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TehRedWheelbarrow
Mar 16, 2011



Fan of Britches

LonsomeSon posted:

Neocon wingnuts' wet dream of Bush maybe.

Also, I haven't slept but I did take a break to bathe, eat, and take my meds. Something tells me that ADD with an amphetamine prescription could be dangerous in combination with this game, but I really want to rework my steam generation complex into the optimal strings which were explained earlier. Before I knocked off, I enlarged my basic-turrets-behind-basic-walls box, should be way more than enough space even for 14 generators or whatever. Probably going to fancy poo poo up every few generators with underground pipes so I can run through areas if I want, should be pretty loving cool.

I started out on a pretty big peninsula, which I managed to wall off entirely with autocannon batteries at known attack points and occasional towers along the rest of the perimeter. I was thinking in the shower about how it would be a lot more convenient to have lighting at some of the remote killzones, and if I was going to run wire out there I might as well do it along the whole perimeter with a light at every pole. What is happening to me.

factorio. you can pause the game, but not your head.

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Mithaldu
Sep 25, 2007

Let's cuddle. :3:
I'd love it if the game was using weyland utani branding. It has everything to fit, including the :science: from alien creatures.

Node
May 20, 2001

KICKED IN THE COOTER
:dings:
Taco Defender
What is the basic solution to overflow on transport lines? I have a loop with coal, iron, and an assembly plant making gears, but the transport lines are going to be clogged up and have coal going to places where it won't be used (tech labs and such) and I'm not sure how to automate a solution to that yet.

Mithaldu
Sep 25, 2007

Let's cuddle. :3:
Don't mix things on the same lane on belts, it just doesn't work. Learn how to use splitters, inserters and underground belt entries to sort stuff onto the right belt side instead.

TehRedWheelbarrow
Mar 16, 2011



Fan of Britches

Node posted:

What is the basic solution to overflow on transport lines? I have a loop with coal, iron, and an assembly plant making gears, but the transport lines are going to be clogged up and have coal going to places where it won't be used (tech labs and such) and I'm not sure how to automate a solution to that yet.

https://wiki.factorio.com/index.php?title=Transport_belts

Here go for the basics.

zedprime
Jun 9, 2007

yospos

Node posted:

What is the basic solution to overflow on transport lines? I have a loop with coal, iron, and an assembly plant making gears, but the transport lines are going to be clogged up and have coal going to places where it won't be used (tech labs and such) and I'm not sure how to automate a solution to that yet.
75% of the time you only want one thing on each belt. The last 25% is dedicated local routes such as for science where it goes to a big science farm or production block where everything can use both things on the belt. Keep the sides segregated in that case.

Manage belt access by rushing logistics to get long inserters, underground belts, and splitter belts. Keep your forges clean: coal comes in on a belt, ore comes in on a belt (important for iron ore, KEEP IT ON THE SAME SIDE AS THE COAL BELT or else bad things happen when you research steel), a belt of plate comes out.

Keep trunks of common raws like iron and copper plate. Use splitters and underground belts to split off a branch from the trunk for a manufacturing line. If you are making an intermediate like gears, keep in mind how it might get ratioed out. Like for example if anything uses 1 gearwheel and takes 0.5 crafting time, you can make its own dedicated gear assembler and feed directly from the gear assembler to the product assembler without putting it on a belt. One gearwheel assembler can feed multiple red science assemblers, so you can stick it on a dedicated local belt headed to a string of the things.

TehRedWheelbarrow
Mar 16, 2011



Fan of Britches

zedprime posted:

75% of the time you only want one thing on each belt. The last 25% is dedicated local routes such as for science where it goes to a big science farm or production block where everything can use both things on the belt. Keep the sides segregated in that case.

Manage belt access by rushing logistics to get long inserters, underground belts, and splitter belts. Keep your forges clean: coal comes in on a belt, ore comes in on a belt (important for iron ore, KEEP IT ON THE SAME SIDE AS THE COAL BELT or else bad things happen when you research steel), a belt of plate comes out.

Keep trunks of common raws like iron and copper plate. Use splitters and underground belts to split off a branch from the trunk for a manufacturing line. If you are making an intermediate like gears, keep in mind how it might get ratioed out. Like for example if anything uses 1 gearwheel and takes 0.5 crafting time, you can make its own dedicated gear assembler and feed directly from the gear assembler to the product assembler without putting it on a belt. One gearwheel assembler can feed multiple red science assemblers, so you can stick it on a dedicated local belt headed to a string of the things.

untill you start getting the hang of the more weird ways to manipulate belts to put things on specific sides, split/combine things and such I wouldnt mix belts for a good while unless its multiple parts for one assembler

Ask me about how somehow steel got put all throughout my loving factory resulting in chopping half the lines.

zedprime
Jun 9, 2007

yospos

SneakyFrog posted:

untill you start getting the hang of the more weird ways to manipulate belts to put things on specific sides, split/combine things and such I wouldnt mix belts for a good while unless its multiple parts for one assembler

Ask me about how somehow steel got put all throughout my loving factory resulting in chopping half the lines.
That's the safe advice as you can probably launch a rocket with no mixed lanes ever. But its worth taking your medicine sooner rather than later because automating things with 4 ingredients takes some hijinx if you don't have shared belts.

Xerol
Jan 13, 2007


The only way I can think of making blue packs in any serious quantity without mixed* belts would be to have 2 belts on each side of the assemblers, and a 3-tile gap between each pair, with an underground belt feeding the finished products out from the middle.

I've started to use a common setup in new games I call the "utility bus", which is 3 belts and 2-3 rows of factories, something like this:

pre:
Copper/Iron>==============
[W] [C] [W] [C] [W] 
=====>Circuits/Gears>=====
[G] [G] [G] [G] [G]
Iron>=====================
The top belt is one lane of copper and one lane of iron. This spits circuits onto the bottom lane of the middle belt. The bottom belt is just iron, and spits gears onto the top lane of the middle belt. Then I just make all my "utility" products farther down the line, inserting more circuit/gear factories to keep the middle belt packed (and occasionally splicing in another belt of iron/copper as needed - this runs parallel to the main bus). Utility products include belts, splitters, underground belts, inserters, ammo, and later on down the line I can intersperse electric furnaces to make steel for things like power poles. The line can basically be extended indefinitely as long as there's enough supply on the main bus, and pretty much takes care of any product that doesn't need red circuits or oil products (which is actually pretty easy to add later with requester chests). The key point here is that the majority of these things only need iron, copper, circuits, and gears. Output goes to wooden (and later on, passive provider) chests via long inserters, outside the outer belts.

*And by mixed, I just mean one item on each lane of a belt, not just one jumbled belt with items randomly placed

Ak Gara
Jul 29, 2005

That's just the way he rolls.
Play > New Game > Start > ....Quit.

Kenlon
Jun 27, 2003

Digitus Impudicus

zedprime posted:

Who wants overcomplicated inventory control? I've got overcomplicated inventory control.

That's both Clever as gently caress and horrifying. If you're not producing as much of everything as your factory can manage, every single moment, you are Doing It Wrong. :colbert:

zedprime posted:

Manage belt access by rushing logistics to get long inserters, underground belts, and splitter belts. Keep your forges clean: coal comes in on a belt, ore comes in on a belt (important for iron ore, KEEP IT ON THE SAME SIDE AS THE COAL BELT or else bad things happen when you research steel), a belt of plate comes out.

Keeping your coal line on the same side as your ore input, or worse yet, on the same belt, is not a particularly good way to do it. For coal-fired smelting, you want this layout:



It has the advantage of being easy to add additional smelting columns to as you need more capacity without overfilling your output belts (or running your input belts out of ore). It also has no chance of cross-contamination between your coal and output lines, because the long inserter isn't facing a short inserter (ask me how I know about that problem). Here's a closer look:



Also, if you look at the leftmost column in the large image, you can see how the iron plate lines widen out - that's because there's another column of forty furnaces up there making steel - take the output lines of the iron smelting and turn them into the input lines of the steel column and Bob's your uncle.


zedprime posted:

That's the safe advice as you can probably launch a rocket with no mixed lanes ever. But its worth taking your medicine sooner rather than later because automating things with 4 ingredients takes some hijinx if you don't have shared belts.

If you need high throughput on something with four ingredients, it's simple to do without mixing belts:


Or you can put them two and two, top and bottom, and if you need really high input carrying capacity you can do three and three top and bottom and weave your output lines in between the assemblers, using underground belts to jump over the input lines. Sacrificing belt bandwidth to put multiple things on the same belt is convenient, but caps out how long you can make your assembler column, so it's a tradeoff.

zedprime
Jun 9, 2007

yospos
That's a lot of real neat high level stuff that I think I have applied accidentally in places and never learned how it might be better than ways I normally do it. I think I'd mostly settled on coal and ore co-sided because I never actually learned the trick to why that inserter placement you've got works over ones that don't.

A lot of my building ends up informed by being incredibly space conscious, maybe because I played Big Pharma first before ever touching this game. So even though I have the whole map to make big bus trunks and very orderly manufacturing lines branching off, I get really dense clusterfucks of woven belts and condensing things into the bare minimum belt footprint around an assembler. My rocket launch was almost entirely predicated around half of my factory being off at any given moment due to inventory management (the normal way with chest slots, not that logic car crash) or accidentally purposeful bottlenecks.

I've started working on an RSO game with the intent of getting really big wads of materials moving around and seeing how much smog weapons rockets I can really cram into the world.

Slickdrac
Oct 5, 2007

Not allowed to have nice things

Ak Gara posted:

Play > New Game > Start > ....Quit.



As least you knew it right away. One of my first games I played for about 6 hours before realizing I was on an island just big enough that wandering around the starting area didn't clear enough fog to tell. And I didn't know about landfill at the time (not that it would help in your case)

TehRedWheelbarrow
Mar 16, 2011



Fan of Britches
so is the multiplayer a co-op or competitive thingy? Is it able to be launched as a big persistent server that multiple idiots can play around in?

Xerol
Jan 13, 2007


Slickdrac posted:

As least you knew it right away. One of my first games I played for about 6 hours before realizing I was on an island just big enough that wandering around the starting area didn't clear enough fog to tell. And I didn't know about landfill at the time (not that it would help in your case)

If you had landfill installed at least you could cheat in a small handful of it.

Ak Gara
Jul 29, 2005

That's just the way he rolls.

Slickdrac posted:

As least you knew it right away. One of my first games I played for about 6 hours before realizing I was on an island just big enough that wandering around the starting area didn't clear enough fog to tell. And I didn't know about landfill at the time (not that it would help in your case)

No one will probably get this.

Qubee
May 31, 2013




dogstile posted:

It's probably I tend to load them up with a bunch of coal when I first make them so that's why its not loading it in. I only played through the tutorial maps so I didn't have enough time for anything to run out of coal. That solves that problem, i'll be onto the next later i'm sure.

Thanks!

When I first started, I had the same issue. Most inserters will only place items in an object if the inserted item is low enough. Inserters don't overstock an item (be it a furnace, assembly machine, boiler). If you stick 100 coal in a furnace, an inserter will only start putting coal in once the furnace's internal coal dips below 5, I think.

Dirk the Average
Feb 7, 2012

"This may have been a mistake."

Ak Gara posted:

No one will probably get this.



Much better as a gate - nobody used their last reagents on an unknown rune.

Garfu
Mar 6, 2008

Much like buttholes, families are meant to be tight.

Ak Gara posted:

No one will probably get this.



WTFMAN?

peepsalot
Apr 24, 2007

        PEEP THIS...
           BITCH!

GotLag posted:

I made a mod for this very reason:
https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?f=93&t=20645



You should also have a look at GDIW if you haven't already, it adds versions of refinery and chemical plant recipes with mirrored input/output/both:
https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?f=92&t=15315

Cool I'll definitely check that out. Still pretty new to this game and haven't tried any mods yet.

Solumin
Jan 11, 2013

Loopoo posted:

When I first started, I had the same issue. Most inserters will only place items in an object if the inserted item is low enough. Inserters don't overstock an item (be it a furnace, assembly machine, boiler). If you stick 100 coal in a furnace, an inserter will only start putting coal in once the furnace's internal coal dips below 5, I think.

The limit for fuel is 5, and the limit for assemblers is double the amount needed for the recipe. The wiki has more details.

TehRedWheelbarrow
Mar 16, 2011



Fan of Britches

Ak Gara posted:

No one will probably get this.



That is indeed my jam.

Node
May 20, 2001

KICKED IN THE COOTER
:dings:
Taco Defender

Ak Gara posted:

No one will probably get this.



One tile isle was the best rune ever. Gate someone gullible -> dispel the gate as soon as they go through it.

I would look for a picture but I'm honestly surprised "one tile isle" or "one tile isle uo" doesn't show it on Google.

Ratzap
Jun 9, 2012

Let no pie go wasted
Soiled Meat
One thing you may notice when building your power plants to the 1:14:10 ratio though is that the furthest out engines will have a small drop off in water amount, say 9.4 instead of the 9.9 in the front ones. If you split the water two ways at the head and put in a small pump on each line of now 7 boilers and 5 engines, you get 9.7 to 9.8 on the rear engine. It's not much of a difference but I use it in my standard blueprint and every little helps.

code:
      -SP-BBBBBBB-EEEEE
Off-
      -SP-BBBBBBB-EEEEE
Like that with the fuel and inserters between.

Ak Gara
Jul 29, 2005

That's just the way he rolls.
Huh. More cool people here than I thought. :v:

Garfu posted:

WTFMAN?

Imanewbie, I believe WTFMan currently plays on UOForever. Or at least posts on their forums.

TehRedWheelbarrow
Mar 16, 2011



Fan of Britches

Ak Gara posted:

Huh. More cool people here than I thought. :v:


Imanewbie, I believe WTFMan currently plays on UOForever. Or at least posts on their forums.

:catbert: old hally mage UO is best UO

FISHMANPET
Mar 3, 2007

Sweet 'N Sour
Can't
Melt
Steel Beams

Ratzap posted:

One thing you may notice when building your power plants to the 1:14:10 ratio though is that the furthest out engines will have a small drop off in water amount, say 9.4 instead of the 9.9 in the front ones. If you split the water two ways at the head and put in a small pump on each line of now 7 boilers and 5 engines, you get 9.7 to 9.8 on the rear engine. It's not much of a difference but I use it in my standard blueprint and every little helps.

code:
      -SP-BBBBBBB-EEEEE
Off-
      -SP-BBBBBBB-EEEEE
Like that with the fuel and inserters between.

This actually doesn't matter, because if you mouse over the boiler it's still at full potential, even if it's only getting 9.4 units of water instead of 9.9.

Ratzap
Jun 9, 2012

Let no pie go wasted
Soiled Meat

FISHMANPET posted:

This actually doesn't matter, because if you mouse over the boiler it's still at full potential, even if it's only getting 9.4 units of water instead of 9.9.

So you're saying the amount of water reaching the engines doesn't matter? I know the boilers are fine and the water is 100 degrees on all the engines but I remember a post from a while back on the factorio forums where the amount of water available to each engine mattered as well. I'll have to set up a load and check now, see if the production changes under full load.

Telarra
Oct 9, 2012

At any rate, by splitting the row like that you're doubling the amount of waterfront your power plant requires. Just add more rows, that final bit of water only matters if you're drawing a full load from your steam engines, and if you are something's wrong anyways.

FISHMANPET
Mar 3, 2007

Sweet 'N Sour
Can't
Melt
Steel Beams
The amount may matter at very low amounts, but I don't think it will matter at 9.4 vs 9.9

Ratzap
Jun 9, 2012

Let no pie go wasted
Soiled Meat

Moddington posted:

At any rate, by splitting the row like that you're doubling the amount of waterfront your power plant requires. Just add more rows, that final bit of water only matters if you're drawing a full load from your steam engines, and if you are something's wrong anyways.

I just loaded up a save and checked. I ran power from solar to the pump area but cut the factory off and shut down all other power sources to force a full load (the factory draws 14MW or so). The water amount is irrelevant so long as it doesn't reach zero. I was getting 5.1MW even with the back engines down to 4.8 water. So yes, I can switch to using straight lines.

Xerol
Jan 13, 2007


I think it's a boundary condition on tick (the water gets consumed first, then pumped in) so when it gets below however much it consumes per tick, there's not enough in there to make the full amount of power. I've actually found there's enough extra water (and heat) to be able to hook up a 21st engine behind each pair of engine banks, to squeeze out a little more power in the early game.

I also throw down an underground pipe between the 5th and 6th boilers in the line just to leave some room for traversing the power plant. Also a good spot to stick some turrets, especially if you can make it a chokepoint on the way to the boilers (biters love attacking the boilers early on).

concise
Aug 31, 2004

Ain't much to do
'round here.

Ak Gara posted:

No one will probably get this.



We can be friends I think. I miss UO sometimes.

Speedball
Apr 15, 2008

Clicking around the tech tree, I see electric boilers (for the steam engine) there. Do I ever get other types of power besides steam generators?

It looks like you can refine oil into a variety of products, which then can get refined into even more products, but common to all of them is fuel. I guess that replaces coal late-game?

My new factory is more organized than my last one but due to the terrain being weird I have to adapt my plans to what nature gave me; can't do that ultra-efficient scores-of-belts everywere thing yet. Getting there, though. My plan for laboratories is to automate the construction of red and green science bottles and put them on a revolving track going around in a circle around the labs.

Ak Gara
Jul 29, 2005

That's just the way he rolls.

concise posted:

We can be friends I think. I miss UO sometimes.

UOForever SA thread so we don't derail the Factorio thread too much. :v:
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3733735

scuba school sucks
Aug 30, 2012

The brilliance of my posting illuminates the forums like a jar of shining gold when all around is dark

Speedball posted:

Clicking around the tech tree, I see electric boilers (for the steam engine) there. Do I ever get other types of power besides steam generators?

It looks like you can refine oil into a variety of products, which then can get refined into even more products, but common to all of them is fuel. I guess that replaces coal late-game?

Eventually you can get solar power and accumulators. Solar panels just need steel and green circuits, but accumulators need batteries, so you have to set up petroleum refining first. Solar panels basically give you infinite electric energy for free, but you need accumulators to store the power.

Fuel is more energy-dense than coal, twice as powerful if I remember right. Once you have a petroleum refinery setup, you shouldn't burn coal, you should use it all to produce plastic and burn solid fuel in any place you were using coal before.

GotLag
Jul 17, 2005

食べちゃダメだよ
Underground belt pro-tip: if you want to be able to walk through, you don't need to leave an empty space. Have the pipe come back out of the ground in the very next square and there's still enough space between the hitboxes for you to walk through.

Solumin
Jan 11, 2013

Speedball posted:

Clicking around the tech tree, I see electric boilers (for the steam engine) there. Do I ever get other types of power besides steam generators?

It looks like you can refine oil into a variety of products, which then can get refined into even more products, but common to all of them is fuel. I guess that replaces coal late-game?

My new factory is more organized than my last one but due to the terrain being weird I have to adapt my plans to what nature gave me; can't do that ultra-efficient scores-of-belts everywere thing yet. Getting there, though. My plan for laboratories is to automate the construction of red and green science bottles and put them on a revolving track going around in a circle around the labs.

W-wait, electric boilers? These I do not recall. When do they unlock? (Edit: Or did you install a mod...?)

Solid fuel is ~3x more dense than coal (25 MJ versus 8 MJ), so you need less of it to power all of your boilers and furnaces. (This does not factor in the cost of actually producing solid fuel.) I usually don't bother using it unless I have a plethora of oil and my local coal fields are starting to run dry. It makes great fuel for vehicles though! You also need it for making rocket fuel later.

I strongly suggest not doing the loop of science. I did that in my first save and it was an evil clusterfuck that was hard to maintain, hard to extend and impossible to update. You can definitely make it one long track around the labs, but don't join it into a full circle!

Solumin fucked around with this message at 01:07 on Mar 25, 2016

Node
May 20, 2001

KICKED IN THE COOTER
:dings:
Taco Defender
Can biters spawn from anywhere to attack your base or will they always come from the direction of a spawner? I just lost a few buildings to them and want to know how to plan my defenses.

And I hope they don't swim.

Node fucked around with this message at 01:08 on Mar 25, 2016

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Ratzap
Jun 9, 2012

Let no pie go wasted
Soiled Meat

Roflex posted:

I think it's a boundary condition on tick (the water gets consumed first, then pumped in) so when it gets below however much it consumes per tick, there's not enough in there to make the full amount of power. I've actually found there's enough extra water (and heat) to be able to hook up a 21st engine behind each pair of engine banks, to squeeze out a little more power in the early game.

I also throw down an underground pipe between the 5th and 6th boilers in the line just to leave some room for traversing the power plant. Also a good spot to stick some turrets, especially if you can make it a chokepoint on the way to the boilers (biters love attacking the boilers early on).

I loaded up a late bobs game I have (large supplies of everything and loads of space so it's easy to muck around trying things out) and built out a line on stock items: iron pipe, boilers and steam engines. If I ran 2 lines of 14 on one offshore pump, half the engines ran out of water as you'd expect. If I do the same with the mk3 engines, it doesn't happen so they must use less water in addition to producing more power. Or the adjustment to make more power dropped the water usage as side effect.

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