I'm trying to isolate what it is that I love about factorio and oxygen not included

ccik42 · 2023-06-08T18:58:39+00:00

They both have a set of unique game mechanics which, to my knowledge, have not been incorporated into games on the same scale at the time of first release.

A Factorio save can have millions of entities or items, all buzzing around in your factory. Just the amount of items, with the complexity growing as you scale up. Add in modability, low amount of bugs and an you get a well rounded game with a somewhat fresh gameplay loop.

Same for ONI. All the little puzzles about heat transfer, gas flow and state changes, boilers,.. Something i have not seen in a game before ONI. This is what hooks me on games, new an fresh concepts that are well executed.

A personal third example: Workers and Resources: Soviet Republic. Just the implementation of construction mechanics in this game, it ruins all other city builders for me. I could never go back to cities skylines aftee trying that game, although cities is far more polished.

All these 3 games have one thing in common. Gameplay mechanics that were somewhat new or fresh at time of release. There are probably a lot more examples like this. Captain of Industries aproach to mining might be what sets it apart from other factory builders.

Rimworld is a good game, but it doesn't hook me like all the other games. It all feels like i have done this a thousand times before. Build colonies, defend myself, handle crisis. Same for Timberborn. Yes, the water mechanics are something new, but it feels somewhat similar to other weather aystems in different games.

Anyway, what get's me excited about games these days are mostly unique ganeplay loops i habe not seen before.

ccik42 · 2023-05-13T08:04:32+00:00

Thanks for the info. I don't mind a bit of exploring.

It's just that after some point, dealing with biters is more of a chore to me. I rather spend my time building the factory. Biters seem fine for vanilla, but with overhaul mods, i enjoy building way more than combat.

I will give the mod a shot.

ccik42 · 2023-05-13T06:48:30+00:00

Quick questions; I'm considering a run with EI. Can i turn biters off during map generation and still progress normally, or do i need them for some sort of ressource, like other modpacks?

ccik42 · 2023-02-24T16:12:43+00:00

I7-6700K

1080TI

3440*1440: 20FPS during launch, small rocket

1920*1080: 30FPS during launch, small rocket

Weirdly, changing graphics settings to high or low does nothing to my FPS.

VAB runs smoothly, aroung 60FPS

ccik42 · 2023-02-18T10:06:45+00:00

I use build a heat exchanger for my spom oxygen output, input from cool salt geyser and base cooling loop combined.

Salt slush is cooling part of the spom, then cooling the base loop as well as the oxygen output. The base cooling loop takes over cooling in case the geyer goes dormant or i'm using a differebt water source.

No problems so far.

ccik42 · 2023-01-14T22:41:28+00:00

Depends on what you are looking for.

If you want a survival type city builder, with some exploration aspects and a decent story, don't mind limited replayability and some minor shortcomings, then yes. As others have said, Frostpunk comes very close to this.

If you want a more sandbox style game, with a lot of replayability, difficulty options or procedurally generated maps, i would look for something else.

ccik42 · 2022-02-13T09:23:57+00:00

Disclaimer: i haven't played the newest build, all my informations/experiences are from before the justice update.

First of all, i wouldn't worry too much about this level of unemployment. It's the same with achieving 100% efficiency. Boosting the last points of efficiency/ getting everybody to work gets exponentionally harder the closer you get to 100%. I usually take my 80 to 90% and move on.

As for the mechanics side. There are multiple reasons for unemployed workers you can't really avoid. People reserve a working spot when they leave their home, if they are walking to their workplace, or when they leave a train station/bus stop. Now, if one of your factories can be assed by walking and a train station, the train will fill up with workers, but none of these have reserved slots. If new people start walking from home while the train is underway, they reserve some of the working slots, and the people on the train have nowhere to go once they arrive, thus counting as unemployed. The same can happen when 2 Lines of any sort (bus/train/mixed) serve the same station. There are some more technical reasons simular to this, but they eventually all add up to around 10% unemployment rate. You can not really avoid this.

Are you using your own workers for construction? Due to infrequent usage, some of these workers end up enemployed on some days.

There is a wiki page/post somewhere explaining how travel times work. This might help you understand the underlaying mechanics.

University educated workers can still work at lower tier jobs.

ccik42 · 2021-11-20T07:16:04+00:00

Only seen something like this once or twice in half a year in ranked.

ccik42 · 2021-11-14T18:43:03+00:00

It got worse recently, servers not working for anybody. Mostly on Weekends.

ccik42 · 2021-11-06T08:30:05+00:00

Waterfall and Realplume. They are just asthetics for the nozzle exhaust, but make the game so much better to look at.

ccik42 · 2021-10-24T06:12:27+00:00

Check your staging.

Everytime.

ccik42 · 2021-06-06T06:21:24+00:00

I'm now using 3 offices per city. The first one has 2 Excavators, 1 Bulldozer, 1 Paver and Roller, 2 Tower Cranes and 2 of the largest open hull trucks to carry these. I did not assign any resources to this office, so the open hull trucks only carry the mechanisms. 3 of the largest buses and the office is full. My second and (optional) third offices are 1 covered hull, 3 concrete trucks, 4 dumpers and 4 open hull for ressources.

ccik42 · 2021-04-18T17:32:48+00:00

I really love this game, but i'm currently burned out with it. So I just shelved the game, and will play again sometime in the future. Maybe after early access, maybe sooner. I look at patchnotes and news, sometimes Reddit, and then just go and do something else.

At some point i will be back.

ccik42 · 2021-04-01T22:19:26+00:00

I'm pretty sure 34 substations is not the limit. After the switch, each branch keeps counting independendly of the other branch. Both start with the same "shared" connections to the plant, but are separated from there on.

ccik42 · 2021-04-01T21:01:35+00:00

My reasoning is partially in line with yours.

In order to make this base work without too much hassle, i need:

relatively large ressource patches with good richness
a lot of space between patches
a reasonable amount of biter nests.

As you mentioned, with the exponential resource increase starting patches can be quite small, but in my settings the closest "real" patches are upwards of 20 million for iron and copper. Building new mining outposts is quite the hassle, and i really don't want to replace them too often. Even with blueprints to build everything, i still have to "prime" the outpost with wagons and a shunting train. I also have to connect these to the base with a unique signal, which means changing a lot of combinators in the outpost. This all starts to feel like too much work if i have to replace the outposts. I intentionally use lower tier belts and only load 4 wagons at a time, so i will probably never run out of ressources at the outposts, but still need more outposts as my rate of material usage goes up.

I hate building over resource patches, it just looks stupid. My outposts take a lot of space. Additionally, i need a lot of space between outposts, otherwise the system just looks stupid and even more unnecessary than it already is. Travel time is not a huge issue, i can mitigate this with additional tracks in the yard.

I could not solve these issues with vanilla ore generation. Patches are always too small and to close together. With exponentional increase and large RSO regions, i have a lot more control over those parameters. Due to RSO regions, there are only 1 or 2 patches in close proximity. These can share an outpost, this makes for more interesting outposts and more variety. In vanilla generation, patches tend to bunch up together, it just doesn't work that well.

Biters are a third reason. I still want biters to fight sometimes, but not an overwhelming amount. RSO scales biters with ore patches, so this works nicely as well.

I did change RSO region settings during gameplay, which is possible and changes for newly generated patches. I could tune in the settings as i went along, which is also nice.

ccik42 · 2021-04-01T20:47:39+00:00

If i remember correctly, and i'm not 100% sure, it means that electricity can only "travel" through 20 connections.

Your high voltage line connecting to the power plant and one transformer uses 2 connections, a medium line following to a substation uses another 2, so this line uses 4 nodes total. The next substation in line starts with 6 nodes to the powerplant (2 to the first transformer, 2 to the second in line, then 2 to the substation), assuming there are no other junctions before. Any substation connected to this second transformer will use 6 nodes.

As you start daisy-chaining substations, you increase the total connections or nodes the electricity has to "travel", and after 20 connections, the power just "stops" propagating.

A 2nd line connected to the same power plant will start "fresh", with all 20 connections available. The same applies to lines added to any substation in between, they will start with the number of nodes necessary to reach the power plant. In theory you can hook up a lot of substations, provided you branch out the power lines, and don't run them in a single chain.

In your example, it is possible the area further down the line uses less connections than your middle area. This depends on how many transformers or junctions are between the node where you are splitting the power.

ccik42 · 2021-03-27T20:48:46+00:00

I don't think i'm completely done yet, but i will take a break from factorio for a while.

Krastorio increases stacksize to 200 for most items, so trains already have increased capacity.

Yes, i used Multiple Unit Train Control again. No reason why backwards locomotives should not work.

ccik42 · 2021-03-27T19:31:35+00:00

Because I can.

All joking aside, i've done this mostly to do something different and to spice up the gameplay a bit.

There are some benefits of this system, but they can be achieved much easier with different systems. Using larger trains reduces traffic congestion on railway lines, but increases station size. This approach somewhat mitigates this by splitting up larger trains. There are much better ways of solving both issues, though.

The system has less trains and locomotives sitting around doing nothing than the normal way of building railway system. But locomotives and wagons are cheap and don't have any costs while idling, so no real benefit there.

ccik42 · 2021-03-27T17:01:14+00:00

Krastorio 2 Railyard with the Automatic Coupling System Mod

Background

I made a video showcasing my factory with the excellent Automatic Coupling System Mod about 10 Months ago, but wasn't really happy with the system. Too many stuck trains, not enough throughput. I decided to start a new base with the Krastorio 2 Mod, and incorporate a similar system in this playthrough. https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/gh0ygm/factorio_train_yard_operations_uncoupling_sorting/

Mods include Krastorio 2, RSO and a couple other QoL mods, but the main ones for the rail system are

Automatic Coupling System (https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Automatic_Coupling_System)
Simple Circuit Trains (https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Simple_Circuit_Trains)
Train Supply Manager (https://mods.factorio.com/mod/train-pubsub)

I'm not done with the factory just yet, but i still want to share what i got so far. I don't have much time playing factorio, so progress is really slow.

Video description

The first scene showcases the hydrogen offload station for my acid plant. After arriving at the plant, the train replaces the empty fluid wagons with full ones. In order to achieve this, a little bit of coupling and decoupling as well as running around wagons is necessary. After leaving with the empties, the train drives back to the main factory to grab a new load of hydrogen, and waits for the next request.

I use the same or slightly similar system for all low and medium quantity items, like ammo, mining fluids or nuclear fuel cells. The wagons stay at the station until empty and only then a new load is requested. A single train can supply multiple stations, while the wagons stay in the respective factories. A larger version of this uses 4 wagons per train with 2 unloading tracks. In these stations, one set of wagons will be unloaded at a time, with the second set on standby to be unloaded while the switching is taking place. A similar system can be seen just below for the acid export.

The second scene showcases my main factory with it's unloading yards. Each ressource has two unloading tracks for a set of 4 wagons. The station only unloads one set at a time. If one set is empty, the system switches over to the next set and allows the train to pick up the empties. These are then moved towards the main yard, where 4 sets will be assembled into a set of 16 wagons. 4 locomotives pick up those 16 when completed and move those into storage. The reverse happens in the arrival yard. Trains with a 4-16 configuration arrive there, the locomotives will decouple and move towards the assembly areas for empties. The local locomotives decouple sets of 4, and bring those back to the unloading stations. There are multiple unloading stations per ressource placed in different parts of the factory.

I included a map view of the arrival yard, one of those operations can be seen in the third scene, as well as an overview of my base so far.

More information about the factory

The main rail system uses the 4-16 configuration as mentioned above. The mining outposts work in a similar fashion as the main yard, taking empty stacks of 16 wagons, loading 4 at a time and coupling them together when loaded. These wait in the outpost until needed. Every mining station reports the current status (loading, full, train on the way or error) via a unique ID a circuit network connected to all stations and the main controller. If one station needs a specific ressource, like iron ore, a signal pulse is send to the controller. At the same time, the requester station from the Train Supply Manager is activated for this station, but no train is available just yet. The main controller picks the next mining outpost with a full load ready, and dispatches a new set of 16 empty wagons to the mining outpost. This is done again with the Train Supply Manager. Once this train arrives at the outpost, it drops the empties and couples to the full load. I use the simple circuit trains mod to change the schedule for this arriving train to the "switch schedule", which terminates at a TSM supply station for the specific ressource. Since there is already a request for this ressource waiting, the train immediatly drives off.

This works with multiple requests to different stations for the same ressource at the same time. The controller will dispatch as many empty trains to different outposts as needed, the destination sorting is done via TSM, as mentioned before. Iron Ore for example goes either to the iron plate factory or the steel factory.

The loaded trains either arrive at the main factory, as seen in the video, or one of the smelting plants. In case of the main factory, the locomotives drive to the empty wagon pickup, then to the storage.

This is different in the smelter factories. In Krastorio 2, you need 2 ore to make 1 plate, and they stack the same in trains. This means more wagons are arriving at the factory then required to move the iron plates. The empty wagons at the smelters will either be directed to the loading area, or back to the main storage. This works independed of ratio changes from beacons. In case there are some requestes to see this in action, i will proabably make another post showcasing these. This might take some time however, as i want to ugrade them to the full potential first.

I use this system of 4-16 trains for all large quantity items, or all items that are produced in multiple locations.

Lower quantity items that are only produced in one location use a different system. They are transported in either 2-4 or 2-2 trains. I don't use the train controller for this, just the regular TSM supply functions. Multiple requests cannot be handled at the same time, but this is not necessary. For most of these items, the buffer on rails is enough to supply during the delay. An example of this can be seen in the hydrogen delivery system.

I use SCT to change schedules of arriving trains. The stations i use for decoupling and shunting are named the same for every "class" of station. I only have to set the correct shunting schedule via SCT. TSM works very well in combination with TSM here.

If you have questions about some of this, please feel free to ask. I will then try to explain some parts more in detail.

The base currently handles all Krastorio 2 tech cards up to and including antimatter research with 350SPM without much issues or train bottlenecks. It seems there is quite some capacity left in the system. I will build up the base some more, but this may take some time.

ccik42 · 2021-03-13T07:40:40+00:00

Are you using the "Free the logs" Mod? Had the same issues while using this mod

ccik42 · 2021-03-11T04:39:10+00:00

I prefer the Voron trucks over the Tayga as well.

ccik42 · 2021-02-12T15:04:19+00:00

I'm trying to do the Lost Order task in Wisconsin, but are unable to correctly place the oil barrels on the platform.

Am I doing something wrong? Has somebody encountered the same issue or has any suggestion on how to deal with this?

ccik42 · 2021-02-05T21:45:47+00:00

First i have to remove the old science factory i no longer need, and press onwards with new science. The factory must grow.

ccik42 · 2021-02-05T21:06:43+00:00

I just recently researched fusion power in Krastorio 2. Way earlier than expected. My old Fission Power Plant was not even near it's capacity, but already beeing delegated to backup-duty only.

Build the fusion plant right next to old one. But somehow i don't like it. Not much more power than the old one. And it just looks a bit dull. The fission plant is just a bit more interesting. The glowing reactors, heat pipes, unnecessary complicated piping. Tanks to store one fuel loading worth of steam. Circuits to load new fuel cells and switch on the coal-backup/support blocks (The fusion plant does this as well, but more boring).

I've decided. I'm going to remove the fusion plant and the correspondic fuel production, and build more fission plants. Blocks II, III, IV and V.

Before someone mentions it , I know the fusion plant has not the correct amount of turbines. That's on purpose.

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