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How the hell do you keep everything together when Oil hits the field; it's bad enough organising a rapidly becoming gargantuan main bus but whe oil hits the field and plays by its own rules everything goes to poo poo. I'm thinking I need to look into more modular building that eats raw materials and poops out finished product rather than going through sequential processing stages. The latter is more efficient if I can build it right but good luck 
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Jun 22, 2014 14:07
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What annoys me most about pipes is how they connect when adjacent. If you have multiple pipelines running in parallel, you need an empty space between the pipes. The only way to avoid that is by using underground pipes will only join up other pipes in one direction under your control. There's a mod which fixes this: http://www.factorioforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=4135 Similarly, you can forego pipes mostly and use barrels for crude oil instead. It's mostly used to get oil onto a train. With a mod you can also do this with other liquids: http://www.factorioforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=2797 . The disadvantage here is that you need a belt back to wherever the barrels were filled.
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Jun 22, 2014 14:31
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Stick Insect posted:What annoys me most about pipes is how they connect when adjacent. If you have multiple pipelines running in parallel, you need an empty space between the pipes. The only way to avoid that is by using underground pipes will only join up other pipes in one direction under your control. There's a mod which fixes this: http://www.factorioforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=4135 Yeah that is super annoying. My initial plans for my oil refinery were screwed because of that. Stick Insect posted:Similarly, you can forego pipes mostly and use barrels for crude oil instead. It's mostly used to get oil onto a train. With a mod you can also do this with other liquids: http://www.factorioforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=2797 . The disadvantage here is that you need a belt back to wherever the barrels were filled. Oil itself isn't a huge problem its all the byproducts and side products and everything you can turn it into and some of those things are liquid and some of them are solid and some need to be combined with other things to make new things and 
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Jun 22, 2014 14:39
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Oil's biggest problem is that it's complexity isn't granular. There's essentially two stages, regular refining, and advanced, which adds water, and a few end products. However, unlike every other product in the game, which builds off a prior product or three, oil needs the majority of its infrastructure stood up all at once to function, since you can't, for example, only make heavy oil and turn it into lubricant. The light oil and petroleum will fill the output of the refinery, and the plant will shut down. Standing up the entire oil chain at the same time is a bit of a stumbling point when you first get there.
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Jun 22, 2014 14:50
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Not being able to walk through pipes is also a gigantic pain in the rear end.
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Jun 22, 2014 15:09
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MrYenko posted:Oil's biggest problem is that it's complexity isn't granular. There's essentially two stages, regular refining, and advanced, which adds water, and a few end products. However, unlike every other product in the game, which builds off a prior product or three, oil needs the majority of its infrastructure stood up all at once to function, since you can't, for example, only make heavy oil and turn it into lubricant. The light oil and petroleum will fill the output of the refinery, and the plant will shut down. Standing up the entire oil chain at the same time is a bit of a stumbling point when you first get there. Solve this problem via buffer zones consiting of lots and lots of tanks. Using the output directly from the refinery to actually make products is - as you said, problematic. Because if one things starts to hold because it stacks back, everything dies.
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Jun 22, 2014 15:11
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Michaellaneous posted:Solve this problem via buffer zones consiting of lots and lots of tanks. Using the output directly from the refinery to actually make products is - as you said, problematic. Because if one things starts to hold because it stacks back, everything dies. Worth noting that it is for similar reasons that oil and its liquid products are put in big tanks before being sent anywhere; in real life the refinery doesn't magically turn off when it runs out of room for more oil and instead it just explodes.
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Jun 22, 2014 15:13
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MrYenko posted:..., oil needs the majority of its infrastructure stood up all at once to function, since you can't, for example, only make heavy oil and turn it into lubricant... We need a flare stack device that just burns off what you don't need. Only make petroleum, directly convert the other oils into pollution.
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Jun 22, 2014 16:39
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Stick Insect posted:We need a flare stack device that just burns off what you don't need. Only make petroleum, directly convert the other oils into pollution. Nooooooo  Maybe I'm just always starved for petrol, but the thought of losing oil at all just kills me. Crack it, or store it until you can crack it.
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Jun 22, 2014 17:01
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Stick Insect posted:We need a flare stack device that just burns off what you don't need. Only make petroleum, directly convert the other oils into pollution. This game is in desperate need of a "gently caress the World option" maybe a pipe that drains from a tank that covers an entire field in heavy oil and then ignition of that field. 5 pollution per tile ignited/cycle but a can guarantee you that biters will not like it
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Jun 22, 2014 17:07
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QuiteEasilyDone posted:This game is in desperate need of a "gently caress the World option" maybe a pipe that drains from a tank that covers an entire field in heavy oil and then ignition of that field. 5 pollution per tile ignited/cycle but a can guarantee you that biters will not like it Then you can surround your factories with moats of flaming oil.
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Jun 22, 2014 17:23
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I would really like some sort of light nuclear option for those really massive nests. Which could also lead to nuclear power and all the stuff that brings. Mainly I want to see my sprawling factory surrounded by plains of irradiated black glass
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Jun 22, 2014 19:12
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Count me in for wanting nuclear tech. I'd like to see an ore that isn't useful at all early game, but once you get into 20th century tech you can start refining it, add "aluminum tubes" and "yellowcake" to your resource bus. We need a more dangerous alternative to fields of batteries and solar panels to provide power in the mid and lategame. Iron Man's chest reactor is already in the game, we should get the ability to make a big one too. Obviously we need a way to spend 1000 plutonium or palladium or whatever to make a nuke that effectively does the same thing as a stack of poison capsules but with only one use.
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Jun 22, 2014 19:56
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Noooo the bus is big and unwieldly as-is don't make it bigger don't do it 
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Jun 22, 2014 20:37
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Everybody post a picture of your bus. This is most of my main line a couple of hours before I beat the game. Lesson learned from this experience: Only copper wire and circuits really need that expandable modular double production line, everything else can get by with a single line of five at most. If anybody has sulfur, plastic, explosives, or CPU production lines that are pretty as well as productive, I'd like to see them. I'm not really proud of mine. scuba school sucks fucked around with this message at 00:25 on Jun 23, 2014 |
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Jun 22, 2014 20:48
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Using  Built with a large iron deposit to the north, copper to the south, and oil to the east. Everything runs at full speed (currently making Production3's) after carefully tuning modules... or it would, but even just making plastic/acid I'm starved for petroleum. That's with 8 pumpjacks, all with speed3s, with two beacons with speed3s, and all refineries/crackers running production3s. All oil is spent and cracked the instant it shows up. I'm kinda mad since there's basically no oil on this map at all, and I'm 20 hours in. Originally I was going to have the train move just chips to the main base, but with the local oil I figured I'd save a step. Now the train just brings in coal.
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Jun 23, 2014 01:07
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Wouldn't it make more sense to put Productivity modules in your oil stuff so you end up producing more of it?
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Jun 23, 2014 02:04
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Productivity in the refineries, speed in the pumpjacks. There's a case for productivity before the jack goes dry (0.1/sec) but after that only speed helps. And if you do it before, it's another step to replace them later. Oil pumpjacks don't consume any resources except their own life clock, so productivity isn't useful after that clock 'expires'.
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Jun 23, 2014 02:18
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Evilreaver posted:Productivity in the refineries, speed in the pumpjacks. There's a case for productivity before the jack goes dry (0.1/sec) but after that only speed helps. And if you do it before, it's another step to replace them later. And beacons literally nowhere, because they seem to be pretty terrible.
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Jun 23, 2014 03:02
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Never even used beacons, what are they and what do they do? Also, mechanics question. When merging two belts, is it faster to simply merge them by running them into each other, or by using a splitter?
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Jun 23, 2014 03:06
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Phobophilia posted:Never even used beacons, what are they and what do they do? I think if the two belts are both transporting the same item, a splitter would be better. If they're two different items you probably want some trickery to keep them on separate sides of the same belt.
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Jun 23, 2014 03:29
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boo_radley posted:And beacons literally nowhere, because they seem to be pretty terrible.  Beacons can be used to squeeze a few more speed modules onto your pumpjacks if you are completely starved for oil, like I am most games. I can see literally no other use for them other than bandaids for bad design.Beacons 101: Beacons have 2 slots for modules, and add those module benefits to whatever is in range (3 spaces) at half effect. Two Speed3's (Net +100%) will add 50% speed to all constructions around them. Beacons can improve things that can't usually equip modules, which you might think would be useful, but it's generally not. For example, you could use it to boost the speed of laser turrets, or you could just add a bunch more lasers for dramatically cheaper. Beacons have a base energy cost that cannot be modified.
I'm not 100% positive of the list of things Beacons work on. If they work on Inserters, maybe there's a train station loadout that could work using Speed- but again, beacons are huge with a short range so good luck making a design better than "just add more inserters somewhere".
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Jun 26, 2014 02:01
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Yaaay forums are finally back! I've out-nerded all you nerds over the weekend and I've been wanting to post this since - I made a  calculator!quote:The calculator runs entirely in your browser and can be found here: I'm ready to accept my nerd-crown for being king of nerds now, TIA nerds. Evilreaver posted:beacons But do they stack on top of just inserting speed modules in the pumps themselves?
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Jun 26, 2014 06:39
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Mr. Wynand posted:But do they stack on top of just inserting speed modules in the pumps themselves? They sure do, and they stack with each other up to a limit. When you hover over a building, it'll say 'Effects count' or something- 2 from the building, 1 from each beacon, I thing it caps at 6- so you could get (100% natural + 100% internal +50%+50%+50%+50%+50%) 450% total speed. Mr. Wynand posted:Calculator Just needs a 'totals' bit. How many circuit board factories do I need to make Speed3's? Am I supposed to add all those numbers together like some sorta 4th grader? Pfft! E: and a "per minute" setting. Evilreaver fucked around with this message at 07:04 on Jun 26, 2014 |
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Jun 26, 2014 06:48
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Network Pesci posted:Everybody post a picture of your bus. I've been playing around with a more compact alternative to a bus: 2-4 central belts that put all the essential materials in reach of all the assemblers.  Almost everything can be produced with access to iron, copper, plastic, and batteries. A row of factories between those main resources can produce intermediate components on short transport belts and store final products in passive provider chests. (Products that don't require oil can be built on a second row that can only reach the iron, copper, and circuits.) This is a very low-tech solution. The only technology it requires is Automation 1 for long-handled inserters. Since it mostly uses belts instead of chests (to minimize vertical space usage), it does not benefit from inserter stack size bonus. it allows you to express constraints like "first make x factories worth of science, then fill one wood chest full of weapons, then spend extra resources on solar panels" without depending on smart inserters or logistic drones. Since all products are flowing the same direction, the density of the input belts shows you exactly where resource contention is occurring. But without splitters or drones there is no good way to express constraints like "spend an equal amount of iron on these two products."  Placing Advanced Circuits and Batteries on the central line allows for a more flexible layout. Both sides of the iron/copper/battery/adv circuit line are fully useful, and there is plenty of room for circuits and steel and intermediate items on the sides.  It's possible to work with a 3-wide central belt, but all the underground sections are a hassle to set up, and bandwidth gets pretty limited. Placing assemblers only one tile away from the closest belt allows fast inserters to be used on one side. An extra space between every two assemblers makes it easier to deal with pipes and take advantage of inserter bonuses.
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Jun 26, 2014 09:16
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Can somebody please write me a very very basic tutorial on robots? The wiki is poo poo. I've just researched them, have started building some components, and I'm wondering how best to use them. Should I rip up most of my factory's belts and do things with bots? What things should I leave as belts? I'm 5 hours in and I'm at the point where I'm wondering if I should start again (for about the 5th time) or just plough through. I think I could do things better but I'm desperate to not keep restarting
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Jun 26, 2014 12:15
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thehustler posted:Can somebody please write me a very very basic tutorial on robots? The wiki is poo poo. Build and place a Roboport and put some Logistic Robots in it. When you mouse over it, it shows a large construction area and a small delivery area. Suppose you have an engine unit assembler nowhere near any liquids, and an electric engine assembler over by your lube, and you need to get those plain engines across the distance. Place a passive provider chest by the engine unit assembler and an inserter to load engines into the chest. Now they are in the logistics system. Now place a requester chest by the electric engine unit assembler and an inserter to feed it into the assembler. Open the chest and set its logistic request to 5 engine units. The logistic robots will deliver them. When you mouse over the requester/provider chests, it shows a count of all items in the logistic network within delivery range. You can use those counts to give a smart inserter a rule like "only unload the solar panel assembler into the provider chest if there are less than 50 solar panels in the system." Construction robots are nice, too. You can make blueprints to copy-paste entire sections of your base, and construction robots will build it with materials in the logistic network. With the red destruction tool you can tell construction robots to take structures down and place them in storage, which is much faster than cutting down forests and walls by hand. If you put some repair packs into the Roboport, the construction robots will use them to repair damage in their range. Phssthpok fucked around with this message at 12:57 on Jun 26, 2014 |
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Jun 26, 2014 12:53
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Robots need powered roboports to operate from. A roboport lays out a 40x40 grid in which logibots can operate, and a 60x60 grid where construction bots can operate. However, the "inner grid" of multiple roboports have to be touching in order for robots to move within them. By placing these roboports, you've basically designated an area of the world map as part of a "logistics network" in which Logibots and CBots can operate. Robots Construction robots can construct, deconstruct, and repair objects. With a deconstruction blueprint, you can drag out a big red box, and CBots will fly around picking them up off the ground. And it's instant, there's zero mining time when deconstruction occurs. With a construction blueprint, they can plant objections on the ground. This lets you set up big tesselating mining, furnace, and assembler complexes, or walls, or turret pillboxes, or solar panels/accumulators. Once you start blueprinting, you'll fall in love with them. Logistics bots can move items from one place to another. So they can act as a low throughput alternative to belts. They can also move objects from the logistics network directly into your inventory, saving you from having to manually run up to your assembler complexes and manually pick them up. But where do robots pick things up from, and where do they move? There are four kinds of chests. Passive provider chests. Treat these chests as "outputs" from your factory. Say you have an assembler making mining drills. An inserter can place mining drills into a passive provider chest, and cbots can grab mining drills from your passive provider chest and place them on the ground. Or, you could have an assembler make advanced circuits, and logibots can move them to the correct locations for you. But where do they move items? Requester chests. Where passive provider chests are "outputs" to your factories, requesters are "inputs". Say you have an assembler that wants to build distractor capsules. You therefore want to input advanced circuits into them. You could belt the advanced circuits all the way to the assembler... or you could place a requester chest, and have it constantly request 5 advcircuits, and have an inserter move them into the assembler. Logibots will run around picking up advcircuit from your advcircuit assemblers, and try to maintain a stack of 5 advcircuits in the chest (which will constantly tick downwards as you build more distractors). Or you could use a requester chest to move robots from your robot factory straight into your roboport. And so on. What about everything else? Storage chests. These are two-way chests, and can both receive and provide. You can't specifically request any items get placed in the chest. Nor should you plant them in the output of a factory, as they'll get filled with random junk. But for everything else, they go into storage chests. When your cbots tear down a forest or a section of rail, it goes into storage chests. When I have a 3 stack of train signals, I can dump them there, and I can request them out of storage at any time. They'll even take things from... Active provider chests. These are the least commonly used chests. As soon as an item goes into them, a logibot will run up to them and pull them out, and place them into a storage chest. They might be good for train stations, so they're immediately cleared out for the next cartload of items to come in.
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Jun 26, 2014 13:03
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This is amazing. Thank you. It seems like for carting raw materials around such as ore, or for carting basic components around, belts are still king. But once you get into the nitty gritty of making final products, and getting everything together into an assembler to make them, the log bots are much nicer because you don't need a complicated nest of belts. So I think I should be getting my belts reordered so that I make things and get them put into chests ready to be requested from higher level factories. PS: Not sure about storage chests and what they are for. When/how do things get put in there if I don't specifically have to ask for it? Is it just items from Active provider chests that go in here so that they become part of the logistic network?
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Jun 26, 2014 13:25
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Storage chests get their contents from active provider chests, deconstruction, or direct insertion. I use passive provider chests for intermediate products, but active provider chests for end products.
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Jun 26, 2014 13:37
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That and de-constructed items. Storage chests are basically the 'Misc' option when a robot has to put something somewhere. If it's not being requested - Storage Chest. Right now, I'm pondering how feasible satellite-bases are outside of peaceful mode. Lay tracks and power poles from the main base to a good alternate starting location, carry a huge pile of belts etc. and don't worry about research, power or anything other than Advance Circuits. Then carry them back by the trainful. Maybe it'll be more effective in multiplayer, have players merging their factories.
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Jun 26, 2014 13:41
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I like active providing and a centralized storage area next to a roboport. Means less time to resupply me when I return from expeditions or when manually crafting large batches of stuff. Just stand next to the storage area and resupply is near instant.
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Jun 26, 2014 14:24
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I guess active providers and a big central supply depot could be useful if you have smart inserters putting into active providers only if an item is below a certain threshold.
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Jun 26, 2014 14:47
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Phobophilia posted:I guess active providers and a big central supply depot could be useful if you have smart inserters putting into active providers only if an item is below a certain threshold. This is what I've been doing
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Jun 26, 2014 14:52
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Evilreaver posted:They sure do, and they stack with each other up to a limit. When you hover over a building, it'll say 'Effects count' or something- 2 from the building, 1 from each beacon, I thing it caps at 6- so you could get (100% natural + 100% internal +50%+50%+50%+50%+50%) 450% total speed. quote:Just needs a 'totals' bit. How many circuit board factories do I need to make Speed3's? Am I supposed to add all those numbers together like some sorta 4th grader? Pfft! I guess you just want to balance out your bus a little? quote:E: and a "per minute" setting. That I can do.
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Jun 26, 2014 16:07
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Phobophilia posted:With a construction blueprint, they can plant objections on the ground. This lets you set up big tesselating mining, furnace, and assembler complexes, or walls, or turret pillboxes, or solar panels/accumulators. Once you start blueprinting, you'll fall in love with them. If you place something with your character using shift-click, the item won't actually be placed but it will call for a construction bot to place it instead.
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Jun 26, 2014 16:36
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Mr. Wynand posted:You know, I thought about having that but then I didn't really see the point. Or rather, the point of the calculator is that each input is fed by exactly however many outputs it needs - the whole idea being you avoid just having all your circuit board factories in one pile (where they are likely to back up anyway) - instead you'd have 8 different piles of circuit fabs, each before their respective immediate use. (though again, i've still not had the time to actually try this poo poo) If you're using express belts, I can't fathom any intermediate product except for wire ever backing up faster than it can be used by outputs (in an ideal balance situation like this calc calls for). Also, in the case of Speed3 for example, there are banks of '3.33 assemblers' and '0.08' assemblers, and I bet they could share a line comfortably 
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Jun 26, 2014 16:43
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Stick Insect posted:If you place something with your character using shift-click, the item won't actually be placed but it will call for a construction bot to place it instead. You can do this before you even have bots can't you? Just as a guide? I'm sure I saw that mentioned on Reddit.
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Jun 26, 2014 16:51
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thehustler posted:You can do this before you even have bots can't you? Just as a guide? I'm sure I saw that mentioned on Reddit. Yea, but they time out eventually. It's super handy for placing Roboports since you can figure out where it has to go, 'place' it long-range, then actually run over to the placing place and place it in that place.
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Jun 26, 2014 17:17
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Man, all of these well thought out factories makes my achievement in not having material shortages pale in comparison. How do you guys normally deal with the larger biter bases? Clouds and clouds of poison capsules? I tried using explosive rockets and they seem kinda underwhelming.
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Jun 26, 2014 17:32
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