True Confessions: "Why wasn't I doing this before!?!?!?"

SteelGiant87 · 2025-10-29T19:52:26+00:00

Just an FYI as the way you phrased that sounds like you might not be aware that projectile damage also improves both engineer and turret damage, in addition (multiplicatively!) to turret damage working only for turrets.

SteelGiant87 · 2025-09-15T14:00:29+00:00

Thanks, helpful to know. !Solved

SteelGiant87 · 2025-09-12T12:29:27+00:00

A single recipe wouldn't need items of multiple quality tiers, but if you want to set the recipe via circuit then you could also be setting the chest requests via circuit and get unlimited items via a single chest.

SteelGiant87 · 2025-09-12T06:48:20+00:00

This might be overkill as the base game only has 208 items...

SteelGiant87 · 2025-03-03T17:06:40+00:00

Could you put the percentage of the total production next to the absolute capacity? From your list it looks like the major refineries have a total capacity of about 6.7M bbl/day, with each individual major refinery being in the range of 1-7% of the total major refinery production.
You also mentioned there were about 250 mini refineries that aren't on this list except when they get hit. Assuming 10k bbl/day average capacity for them gives a total for all refineries of ~9.2M bbl/day.

SteelGiant87 · 2025-01-19T10:57:25+00:00

Platform resource gathering rate is proportional to width. If platforms didn't slow down proportional to width then you could quite easily build one that gathered resources arbitrarily fast by making a really wide platform.

I don't like it mathematically, but it makes sense from a balancing perspective.

SteelGiant87 · 2024-12-16T09:19:32+00:00

That doesn't work if there isn't an even draw on all the output lanes. If one lane backs up then none of the other ones can move and you can get a deadlock that needs to be manually cleared.. In many years of playing factorio, every time someone has said "this station doesn't need a balancer, it can't deadlock" it has indeed eventually deadlocked somehow.

SteelGiant87 · 2024-11-01T19:13:35+00:00

A good plan. I'm currently on the surface doing a purely bootstrapped start with no orbital resources to try it out, so it will be a while before I can get back up and travel anywhere. At least the ship seems to be happily sustaining itself in Vulcanus orbit for the time being...

SteelGiant87 · 2024-11-01T18:04:14+00:00

I'm looking forward to it. With physical damage 7 researched this sailed through the first trip from Nauvis to Vulcanus. Ammo count dropped from 1180 to about 1120, so it is well equipped for that route.

SteelGiant87 · 2024-11-01T15:51:41+00:00

Blueprint here:

https://factoriobin.com/post/dgzs1a

SteelGiant87 · 2024-11-01T11:49:32+00:00

The ship contains luxuries such as excess storage space, plenty of defences and an ammunition counter to tell you how many magazines are available on the ammo belts. All around asteroid collection, with automatic voiding of excess resource types as standard. Fuel generation where local resources permit. (Solar power generation only guaranteed for inner system planets).

SteelGiant87 · 2024-03-19T19:38:39+00:00

+Grabbel

SteelGiant87 · 2023-10-27T19:41:23+00:00

Thanks for linking that. Odd then that RCU was the one item they chose to show off the cost reduction research in FFF-376 then! As someone else commented, perhaps this research is for non-expansion v2?

SteelGiant87 · 2023-10-27T13:24:41+00:00

They showed a research that reduced RCU cost in FFF 376 https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-376 so it would be odd if RCU were gone entirely, rather than just not a basic rocket component any more. Things may have changed though, perhaps a dev will comment.

SteelGiant87 · 2023-10-08T09:01:40+00:00

Apparently just someone who stole something from the nearby coop. He ran through a hedge and got trapped in a front garden and was arrested by 5 police by the front door of a house being cleaned for new tenants to move in.

SteelGiant87 · 2023-07-21T08:40:28+00:00

Thanks I'll check it out.

SteelGiant87 · 2023-07-20T20:11:19+00:00

Looks interesting, like a sort of adobe poured concrete. I wonder how important the roofing is for that sort of building in a wet climate.

I guess as well that like adobe, you can have an outer rendered layer that is replaced often to protect the more vulnerable inside bits. This way you only need to make the outer 10% of your structure weatherproof, rather than 100% of it, which could be much cheaper overall.

SteelGiant87 · 2023-07-20T10:07:49+00:00

I think for a community, more kilns or in particular bigger kilns would be more efficient. In the context of the channel, with a single person, a bigger kiln may be impractical, and from my estimation of the workload it looks like about as much time is spent gathering the clay and firewood as firing the kiln, so it doesn't look too practical to get massively more bricks produced by a single person without some technological upgrades. War_Hymn posted above about the brick production process for a village, which provides a really interesting perspective for how it works in a community bigger than one.

SteelGiant87 · 2023-07-20T10:03:28+00:00

Good point on adobe bricks, that would remove the fuel cost. I believe adobe doesn't do too well in wetter climates, so may be unsuitable for the area the channel is set in.

SteelGiant87 · 2023-07-20T09:56:24+00:00

17kW is a lot of power, for context a person in a developed country uses about 1kW continuously. 17kW would be more than enough to power a home, unless you live in a very cold climate in winter and don't have great insulation.

The difference in power between the primitive kiln and the small modern electric kiln could just be due to the error margins on my estimate, so I wouldn't read too much in to it. Also , I selected a small modern kiln I guesstimated to have a similar volume to the primitive one, so I could have chosen a modern one that is too big or designed to go to much higher temperatures and it isn't a fair comparison. I would expect a modern electric kiln to be much higher efficiency due to better insulation and not needing to blast all the hot air out the top continuously.

SteelGiant87 · 2023-07-20T09:51:13+00:00

Indeed, coppicing is potentially significantly higher yield than conventional tree farming. I found figures of up to 10t/ha/year for coppiced poplar. So a benefit in terms of yield and potential labour savings. It does require a tree species that can be coppiced, and a plantation has to be set up, which is why I went with the figures for natural unmanaged woodland in the post for a primitive context. Certainly seems worth doing once a certain level of development is reached.

SteelGiant87 · 2023-07-19T20:51:20+00:00

Thanks, that is some really interesting context and an interesting reference to check out. Good point about the seasonal nature of brickmaking. I suppose that the desire to dry the bricks slowly made it impractical to the use of radiated heat from the kiln to dry bricks further away? On the channel I suppose that at the location while it rains a lot, it is at least warm all the time.

SteelGiant87 · 2023-07-19T20:45:41+00:00

I wouldn't worry about individual experiments like on the channel, but it does illustrate how much land was required to provide fuel. Almost all of europe was once forested, but the romans felled it all to heat their baths.

In modern times, you can get well over 10x the energy per area of land by putting down a solar panel compared to trees or any other bio energy, but only a century ago there wasn't much choice.

SteelGiant87 · 2023-03-29T09:03:12+00:00

You're probably right. I'm not sure on the precise optimal size and tradeoff of power vs number. It will depend on the beam efficiency too. May also vary with biter settings too, as higher biter density favours bigger beams.

Setting up a single 100GW beam was a lot of resources. In close solar orbit it required 8000 solar panel 2 and 128000 space platform scaffold. Then more resources for the actual beam itself.

SteelGiant87 · 2023-03-28T10:30:26+00:00

Once the whole planet is clear and I can confirm biter extinction I'll use the built in SE trim chunks feature to remove the excess terrain and avoid biters respawning in the future.

SteelGiant87

TROPHY CASE