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2mil is not much at all once you start to scale up your operations.
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May 1, 2017 18:57
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Steel furnaces have no module slots, Electric furnaces have two. And if your electric grid is coal powered they're not a good deal because burning coal for electricity basically gets you half the coal's power value onto the grid, so Electric furnaces require twice as much coal. If you're solar or nuclear though they can be a good deal.
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May 1, 2017 18:57
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Loopoo posted:I've never used electric furnaces, do they get more module slots than steel furnaces? I also wanna give electric furnaces a go cause it'd be nice not having to belt coal around everywhere, but it's not too big a pain since steel furnaces are way easier to make than electric ones, and there's a metric fucktonne of coal everywhere. Steel furnaces don't get module slots but are affected by beacons. Electric furnaces get two slots on top of being affected by beacons. Because they're run by electric they're also more flexible; steel furnaces need something you can burn while you can run electric furnaces off of nuclear or solar. It ultimately simplifies input as well since you don't have provide the fuel. You'll have poles around anyway to run the inserters unless you are an insane person who loads everything by hand.
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May 1, 2017 20:34
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One red belt / two yellow belts (48 furnaces) is just about enough iron to make up to blue science. Once blue science comes out and you want to expand, I made additional lines with the electric furnaces (and connect in new ore to it) and left the initially created ones alone. I also switched to nuclear around this time so that removes coal completely from the equation, helping my pollution immensely.
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May 1, 2017 21:35
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I added the balancer designs from the wiki to the Google doc per the request, and also compressed the existing strings into public, non-expiring pastebin links. I agree, however, that a spreadsheet is probably better for our purposes. E: I am not good with computer but here is a Fisher-Price spreadsheet for strings. love too spread sheets Feel free to gently caress with it however, change the format, change the colors, added public pages and geegaws and all kinda poo poo go buck wild Solid Poopsnake fucked around with this message at 23:21 on May 1, 2017 |
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May 1, 2017 22:39
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On my fourth factory now, I have had my factory grind to a halt every time I get to blue science, this time I built huge. Turning on blue science didn't even make my bus miss a beat. Bigger really is better. That and a little planning prevents me from just restarting when things slow down. Easier to fix issues when there is space.
Dirk Pitt fucked around with this message at 08:06 on May 2, 2017 |
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May 2, 2017 08:02
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OddObserver posted:Anyone have ideas on how to automate withdrawal of extra stuff from the Uranium enrichment process? It's easy to make it produce new U-235 in a closed loop, but I want the extras going to reactor fuel, not sitting in a centrifuge input buffer, and the closest I can come up with for solution has a long delay belt with circuit network in every cell. I'm using something similar to this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_Eh7sz1Pik (Enrichment starts around 4:30, but I found the whole video fairly helpful for getting my head around all things nuclear). I spent a bit of time trying to figure out a better way, but couldn't come up with anything. Long term it's going to be interesting to see if people end up favouring nuclear over solar, especially for megafactories that are going to be running for a while. Solar can be a pain and takes up so much room, but the place and forget aspect of it is a huge advantage.
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May 2, 2017 09:35
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Firos posted:Do you guys typically stick with steel furnaces or electric furnaces? I can't make my mind up if I want to switch over to electric, as I can't figure out a good setup for smelting steel with the electric. Por que no los dos?
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May 2, 2017 10:13
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What's good to bus and what's better to produce as needed for each build, generally? I'm especially not sure about things like circuits, steel and gears. I guess it's theoretically optimal to produce intermediates on site, but that iron/copper bandwidth becomes a limiting factor?
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May 2, 2017 10:22
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I really like your electric furnaces mod. The early coal logistics for furnaces always seems like unnecessary busywork when you'll eventually go all electric anyway.
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May 2, 2017 10:25
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Jack the Lad posted:What's good to bus and what's better to produce as needed for each build, generally? I'm especially not sure about things like circuits, steel and gears. My last game turned into a clusterfuck when I tried bussing gears and pipe. Copper, Iron, Green Circuits, plastic, and steel are mandatory for me a few hours into my 4th try. I'm about to add two rows of red circuits and redo my blue science area.
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May 2, 2017 10:32
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Added a couple of early game blueprints on the google document. I haven't really done any math on them, they are probably inefficient to the biggest number crushers in here, but it works. If you have any feedback on them, I would love to hear it. This one, in case you have moved over to a new one without me noticing: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SZeIlyYvjInZp88_ilfIMY_4BcslO2fDl886sqKS6LA/edit
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May 2, 2017 10:48
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Dirk Pitt posted:My last game turned into a clusterfuck when I tried bussing gears and pipe. Copper, Iron, Green Circuits, plastic, and steel are mandatory for me a few hours into my 4th try. I'm about to add two rows of red circuits and redo my blue science area.
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May 2, 2017 10:50
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I basically bus anything that has use in more than one area, so I'll belt iron, copper, steel, gears, plastic, all circuits, batteries and engine units.
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May 2, 2017 10:53
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Collateral Damage posted:I really like your electric furnaces mod. The early coal logistics for furnaces always seems like unnecessary busywork when you'll eventually go all electric anyway. Thanks. Any thoughts on the balance of the upgraded electric furnaces? I never played up to blue science before, I always got distracted by another modding opportunity.
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May 2, 2017 11:09
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ShadowHawk posted:If you play on expensive recipes and don't bus gear wheels you'll find yourself bussing inordinate amounts of iron. Gear wheels are twice as expensive there, and recipes take about twice as many of them. Ahh yeah. I am playing on normal recipes. If you play on high recipes how many belts of gears do you bus? Also, if you build a "mall" do you still need to bus gears since the "mall" can supply all gears necessary? Dirk Pitt fucked around with this message at 12:00 on May 2, 2017 |
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May 2, 2017 11:57
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I'd recommend putting at least iron, copper, steel, gears, all three circuits and batteries on the bus. There aren't a lot of recipes that use batteries, but they are spread out in the other items they need so putting batteries on the bus helps save headaches. Some possible additions if you'd like are coal, stone, stone brick and concrete. Most everything that needs coal is also well served being taken care of near or in your oil products where coal is already available, so you could skip that if you design your factory with that in mind. Stone, stone brick and concrete (the latter with this patch and the nuclear machines) could be taken care of in a new dedicated area, much like oil is, if you'd prefer. I used to bus plastic, but after looking at the recipes that require it I'm not going to anymore. The only things that need plastic are red circuits, both types of cannon shells and the low density structures for rockets. I think I'm just going to make my red circuits and cannon shells (which needs explosives, which is also right there) next to a simpler plastic setup, and when I eventually launch my first rocket I'll set up a new plastic factory closer to my rocket production area that outputs a lot more. I don't see a reason to put engines on the bus. When I set up a non-science, larger scale automation of engines, I'm also doing it to set up electrical engines, which I'm setting up for bots. With those four recipes, everything else you can build out of engines can be built out of the supplies in that area. I throw locomotive, pump and flame turret production in that area. Cars and tanks I only make one or two of at a time so I make those by hand, and beakers are done in my research area. For electrical engines, the only items outside of robot frames that use them are exoskeletons (usually handmade, but if automated it's not until robots are fully up and running, so no bus needed), power armor (handmade) and rocket silos (bring in some concrete and blue circuits and you're golden, again, not until robots are up and running). Purple beakers are of course made over in the research area. I restarted my island start since I realized I really screwed myself with my original factory layout and my new one is going much smoother. So, when I get off the island and set up a larger, more scalable factory I'm planning on going with a design roughly like this: pre: Stone Products Research
^ ^
^ ^
============== Iron
============== Copper
Rail Depot - Furnaces - Main Bus ============== Steel/Batteries/Gears
============== Green Circuits
============== Red/Blue Circuits
v
v
Oil Products/Combat Items
Onean fucked around with this message at 12:24 on May 2, 2017 |
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May 2, 2017 12:05
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The problem with not putting plastic on the bus is that now you have to put coal on the bus to actually make the plastic where you're going to use it, so if you were previously skipping coal you don't really gain anything...
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May 2, 2017 13:23
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On the other hand, the only things that use plastic are red chips (a ton), cannon shells (and how many are you going to make, really?), and then low density structure for the rockets (a fuckton). So having just a localized plastic zone can make sense. No point in transporting plastic on the bus past where it will be used, too.
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May 2, 2017 13:40
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Don't you want coal on the bus for your explosives/grenade production anyway? Or do you just set up a train stop right next to that area by the time you get ready to set it up?
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May 2, 2017 13:38
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i wish there were gameplay reasons to make a proper tank factory stick a basic AI core in those and set them loose to find trouble they'll inevitably run out of ammo or get owned otherwise, but that's why you've got them coming off an assembly line
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May 2, 2017 14:39
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Jack the Lad posted:What's good to bus and what's better to produce as needed for each build, generally? I'm especially not sure about things like circuits, steel and gears. There's much better answers already, but the basic number one rule is that you want to compress your materials as much as possible when bussing items. Iron:gears is 2:1 normally, so you get half the capacity/belt using local gear production vs. bussing it.
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May 2, 2017 14:48
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There's a cost benefit analysis someone could do where the increased logistical capacity vs making something like a gear assembler block, but the fact of buses is you bus because its convenient to plan around. Thus you bus gears if you want to just tap off gears in a sub factory and you don't if you stay more organized if you create a gear assembler at the head of a sub factory. A lane of gears is a sick amount of gears, which you may need logistically some day, but then its also like lanes of plate are cheap in size and resources and pretty soon your idea of "modular sub factory" is fed by a train station eating ore and what happens after that is at a scale you've planned for with extra lanes of iron plate or a lane of iron gears. e. and its worth mentioning one of the double edged swords of buses for example Dirk Pitt posted:On my fourth factory now, I have had my factory grind to a halt every time I get to blue science, this time I built huge. Turning on blue science didn't even make my bus miss a beat. Bigger really is better. That and a little planning prevents me from just restarting when things slow down. Easier to fix issues when there is space. zedprime fucked around with this message at 15:33 on May 2, 2017 |
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May 2, 2017 15:23
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Do you guys enjoy building these bus factories or do you do them because it's the Optimal Way? I tried one once and it ended up indistinguishable from every other bus factory I've seen: neat and dead inside. I really don't get the appeal.
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May 2, 2017 15:45
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seravid posted:Do you guys enjoy building these bus factories or do you do them because it's the Optimal Way? I tried one once and it ended up indistinguishable from every other bus factory I've seen: neat and dead inside. I really don't get the appeal. The numbers get bigger more.
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May 2, 2017 15:56
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I do a bus because its convenient. Everything else I do is far more slapdash, but the bus is there because otherwise I have a poo poo ton of problems getting resources to my actual assemblers and its not fun spending half an hour going "oh for fucks sake i'm going to have to route this belt around my ENTIRE factory".
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May 2, 2017 15:56
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Its an organizational tool to section out a throughway for getting plates from A to Z while feeding sub users B-Y. Sectioning out a throughway is useful while you're organically building up to leave room for bandwidth expansions which is where my non-bus factories always turned into headaches. It also happens to be a big warehouse of poo poo which as I mentioned can be useful to absorb lulls in raw supplies or keep things from drying out when you spin up the assembler factory once every 20 minutes.
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May 2, 2017 15:57
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Also, bussing is hardly optimal, it's just a way to compartmentalize things so that you don't have to think about the whole factory all at once. True doom murderheads will make end products each with their own dedicated supply chain, going right back to the resource nodes.
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May 2, 2017 16:01
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I HIGHLY recommend bussing gears now with the new science packs. It didn't used to be necessary but now that you need assembling machines, engines, and gun turrets for science packs it's extremely worthwile and I'd say that even without automating red belts/splitters/underbelts you're still making at least 1/3rd of your overall iron production into gears.
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May 2, 2017 16:03
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zedprime posted:There's a cost benefit analysis someone could do where the increased logistical capacity vs making something like a gear assembler block, but the fact of buses is you bus because its convenient to plan around. Thus you bus gears if you want to just tap off gears in a sub factory and you don't if you stay more organized if you create a gear assembler at the head of a sub factory. Yeah. I am working to consume evenly and getting ready for rail to get to my smelting area to feed the bus. seravid posted:Do you guys enjoy building these bus factories or do you do them because it's the Optimal Way? I tried one once and it ended up indistinguishable from every other bus factory I've seen: neat and dead inside. I really don't get the appeal. I think it is fun. I get messy outside the bus, but I have a place I know to get resources from.
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May 2, 2017 16:04
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zedprime posted:
If your bus is your whole factory, production statistics should show you if you're outstripping supply. You can also just visually inspect and see where the backup ends and if it's moving further down belt or further up belt. This is easier than distributed production. If you make gears everywhere they're needed, you won't be able to tell if you're producing enough. Likewise, if you've got 5 belts of iron flowing all over the place, you are going to have one heck of a time figuring out quickly if you're producing enough, and if you're not, where is the shortfall?
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May 2, 2017 16:12
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I mean, unless you've got some ridiculous megafactory that takes 10 minutes to walk across... Wait, that's all of us. Nevermind.
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May 2, 2017 16:18
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Mr. Powers posted:If your bus is your whole factory, production statistics should show you if you're outstripping supply. You can also just visually inspect and see where the backup ends and if it's moving further down belt or further up belt. This is easier than distributed production. If you make gears everywhere they're needed, you won't be able to tell if you're producing enough. Likewise, if you've got 5 belts of iron flowing all over the place, you are going to have one heck of a time figuring out quickly if you're producing enough, and if you're not, where is the shortfall? If you built gears everywhere they were needed, you wouldn't need to care whether you were producing enough. You'd just be worrying about whether you were producing enough iron.
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May 2, 2017 16:17
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Dr. Stab posted:If you built gears everywhere they were needed, you wouldn't need to care whether you were producing enough. You'd just be worrying about whether you were producing enough iron. See the second point. If you're not busing and just using individual feeds, you still have the problem of figuring out where your shortfalls are.
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May 2, 2017 16:31
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This game I made a bus for batteries out of habit, but in retrospect it's not needed now you can barrel acid. Especially since I'm already carrying acid around for blue circuits. Now that I'm in the post-game I've started making outposts to produce materials for my main factory rather than try to upgrade belt throughput. It started with a steel foundry to relieve stress on my iron supplies, then I did one for circuits. Now I'm working on advanced circuits, which require a separate oil refinery and plastic factory, with an end goal of spinning everything off to an outpost and running a huge meta-factory with logistics powered by rail.
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May 2, 2017 16:36
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Instead of trying to fine tune a bus by sight and stats I am an avid spreadsheeter. Production stats can be useful but I make a lot of stuff on demand, ie I choke down my inserter chest for 200 and come by and grab 200 (or the bots do) and everything spins up to make 200. The inventory capacity of the bus should just absorb that because it amortizes down to some trickle of resources over a meaningful time period. Which you can sort of see in the production stats but most of us are growing constantly so any flux it susses out might have been addressed 20 minutes ago and its just waiting for old numbers to fall out of the running. That's separate from the things I want running hell or high water at a specified rate like research and rocket parts. At which point I run the numbers, make sure I have furnace and belt capacity for it, then add some fat to take up those incidental drains like making stacks of inserters and assemblers every half hour. The newish belt circuit stuff is useful for that too because you can logically restrict offtake to prefer your research or rocket parts instead of needing to put them at the head of the bus to guarantee they get preferential treatment over building and military supplies.
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May 2, 2017 16:45
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Is there any downside to bussing whatever the hell I want? Cause I didn't bus gears in my starter factory and it was a major pain in the rear end. Having to put gear assemblers where they were needed made my assembly stacks messy and annoying.
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May 2, 2017 16:46
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Aside from that bus using up resources until its saturated fully, no reason not to.
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May 2, 2017 16:51
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Loopoo posted:Is there any downside to bussing whatever the hell I want? Cause I didn't bus gears in my starter factory and it was a major pain in the rear end. Having to put gear assemblers where they were needed made my assembly stacks messy and annoying. It takes up real estate and demands you expand slightly more, but that's about it.
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May 2, 2017 16:54
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| # ? May 25, 2024 00:35 |
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seravid posted:Do you guys enjoy building these bus factories or do you do them because it's the Optimal Way? I tried one once and it ended up indistinguishable from every other bus factory I've seen: neat and dead inside. I really don't get the appeal. I actually really like the visual appeal of a massive super wide bus with lane after lane saturated with materials. I like how crisp it looks and it's a very good indicator of pure manufacturing power. It's also a lot more convenient, especially when you're still working up the tech tree, but that's more of a side benefit for me. Nothing wrong with a chaotic spaghetti factory, or a super huge rail maze where you manufacture everything you need on site, or some super clean robot-powered hellscape, but for me I just like to build around a huge fat bus. I mean pretty much 95% of this game's appeal is allowing you to express your  to your own personal taste anyway.
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May 2, 2017 16:58
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