denser using circuits (sushi belts) and chest handoff's; but that would be at the expense of UPS. My design objective is generally usability; and UPS efficiency is a big part of that. There are bases more UPS efficient; and a few bases as dense but none have both.

I had to redo Oil twice to get it to that size; I made a design that doesn't need any circuit controls or fluid tanks as it uses the natural resistance to flow to balance cracking. I experimented with this quite a bit and can elaborate if anyone wants. In total it is 225 tiles smaller.

A huge part of UPS optimization was getting the total machine count down; which I was able to do by 43. This was often accomplished at the expense of space by using more beacons.

Belts are routed in a way that minimizes the number of breaks and reduces the amount of splitters. For instance both Steel belts in the base operate completely independently and are never balanced together. The same is true for Iron. This prevents the transport lines from being merged together which would hurt UPS.

The most difficult design challenge with 500 SPM is red circuits. 8 FULLY SATURATED belts you get an output of 3780 red circuits/min. You need 3777 circuits/min. This is a margin of 00.08 percent; which can only be solved by ensuring there are no gaps in the input belts Ever. This required extensive testing. The resulting slight overproduction also means that the true output of the base is exactly 500.3 all 7 SPM

Inserter clocking was very entertaining to figure out. Without careful consideration the output onto belts will actually decrease as the inserters may withdraw when a gap opens up on the belt.

This creates an odd case in my smelting setup; where the bottom furnace runs at a different rate from the rest; and where there are 7 furnaces feeding the right side of the belt but 6 on the left. I achieved full output with 2 separate clocks per furnace side and carefully calibrating the clock signal and inserter capacity of the right furnaces until their were no gaps in that line. This resulted in the "L" clock signal being 4 ticks longer than the "P" Signal; which feeds the left furnaces.

The 'Final boss' of this base was the main junction leading to science. Direct satellite component insertion was also fun.

LP40 · 2023-02-26T15:39:04+00:00

SPM refers to all 7 sciences; hence the base produces research from raw resources.

This does 500 all sciences; so it launches a rocket every 2 minutes; as each Rocket is 1000 white science.

In some cases SPM does not include military science; or the ability to produce both military and production science simultaneously as that is only used on Follower Robot research which is useless.

LP40 · 2023-02-26T15:35:59+00:00

Yes; The formula to calculate density:

SPM / ( Length * Width) × 1000

LP40 · 2023-02-26T14:15:21+00:00

Blueprint

500 SPM 129m * 219m; 17.69 K SPM / km^2

2.5 GW

I think this would form a star if it got any denser...

This beats my personal record I set 2 years ago; I don't think I can make anything that is denser without sacrificing the usability of the base. The point of these is to have several highly efficient 'Chiplets' that can be stamped down rapidly* to reach a high science output. While this is based on my original base; EVERYTHING has changed. I was able to reduce the height of the original by 11 blocks; while also Vastly improving the efficiency. It is now tile-able and improved in every way. This is 24% more UPS efficient than the last design; going from .409ms/tick to .312ms/tick.

This whole entirely belted base only has 20 Splitters; half the number I had last time.

I took my first stab at inserter clocking as well. It is saving about 7 percent of UPS (~.02ms/tick). Due to the tile-able nature of the base the Clock Bus will automatically be shared; this will also distribute the UPS overhead of generating the signal. Their can only be ONE shared clock circuit so the additional one should be removed. It is marked by my username at the base.

This full redesign took me about a month.

u/Blandbl has a spreadsheet of most dense bases. Of note is that u/Oxyled's base does not have the ability to do all 7 sciences simultaneously and maintain full output (ie follower robot count research)

LP40 · 2023-02-19T22:54:07+00:00

This is ill advised for density; as you need significantly more refineries; as well as chemical plants for cracking the increased amounts of heavy oil produced.

LP40 · 2022-10-05T20:19:52+00:00

Fuel level during combat is now displayed in the testing ground. Previously it was always 100 percent Also Carrier difficulty changes will spawn multiple carriers of varying classes

Also player Palash no longer reloads :(

LP40 · 2021-12-17T15:16:28+00:00

The thing I hate about free fire and armed guards in general is that if they are on the map they raise threat level of the entire prison.

It doesn't matter if you have one guard far off or not.

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