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Applewhite posted:I'm sticking to the vanilla version for now. Anyone should do that for quite some time iirc.
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# ? Mar 1, 2016 14:10 |
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# ? May 13, 2024 11:35 |
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Why are belts so mesmerising? I spent way too long playing with these various designs of belt/lane splitter (no mods required):Michaellaneous posted:Factorio mods are going down the bullshit unfun Minecraft mods route that ramp up the absurdity of collecting poo poo to 11. You need 4 hours to get any basic sort of machinery going, but then it doesn't get faster, no. It only gets more complex. Play mine! They're fun (I hope) and aimed at enabling options rather than adding grind. Feedback is always welcome, as are suggestions. I can't reimplement my old lane splitting machines unless we get an API update, although at least one of the devs has expressed interest.
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# ? Mar 1, 2016 14:11 |
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ModeSix posted:I think in almost 2 years of playing this game, I've automated blue science packs... twice... I'm never happy with my factories so I start over... I think everyone reaches that point where their early factory isn't fit for purpose so they start over. There's no need to start a new game for it though - keep the old one chugging along and build somewhere else! The landmass in Factorio is infinite; make good use of it.
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# ? Mar 1, 2016 14:13 |
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GotLag posted:Why are belts so mesmerising? I spent way too long playing with these various designs of belt/lane splitter (no mods required): I should have clarified - your mods, aka quality of life improvements, own most of the time. The bigger mods like Bob and whatnot are the one that are kinda bad.
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# ? Mar 1, 2016 14:16 |
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I find a lot of them to be like Gregtech from Minecraft: they have some neat concepts and mechanical additions, but they ruin them by gating them behind endless grind. A good example is the electrolysis/chemistry part of Gregtech. I loved that you could break down clay, emeralds, all kinds of minerals into component elements, it was a nice way of harvesting trace minerals. But all his recipes required way too much bullshit. It's like they think that adding fun is something that has to be "balanced" by adding busywork. GotLag fucked around with this message at 14:29 on Mar 1, 2016 |
# ? Mar 1, 2016 14:26 |
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GotLag posted:I find a lot of them to be like Gregtech from Minecraft: they have some neat concepts and mechanical additions, but they ruin them by gating them behind endless grind. A good example is the electrolysis/chemistry part of Gregtech. I loved that you could break down clay, emeralds, all kinds of minerals into component elements, it was a nice way of harvesting trace minerals. But all his recipes required way too much bullshit. It's the same reasoning which makes people create insanely hard games because they want to be like Dark Souls, and they don't realize that there is a lot of other things in play. It certainly did not start with Minecraft but it is probably the most famous example. They have really warped views on the topic of goals and fun in video games. You need to be this elite to play with us. ----------
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# ? Mar 1, 2016 14:31 |
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Michaellaneous posted:Anyone should do that for quite some time iirc. This really needs to go at the top of every page and every 5 posts thereafter. Really learn the base game before you even look at mods. This game is 100% completely functional and fun without mods. Mods (in general) just add unneeded complexity for complexities sake!
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# ? Mar 1, 2016 15:01 |
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ModeSix posted:This really needs to go at the top of every page and every 5 posts thereafter. Yeah except replace iirc with imho.
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# ? Mar 1, 2016 15:02 |
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Their are a lot of really good quality of life mods out there and a bunch of just fun little thing mods. I just wish they would swap over to the workshop for mods so we would get automatic updates, collections, and categories.
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# ? Mar 1, 2016 15:09 |
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Does anyone know enough about the vehicle mechanics internals to say whether a boat mod would be pragmatically possible?
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# ? Mar 1, 2016 16:08 |
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Michaellaneous posted:I should have clarified - your mods, aka quality of life improvements, own most of the time. We did a multiplayer game last year with most of bobs stuff but skipping some of the extreme complexity additions. The circuits his stuff uses are just crazy, utterly ridiculously complex. Sure, factorio end game is 'make umpty billion circuits really fast' and could do with diversification but hell, Bobs mod takes that ball and runs away. Mods I always use? Autofill, blueprint string, evogui, gravestone (for MP games) and WaiTex. The one thing Bobs has right (and the factorio authors have touched on fixing at some point) is giving mining and power upgrade options via research. Being bobs they go way too far (especially in conjunction with his modules) but having better miners and boilers/generators/solar etc really does help. Especially in the end game when you need so drat much of everything. For the folk looking at blue research and thinking 'where the hell do I start?'. First, find and secure a large patch of space to work in. Start with oil and always leave some space between things - you'll love yourself later when you have to come back and there is space to fix it without moving anything. Use tanks and underground pipes to keep things tidy and give yourself a buffer. Write down the ingredients for blue science (or memorise them) and then pick one and build a piece of factory to make that item bearing in mind to leave space for the rest and how to get the product to the assembly point. Then pick the next item and build that. Breaking the problem down makes it more manageable - before you know it you'll have 2 belts with all 4 items on them. If you're playing with aggressive biters, this is the toughest time. You don't have lasers yet but you have to expand a lot, protect what you have and at the same time spend hours building a large complex area. If you're suffering badly, make batteries first and churn out a bunch of lasers (plus some accumulators if you find the lights going out too often ) then get back to building safe in the knowledge that the rest of your factory is now secure.
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# ? Mar 1, 2016 16:11 |
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ikanreed posted:Does anyone know enough about the vehicle mechanics internals to say whether a boat mod would be pragmatically possible? The devs are working on spider bot vehicle that can cross water, so it is possible. I also feel like I used a boat mod at one point, but I don't remember what it is/was called, or if it is still up to date.
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# ? Mar 1, 2016 16:26 |
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What's the keybinding to put fuel into machines without having to open their gui and do it manually? I've seen it in videos but combinations of modifiers and clicking don't seem to be working (except to take fuel back out).
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# ? Mar 1, 2016 16:35 |
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Ciaphas posted:What's the keybinding to put fuel into machines without having to open their gui and do it manually? I've seen it in videos but combinations of modifiers and clicking don't seem to be working (except to take fuel back out). Ctrl+Click while holding the item. Also works for putting ore/stone into furnaces or items into assemblers that take that item as a component.
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# ? Mar 1, 2016 16:41 |
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RattiRatto posted:Yea i just finished that level. The next one it basically "kill a lot of biters and you don't have a base", but i find it even harder than the previous one. It seems like campaign is really hard I think it just isn't written correctly as a tutorial. It really implies you already know how the game really works, and all you need is a refresher on the controls.
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# ? Mar 1, 2016 16:43 |
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Slickdrac posted:Ctrl+Click while holding the item. Also works for putting ore/stone into furnaces or items into assemblers that take that item as a component. And Ctrl + right click to put in half of what you have in your hand.
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# ? Mar 1, 2016 16:52 |
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Oh, didn't realize you'd have to hold it, derp, thanks. New question, is the game's framerate supposed to be oddly choppy? It hitches for a split second every half of a second or so, from the very start of playing. Ciaphas fucked around with this message at 17:01 on Mar 1, 2016 |
# ? Mar 1, 2016 16:58 |
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Ciaphas posted:Oh, didn't realize you'd have to hold it, derp, thanks. My game does this sometimes, restarting my computer fixes it for me.
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# ? Mar 1, 2016 17:14 |
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I've noticed that if I order stuff deconstructed, I'm then allowed to drop a blueprint over it. Is there a mod that makes it so that stuff is autoflagged for deconstruct whenever I drop a blueprint on it? It'd be handy for dumb stuff like "replace this belt segment with a side-balancer".
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# ? Mar 1, 2016 17:35 |
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Belt balancing handy hint! This layout will use both input lanes equally even if all your output is from a single lane only: You can use regular belts instead of the undergrounds if you like (extend them back down to the same row as the bottom splitter), they just make it look a bit neater in my opinion. Compacting is left as an exercise for the reader.
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# ? Mar 1, 2016 17:45 |
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LordSaturn posted:I've noticed that if I order stuff deconstructed, I'm then allowed to drop a blueprint over it. Is there a mod that makes it so that stuff is autoflagged for deconstruct whenever I drop a blueprint on it? It'd be handy for dumb stuff like "replace this belt segment with a side-balancer". That sounds like one misclick away from disaster.
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# ? Mar 1, 2016 17:52 |
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GotLag posted:Belt balancing handy hint! Are there space-efficient ways to balance multiple belts of the same resource? My first good attempt at a large bus had 6 iron and 6 copper belts, but I ran into all sorts of problems when I started treating them as two large belts. I'm guessing, though, that it's just better to not try to treat multiple belts as a single belt-highway and instead maintain dedicated resource lines. Re-shuffling more than 2-3 belts without lowering belt bandwidth after a split-off seems to require a lot of space. But it just felt... wrong to have my copper/iron plate belts end before the end of the bus. They make such beautiful, colourful lines.
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# ? Mar 1, 2016 18:19 |
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Dunno-Lars posted:That sounds like one misclick away from disaster. I hope you don't think that's a reason not to want that mod.
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# ? Mar 1, 2016 18:25 |
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So in theory, in a situation like that, this is what you want to do: Every time you split off the "bus" you need to take every belt of that material, and split it with some portion staying on the belt and some leaving the belt. You then probably need to rebalance everything staying on the belt and also balance what you're taking off the belt. As your belt gets larger this becomes harder. For example, this is what I do with a 2 belt bus. That splits so half stays on the bus half gets diverted. If you want to split less than half or have more than 2 belts you can see how it quickly spirals out of control.
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# ? Mar 1, 2016 18:49 |
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So why is balancing the belts important? Is it purely an aesthetic thing or does it actually have a measurable impact on production?
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# ? Mar 1, 2016 20:11 |
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Balancing the belts is is important because a lot of times you have all the factories on one side of the belt and all their inserters pull from the opposite side of the belt. This feeds back into your main bus and so it's common to have one side of your bus belt completely stationary. It's the same idea with two belts, but worse, because if there's only one belt your inserters will fall back to the close side, but if it's on a separate belt you can be starving that part of your factory.
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# ? Mar 1, 2016 20:15 |
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Balanced belts carry more throughput than unbalanced ones, and in larger factories, transportation quickly becomes the bottleneck instead of fabber speed. Eventually (post-rocket silo 'eventually') you'll even surpass the limits of what a naive bus can reasonably handle, and you'll instead want to explicitly ratio out the products of each factory to their destination factories.
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# ? Mar 1, 2016 20:18 |
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What is a "bus" belt? I've just started playing this morning and have a single lab automated on red packs and I already feel like I've done it completely wrong. Also the hotbar is a hot mess, why can't I hit 6 through 0 to use those, I have to drag them to the left hotbar instead
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# ? Mar 1, 2016 22:35 |
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So here's the main body of my factory (after being rebuilt following a major biter attack): My red and green potion factories: Turret factory: And ore processing: Power generation is up north, as are my oil fields and bullet factories. Ciaphas posted:What is a "bus" belt? A bus belt is a central belt along which all the major ingredients travel, branching off where needed to feed specific factories. It's a very efficient design I only found out about after building my factory.
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# ? Mar 1, 2016 22:37 |
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Applewhite posted:So here's the main body of my factory (after being rebuilt following a major biter attack): You should hit alt before you take the screenshots so that we know what the assemblers are making.
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# ? Mar 1, 2016 22:41 |
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Ciaphas posted:What is a "bus" belt? "Bus" refers to a particular setup for using belts, not an actual type of belt. The bus itself is a bunch of belts carrying materials, and factories lined up along the edges of the bus pull off what they need. The simplest belt is iron plates and copper plates, since those are required by pretty much every recipe. You can add more belts to your bus for intermediary things, like iron gear wheels or green circuits. It's pretty efficient! Don't worry about doing it wrong -- it's really easy to tear down and start all over. Seriously, this is one of the few games where starting over doesn't feel like punishment. until you get construction robots and are used to them doing all the work for you... Check the Controls section in the options menu. (Check the tabs on top of the window) You use Shift + 1 through 5 to access the right side of the hot bar. I don't know why. You can set it to 6 - 10 if you want to.
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# ? Mar 1, 2016 22:41 |
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Ciaphas posted:What is a "bus" belt? It's basically when you set up a long line of Iron and Copper plates (and occasionally things like Green Circuits, Plastic, Steel, ect.) that smaller factories branch off of to make their products. People like it because all you have to do is just feed more input Iron/Copper to the bus belts. (The picture I'm going to link feeds off a double Iron bus, a Copper bus, a Coal bus, and a water/oil "bus") Also for people complaining about Blue Science, I present this Also please note the ratios for science production. Due to build times, you're going to want 5 Red : 6 Green : 12 Blue : 1 Purple. It aggravates me to no end seeing other ratios, because it's just wasteful at some point. You can usually cram some extra science labs on the chain there, but you'll want to maintain the ratio. This factory uses Advanced Oil Processing to turn Heavy Oil into Light Oil, and Light Oil into Petroleum, so that's the first thing you should research with your blues. (Just set up oil storage for Light and Heavy oil until you have that). In general, just pay attention to your ratios for max efficiency EDIT: The factory fits comfortably into a 3x2 "block" area on the grid you see when you pause.
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# ? Mar 1, 2016 22:52 |
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Dirk the Average posted:You should hit alt before you take the screenshots so that we know what the assemblers are making. oh that's how you guys got them to do that. I thought it was a mod or something. This game really tosses you in the middle of things without explaining anything.
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# ? Mar 1, 2016 22:54 |
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Applewhite posted:oh that's how you guys got them to do that. I thought it was a mod or something. Yeah, it really ought to have that on by default.
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# ? Mar 1, 2016 22:59 |
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Krysmphoenix posted:5 Red : 6 Green : 12 Blue : 1 Purple. You need a speed module in your purple factory. Red takes 5 seconds for 1 pack, so 5 factories gets you 1 per second (modified by your factory speed). Green takes 6, so 6 factories gets you 1 per second. Blue takes 12 seconds, so 12 factories gets you 1 per second. Purples takes 12 seconds to make 10 packs, which means you're going to be making 10/12~.83 packs per second. Throwing in a Speed 1 module (+25% speed) boosts it so those 10 packs get made in 9.6 seconds, or .96 second per pack, which is close enough to 1/second.
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# ? Mar 1, 2016 23:16 |
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Krysmphoenix posted:
I like that and I'm going to steal it thank you. Don't suppose you have a blueprint string for it? FISHMANPET posted:You need a speed module in your purple factory. Red takes 5 seconds for 1 pack, so 5 factories gets you 1 per second (modified by your factory speed). Green takes 6, so 6 factories gets you 1 per second. Blue takes 12 seconds, so 12 factories gets you 1 per second. Purples takes 12 seconds to make 10 packs, which means you're going to be making 10/12~.83 packs per second. Throwing in a Speed 1 module (+25% speed) boosts it so those 10 packs get made in 9.6 seconds, or .96 second per pack, which is close enough to 1/second. Excellent, the factorio thread is the BEST place for technical nit picking on SA. I love it, thank you.
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# ? Mar 1, 2016 23:34 |
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Ciaphas posted:What is a "bus" belt? Someone already answered this, but here is a picture.
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# ? Mar 1, 2016 23:46 |
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Krysmphoenix posted:It's basically when you set up a long line of Iron and Copper plates (and occasionally things like Green Circuits, Plastic, Steel, ect.) that smaller factories branch off of to make their products. People like it because all you have to do is just feed more input Iron/Copper to the bus belts. (The picture I'm going to link feeds off a double Iron bus, a Copper bus, a Coal bus, and a water/oil "bus") Goddamn. That is a beautiful factory. Thanks for the info about ratios. I try not to worry too much about those (i.e. don't go looking up ratios online for every little thing) but it's a necessary part of building an efficient factory. I've only every seen 5 red : 6 green : 6 blue before though. It looks like from yours that 2 inserter factories are needed for green and blue science... guess I'll have to fix that in mine. Usually I just take whatever inserters aren't being used by my green factories and turn them into smart inserters. FISHMANPET posted:You need a speed module in your purple factory. Red takes 5 seconds for 1 pack, so 5 factories gets you 1 per second (modified by your factory speed). Green takes 6, so 6 factories gets you 1 per second. Blue takes 12 seconds, so 12 factories gets you 1 per second. Purples takes 12 seconds to make 10 packs, which means you're going to be making 10/12~.83 packs per second. Throwing in a Speed 1 module (+25% speed) boosts it so those 10 packs get made in 9.6 seconds, or .96 second per pack, which is close enough to 1/second. A lot of people recommend productivity modules, too, to get the most from each artifact. How many speed and productivity modules would you need to reach 1/second? Hagop posted:Someone already answered this, but here is a picture. That's a nice bus. Got any pictures of the whole factory?
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# ? Mar 2, 2016 00:03 |
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Solumin posted:A lot of people recommend productivity modules, too, to get the most from each artifact. How many speed and productivity modules would you need to reach 1/second? I don't think you could pack a factory full enough with modules and there's not really a reason to when you can just build another factory. For reference, my research factory: That's twice as many labs as I need with all the research upgrades I have, but whatever, I just left them forever.
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# ? Mar 2, 2016 00:10 |
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# ? May 13, 2024 11:35 |
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A problem I'm finding with single lane buses is that each time you split off to somewhere it's needed, you're cutting the amount on the bus after that point by half each time. 100 green circuit per minute bus gets reduced down to 12 per minute after just 3 off-branches. I was thinking of either making triple lane buses or dedicated lanes. 1 green circuit bus for EVERY section that requires green circuits, etc? [edit] This is like minecraft crossed with OpenTTD. Only with less bribing towns so I can bulldoze their homes in order to run a 12 lane railroad in a straight line from one side of the map to the other. Ak Gara fucked around with this message at 00:18 on Mar 2, 2016 |
# ? Mar 2, 2016 00:15 |