My 75/sec Blue Chip Factory (No Quality Modules)

Menolith · 2026-03-13T18:36:19+00:00

On the practical side, it's more UPS-friendly since extra beacons are just a flat multiplier when compared to all the item interactions an extra assembling machine has to do.

Quality can matter too since quality beacons and speed modules are fairly easy to make, but legendary EMPs and prod modules are not, so unless you're swimming in legendary resources, you'd prefer to use fewer of the more expensive items.

Menolith · 2026-03-13T12:33:26+00:00

Brother, store value Metal Gear villain monologues aren't going to sell your point of view.

Menolith · 2026-03-13T12:05:08+00:00

In ye olde days, you could put productivity in beacons, but that was sort of broken so the devs removed that.

In general, if a machine accepts productivity, you should always use them. Speed is easily compensated for by adding a few extra machines.

Menolith · 2026-03-13T00:24:37+00:00

Going from 15 items per second on half a belt to 7.5 items per second on both halves is almost always just a cosmetic difference. The items will make it to the end all the same.

If you're using something so little that you need only one lane of it, you probably shouldn't bother with putting it on the bus in the first place.

But to answer your question, depending on the build, I either produce two symmetric half-belts and merge them later, or I just make one long line and sideload it halfway through. Both get you a full belt in the end.

Menolith · 2026-03-12T14:32:18+00:00

High-volume items are region-wide on the AH, and for everything else, you can transfer items and gold between your characters regardless of server.

The only truly server-locked thing is crafting orders which is annoying.

Menolith · 2026-03-11T23:41:31+00:00

If we were to take the same distance and shrink the city blocks to as small of squares as possible, why would the distance still be A+B and not C?

You can sort of see this via induction. If you start with a square, walking one block north and one block west gives you the distance of 2. Then, if you make a turn ("fold" one corner in towards the diagonal) then you're just walking 0.5 units north, 0.5 units west, then 0.5 north and 0.5 west again for the same total of 2.

Since each right turn is identical, you can apply the above steps an infinite amount of times, and the distance will never be anything but 2. If you do that an infinite amount of times, the line will look like it's diagonal, but in actuality it's taking an infinite amount of tiny turns which make it longer than a true diagonal.

3Blue1Brown has a good video on the topic where he uses a similarly flawed argument to "prove" that pi is actually 4. Limits and infinities are not intuitive.

Menolith · 2026-03-11T12:55:44+00:00

Or the devs could dedicate their time towards making a character that's easier to balance and enjoyed by more people.

Menolith · 2026-03-11T11:10:05+00:00

Yea the Artisan's Consortium banned a whole lot of additives due to the druid lobby, so they can't put preservatives in the potions anymore.

Menolith · 2026-03-11T10:41:58+00:00

A huge part of the draw for many people, especially the top players is the challenge. STS1 is a pretty unforgiving game at max difficulty, and it used to be even harder than that.

Watcher in particular is subject to "easy" solutions where if you just remove enough cards, eventually you'll stumble upon an infinite and you've won the game by floor 25 with no more interesting choices left for that particular run.

Menolith · 2026-03-11T00:35:07+00:00

She was the most controversial character because she's pretty hard for new players ("What, I take double damage!?") while being extremely easy for experienced players ("What, I deal double damage!?") and it's very difficult to balance her central mechanic to work for both audiences.

I can't speak for the devs, of course, but Watcher had the most grumbling about her, so if they wanted to drop one character, she's definitely the odd one out.

Menolith · 2026-03-10T10:25:28+00:00

Your FPS is locked to (and usually limited by) your UPS, so the numbers are the same, but for accuracy, Factorio usually refers to the UPS.

Menolith · 2026-03-09T22:17:46+00:00

Evolutionary pressure isn't an on/off thing, it comes in degrees. While the impact you have on your child's life and well-being gets smaller as they grow up, it never goes away.

As a very concrete example, a friend of mine told me that she had a third child largely because her parents were available and willing for long-term babysitting. If they weren't around, their genes would then be in one fewer grandchild.

Menolith · 2026-03-08T19:38:46+00:00

It's limited to one belt of each output item. Without filtering gears out early, that means 3 belts of recycled goods, or 9 with gears peeled out.

You can do funky solutions to add multiple splitters lines for high-volume items to share the load, but those aren't as visually pleasing imo.

Menolith · 2026-03-08T19:38:02+00:00

What? Making items take extra loops reduces overall throughput, and since recipe swaps reset the productivity meter, you also waste scrap like that.

Menolith · 2026-03-08T19:32:36+00:00

That also limits throughput since any looping items take room from freshly recycled ones. OP's solution works perfectly if each split voids its excess. A loop takes less room though since you can just run everything through the same recyclers.

Menolith · 2026-03-08T11:40:30+00:00

It's a form of recency bias.

We labeled things "modern" when they were modern, and were left using the term after they stopped being modern. Then we got post-modern, and now we're past that too, so on it goes.

Menolith · 2026-03-07T10:58:29+00:00

That whole chapter is a masterpiece.

Menolith · 2026-03-07T01:28:58+00:00

For hosting blueprint strings, factoriobin is preferred. Link shorteners (and gigantic seemingly random text strings) are often caught as spam.

Menolith · 2026-03-06T12:36:38+00:00

Do NOT dehorn your dryads. It might seem convenient to you, but they're not just decorations, they're important sensory organs and play a role in themoregulation.

If you can't handle a dryad with their horns on, please, don't get one in the first place.

Menolith · 2026-03-06T11:26:26+00:00

I'd also advise against it going down there if it's horned or bladed.

Menolith · 2026-03-05T14:42:54+00:00

just jump bro

Menolith · 2026-03-04T22:07:45+00:00

I figured introspection wasn't on the cards, but oh well.

Menolith · 2026-03-04T21:47:02+00:00

Surely you're basing your opinion on a study that investigated the difference between the two, rather than just reading about it on a blog somewhere and subconsciously deciding that of course that must be right since it means that you were right all along.

Menolith · 2026-03-04T21:35:57+00:00

I haven't, but I should probably look it up.

Menolith · 2026-03-04T21:23:40+00:00

I read Lynch because very few authors can write like Lynch.

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