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Nth Doctor
Sep 7, 2010

Darkrai used Dream Eater!
It's super effective!


Dr. Arbitrary posted:

I just wanted to congratulate you on building some really snazzy looking designs after only some minimal suggestions.
Anyone looking at this game and thinking "I'll never be able to build advanced stuff" should look and see how quickly you've been able to get some awesome looking stuff.

A day or two from now you're gonna want to scrap it all and make something even more advanced!

I want to chime in, too. All the flurry of posting over the last couple of days has gotten me back into the game. I was up late last night getting about as far as Ciaphas and following, generally, Negative Root's beginner's guide.
Next up for me: Steel smelting and oil processing.

Thanks, Ciaphas, for getting me back in by posting a bunch of your WIP factory. :hfive:

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Loren1350
Mar 30, 2007

President Ark posted:

It's because you're in the middle of a desert. Pollution gets progressively reduced on tiles that are grassland, and further reduced for each tree present on a given tile. Deserts have no intrinsic impact on pollution and tend to have very few trees, so pollution spreads pretty far over it. Only thing worse is ocean.


e: in regards to oil: First thing you should do with blue science is get advanced oil production, and first thing you should do with that is set up 2 (or more) chemical plants cracking light oil into petroleum. Heavy is at least useful for lubricant.

Each terrain tile contributes to the pollution reduction of a map chunk; desert tiles do still reduce pollution, just not by very much. Water tiles reduce it the most (but never have trees to augment), otherwise grass is the best. Overall the terrain-based pollution reduction is less than the previous method, which was a flat rate; a solid chunk of water reduces slightly more, but pretty much everything else is less.

Stone path and concrete have zero pollution reduction.

Ratzap
Jun 9, 2012

Let no pie go wasted
Soiled Meat

Nth Doctor posted:

I want to chime in, too. All the flurry of posting over the last couple of days has gotten me back into the game. I was up late last night getting about as far as Ciaphas and following, generally, Negative Root's beginner's guide.
Next up for me: Steel smelting and oil processing.

Thanks, Ciaphas, for getting me back in by posting a bunch of your WIP factory. :hfive:

I've been following Negative Root's new series too and building the same as it runs, he really doesn't muck around. Which would have been fine with peaceful but I left them going and the filth his build kicks out really has made a lot of friends. The only 'wrong' thing I'd point at so far is him sharing the wheel assembler with the inserter and belt assemblers. It tends to feed one or the other until it backs up then the other gets some gears. Add another gear assembly or put them on a belt fixes it.
He's not buffering the furnace builds either but that's no big deal.

I tend to make much smaller, cleaner builds until I have dominance established so it's nice to play differently.

Nth Doctor
Sep 7, 2010

Darkrai used Dream Eater!
It's super effective!


Ratzap posted:

I've been following Negative Root's new series too and building the same as it runs, he really doesn't muck around. Which would have been fine with peaceful but I left them going and the filth his build kicks out really has made a lot of friends. The only 'wrong' thing I'd point at so far is him sharing the wheel assembler with the inserter and belt assemblers. It tends to feed one or the other until it backs up then the other gets some gears. Add another gear assembly or put them on a belt fixes it.
He's not buffering the furnace builds either but that's no big deal.

I tend to make much smaller, cleaner builds until I have dominance established so it's nice to play differently.

That's interesting. I haven't even seen any aliens yet. What I do need to do is build tons of walls, though, or I may get clobbered soon. I've totally neglected that.

Ratzap
Jun 9, 2012

Let no pie go wasted
Soiled Meat

Nth Doctor posted:

That's interesting. I haven't even seen any aliens yet. What I do need to do is build tons of walls, though, or I may get clobbered soon. I've totally neglected that.

I knew they'd be round for a chat so I had walls ready. Turrets are quick enough to produce but making large amounts of ammo takes time. Set an assembler churning it out constantly and you'll still find yourself half filling the guns. They always path in the exact same way so make sure you spot which direction they came from, stick a wall with some turrets over that path and they're sorted.

ModeSix
Mar 14, 2009

Control Volume posted:

I'll probably hold off until that big update is here then, since I know I'll burn myself out on this game before it ever gets added if I buy it now. Looks boss though.

This is faulty logic.

If you buy the game now, you might have figured out how to get to the space platform by the time they add it.

This is no simple game, get ready for many many hours of just learning how to set things up efficiently and manage your production lines.

Solumin
Jan 11, 2013

ModeSix posted:

This is faulty logic.

If you buy the game now, you might have figured out how to get to the space platform by the time they add it.

This is no simple game, get ready for many many hours of just learning how to set things up efficiently and manage your production lines.

Yup. Go read Ciaphas's posts in this thread for an idea of how playing this game goes for new players. I've automated blue science (which is basically the first step into the late game) all of twice across all of my saves, and both times I feel like I haven't entirely done it right. This game is deep.

Ciaphas
Nov 20, 2005

> BEWARE, COWARD :ovr:


Sadly I'm at work so I can't continue my cute-newbie crusade for a few hours :v: I'm excited to, though.

First thing I gotta do tonight is figure out if I want to look into robots yet or not. I have a general idea in mind of how they work but I'm not really sure how to use them, or whether to tear down my current bus infrastructure and replace it with them, or perhaps even spread out some--now that I have the resources, maybe take my current bus-based factory, tear it down into nothing but a smeltery making iron, copper, and steel plates, and link it by trains on one side to mines, and on the other side to various factories run by robots, placed out a few screens so they all have massive room to expand (because who cares about travel time when you have trains and cars).

Then I think to myself there's no reason to do that besides hubris, I have shitloads of resources right where I started. Then I think alternately "so what?" and "maybe I'll start over, installing some mods like RSO, to give trains a real purpose."

this is how madness starts isn't it

Tenebrais
Sep 2, 2011

Logistics robots need a fair bit of upgrading (and a big swarm produced, but of course you're going to do that) before they can realistically replace belts in general, but early on they can still be good for hooking up parts of the factory that are difficult to belt together, or for managing your own inventory (again with upgrades, but not as many). Construction robots are extremely useful right from the off.


Trains are awesome. Technically trains will never be as efficient as just spanning that gap with belts, but... trains.
Also tracks are much much easier to build than belts, even more so once the next update hits.

Ciaphas
Nov 20, 2005

> BEWARE, COWARD :ovr:


When I was reading logistics bots made sense right from the off but construction bots didn't make much sense--at least, without pictures (work proxy :argh:). I'll have to see an example of them in use to get it.

I don't remember, do train stops or signals need electric power to function? I found a giiiiiant coal deposit a ways out, figure I could set that up as an end-of-the-line for a rail network, but I don't particularly want to drag rail lines AND poles out there.

Speaking of which, there any faster way to lay rail than running alongside and click-dragging a la belts? Especially with respect to 90 degree turns, that was a pain in the butt even only done twice for my copper mine yesterday.

Ratzap
Jun 9, 2012

Let no pie go wasted
Soiled Meat

Ciaphas posted:

When I was reading logistics bots made sense right from the off but construction bots didn't make much sense--at least, without pictures (work proxy :argh:). I'll have to see an example of them in use to get it.

I don't remember, do train stops or signals need electric power to function? I found a giiiiiant coal deposit a ways out, figure I could set that up as an end-of-the-line for a rail network, but I don't particularly want to drag rail lines AND poles out there.

Speaking of which, there any faster way to lay rail than running alongside and click-dragging a la belts? Especially with respect to 90 degree turns, that was a pain in the butt even only done twice for my copper mine yesterday.

And just how are you going to load the train without electricity for inserters? You will be running power out there or make a local substation with some solar+accumulators.

Logistic bots are a common downfall for many factories. It's so easy to be lazy and just toss down a requester and let the bots handle it. For low volume or ad hoc builds - fine, brilliant, lovely. But don't use them for anything else - belts shift stuff faster and more efficiently.

Tenebrais
Sep 2, 2011

Ciaphas posted:

construction bots didn't make much sense--at least, without pictures (work proxy :argh:). I'll have to see an example of them in use to get it.

Two main functions of construction bots:

With repair packs, they will repair walls and turrets (and other equipment!) damaged by biters, and automatically replace anything destroyed.
With blueprints, they can be used to construct your factory without you having to be carrying the parts around yourself.

Ciaphas
Nov 20, 2005

> BEWARE, COWARD :ovr:


Ratzap posted:

And just how are you going to load the train without electricity for inserters? You will be running power out there or make a local substation with some solar+accumulators.

Logistic bots are a common downfall for many factories. It's so easy to be lazy and just toss down a requester and let the bots handle it. For low volume or ad hoc builds - fine, brilliant, lovely. But don't use them for anything else - belts shift stuff faster and more efficiently.

I was about to be slightly snarky and say "burner inserters :smug:" then asked myself about the actual mining part of that plan and welp i'm dumb

Never messed with solar, though, so this seems like a good excuse to figure that out.

Ciaphas
Nov 20, 2005

> BEWARE, COWARD :ovr:


Tenebrais posted:

Two main functions of construction bots:

With repair packs, they will repair walls and turrets (and other equipment!) damaged by biters, and automatically replace anything destroyed.
With blueprints, they can be used to construct your factory without you having to be carrying the parts around yourself.

Neat! Not so much the former because I'm a giant peaceful-playing babby, but the latter sounds neat. So I can make a blueprint of the green-circuit factory and just duplicate the whole drat thing lock stock and barrel? Cool.

Slashrat
Jun 6, 2011

YOSPOS
What's the best way to deal with biter attack if you don't yet know where the attacks will come from? If you build a perimeter wall some distance from your factory structures with openings at intervals, will they follow it to the opening, or just gnaw their way through the wall as soon as they encounter it?

Jabor
Jul 16, 2010

#1 Loser at SpaceChem
I tend to scatter firebases with a few walled turrets around the perimeter. Biters love to attack military targets, and once you get the "under attack" alert it'll usually hold out long enough for you to wander out there and reinforce it with more guns.

Tenebrais
Sep 2, 2011

Slashrat posted:

What's the best way to deal with biter attack if you don't yet know where the attacks will come from? If you build a perimeter wall some distance from your factory structures with openings at intervals, will they follow it to the opening, or just gnaw their way through the wall as soon as they encounter it?

They'll take a reasonably straight line toward your factory, and chew any walls in their way unless there's an opening within a couple of blocks. They are easily distracted by military structures, however.

Build a radar; it'll give you a map of the area and you can see where the biter nests are. Biters will come from any nests your pollution cloud reaches, in a straight line toward your factory. (If the line takes them near another biter nest they'll just join up with that one for pathfinding's sake).

LLSix
Jan 20, 2010

The real power behind countless overlords

My blue science assemblers are usually a giant mess. This is the first one I've been happy with. It's actually pretty clean if not really optimal.

I've got steel and iron shortages right now, but you can see where steel would be on the other half of the battery belt and how smart inserters share the red science belt.

RE: oil being a pain. There's a very simple way to lay out oil that takes almost all the pain away:

That's from my current fort and I don't have advanced oil yet, but you can see how there's space enough to drop chemical plants in there for cracking when you do get it. Probably could have left a little more space though to make walking easier later. I usually start with only 2 or 3 tanks and add them as they fill up until I can get blue science going.

Aurium
Oct 10, 2010

Ciaphas posted:

I was about to be slightly snarky and say "burner inserters :smug:" then asked myself about the actual mining part of that plan and welp i'm dumb

Never messed with solar, though, so this seems like a good excuse to figure that out.

Burner miners of course. You're talking coal, so that's fine.

Sure, they're slow, but hey, if the coal deposit is huge, just cover it with more miners than you'd use otherwise.

widespread
Aug 5, 2013

I believe I am now no longer in the presence of nice people.


Nth Doctor posted:

I want to chime in, too. All the flurry of posting over the last couple of days has gotten me back into the game. I was up late last night getting about as far as Ciaphas and following, generally, Negative Root's beginner's guide.

I need to get to this guide. Where's it at? Also should I just not smelt directly next to electric miners? Only because I think a centralized Smelt and Pollute Plant would be a decent idea, getting fed metal from all these loving veins I find on Very Big/Very Rich/Very High mode.

Truga
May 4, 2014
Lipstick Apathy

President Ark posted:

e: in regards to oil: First thing you should do with blue science is get advanced oil production, and first thing you should do with that is set up 2 (or more) chemical plants cracking light oil into petroleum. Heavy is at least useful for lubricant.
This is something I figured would be a neat idea as far as lubricant goes:


Wire your lube tank to a pump between your heavy oil and cracking refinery, set it to only turn on when there's more than 2480 lube in the tank (window rounds to 2.5k :shrug:).

This way, you'll never run out of lubricant because as soon as it's not full it'll stop cracking your heavy oil to light, and you'll also never have heavy oil overflow and clog your refineries. And all it takes is 2 red or green wires.

Ratzap
Jun 9, 2012

Let no pie go wasted
Soiled Meat

Ciaphas posted:

I was about to be slightly snarky and say "burner inserters :smug:" then asked myself about the actual mining part of that plan and welp i'm dumb

Never messed with solar, though, so this seems like a good excuse to figure that out.

I was expecting a reply like that which was why I worded it like that. You could indeed use burner inserters and burner miners but they're horrifically slow and pollute a great deal more than the electric versions. Good luck loading a train with burner inserters... take a good book ;)

Solumin
Jan 11, 2013

Tenebrais posted:

Two main functions of construction bots:

With repair packs, they will repair walls and turrets (and other equipment!) damaged by biters, and automatically replace anything destroyed.
With blueprints, they can be used to construct your factory without you having to be carrying the parts around yourself.

Third important function is deconstruction. Select an area and watch the construction robots tear down anything in it! Fantastic for clearing forests (they'll give you the wood) and removing factories you don't want/need anymore.

The idea use for logistics is to move many small things a short distance. So using them to feed copper plate into your green circuit factory is a bad idea, but feeding gears and pipes into your engine factory would work well.
Another good use is keeping yourself supplied with ammo. Set up an assembler that outputs to one of the logistics chests, then set one of your personal logistics slots to receive ammo. Bots will start delivering it to you! Then when you come back from slaughtering biters, they'll top off your ammo reserves again.

Retro42
Jun 27, 2011


With all the big factories being posted out there I though I'd share my mini prefabs for early game. Doesn't hurt to have a little area set up churning out circuits/belts/inserters/etc. to get some supplies building while I plan out my production line. Just dump a few stacks of iron/copper in each and walk away.





Ratzap
Jun 9, 2012

Let no pie go wasted
Soiled Meat
One thing I noticed yesterday (I must never have made a vertical station before) is that you only get 5 load/unload spaces down a vertical carriage but 7 when it's horizontal. Or does someone have a trick to get more on a vertical station? To my mind it just means I always build horizontal stops now.

Solumin
Jan 11, 2013
Vertical trains are in fact shorter than horizontal trains. Video games!

Ciaphas
Nov 20, 2005

> BEWARE, COWARD :ovr:


Solumin posted:

Vertical trains are in fact shorter than horizontal trains. Video games!

So that's why my loving inserters weren't working right. God drat video games.

FISHMANPET
Mar 3, 2007

Sweet 'N Sour
Can't
Melt
Steel Beams
Yeah the trains are longer horizontally than they are vertically. I've also switched to all horizontal.stations. Though I'm starting to think that while for loading I want as many inserters as possible grabbing off the feed line, I only need 5 per side per train car rather than 7 for unloading. 5 fast inserters going onto blue belts will load the belt, the last 2 chests just fill up and stay idle.

Dr. Stab
Sep 12, 2010
👨🏻‍⚕️🩺🔪🙀😱🙀
That doesn't really make sense. You want to put more on the train than you take off?

Ciaphas
Nov 20, 2005

> BEWARE, COWARD :ovr:


Well it's going to be slow, need a teardown or three especially on the oil processing side, and makes me cringe a bit to look at but god damnit I did science 3 automation



Now to go make dinner and let it sit for a while so I can spot the backlogs on the belts

Ciaphas fucked around with this message at 05:32 on Mar 4, 2016

Kinetica
Aug 16, 2011
I left biters on, and I think I may have accidentally made them nastier or more numerous. How do I get rid of the drat medium/large worms? I'm running off an insane amount of steam engines, but only have a little blue science so I don't have really any of the higher end weaponry.

Suspicious Dish
Sep 24, 2011

2020 is the year of linux on the desktop, bro
Fun Shoe
The thrill from dodging trains while trying to solve down a crazy pipe logistics puzzle....

Ratzap
Jun 9, 2012

Let no pie go wasted
Soiled Meat

Kinetica posted:

I left biters on, and I think I may have accidentally made them nastier or more numerous. How do I get rid of the drat medium/large worms? I'm running off an insane amount of steam engines, but only have a little blue science so I don't have really any of the higher end weaponry.

The medium and large worms are evolution products, not part of the settings. AP ammo will kill them, as will the gas grenades (if you can make those yet). If you're really stuck, get the mod autofill, make sure you only have AP ammo on you then take a few dozen turrets plus repair packs to a nest. Run in, wack down turrets and run away again trying not to die. Rinse, repeat - it's super cheesy but it works.

Ciaphas posted:

Well it's going to be slow, need a teardown or three especially on the oil processing side, and makes me cringe a bit to look at but god damnit I did science 3 automation



Now to go make dinner and let it sit for a while so I can spot the backlogs on the belts

Grats bro, yeah some of those belts are kinda long there.

Ciaphas
Nov 20, 2005

> BEWARE, COWARD :ovr:


Looks like my current shortfall with what I have is green circuits, which means new factory time

I'd like to work out construction bots to do that though, which means lubricant, which means...

well, what it actually means is taking down and redoing oil processing 'cos all the crammed-together-ness has screwed my ability to pipe. Rats.

Question because I don't understand pipe mechanics, is there a way to completely empty one storage tank into another or can i only save half of it if I need to destroy it (by building the new tank first and piping to it)?

Nth Doctor
Sep 7, 2010

Darkrai used Dream Eater!
It's super effective!


Ciaphas posted:

Well it's going to be slow, need a teardown or three especially on the oil processing side, and makes me cringe a bit to look at but god damnit I did science 3 automation



Now to go make dinner and let it sit for a while so I can spot the backlogs on the belts

You've gotten further than me. I got a small wall factory up and running. Barely. The biters are angry with me, and come in a wave every few minutes.

I did get 32 stone furnaces cranking out steel, but that's a popular hangout with the locals at the moment.

The big downside is that the biter bases they I've find ask have big worms guarding them.

Ciaphas
Nov 20, 2005

> BEWARE, COWARD :ovr:


Nth Doctor posted:

You've gotten further than me. I got a small wall factory up and running. Barely. The biters are angry with me, and come in a wave every few minutes.

I did get 32 stone furnaces cranking out steel, but that's a popular hangout with the locals at the moment.

The big downside is that the biter bases they I've find ask have big worms guarding them.

Console yourself with the knowledge that I am a giant sissy and turned on peaceful :v:

widespread
Aug 5, 2013

I believe I am now no longer in the presence of nice people.


loving christ, I have been missing some high quality automating in the early game. How the gently caress was I supposed to know I could set up a square of four burners to mine coal infinitely?

ikanreed
Sep 25, 2009

I honestly I have no idea who cannibal[SIC] is and I do not know why I should know.

syq dude, just syq!
Another noob strategy for medium worms:

Set an empty turret down to draw agro.

GotLag
Jul 17, 2005

食べちゃダメだよ
https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=20823

FactorioBot posted:

Version 0.12.25

Use the automatic updater if you can (check experimental updates in other settings) or download full installation at http://www.factorio.com/download/experimental.
This update isn't yet being rolled out by default on Steam, if you want it now you need to opt in on the betas tab on the game's properties page.

It also fixes at least one bug not listed above: mod definitions can now define dependencies for other mods with spaces in their names.

GotLag fucked around with this message at 07:18 on Mar 4, 2016

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Suspicious Dish
Sep 24, 2011

2020 is the year of linux on the desktop, bro
Fun Shoe
Trying to get green science working. I think you can tell I originally had a lot more duplicate factories and finally got around to removing them since they were just stealing parts from other things.



I know this isn't efficient but in terms of ratios or belt layouts, is there anything better I can do here?

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