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SkyeAuroline
Nov 12, 2020

Yeah, interstellar ventures for iron are looking about like my next step. Can't bootstrap with deut on these new planets though, because of course I was enough of a fool to convert two of my three home system planets to deut fuel and now as mentioned my fractionators can't keep up with fuel costs, let alone supply the extra deut that the strange matter - > graviton lens chain wants. :allears: at least I've got some high wind power options and a ton of precharged accumulators to get things to a minimum level of function.
Hydrogen (not deuterium) isn't actually a problem currently, I've just been sick of building chem plant sprawls so I haven't expanded fire ice processing. I have a full 40-extractor setup on my home planet's parent giant pulling hydrogen and fire ice. The hydrogen is getting used, the fire ice is... less used but gives me another source for a ton of it. Also got the crystals used to make graphene directly, so I'm sure that's about to gently caress with supply chains too. Iron is just bottlenecking everything that everything else is used for. I could probably put more miners per vein to get a better rate for now... but then I just have to fix the problem sooner.

At least the ring is over halfway done by my estimate (haven't figured out how you can actually see progress besides the pieces changing color) so I'm making progress there and might eventjally be able to wean home system planets off so much local power generation. None at a perfect 0 inclination, and none tidally locked, so it's going to be less than perfect though.

At what point is it worth setting up a second ILS with more iron processing linked to it? I'm almost certainly going to hit supply chain issues to and from the station thanks to limited ships before I hit the limits of my belts, no?

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mmkay
Oct 21, 2010

SkyeAuroline posted:

(haven't figured out how you can actually see progress besides the pieces changing color)

You can check the overall node progress in the rocket launching site itself. No idea if there's a similar way of quickly checking solar sail progress though.

nessin
Feb 7, 2010
I already put down DSP as a game I'm going to pickup eventually but I've stopped buying Early Access games except in very few specific niche instances so I hadn't thought about getting this yet. However I've seen a few videos of people already putting together Dyson Spheres and I assumed that was going to be the "end game" if one exists. Is the game basically feature complete and they're bug fixing or is there still more content they're planning to add down the road?

zoux
Apr 28, 2006

I have 500 hours into this EA game. You're going to need some mods that already implement features that the devs say are coming (modding is dead easy though and the mods are very, very good), and there are some bugs obviously, but for $20 bucks you will absolutely get your money's worth.

mmkay
Oct 21, 2010

Yeah, the game is mighty addictive and I had to uninstall after like 90 hours of play time (two playthroughs, both times ended in various stages of building the sphere), because it was way too easy to lose track of time. There's always something to fix/expand/build.

SkyeAuroline
Nov 12, 2020

The full progression from "mech, alone, on a deserted planet" to "casually building dyson spheres and artificial stars to power your all consuming hunger for goddamn iron" is already present. (the win condition is not actually "build a dyson sphere" thanks to a quirk.)

A mountain of downright essential QOL is missing. I am intent on getting my sphere without mods, but I will second the "they make your life way easier" sentiment.

edit:

mmkay posted:

Yeah, the game is mighty addictive and I had to uninstall after like 90 hours of play time (two playthroughs, both times ended in various stages of building the sphere), because it was way too easy to lose track of time. There's always something to fix/expand/build.

Christ, mood, I'm only at 38 hours... 28 in the last two weeks spread across maybe 4 days. One of the only two games I'm really doing atm (alongside Destiny). Even alarms don't help. Thanks, poorly treated ADHD.

SkyeAuroline fucked around with this message at 21:26 on Apr 6, 2021

neogeo0823
Jul 4, 2007

NO THAT'S NOT ME!!

SkyeAuroline posted:

A mountain of downright essential QOL is missing. I am intent on getting my sphere without mods, but I will second the "they make your life way easier" sentiment.

Lemme tell you, mah dude, you definitely, absolutely, want to get the CopyInserters mod at a bare minimum. All the other mods, whatever, but that copy inserters mod, it's the only thing I'd 1000% recommend as absolutely required for play. I'm still on my first playthrough, at something like 90 hours. I set up my whole home system without that mod. And then when I went to my first new system is when I installed it, and it literally makes an entire world of difference to me. I could not imagine setting up another set of 4 rows of 30 smelters without it, let alone covering a whole planet with them as I'm planning on doing.

SkyeAuroline
Nov 12, 2020

What exactly does it even do, just copy inserters down the line or something? Not really wanting to compromise on it but also not excited to do another round of "weaving inserters for two rows of assemblers feeding from three shared belts" for 20 minutes a "module" again.

I still don't see how a blueprint mod doesn't break with latitude adjustments.

Shipon
Nov 7, 2005

SkyeAuroline posted:

What exactly does it even do, just copy inserters down the line or something? Not really wanting to compromise on it but also not excited to do another round of "weaving inserters for two rows of assemblers feeding from three shared belts" for 20 minutes a "module" again.

I still don't see how a blueprint mod doesn't break with latitude adjustments.

The blueprint mod doesn't like when the grid changes shapes as you go higher in latitude but as long as the grid pattern is the same in the area you're using it, it more or less works OK except for the occasional power pole between assemblers that would get squeezed at the north/south edge of that grid region.

Though I don't see that being a major issue since even hand-building you wouldn't really want to cross a production line across that because it makes for a trickier time.

zoux
Apr 28, 2006

SkyeAuroline posted:

What exactly does it even do, just copy inserters down the line or something? Not really wanting to compromise on it but also not excited to do another round of "weaving inserters for two rows of assemblers feeding from three shared belts" for 20 minutes a "module" again.

I still don't see how a blueprint mod doesn't break with latitude adjustments.

It does, but on the dyson blueprints site it tells you where it goes either in the title:


or the 3d preview:


In case you didn't know there are a number of distinct zones that are the same on every planet
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5E-QekRlRDo

One of the big "challenges" of the game is building to particular latitude belts. There are a handful of bugs with the blue print mod, and some QoL stuff that needs to get implemented but it works very very well.

So my list of must-have mods to remove the annoyances of the game is
MultiBuildBeta : this is the BP mod that also includes the author's CopyInserters analog that doesn't have a BP function
BuildCounter: tells you how many units you're using when laying belts or copied buildings
Better stats: greatly improves your stat page, gives you total consuming/producing units, actual production vs. max production and consumption etc.
SplitterOverConveyor: lets you drop splitters straight onto belts and hooks em all up.
MinerInfo: tells you total mining output of all miners on a vein.
MineralExhaustionNotifier: allows you to check the status of all miners and all logistic stations from anywhere
NoAdvisor: No Advisor. S-tier mod.

None of the above I would call cheat mods, they don't really change anything about the game, just makes it less tedious and repetitive or gives you better stats. These next ones are cheat mods, but I use them to eliminate game elements I don't like.

Free Foundations: Just go buck wild, pave the universe, never worry about soil pile again.
FastDrones: sets drone speed to max. This is great in the early game, when it takes you forever to lay a long belt during the Spaghetti Epoch, it's great in the late game when you're dropping massive blocks of smelters or assemblers with the BP mod, and all the time inbetween (no more waiting an hour for a drone to fly up and place an orbital collector, for example)
RailgunsRetargeting: If your guns lose one orbit, they automatically switch to another one. The challenge with EM Rails is maintaining sail supply, imo, not trying to figure out how orbits work with zero information. I put up three orbits and then gently caress off, you could do as many as you like.

Also, I'll say that I've never had a mod corrupt a file or otherwise ruin, I've played 11 games (building my first Dyson sphere in this one :frogc00l: )but one time I had a mod that popped a persistent error (#10) and I abandoned it out of an abundance of caution. And also I had a four day weekend and I love to start over.

zoux fucked around with this message at 22:13 on Apr 6, 2021

neogeo0823
Jul 4, 2007

NO THAT'S NOT ME!!

SkyeAuroline posted:

What exactly does it even do, just copy inserters down the line or something? Not really wanting to compromise on it but also not excited to do another round of "weaving inserters for two rows of assemblers feeding from three shared belts" for 20 minutes a "module" again.

I still don't see how a blueprint mod doesn't break with latitude adjustments.

So when you shift+left click to copy a building, it copies any attached inserters and sets them down as well. It doesn't cheat anything in, you still use the same amount of resources and construction drones as you would placing stuff normally, it just makes building long lines of factories all chained in a row so much faster.

link to the mod. Keep in mind, it needs BepInEx to work.

Here's a gif from the mod page, to highlight it more:


My warehouse world has lines and lines and lines and lines of storage crate stacks, all linked to the next stack in the line by 3 inserters each. With this mod, I can lay down the first crate, then the 2nd, then the inserters, then shift + click copy that 2nd crate and just connect up a huge line of them in a row as I go. It's fantastic.

zoux posted:

In case you didn't know there are a number of distinct zones that are the same on every planet
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5E-QekRlRDo

One of the big "challenges" of the game is building to particular latitude belts. There are a handful of bugs with the blue print mod, and some QoL stuff that needs to get implemented but it works very very well.
This vid, along with the polar hub one, changed the way I looked at the game. So now, when I move to a new planet, I first set up a north pole polar hub, which will be for importing anything needed for that planet. Then I set up a south pole hub, which is for exports. If solar/wind aren't viable, then I'll set up a charging ring(detailed in a previous post of mine) in between the blue and purple lines on that preview image there, and import full accumulators, and export empty ones. I'll also set up a planetary tower inside the ring, that requests full accumulators and supplies empties so that I'm only using 1 slot in each for each on the import/export hub.

SettingSun
Aug 10, 2013

Well, I started a dyson sphere but it's slow going. The resource demand for one of these is incredible. There aren't enough mining nodes in my solar system to support making this in a reasonable amount of time so I guess I too am expanding to other stars for more mundane imports other than rare nodes. I'm really glad green matrices manufacture 8 warpers.

seaborgium
Aug 1, 2002

"Nothing a shitload of bleach won't fix"




neogeo0823 posted:

I just logged back in to play and I'm still getting the weird flickering on the containers. Like, obviously it's more evident when not in a screenshot, but look at this.


You can see the holes everywhere in what are normally full stacks of crates. And how most of the 1-high crates in the lower right are missing, with just the inserters showing.

EDIT: it's gotta have something to do with the amount of stuff displayed. If I change view to only show half of the crates, then it goes back to normal. In standard view it's fine, and only does this when I go into world map view.

I've noticed that a lot, pretty sure it's just a visual bug when you go into planet view. I had a forge planet that was pretty full around the equator and it did that sort of thing, if you zoom out a little or zoom in a little it goes away.

AlphaKeny1
Feb 17, 2006

I started this game on Saturday and was a little overwhelmed and had no idea how to even start. For some reason the in-game tutorials don't do it for me. But I watched about 10-15 mins of youtube to get some basics and then I just spent over 8 hours playing today...

socialsecurity
Aug 30, 2003





nessin posted:

I already put down DSP as a game I'm going to pickup eventually but I've stopped buying Early Access games except in very few specific niche instances so I hadn't thought about getting this yet. However I've seen a few videos of people already putting together Dyson Spheres and I assumed that was going to be the "end game" if one exists. Is the game basically feature complete and they're bug fixing or is there still more content they're planning to add down the road?

It's mostly feature complete, Blueprinting is modded right now and sort of works but for real blueprints are coming. I think waiting comes down to if you like Satisfactory or Factorio more, at the moment there are no biters like Factorio no reason you couldn't just afk forever like in Satisfactory if you are ok with that or are someone who turned off biters in Factorio then is like 90% of the way there.

snail
Sep 25, 2008

CHEESE!

AlphaKeny1 posted:

I started this game on Saturday and was a little overwhelmed and had no idea how to even start. For some reason the in-game tutorials don't do it for me.

You're not alone. I bounced at first, and pretty quick, and there were enough distractions that I stepped away.

Came back to it recently, restarted a new game after reading this thread for a while, and I've been enjoying it a lot.

Kazzah
Jul 15, 2011

Formerly known as
Krazyface
Hair Elf

AlphaKeny1 posted:

I started this game on Saturday and was a little overwhelmed and had no idea how to even start. For some reason the in-game tutorials don't do it for me. But I watched about 10-15 mins of youtube to get some basics and then I just spent over 8 hours playing today...

For now, just focus on automating science, and on automating production of basic things (belts, sorters, assemblers) that you need to expand the factory.

SkyeAuroline
Nov 12, 2020

Houston, we have a ring.

Now I just have to get green sci steady enough to a) start replacing my warper supply before my supply lines break down, b) get to work on the increased latitude research (see prior, since lenses are currently bottlenecking me through a chain or issues, mostly motors).

SettingSun
Aug 10, 2013

Now that my dyson sphere is assembling I finally dipped into mods. Only two, the production stats and blueprint mod, but both have been life changing. Now I can see precisely where my line is collapsing (it's plane filters) and setting up new planets is a breeze.

Edit: I'm running out of sulfuric acid are you kidding me

SettingSun fucked around with this message at 16:31 on Apr 7, 2021

zoux
Apr 28, 2006

SettingSun posted:

Now I can see precisely where my line is collapsing (it's plane filters)

Oh we could've told you that

SkyeAuroline
Nov 12, 2020

zoux posted:

Oh we could've told you that

Now now, let's be fair, it could have been casimir crystals, or electromag engines (turbines? "green motors")
But yeah, frequent pain point.

e: sulfuric acid was solved in one move for me. Set up an ILS linked to 12 sulfuric pumps. Promptly bottomless-enough supply.

Grevlek
Jan 11, 2004
Explain how to install the enahnced stats screen mod, and the copy/inserter mod, as if you were talking to a child.

zoux
Apr 28, 2006

Grevlek posted:

Explain how to install the enahnced stats screen mod, and the copy/inserter mod, as if you were talking to a child.

Download the mod manager

Go to mod page and click on "install with mod manager".

Mayveena
Dec 27, 2006

People keep vandalizing my ID photo; I've lodged a complaint with HR

zoux posted:

Download the mod manager

Go to mod page and click on "install with mod manager".

But how do you bring it up in game? And also I was looking at the seeds on the wiki, why do I care if a seed has planets that are tidal locked?

SettingSun
Aug 10, 2013

To be fair I'm already exploiting another star system's sulfuric acid oceans. I just need to do more of it, ie actually go out there and lay down more pumps. I'm going to have to expand the whole plane filter supply line. God that's going to suck.

zoux
Apr 28, 2006

Mayveena posted:

But how do you bring it up in game? And also I was looking at the seeds on the wiki, why do I care if a seed has planets that are tidal locked?

What do you mean "bring it up in game"?

Also, tidal locked planets have permanent day on one side, you go throw a bunch of solar panels on that side, hook it up to an accumulator distribution center and enjoy free energy throughout your star cluster. I found my first one just yesterday in fact, and covering just the equatorial bands of the dayside of that planet in panels was giving me like 3 GW

Blorange
Jan 31, 2007

A wizard did it

Mayveena posted:

But how do you bring it up in game? And also I was looking at the seeds on the wiki, why do I care if a seed has planets that are tidal locked?

You need to launch the game using the mod manager instead of steam.

Also, tidally locked planets enable this bullshit:

SettingSun
Aug 10, 2013

For the record I don't use the mod manager. I just downloaded the files directly and threw them into the DSP install folder. Loads up with no user intervention. Until I need to update them that is, but I'll deal.

The better production stats mod is merely an expansion to the already existing Production screen and is used in the same way.

SkyeAuroline
Nov 12, 2020

SettingSun posted:

To be fair I'm already exploiting another star system's sulfuric acid oceans. I just need to do more of it, ie actually go out there and lay down more pumps. I'm going to have to expand the whole plane filter supply line. God that's going to suck.

Fortunately, aren't plane filters the ones with absurdly long craft times? You can get a hell of a lot built on a single supply branch of mk3 belts out of a logistics station. It's annoying and space consuming but at least it's not a super high input rate thing that needs a whole web of towers and I/O belts.

SettingSun
Aug 10, 2013

Oh absolutely, I'm really griping at this reverse pyramid scheme where to expand the top you need to geometrically expand the bottom of Ti glass and casimir crystals, and their upline.

Mayveena
Dec 27, 2006

People keep vandalizing my ID photo; I've lodged a complaint with HR

SettingSun posted:

For the record I don't use the mod manager. I just downloaded the files directly and threw them into the DSP install folder. Loads up with no user intervention. Until I need to update them that is, but I'll deal.

The better production stats mod is merely an expansion to the already existing Production screen and is used in the same way.

Thanks!

SkyeAuroline
Nov 12, 2020

SettingSun posted:

Oh absolutely, I'm really griping at this reverse pyramid scheme where to expand the top you need to geometrically expand the bottom of Ti glass and casimir crystals, and their upline.

Yep. Not too far off the same boat. I'm just not fully in plane filter hell yet (as mentioned, I was getting bottlenecked hard with graviton lenses, so had much bigger fish to fry for a bit).

Idle wish: modders, please create a fourth setting for logistics towers. "When below x, demand until y, then supply until x". I know it reads like a niche case but my network would be way goddamn easier to manage if I could make buffer distribution stations more easily without ending up in "my materials are looping between one way belt connected stations instead of ever going to the destination".
That, and priority toggles for logistics stations. Youthcat I am begging this one to be vanilla.

Grevlek
Jan 11, 2004

zoux posted:

Download the mod manager

Go to mod page and click on "install with mod manager".

Thanks dude.

I've literally only opened the stats panel so far and my game is a trillion times better.

SkyeAuroline posted:

Yep. Not too far off the same boat. I'm just not fully in plane filter hell yet (as mentioned, I was getting bottlenecked hard with graviton lenses, so had much bigger fish to fry for a bit).

Idle wish: modders, please create a fourth setting for logistics towers. "When below x, demand until y, then supply until x". I know it reads like a niche case but my network would be way goddamn easier to manage if I could make buffer distribution stations more easily without ending up in "my materials are looping between one way belt connected stations instead of ever going to the destination".
That, and priority toggles for logistics stations. Youthcat I am begging this one to be vanilla.

I want a step between intersystem and interstellar shipping. It's fine if they still just use the interplanetary towers. That's my hope for a mod.

Grevlek fucked around with this message at 18:58 on Apr 7, 2021

AlphaKeny1
Feb 17, 2006

Kazzah posted:

For now, just focus on automating science, and on automating production of basic things (belts, sorters, assemblers) that you need to expand the factory.

Yup, two of my big OH poo poo moments last night was 1. I realized I should be automating my production of belts and sorters instead of just materials and 2. I had to find out via a reddit post after googling that I can use the labs for research instead of carrying cubes on my mech because I'm dumb. At first I thought it'd take over an hour researching the new red+blue upgrades I just unlocked but then built two lab towers and now I'm gobbling up those tiny little cubes.

My next goal is, yeah, automating belts and sorters. Then figuring out what the hell I'm doing with oil refinery and plastic poo poo, and seeing how I get yellow cubes and how I'm going to feed that into my labs. My initial area is looking like a huge mess and I kind of hate how I packed everything tightly together thinking I was being clever. Oh, I also need to figure out how to level land. The in-game prompt made no sense to me.

Game reminds me of working on a large coding project from scratch. I'll go off to build some new component then see that I'm not getting enough power because half of the coal burning line I set up two hours ago is no longer functioning so I have to figure out how to fix that. But then I'm also afraid to touch a previous section of my spaghetti code or it'll destroy my production of blue cubes, lol.

WithoutTheFezOn
Aug 28, 2005
Oh no
Well you can’t fail in this game. Worst that happens is things shut down / get slower. You never really have to tear things up, just add to them.

Flattening is done with the terrain tool, but can also be done just by building something on the land you want to flatten.

zoux
Apr 28, 2006

AlphaKeny1 posted:

Yup, two of my big OH poo poo moments last night was 1. I realized I should be automating my production of belts and sorters instead of just materials and 2. I had to find out via a reddit post after googling that I can use the labs for research instead of carrying cubes on my mech because I'm dumb. At first I thought it'd take over an hour researching the new red+blue upgrades I just unlocked but then built two lab towers and now I'm gobbling up those tiny little cubes.

My next goal is, yeah, automating belts and sorters. Then figuring out what the hell I'm doing with oil refinery and plastic poo poo, and seeing how I get yellow cubes and how I'm going to feed that into my labs. My initial area is looking like a huge mess and I kind of hate how I packed everything tightly together thinking I was being clever. Oh, I also need to figure out how to level land. The in-game prompt made no sense to me.

Game reminds me of working on a large coding project from scratch. I'll go off to build some new component then see that I'm not getting enough power because half of the coal burning line I set up two hours ago is no longer functioning so I have to figure out how to fix that. But then I'm also afraid to touch a previous section of my spaghetti code or it'll destroy my production of blue cubes, lol.

I recommend downloading the infinite foundation mod because foundation is a bad mechanic, but the way it works is that when you use the foundation tool, it levels the ground to zero. If you are leveling down to zero you gain, ahem, soil pile. If you are leveling up to zero you lose soil pile. A good way to get soil pile, at least on your starting world, is to look for grass and trees and such, they always grow at zero+. But yeah, outside of random chance, you're going to have to go level some regions that you don't need for development space to harvest soil pile.

There are 4 phases in the game

First phase is you trying to get a rudimentary mall that produces the buildings that can be made with EM coils, Circuit boards, stone, iron and gears, and using those excess boards and coils to make some blue cubes. Then you expand and expand through red and yellow, including having to fly to one or two planets like a space truck to haul silicon and titanium back home. Your planet at this point looks like a bowl of ramen.

Then you get Interplanetary Logistics stations and you have to automate more poo poo based around that, I recommend ILSs themselves and both drone types. You start building larger, individual component factories connected to a single ILS. You change your mall to ILSs, and then add in belts coming from the opposite side containing steel, glass and plasma exciters to replace gears, iron and EM coils to finish off your primary building types. You start tearing down old spaghetti as you replace them with larger integrated factories. You set up one planet for smelting and your lava planet for mining. You get started on your dyson swarm to draw down power. Start working to green science.

Once you are producing warpers at a good clip, you start to expand out into the stars, getting access to massively larger resource veins, rare resources that replace entire production chains, more crude oil than you can believe and so on. Start building vertical launchers and begin work on your sphere proper, you research everything, get to white science and unlock the full tree.

Now you have completed the tutorial phase of the game and can get started on phase 4: actually playing it.

zoux fucked around with this message at 20:35 on Apr 7, 2021

AlphaKeny1
Feb 17, 2006

Thanks for the tips!

The scale and scope of this game is awesome. I guess I won't bother messing with my initial iron/copper area, but I will try to spread out now that I'm figuring out the oil refinery and plastics. I guess I shouldn't be afraid to build long rear end belts to transport belts/sorters to where I'm building, too.

Peachfart
Jan 21, 2017

So why do people keep talking about making separate mining and smelting planets? I just smelt on site, it saves time, materials, and energy.

Edit: And oil is the eternal nightmare, you will probably spend more time getting oil unclogged than any other thing in the game.

awesmoe
Nov 30, 2005

Pillbug

Peachfart posted:

So why do people keep talking about making separate mining and smelting planets? I just smelt on site, it saves time, materials, and energy.

because a mining+smelting planet eventually becomes a smelting planet so you may as well just plan for it

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Kazzah
Jul 15, 2011

Formerly known as
Krazyface
Hair Elf
I smelt everything on my homeworld. It's less efficient in terms of shuttle throughput, but that's never been a bottleneck for me. It makes it easier to manage power and diagnose supply line faults, since there's just less going on in the other systems.

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