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Honestly I'd just stick a requester chest for repair packs filling up various evenly-distributed roboports. Ensures they get spread out, and honestly repair packs are so cheap it's no big deal to build a few extras.
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Apr 1, 2016 15:45
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Jabor posted:Honestly I'd just stick a requester chest for repair packs filling up various evenly-distributed roboports. Ensures they get spread out, and honestly repair packs are so cheap it's no big deal to build a few extras. I don't feel that's really needed, though. I noticed with my repair pack distribution, construction bots would end up taking them to the frontlines where they were needed most. My outer roboports right next to the frontlines would always have 60 or so repairpacks in them, whilst my inner, safe roboports would have none. I feel like adding all those requester chests is just more hassle than it's worth.
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Apr 1, 2016 15:50
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Logistics Networks try to keep things sorted. If you have a lot of storage chests, it will try and keep one type of item per storage chest. So when you put something in an active provider chest, it will move those contents to the nearest storage chest that contains some of that item. I think Active chests are of limited use, but I usually keep a pile of them to unload wood and alien artifacts from my construction train. I'll also use them if I have a full steel chest that I want to move, I'll replace it with an active provider chest first to empty it out (construction bots can empty it out when you mark it for deconstruction, but I have a personal robots and then half the stuff ends up in my inventory if I do that). The idea of using Active providers to distribute repair packs would only work if you have nothing else ever entering your logistics network (aka never deconstruct anything) because as soon as you had a need for storage chests, all your repair packs would get dumped into those rather than in roboports. I use Provider chests to provide materials to factories that need a lot of throughput. Passive provider chests are fed by smart inserters from these factories. I set Logistics conditions to limit the number of items. As an example, I have an assembler that makes steel chests. I have a requester chest that requests 160 steel. I did this by Shift left clicking on the assembler with the chest recipie and shift right clicking on the provider chest. This will program the requestor chest for enough items for 2 of whatever the assembler makes, so in this case 16 steel. For items that produce slowly or I don't have a lot of the item in my network, I might keep it at that 2x ratio. For quick little things like chests where I would want a bunch at a time and also the resources are cheap, I usually manually add a 0 on all the values, so 160 steel. I then have a smart inserter unloading into a passive provider chest. I set the condition of [steel chests] < 199. That means as long as the number of steel chests in my network is less than 100, it will unload from the assembler into my chest. Doing it this way rather than limiting the the output size of the chest means that chests in other parts of the network will be counted against the total of 100, rather than what's strictly in that box. It also lets me output multiple assemblers into a single chest, or have multiple assemblers all building the same item. E: I keep 1000 repair backs at any given time, because if I go out on a bug hunting expedition, I might bring 500 with me, and I don't want to have to wait for those to be made. FISHMANPET fucked around with this message at 16:00 on Apr 1, 2016 |
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Apr 1, 2016 15:54
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Roflex posted:I tried this once and quickly ended up with about 200 storage chests completely full of the things. Haha, yeah, you gotta tell them to stop at some point or you end up like Mickey Mouse in the sorcerers apprentice. If you look inside a roboport, underneath the row at the top where it stores bots, there's a row for repair kits (it tells you if you hover over them). You want kits here.
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Apr 1, 2016 16:11
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Ratzap posted:A tank is not going to make it that much easier. Take turrets and AP if you don't want to string out poles for lasers. Take poison capsules if you're scared of worms but the turrets will kill them. The worms even warn you before they start spitting, when they rise up you have 2 or 3 paces before they fire. Plop down something for them to shoot at then move in and set up the firing squad. When it comes to building the small-production-run items like inserters and factory building items (power poles, assemblers, power generation, etc) I prefer doing the requester/provider chest with assemblers on either side. No reason to muck about with belts for something you only need 50 of. Granted, that doesn't take many robots once it's in steady-state but having the ability to instantly drain a full chest of items with 1000 bots is really handy.
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Apr 1, 2016 16:24
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Here's a question, or rather a quick straw poll. You've started a map, you've got red + green going but you're finding more and more that you built things too close or in the wrong place. It's all squished up and awkward to extend. Do you: 1) rip it all down and do it again properly 2) finish red + green science then tear it apart 3) muddle on and hope it'll be cool 4) scream in frustration, quit and start another map I tend to go with 2 mostly but shades of 3 I'm feeling lazy.
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Apr 1, 2016 16:24
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Ratzap posted:Here's a question, or rather a quick straw poll. You've started a map, you've got red + green going but you're finding more and more that you built things too close or in the wrong place. It's all squished up and awkward to extend. Do you: This is the problem I ran into too often, and since I've already done enough "progression" games I usually just spawn and console-reveal a bunch more of the map to avoid it. Otherwise, 3. I'd rather just start scraping together the resources needed for starting a new branch of the factory with more planning. If you don't end up cheating, once you get enough power to reliably keep radars up this makes a little more sense.
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Apr 1, 2016 16:28
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Active providers can also be really useful at train stations. If you set up your smelting lines and logistic storage chests to be next to your train stations, you can set it so that all trains carrying solid products stop there and unload everything into active providers. This also allows you to create trains that fill with mixed loads, since your stations can handle any ore and the bots will deal with it for you. It's pretty stressful on your robot network though, so it's really only an endgame thing, but it has the advantage of allowing you to monitor current ore counts for better ease of knowing when to get more trains.
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Apr 1, 2016 16:32
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Dirk the Average posted:Active providers can also be really useful at train stations. If you set up your smelting lines and logistic storage chests to be next to your train stations, you can set it so that all trains carrying solid products stop there and unload everything into active providers. This also allows you to create trains that fill with mixed loads, since your stations can handle any ore and the bots will deal with it for you. It's pretty stressful on your robot network though, so it's really only an endgame thing, but it has the advantage of allowing you to monitor current ore counts for better ease of knowing when to get more trains. I tried this in one save and it didn't seem to go very well for me. Might have been my implementation, but I went back to a belt-fed system pretty quickly. I also ship in plates instead of ore, and leave smelting out at the outposts so that might have something to do with it.
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Apr 1, 2016 16:36
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CanOfMDAmp posted:I tried this in one save and it didn't seem to go very well for me. Might have been my implementation, but I went back to a belt-fed system pretty quickly. I also ship in plates instead of ore, and leave smelting out at the outposts so that might have something to do with it. You need a lot of bots and logistic robot tech to make a robot train station work. And I mean seriously a lot. Take the number you're thinking of and multiply it by ten. You also need to enough roboports to charge the bots fast enough that they can keep unloading. As far as I can tell, no-one has actually done any numbers on how many you'd need for this.
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Apr 1, 2016 17:09
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Ratzap posted:Here's a question, or rather a quick straw poll. You've started a map, you've got red + green going but you're finding more and more that you built things too close or in the wrong place. It's all squished up and awkward to extend. Do you: Leave it running to provide science then go set up a new base and do it right this time.
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Apr 1, 2016 17:21
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New Friday Facts; not much news patch-wise, but Phone Factorio is looking like A thing.
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Apr 1, 2016 17:25
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Royal W posted:New Friday Facts; not much news patch-wise, but Phone Factorio is looking like A thing. Their proposed business model sure is ... a thing. I can understand wanting to actually earn something from it, but it seems like a more traditional freemium buy-a-bucket-of-resources or instantly unlock a tech or that sort of thing (buy god modules with iaps?) would both be more profitable and less defeating-the-entire-point-of-the-game.
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Apr 1, 2016 17:34
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All 3 all day baby  Factorio is best played, multiplayer, by people from the whole skill spectrum: you gotta have the day 1 newbie, the "blue sci is too hard" guy, the "I got blue sci mostly figured out" guy, and "1 rocket/minute" guy playing together with the caveat that nobody is allowed to mess with something someone else made. The base turned to a horrible garbage mess over the course of the game and we loved it. The initial greenchip belt split and merged three separate times, without any extra input assemblers. Jabor posted:Their proposed business model sure is ... a thing. I'd pay a nickel a module, maybe. Drop a quarter and outfit an assembler with good poo poo to get rid of a headache, sure. Evilreaver fucked around with this message at 17:39 on Apr 1, 2016 |
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Apr 1, 2016 17:36
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Discharge defense sucks.Ratzap posted:Here's a question, or rather a quick straw poll. You've started a map, you've got red + green going but you're finding more and more that you built things too close or in the wrong place. It's all squished up and awkward to extend. Do you: Mostly 3. That's half the fun.
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Apr 1, 2016 17:38
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FISHMANPET posted:As an example, I have an assembler that makes steel chests. I have a requester chest that requests 160 steel. I did this by Shift left clicking on the assembler with the chest recipie and shift right clicking on the provider chest. This will program the requestor chest for enough items for 2 of whatever the assembler makes, so in this case 16 steel. I never knew this! Thanks so much man. Got so fed up of using requester chests and the default amount being much higher than I need (green circuits, I'm looking at you, you lil fuckers!) Ratzap posted:Here's a question, or rather a quick straw poll. You've started a map, you've got red + green going but you're finding more and more that you built things too close or in the wrong place. It's all squished up and awkward to extend. Do you: I do 2, early-game for me is always spaghetti-ville. So unefficient and ugly. Once I've unlocked most green techs, I tear it all down with the help of a roboport and constructor bots, and then build my main efficient base from the ground up.
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Apr 1, 2016 17:39
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I keep my science on one side of the bus and build towards the ratio 5/6/12/1 (red/green/blue/purple) per 10 labs. It keeps the clutter down and I don't have to modify it too much. The clutter started building up elsewhere along the bus and I sort of just gritted my teeth and planned around it instead of losing all hope and maybe starting over like I've done in the past. Worked out pretty well, so long as I don't need to expand production for certain things! I'm a "I got blue sci mostly figured out" guy, content in letting the rocket silo slowly grind its way towards 100% completion mainly because I didn't realize the requirements was for 1% progress each. Next playthrough I know exactly what I'd need to gun towards after blue science: a lot more steel, faster and a more dedicated speed module production, better ratios for processing units, and some dedicated location for rocket fuel.
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Apr 1, 2016 17:48
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Jabor posted:Their proposed business model sure is ... a thing. what day is today
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Apr 1, 2016 17:53
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Ratzap posted:Here's a question, or rather a quick straw poll. You've started a map, you've got red + green going but you're finding more and more that you built things too close or in the wrong place. It's all squished up and awkward to extend. Do you: I am currently running numbers on a design basis to plan for known science production and a little excess for making infrastructure, so I can finally live my dream of a factory where all the belts carry exactly what they need to instead of being really long chests.
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Apr 1, 2016 17:57
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President Ark posted:what day is today Hush, they'll work it out eventually. So far we're all in the 2 or 3 camp. Interesting.
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Apr 1, 2016 18:20
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zedprime posted:Always 3. You can get anything from anywhere to anywhere, its just a matter of underground belts. All the better if you accidentally spin all the green circuits in a circle because you make up the original, and then you forget when you use the original to make up the newer lines. This is the polishing a turd method, it'll always be a turd. I'd rather quickly rip the bandaid off to shorten the amount of time I'm in pain, than slowly peel it off. Bases that are messy and squashed together are an absolute nightmare to expand. Sooner or later, it'll hinder you to the point where you're better off starting from scratch.
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Apr 1, 2016 18:20
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Apr 1, 2016 18:20
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For me it's usually 4 (minus the screaming because I like the early-game the most), but sometimes 3. I have like a dozen half-started saves. This game is really exacerbating my autism.
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Apr 1, 2016 18:33
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Jabor posted:You need a lot of bots and logistic robot tech to make a robot train station work. And I mean seriously a lot. Take the number you're thinking of and multiply it by ten. Reasons I've been considering making a 16-port charge-only entity in a mod. Not being able to charge more than 4 at a time is extremely obnoxious.
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Apr 1, 2016 18:54
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Loopoo posted:This is the polishing a turd method, it'll always be a turd. I'd rather quickly rip the bandaid off to shorten the amount of time I'm in pain, than slowly peel it off. But why rip up the old one if it is still sort of working? Just go and build a new base and let the old one putter along.
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Apr 1, 2016 19:18
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CanOfMDAmp posted:Reasons I've been considering making a 16-port charge-only entity in a mod. Not being able to charge more than 4 at a time is extremely obnoxious. Bob's mods has something similar with charging pads that handle 9 robots at a time. It is obnoxious to drop too many ports, but in the game where I'm managing ore/trains with bots, I have around 30 ports in that area. It's overkill, but it works.
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Apr 1, 2016 19:20
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Ratzap posted:Here's a question, or rather a quick straw poll. You've started a map, you've got red + green going but you're finding more and more that you built things too close or in the wrong place. It's all squished up and awkward to extend. Do you: Usually 3, 4 if it's bad enough and I really don't see a future for it. Seeing how far you can go when poo poo is already hosed is the fun part! For some reason my current save doesn't have nearly enough coal on it. We had a couple brownouts and decided gently caress it, we're switching to solid fuel. So now our electrical system is fed entirely by solid fuel the whole refinery is powered by its own electrical network, so we should be safe from brownouts (until we run out of crude.)I strongly recommend doing this (the separate network, I mean) whenever you're using steam engines. If you do it right, you can have your boilers' fuel supply and loading inserters isolated on their own miniature power network, ensuring that overconsumption won't shut down your whole grid.
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Apr 1, 2016 19:26
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I've seen some people insist on using burner inserters for the steam engine boilers, just so that in the case of a brown-out the inserters don't fail and the rest of the system gets back on-line faster. Probably goes through coal a lot faster, though.
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Apr 1, 2016 19:34
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I'm trying a no steam engines at all map now. All I have is solar and wind. It's pretty slow going.
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Apr 1, 2016 19:38
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Solumin posted:To clarify, that's 50 to 100 bots as an upper limit on how many your network can comfortably support without having too many robots queueing up to recharge. You almost never need that many actual robots, though I anticipate some goon will show us their factory that uses 6000 logistics robots as the only method for moving materials. I don't like using logistics bots as a replacement for belts, but when you do need like (like, for example, when you need to relocate a bunch of your buffer storage), you want a lot of them. Set up automated production and let it run forever - 5K+ bots is a good starting point. Speedball posted:I've seen some people insist on using burner inserters for the steam engine boilers, just so that in the case of a brown-out the inserters don't fail and the rest of the system gets back on-line faster. Probably goes through coal a lot faster, though. If you use the long-handed inserter setup for your boilers, you can use burners for the first stage, guaranteeing that as long as you have fuel, you will have power. 
Kenlon fucked around with this message at 19:41 on Apr 1, 2016 |
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Apr 1, 2016 19:39
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Speedball posted:I've seen some people insist on using burner inserters for the steam engine boilers, just so that in the case of a brown-out the inserters don't fail and the rest of the system gets back on-line faster. Probably goes through coal a lot faster, though. It's not that much faster. Keep in mind that you burn less coal in your furnaces since non-burner inserters have an idling power consumption and you still have to pay for their power usage through boilers. The costs are tiny, but they do exist.
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Apr 1, 2016 19:45
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In my first freeplay I built a horrific abomination of a base to get up to drone tech and then went watching some videos for ideas on how to make buses work. I then built a proper smelting input line with full buses, redirected a tiny bit of ore from the original base to make sure everything worked, then once I had it online I ran what I called a "compatibility" or "legacy" belt from the main output of my new shiny smelting operation into the original base, mimicking how it took iron/copper in, and disconnected all the random scattered smelters. Over time as I brought better tech online in my better-designed factory I tore it out of the original, until eventually I didn't have anything there but some chests and a roboport. The only downside is that now I have this enormous beltway with about six thousand iron/copper going nowhere. My next target is railways. I'm not playing with RSO though so I keep ending up going "well, I can just run this on a belt, so why not?" .. eventually I'll find something far enough out to need a train. Also, even with buses, my new base is kind of a wreck. Lots of times I'll go "well, most of the materials to make X are around here, so I'll just snake them all around ..." and it works but it's becoming kind of a mess. I'm sort of glad that just seeing someone else who's solved all these problems (Arumba) didn't remove the fun of working out solutions for myself - I still make lots of mistakes, but there are small "best practices" I picked up, like using splitters instead of inserters in most places, using lots more underground pipes, and so on. Those make it easy to knock out a design for something I need without spending a bunch of time just looking for space in the current design - "how can I even get copper over here???" is no longer a question, it's more like "do I really want to run red circuits underneath my entire central bus for this factory, or should I just use a requester chest?". Belt-based solutions are also significantly more fun to engineer; bot-based solutions are way too simple. I find myself engineering hybrid solutions a lot - my blue science production ended up with two of its ingredients being belt-fed and the other two bot-fed because of the aforementioned "running belts under the entire bus" aversion. I can't wait to see what my next factory looks like. I'm already 24 hours deep into this save.
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Apr 1, 2016 20:03
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Get your feet wet with a simple train with an engine on the front and back that goes from one end of the track to the other and back again. You don't even need signals since there's just one train. You'll learn how to load and unload a train, and you can always just make single dedicated lines for the first few deposits. Later on, make a new game with RSO and mods like Fat Controller and FARL.
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Apr 1, 2016 20:12
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Speedball posted:I've seen some people insist on using burner inserters for the steam engine boilers, just so that in the case of a brown-out the inserters don't fail and the rest of the system gets back on-line faster. Probably goes through coal a lot faster, though. My problem with brownouts has always been: 1. Start consuming too much power. 2. The coal mines feeding the boilers slow down due to insufficient power. 3. Not enough coal reaches a boiler. It goes out. 4. The problem cascades. More and more boilers run out of fuel, leading to less efficient power production. The mines are barely grinding out any coal. The whole factory is in the red. Burner inserters or electric inserters, it all comes back to the mines.
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Apr 1, 2016 20:35
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Solumin posted:My problem with brownouts has always been: So what you're saying is use burner drills exclusively for mining coal, and have a portion of their product loop back around to feed them.
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Apr 1, 2016 20:37
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I just keep a stash of coal for when I need to 'jumpstart' my steam engines
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Apr 1, 2016 20:38
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Solumin posted:Burner inserters or electric inserters, it all comes back to the mines. Put a buffer chest in front of each boiler as a final reserve - even if you end up with no fuel coming it, that should provide you with time to fix it.
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Apr 1, 2016 21:40
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Kenlon posted:Put a buffer chest in front of each boiler as a final reserve - even if you end up with no fuel coming it, that should provide you with time to fix it. Yeah the problem is that this just delays me noticing the problem. I need some sort of system where a red light turns on when the coal in the buffer chests goes below a certain point... colored lights can't get here fast enough. e: that is, it doesn't help, because it isn't "I'm out of coal" that I notice, it's "my inserters are moving in slow motion", which is what happens after I've been out of coal long enough to clear the buffers.
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Apr 1, 2016 21:54
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Dessert Rose posted:Yeah the problem is that this just delays me noticing the problem. I might start experimenting with using smart inserters onto a warning loop, if coal supplies dip below X, start filling the loop with coal or another signal material. Stick a blue inserter at the end, into the chest the smart inserter pulls from and you have a contained signal loop. Stick it somewhere high traffic and if you see coal on the warning loop, you know you need coal.
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Apr 1, 2016 22:02
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Exactly. Every solution that isn't "keep coal throughput high enough, always" is just delaying the problem. Of course, you could keep track of your electricity and always stay on top of building more engines, setting up a fresh coal mine when the current one runs low, etc. -- but with everything else going on in the game, babysitting the power grid takes up too much time. It's better to have a robust solution like a separate, secondary grid.
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Apr 1, 2016 22:10
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