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How do refineries work? I have crude oil in a storage tank, and that tank is hooked up to a refinery, but the refinery isn't doing anything or outputting anything. Do I need pumps somewhere, or is there another facility that needs to go in between?
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May 6, 2014 21:39
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In this game production stops when you have no more storage. Refineries produce three things, and if its storage for one of those is full it will stop producing. So make it output to to some tanks or something (remember fluids don't mix).
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May 6, 2014 21:42
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Don't forget that you can make solid fuel with light and heavy oil, so you can always just make a load of that and then use it instead of coal.
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May 6, 2014 21:50
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So can solid fuel replace coal for recipes or just for furnaces?
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May 7, 2014 00:19
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Buried under production optimisation flowcharts and the half finished bones of a resource calculator program, please send help 
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May 7, 2014 01:05
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This game is addicting but I feel totally overwhelmed by all the poo poo I can build and the potential production chains and oh god. This is gonna be like Dawn of Discovery where I end up finally making a good factory complex in this case and pour so much time and effort into it and never start another game.
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May 7, 2014 02:15
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The Shortest Path posted:So can solid fuel replace coal for recipes or just for furnaces?
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May 7, 2014 02:15
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Today's lesson: If you're trying to repair a damaged box, be very sure you're clicking correctly to repair it, not collect it.
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May 7, 2014 02:41
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I'm in the drilling/rifenery mode as I got bored of optimizing the factory so now I'm optimizing a different type of factory... anyway What do Small Pumps do? The flow-rate of the pipes doesn't seem to be affected with mine, so is my setup simply too small for them to be of any use? Also, I'm dying to see someones fully automated setup, like from coal/iron-ore/copper to the next step of bars to wheels and all other poo poo and at the end pumping out Research beakers things. I think it'd be kind of impossible but maybe that's what some of the smart chests/inserters are for. Here is an example of my simple assembly setup, it's 2 rows of 5 factories being fed by a boxes at one end. I have two of these so in total I have 20 factories that can be pumping out stuff.  I end up switching the factories production quite a lot but it's nice to be able to pump out couple thousand in simple precursors like iron wheels and green electric circuits relatively fast.
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May 7, 2014 03:00
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Morphix posted:I'm in the drilling/rifenery mode as I got bored of optimizing the factory so now I'm optimizing a different type of factory... I've always fully automated my red + green beakers from raw ore to both on the same conveyor belt running past like 6-10 labs running side by side, which produces technology monstrously fast. I don't even know where to start with blue beakers though. Even going from red to green is ridiculously complicated and usually takes me like an hour. And part of the problem is once you automate all that poo poo all your iron plates and copper and stuff are tied up but it's difficult to pull them out for other things. Also it's really easy to get to products in the same line it's almost impossible to separate them if you try the crane will grab that randomly one of the two objects and place it on the other conveyor - and if the wrong object runs into a machine the whole thing will just stop until you remove it manually.
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May 7, 2014 04:28
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I don't really have a good picture of a complete setup but I activated my crappy editing skills to make a thing: There are variants you can do, but the idea is to have one central belt system with only one resource per belt, and then split off new factories to one side. That way if you need more of a resource, you just pop another fab on the right branch, extend a few belts, and you get more stuff. Then you can add boxes at the end to stockpile, and then later replace them with provider chests if you give up and start using bots.
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May 7, 2014 04:44
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Wolpertinger posted:but it's difficult to pull them out for other things. I always plan my factories to have 2 (or three with steel) belts coming in, and the same number leaving. It's easy to think of the materials as arteries for your factory, you don't want them to stop. If you ever get it big enough that the factories on the end are starved, you can splice in another supply easily enough, or simply upgrade to red belts.
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May 7, 2014 04:45
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I actually don't understand the use of the faster belts - having things travel faster doesn't increase throughput at all, would it? It'd just reduce travel time, which is essentially useless once your system's humming along at full production speed. Anyone care to explain the value of them to me?
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May 7, 2014 05:51
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Bettik posted:I actually don't understand the use of the faster belts - having things travel faster doesn't increase throughput at all, would it? It'd just reduce travel time, which is essentially useless once your system's humming along at full production speed. Some things (especially with modules) can use the added speed- if you have 30 furnaces feeding a belt, it can get overwhelmed if it's slow, and with modules some factories can be fed by two blue grabbers and make use of it. I had to upgrade a belt for extra throughput once so far. Edit: Also, to expand on "humming along at full speed", if you have a queue of materials then you don't have enough sinks! Make more factories to eat that backlog! Then you'll need the speed to feed the new hungry factories. Evilreaver fucked around with this message at 07:44 on May 7, 2014 |
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May 7, 2014 06:03
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I have hit the point where i need to use trains, i have consumed all the nearby iron, however i cannot for the life of me figure out a decent way to integrate a centralized resource drop off point. Anyone have any decent designs?
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May 7, 2014 06:07
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Why don't my regular electric inserters put stuff in labs? Do I need a special one?
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May 7, 2014 08:36
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Bettik posted:I actually don't understand the use of the faster belts - having things travel faster doesn't increase throughput at all, would it? It'd just reduce travel time, which is essentially useless once your system's humming along at full production speed. It will increase throughput if you have crapton of stuff going on the same line, 10-ish smelters will completely empty the ore conveyor that was filled without any free space, if you want to add more mines/smelters to same line you'll want a faster belt.
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May 7, 2014 08:48
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Wahad posted:Why don't my regular electric inserters put stuff in labs? Do I need a special one? I've noticed what seems like a bug, if you 'insert' into the corner of something like a lab or factory, sometimes it won't take for reasons I can't fathom yet. Put it into the middle for the most reliable inserting. E: You know what's a dick move? The end of the campaign, "Make an airplane. Made it? Good, game over! No, you don't get to fly it." 
Evilreaver fucked around with this message at 09:11 on May 7, 2014 |
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May 7, 2014 09:06
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Evilreaver posted:I've noticed what seems like a bug, if you 'insert' into the corner of something like a lab or factory, sometimes it won't take for reasons I can't fathom yet. Put it into the middle for the most reliable inserting. Tried this, but it didn't work. Unless by corner you mean the edges and I need to use a longhanded inserter to get it into the middle of a factory. Edit; for posterity, my setup. 
Wahad fucked around with this message at 09:21 on May 7, 2014 |
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May 7, 2014 09:16
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Your labs appear to be working. They will only insert a few bottles and replace them as they get used, they wont just keep cramming them in there.
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May 7, 2014 09:36
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American Dad posted:Your labs appear to be working. They will only insert a few bottles and replace them as they get used, they wont just keep cramming them in there. Yeah - the way to deal with excess (and not just excess bottles, excess anything) is instead of placing the bottles directly onto a conveyor leading to your lab, have your conveyor use a blue fast inserter to place your excess items directly into an iron chest, and have another inserter pulling it straight out and placing it on the conveyor belt that leads to where it will be used. If you're using them as quickly as you make them, the blue inserters will pass them just as quickly as any conveyor belt. If you generate them faster than they are used, eventually the conveyor belt on the other side of the box will start to clog up, and when it's completely full, the inserter pulling things out of the box will stop. From then on, the box will start filling up and will store up to several thousand excess of that item for you - meaning that if your demand ever increases, you have a huge reservoir to pull from immediately, with the additional option of snagging stacks from the box for personal use, or to manually fill up whichever machine with a full stack instead of just 3-4 (which I sometimes do as it does speed things up slightly in some situations). Otherwise, whichever machine is producing the object that has supply outstripping demand is sitting there, wasted - I can almost guarantee that at some point you'll wish you had a lot more of an object that's been sitting unproduced because of a conveyor belt clog - like those copper plates sitting on a conveyor belt dead end on that screenshot could probably use a fast inserter with a box at the end even more than the beakers could, considering just HOW MUCH freaking copper you need in higher tier technology, like tens of thousands at least. Plus, the iron plate belt is clogged up too for the same reason, which means the smelters are clogged up, which means the miners are clogged up, and so on. The campaign taught me the hard way that letting machines sit idle never pays off when you suddenly need another couple thousand iron or copper.
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May 7, 2014 10:39
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Cheers! That helps a lot. I'll have to get to the blue inserters first, but that solution solves a lot of my problems.
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May 7, 2014 11:48
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My personal favorite furnace setup (a bit backed up at the moment): New powerplant, note the roboports so I can just slap down a blueprint and hook up the water:  Possibly my favorite  feature, right click on a power pole for a complete power breakdown for that power network or press "P"  now to see how many blue science packs goons can produce every 5 seconds.
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May 7, 2014 11:50
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SergZpartan posted:Possibly my favorite It'd be ill-advised to right click the power pole to see the power consumption/production, try left clicking it instead. I've got my entire factory supplied with Solar Panels during the day, and Accumulators during the night. I use normal gun turrets so I don't need to use accumulators for defenses. 
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May 7, 2014 12:12
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UberJumper posted:I have hit the point where i need to use trains, i have consumed all the nearby iron, however i cannot for the life of me figure out a decent way to integrate a centralized resource drop off point. Anyone have any decent designs? Something like this? Note that I'm using rail signals to run 2 trains, not loading 2 resources into the same train.  Coal use for non-burning purposes isn't typically high enough to justify using trains, so the above station is functional for copper/iron. It's key to empty trains into boxes because then you can take advantage of the inserter capacity techs. In the above pic I'm at tech 2, I believe, and the 5 inserters empty a full car in a little under 30 seconds. It would take ages if you did it onto a belt, even the fastest one.
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May 7, 2014 13:19
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Morphix posted:I'm in the drilling/rifenery mode as I got bored of optimizing the factory so now I'm optimizing a different type of factory... Here's one of my older 0.8.5 layouts. Few mods in there as well.  It's not specifically showing science packs(they are farther down the line, but the concept works for just about anything. Biggest fault of such a linear setup is that you need ALOT of raw material input to keep pace. Every time you split the line you are basicaly sending 50% prodution to that specific assembler group and 50% to the rest of the line. This particular setup was actually tasked with feeding 12 labs with green/red packs. Here's where the raw materials come from. Note this one is using solid fuel:  I used to run fuel right down the middle, but with it like this you can actually drop in electric furnaces at will without a complete retool of the line.
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May 7, 2014 13:39
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Evilreaver posted:E: You know what's a dick move? The end of the campaign, "Make an airplane. Made it? Good, game over! No, you don't get to fly it." Really all of the campaign missions could do with allowing you to continue to play after you've achieved the objective, it'd be a nice environment for tweaking mostly complete designs. Gotdammy posted:I don't really have a good picture of a complete setup but I activated my crappy editing skills to make a thing: Easiest spacing for fabbers with this bus system (I think) looks like this:  Keeps the power cables neat, at least. You could probably double up items on the main bus conveyors by faffing around with smart inserters at the base of the branches to take out what you want before sending the rest back. Renaissance Robot fucked around with this message at 19:03 on May 7, 2014 |
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May 7, 2014 17:21
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Why did I have to find out that this game was updated?! After spending a few hours last night in a new sandbox game, I'm considering tearing everything down and starting from scratch, with all my updated tech. Does anyone else do this, or am I the only one with a crippling lack of organization and foresight?
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May 8, 2014 05:33
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Royal W posted:Why did I have to find out that this game was updated?! After spending a few hours last night in a new sandbox game, I'm considering tearing everything down and starting from scratch, with all my updated tech. Does anyone else do this, or am I the only one with a crippling lack of organization and foresight? Nope this is me too, I can't plan for the life of me. At least you don't lose resources when breaking down equipment!
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May 8, 2014 12:39
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I'm a little bit addicted to this right now, and may have to try some alternate setups when I'm not at work. Right now, my go-to layouts are the train-level furnace/ore setup line, with some of the components swiped processed and reloaded as steel or wire, so the four main resources are all in one place. I'll also have to try and find some of my earlier setups. The first time I got to Blue Science was a convoluted maze of underground conveyors, loaders switching products between belts and back again just to have it on a certain side, and a general lack of foresight combined with having everything near to each other.
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May 8, 2014 13:18
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I bought the game yesterday, which caused yesterday to quickly disappear. Definitely fun, and I can see burning a lot of time on this. It is easily better than most greenlight games, and should be a lock for getting on steam. This game has to eventually make it big. I spent a lot of time fumbling with figuring out how to effectively use both sides of conveyer belts. I've occasionally built a small extra extra section so that my belts can meet at a right angle rather than a curve, so that my resource is moved from the outside to the inside of the belt. I've been good at automating red research, but have been lazy with green research so far, stocking the factories by hand. I think I need to spread my factories out more, and not be worried about keeping things compact.
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May 8, 2014 13:48
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Filthy Monkey posted:I bought the game yesterday, which caused yesterday to quickly disappear. Definitely fun, and I can see burning a lot of time on this. It is easily better than most greenlight games, and should be a lock for getting on steam. This game has to eventually make it big. Yeah spreading out is something I need to get used to as well. Once you set up an assembly line for belts you're going to have more of them than you know what to do with anyway.
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May 8, 2014 15:22
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I finally managed to put a good amount of time into this game last night, and drat is it fun. I'm big into modded Minecraft so this sort of automation is right in my wheelhouse. I got most of Green research automated. Has anyone figured out how to create some sort of mass storage with resources delivered to factories on demand? I didn't get very far down the tech tree so I haven't unlocked Robots or anything, but my ideal setup would have all resources in some sort of central storage, piped out to various Factories evenly, and the outputs from the Factories coming back to that storage before heading off to other factories or labs.
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May 8, 2014 15:23
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Sunblood posted:Has anyone figured out how to create some sort of mass storage with resources delivered to factories on demand? I think this has something to do with Smart Chests, Smart Inserters and Logistics Robots. But I'll be damned if I can figure out what to do with it all. Can someone explain to me how Logistics robots work? I've built a Roboport and have 80+ robots sitting inside, and I've noticed I have the logistics tab in my build menu but aside from that I'm lost.
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May 8, 2014 15:30
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Morphix posted:I think this has something to do with Smart Chests, Smart Inserters and Logistics Robots. But I'll be damned if I can figure out what to do with it all. I've been reading this wiki and it's been very informative.
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May 8, 2014 15:32
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Without logistics robots, you can use Smart Inserters to only take certain things, so a chest with three outputs and one input can work. I've been pondering a setup with 'branches' to different mini factories, which then branch off to final products. The tricky part is, without robots the only way to make the inserters stop is to have no more room. so you still have a big line of stuff.
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May 8, 2014 15:34
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Sunblood posted:I finally managed to put a good amount of time into this game last night, and drat is it fun. I'm big into modded Minecraft so this sort of automation is right in my wheelhouse. I got most of Green research automated. Your options for controlling the flow of supplies are Logistics Networks and Logistics Drones. Networks transmit the total number of all goods in connected chests, and then various devices (like the green loader arms) can connect to the network and be told to operate only if the connected supply is </>/= a target number. You need Smart Chests at a minimum to be able to do this, and all network signals are either electric-pole-to-electric-pole or pole-to-device. Green and red networks can run in parallel, and you can have an unlimited number of 'mini-networks' as long as you don't connect them. Logistics Drones cost a bunch of research, but then you can make Requester (blue) chests that are programmed to demand resources be stocked in specific amounts, and use Provider chests to feed those. You also get to assign yourself some logistics orders, so the drones will put stuff in your pockets while you're in range. Passive Provider (red) chests will feed Requesters or you, Active Provider chests (purple) will feed Requester chests, yourself, or Storage (yellow) chests. Green arms in range of a drone hub can be programmed to listen to the supply of materials available to that drone hub in the same way as logistics networks. Neither of these options is very good at having a central supply depot that distributes and collects automatically. Drones have lovely bandwidth, especially as compared to their electrical consumption. Networks aren't very good at understanding the concept of different chests with the same resource, and trying to feed multiple resources intelligently from one chest is difficult. I guess maybe you could have one or more depot input collection chests, and then green-arm poo poo around to sort it out? That's still a lot of unnecessary motion. Basically, I would prescribe logistics networks all the way from the mines down to the factories that consume metal plates, because the bandwidth will be important. Those factories can directly feed their consumers where possible, and all the products after that can be droned around as needed. LordSaturn fucked around with this message at 15:59 on May 8, 2014 |
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May 8, 2014 15:53
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You can make smart inserters stop by using a smart chest and the red/green wires. You connect them by clicking with the wire on an existing power pole, then connecting the wire to something else (another pole, inserter, chest). The wire will then sense item counts in all the chests that are connected together and will provide that data to all the smart inserters that are connected to the same wire network. So if you tell your smart insterter that "red wire signal" should be, say, "iron plates less than 60", then the inserter will stop working once there are 60 iron plates in the chest(s) it's connected to.
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May 8, 2014 15:59
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Elfface posted:Without logistics robots, you can use Smart Inserters to only take certain things, so a chest with three outputs and one input can work. I've been pondering a setup with 'branches' to different mini factories, which then branch off to final products. Using smart inverters with smart chests and wire can do this actually. You can set <,>,etc conditions on smart inserters based on the wire network they are connected to. Typically you set a smart chest by the finished product farther down the line, but still connected to the same wire network, and set the smart inserters to trigger when the finished product in the network is less than a certain amount.
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May 8, 2014 16:02
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Morphix posted:Can someone explain to me how Logistics robots work? I've built a Roboport and have 80+ robots sitting inside, and I've noticed I have the logistics tab in my build menu but aside from that I'm lost. The research for Logistics Robots is super lovely, because all it does on its own is cram stuff into your pocket. That logistics tab on your build menu says "hey robots, make sure I always have this many of these materials." You need the Logistics Networks research to actually make the chests that can do that as well. See also my effortpost for how to actually do these things.
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May 8, 2014 16:12
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