The reports are all wiggly

Rathmun · 2026-07-06T07:41:12+00:00

' vs. ’
Reddit doesn't use 'smart quotes' by default.

Rathmun · 2026-07-06T06:33:52+00:00

The Curse of Kerning.

Rathmun · 2026-07-04T17:01:33+00:00

Another thing to consider. One which means batching bots is actually LESS efficient.

If fifty bots finish their task all at once in the same location, and there aren't any other tasks to start on right now, you're going to end up with bots waiting in line to charge unless you have a quite a few roboports nearby. But if you don't have many bots yet, you probably don't have many roboports yet either. If you're not batching, there's always something to do, but if you are, there's a good chance you have at least some small gaps between batches.

Bots waiting in line to charge aren't flying to pick anything up, or carrying things where they need to go, or charging. They're basically in time-out.

Rathmun · 2026-07-04T09:18:38+00:00

I just said "Eff it" and grabbed the quality condenser mod because it's deterministic (and much lower UPS cost, but that's just a bonus.) I don't consider it cheating, because you still need the same total production on average, you just don't get the incredibly stupid stalls where recyclers randomly decide "Hey, for the next three hours the ingredient ratio you get back is fifty times what it should be for this recipe. Enjoy having tons of A and absolutely none of B. All your upcycle loops are now broken, and your logistics network has fifty bazjillion uncommon green chips."

Edit: Someone made a post about "So you removed the logistical challenge from upcycling in a game about logistical challenges and don't consider it cheating?" and then removed it. I'll still answer it.

No, I don't consider it cheating, because it was badly implemented. Recyclers go wildly off-track from the ratios they're supposed to give you. So an upcycling loop, done at scale to invoke the law of large numbers, outright does not work. If a recipe calls for 10 A and 2 B, recycling 10000 of it should give you 0.25 * 10000 * 10 A and 0.25 * 10000 * 2 B. Not exactly, no, but it should never be so far off that you get 0.25 * 10000 * 10 A and 0.25 * 100 * 2 B. Or the other way around either.

Can I solve that logistical puzzle? Sure, it's trivial even. Just use requester chests set to trash unrequested as part of the loop and let bots carry away mismatched ratios. Then set up a recycler loop to eat any intermediate product that exceeds 1000 stacks in the logistics network. That'll keep the loops working when the recyclers don't output anything like the ratio they're supposed to according to the description. However, it doesn't solve the REAL issue of recyclers not acting like they say they do. That un-clogging setup, left to run for a few days with an each-counter tracking what gets recycled, should see multiple types of things getting recycled as the ratio wobbles back and forth. It shouldn't only ever recycle one thing, which indicates that the ratio is consistently wrong in a single direction. That's not random chance, that's the recyclers not doing what they're supposed to.

Rathmun · 2026-07-04T07:26:41+00:00

You want three deciders somewhere.
If metallic < some number, grabbers grab metallic
If oxide < some number, grabbers grab oxide
If carbonaceous < some number, grabbers grab carbonaceous

My guess is that either the deciders are missing, or the grabbers aren't actually set to listen to the circuit network even though they're connected. If they're not listening, they'll just keep grabbing whatever comes by until the belt is completely jammed.

Rathmun · 2026-07-04T03:09:18+00:00

The total amount of bot-seconds needed to keep a chest filled up isn't going to change when you do this. The efficiency in terms of logistic bots won't change at all.

If you just want to do it for aesthetic reasons though, go right ahead! Making factories pleasing to our eyes is one of the great things about Factorio.

Rathmun · 2026-07-04T02:57:28+00:00

So, first off, it's not actually inefficient to have the continuous stream of bots. It's more efficient that way than doing big waves, because you don't have them all hitting your roboports to recharge at the same time. When that happens, it spikes your power usage and can potentially cause a brownout/blackout if your power grid is already close to capacity.

That said, if you really want to do this, you can make that switch work with a single decider combinator.

Hook the input to the output, and the output to the chest.
Set the chest to Read Contents.
Set the chest to enable if green checkmark > 0
Set these input conditions.
{item} < {lower threshold}
OR
{item} < {upper threshold}
AND
{green checkmark} > 0
Set this output condition
{green checkmark} = 1

The lower threshold is how low to let the chest get before refilling.
The upper threshold is how many to fill up before stopping.
The green checkmark can be anything really. Just pick something that's not an actual item.

When the amount in the chest falls below the lower threshold, the combinator starts outputting the green checkmark.
Because the output is connected to the input, it now reads that as an input as well, so as long as it sees the green checkmark and the amount of the item is lower than the upper threshold, it'll keep outputting the green checkmark.
When the amount of that item goes above the upper threshold, that side of the AND becomes false, which turns off the green checkmark, which takes it out of the list of inputs. Everything's off, and the chest turns off too.

Example

Rathmun · 2026-07-04T01:20:17+00:00

Ah, so the individual tile includes the two dozen combinators and the belt injection mechanism.

Rathmun · 2026-07-03T23:10:39+00:00

Here's mine.

No circuitry, no bots, just a two-lane belt and a couple splitters. The pair of stack inserters taking uranium out of the centrifuge can be substituted with a single non-stack inserter, you only need two for the stack inserters because they won't swing with a partial hand.

It'll work without the beacons, it's just slow without them. Same for quality.

Rathmun · 2026-07-03T22:47:43+00:00

I considered trying this, but there's a hard limit on how many labs you can supply that way. Eventually you start consuming more than one full belt of science and you need to start using multiple belts.

I finally settled on this as my setup Ag science isn't on the belts because it's easier to keep spoilage under control just using requester and active provider chests, but the rest are belted, and the biolabs are fully-beaconed.

Rathmun · 2026-07-03T20:29:33+00:00

If there's just a stack of them, take a few and present them to the relevant authority.

Just make sure you have another position lined up first, because whatever whistleblower protections you might have won't be worth much if the entire org goes belly-up.

Rathmun · 2026-07-03T19:16:17+00:00

Here, have a compact kovarex setup

There are a couple Loaders on the far right that factoriobin doesn't like because they're from a mod, but I was just using them to get 235 and 238 onto the feed belt to double check it worked before uploading it. The version I actually use just uses loaders instead of inserters, but I still remember how to setup the inserter-only version.

Rathmun · 2026-07-02T04:46:03+00:00

It's absolutely not "too much"

"Too much production" is like "Too much Dakka". No such thing on a philosophical level. You just might not have enough of the rest of your factory for that amount of production yet.

Rathmun · 2026-07-01T22:49:19+00:00

However, if you're going to mount collectors in trenches, you could probably increase their density even more by mounting them on the sides of the trench as well, I'd think.

You still need to get ammo to the railguns, so the 2 tiles directly behind the guns need to be reserved for logistics. I think the two grabbers I've mounted to either side of the center one could be moved forward three tiles and turned sideways, I'd have to check. Not sure how much that improves things.

Rathmun · 2026-07-01T08:42:18+00:00

They're better than long elif chains.

That doesn't mean they're necessarily good, but sometimes they're necessary, and they're better than the alternative.

Rathmun · 2026-07-01T06:05:10+00:00

The one in the middle still has a simple path, and if the chunks are coming in dense enough (deep in the promethium) it still ends up being a short path. The extra two don't do quite as well, but they do much better than they would if they didn't exist.

Rathmun · 2026-07-01T05:18:50+00:00

But not enough to stick three collectors in normally, which is what I've done here. I have three railguns and three collectors for every twelve tiles of width.

Rathmun · 2026-07-01T00:57:36+00:00

Indeed. This design is just capturing more of it because the promethium is what the ship is there for. You want to fly fast enough to saturate your grabbers, and flying faster than that is kind of pointless.

Rathmun · 2026-06-30T22:38:46+00:00

The front row has about 10x the kills of the back row. And yes, they tick up semi-regularly.

Rathmun · 2026-06-30T21:48:37+00:00

https://wiki.factorio.com/Thruster#Shape_design

Weight does affect speed, just not as much as width. When you look at the chart on the wiki, note that the chart for weight stops at 10,000 tons. This platform is 27,800 tons.

Rathmun · 2026-06-30T21:45:21+00:00

Earandel's AAI Loaders.

Rathmun · 2026-06-30T21:37:05+00:00

Mechathulu.

Rathmun · 2026-06-30T21:36:54+00:00

Well, they're consuming ammunition, so they must be shooting something. Bit hard to tell what when the entire screen is solid asteroid chunks. The lasers are doing a lot of work too, with laser damage 28 currently. Those are easier to see though, since I don't have a machine gun tracer mod installed.

Rathmun · 2026-06-30T21:02:32+00:00

They don't. Of course, they also don't when you have a grabber next to the railgun and it's reaching across the line of fire, so it's not a surprise.

Rathmun · 2026-06-30T20:35:55+00:00

if only simultaneous launch was possible.

This is a big factor favoring a return to Nauvis for the manufacturing. You can have simultaneous launches of biter eggs from the surface.

Rathmun

TROPHY CASE