|
I'm partways through a modded save using Krastorio 2 and Space Exploration. This is my first time playing Factorio in a couple of years, and my first time using any major overhaul mods. I've finished all my yellow tech card research, and am getting ready to head into space for the first time. Does anyone have any suggestions for mods that can be added halfway through a save that might mesh well with K2/SE? I've got Factorissmo, Factory Planner, and Vehicle Snap. I was looking at adding logistics trains - does anyone have some experience with that? Finally, I mentioned to a friend that I was using K2 and SE together, and he was concerned that K2 recipes might make playing SE and getting into the late game significantly more difficult. Does anyone know if there's anything to what he said? K2 explicitly mentions that it's compatible with Space Exploration.
|
![]() |
|
![]()
|
# ? Jun 11, 2024 10:03 |
|
I don't think K2 recipes affects the Space Exploration phase much at all. The space stuff is largely self-contained recipes. I guess the raw materials you ship up might be slightly more complex to build? It's not a huge deal though.
|
![]() |
|
K2 also makes power generation a lot easier. And I don't know if they fixed this by now, but you were also able to magic up water from the atmosphere on waterless planets.
|
![]() |
|
Spoggerific posted:I'm partways through a modded save using Krastorio 2 and Space Exploration. This is my first time playing Factorio in a couple of years, and my first time using any major overhaul mods. I've finished all my yellow tech card research, and am getting ready to head into space for the first time. Does anyone have any suggestions for mods that can be added halfway through a save that might mesh well with K2/SE? I've got Factorissmo, Factory Planner, and Vehicle Snap. I was looking at adding logistics trains - does anyone have some experience with that? None of these really add new things, they just provide QoL, so they're easy to add in whenever. 200 Inventory size While the normal inventory size is fine for vanilla, I find that in modded runs you often get so many new components and buildings that it just gets tedious. With this you can carry around so much more. Todo List An easy way to make a list of tasks for yourself. Really good for spotting little things that you want to get to later and making sure you don't forget. Auto Deconstruct Automatically marks miners for deconstruction when you run past, good way to notice that your patches are running out when you see your bots gunning for some miners. Automatic Station Painter This will color your station to a tint that matches whatever item you're shipping/receiving Automatic Train Painter Same thing as above, but for the trains. Blueprint Sandboxes This thing is amazing, it opens up a sort of extra dimension where you can mess around to make a nice layour for your blueprints. The game will still be running in the background and you can easily switch back and forth. GUI Unifyer Only really needed if you have a bunch of mods that add buttons and stuff to the top. This'll make sure they are all in a unified size and style. Honk Honk honk Inbuilt Lighting Gives your power poles a small light radius, really nice to be able to see at night. Max Rate Calculator This will let you select a group of buildings and it'll tell you the input it needs and output it provides when running at max speed. Milestones Keeps track of the time you needed to hit certain milestones, it has built in ones for most major modpacks and you can also add your own. Even if you add it later it calculates back based on the production statistics. Just a neat bit of information. Pipe Visualizer This'll highlight all the pipes connected to the one you're hovering over with a color matching the fluid inside. Really good to find out if you have any missing pipes anywhere. Underground Indicators This'll add an indicator when placing underground belts or pipes, showing the max length it can go
|
![]() |
|
You probably want a factory planning mod (I use Factory Planner) and a lookup mod (I use “What is it really used for?”) if you’re playing any mod. A lookup mod lets you look up any item and see what it’s, well, used for, and a planning mod lets you use an ingame interface to plan how to create some item at a certain rate in a tabular UI. You don’t need a train mod for K2, although as always you might enjoy having one.
|
![]() |
|
I just got back into Factorio after trying it a few years ago. I could use Babby's First Strategy Guide. (Links welcome) All my questions are about the early game. 1. My first plan was to set up a lot of loops -- one with coal and iron ore around the furnaces, for instance, with inserters picking up finished projects from the furnaces and moving them on. It sounds like the preferred strategy is actually to set up buses? 2. Is moving things into and out of boxes with inserters a standard early-way game of buffering and moving things from one production line to another? 3. What do you wish you'd understood when you started out? Thanks.
|
![]() |
|
The recent LP was very guide focused: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3984107 1) Loops are a possible but very unusual way to build things. It is very hard to expand and easy to clog up. And even harder to use without filters and some very advanced knowledge. 2) Yes.
|
![]() |
|
Thanks for answering my questions and giving some mod suggestions. I'll give them a shot next time I play. I just survived my first coronal mass ejection, and hooo boy did I cut it close. The info panel said it required 2.5GW and 188GJ to defend. I set up my first nuclear plant of about 1.5GW of nominal power with around 12 hours to spare, then got sucked into expanding my train network and all kinds of other random crap. Combined with leaving the game open on accident for a bit when I had to go AFK, before I noticed there was only about an hour and a half left before the CME arrived. I went to take a look at my nuclear power plant, thinking it was time to build a second one to make sure my umbrella could meet the demand. When I got there, I realized that my power plant was built with a vanilla blueprint, and either the K2 or SE ratios are completely different, so I ended up wasting a couple dozen nuclear fuel cells without realizing. This combined with Korvex being locked behind space science and the significantly increased uranium ore requirements for centrifuges meant that I had nearly mined out my only active uranium patch. I scrambled to deconstruct my old power plant and build a new one with the proper ratios and capacity, and only managed to get it online and enough steam stored with 11 minutes and 1 (one) fuel cell remaining.
|
![]() |
|
Arsenic Lupin posted:I just got back into Factorio after trying it a few years ago. I could use Babby's First Strategy Guide. (Links welcome) All my questions are about the early game. 1) The only thing I loop is science packs for labs, and half of that's for the sushi belt disco science aesthetic. 2) And not just for early game! 3) The game gives you a lot of levers for tweaking biters. You can turn them off completely, you can make them so you have to attack first, you can expand the starting area so they take longer to get to you, you can slow down their expansion rate... and you can always turn them up if you want to. The same applies to resources: I always play with oil kicked up a couple notches, because I've had too many games where it took over two hours of searching to find any oil. So if there's some aspect of the game that you're not really enjoying, change some settings. The bigger you build now, the bigger you can build later. Only need 6 furnaces for copper now? Build 12. Only need 12? Build 24. Or 36. I still struggle with this, honestly; building big just doesn't come naturally to me. But it really does help you in the long run. Everyone has their own playstyle. I want to go in with a plan (Factory Planner!) and design the factory myself. One friend only uses blueprints, because figuring out the factory is overwhelming and not fun. Another friend is an agent of chaos who turns empty fields into massive factories and then disappears. This makes multiplayer incredibly fun. For single player, figure out what YOU need in order to make the game more enjoyable for yourself. Vanilla is great and balanced, but QoL mods are the difference between one unfinished run and a dozen hundred hours of playtime. (Or a dozen unfinished runs.)
|
![]() |
|
Holy poo poo, you can put a smelter right next to a miner. This set of tutorials is worth its weight in gold. (which Factorio doesn't have, so clearly gold is extra-valuable.)
|
![]() |
|
For what it’s worth, I would explicitly strongly recommend against using blueprints downloaded from the Internet. Factorio is designing factory segments; if you don’t do that, there’s no game. (Of course, it’s fine to use blueprints you created.) This won’t come up for awhile, since it takes awhile to get the technology for blueprints to be useful anyway. Other than that, the only big tip I have is to design everything both bigger than you need and farther apart than you need. You won’t regret it!
|
![]() |
|
Yeah, no, the bumbling is absolutely part of the fun. I want design patterns*, not boilerplate. * don't hit me
|
![]() |
|
You really do not need to worry about exact ratios. Build enough to (over)produce what you want and then overproduce the sub-parts, all you're losing is the negligible cost of the structures and some power.
|
![]() |
|
nrook posted:For what it’s worth, I would explicitly strongly recommend against using blueprints downloaded from the Internet. Factorio is designing factory segments; if you don’t do that, there’s no game. Except for trains. If you want an actual proper rail network that’s been all but solved and reinventing it adds nothing imo even as a new player (if you just want lazy ugly trains and don’t care about intersection throughput then go wild). Possibly also belt balancers for any non-trivial size. But for everything else yeah at least do it yourself once.
|
![]() |
|
power crystals posted:Except for trains. If you want an actual proper rail network that’s been all but solved and reinventing it adds nothing imo even as a new player (if you just want lazy ugly trains and don’t care about intersection throughput then go wild). Possibly also belt balancers for any non-trivial size. But for everything else yeah at least do it yourself once. I'd still do both of these as a simple run at first just to understand them. This way if something goes wrong you have an idea of what that looks like.
|
![]() |
|
Arsenic Lupin posted:I just got back into Factorio after trying it a few years ago. I could use Babby's First Strategy Guide. (Links welcome) All my questions are about the early game. 1. Loops are usually not the greatest idea. It's fine to let conveyor belts just end, because unlike IRL they will compress just fine. Also, specifically in the case of furnaces it's not hard to do the math on how many furnaces it takes to handle one belt of or and how to lay them out relatively efficiently. It's also fine to just find ratios by eye, though. If you have a full belt coming in and everything is being consumed before it makes it to the end, you found the limit of how many machines one belt can supply. 2. For buffering? Sure. And by making the conveyor take a 90, you can easily have the input and output on the same belt so the excess that the inserter can't handle will just flow by. For moving from one line to another? No. That's what splitters and underground belts are for, and you get those veeery early. 3. You need more space than you think. You need to scale up more than you think. Automate EVERYTHING. Don't sit around and craft things by hand, don't just sit around waiting for your factory to produce more, be aggressive about expanding. If things turn into a clusterfuck... well either find a way to augment it, build a secondary source elsewhere and find a way to feed it to where it needs to go, or as a last resort tear your mess up and rebuild it. But generally speaking, you'll learn more from working in/around a mess (which is part of the reason to leave space around everything where possible). K8.0 fucked around with this message at 19:10 on Sep 27, 2022 |
![]() |
|
Arsenic Lupin posted:3. What do you wish you'd understood when you started out? You can copy-and-paste many things....settings, build requirements into a requestor chest, train schedules, etc. Eventually, whole assembly lines. Leave lots of empty space between your assembly lines, particularly early on. You'll need more of those early products than you expect.
|
![]() |
|
gaj70 posted:Leave lots of empty space between your assembly lines, particularly early on. You'll need more of those early products than you expect. On this note don't be afraid to just ditch your existing stuff and go build someplace else. You'll have trains eventually this means you can have different "buildings" nothing wrong with having multiple that are the same, or building a new one in a better location with more space before destroying the old one for scrap. Really I try not to make many large changes until trains then I kind of figure out what the hell I want to do with the map. *Note haven't played in like 2 years currently feeling the itch and thinking about starting a game why I'm reading the thread again.
|
![]() |
|
At some point you will look at your base and go, "Wow this is a lot of poo poo, I should tear this down and go make a new base! A better one, with more output!" And that's a good idea! But do not destroy your old base until the new one is built. You will need all those resources that the old base processes to build the new base in the first place. At least get to the point where the new base is able to sustain its own growth before dismantling the old one. (That means at least mining outposts, ore processing, and assemblers that build base-building materials like assemblers. And defenses, if you're playing with biters.)
|
![]() |
|
gaj70 posted:You can copy-and-paste many things....settings, build requirements into a requestor chest, train schedules, etc. Eventually, whole assembly lines. You forgot to say how to copy settings, shift + right click is copy, shift + left click is paste.
|
![]() |
|
power crystals posted:Except for trains. If you want an actual proper rail network that’s been all but solved and reinventing it adds nothing imo even as a new player (if you just want lazy ugly trains and don’t care about intersection throughput then go wild). Possibly also belt balancers for any non-trivial size. But for everything else yeah at least do it yourself once. Doing your own trains isn't that bad if you keep it to the most basic elements: Straight segment, curved/corner segment, T-junction, stacker, station block. It's also a good opportunity to get acquainted with making grid-aligned blueprints so you can build your whole system in a way that doesn't create any awkward intersections if you loop around a lake or whatever. For belt balancers all you really need is a standard 4-4 "bowtie" and a throughput-unlimited 8-8 in yellow belt and an upgrade planner. Being throughput-unlimited means you can use any number of inputs and outputs and it will stay balanced.
|
![]() |
|
power crystals posted:Except for trains. If you want an actual proper rail network that’s been all but solved and reinventing it adds nothing imo even as a new player (if you just want lazy ugly trains and don’t care about intersection throughput then go wild). Possibly also belt balancers for any non-trivial size. But for everything else yeah at least do it yourself once. I don't use balancers anymore. They are a tedious thing that IMO adds nothing and I'm not trying to re-solve those monstrosities on my own. I use merging chests and mini-loaders as balancers and I've never looked back once I started doing that. No regrets.
|
![]() |
The Locator posted:I don't use balancers anymore. They are a tedious thing that IMO adds nothing and I'm not trying to re-solve those monstrosities on my own. I use merging chests and mini-loaders as balancers and I've never looked back once I started doing that. No regrets. warehousing + loaders redux is great, especially when used with trains.
|
|
![]() |
|
M_Gargantua posted:warehousing + loaders redux is great, especially when used with trains. Yeah, warehouses and loaders work also, but merging chests is more flexible IMO, although maybe not as pretty.
|
![]() |
|
The Locator posted:Yeah, warehouses and loaders work also, but merging chests is more flexible IMO, although maybe not as pretty. I'm remembering learning Angel Bob and while working out some stuff trying to hyper optimize some things so I can blue print them just building a ton of chests for something with algae farms or something? Some of the output I think was needed for paper to make chips. I just remember expanding it to over a screen size to not back up production (I forget the inputs and outputs but something else would backup and be a problem). I also remember after several hours eventually running out of whatever the hell this was. Do weird things, it's memorable and you're going to come back to this game over the years. also note for the new players, I'm playing Angel Bob in this, that's a mod that says the game is too fast why is there no steampunk phase to this game? (I love steam assemblers) Why don't chips require you build a paper industry? Why not everything. It's long.
|
![]() |
|
Rather than using belt balancers, can't you also use, uh, nothing? I use nothing personally. It suits me very well. Sometimes I use (n-1) priority splitters too.
|
![]() |
|
Belt balancers are useful for train stations if you need to maximize throughput by making sure that your chests are all emptied evenly and thus cars are emptied unevenly so the trains can leave ASAP. That's really about it. It's megabase-level stuff ever since priority splitters were put into the game.
|
![]() |
|
K8.0 posted:Belt balancers are useful for train stations if you need to maximize throughput by making sure that your chests are all emptied evenly and thus cars are emptied unevenly so the trains can leave ASAP. That's really about it. It's megabase-level stuff ever since priority splitters were put into the game. Yeah loading and unloading stations are two places where sharing a single source or target for the trains is pretty drat useful.
|
![]() |
|
I mostly use 4x4 balancers for onsite smelting on large ore patches. Run all the ore into the input, get four output belts at full size.
|
![]() |
|
For those who have done large-scale belt based builds, how have you managed ore delivery? I'm at the penultimate stage of designing my 2,700 SPM belt only build (excluding trains for delivery), and I haven't really done trains at this scale so I'm looking for inspiration. My current plan is 3-8-3 trains unloading 16 blue belts per train. The largest unload area will be copper at 71 blue belts (iron and steel are separate delivery areas so smaller individually) and I have everything spaced out such that I should be able to have quite large delivery areas if necessary. My current thought is to have each station (~5 for copper) setup so that a full train can fit behind it for quick follow, with 2 open spaces in each chest to provide some buffer while the trains shuffle. The question then becomes: will I be okay just making a big buffer spot for trains before splitting off to the individual stations (a stacker), or do I need to consider different approaches at this scale? I've spent a _lot_ of time designing the actual factory to run the 2,700 SPM but realizing at this point I really have not considered what to do with the trains. I think the simple approach will work out okay, but my main concern is the exit throughput of the trains causing blockages for the incoming trains. I'd hate to build this straight-forward design only to find I'm blocked by the exiting trains limiting me. ![]() This is what the factory looks like, for reference: steel is on the left; stone brick on the right; copper and iron on the bottom; oil at the top. There should be plenty of space for whatever I need to do with trains here.
|
![]() |
|
necrotic posted:For those who have done large-scale belt based builds, how have you managed ore delivery? I'm at the penultimate stage of designing my 2,700 SPM belt only build (excluding trains for delivery), and I haven't really done trains at this scale so I'm looking for inspiration. Trains can maintain a surprising throughput without worrying about getting too overcomplicated. It can get to where it's more limited by the space for the belts. I've never tried to do an entire base in one 'train' setup like you are doing, but here is 30 blue belts of copper and 21 blue belts of iron plus 4 coal and oil unloading, all sharing a single input/output track, but with a large enough parking area that it can absorb all assigned trains should the need arise. As you can kind of tell by the number of trains waiting to unload, the copper ran at pretty close to 100% throughput at all times without a problem. ![]() Here is the overall view of the space science module being fed by those stations. ![]() I'm sure other people have much prettier/more elegant designs. My builds tend to be brute force. Edit: Note that I use pretty much exclusively 1-4 trains as my largest trains, so your larger trains should be able to provide even more throughput but will require more space.
|
![]() |
|
The Locator posted:I've never tried to do an entire base in one 'train' setup like you are doing, but here is 30 blue belts of copper and 21 blue belts of iron plus 4 coal and oil unloading, all sharing a single input/output track, but with a large enough parking area that it can absorb all assigned trains should the need arise. While it seems like one “place” there are very easily at least 4 delivery locations (one per plate + oil, which can be further split in half if needed). After some basic testing of unload throughput I think you’re on point that I’m over thinking this. Basic stacker plus unload should be fine. I changed the stack size of the chest->belt inserts to 6 (half of max) and the unload system I’m looking at can handle that with the chests loading at twice that speed. So as long as I have more trains than I need ready to go i should be fine. Thanks for the detailed reply, it helped me refrain my thought process here. edit; I will need a lot of trains. But that I can handle (I think) necrotic fucked around with this message at 06:05 on Sep 28, 2022 |
![]() |
|
necrotic posted:While it seems like one “place” there are very easily at least 4 delivery locations (one per plate + oil, which can be further split in half if needed). There's always the setup where you have train hubs, then when something runs low it calls for a train it goes and loads up then dumps everything. You can run a surprising amount of stuff with only a dozen 4-5 cart long trains I think, been awhile. You want the engine to cart ratio to be right.
|
![]() |
|
pixaal posted:I'd still do both of these as a simple run at first just to understand them. This way if something goes wrong you have an idea of what that looks like. That's what I get for phoneposting that and not phrasing it clearly enough. Yeah, definitely do the basics first because you can absolutely make one that works like 50% of ideal without too much effort, but when you find yourself going "well if I move this signal over here, does this help?" then go get a blueprint book unless trying to reinvent that wheel is specifically fun for you.
|
![]() |
|
I do think that the big stacker setups are no longer the best way to build fast and large train networks since the 1.0 train update. You can just build some logic such that there are at most n trains pathing to your station, ideally reduced if the unloading buffer is full, and then you can build a smaller buffer for each unloader. Massively reducing average travel time between buffer and unloader.
|
![]() |
|
I just went to space for the first time in my SE/K2 save, and that was a chaotic experience. I filled up my rocket with a bunch of supplies that I thought would be useful, but it crash landed on the asteroid in Nauvis orbit, scattering my supplies everywhere. The construction robots in my personal roboport immediately went nuts trying to deconstruct everything and stuff it all into my inventory, which filled up so completely I couldn't even craft some chests to put junk in. I also forgot to bring logi bots, which meant I couldn't just slam stuff into my logi trash and have them carry it away. Combined with the asteroid being completely filled with ruins, it took me a good 15 minutes or so just to sort out my inventory, plop down some chests, and clear up the scattered supplies from my crash landing. I'm glad I brought a full hour's worth of life support with me. I'm going to go install that increased inventory size mod now.
|
![]() |
|
My first game I avoided logistics stuff. Had my 75 personal robots in the end and that was good enough for me. Second game in and, teething issues around how stuff works aside, this is the kind of scaling out I was missing in Satisfactory. Seeing as I already unlocked everything in my first game, is there a mod for a third go that just extends it out? Bigger (increasingly preposterous) tech and research that scrolls for days is my jam. Most of them seem to just crank the biter difficulty or add a ton of byproducts/"balance"/whatever changes that are just there for difficulty/tedium. I'm looking at Space Exploration since a friend plays it but I'm certainly open to suggestions.
|
![]() |
|
Krastorio2 is a good first remake-ish mod. I did 1½ K2 run and now I'm doing K2+SpaceExploration. I feel like SE adds alot more stuff to do but also makes some of the recipes more annoying.
|
![]() |
|
Unfortunately my experience so far with Krastorio is that it's very much "add a bunch of byproducts and tedium," at least as of the third science pack type. Ready to abandon my run since this is just anti-fun.
|
![]() |
|
![]()
|
# ? Jun 11, 2024 10:03 |
|
Mailer posted:add a ton of byproducts/"balance"/whatever changes that are just there for difficulty/tedium. Definitely do not play space exploration if you don't like this stuff. It's a great mod but it is definitely not just "more factorio" - it presents very different kinds of challenges with having so many separate surfaces and needing to coordinate between them. Then, a lot of the challenge in making the space based sciences themselves is about byproduct handling, to the extent that the modder banned production modules in space because it might screw up the cycles (also because, and this may shock you, this popular modder has a weird idea about what's cool). Also, space exploration hard requires AAI industry, which alters a lot of early game recipes making glass a more key component and adding really slow-to-produce motors as intermediates to everything. I really love space exploration, even given having to use aai industry, but it doesn't sound like what you're looking for. For positive suggestions, - Krastorio2: This is a really popular "first big-mod playthrough" mod, and for good reason: it's polished, well-supported with entries into the native factorio help system, pretty well balanced. Does what you're looking for. Some of the new ore refining stuff can feel a bit samey to me, that's about the only downside. - 248k: I haven't played through it yet but it seems more in this vein: scale scale and more scale but not a lot of added early game stuff, intermediates, or byproducts. - Industrial Revolution: played the first version (modder had a meltdown about people "stealing" from it - it has a very restrictive license that doesn't even let monetized streamers play through it, made a second version) adds a bunch of stuff especially to the early game. My personal quibble is that the tiers feel a little samey - you're basically making the same 7 or so things with the same ratios but out of a new kind of metal, to the extent that when I played IR1 I would copy/paste the previous tier exactly to set up a new one - but it should give you scale. - Don't use mods, make a megabase instead! There's a thriving scene of people making bigger bases to hit science throughput milestones like "consume 1000 science packs per minute" (science packs per minute is usually abbreviated to SPM, so if you see somebody talking about their 1KSPM base, this is what they mean) or "launch 10 rockets per minute" (10RPM, same deal - this has gotten a little less popular compared to SPM focused builds). Best done on map settings with extremely increased ores, since otherwise you'll spend most of your time going and setting up mine sites. Doing this will force you to change up the basic way you play - a bus is a lot less useful when you need 16 (or 32...) blue belts of iron ore, for instance - All of the above! A lot of modders spend time making sure their mod doesn't break too badly when used with others, especially more popular modpacks. The three I listed above, IR + krastorio + 248k, would make a pretty ok combo. IR for the early game, going into K2 for the midgame, then 248k (although 248k's power production and k2's advanced power production might clash gameplaywise - it's likely you'll have an option from each at the same time and one will just be Better).
|
![]() |