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My AngelBob+LTN-base (no biters) when the first rocket went up: Started with zero blueprints, and learned as I went, which is the reason my train-grids don't line up.  Installed factorissimo towards the end to fix some space problems I couldn't find the motivation to fix with even more sprawl. The "rail-lines" on the water are from the cargo ships mod, it's an oil-tanker route to three off-shore oil rigs. Power is all from 2 2x2 MOX-reactors, never needed Thorium or Fusion power, probably because the buffers for everything are so deep only a fraction of the base is working at any one time, and all the bots are fusion powered so they don't tax my grid (and bots are pretty much only in the mall and the puffer/biter-farms, although I have logistics network coverage everywhere for personal logistics.) There are also severe bottlenecks in a lot of places, most every block is scaled to deliver about one blue belt of output except for the various electronics, but the deep buffers mean I haven't noticed the bottlenecks much.
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Nov 1, 2022 00:15
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Count Roland posted:That all sounds very neat. Frankly, vanilla factorio is sufficiently complex/challenging for me already. I'll follow this thread and keep watching you guys do it. I tried literally one game of K2 and noped out of it before I reached the third science type. I was just looking for more to unlock - more efficient power, alternate recipes, better fluid handling, stuff to both handle and require megabase scaling, etc - but all it really did was add many more hours of intermediate machines in between science hurdles. Slowing down the early game also increases the amount of time you spend manually crafting/feeding and that's already a part of it I wish you could skip.
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Nov 1, 2022 01:20
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 This is my steel smelter using the highest-tier recipe in Nullius. One of my design goals is to handle all byproducts on site so steel (or aluminum, titanium, etc.) production is never held up by some other process getting stuck. And in fact many of the byproducts can be reprocessed into raw materials to be fed back to the production chain. 1. Iron ore gets crushed, creating rock as a by product. 2. Crushed iron ore gets converted to iron oxide. This step also requires caustic solution and emits sludge as a byproduct. 3. The iron oxide is smelted with graphite and hydrogen gas, producing the desired steel ingots. This also creates sludge. 4. The stone from step 1? Crushed to gravel, then to mineral dust, then melted into...sludge! This also uses sulfuric acid, which is the second of three inputs. 5. Sludge!! Iron reclamation from sludge, to be exact. This takes more caustic solution, and results in crushed iron ore and crushed limestone. The crushed iron ore feeds right back into step 2. 6. Well now I've got crushed limestone. First it gets cooked until it becomes lime, giving off carbon dioxide in the process. CO2 can be safely vented into the atmosphere, but it's also combined in a process with hydrogen to create all the graphite needed to smelt the steel back in step 3. This is the sort of not obvious but very useful opportunity to multi-purpose things that pops up everywhere if you go looking for them. It's really neat! Anyways, I've got lime here. This is perfect for dealing with all the chlorine I'm making in step 7. Chlorine can't be vented by itself, but chlorine + lime makes calcium chloride, which can be dumped. The amount of lime reclaimed from the sludge is not enough on its own, so my last input is more lime to make up the difference. 7. This is making caustic solution, used in steps 2 and 5. The only way to make caustic solution also requires making chlorine, which yeah, can be pretty obnoxious. And it takes way more caustic than I can feasibly train in, hence the need to neutralize the chlorine on site. 8. Water electrolysis provides most of the hydrogen used in step 3 (the rest comes as a byproduct of making caustic in the last step). Oxygen isn't needed for anything, so it's all vented. Releasing oxygen into the atmosphere actually raises my terraforming rating as well, so this is pure upside. 9. There's 7 flavors of water and turning some kinds into others is an ubiquitous part of just about every chemical process in the mod. In particular, I need brine for making caustic solution and pure water for the hydrogen production. Sludge processing in step 5 also emits wastewater, which can also be reclaimed, and in fact doing so makes a little bit more sludge to feed back into itself. Game's complex as hell and I love it. And Pipe Visualizer is a godsend.
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Nov 1, 2022 01:50
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Mailer posted:I tried literally one game of K2 and noped out of it before I reached the third science type. I was just looking for more to unlock - more efficient power, alternate recipes, better fluid handling, stuff to both handle and require megabase scaling, etc - but all it really did was add many more hours of intermediate machines in between science hurdles. Slowing down the early game also increases the amount of time you spend manually crafting/feeding and that's already a part of it I wish you could skip.
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Nov 1, 2022 03:22
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God I fucking love Diablo 3 gold, it even paid for this shitty title
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misguided rage posted:I think angelbobs has been my favorite mod set for this sort of thing. Things are definitely way more complicated than the base game but it gives you a lot of tools to use as well. The ore system and advanced smelting feels really good once you get the hang of it. Pretty much everything I've seen from every mod, or at least the big ones people talk about, is about taking (fictional, hyperbolic example) the process of Miner->Smelter->Plates and turning it into Miner->50 other machines dealing with waste or whatever->Plates. It makes it more difficult/time-consuming, but in the end you're just adding more steps to get a basic resource. Some people are into the challenge there but to me it's just kind of boring busywork without anything new/cool at the end. Obviously SE and K2 add in some cool stuff but that's so far forward in the future that I'll never suffer through it all to get to orbital lasers or a megaspidertron.
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Nov 1, 2022 04:47
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Mailer posted:Pretty much everything I've seen from every mod, or at least the big ones people talk about, is about taking (fictional, hyperbolic example) the process of Miner->Smelter->Plates and turning it into Miner->50 other machines dealing with waste or whatever->Plates. It makes it more difficult/time-consuming, but in the end you're just adding more steps to get a basic resource. Some people are into the challenge there but to me it's just kind of boring busywork without anything new/cool at the end. Its the fundamental factorio player split between people who want to make the megaist mega base and the people who want to optimize everything to the tiniest degree possible. For mod purposes you're on the wrong side because its a lot easier to add intermediate products and ways to optimize them then it is to create entire new gameplay loops.
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Nov 1, 2022 05:02
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Nullius certainly has megabase-friendly features. For example my smelter above is fully speed beaconed: the best beacons have a big radius and can't be placed in the effect area of each other, so you can lay them out in a grid and build very neat production lines in between without worrying about cramming crappy small beacons all over the place. It also makes use of the concept of item boxes, which is just 5 normal items compressed into a single boxed item version. You can freely box and unbox items, and most crafting recipes have versions that operate on boxed inputs and outputs. This is straight-up a 5x multiplier on belt, inserter, and logistic bot throughput. Stack sizes of boxed items are smaller so it's a little less effective for trains and chests, but still comes out to double or more capacity. I can't overstate what an enormous QoL feature that is. Using the fastest belts, 1 belt of boxed items is equivalent to more than 8 blue belts in vanilla. Making huge multibelt arrays and belt balancers is something I never have to think about.
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Nov 1, 2022 14:42
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Mailer posted:Factorio mods are just an endless line of people where the first guy made everything take two more intermediates and everyone since then has been in an escalating "hold my beer" conflict. That's why Spacebuild is the only gameplay adjusting mod I've liked. It actually enhances the gameplay, instead of trying to make the game needlessly complex.
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Nov 4, 2022 18:05
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Mailer posted:Pretty much everything I've seen from every mod, or at least the big ones people talk about, is about taking (fictional, hyperbolic example) the process of Miner->Smelter->Plates and turning it into Miner->50 other machines dealing with waste or whatever->Plates. It makes it more difficult/time-consuming, but in the end you're just adding more steps to get a basic resource. Some people are into the challenge there but to me it's just kind of boring busywork without anything new/cool at the end. It's not just that there's more steps, but that they usually give you a choice of how to proceed through the steps. It gives you a lot more flexibility to choose how creative or elaborate you want your logistics to be. The waste products and stuff give you the opportunity to feed your recipes and production lines back into each other and intertwine them in all sorts of clever ways - if you want to! There's not really a ton of room in the game to add new/cool stuff in the first place. Managing logistics and production is the main game loop, and in vanilla it gets kinda dull after a while since the base recipes are pretty straightforward and fairly samey, and you don't need that many basic resources so it's pretty easy to just build everything around a main bus.
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Nov 4, 2022 20:28
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Yeah, and one of the things the mods I've tried do is add in ways to get rid of waste. In vanilla, you have to get the oil cracking ratios right or it backs up. In some mods, you can just vent excess gas/liquid away so you don't have to perfect the ratio (in Nullius, the exception is Chlorine specifically to keep an early game challenge). That way you can focus on new production lines. In at the part of K2 where I have way more power capacity than I need (Nuclear, less turbines than 2 reactors in K2 can support). Should I scale up to max and then look at fusion or just increase my Nuclear more (add 2 more reactors and associated turbines)? I'm guessing that the Matter science and late game stuff needs GW scale power? Just about to finish all early game science so I can completely deconstruct those buildings (red/green/blue science cards). I'm not looking to do megabase stuff, I find placing down grids of blueprints boring, but I'd like to finish the game without having to leave it running.
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Nov 5, 2022 00:01
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PancakeTransmission posted:Yeah, and one of the things the mods I've tried do is add in ways to get rid of waste. In vanilla, you have to get the oil cracking ratios right or it backs up. In some mods, you can just vent excess gas/liquid away so you don't have to perfect the ratio (in Nullius, the exception is Chlorine specifically to keep an early game challenge). That way you can focus on new production lines. The final thing you do in K2 is charging a thing up with a ton of power and then activating it to get the 'you win' screen. You want to have some big power generation for that if you don't want to leave the game running.
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Nov 5, 2022 00:13
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Go for fusion it’s way better than nuclear in K2
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Nov 5, 2022 00:57
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Firebatgyro posted:Its the fundamental factorio player split between people who want to make the megaist mega base and the people who want to optimize everything to the tiniest degree possible. For mod purposes you're on the wrong side because its a lot easier to add intermediate products and ways to optimize them then it is to create entire new gameplay loops. Yeah I'm on the Just Want More Factorio minority side. Having it take a hundred hours and an elaborate megabase of intermediates just to produce the same blue potions that you normally get in a much smaller footprint isn't really my thing. I'd hoped all the cool advanced tech in K2 would be fun, but it was just making N+10 machines instead of N+1 and I never got near anything new or interesting. There's undefined but present stages in the game (starter, bus, modules, megabase, whatever) and I kind just want the next one of those stages instead of more difficult previous stages. No shade thrown at people who like the other side, with biters off and complex chains of byproducts and wood and glass and stuff. It's just not my jam.
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Nov 5, 2022 08:48
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Mailer posted:Yeah I'm on the Just Want More Factorio minority side. Having it take a hundred hours and an elaborate megabase of intermediates just to produce the same blue potions that you normally get in a much smaller footprint isn't really my thing. I'd hoped all the cool advanced tech in K2 would be fun, but it was just making N+10 machines instead of N+1 and I never got near anything new or interesting. There's undefined but present stages in the game (starter, bus, modules, megabase, whatever) and I kind just want the next one of those stages instead of more difficult previous stages. if that's what you want then you should definitely check out space exploration. it does alter some of the basic recipes to add more intermediates (well the guy's other mod AAI does, but it's mandatory so whatever) but it adds stages to the game of - starter space base (rockets for logistics, if automated at all) - bus space base (rockets or cannons for logistics) - interplanetary starters (linked with rockets or cannons) - space megabase (with elevator and trains) - interplanetary large footprint (elevators per planet and spaceship or cannon logistics) - interstellar starter (probably manual spaceship logistics) - interstellar large footprint (one-off spaceship automation) - if you want to go for the special hidden victory apparently a lot more interstellar stuff there's some qualms i have with all of this but they are all different stages that's for sure
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Nov 5, 2022 13:51
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Mailer posted:Yeah I'm on the Just Want More Factorio minority side. Having it take a hundred hours and an elaborate megabase of intermediates just to produce the same blue potions that you normally get in a much smaller footprint isn't really my thing. I'd hoped all the cool advanced tech in K2 would be fun, but it was just making N+10 machines instead of N+1 and I never got near anything new or interesting. There's undefined but present stages in the game (starter, bus, modules, megabase, whatever) and I kind just want the next one of those stages instead of more difficult previous stages. You must not have made it very far into K2, because that is how it's designed and how most of its content plays out. It adds a little bit pre-rocket like sand and glass and rare metals, but that's pretty minimal. Almost all its content is post-rocket, and is just bigger and cooler versions of early-game stuff. Upgraded furnaces, assemblers, chemical plants, new science labs, fusion, antimatter, etc. Based on what you're describing as what you want, I'd still describe it as the perfect mod for you. Did you just not like the early-to-mid game changes?
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Nov 5, 2022 22:44
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I'm going to second "sounds like the poster might be looking more for a Vanilla -> SpaceEx type of play," where there's very little new until you're at the point that you're leaving Nauvis and then all of the stuff kicks in. SpaceEx itself does have a lot of extra widgets to make more-expensive space science packs of each color, but it's got stuff to learn like applying logistics and circuit-automation skills from Vanilla across surface-to-orbit and interplanetary scales, scrap and recycling it back into useful supplies, the life support poo poo and recycling related to it, futzing around with supercoolants at different temperatures, and all before you start talking about building and automating entire space ships. If you're looking to have basic Factorio lead into "Factorio, but more and bigger and with some new visual appeal" then it's probably worth trying. e: my deepest SpaceEx run appears to have 228 hours on it, but it was K2 -> SpaceEx and it's also got fully automated and circuit-limited delivery of every kind of material from I think three planets other than Nauvis up to my Nauvis orbital platform, and delivery from Nauvis surface to the platform and every other world of every type of construction, logistics, and military material needed up to HE railgun rounds, uranium magazines, processed oil for flamethrower turrets, the whole shebang via cargo cannons. I had set drone attrition down to the minimum possible value, also, and started with a mk1 power armor and a comfortable personal-construction equipment grid. I highly recommend that last bit for every Factorio game once you've done the start a few times LonsomeSon fucked around with this message at 01:45 on Nov 6, 2022 |
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Nov 6, 2022 01:29
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It's probably not what you're looking for but you should try MSP if you're looking for a challenge while still remaining vanilla-oriented.
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Nov 6, 2022 03:33
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Is there a mod that can output a circuit condition when a ghost is part of a construction network that can't be satisfied? Specifically what I'm trying to do is set up an engineering stop that only requests items that can't be built with the current network contents. Seems like that'd be a good thing to have in the base game, honestly.
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Nov 6, 2022 03:54
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https://mods.factorio.com/mod/GhostScanner
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Nov 6, 2022 04:02
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Perfect, thanks!
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Nov 6, 2022 04:34
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Taffer posted:Based on what you're describing as what you want, I'd still describe it as the perfect mod for you. Did you just not like the early-to-mid game changes? The early game (I think the first 3-4 cards?) is as far as I got. My issues with default settings and wonky fluid mechanics aside, I'm generally happy with the standard game and megabase postgame in vanilla Factorio. A few small mods and settings tweaks can shore up a lot of the limitations. I don't have the stored knowledge or blueprints to really go fast, but I'm happy with the ~30-hour mark for launching a rocket. Going past that, to new tech with new builds, is interesting to me. Taking 100 hours to get the same tech isn't. All the extra requirements/waste products/etc mods that tend to be popular fall on the latter side of that.
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Nov 6, 2022 07:48
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For all your 32:32 balancing needs
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Nov 6, 2022 08:22
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I have no such needs, but thanks! It's horrifying!
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Nov 6, 2022 08:24
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Tried out the space exploration mod with a buddy some weeks ago and holy crap is it good, lots to dig into post rocket Just breaking into first tier energy/astro etc sciences and setting up the orbital science base is very satisfying.
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Nov 9, 2022 01:53
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Azhais posted:For all your 32:32 balancing needs Re. mods with byproducts, is there anyone who has played both Captain of Industry and Factorio mods who can speak to how the waste, coproduct, and/or recycling streams encouraged by some of the mods compare? I'm still a little saturated on vanilla Factorio compared to playing more CoI or DSP but wondering if maybe some of the mods can give me the same high as CoI where I make incredibly glacial improvements while I plumb and replumb a bunch of things into themself to better use a byproduct.
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Nov 9, 2022 02:14
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something posted:Tried out the space exploration mod with a buddy some weeks ago and holy crap is it good, lots to dig into post rocket The irritating parts of SpaceEx and its author get talked up a lot in here, but it's a really cool and fun mod which legitimately adds both "Factorio, but more" in the form of setting up satellite factories off of Nauvis and "Factorio, but with new poo poo" in terms of the ground-based defense and logistics stuff on Nauvis and then this whole new loving world of space platform which is limited only by how rapidly you can make and lay new platform. Extremely worth a try and I authentically hope a Factorio expansion with orbital stuff has similar general concepts...at least as long as it also has the Jetpack from the Jetpack mod. Having and mostly ignoring AAI was worth it just to be able to change anything burnable into fuel for the Jetpack ~
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Nov 9, 2022 21:47
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I just watched a condensed playthrough of SE and it looks, simultaneously, both very cool and way more complicated than it probably needs to be. Some of the mechanics are extremely awesome and led to some hilarious moments like the guy crash landing on a new planet in the middle of a biter nest - and the space elevator train mechanics are seriously cool, but I'm not interested in "here's an additional 15 types of science for you to do".
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Nov 9, 2022 21:56
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I tried SE but it was too much trying to launch rockets containing the materials you need in space and building the materials needed to operate in space. I hope the official expansion that's in space streamlines that process because obviously a single mod author is probably not going to be able to create the same polish as the creators of the game. It's just too ambitious of an idea for one single dude.
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Nov 10, 2022 04:23
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It HAS been very annoying building up the framework for these space sciences but at the same time i just remember my first playthrough feeling the exact same way about blue and orange sciences. The satisfaction when it finally comes together (plus the smattering of great QOL's now unlockable) has been worth it
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Nov 10, 2022 23:13
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So in space exploration, what do you do if you waste the few hundred rocket science you get from nauvis orbit? I randomly researched a few interesting looking technologies and looking at things more critically later I see that I got very lucky that one of them unlocked a component you need to make more rocket science. I don't have a save prior to the research finishing, so how would you progress at that point if you hadn't unlocked that one technology?
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Nov 12, 2022 08:42
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misguided rage posted:So in space exploration, what do you do if you waste the few hundred rocket science you get from nauvis orbit? I randomly researched a few interesting looking technologies and looking at things more critically later I see that I got very lucky that one of them unlocked a component you need to make more rocket science. I don't have a save prior to the research finishing, so how would you progress at that point if you hadn't unlocked that one technology? Uh, are you playing with some extra mods or something? You craft rocket science by using the «computer» items you get everytime you launch a satellite on a rocket, and it shouldn’t be gated by itself.
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Nov 12, 2022 10:10
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They seem to be talking about the basic uncolored space science, but you can also craft those only using things from the previous tech level. Unless you're using an incompatible mod of course.
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Nov 12, 2022 10:33
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Ah nevermind, you do get cooled thermofluid initially from pre space research. I saw the space super cooling tech that unlocks what I guess is a more efficient recipe and didn't find the other one with a quick search. Now I'm even madder that I didn't spend that initial rocket science on robot upgrades!
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Nov 12, 2022 20:07
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In my current run I've done something new: attempted to factorissimo heavily And I hate it. It only works if you do deliberate spaghetti from building to building.
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Nov 13, 2022 03:27
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That's why you keep putting more buildings inside the buildings until you feed in iron copper and oil on one side and get spider mechs out of the other
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Nov 13, 2022 09:59
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Number one frustration is that my global bot network can't construct inside of them, so you have to walk inside and do it yourself. And you have to carry all the materials yourself, so you're going for a hike if you didn't bring enough belts.
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Nov 13, 2022 15:39
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I just picked up this game and am so late to the party. I started the tutorial and now I’m already fried trying to make enough green bottles for my labs in a way that gets my tech up quick enough and keep forgetting about biters. I was enjoying it and thought naievely that I was getting the hang of it until I read some stuff online. I now feel like I’m about 0.05% of the way through. Very excited to have another bash. Downside is I keep wanting to rebuild my base as it gets all spaghetti and too clogged.
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Nov 14, 2022 08:10
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timbro posted:I just picked up this game and am so late to the party. I started the tutorial and now I’m already fried trying to make enough green bottles for my labs in a way that gets my tech up quick enough and keep forgetting about biters. I was enjoying it and thought naievely that I was getting the hang of it until I read some stuff online. I now feel like I’m about 0.05% of the way through. Very excited to have another bash. Embrace the spaghetti of your starter base. It will quickly become redundant anyway. Then you'll build a bus and a new, beautiful base with a mall and a giant science setup and multiple branches for different things... which will eventually just become spaghetti as well. As someone who was also late to the party: 1. You can adjust parameters for things like starting size (area without biters) and ore size/density. I find the defaults to be far too aggressive with biters, but with a bit more breathing room and a bit denser ore it feels right. 2. Bookmark https://factoriocheatsheet.com/ and just leave it open on a tab. You're gonna look at it a *lot*. 3. Make your own blueprints, because it's fun. Long past that point when you just want to see the most efficient/condensed/etc blueprint that some crazy person mathed out then go grab some. 4. Biters will thread the needle around defenses and hit your weakest points if they can. A dozen bullets from a turret is way cheaper than half a mining installation, so defend judiciously.
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Nov 14, 2022 09:12
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Or just turn off biters entirely! I don't like the pressure they put on me, and I'd rather focus on putting together a new part of the factory rather than worry about defenses. Peaceful mode is the middle ground: biters are still there, and they still evolve and expand, but they don't attack unless you do. So you'll only need to fight them when you want to expand into space they've claimed.
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Nov 14, 2022 10:07
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The tutorial is kinda flawed because it puts several biter bases so close to your position without any noticeable modifiers for the pollution rate, so you'll get swarmed pretty quickly which is rude for any player and especially deadly for people who are still working out how inserters and assemblers work. Even putting up turrets only goes so far because without automation they will quickly chew through whatever ammo you hand fed them so distracted people reading tooltips won't notice them suddenly failing.
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Nov 14, 2022 10:07
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