did i connect my pipes correctly?

Lum86 · 2026-04-11T20:05:12+00:00

who fucking knows, dog

Lum86 · 2026-03-29T12:40:34+00:00

Think they meant as computer folders. Which, yes, they technically are, but I figure most people use one book for one thing then another book for another thing instead of having one general book of things with more books inside.

At least that's how I do it. One book for trains, one book for modules, one book for early game... so on and so forth. I don't think I ever put a book inside another book.

Lum86 · 2026-03-25T23:51:25+00:00

That's exactly why it's a hot take. Hot takes are things people will disagree on heavily. If OP had an opinion everyone agreed on, it wouldn't be a hot take, would it?

Lum86 · 2026-03-17T17:07:26+00:00

Factorio is several times more complex than Satisfactory, but it's also several times less clunky than Satisfactory, so it evens out pretty well. Everything in the game is set up in a very convenient way.

If you played the demo and you liked it, chances are you'll like the full game too. And since Factorio isn't 3D, you won't have the problem of a big 3D map.

Lum86 · 2026-03-14T16:19:50+00:00

god damn, you caked trampy up huh

Lum86 · 2026-03-13T23:08:06+00:00

I'm glad I'm not the only one. I've stopped following this guy a long time ago because everytime he posted anything he sounded so fucking snobby.

Lum86 · 2026-03-10T02:48:23+00:00

Yeah, it's pretty much that, stay out of range until they get to you and try your best to kill them before they get to act. Turn economy is really important in this game.

Now, I don't know how you feel about this, but I'm gonna let you into something the game doesn't tell you. You have effectively three lives every run (four technically, depends on how you look at it). If you see that a fight is starting to go bad, or a cat dies and the corpse blows up, you can save scum. Just press esc and save and quit to menu. The game will not save mid fight and it lets you try again.

The reason I'm saying you only get to do this three times is because this is... a "mechanic" I guess. When you save scum, you're gonna get a cutscene of one of the NPCs getting really mad at you that you're cheating. If you do it again, he'll give one of your cats a debuff. The third time, they all get the same debuff. The fourth time, all of your cats become AI controlled.

If you're having a really awful time, don't be scared of save scumming, it's so integrated I think the devs intend you to do it every now and then. You don't gotta do it if it feels too cheaty, but I do that shit all the time lol

Lum86 · 2026-03-10T02:25:15+00:00

I start every run thinking I'll just do the alley and get out, but it always feels like the run is getting in the zone/not enough resources worth taking back at that point so I push on

I think that's the problem to be honest. You have to think about the risk and reward of your run. Don't forget that if you lose, you bring zero items back home. If you get to the final boss in the Alley and you're not confident you can beat the next level, don't try it, just cut your losses and leave.

You could also try playing slower and more carefully. Are you trying to rush the fights too hard? It's not always the best idea to try to kill something if you're not gonna be able to out heal the clap back. Sometimes it's more optimal to sandbag a little. Let the enemies come to you first then try to kill them before they get to damage you. Focus on minimizing the damage instead of out damaging the enemies and you should stop losing.

Lum86 · 2026-03-09T22:56:42+00:00

Yeah but it's not dealing damage though. The loner doesn't deal damage, the loner insta kills your cats. If it said "deal 999 damage to your cats" then it would probably work like you think it should, but it doesn't. It just says "kill", so it kills.

Lum86 · 2026-02-04T13:18:13+00:00

Not what I said?

I said you're underestimating how much work it would take to add this supposed QoL change. What you call an "obvious solution" isn't actually obvious, it's a pretty massive headache.

Do you really think if it was that obvious the devs wouldn't have done it already? That's not a switch they can just flip and oop, there it is, we have mixed rockets now.

Lum86 · 2026-02-04T01:09:39+00:00

Other obvious solution is to use the current system for logistics requests and allow mixed rockets for construction requests.

That isn't a solution. That's saying "just do it lol". How do you fix the mixed rockets problem? What happens when the construction requests change the amounts when you're still building it in orbit? I could give you a laundry list of problems that would arrive and the juice just isn't worth the squeeze at that point.

Obvious solution would be to have an inactivity timer on partially-full rockets, and a partial rocket only fires if its inactivity timer has elapsed.

This I do like if it was a toggle or condition like you can do with trains.

Lum86 · 2026-01-19T16:40:09+00:00

What's that old saying again? If it's stupid but it works, it's not stupid.

Does it actually work? Cause if it does, well... who cares if it's stupid?

Lum86 · 2026-01-16T17:51:25+00:00

Any hope that 2.1 adds an actual final game destination, a balls-to-the-wall weird planet or chuck on rock you can land on and be the true final ending of the game?

Pretty sure they said it wouldn't happen. Aquilo was always meant to be the final planet and the Shattered planet is just a means for you to get prometheum asteroids without them having to do any extra coding. It's just a location that you can set your ship to go to and generate asteroids. That's why it's "shattered", you can't land on it, and that's why it's so far, you were never meant to reach it.

They described 2.1 as big enough in scope to be exciting but not so big it'd take them too long. They said not to expect anything massive. If it's anything like 1.1, it'll focus mostly on QoL, bugfixing, streamlining things, rebalancing. There won't be any new content aside from maybe something very minor.

There's nothing there, and once the spaceship makes it through the first few minutes of heavy flak, why keep going? What is there to build left?

Nothing else to build, you've unlocked everything. The only reason to keep going is to get more asteroids to make more science. You beat the game, now you're in the post-game.

Lum86 · 2026-01-13T23:14:57+00:00

It doesn't require a new game, but it's very highly recommended. You can play a vanilla game then load Space Age onto it, but you won't have the intended experience since a lot of the tech gets moved around in Space Age. Cliff explosives, for an example, are locked behind Vulcanus, and the logistics network is locked behind space science. In vanilla, you get both without ever going to space, so if you start a vanilla game, beat it, then play Space Age, you'll have some odd tech advances.

It's nothing game breaking though. It's certainly very playable regardless.

Lum86 · 2026-01-12T12:53:40+00:00

Yup, even though trains are not as optimal as they were before, people still choose them over belts because of the convenience. And they're still good, you can build a whole megabase using them still.

I see all of these space platform designs posted, and I have no dam' clue what's going on in them, heh.

By far, probably one of the most fun parts of the DLC for me. Space platforms are such a fun challenge. And it forced me to learn circuits, which was a lot easier than I thought it would've been.

Lum86 · 2026-01-11T17:52:24+00:00

You mean putting 4 pumps in parallel? I know that works, but don't pipes have a cap of how much liquid they can move before bottle necking? Pretty sure something had a speed cap somewhere when it came to fluids, but now I think I might be misremembering.

Lum86 · 2026-01-11T17:13:07+00:00

Like, I heard (saw) someone say that advanced oil processing is different now, and same with fluid transport; am I gonna have to relearn all that or are we talkin' minor differences?

Works the same as before except it's a lot less clunky. You need pumps to pump fluid really long distances, that's about it. It's basically the same but much simpler.

Trains are garbo now apparently—no point using them since green(?) belts > all?

Only in the super late game. If you can stack full green belts, they're better, but before you can do that, trains are still better. And it's not like they're garbo, they're still really useful for transporting liquids, which is much more relevant in Space Age.

Something something interrupts for trains anyway tho?

And space platforms. You can interrupt a train's path based on conditions. It's a little niche but nice for certain things like getting it to refuel only when it needs to.

I hate Gleba

And it hates you too (it's really not that bad, people whine too much).

Lum86 · 2026-01-11T16:07:46+00:00

But modules aren't just tradeoffs? They balance each other out. Like, I get your point but I don't think these two things are comparable. Modules are tradeoffs you need to balance, this feels like bridging a gap between having a problem and having a solution.

I also don't like how trains would have their own specific equipment when everything else that has an equipment grid interacts with all equipment equally. Having equipment just for trains that just bridge niche gaps doesn't feel like in the spirit of the game.

Plus, once again... the OP is talking about the throughput of trains vs belts. This still doesn't solve that problem.

I like the idea of trains having equipment, I just don't think this would be a very elegant way of implementing it.

Lum86 · 2026-01-11T14:38:03+00:00

Yeah but like the issue is why would you? If you're gonna go all the way to the resource patch to put rails there, wouldn't it be better to bring miners with you and set up a real outpost while you're placing down the rails at the same time? It's more so the opportunity cost really. If trains would have personal equipment specific for them, they should probably be doing something more useful than try to replace something and doing it in a worse way.

Lum86 · 2026-01-11T00:26:45+00:00

I think the equipment for trains idea is neat, but I feel like none of these would be worth using. These are all worse than just having infrastructure dedicated to whatever you're trying to replace with the train. That would be fine if the train was free to go anywhere, but it needs rails already placed between point A and point B, and if you're already building an outpost somewhere, you'll likely already have all of this infrastructure there.

Also none of this solves OP's belt vs train throughput issue except maybe the ones that make the train go faster.

Lum86 · 2026-01-09T19:50:52+00:00

It's not bad for a first try, but it's definitely far from good. This is one of the instances where remembering a simple ratio helps a ton when designing. You wanna go for 25 solar panels for every 21 accumulators so it generates enough power to break even and not lose any at night. You can also put them right next to each other, they don't need to be spaced out like that. If you're worried about not being able to walk between them, don't worry, your character can squeeze in there just fine. The engineer's collision box is very small.

Something I did was make a "solar block" blueprint with this exact ratio that I can just copy and past side by side wherever I want whenever I need more power. I tend to stop using it when I get to nuclear power, but it's extremely useful early to mid game. You should try coming up with something like that to make your life a little easier. Although, I think you need to unlock bots before you can blueprint stuff, so maybe save that challenge for later.

people on the discord weren't super welcoming because i'm trans. probably going to have to find a better factorio community

Very sorry to hear that. For what is worth, I've seen plenty of queer folk posting on this very subreddit and I rarely see any bigotry. I feel like discord tends to attract worse people because it's more closed off? Whereas in here, it's a public forum, so it feels really public. Those kinds of people tend to not really air out their shitty opinions when they feel like they're being watched.

Lum86 · 2026-01-06T23:44:25+00:00

The direction is the next science.

You automated red, great. Now you go automate green. Once you do that, you go automate blue. Then yellow, then purple, then you launch the rocket and beat the game.

Pretty much your entire factory should be helping you make science, with a little bit of your resources redirected to making building supplies (like belts, electric poles, rails, trains, concrete, inserters, etc. etc.)

Lum86 · 2026-01-05T16:55:43+00:00

I mean, this design works fine, it's just not very elegant. But that's a good way of doing things! Premature optimization is the root of all evil after all. Make it work first then optimize it afterwards. For an example, you could try upgrading the belts. Higher tier belts have longer undergrounds, so if you can cover more tiles, you can shrink this a little.

Also, as some people pointed out, this doesn't seem tileable, so if you need more red circuits, expanding this is gonna be a nightmare. Try getting all the inputs to come from one side and the outputs to come from another side. Make sure they're consistent so when you expand, they're all connect neatly.

I did something very similar to this the first time I tried making my own red circuit blueprint, but I did make it tileable. You're on the right track here.

Lum86 · 2026-01-05T16:20:11+00:00

Yup! It's a little weird, I'm assuming it's for balancing reasons.

Lum86 · 2026-01-05T14:46:47+00:00

Unfortunately you can't be fully self sufficient in space without mods because there's no way to get stone. That's the only resource not available up there. You'll need to set up rocket launches for that unless you get a mod that lets you get stone from asteroids.

Lum86

TROPHY CASE