Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Post
  • Reply
Foehammer
Nov 8, 2005

We are invincible.

If you just use one-way rails, single direction trains, and t-junctions (no roundabouts), it's nearly impossible to gently caress up.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

manero
Jan 30, 2006

Mithaldu posted:

After some more futzing around i've come up with what feels like a much more easy way to treat the train system.

Going from the data above, with a single track line, i used the chain in, normal signal out strategy on most of the intersections i had on one part of it, and watched things a little. What ended up happening is that trains would basically immediately get stuck near intersections with two trans trying to move into it and each blocking the other. The only way to solve it was to add side-ways whereever this happened.

What that system does is effectively *force* the player to plan and build capacity beforehand or have the entire system just loving jam itself.

What works a lot better for me is to have all intersections be chain signals only, with occasional specifically built buffers. This allows the trains to only *start* moving to where they wanna be if either the path is entirely clear, or they have a clear path to one of the buffers on the way.

The main advantage for me there is that yes, trains may be sitting at train stations for a long time before they get a path they can use, but it will *never* jam, allowing me to keep doing stuff without everything falling apart, until i get around to adding buffers to speed things up again.

And the buffer design i was wondering about fell into place with GotLag's mention of pathfinding weighting. The following structure has the chains-only path on the longest track, so it'll be the last to be considered, and all other tracks are enclosed with normal signals allowing trains to move into them whenever. Having the chains-only path on the longest track is important because otherwise it will be chosen first, the train will reserve its entire path, and thus block the opportunity for other trains to move into a buffer track.



This explanation is a little bit lengthy, but in practice this solution is safe against breaking itself and requires the smallest amount of thinking to implement while allowing smooth incremental optimizing.

I didn't see the helicopters at first and I thought the speed/fuel indicators were for the trains, and I got excited :negative:

Mithaldu
Sep 25, 2007

Let's cuddle. :3:
Tbh i really would like such a UI for trains too. Wonder how hard that would be to mod in.

Unrelated, the bioluminescence mod is rad. Even some biters glow! Only works on newly generated chunks though.

Chakan
Mar 30, 2011
https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-298

Loaders, Tank Buffs, and more on this weeks Friday Facts.

ZekeNY
Jun 13, 2013

Probably AFK

The Locator posted:

I'm playing a "Krastorio" mod game and have Bob's Enemies. Just spawns constant huge waves of biters whenever my pollution cloud is touching a base.

The turret is part of Krastorio, along with a rocket turret that has a much longer range, but the ammo is extremely expensive (and you can make nuclear ammo for those) so I haven't made any of those yet.

Thanks — I’m giving this mod a shot, and really enjoying it. Like you said, it falls right into the sweet spot in between vanilla and AngelBobs. I finally got refined ore going, and now I’m drowning in iron (and waste water, too — time to get filtration researched!)

Saraiguma
Oct 2, 2014
Is there an easy way to tell what mod is crashing the game? I crash on "Building Sprite Atlas" at startup with this error

and don't feel like enabling and disabling each mod one by one, is there a trick to it?

Mithaldu
Sep 25, 2007

Let's cuddle. :3:
Usually Factorio tries to give useful errors and even auto-disables, so probably no if you get that error. Can recommend disabling half though and narrowing it down that way.

KirbyKhan
Mar 20, 2009



Soiled Meat
Use a script to automate the Factorio mod directory. Boom gave you Factorio 2!

Mithaldu
Sep 25, 2007

Let's cuddle. :3:
Fixed in the most recent release: https://forums.factorio.com/71664

Jeesis
Mar 4, 2010

I am the second illegitimate son of gawd who resides in hoaven.
I made a world that was a combination rail world/death world, recipes and science were set to expensive. Science was set to 2x on top of that. I made it 8 hours before giving up, the evolution was near 50% and I had not gotten past more than the start of green science. All the resources I was producing needed to go right into making gun turrets/ammo/repair packs and walls, the attacks started getting into huge blobs including one colony that only sent 60+ spitters with no biters. I built my wall 8 layers deep and had belt fed gun turrets all over the wall. Mismanagement led me to automate science very badly, I also could not expand much more as I was already struggling with my current size.

I just gave up when an attack was happening every minute and was leading to chunks of the wall being taken out and at least 2 turret death, mostly due to not producing enough red ammo.

Now I am going to play seablock!

KirbyKhan
Mar 20, 2009



Soiled Meat

Jeesis posted:


Now I am going to play seablock!

Can't run out of materials because The Sea provides all.

Edit: after you set up some sort of automation doohickey that doesn't require you to be there, just let it go and run for a long while. Your early builds will be meager, it is ok. I wish you the best on your journey To The Sea.

KirbyKhan fucked around with this message at 03:53 on Jun 8, 2019

yoloer420
May 19, 2006

Jeesis posted:

Now I am going to play seablock!

I just hit half decent gold plate output for blue science. It was a pretty big battle. But I'm finally able to scale out pretty nicely!

ZekeNY
Jun 13, 2013

Probably AFK
I hadn't realized that the new ore graphics were going live so soon, but I fired up my factory this morning and there they were:



Looks great!

LonsomeSon
Nov 22, 2009

A fishperson in an intimidating hat!

Looks great in a vacuum, but it's going to be SO much more satisfying to see a belt full of irregular ore sprites go into a furnace column and a belt full of identical plates come out.

Jeesis
Mar 4, 2010

I am the second illegitimate son of gawd who resides in hoaven.
Lol bobs/angels mods, why create complexity when you can make obnoxious choices that just make errything become a 20 step process. Also I cannot imagine using these mods pre-filter splitters, having starting machines put out 2-3 products is just loving dumb.

Anyway, I enjoy my new idle clicker map.

MrYenko
Jun 18, 2012

#2 isn't ALWAYS bad...

Jeesis posted:

Lol bobs/angels mods, why create complexity when you can make obnoxious choices that just make errything become a 20 step process. Also I cannot imagine using these mods pre-filter splitters, having starting machines put out 2-3 products is just loving dumb.

It’s less of a learning curve, and more like a wall.

KirbyKhan
Mar 20, 2009



Soiled Meat

Jeesis posted:

Lol bobs/angels mods, why create complexity when you can make obnoxious choices that just make errything become a 20 step process. Also I cannot imagine using these mods pre-filter splitters, having starting machines put out 2-3 products is just loving dumb.

Anyway, I enjoy my new idle clicker map.



Pre filter splitters all those excess items would have to be direct inserted into an assembly machine that processes it. Every crusher had a landfill maker.

Mithaldu
Sep 25, 2007

Let's cuddle. :3:
i played seablock for like 20 hours before i learned filter splitters are a thing. it went fairly ok, just built a lot of very big carousels.

GotLag
Jul 17, 2005

食べちゃダメだよ
Minor bugfix update to Honk, honks should now only be audible to players on the same surface/layer as the train.

Also the honk spamming while waiting at signals was fixed in Factorio update 0.17.37 so you can turn all the honks back on if you had them off:

FactorioBot posted:

Mithaldu
Sep 25, 2007

Let's cuddle. :3:
Nice, Honk is one of the things i really enjoy. :)

Mildly related, is The_SA_Guy also in this thread?

And lastly, beware the current version, there's a crash bug lurking around deconstructing rails and chain signals.

Mario
Oct 29, 2006
It's-a-me!
Sea Block finally done in 0.16.51. No trains because I found myself leaning on LTN to solve everything in other runs, and also no logistic bots because why not?

Sending up the final spaceship part:




It is a bus of 100~110 belts, mostly red with a few green as needed. Pulling from the bus gets a little crowded:


General factory schematic:



KirbyKhan posted:

Can't run out of materials because The Sea provides all.
This really is true and should be embraced. Don't buffer excess byproduct/coproduct unless it's particularly rare/difficult to obtain (chrome ore comes to mind unless you go for ferrous processes anyways). If you need it later you'll be producing it later too. If you draw down a buffer at that point you're not producing enough of it anyways. I set up oil and gas refining to run full tilt constantly and just flare any overproduction. Never an issue with backups and there's really not much demand for oil/gas products in Sea Block anyways.

Some more observations which could be spoilers:

Bio power from vegetable oil is very compact and available early. It frees you from power concerns for a long time (or perhaps the whole game). The small bio power section produces 900MW (more if you toss in some prod modules on the fuel plants).

Keep waste processing local if possible. Copper/iron waste from science is processed and smelted on-site to support the same science subfactory. Not only does this avoid bussing around waste but it reduces demand for raw materials from the bus.

Higher tier electronics are ridiculously expensive with how they consume several of their lower tier brethren. Prod modules on everything will save the day. Non-moduled assemblers are easily retrofitted with 1 speed and 5 prod modules without skewing ratios too much.

Sniper turret Mk2 outranges all worms.

I rushed to artillery with the first few high-tech science packs and don't regret it at all.

Ended up needing way more carbon that anticpated and had to add in a few booster factories to refill the bus. Rubber was also in short supply.

Spaceship components need a lot of modules -- better start building them early. But I missed how many alien artifacts are also needed for some components and had to commit alien genocide on swathes of worms to have enough artifacts, particularly blue and orange. Could also produce these from scratch but with artillery it's easy to harvest.

KirbyKhan
Mar 20, 2009



Soiled Meat
Contrarian view: buffering is fuckin great in seablock, it is what transforms this game into a rube golberg incremental clicker.

The production chains are so long and products can be used for so many things. Future proofing your designs and understanding which components are going to be the point of failure is actually kinda fun.

Like you don't really need to hook up smelting to your algae farm because a box of coal will run your first smelting lines for hours. Seablock is where that style of play really shines because the scale is slow.

Slag processing is sulfur positive, ceramic processing is sulfur negative. By buffering the sulfur chunks you can keep those two loops separate while having the slag loop always running in case of miscalculations.

In the first 30 hours you will outbuild your trickle of iron and get stuck waiting if you are a busy body.

KirbyKhan fucked around with this message at 07:24 on Jun 9, 2019

Scorps
Feb 24, 2008

Oh, lighten up Mr. Dooms-and-Gloom, "embezzle" is metal.
Seablock is really fun, although it's not technically "done" until you complete the FTL portion technically it's a hell of a long journey just to get to a rocket launch and then basically a massively puzzle of scaling. I really liked Seablock a lot, I will probably try another run through it sometime now that I have a much better concept of the Angels buildings and don't have to learn on the fly (I did get roughly halfway through the FTL stuff before I fizzled out). Getting bots flying in Seablock was probably the most accomplished I've felt in any Factorio save I have, it was such a long road and so gratifying to build a bot based mall finally.

If you are playing .17 Seablock disregard all his advice about farming for fuel, it's high value in .16 is not intended and it was reduced to 1/10th it's value in .17 so any plans for using Enriched Blocks should go straight in the trash. I believe they have adjusted tree cutting requiring iron saws now to be more manageable early game. At the point in that screenshot you can save literal HOURS of time also by hand foraging as much as you can and converting it up the chain into fuel. You will basically spend the first 20-40 hours doing a delicate dance to get power to a stable point, and resources will be very scarce during this time. In particular don't be frivolous with your early green chips, using them for H2O plants was pretty important but you have VERY few to start and no ability to create more until unlocking solder.

You will definitely need to optimize that island for space efficiency or be prepared to spend a long time waiting for resources, there is a lot of "whitespace" there that you will soon see cannot really be afforded

I heavily buffered as well in my run, like literally almost every single thing was massively buffered. This did not ever run out until (besides aluminum which I had to make dedicated production of) after I launched my first rocket, and then I had to look at how to scale things up (chip production is indeed one of the biggest bottlenecks by far IMO). Use warehouses liberally, I also used loaders extensively.

My tip is go hard on arboretums as much as possible, use them for fuel and use them for boards. Brown algae is trash. A nice general tip when starting is to use direct insertion whenever possible so you don't have to waste resources on belts that are slow as poo poo anyway. Also if you think the byproducts on those starting buildings are annoying you better buckle in because the name of B+A might as well be called "Factorio Byproducts Edition". The whole point of the mod is the complexity of balancing things that also generate waste or things you may not yet need. Honestly it's a cool mechanic that you don't see in regular Factorio just because there is no real resource gate like there is in Seablock.

Alien artifacts you will almost certainly have to build production for, it's possible to just fight enough but much easier to just plan to build what you need for those sciences

Most people recommend you do everything by combo sorting, however for an end game process you will be required to make at least one long production chain that cannot be combo sorted. I did not combo sort for majority of my ore in my playthrough, just ended up with a bunch of warehouses of nickle and lead basically as the only downside. If I needed more of a specific production like aluminum, titanium, or iron I would just set up a sorting area specifically for that. I personally think combo sort is a nice supplement, and not required, but you can probably find some people posting about how to wire up combinators to automatically generate the most efficient thing based on production as well so just find what works for you. In theory all combo sorting and T1 ferrous for iron is probably the most efficient method, but you will need to lay it out specifically with that plan in mind

The idea of a bus may or may not work in Seablock depending how you lay things out, I ran a bus of some general stuff but ended up making a train based layout in the end with a sort of "warehousing district" that held shitloads of any items I needed. Petrochem is annoying but not impossible as people might make it seem, just place buildings and see what happens. Use FNEI liberally. Make a shitload of ammonia if possible, like however much you think is so much you could never use it, make 10 times that amount.

My last tip is the recommendation that you do not update any mods and disable Factorio from updating while you play through the modpack, also maybe even keep a separate backup of the mods and saves. Angels updates and base game updates broke my island several times, nothing permanent but having early recipes changed on you 80 hours later when you can't really redesign the broken pieces really is annoying.

Switching topics a bit I'm getting deeper in my Krastorio run, how are people making production of the research memory chips that are required for stuff after blue? I have a makeshift little spot set up doing it then, will science eventually shift purely to those as the only requirement or will I need to keep both types of labs running for most of the game? I'm at the point where I'm switching from my midgame base into a city block megabase start and just trying to plan a bit for the science portions.

Scorps fucked around with this message at 21:16 on Jun 12, 2019

The Locator
Sep 12, 2004

Out here, everything hurts.





Scorps posted:

Switching topics a bit I'm getting deeper in my Krastorio run, how are people making production of the research memory chips that are required for stuff after blue? I have a makeshift little spot set up doing it then, will science eventually shift purely to those as the only requirement or will I need to keep both types of labs running for most of the game? I'm at the point where I'm switching from my midgame base into a city block megabase start and just trying to plan a bit for the science portions.

Check your recipes for the chip-based research. One of the components of each of them is one of the base science packs, so you will need to scale both types. The one nice thing about the research chips (which I didn't realize until far too late) is that for the first 5 types (I think) the recipe is identical except for the science pack piece, so you can build a single huge setup to produce the other three components and feed all 5 of the research chip production lines from it. If you buffer well this means that you won't need to match the demand of all 5 types at once, because most research actually doesn't use all 5 types at once.

I'm currently at the 'matter' and space research barrier. I should probably do the space science next, since it's pretty much like vanilla except for the actual component recipes. The matter stuff has a HUGE power demand barrier, so put your stuff into Helmod or something to figure out what sort of massive scaling to your power supply you will need to do to support it. I've currently built out 4 nuclear plants for this purpose (about 4.4gw total), but haven't spun 2 of them up yet until I actually need the power as the base is currently doing just fine on about 600mw.

Scorps
Feb 24, 2008

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

The Locator posted:

Check your recipes for the chip-based research. One of the components of each of them is one of the base science packs, so you will need to scale both types. The one nice thing about the research chips (which I didn't realize until far too late) is that for the first 5 types (I think) the recipe is identical except for the science pack piece, so you can build a single huge setup to produce the other three components and feed all 5 of the research chip production lines from it. If you buffer well this means that you won't need to match the demand of all 5 types at once, because most research actually doesn't use all 5 types at once.

I'm currently at the 'matter' and space research barrier. I should probably do the space science next, since it's pretty much like vanilla except for the actual component recipes. The matter stuff has a HUGE power demand barrier, so put your stuff into Helmod or something to figure out what sort of massive scaling to your power supply you will need to do to support it. I've currently built out 4 nuclear plants for this purpose (about 4.4gw total), but haven't spun 2 of them up yet until I actually need the power as the base is currently doing just fine on about 600mw.

Right I guess what I'm asking is can I deconstruct all my science labs and replace them with chip only labs or will I need room for both? I'm just starting to process the large mining site node like Immersite so not sure how far away from you that puts me exactly. I have all research completed through blue beakers and am working my way through the chip sciences.

I also did not realize what you pointed out there which will be very helpful with designing the stuff I need to complete the game at least prior to turning into a megabase

Scorps fucked around with this message at 21:00 on Jun 12, 2019

little munchkin
Aug 15, 2010

Scorps posted:

Right I guess what I'm asking is can I deconstruct all my science labs and replace them with chip only labs or will I need room for both? I'm just starting to process the large mining site node like Immersite so not sure how far away from you that puts me exactly. I have all research completed through blue beakers and am working my way through the chip sciences.

I also did not realize what you pointed out there which will be very helpful with designing the stuff I need to complete the game at least prior to turning into a megabase

you'll still need the regular labs for the techs that require them. iirc some of the later game techs still require regular beakers

The Locator
Sep 12, 2004

Out here, everything hurts.





little munchkin posted:

you'll still need the regular labs for the techs that require them. iirc some of the later game techs still require regular beakers

Yep, anything that requires regular ol' white science packs will still need the old labs, but it looks like some of the infinite research was moved to using the new research chips. Definitely need to keep your old pack-based research labs at least for a while. I'm not far enough along to know if you can get rid of them at some point, or if some of the infinite research will use them forever.

Ceyton
Oct 9, 2004

YOU'RE DEAD ARMITAGE!
YOU'RE DEAD ARMITAGE!
YOU'RE DEAD ARMITAGE!

How similar is Krastorio to Bob's suite without any Angel stuff?

Scorps
Feb 24, 2008

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

Ceyton posted:

How similar is Krastorio to Bob's suite without any Angel stuff?

Depending on what you mean by similar exactly it could be. It's pretty similar in difficulty and maybe a bit less complex if you ask me. There is much much much less Mk2/Mk3 upgrade stuff and chip production is not QUITE as insane but it's a nice boost in complexity over Vanilla. I'd rate it around the same as Bob's, keeping in mind that I haven't gotten through it completely yet and expect there is still some more complexity to come. There is several added resource patches (sand which produces several different variants of things like quartz/glass/silicon and gold which is used in electronics. Plus large single nodes that a single specialized miner goes on to make advanced plates like titanium.)

I definitely would recommend giving it a shot, it has a nice complexity bump if you are bored of vanilla without some of the "well time to spend 5 hours making this 1 new product line" that Bob's and Angels both have. If you have experience in either of those you will definitely see parallels but it's a good unique modpack in my experience so far.

Away all Goats
Jul 5, 2005

Goose's rebellion

Oxyclean posted:

This cheat sheet is what I used for setting up my signals:



I try to stick strictly to having single direction rails, saves me a ton of headaches.

I just want to say thanks for this. Finally got a decent rail system going :toot:

Kind of makes me want to play TTD now too.

The Locator
Sep 12, 2004

Out here, everything hurts.





Ceyton posted:

How similar is Krastorio to Bob's suite without any Angel stuff?

What the other guy said, but just to add to it the mod includes quite a bit more in the way of weapons to use against the biters (equipment for vehicles - each vehicle has a grid where you can add power generators, shields, weapons, roboports. A battle tank, new turret types and new high-tech rifle), so Krastor highly recommends using Bob's enemies to make the bugs tougher or you'll just steamroll them with the new toys.

Ceyton
Oct 9, 2004

YOU'RE DEAD ARMITAGE!
YOU'RE DEAD ARMITAGE!
YOU'RE DEAD ARMITAGE!

Neat. I burned out on Seablock and AngelBobs after an embarrassingly large number of hours, but Bobs alone was right around the complexity/realism sweet spot for me. Neo-Bobs sounds pretty swell.

Killstick
Jan 17, 2010
Two ways to feed a red chip factory, but which one is correct? :thunk:

The Locator
Sep 12, 2004

Out here, everything hurts.





Haha.. that 'artistry' way is not something that my brain would have ever conceived of. Interesting to look at though!

Foehammer
Nov 8, 2005

We are invincible.

Mithaldu posted:

And lastly, beware the current version, there's a crash bug lurking around deconstructing rails and chain signals.

Looks to be fixed with 0.17.49

Mithaldu
Sep 25, 2007

Let's cuddle. :3:
given how many other related bugs there were i'm half-surprised they didn't release a fix earlier, but can also half understand it

The Locator
Sep 12, 2004

Out here, everything hurts.





Scorps posted:

Right I guess what I'm asking is can I deconstruct all my science labs and replace them with chip only labs or will I need room for both? I'm just starting to process the large mining site node like Immersite so not sure how far away from you that puts me exactly. I have all research completed through blue beakers and am working my way through the chip sciences.

I also did not realize what you pointed out there which will be very helpful with designing the stuff I need to complete the game at least prior to turning into a megabase


little munchkin posted:

you'll still need the regular labs for the techs that require them. iirc some of the later game techs still require regular beakers

So checked on this tonight when I finally started launching rockets... The only thing the old white science packs ever seem to get used for are the white research chips, and there is nothing left at that point that I can use the old science packs for, except to make the new research chips.

So unless there is something hidden behind matter stuff that I can't see yet, there is no reason to keep your old labs once you complete all possible research prior to rocket launching with them.

Hopefully I don't eat those words later after I tear down my labs!

Killstick
Jan 17, 2010
Do you sometimes look at something you've made and think "How did this happen, and WHY IS IT WORKING??"

Killstick fucked around with this message at 23:09 on Jun 17, 2019

Ratzap
Jun 9, 2012

Let no pie go wasted
Soiled Meat
Saw this on the mod portal:

quote:

pY Veganism [ALPHA]
by koun
WIP. Add plants and biotechnical processes to allow you to play pyanodons mods without exploiting virtual animals.

vegans.txt

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Killstick
Jan 17, 2010
Do vegans dream of electronic sheep?

The answer is yes, and they must be saved!

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply