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The Locator
Sep 12, 2004

Out here, everything hurts.





RVWinkle posted:

I really should do the math but I have a hard time when adding beacons in the mix. Will 3 belts be enough and how do you beacon it?

With a very few exceptions I really haven't done much with beacons in this (my 2nd) factory, as nothing was designed for it. My rocket silo and I think a blue circuit line are the only places I've really got beacons placed, and the rocket silo is the only place where multiple beacons act on a single structure.

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Dancer
May 23, 2011

Microcline posted:

I was thinking earlier about hybrid power generation (basically solar during the day and coal or nuclear at night, possibly with some steam buffering) and I found something unusual about solar panels and accumulators. While accumulators require more tech and infrastructure (mostly for the batteries), the panels consume almost 3 times as many resources as the accumulators. So there's not much of a reason to use solar without accumulators.

I wonder what would happen if the ratio was reversed so that like in real life generating solar power is cheaper than storing it. Something like instead of

5 Copper + 15 Green Chip + 5 Steel : 5 Battery + 2 Iron

it was something like

2 Copper + 10 Green Chip + 2 Steel : 5 Battery + 30 Iron

This would keep the total cost of an accumulator'd array roughly the same while having a cost ratio of closer to 3:4. It'd give more of a reason to get creative with solar panels instead of always building them with exactly .84 accumulators.

I'm playing with the "Realistic Power" mod. It makes all power production generally more expensive per watt, and it also makes accumulators relatively significantly more expensive (but still not overtaking panels)
Panel: 2 Copper + 2 Steel + 10 Green (= 37.5 plates)
High Capacity accumulator: 6 Iron + 15 Battery (=36 plates + some sulfur)
High Power accu: 4 Iron + 10 Battery (= 24 plates + some sulfur)

Mithaldu
Sep 25, 2007

Let's cuddle. :3:
Ugh, is there a mod to make the biter slime more visible? I die more often by stepping into puddles than actually fighting.

Relatedly: Can FARL be permanently on on a train and repair track segments that are broken?

LLSix
Jan 20, 2010

The real power behind countless overlords

FISHMANPET posted:

OK, another problem I'm trying to solve. I've got a supply train, and I'm trying to load it up. I want one train car to hold 12 different cargos, but because of track placement, I can only use 11 chests. So trying to figure out how I can program the inserters to feed two different items. The problem is that they keep grabbing the first item until the train is full, and then just hang out with the full hand over the car, waiting for a spot to open up, so it never grabs the second item out of the chest. Is there some way (that won't involve building an enormous counting computer) to make the hands smarter?

Two easy fixes:

Use two train cars.

Lay track so the car isn't on a curve/otherwise blocking placing a 12th chest.

Reverend Dr
Feb 9, 2005

Thanks Reverend



Mid-game jury rigged supply train. You can get more than 12 chests per cart, but you'll only have red inserter throughput. So carefully choose which item types you do this with.


Inserting multiple item types from a single chest suffers from the problem of once an inserter has something in its hand it won't let go until it can place it. If an inserter on one of those multi item chests does this, then you won't get any of those item types and it won't clear until its cleared manually. If you override inserter stack size a lot of the jamming goes away, but also that means your throughput is killed as inserters will take move 1 item at a time.

And I don't think there has been a non-jamming solution to this even with complex circuit networks. It would have to 100% correctly predict every inserter swing will finish with no room for error, even a single tick.

Reverend Dr fucked around with this message at 02:58 on Apr 10, 2019

bus hustler
Mar 14, 2019

Someone was asking for "factorio but more when you finish" and this is basically that: https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?f=190&t=61423

Like a lot of the mod packs you can download specific ones if you find you don't like some. It works with .17 but isn't fully updated, some level 4 things can be made without the level 3 prereq, etc. The dev will get around to it at some point though, he's active.

Also https://mods.factorio.com/user/Hiladdar Hiladdar's mods are pretty much just an extension.

bus hustler fucked around with this message at 04:53 on Apr 10, 2019

pumpinglemma
Apr 28, 2009

DD: Fondly regard abomination.

Reverend Dr posted:



Mid-game jury rigged supply train. You can get more than 12 chests per cart, but you'll only have red inserter throughput. So carefully choose which item types you do this with.


Inserting multiple item types from a single chest suffers from the problem of once an inserter has something in its hand it won't let go until it can place it. If an inserter on one of those multi item chests does this, then you won't get any of those item types and it won't clear until its cleared manually. If you override inserter stack size a lot of the jamming goes away, but also that means your throughput is killed as inserters will take move 1 item at a time.

And I don't think there has been a non-jamming solution to this even with complex circuit networks. It would have to 100% correctly predict every inserter swing will finish with no room for error, even a single tick.
Could you not use a circuit network to drop the inserter stack size only when the relevant slot is almost full? That wouldn’t need much precision, and it should do better than long inserter throughput at least.

VictualSquid
Feb 29, 2012

Gently enveloping the target with indiscriminate love.

pumpinglemma posted:

Could you not use a circuit network to drop the inserter stack size only when the relevant slot is almost full? That wouldn’t need much precision, and it should do better than long inserter throughput at least.
This would only work if you only want to transfer one type of input. Otherwise you need ludicrously complicated logic.

Ixjuvin
Aug 8, 2009

if smug was a motorcycle, it just jumped over a fucking canyon
Nap Ghost
Returning but newbie player here (the last time I really played Factorio the rocket defense was just a square placeholder graphic), i just got to crude oil and am kind of paralyzed by how obnoxious it is to route pipes. I spent my first few packets of blue science to unlock advanced processing, but I'm not really sure what i should be building - should i even bother thinking about how much i can support on the back of my 4 oil wells, or just build one of each product to get the assembly lines going? Also with red chips online I can build roboports and whatnot, what is a good early task to set my new robits to?

ymgve
Jan 2, 2004


:dukedog:
Offensive Clock
To route pipes easier: Build with more distance between buildings, and use lots of underground pipes. Like, you should only use pipes above ground if absolutely necessarry.

Scorps
Feb 24, 2008

Oh, lighten up Mr. Dooms-and-Gloom, "embezzle" is metal.

Ixjuvin posted:

Returning but newbie player here (the last time I really played Factorio the rocket defense was just a square placeholder graphic), i just got to crude oil and am kind of paralyzed by how obnoxious it is to route pipes. I spent my first few packets of blue science to unlock advanced processing, but I'm not really sure what i should be building - should i even bother thinking about how much i can support on the back of my 4 oil wells, or just build one of each product to get the assembly lines going? Also with red chips online I can build roboports and whatnot, what is a good early task to set my new robits to?

The quick and easy answer to Oil is basically use petroleum to make sulphiric acid and plastic, until you unlock adv processing make solid fuel from heavy and light in order to keep the products flowing. The part that is confusing about oil is that it won't generate new products until you've taken all of all 3 products out of it so you either need to consume all 3 types or have a lot of liquid storage so it can flow out of the refinery and be stored. If it keeps stopping because it has too much heavy oil, start making solid fuel from heavy until it runs smoothly again.

Once you unlock advanced processing you can basically just crack everything into petroleum since it's the most useful product, I think the ratio is like 10 refineries to 8 light oil crackers to 1 (maybe 2?) heavy oil crackers

You don't really need to worry about the capacity of the oilfield, just throw a pumpjack on every oil spot and connect all the outputs. Oil never runs out it just weakens in flow basically.

As for pipes try putting all your refineries in a line and connect the outputs of similar products in a way such as this, you can see all the undergrounds of all the various outputs essentially link them all together: https://imgur.com/ajh35Mi

2 pipes of the same liquid can't touch but an underground pipe can touch whatever. I assume hopefully you are playing on .17 with the new fluids, I do not have much experience with .16 fluids but I know they were a significantly larger pain in the rear end and could accidentally mix together

Scorps fucked around with this message at 23:37 on Apr 10, 2019

Olesh
Aug 4, 2008

Why did the circus close?

A long, chilling list of animal rights violations.

Ixjuvin posted:

Returning but newbie player here (the last time I really played Factorio the rocket defense was just a square placeholder graphic), i just got to crude oil and am kind of paralyzed by how obnoxious it is to route pipes. I spent my first few packets of blue science to unlock advanced processing, but I'm not really sure what i should be building - should i even bother thinking about how much i can support on the back of my 4 oil wells, or just build one of each product to get the assembly lines going? Also with red chips online I can build roboports and whatnot, what is a good early task to set my new robits to?

Routing pipes gets a little more tolerable if you primarily use undergrounds whenever possible.

Most of what you will initially care about from oil (i.e., plastic and to a somewhat lesser degree sulfur) comes from petroleum gas. However, basic oil processing gives you a return of 30 heavy, 30 light, and 40 petroleum gas, and if you are only really consuming petroleum gas, your refineries will get backed up with excess heavy and/or light oil, and stop processing crude, meaning no more petroleum gas, meaning no more plastic.

Until you get access to Advanced Oil Processing (and, later, Coal Liquefaction), your options for consuming heavy and light oil (to free up space to obtain more petroleum gas) are basically limited to:

1: Build more holding tanks for Heavy and Light oil (no practical value beyond temporarily extending the length of time you are producing petroleum before it fills up)
2: Convert Heavy/Light oil into solid fuel (DO THIS)

Blue science requires solid fuel anyways, so it's a really good idea to start producing lots of solid fuel (to make sure you don't get backed up on heavy/light oil). You'll eventually get backed up on solid fuel if you don't consume it, so you can phase out coal as a fuel and just start using solid fuel for everything - the main goal here is to make sure that petroleum keeps flowing for those delicious delicious plastics and sulfur.

"Early" robots, meaning what you have access to with only red and green science, allow you to start taking advantage of construction robots, meaning you can set things up such that you no longer need to be physically present to construct things, and can use blueprints to lay down large constructions quickly and let your robots handle the task of actually retrieving the materials and placing them - useful for easily-tiled constructions and/or extending existing already-built sections of your base further.

To be of use, construction robots need a few things:
- Contiguous roboport coverage of all applicable areas, but more specifically:
- Roboport access to any entity "ghosts" to construct them (such as the "ghosts" created by placing down a blueprint)
- Roboport access to a logistic chest within the same logistic network that contains the objects to be constructed.
- Available construction robots within the network

Additionally, construction robots will automatically attempt to replace destroyed items within their coverage area (if replacements can be found within the network) and will automatically attempt to repair damaged items within their coverage area (if there are roboports with repair packs within the same logistics network).

In short, if you place down a "ghost" yellow inserter within roboport coverage, a construction robot will be tasked to go retrieve a a yellow inserter from the closest logistics chest, fly it over to the "ghost" inserter, and put it in place. This may seem slow and crude at first, but each roboport can hold hundreds of robots, freeing you up from having to manually place repetitive constructions (such as a row of smelters) and allowing you to design and reuse blueprints for any commonly used constructions without the need to actually carry hundreds of materials around on you at all times.

Reverend Dr
Feb 9, 2005

Thanks Reverend

pumpinglemma posted:

Could you not use a circuit network to drop the inserter stack size only when the relevant slot is almost full? That wouldn’t need much precision, and it should do better than long inserter throughput at least.

Would need to have access to a signal of the train's cargo max, combined contents of each inserter hand, contents of train. Subtract the latter 2 from the former, have filter inserters take their whitelist from the result (would likely have to have something split this), have something that modifies the stack size down so that it is never greater than the signal, but still in the end, if two inserters are synced up (and station inserters usually are), then they will both take on the same tick before the system has a chance to work and you get a jam. You'd have to have a thing that recalculates for each inserter down the chain, such that they all swing on different ticks.

So for a mid-game jury rigged supply train, that I change the contents of regularly (necessitating changing the circuit network), its not something I'm going to do. Also my mid-game jury rigged supply trains are the only real time that I end up using more than 12 different items per wagon.

With the crazy stuff that is possible in this game, it sure seems like this should be easily doable, but without some change to inserter behavior I don't think there is going to be a real way to do this (and I also don't think its worth changing inserter behavior for this fringe case).

Ambaire
Sep 4, 2009

by Shine
Oven Wrangler

Reverend Dr posted:

if two inserters are synced up (and station inserters usually are), then they will both take on the same tick before the system has a chance to work and you get a jam.

Have each inserter transfer a different set of items? AssemblyStorm's factorio server has some semi automated build train setups where you set what you want loaded in constant combinators and requester chests request that many items and it gets loaded onto the train. Excess or non matching items are automatically removed by filter inserters on the other side of the train, into active provider chests.

Ixjuvin
Aug 8, 2009

if smug was a motorcycle, it just jumped over a fucking canyon
Nap Ghost

Scorps posted:

As for pipes try putting all your refineries in a line and connect the outputs of similar products in a way such as this, you can see all the undergrounds of all the various outputs essentially link them all together: https://imgur.com/ajh35Mi

2 pipes of the same liquid can't touch but an underground pipe can touch whatever. I assume hopefully you are playing on .17 with the new fluids, I do not have much experience with .16 fluids but I know they were a significantly larger pain in the rear end and could accidentally mix together

Thanks for the replies guys, this in particular looks pretty useful. I think I'm just trying to build spaghetti in a small space for literally no reason and just need to spread out a little more.

Royal W
Jun 20, 2008

Ixjuvin posted:

Thanks for the replies guys, this in particular looks pretty useful. I think I'm just trying to build spaghetti in a small space for literally no reason and just need to spread out a little more.

Wanting to be space efficient isn't necessarily a bad thing, but do keep in mind that space is infinite, so its only real value is tied to the time it takes to cross.

The Locator
Sep 12, 2004

Out here, everything hurts.





Ixjuvin posted:

Thanks for the replies guys, this in particular looks pretty useful. I think I'm just trying to build spaghetti in a small space for literally no reason and just need to spread out a little more.

I understand this completely. My entire core factory is crowded spaghetti because I didn't really understand how things would scale as the factory grew, and I just naturally tried to fit everything into the smallest space possible, for no real reason other than it just seemed like the thing to do!

comedyblissoption
Mar 15, 2006

You can dump fluids you don't know what to do with into big storage tanks until you figure out a need for them later.

KirbyKhan
Mar 20, 2009



Soiled Meat

comedyblissoption posted:

You can dump fluids you don't know what to do with into big storage tanks until you figure out a need for them later.

When it fills up you can STORE MORE and build more tanks or you can shoot the tank and void the liquid. It is a philosophical choice.

The Locator
Sep 12, 2004

Out here, everything hurts.





I think the oil stuff is one of the must frustrating things in the game. Everything else if it backs up, no big deal, but if anything from oil backs up it breaks everything.

As I'm scaling up my base for more and more science, I am running into issues with solid fuel, because the production rate from oil is so unsteady due to it switching on and off. I doubled my blue science production, and now keeping the solid fuel supply is a pain in the rear end.

If I turn off my rocket fuel production from the solid fuel from my oil, then the demand for solid fuel is too low from just the science, and it eventually backs up and shuts everything down, cutting off my plastic and sulphuric acid (batteries) production. If I leave the rocket fuel on, then it uses too much and eventually the fluid levels drop to where the pumps start cycling off and then everything on the solid fuel line starves until the fluids build back up enough for the pumps to come back on.

Nothing else in the game (at least that I can think of) in vanilla is a pain in the rear end like this. Sure, resources run out, but you just source more, and if you source too much of something it's not big deal, the trains just sit idle with loads until they are needed.

I need to figure out the perfect balance of number of rocket fuel assemblers to keep online, but the cycles happen so slow that it's a pain to figure out using my 'no math' system of just observing things and fixing what's broken.

I did finally get rid of my original 32 science labs in the center of my spaghetti base and replaced them with this new giant stretched science racetrack.



Someday I'll look into designs for beaconing stuff beyond randomly here or there where I find room, but not this factory.

necrotic
Aug 2, 2005
I owe my brother big time for this!
Don't even have to shoot it,just deconstruct it.

KirbyKhan
Mar 20, 2009



Soiled Meat

necrotic posted:

Don't even have to shoot it,just deconstruct it.

But then how would I void my starting ammo?

UraniumAnchor
May 21, 2006

Not a walrus.

KirbyKhan posted:

But then how would I void my starting ammo?

Put it in a box and shoot it.

Asciana
Jun 16, 2008

The Locator posted:

I think the oil stuff is one of the must frustrating things in the game. Everything else if it backs up, no big deal, but if anything from oil backs up it breaks everything.

As I'm scaling up my base for more and more science, I am running into issues with solid fuel, because the production rate from oil is so unsteady due to it switching on and off. I doubled my blue science production, and now keeping the solid fuel supply is a pain in the rear end.

If I turn off my rocket fuel production from the solid fuel from my oil, then the demand for solid fuel is too low from just the science, and it eventually backs up and shuts everything down, cutting off my plastic and sulphuric acid (batteries) production. If I leave the rocket fuel on, then it uses too much and eventually the fluid levels drop to where the pumps start cycling off and then everything on the solid fuel line starves until the fluids build back up enough for the pumps to come back on.

Nothing else in the game (at least that I can think of) in vanilla is a pain in the rear end like this. Sure, resources run out, but you just source more, and if you source too much of something it's not big deal, the trains just sit idle with loads until they are needed.

I need to figure out the perfect balance of number of rocket fuel assemblers to keep online, but the cycles happen so slow that it's a pain to figure out using my 'no math' system of just observing things and fixing what's broken.

I did finally get rid of my original 32 science labs in the center of my spaghetti base and replaced them with this new giant stretched science racetrack.


Someday I'll look into designs for beaconing stuff beyond randomly here or there where I find room, but not this factory.

KatherineofSky has some great videos on oil production stuff using switches.

RVWinkle
Aug 24, 2004

In relating the circumstances which have led to my confinement within this refuge for the demented, I am aware that my present position will create a natural doubt of the authenticity of my narrative.
Nap Ghost

Asciana posted:

KatherineofSky has some great videos on oil production stuff using switches.

Oil production is one of the first places where you really need to get a handle on basic circuit conditions and it's pretty interesting once you figure it out.

CRISPYBABY
Dec 15, 2007

by Reene
Yesterday I wired circuits to stop chests from filling up all the way and then remembered I could just X out inventory spots on them.

(I've barely used circuits)

(This is my first real playthrough)

I definitely know I could read/watch tutorials to fix a million inefficiencies but I like the feeling of stumbling around blindly with my own garbage solutions, for now. If I get to a game two I'll prolly polish things up.

concise
Aug 31, 2004

Ain't much to do
'round here.

KirbyKhan posted:

But then how would I void my starting ammo?

Feed it into the factory cell that produces your military science

The Locator
Sep 12, 2004

Out here, everything hurts.





Asciana posted:

KatherineofSky has some great videos on oil production stuff using switches.

I'm using switches, but that's exactly what causes the cycling of production in the solid fuel. As the tanks fill up, solid fuel production gets higher and higher as the different fluids begin getting cracked to make solid fuel, so if you don't have enough solid fuel consumption to handle all the petroleum production you need (i.e. consume enough light and heavy oil), then eventually the solid fuel backs up into the cracking and stops everything.

My problem is trying to balance the consumption of the solid fuel to a place where the science isn't starved for solid fuel because I'm using too much, but it never backs up into the crackers and shuts everything down. I was using buffers for a long time, and I may go back to doing that but it seems like such a cheesy solution. Prior to nuclear power it was pretty easy to just use the solid fuel to power my steam plants, but then if something happened to upset the oil balance my power would shut down.

I guess that's part of the draw of this game, is the careful balancing game you are always playing, but oil is just tricky for me as the fluids are just much harder to determine if things are balanced correctly as I can't directly observe the flow rates like you can with a belt-bus of solids, as it takes a long time if things are 'close' to balanced to see the tanks change from say 21k to either 22k or 20k to show if I'm gaining or losing that particular fluid. I wish that the mouseover would display exact amounts like it does below 1k fluid so I could just observe for a bit with everything running to see how it's going to go.

I set up my coal liquefaction -> plastic by observing the level in a heavy oil tank that I added, and once I had it on a slight increase over time, then I added a second heavy to light cracker and put it on a switch to come on when heavy oil > 5k, and those just run perfectly forever because there is no way I'm ever backing up my plastic lines to the coal liquefaction plants unless I just shut down the factory for a good long time.

TasogareNoKagi
Jul 11, 2013

The Locator posted:

I'm using switches, but that's exactly what causes the cycling of production in the solid fuel. As the tanks fill up, solid fuel production gets higher and higher as the different fluids begin getting cracked to make solid fuel, so if you don't have enough solid fuel consumption to handle all the petroleum production you need (i.e. consume enough light and heavy oil), then eventually the solid fuel backs up into the cracking and stops everything.

My problem is trying to balance the consumption of the solid fuel to a place where the science isn't starved for solid fuel because I'm using too much, but it never backs up into the crackers and shuts everything down. I was using buffers for a long time, and I may go back to doing that but it seems like such a cheesy solution. Prior to nuclear power it was pretty easy to just use the solid fuel to power my steam plants, but then if something happened to upset the oil balance my power would shut down.

I guess that's part of the draw of this game, is the careful balancing game you are always playing, but oil is just tricky for me as the fluids are just much harder to determine if things are balanced correctly as I can't directly observe the flow rates like you can with a belt-bus of solids, as it takes a long time if things are 'close' to balanced to see the tanks change from say 21k to either 22k or 20k to show if I'm gaining or losing that particular fluid. I wish that the mouseover would display exact amounts like it does below 1k fluid so I could just observe for a bit with everything running to see how it's going to go.

I set up my coal liquefaction -> plastic by observing the level in a heavy oil tank that I added, and once I had it on a slight increase over time, then I added a second heavy to light cracker and put it on a switch to come on when heavy oil > 5k, and those just run perfectly forever because there is no way I'm ever backing up my plastic lines to the coal liquefaction plants unless I just shut down the factory for a good long time.

You shouldn't be aiming to balance consumption and production. That's an unstable equilibrium, as you've noticed. You should try to build something that will regulate itself.

Rather than try to guess exactly what you're doing wrong, I'll post a screenshot of my setup and comment on a few things.


The tanks you probably understand. Both the refineries and the cracking plants feed into the pipe network above; the pipes below the tanks are my fluid "bus" that runs to all the sulphur plant, plastic, solid fuel, etc. The arrangement of the pumps on the tanks and the cracker outputs means they only back up if nothing is consuming that resource.

The pumps feeding my crackers only turn on if INPUT > 20k and OUTPUT < 20k. I also have enough cracking capacity for

I also have solid fuel plants for both heavy oil and gas as a soft void; they turn on over 22k. I could technically get rid of the heavy oil plant now that I have cracking, but whatever. The splitter on the solid fuel belts should be favoring that side over the light oil side, again as soft void, but that got ripped up and replaced at some point.

This setup can go from running flat out to stopped and back again without issue. Right now it's backed up and quiet because I'm off designing a reactor. When I come back to do whatever's next (electric furnace production, I think) it will start back up again. The one exception is where you've used all your heavy oil and the other 2 are backed up so your refineries won't run. That's where coal liquification slots in when you unlock it.

Regarding using a steam power plant as an incinerator, you could back up your fuel supply with coal using a splitter and input priority. You could also wire the fuel belt to connect solar power if the belt it empty. My solar farms include a power switch so I can disconnect them remotely for something like this, or when I get plutonium breeding going.

The Locator
Sep 12, 2004

Out here, everything hurts.





TasogareNoKagi posted:

You shouldn't be aiming to balance consumption and production. That's an unstable equilibrium, as you've noticed. You should try to build something that will regulate itself.

Rather than try to guess exactly what you're doing wrong, I'll post a screenshot of my setup and comment on a few things.

Nice looking setup and with lots of room.. unlike my disaster. Hah..

Are those heat exchangers or boilers or something on the upper left? It looks like they are making steam that feeds to your refineries, but I'm not sure why. My refineries take in water, not steam. Steam is only for coal liquefaction? Guessing you are running a mod that changes the recipes or this is from a different version, not 0.17?

forbidden dialectics
Jul 26, 2005





One thing I always forget about, if the belt you're offloading Space Science packs to is full, the Rocket Silo will happily keep "Automatically Launching with Cargo" and it can only store 2k science packs - each rocket you send up with it full like this is completely wasted. I launched about 100 rockets and go no science from it in the game I'm playing right now - that's a lot of materials.

I just put a wire to the output belt and had the inserter for the satellite only operate if there were <7 science packs on the belt (i.e., it wasn't full).

TasogareNoKagi
Jul 11, 2013

The Locator posted:

Nice looking setup and with lots of room.. unlike my disaster. Hah..

Are those heat exchangers or boilers or something on the upper left? It looks like they are making steam that feeds to your refineries, but I'm not sure why. My refineries take in water, not steam. Steam is only for coal liquefaction? Guessing you are running a mod that changes the recipes or this is from a different version, not 0.17?

Yeah I play a heavily modded game. One that makes advanced refining and cracking require steam, and KS power for the oil burning boilers.

Scorps
Feb 24, 2008

Oh, lighten up Mr. Dooms-and-Gloom, "embezzle" is metal.

The Locator posted:

I'm using switches, but that's exactly what causes the cycling of production in the solid fuel. As the tanks fill up, solid fuel production gets higher and higher as the different fluids begin getting cracked to make solid fuel, so if you don't have enough solid fuel consumption to handle all the petroleum production you need (i.e. consume enough light and heavy oil), then eventually the solid fuel backs up into the cracking and stops everything.

My problem is trying to balance the consumption of the solid fuel to a place where the science isn't starved for solid fuel because I'm using too much, but it never backs up into the crackers and shuts everything down. I was using buffers for a long time, and I may go back to doing that but it seems like such a cheesy solution. Prior to nuclear power it was pretty easy to just use the solid fuel to power my steam plants, but then if something happened to upset the oil balance my power would shut down.

I guess that's part of the draw of this game, is the careful balancing game you are always playing, but oil is just tricky for me as the fluids are just much harder to determine if things are balanced correctly as I can't directly observe the flow rates like you can with a belt-bus of solids, as it takes a long time if things are 'close' to balanced to see the tanks change from say 21k to either 22k or 20k to show if I'm gaining or losing that particular fluid. I wish that the mouseover would display exact amounts like it does below 1k fluid so I could just observe for a bit with everything running to see how it's going to go.

I set up my coal liquefaction -> plastic by observing the level in a heavy oil tank that I added, and once I had it on a slight increase over time, then I added a second heavy to light cracker and put it on a switch to come on when heavy oil > 5k, and those just run perfectly forever because there is no way I'm ever backing up my plastic lines to the coal liquefaction plants unless I just shut down the factory for a good long time.

So the answer to this conundrum is just to set up another oil refinery station that does nothing but create solid fuel by cracking everything to light oil, and even makes solid out of petroleum. Then you don't care if it backs up or not since it's all it does. Oil is confusing because there is 3 products that all make more products as you said, if you just make it more discrete production such as 1 refinery setup for plastic, one for sulphur and batteries, and one for fuel, you will have no issues. I find a lot of people set up a basic oil setup once for all products and then never consider building any more. That's like running copper iron and green chips all down the same lane and wondering why sometimes it gets stuck.

The same thing applies to a situation where eventually you will run dry on lubricant and find that now your setup to always crack to petroleum is causing a problem, all you need to do is create a station that does regular oil processing (not advanced since regular gives more heavy oil) and turn it straight to lube. Segregate the end products of oil and suddenly it's a lot easier to keep running.

Also the Coal Liquefaction can run indefinitely and turn coal straight into solid fuel with nothing but a single boiler of steam and a single barrel of heavy oil input to kickstart it. Since solid fuel can be easily converted to rocket fuel this means that in the late game any coal patch you find with water nearby can be set up to produce direct rocket fuel with no other input besides power/water/coal

Scorps fucked around with this message at 20:16 on Apr 11, 2019

The Locator
Sep 12, 2004

Out here, everything hurts.





Scorps posted:

So the answer to this conundrum is just to set up another oil refinery station that does nothing but create solid fuel by cracking everything to light oil, and even makes solid out of petroleum. Then you don't care if it backs up or not since it's all it does. Oil is confusing because there is 3 products that all make more products as you said, if you just make it more discrete production such as 1 refinery setup for plastic, one for sulphur and batteries, and one for fuel, you will have no issues. I find a lot of people set up a basic oil setup once for all products and then never consider building any more. That's like running copper iron and green chips all down the same lane and wondering why sometimes it gets stuck.

The same thing applies to a situation where eventually you will run dry on lubricant and find that now your setup to always crack to petroleum is causing a problem, all you need to do is create a station that does regular oil processing (not advanced since regular gives more heavy oil) and turn it straight to lube. Segregate the end products of oil and suddenly it's a lot easier to keep running.

Also the Coal Liquefaction can run indefinitely and turn coal straight into solid fuel with nothing but a single boiler of steam and a single barrel of heavy oil input to kickstart it. Since solid fuel can be easily converted to rocket fuel this means that in the late game any coal patch you find with water nearby can be set up to produce direct rocket fuel with no other input besides power/water/coal

This is a great idea. I just need to get busy and completely tear down my oil infrastructure and rebuild it in discrete units like this, and figure out where to put it. I've massively expanded my oil refining/cracking/etc. area, but it's still all one 'unit' making all of my stuff. I pipe in all my crude oil, but that shouldn't matter that it's all together since it's just the source product.

On the Coal Liquefaction side, I've got 8 Coal -> solid fuel -> rocket fuel setups and 3 to plastic. It does indeed make any handy coal patch into a useful thing!

bus hustler
Mar 14, 2019

I want them to buff barrels, I frickin love barrels, but the fluid throughout on them is just so low :qq:

The Locator
Sep 12, 2004

Out here, everything hurts.





charity rereg posted:

I want them to buff barrels, I frickin love barrels, but the fluid throughout on them is just so low :qq:

The small stack size makes them a pain in the arse too, they fill up the inventory on anything (including me!) really fast, then you have to do something with the empties.

necrotic
Aug 2, 2005
I owe my brother big time for this!

charity rereg posted:

I want them to buff barrels, I frickin love barrels, but the fluid throughout on them is just so low :qq:

I don't see them doing much to change barrels, they nerfed them pretty hard when they changed fluid cars. The throughput of barrels was extremely high (especially with bots) and made it the only real choice for high-throughput.

https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-223

I doubt they'll do anything to buff them.

Some of the Sheep
May 25, 2005
POSSIBLY IT WOULD BE SIMPLER IF I ASKED FOR A LIST OF THE HARMLESS CREATURES OF THE AFORESAID CONTINENT?
If we're talking oil and production ratios again, here's the bp I shared last time:

https://factorioprints.com/view/-KjJ6MvDSt-GWrthi9Z4

It's got some extremely basic logic that you can follow to understand how it works, and in practice the only way I've failed to draw what I need from its output tanks is by consuming more than it can produce. Of course it's tileable so that's a problem easily fixed.

The Locator
Sep 12, 2004

Out here, everything hurts.





Some of the Sheep posted:

If we're talking oil and production ratios again, here's the bp I shared last time:

https://factorioprints.com/view/-KjJ6MvDSt-GWrthi9Z4

It's got some extremely basic logic that you can follow to understand how it works, and in practice the only way I've failed to draw what I need from its output tanks is by consuming more than it can produce. Of course it's tileable so that's a problem easily fixed.

That's the BP I started with - Thanks! My problems only started after I tried to expand it, because I didn't have the space in that same area to tile it so I sort of made a mish-mash of it apparently.. :v:

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CRISPYBABY
Dec 15, 2007

by Reene
New player question: How should I be looking to clear out biter camps mid-game? They're stifling my expansion right now. My walls and turrets are holding, but I probably haven't killed a single full camp since medium worms showed up. I've just got military science up and running and I've got most of the bullet damage upgrades from that. Should I be looking at rockets? Flamethrowers? Deployables?

I stock up my modular armour with energy shields but it takes so loving long to charge. Right now the swarms have a mix of small, medium, and the ocasional large biter. The swarms aren't tooo bad to deal with, but whenever I get into worm range I tend to melt before I can nuke them down with grenades. I spent a lot of time loving around making GBS threads out pollution while getting a logistic network and fluid network up and running with no research so I hope I'm not perma behind versus their evolution.

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