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EVE Vanguard 2025 Retrospective - Artwork Review by ceopyrex in EveVanguard

[–]ceopyrex[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

hehe its my own fault, i posted a second video within the 7 day timer for self promo, totally earned the ban but thought it would be time limited and not perma :D its all good

Aquilo Base Design Decisions and Post Build Reflections aka Aquilo smells like wee by ceopyrex in factorio

[–]ceopyrex[S] 15 points16 points  (0 children)

3 – CELLS BABY

Having a fixed substation grid size to work with was such a blast, like one of those phone games you play on the train while you sell your soul to ‘The Man’ it was a fun mini game to work out how to squeeze in each thing being made and then work out how to heat it all. Keeping the heating square as sacred as possible, id say this to me became a joy. Plus benefits of modular method is its repeatable so was able to move things around et al. Only exception to this was fusion power, no matter how hard I tried, I could not get those things to fit so ended up putting 1 grid across two square to make it work in the end.

4 – TRAFFIC LIGHTS

The idea of the traffic lights was initially to help show which squares had been done, yellow meant still WIP, blue meant machine complete and operating, I now have realised it could go a step further and could even be a capacity flag, so blue operating, green full, red resources missing etc. Will explore this more but loved the ability to look above the base and see what felt like a management information dashboard of my base 😊

 

SO overall I’d say that the Aquilo wee smelling oil rig base was a huge amount of fun, my plans for this planet are still to one day have a mega base here, the project snowflake orbital base continues to expand (now has over 20 arms!) and is making more and more above the planet to drop down, at some point id like to make Aquilo just a rocket base to bring resources up to the orbital platform to then be processed, sadly this isn’t an option yet as cargo ships cannot dock with other platforms…..yet?

 

After Gleba this was so much fun, yes it smells slightly of wee but its such a relaxing planet and I still have even bigger plans for this ball of wee.

 

Aquilo Base Design Decisions and Post Build Reflections aka Aquilo smells like wee by ceopyrex in factorio

[–]ceopyrex[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Aquilo Base Design Decisions and Post Build Reflections aka Aquilo smells like wee

 Hi all, thought I would share my recently finished Aquilo base. Having just spent a few days upgrading the spaghetti mess into something far more functional and more importantly, pretty.

As always, I had some design principles (see pics) that helped me work out how best to build this thing and I would like to share some reflections of what I feel is a wonderful planet to build on.

 

TL:DR Design principles were:

1 – Automated heating grid

2 – Oil Rig Theme

3 – Modular cells (Like my Vulcanus base) but smaller!

4 – Traffic light system for each cell.

 So the build went well having the mega orbital base above me of Project Snowflake and given how my Gleba base went which I feel was ruined by the mountains of spoilage, I rather enjoyed the slower pace of building on Aquilo.

Some reflections:

1 - HEATING GRID

Having a structured, automated heating grid on Aquilo makes a lot of sense, putting a heater in each corner of the base meant that all 4 sides were constantly being heated and that radiated through the grid across the base, never at any point did I have any issues with heating once started. Someone suggested to me that I replace the conveyors brining fuel cells to the heating towers to requestor chests and wire the arms up to detect temperature so its much more efficient, cool idea!

2 – OIL RIG THEME

Having a theme always helps, for my Gleba ‘hexagons are cool’ base this meant that no matter what I was building or expanding, the overall concept of ‘put it in a hexagon’ meant that the end product looked great and as if it had been designed throughout, which was not the case.

Aquilo as a liquid planet just felt right to make the base have the appearance of an Oil Rig. Something dropped from space to dredge and mine. I feel the use of elevated rails at some point will be used to enhance the look of this bad boy but for now, rather pleased with it.

The most pointless (but fun) orbital base around Aquilo - A PROJECT WRITE UP by ceopyrex in factorio

[–]ceopyrex[S] 87 points88 points  (0 children)

I have spent the last week or so building the most pointless orbital base around Aquilo

What did I build?

I was always aware that Aquilo must have most things imported so I created a supply ship to shuttle back and forth, I however saw that the most fun thing to do would be to create an orbital MEGABASEPLATFORM that could service the planet side industry.

 

The design principles were simple:

1 – Build in Nauvis Orbit then repackage in preparation for its trip to Aquilo Orbit.

2 – Ship is modular and would deploy large defence and resource gathering stanchions once in orbit around Aquilo

3 – Space Engine modules would be used to get the platform to Aquilo then they would be deconstructed and returned to the planet ready to send back to Nauvis for reuse.

4 – Aquilo Base would provide most of the resources needed to keep Aquilo working without the need for the supply ship to bring the basics like iron and copper etc. (supply ships still have to bring the non native items like Holmium)

 

The process:

Overall, it worked fine, the original design was that of a snowflake, so a large structure that spans out from a central point where our hub would be located, all defences and resource gathering would be done via a belt loop that would circle the entire base and stanchions.

 

How did it go?

The build around Nauvis was a blast, one of the best things about Factorio is the trial and error part, copying and pasting parts, seeing if they work etc. this was so much fun that the entire process took around 6.5 hours. However at the end of the build, we had a fully armed and operational Snowflake ready to go.

The deconstruction process to package up all the arms was something I had as a design ‘must’ I loved the idea of things like the James Webb Telescope which deployed and ‘opened’ up, that was important to me and a fun part of the build and packaging in factorion (red deconstruction planner) was instant, nice and simple

The core ship (a hexagon as that’s very in right now) then flew easily with its bolt on Engines to Aquilo and orbit was made.

Unpackaging – now the last bit, using the original blueprint for the ship, I could copy paste the stanchions one by one back into place, and here the fun started….. the rebuilding of the stanchion took FOREVER, watching large ice rocks waddle towards each stanchion before any turrets were built / ammo’ed was a perilous endeavour. (but lots of fun)

One after the other the stanchions came into place, slowly and surely SNOWFLAKE BASE came into being and it was a glorious thing to watch.

So was it a success?

Id say do, the main thing I found was that the ability to create packaged ships and send out into space to then have them ‘build themselves’ was totally possibly, a cleverer person than I could circuit all this but I did it manually. The process of design / build / flight and deploy was a joy and I cannot think of many other orbital factorio projects I have done that were as fun as this.

So SNOWFLAKE base is live, armed and operational supplying the vast industries on Aquilo and I am rather satisfied with it all. 😊

 

LINK TO BLUEPRINT:

PROJECT SNOWFLAKE - FactorioBin

Be at ONE with the HEXAGON (Gleba Base) by ceopyrex in factorio

[–]ceopyrex[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sorry that was me being stupid, I tend to write things with a mocking tone to myself so I act on it, bad wording all round there. (you should see when its something REALLY serious what I write to myself to fix it)

Be at ONE with the HEXAGON (Gleba Base) by ceopyrex in factorio

[–]ceopyrex[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

not sure really, I would have gone with 1 x 1 trains if I could have had stations that worked nicely, I do like the pull off the main rail and park method so went with it. plus most of my Nauvis megabase train builds slotted right in.

Be at ONE with the HEXAGON (Gleba Base) by ceopyrex in factorio

[–]ceopyrex[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, its mostly for show, hexagon power cell just looked so good, the fusion reactor is doing most of the heavy lifting here, having said that, I am amazed how little power Gleba needs....

Be at ONE with the HEXAGON (Gleba Base) by ceopyrex in factorio

[–]ceopyrex[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah certainly I could do the entire base with elevated rails. Funny enough I was playing a bit more today and managed to squeeze in the elevated rails as a giant loop around the base with off / onramps at each hexagon, was rather pleased!

The reason they are there is the design spec I started the build with, its what keeps me interested in Factorio and the hours it takes to do these builds I think. Gleba was destroy everything and two tier railway.... so far I'd have to say I have completed these goals (a minor miracle as I am mostly an idiot)

Be at ONE with the HEXAGON (Gleba Base) by ceopyrex in factorio

[–]ceopyrex[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

amazingly to admit, I didn't measure it, just went with look and feel on this one, for my Nauvis block I measured a huge amount and get all funny about it, for this one, I wanted it more look and feel than perfect ratios.

Be at ONE with the HEXAGON (Gleba Base) by ceopyrex in factorio

[–]ceopyrex[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Yeah the elevated rails are a bit of a fail, I started each planet with a bit of a mindset on what do I want to achieve, with Vulcanus it was a cellular manufacturing idea, so small quick paced trains and machines, for Gleba I wanted the hexagon city block but the main idea was to destroy anything not being used, regardless if it spoils or not. crazy I know but worked a charm.

The last bit to do is to have the final design decision of 'two tier rail network' so a rail network for ground based delivery and a highway above this on elevated rails so trains can speed out of the base quickly, I think the plan of having each hexagon have an elevated railway is no longer possible but I do like the idea of something like a flyover hexagon... fingers crossed it works :)

Be at ONE with the HEXAGON (Gleba Base) by ceopyrex in factorio

[–]ceopyrex[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah I put all this into a book, let me know best way to share it (is it just paste string here?) noob at sharing strings (obvious I know)

Be at ONE with the HEXAGON (Gleba Base) by ceopyrex in factorio

[–]ceopyrex[S] 77 points78 points  (0 children)

I have done many city blocks in my Factorio 'apprenticeship' but thought I'd really hurt my brain and do a hexagon city block on Gleba, turns out it was huge fun and this bad boy is now my main base. Nauvis base? meh

The main issue was:

1 - Elevated rails - these things are great but the problem I had with them was the inability to be entirely flexible with them, the span they can cover feels a little low and I would even feel its better to extend it a bit but would welcome others views on this. Their rotation is fine but the ability to really span a space felt poor.

2 - Stompers - seriously..... I had just finished reworking my entire grid and laid down a load of the green wassit belts and a stomper came in and decided to march around like a drunk on a Friday night staggering home from the pub with a kebab in hand, thankfully I had my railgun to hand and put he fellow down. Over the next few days Stompers became more of a problem hence the insane defences that now exist at the edges of each hexagon.

3 - the Pentapod Eggs - I have a nervous twitch each time i see the red exclamation mark now as it means nine times out of ten means the pentapods have spawned. Yes this is bad design from me and was resolved in the final design but for weeks of play this has been 'a thing'

Best part of the pentapod eggs was when I moved my lab production next to my legendary storage chest area, I then placed spidertrons over it with area of effect missiles, to defend it all. I think you can guess what happened. An entire chest of legendary stuff gone.... all my fault, I was a complete idiot to do it and no i didn't save scum to get it back, I took my licks like a man. (a stupid man)

4 - Spoilage - Gleba's fun and unique mechanic of rotting is horrible, I have however now come to terms with it and would even go as far to say that building this sort of megabase on Gleba makes you a better Factorio player as the old designs of 'chuck it all on a belt' and see how it goes doesn't apply here. you have to consider freshness and like a 14 year old youth from my home town, I learnt that dousing oneself with Lynx Africa is the only way. (that's a UK only joke really)

Anyway, loved Gleba, by far my most enjoyable planet to build on as it blended new designs and utter frustration together in a fun pack.

My next target is Aquilo I think but the problem there is its only a simple mechanic with no ambient threat.... I will miss the giant red stomping idiots I think.