Factorio: Captain Planet doesn't stand a chance.

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Factorio: Captain Planet doesn't stand a chance.

Shartweek: Feb 15, 2003; D O E S N O T E X I S T

I started playing for the first time Friday night, watched all of Negative Roots videos to get a hang of the game. Just completed automated processing of blue science packs in a super confined area. My base may look like a clusterfuck but I'm proud of my work today!

Any tips on evening out the iron and copper plates on the main bus would be appreciated, he didn't quite cover how he setup his spliters in the videos.

Edit: VVV that's awesome, thank you!

Shartweek fucked around with this message at 03:34 on Mar 7, 2016

# ? Mar 7, 2016 02:39

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# ? May 12, 2024 23:26

Solumin: Jan 11, 2013

Like so, using 5 splitters:

code:

Belts:
===
A splitter: (covering 2 belts vertically vertically)
D
D

===D=D===
===DDD===
===DDD===
===D=D===

Edit: Here's a post from a few pages ago with pictures!

Moddington posted:

What you're working with here is what I'd term a "naive bus". A bus system that's designed without any specific knowledge of what it's going to feed. Which makes them incredibly flexible, and a great system to center your entire base around, all the way up to launching a rocket.

With a naive bus, there's a couple ways you can use to keep the belts balanced. The first is to take products from the belts in a balanced way, using a splitter setup like one of the following:

This inherently keeps the belts balanced, and if you make sure to take from both lanes equally, the lanes will also stay balanced. The other way is to use a much smaller splitter setup (eg. a single splitter on the leftmost belt) to take a belt of products, and every so often throw onto the bus a balancer like the following:

The one on the left is very compact, but has a bias to it (items coming in on the left or right half of the bus will more likely than not leave on the same half), while the one on the right is count-perfect, but bulky.

What I've done lately is use the first setup, leaving lots of space between the different products on the bus for splitter shenanigans, and a single count-perfect balancer at the very start of the bus.

But a third method is to make the bus a little less naive, which is something I think I'll do for my gear and circuit builds next time I start a new base. What I mean is you'd take a number of belts from the bus, and redirect them fully into the gear or circuit factory. So your 4 belts of iron plates would be cut down to 2, but with the gear factory operating you would've just had 2 belts worth spread over 4 belts, so you're kind of better off anyways. This method becomes even more desirable when you start working with ratios, because you can measure input and output in terms of how many fully loaded belts and completely eliminate bottlenecks with little effort.

Solumin fucked around with this message at 03:01 on Mar 7, 2016

# ? Mar 7, 2016 02:59

Bedurndurn: Dec 4, 2008

Laser turret leapfrogging with blueprints and constructor bots is such an amazing dick move. Those aliens are kind of justified in hating me.

Is there a way to make a blueprint that will disassemble anything already in place when you stamp it down?

# ? Mar 7, 2016 04:42

Boogalo: Jul 8, 2012; Meep Meep

Bedurndurn posted:

Is there a way to make a blueprint that will disassemble anything already in place when you stamp it down?

Hold shift I think.

# ? Mar 7, 2016 05:25

GotLag: Jul 17, 2005; 食べちゃダメだよ

A new lovely mod to crap up your crafting menu with worthless recipes!

I've just released Near Inserters, which is compatible with (and extends) Side Inserters to add versions that place items on the side of the transport belt that is closer to the inserter. If both mods are present, all inserter recipes are moved to a new tab in order not to poo poo up the logistics tab too much, while still keeping all inserter recipes in one handy place.

They are distinguished from regular base/sided inserters by the addition of two white stripes to the inserter arm and icon:

The full collection:

# ? Mar 7, 2016 10:45

Bedurndurn: Dec 4, 2008

I have no idea what kind of stuff is possible for mods in the game, but at thit point, wouldn't it just make more sense to go back to the 6 default inserter types and give them an individual configuration UI to pick near/far and straight/left/right? There's already a config menu for the smart inserters, so it hopefully (but again with no actual knowledge on my part) wouldn't be too hard to extend that.

# ? Mar 7, 2016 12:45

GotLag: Jul 17, 2005; 食べちゃダメだよ

It's a pain in the rear end, and while you can make entities that can be placed then configured, those are then not blueprint-friendly.

# ? Mar 7, 2016 13:00

LLSix: Jan 20, 2010; The real power behind countless overlords

Steejo started a tutorial series just last month.

# ? Mar 7, 2016 14:40

concise: Aug 31, 2004; Ain't much to do
'round here.

GotLag posted:

It's a pain in the rear end, and while you can make entities that can be placed then configured, those are then not blueprint-friendly.

Smart inserters and chests are both configurable and blueprint friendly. Perhaps you can emulate the way those objects handle their settings.

# ? Mar 7, 2016 15:56

Ratzap: Jun 9, 2012; Let no pie go wasted; Soiled Meat

GotLag posted:

A new lovely mod to crap up your crafting menu with worthless recipes!

I've just released Near Inserters, which is compatible with (and extends) Side Inserters to add versions that place items on the side of the transport belt that is closer to the inserter. If both mods are present, all inserter recipes are moved to a new tab in order not to poo poo up the logistics tab too much, while still keeping all inserter recipes in one handy place.

I just deleted an inserter pack for exactly that reason. I couldn't find a drat thing in the logistics tab any more, it was full of coloured weird inserters I'd only need once in a blue moon. Kudos for putting it into a fresh tab, that makes it worth looking at.

# ? Mar 7, 2016 16:43

Poil: Mar 17, 2007

I just realized that you can use middle click to restrict space for certain cargo in train wagons (2 stacks of ammo and the rest ore :toot:

). Presumably it also works for other containers. But it doesn't seem to work properly when I use it on the quickbar. I put 1 for transport belts and when I'm done building and selects anything else it just drops them in a random slot and leaves the dedicated one empty.

# ? Mar 7, 2016 16:48

awesmoe: Nov 30, 2005; Pillbug

concise posted:

Smart inserters and chests are both configurable and blueprint friendly. Perhaps you can emulate the way those objects handle their settings.

Think about how much of a pain in the rear end it would be to place eg 100 inserters (when making a new smelter pre-blueprints) and then have to configure them all. This way is good!
PS gotlag I like your mods!

# ? Mar 7, 2016 16:58

GotLag: Jul 17, 2005; 食べちゃダメだよ

concise posted:

Smart inserters and chests are both configurable and blueprint friendly. Perhaps you can emulate the way those objects handle their settings.

This will be possible in 0.13, but isn't now.

In 0.13 pickup_position and insert_position will have read/write access for individual inserters.

# ? Mar 7, 2016 17:51

kaxman: Jan 15, 2003

Poil posted:

I just realized that you can use middle click to restrict space for certain cargo in train wagons (2 stacks of ammo and the rest ore ). Presumably it also works for other containers. But it doesn't seem to work properly when I use it on the quickbar. I put 1 for transport belts and when I'm done building and selects anything else it just drops them in a random slot and leaves the dedicated one empty.

It should work properly, it works for me. Example, restrict slot 1 to coal. Use the coal on some stuff and then hitting either q or selecting something else puts the coal back in slot 1. However I believe the slot filtering only exists for the quickbar and train cargo wagons. Only idea I have is your filter is set for yellow belts but you're using red ones.

A handy tip I didn't see mentioned: shift+right click copies recipes/filters/setting stuff from one entity to another. So if you want several factories or inserters or whatever set up the same way, set one of them up, shift+right click it and then shift+left click the other things.

# ? Mar 7, 2016 17:55

pisshead: Oct 24, 2007

Is there a way to make burner inserters grab coal if they need it when it's right in front of them? Or to grab them from a furnace if there's a fuel flow on the other side?

# ? Mar 7, 2016 18:06

Solumin: Jan 11, 2013

If there's fuel in front of them, they'll grab it and resupply themselves automatically. They can take from belts, chests, boilers and (I think) furnaces.

# ? Mar 7, 2016 18:31

Slickdrac: Oct 5, 2007; Not allowed to have nice things

awesmoe posted:

Think about how much of a pain in the rear end it would be to place eg 100 inserters (when making a new smelter pre-blueprints) and then have to configure them all.

Reminds me of another useful shortcut you can do.

Configurable devices (assemblers, smart inserters, Requester chests, and similar) can have their configuration "copy/pasted" by holding Shift and RIGHT clicking to copy from an object, and then you can hold shift and LEFT click to duplicate that config onto another object

# ? Mar 7, 2016 20:09

FISHMANPET: Mar 3, 2007; Sweet 'N Sour
Can't
Melt
Steel Beams

Also works for setting the capacity limit of chests (the red X and red slots inside the chest) and for restricted cargo in train cars. Also for train stations (copies the name) and trains themselves (copies the orders).

# ? Mar 7, 2016 20:26

Sillybones: Aug 10, 2013; go away,
spooky skeleton,
go away

Do you carry blueprints over from game to game somehow?

# ? Mar 7, 2016 20:37

FISHMANPET: Mar 3, 2007; Sweet 'N Sour
Can't
Melt
Steel Beams

There's a mod called Blueprint string that lets you save a blueprint to a long string and then let's you import that string into a new game. So at this point I've got blueprints for a lot of my commonly used creations and just keep using those between games instead of creating them scratch each time.

# ? Mar 7, 2016 20:41

Slashrat: Jun 6, 2011; YOSPOS

Can you stamp down a blueprint right from the start of the game or do you need to research something first?

# ? Mar 7, 2016 20:51

bbcisdabomb: Jan 15, 2008; SHEESH

You can use everything from the start but you have to research to actually make the stuff. If you cheat in a blueprint and the robots to deal with it (modular armor with some solar panels and a personal roboport works well) you can use it to your heart's content but can't make more until you do a fair amount of research.

# ? Mar 7, 2016 20:57

Roadie: Jun 30, 2013

bbcisdabomb posted:

You can use everything from the start but you have to research to actually make the stuff. If you cheat in a blueprint and the robots to deal with it (modular armor with some solar panels and a personal roboport works well) you can use it to your heart's content but can't make more until you do a fair amount of research.

A map/mod that gives you a number of blueprints and bots but disables your ability to personally build/mine could be an interesting puzzler.

# ? Mar 7, 2016 22:37

Pittsburgh Lambic: Feb 16, 2011

Boogalo posted:

Plus the graphics department is usually on point so it could be some super complicated flailing monstrosity looking thing.

One of the blog posts on the Factorio website made use of the term "nonsense evil factory" when describing the game's graphic design, and I will never not love the designers for that.

# ? Mar 7, 2016 23:02

Applewhite: Aug 16, 2014; by vyelkin; Nap Ghost

Looking at all the mountains of biter corpses piling up against my walls, I kind of wish there were some way I could exploit them for resources. Some truck that would scoop them up and dump their bodies in a hopper to be juiced and then use the juice to grease the treads of my tanks.

# ? Mar 8, 2016 01:06

Sillybones: Aug 10, 2013; go away,
spooky skeleton,
go away

Remote cameras and picture-in-picture.

# ? Mar 8, 2016 01:06

bbcisdabomb: Jan 15, 2008; SHEESH

Applewhite posted:

Looking at all the mountains of biter corpses piling up against my walls, I kind of wish there were some way I could exploit them for resources. Some truck that would scoop them up and dump their bodies in a hopper to be juiced and then use the juice to grease the treads of my tanks.

DyTech lets you process corpses into chitin for really strong walls, which I thought was neat.

# ? Mar 8, 2016 01:14

concise: Aug 31, 2004; Ain't much to do
'round here.

GotLag posted:

This will be possible in 0.13, but isn't now.

In 0.13 pickup_position and insert_position will have read/write access for individual inserters.

Ah, fair enough.

# ? Mar 8, 2016 03:30

Bedurndurn: Dec 4, 2008

Hooray! I into space!

So my first game of Factorio is done. I probably could've finished ages ago, but I wanted to research all the techs like a crazy person.

Some thoughts/questions:

I played on default everything. I really didn't need to expand much at all. I cleared a whole bunch of land of biters, but never really needed to actually start mining it, so it mostly sat around empty except for strings of powerlines and discarded laser turrets. I would really like a bigger radar dish, because I found it a pain to keep my territory in view and it's not easy to figure out what's currently visible just because I'm in the area and what's my FoW going to look like once I walk away.

I built a rail network with 3 stops, mostly for fun (OpenTTD is my jam). Honestly resources are so plentiful and train cars hold so little that I just said gently caress it and started building red belts to everywhere instead of playing around with trains.

There should be a mechanic where sometimes a swarm of biters just gets angry and charges at your base from somewhere outside of your pollution cloud. It was pretty dang easy to clear out everything from my pollution zone and avoid getting attacked entirely.

Powering everything with solar is easy as hell and accumulators look awesome so they're fun to build a shitload of. I think I had 3k or so of each at the end of my game. I found a blueprint online towards the 30 hour mark that had those to things in the right ratio, but I just basically plopped a hundred of either down whenever one of my numbers wasn't big enough at the time and muddled through.

Oil and all things fluid kind of suck and lack the easy to grasp visual feedback of the belt system. I'm tempted to install a 'put everything in a barrel' mod for my next game.

My factory was terrible and I wish I used better bus. I started out with a single belt with copper on one side / iron on the other and then kept trying to do stupid poo poo to make it work instead of tear down everything and rebuild it the right way. It reminded me a lot of some coding projects I've worked on.

Construction robots are awesome and one of the best upgrades to player ability I've seen in a video game. Logistic bots are kind of useless for transporting stuff around my base, but player logistic slots are loving sweet and I love watching a swarm of flying robot butlers come bring me my slippers every time I come back to base.

# ? Mar 8, 2016 07:37

Slickdrac: Oct 5, 2007; Not allowed to have nice things

Bedurndurn posted:

Hooray! I into space!

So my first game of Factorio is done. I probably could've finished ages ago, but I wanted to research all the techs like a crazy person.

Some thoughts/questions:

I played on default everything. I really didn't need to expand much at all. I cleared a whole bunch of land of biters, but never really needed to actually start mining it, so it mostly sat around empty except for strings of powerlines and discarded laser turrets. I would really like a bigger radar dish, because I found it a pain to keep my territory in view and it's not easy to figure out what's currently visible just because I'm in the area and what's my FoW going to look like once I walk away.

I built a rail network with 3 stops, mostly for fun (OpenTTD is my jam). Honestly resources are so plentiful and train cars hold so little that I just said gently caress it and started building red belts to everywhere instead of playing around with trains.

There should be a mechanic where sometimes a swarm of biters just gets angry and charges at your base from somewhere outside of your pollution cloud. It was pretty dang easy to clear out everything from my pollution zone and avoid getting attacked entirely.

Powering everything with solar is easy as hell and accumulators look awesome so they're fun to build a shitload of. I think I had 3k or so of each at the end of my game. I found a blueprint online towards the 30 hour mark that had those to things in the right ratio, but I just basically plopped a hundred of either down whenever one of my numbers wasn't big enough at the time and muddled through.

Oil and all things fluid kind of suck and lack the easy to grasp visual feedback of the belt system. I'm tempted to install a 'put everything in a barrel' mod for my next game.

My factory was terrible and I wish I used better bus. I started out with a single belt with copper on one side / iron on the other and then kept trying to do stupid poo poo to make it work instead of tear down everything and rebuild it the right way. It reminded me a lot of some coding projects I've worked on.

Construction robots are awesome and one of the best upgrades to player ability I've seen in a video game. Logistic bots are kind of useless for transporting stuff around my base, but player logistic slots are loving sweet and I love watching a swarm of flying robot butlers come bring me my slippers every time I come back to base.

Get RSO mod, this spreads out resources and makes trains basically essential (or lots and lots and LOTS of belts). Alternatively, reduce ore rates/richness. I'd try RSO first, because this really just makes things more tedious as you end up constantly setting up lots and lots of mining outposts. It makes trains nearly necessary, but also very tedious. I'd also recommend some biter and weapon mods to make that part more fun/challenging. But mostly, you have to find or come up with your own challenges since the regular end game goal is fairly straightforward and doesn't require a ton at minimum to complete.

Some I've tried to varying extents:
-No belts: Rush research straight to logistic robots and chests. No belts permitted anywhere ever. Not recommended if you don't have a decent rig to play on, you will need many many thousands of bots
-1 of everything: Make a factory that can build all the items and handle all throughput even if everything is running at the same time.
-Tidal orbit: Use Test Mode, or some other mod and enforce perma night. Or you could have regular day cycles, and just ban yourself from using solar at all, and just sticking to steam engines powered with coal, wood, fuel blocks, and the souls of small children.
-No Crafting challenge: Use the mod for it, or just cheat yourself a single solar panel and Lv 2 Assembler and resist the urge.

Or you can combine several or all together for a real wild challenge.

# ? Mar 8, 2016 09:22

Obama 2012: Mar 28, 2002; "I never knew what hope was until it ran out in a red gush over my lips, my hands!"

-Anne Rice, Interview with the President

Stick Insect posted:

I've updated the OP now that the game is on Steam.

Lemme know if there is anything obvious missing from the OP, or blatantly wrong.

A section on the most popular mods and how to install them would be helpful. I'm just hopping into the thread and I'm afraid to ask since somebody probably brings it up every third page.

# ? Mar 8, 2016 16:26

Truga: May 4, 2014; Lipstick Apathy

Slickdrac posted:

-Tidal orbit: Use Test Mode, or some other mod and enforce perma night. Or you could have regular day cycles, and just ban yourself from using solar at all, and just sticking to steam engines powered with coal, wood, fuel blocks, and the souls of small children.
-No Crafting challenge: Use the mod for it, or just cheat yourself a single solar panel and Lv 2 Assembler and resist the urge.

I'm doing this right now (using the mod for no crafting, but also not using any solar power because I find it boring). It's going to be fun when biters start attacking massively due to hilarious amounts of pollution I'll produce.

# ? Mar 8, 2016 16:47

Krysmphoenix: Jul 29, 2010

Slickdrac posted:

-Tidal orbit: Use Test Mode, or some other mod and enforce perma night. Or you could have regular day cycles, and just ban yourself from using solar at all, and just sticking to steam engines powered with coal, wood, fuel blocks, and the souls of small children.

You made me want to design a mod where you can use alien artifacts as fuel sources, and I became very disgusted with myself instantly.

# ? Mar 8, 2016 17:11

Gibbo: Sep 13, 2008; "yes James. Remove that from my presence. It... Offends me" *sips overpriced wine*

Krysmphoenix posted:

You made me want to design a mod where you can use alien artifacts as fuel sources, and I became very disgusted with myself instantly.

Considering you need a bunch of them to make the power core for the armor, it doesn't seem that farfetched

# ? Mar 8, 2016 17:30

Slickdrac: Oct 5, 2007; Not allowed to have nice things

Krysmphoenix posted:

You made me want to design a mod where you can use alien artifacts as fuel sources, and I became very disgusted with myself instantly.

There's a mod with that in it

https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?f=93&t=14894

# ? Mar 8, 2016 17:45

pisshead: Oct 24, 2007

Solumin posted:

If there's fuel in front of them, they'll grab it and resupply themselves automatically. They can take from belts, chests, boilers and (I think) furnaces.

There's a belt full of coal in front of them and they don't grab it.

# ? Mar 8, 2016 18:16

Slickdrac: Oct 5, 2007; Not allowed to have nice things

pisshead posted:

There's a belt full of coal in front of them and they don't grab it.

They will keep themselves supplied with 1 unit and 1 unit only as a buffer. If they are running out of fuel and not grabbing anything, then that's either a very unique bug you have there, or a mod is causing issue.

# ? Mar 8, 2016 18:26

GotLag: Jul 17, 2005; 食べちゃダメだよ

Krysmphoenix posted:

You made me want to design a mod where you can use alien artifacts as fuel sources, and I became very disgusted with myself instantly.

If you look closely at the alien artifact sprite, it's either a brooch or the captured soul of a wood elf.

# ? Mar 8, 2016 18:31

FISHMANPET: Mar 3, 2007; Sweet 'N Sour
Can't
Melt
Steel Beams

pisshead posted:

There's a belt full of coal in front of them and they don't grab it.

Does it already have some kind of ore in its hand? I think these situations come about when people try to be extra clever and put ore and coal on the same belt and expect a burner inserter to feed the whole thing. Unfortunately that just ends up not quite working. Burner inserters are just designed as a crutch to get you to electric inserters, and maybe to use to power your steam power plants.

# ? Mar 8, 2016 18:49

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# ? May 12, 2024 23:26

Solumin: Jan 11, 2013

pisshead posted:

There's a belt full of coal in front of them and they don't grab it.

Post a pic, I guess? It should work fine.

Slickdrac posted:

They will keep themselves supplied with 1 unit and 1 unit only as a buffer. If they are running out of fuel and not grabbing anything, then that's either a very unique bug you have there, or a mod is causing issue.

I had a fun situation where several burner inserters ran out of power with fuel in their hands. I had to manually re-fuel them, it was weird.

Edit: ^^ Or that. I use them to power my steam power plants' boilers, though it doesn't really matter since ~40 regular inserters aren't using that much power relative to late-game smelting and crafting.

# ? Mar 8, 2016 18:55

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