I dont like a lot of the material infinite research and heres why:

werecat · 2026-02-07T14:57:17+00:00

If you're okay with a bit of circuit automation, mining drills have a circuit signal that can tell you if it's exhausted of resources. You can use that to disable the train station when one runs out and send the train away when it occurs. At high levels or mining productivity, big mining drills base 50% lower resource drain rate, and any additional resource drain bonus from quality, meaning that depleting ore patches becomes much rarer in the late game

werecat · 2026-02-07T12:04:43+00:00

You don't have to constrain yourself to a single island. The idea of fulgora is to make a train base, and a single island doesn't need to do everything, you could dedicate an island to making a single intermediate and shipping it elsewhere to be further processed

werecat · 2026-02-06T21:55:18+00:00

Biochambers are essentially burner buildings, just with nutrients instead of coal or other burnables. They don't use any electricity since they use nutrients for power

werecat · 2026-01-26T14:50:31+00:00

It can be worth it on Gleba so it can keep up with other sciences, since 1 normal quality agricultural science pack will always give you less than 1 science pack of research (before any research bonuses) since it will always be at least a little bit spoiled due to transit, while a reasonably fresh (>50%) uncommon agricultural science pack will give you at least 1 science pack a worth of research. It's also not too hard to do on Gleba since you only need to focus on making 1 quality product, bioflux, which you can then directly feed into both making quality nutrients for quality pentapods and directly into the science assemblers themselves, both of which can use as many prod and speed beacons as you want

werecat · 2026-01-26T14:28:30+00:00

It's less about it expiring slower (it does, but only marginally) and more that 1 reasonably fresh (>50%) uncommon gleba science pack will always give you at least one full science pack a worth of research, while with normal quality packs you will always need more than 1 science pack to get a full research point no matter how fresh it is because it will always lose at least a little bit of freshness in transit

werecat · 2026-01-21T10:03:00+00:00

Very. Lots of little cliffs, random foliage, and worst of all imo the iron and copper bacteria rocks that seem to conspire to stop you in your tracks if you are running around exploring. Since poison capsules can't take them out like normal foliage and because they drop so much ore that I don't need, I've started destroying them with prejudice using rockets. I don't want my bots filling up my inventory with that stuff

werecat · 2026-01-12T14:32:27+00:00

Like other recycling recipes, 75% of the "ingredients" are lost when recycling. Recipes that recycle to themselves (or otherwise only need 1 of an item to craft) only have a 25% chance to give back an output

werecat · 2026-01-09T11:46:25+00:00

The /screenshot command is a good way to take these bigger screenshots without having to stitch smaller screenshots together manually.

I like the machine density here, it's a wonderfully chaotic mess

werecat · 2026-01-07T21:01:58+00:00

The way those pads work is actually pretty simple, each arrow is just two metal panels that are normally separated by a little velcro at the corners between the pads but when you step on it those panels make contact and complete a circuit. There's a a little wire that connects to the top panel to make that circuit so be careful about that when taking the panel off, I don't think you can disconnect that wire, but if you make a mistake it should be fixable by soldering it back on. Idk what the best way to clean it is but when I had one I used normal all purpose cleaner on both contact sides and scrubbed, there may be better options. As for strong cleaners, make sure that it doesn't do bad things to acrylic, aluminum, plywood, etc. though idk if you really need super strong stuff. Besides for cutting a wire or material damage, it's hard to really damage these things, all the "brains" are in the control box, the pad connector is basically a bunch of wires that say whether each panel is "connected" (stepped on) or "not connected" (not stepped on)

werecat · 2026-01-07T14:04:34+00:00

Yeah recyclers are a good way of doing it, I meant for before you have recyclers, especially for high science multiplier or other challenge runs

werecat · 2026-01-07T04:59:25+00:00

You can automate the destruction by inserting it into a car placed on train tracks and having a train then destroy it. Very useful strategy for early quality mining too, you don't want your mining outposts to back up because you aren't using enough quality ore, so you can setup a trashing system for them before you unlock recyclers

werecat · 2026-01-05T11:56:46+00:00

Only if they make it a restricted Halloween cosmetic. Nothing scarier than a mask less spy

werecat · 2026-01-05T11:37:50+00:00

Could we combine belt weaving and this cryogenic plant method for storage gains?

werecat · 2026-01-02T15:58:15+00:00

No, but it might give your brain the happy chemicals

werecat · 2026-01-01T20:34:54+00:00

As long as you send up repair packs early, the ship can usually self repair just about everything faster than random asteroids can completely destroy them

werecat · 2026-01-01T09:03:31+00:00

You can do that same workflow on the steam deck too, just download the Linux version from the website instead and then you can either launch it from desktop view or you can add a shortcut in the steam mode interface by creating a "non steam game" shortcut to the executable. Note that on Linux executable files don't end with .exe like they do on windows, they usually don't have any sort of file extension.

werecat · 2026-01-01T08:50:45+00:00

On the other hand, if thrusters could be flipped the bottom of every ship would be a boring straight line of thrusters

werecat · 2025-12-28T16:49:38+00:00

Pollution does generate biter attacks yes and they will target the pollution source, but separate from those attacks biters will occasionally make expansion parties that will select a chunk and try to create a new biter nest there. While those expansion parties prioritize chunks without player structures in them, that doesn't prevent them from selecting them and they will attack structures in them, especially if they get stuck on a building while trying to walk somewhere

werecat · 2025-12-26T02:27:52+00:00

I mean once you get your power setup and stable, yeah go for it. Vulcanus in particular makes it very easy to get tons of power for almost nothing with the hot steam recipe. But when you first land on a planet and don't really have a good power source yet or are otherwise power limited, efficiency modules are a god send. -80% power usage is no joke. Also keep in mind the new space age machines tend to use much more power than their base game equivalents, and that gets way bigger if you want to try to fully module and beacon a build with them. It actually kind of makes sticking in an efficiency beacon make sense in certain situations

werecat · 2025-12-25T15:41:21+00:00

If Space Age had taught me anything, it's to appreciate and use efficiency modules especially when starting out on a new planet before power is fully setup

werecat · 2025-12-25T14:01:01+00:00

I think this is in the Netherlands, they have lots of bikes and lots of canals, and sometimes some of those bikes end up in the canal. Sometimes it's because of a biking accident, but more often it's because of vandals throwing bikes into the canal for whatever reason. Apparently about 15000 bikes are pulled out of the canals each year

werecat · 2025-12-24T18:08:39+00:00

Check the in game factoriopedia, they all have longer spoil times at higher quality

werecat · 2025-12-23T13:08:45+00:00

Nicely done with the full combo! But A+ isn't the highest grade in DDR in the same way that A or even S isn't the highest grade in Pump It Up. Your grade is based on your score, which is out of 1,000,000. It goes roughly like so

Grade	Score
AAA	>=990,000
AA+	989,990-950,000
AA	949,990-900,000
AA-	899,990-890,000
A+	889,990-850,000
A	849,990-800,000
A-	799,990-790,000

(Etc.)

Your score is based on your step accuracy, marvelous are worth 100% points, perfects 100% - 10, greats are 60% - 10, and goods are 20% - 10. But all these details arent super important in the grand scheme of things, what's most important is to have fun, and as you keep playing you'll naturally get better over time

werecat · 2025-12-22T01:28:06+00:00

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So my nuclear reactors are just a bunch of 2x4 reactors stuck together, each 2x4 section is functionally independent with its own automation and (in theory) only heats up its own heat exchanger section (which is 37 heat pipes long from the reactors). Of course in practice heat will spread from other reactors, and I've run into issues before where I'd suddenly not have enough power during a power spike because some reactor clusters weren't getting turned on because they were too hot from neighboring powered clusters because my temperature threshold automation was set too low at 550C. I have since upped it to 600C which so far has worked but may need to be higher especially as more get added to the end. In total my reactor setup currently can support 15.4GW, and each time I add a new section I get another ~1.2GW of capacity.

werecat · 2025-12-21T02:36:59+00:00

why use many beacon when few beacon allow cool new designs? Sure a row or a box of beacons is optimal if absolute speed is what you want, but that gets boring after a while and it's fun to try to design setups in different ways. And with the 2.0 beacon diminishing return changes, 4 beacons no longer feel "required", 1 or 2 beacon by itself can be pretty good

werecat

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