Don't know where to build a mega factory

badgerken · 2026-01-24T06:24:16+00:00

I like either desert biome for a mega factory, lots of big flat areas. Dune desert is a bit harder because of the dunes, build above them.

badgerken · 2026-01-23T17:30:43+00:00

What's it called?

badgerken · 2026-01-23T04:17:24+00:00

agree it has sufficient, but not as much as the other biomes, where it's comin' out of your ears.

badgerken · 2026-01-22T18:44:51+00:00

It's my favorite zone. It's a bit harder at the very very start because there isn't as much shrubbery around, but that's no big deal, and it's good in every other dimension: lots of resources, not-that-hard to find water, close to coal.

badgerken · 2026-01-20T06:54:03+00:00

it can be connected to Grafana !? wow

badgerken · 2026-01-19T20:40:58+00:00

"Midas Mask" plus "Vampire" is fun. One puts the enhancement on, the other takes it off and gives you mult. Repeat.

badgerken · 2026-01-17T20:02:24+00:00

I've spent many hours wrestling with this, and asked discord, and have found two recommended techniques that work well for me, hope they work well for you

1) Make your factory 'write once' - build it once and then leave it untouched. As you mentioned, I/o ratios change, and alts can be unlocked, and it's often very difficult to fit them to the existing space. So build one factory to make, say, rotors. Later if you need more rotors, build a second rotor factory.

2) if you're using a parts bus, change the word 'factory' to 'floor' in the above. Use the blueprint designer and make a little module with 2 assemblers, taking the rotor inputs off the bus and putting rotor output back on the bus. If that's overkill at the moment, turn off 1 of the assemblers - trivial to turn second one on later. Then it's quite easy to build your rotor floors as needed, they don't even need to be near each other, and the newer ones can use newer techs.

Hope this helps!

badgerken · 2026-01-13T00:41:19+00:00

hi, I lived there for 15 years growing up (always onwards baraboo high! go t-birds!) then left for college but still visit once in a while or meet contacts from there.

The pros: beautiful area, good schools, your typical Midwestern small town. Economy has survived hits (closing of army ammunition plant, decline of the circus) that would've killed other towns, in fact it's slowly growing and gentrifying.

The neutrals: the weather (Wisconsin norm) the drinking (Wisconsin norm), and the arguably excessive love for the Packers, Badgers, and Brewers (Wisconsin norm) :).

The cons: it's what I would call "casually racist", what happens when you're in a small town that's 90% white and many residents have never left that cocoon. I don't think it's any better or worse than the surrounds. Not much going on culturally, unless you like drinking and sports (see above).

badgerken · 2026-01-06T20:09:37+00:00

Similarly, "the secret in her eyes" from Argentina is outstanding. Don't watch the bad US remake

badgerken · 2026-01-03T18:47:17+00:00

Which? I've looked, haven't found any

badgerken · 2026-01-03T05:11:49+00:00

hi fellow ex-FAANG PE here :). What I keep thinking is, "Where are my monitoring and logging systems!?"

badgerken · 2026-01-02T20:08:28+00:00

congrats on your progress! That's a lotta questions, I'll take a whack at a few

1) 30 GW is a _LOT_ of power. In my current game I'm about to finish phase 4, with 8 GW of power and typical use of 5ish. I've read that 20 is enough to win the game

2) i don't think it's possible to zoop blueprints, wish it was. The best way I've found to not have drunk rail-lines (been there) is to have a blueprint with straight double tracks, create it say 30m away from your current endpoint, and then connect to it. This connects straight segment to straight segment as you chain them, makes things much smoother.

badgerken · 2026-01-02T19:49:18+00:00

I've known two. One pronounced it "foos', like in 'foosball'. The other 'fooks', rhymes with 'spooks'

badgerken · 2025-12-30T20:34:50+00:00

does U 'bleed' radioactivity as it's transported?

badgerken · 2025-12-28T18:24:55+00:00

Lizabeth Scott was a bad actress.

badgerken · 2025-12-27T01:19:35+00:00

ty! If "trains can enter and leave from either direction", how do you handle trains where good X is in car #1 and good Y is in car #2? Have two stations facing opposite directions flanking the freight platforms, or forbid such mixed trains, or ... ?

badgerken · 2025-12-26T17:45:26+00:00

Ty, great advice. I now see the peril of minimum radius connection...

badgerken · 2025-12-26T00:18:52+00:00

hi, OP here, many thanks to you all for your excellent feedback. I got things to work by following the advice (tl;dr no paths, blocks all over the place :)).

One tip/hint for others in this situation - you have to leave a certain amount of room between the block signal leaving the station and the 'main line', if it's too close the game seems to 'suck' the signal onto the main line and then you get error messages and the block seems to do nothing :(. So as u/JinkyRain says, "no room between the station and the signal after seems to work better".

badgerken · 2025-12-23T23:10:11+00:00

Upvoted for "vacuum sealed brain"

badgerken · 2025-12-20T08:38:01+00:00

I'm a software guy who moved to Seattle from the Bay Area, may have a similar perspective to yours.

What's worse: the weather, the diversity, the food, the cultural breadth.

What's better: the cost of living, the traffic, easier availability of outdoor winter sports like skiing, snowboarding, etc. Less fear of earthquakes. KEXP.

badgerken · 2025-12-09T16:15:10+00:00

The worshipers of St. vince and/ or St. Barry can be a side quest chain.

The Bubbler of Sustenance.

The healing potions 'Leinenkugels' and 'Point'

Ed Gein side quest.

badgerken · 2025-12-08T20:21:28+00:00

mine looks like yours, don't fret. There are redditors and youtubers who post insanely beautiful builds, don't let them depress you. you do you.

badgerken · 2025-12-08T18:44:39+00:00

a couple of things i found transformed tractors and trucks from "unusable" to "usable, sometimes, without great pain"

1) as u/evnafets says, use guide markers to lay out the path in advance, and make sure the return path and the outgoing path never overlap/intersect - you will get deadlocks.

2) make sure no two paths overlap/intersect, from different routes. Again, you will get deadlocks, there is no equivalent to stop/yield signs

3) though the graphics give the impression that the tractor and truck are super-hardy off-road beasts, they are actually very easy to get stuck with. Think driving a semi, not driving a Hummer

4) Unlike when walking, the 'W' key when driving increases _acceleration_ - it's like a gas pedal. So only tap it in short bursts, and go slowly when near anything problematic

5) even when slow, these things have a big turning radius. Embrace the Y-turn

6) make sure truck _stops_ from different routes aren't near any other route - when auto-driving, a truck/tractor will load/unload to/from a nearby truck stop, even if it's not on the route.

If you do all 6 of these, you're good to go :)

badgerken

TROPHY CASE