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Since the topic is mod recommendations I will take the opportunity to plug a new overhaul mod I just released today: Ultracube. If you thought there wasn't enough reason to get up to combinator shennanigans in vanilla it might be the mod for you.
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Dec 23, 2023 23:02
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| # ? May 24, 2024 01:51 |
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seiken posted:Since the topic is mod recommendations I will take the opportunity to plug a new overhaul mod I just released today: Ultracube. If you thought there wasn't enough reason to get up to combinator shennanigans in vanilla it might be the mod for you. That's an interesting looking mod, but definitely not my cup of tea. Hope a lot of folks get enjoyment out of it though, it's absolutely a new twist that I've never seen before!
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Dec 23, 2023 23:30
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The description sounds neat! I'll likely try it out after the holidays.
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Dec 24, 2023 00:13
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God I fucking love Diablo 3 gold, it even paid for this shitty title
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I cubed for about an hour. Very interesting so far. I can see where the optimization is necessary. Immediately I crafted 60 steam engines and storage for a ton of steam so I can efficiently run the 50MW synthesizer. Interested to see where it goes.
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Dec 24, 2023 00:17
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My gaming buddy and I finished off our first Krastorio 2 game at pretty much exactly 150hrs. Would play again but I think I enjoyed the early to mid game more than the end, it really slowed down and the end game tech is a little weird with how you can just turn wood directly into matter to get power. I did enjoy just how many biters we had to murder to keep the base clear.
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Dec 24, 2023 07:22
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seiken posted:Since the topic is mod recommendations I will take the opportunity to plug a new overhaul mod I just released today: Ultracube. If you thought there wasn't enough reason to get up to combinator shennanigans in vanilla it might be the mod for you. FYI: I had a crash on first loading up the mod, it looks like the pushbutton depency is not actually optional. You really put stack inserters quite a ways down the tech tree, huh? Working through green cards right now and I like the way it progresses - first a tiny trickle of materials, so you're going to want to do some spaghetti to consume it as locally as possible (and not buffer immense quantities on belts trucking it somewhere else), and then after you get things set up and start teching you can start producing it in a substantially larger quantities and set up a real science build.
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Dec 24, 2023 08:23
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That bug must be caused by something else. I didn't enable that mod and I'm trucking along.
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Dec 24, 2023 08:30
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Jabor posted:FYI: I had a crash on first loading up the mod, it looks like the pushbutton depency is not actually optional. Thanks, it was a problem if you had Flow Control installed but not pushbutton. Fixed now Stack inserters are in a fairly similar place to base game aren't they? I guess you might want them more than normal here to be fair.
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Dec 24, 2023 13:56
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seiken posted:Since the topic is mod recommendations I will take the opportunity to plug a new overhaul mod I just released today: Ultracube. If you thought there wasn't enough reason to get up to combinator shennanigans in vanilla it might be the mod for you. I love counting and displaying my stuff. And building circuit abominations in general. But everything, except for one or two combinators at the train stations, is completely unnecessary.       Your mod is extremely awesome so far. I played an hour and really look forward to playing more. RabbitWizard fucked around with this message at 16:42 on Dec 24, 2023 |
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Dec 24, 2023 16:15
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I want Dosh to play this.
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Dec 24, 2023 18:03
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Been thinking about that cube. It’s an interesting logistical puzzle with the cube being the only fuel source (that I currently know of). My first attempt at automating green science was held up by unbalanced outputs, so the cube just sat around waiting to be burned, holding up everything else. Had to work right away on circuitry.
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Dec 25, 2023 00:39
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The cube mod is interesting, but I feel it's limited by how much it relies on items consumed/produced hundreds at a time. The early game then either becomes hand loading materials or many many many inserters. edit: what's a good way to create a "non-blocking" use of a crafting machine that requires the cube? I mean, some way to ensure that the input is full enough and the output is empty enough that picking up the cube will lead to production and not a stall ymgve fucked around with this message at 04:02 on Dec 25, 2023 |
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Dec 25, 2023 01:55
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I heard you degenerates like spaghetti
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Dec 25, 2023 08:56
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KillHour posted:I heard you degenerates like spaghetti The fact you managed to screenshot that and have it be understandable means its not real spaghetti, real builds transcend screens and rely on the whimsy of the uncaring gods to function and cannot be comprehended by mortal eyes
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Dec 25, 2023 09:51
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yeah sorry bud but I can parse that
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Dec 25, 2023 12:16
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KillHour posted:I heard you degenerates like spaghetti I mean if we're comparing spaghetti here's an old screenshot of a pre-AE Py base of mine. Those Nexelit tiles are real zoomy but goddamn they are not easy on the eyes.  Note the single lab because there was a bug where you could slot in ANY module including plants and animals so that lab is running at like 2000% speed.
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Dec 25, 2023 13:23
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ymgve posted:
Simplest approach is to have some input/output buffer chests wired up to an inserter that puts the cube in and enable it when the chest are full/empty enough. If you have e.g 2 conditions you can use two combinators set to output 1 when their condition is true, wire outputs to inserter and set that to enable when the signal = 2. Chin Strap posted:I want Dosh to play this. I would be lying if I said this wasn't at least partial inspiration/motivation for making this
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Dec 25, 2023 17:23
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seiken posted:Simplest approach is to have some input/output buffer chests wired up to an inserter that puts the cube in and enable it when the chest are full/empty enough. If you have e.g 2 conditions you can use two combinators set to output 1 when their condition is true, wire outputs to inserter and set that to enable when the signal = 2. Learning improved my cubing a ton. I started a little simpler before I got the hang of it. I just wired all the buffer chests and the cube inserter together and only enabled the inserter when the boxes were less than some total, ensuring the machine can always work the cube. The actual toughest part right now is figuring out when/where in the cube line to shove the cube into the boiler to keep power running.
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Dec 25, 2023 17:29
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SynthesisAlpha posted:I mean if we're comparing spaghetti here's an old screenshot of a pre-AE Py base of mine. Those Nexelit tiles are real zoomy but goddamn they are not easy on the eyes. This is pure-strain, high-quality Italian spaghet.
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Dec 25, 2023 23:08
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Oh, my bad. I didn't realize we were sharing our shameful pipe mazes.
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Dec 26, 2023 04:18
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SettingSun posted:Learning improved my cubing a ton. I started a little simpler before I got the hang of it. I just wired all the buffer chests and the cube inserter together and only enabled the inserter when the boxes were less than some total, ensuring the machine can always work the cube. My solution was to have a dedicated wire that signals when steam is getting below some threshold, and include that in the choice for whether to put in the cube or not. Up to the third tier of science now and it's a mess. I don't even have card production automated, I run around carrying byproducts because I foolishly built the fluid stuff on the opposite side of the base and haven't bothered tearing things down yet. And I still haven't moved to the other tier of fuel you got mid-green science.
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Dec 26, 2023 05:17
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KillHour posted:Oh, my bad. I didn't realize we were sharing our shameful pipe mazes. This is like when you go to a friend's house and they say "Sorry about the mess" and you can't actually discern a single thing out of place. What are you guys defining as "spaghetti"??? For comparison, here are a couple screenshots of the bulk of my Nullius base, just pushing into physics science:   Here it is with Pipe Visualizer on so you can see a true shameful pipe maze: 
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Dec 26, 2023 05:23
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You guys should install some light fixtures to your factories.
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Dec 26, 2023 08:01
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Cube update: I've automated the 3rd tech card, which was an interesting experience. Getting condensed fuel running helped, as having my cube spending all day powering other things really didn't help my power at all. A look at the next leg of the tech tree is...interesting.
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Dec 27, 2023 07:27
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MrYenko posted:This is pure-strain, high-quality Italian spaghet. 
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Dec 27, 2023 18:15
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After 263 hours and 3040 rockets, I finally completed the objectives in Nullius, seeding the planet with acid-spitting life for the engineer to fight in the distant future, and launching 10 versions of myself across the galaxy to continue the mission. Mostly finished; I played version 1.5, and the current mod version 1.8 adds two more objectives to create coal and oil deposits, but I need a break. At least for a little bit. Some stuff that went right was using split LTN logistic nets to handle regular supply and waste byproducts. So for example, crushed bauxite generates crushed iron ore, which goes to an LTN Provide station on Network 2. At the LTN Network 2 Request Crushed Iron Ore there's a belt diversion to a LTN Network 1 Provide, which then links to an LTN Network 1 Request Iron Ore that goes to iron smelting. 1-2 trains and big city blocks with 4x tracks also worked pretty well. I could fit 12 stations around a block, which was enough to handle any production step in the game. I also almost managed to stockpile enough glycerol to get through the stages of biological science before I could turn worms into amino acids and nucleotides. Alarms wired to buffers and dumps to alert me when things got close to filling up kept the factor moving. Pretty much any process that has more than one output can use a buffer, or better yet a sink. There's not really a good sink for chlorine, but giant tank farms work okay. Stone can go to gravel can go to gray landfill, which stores densely and is useful. If I do this again, which is a big if, I'd wait more before transitioning from my starter base to a grid based megabase. I skipped an intermediate step of trained in basic materials from outposts, which would have been quicker to build than a full grid base with higher throughput than the starter base. It's not worth going for the full grid base until Tier 3 buildings are unlocked. I wasn't aggressive enough about upgrading my train stations to match the larger capacity of higher tier cars. Roundabout intersections were a mistake, especially by depots. I learned the hard way that brownouts can cause LTN trains to depart before completing unloading, which jams up the factory. And while I put processors on a separate belted manufacturing chain, I did not do the same thing for motors/turbines/pumps, which you also need a lot of. Everything that goes into rockets requires scalable manufacturing. My limit was rocket fuel--> rubber, but if not that it would have been something else. And if you're new to Nullius, the upgraded recipes are vastly better than the ones you start with. It's worth switching ASAP, even if it means unbuilding your base and more spaghetti. Also, at some point you'll look at a supply chain and go "this is bullshit." Bots, batteries and epoxy the techs that separate the early game from the midgame. Bite the bullet and get through those checkpoints. Even a bad factory producing a trickle of items is much better than 0 items.
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Dec 27, 2023 20:51
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Can somebody help me sanity check this city block / train intersection design? I'm not sure I understand rail signals and chain signals properly - like, I have the gist of chain signals at intersections and rail signals at exits, but I'm having trouble getting trains running through intersections simultaneously when they're not blocking one another. Things are slowing down / stopping when it looks like they've got a clear path through. https://factoriobin.com/post/KGmzLins   My city grid spacing is mostly based on 3 roboports, so I think 150 x 150 tiles, though I have also got a sort of maintenance/refuelling narrow block that I want to run through the middle of things while I build, which is basically just the same outer corners but moved closer based on the roboport spacing:  I'm using 1-4-1 trains for everything, and with that length there's room for 2 stations on each side of the block, though I might not use every station location. How can I signal these intersections better?
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Dec 28, 2023 02:04
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I don’t think you really can signal a 4-way that small any better. 4-way intersections need a generous amount of space to handle signaling for higher throughput. There are huge threads on the official factorio forums testing a TON of 4- and 3-way intersections with ratings for their various outputs. An effective 4-way on the smaller side is not trivial to design. https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?t=46855
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Dec 28, 2023 02:10
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I will say the spiral design looks super cool. 
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Dec 28, 2023 02:12
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If you grab a train signal and stand next to the intersection, you can see how the existing signals divide up the rails into blocks. This sort of area is a problem:  Because it's all one block, a train on the inner loop ends up conflicting with every other train traversing that same arc - what you'd need to do is place a chain signal before the crossover point to the south line, so that trains only on the inner loop only need to reserve the inner loop and the not the crossover - and similarly on the middle track, you'd want a chain signal before each merge or crossover so that the blocks only cover the paths that the train actually takes. But as you can see, there's no room to place those signals - the only way to fix it is to make the intersection bigger.
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Dec 28, 2023 02:34
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Chin Strap posted:I want Dosh to play this. seiken posted:I would be lying if I said this wasn't at least partial inspiration/motivation for making this I hope you don't mind, but since I'm a member of Dosh's discord, I let him know about the mod and what your inspiration/motivation for the mod was. He's definitely intrigued!
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Dec 28, 2023 02:35
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Since you have mid-block lane swaps available, is there a reason to have paths for trains to change lanes mid-intersection? I think you could cut down on complexity significantly by having the outer lanes only able to make right turns. Only other way I could think of getting the room to fix the intersection in general would be to move the stations back, and I'm not sure if you have room in your system for that.
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Dec 28, 2023 02:45
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Jabor posted:If you grab a train signal and stand next to the intersection, you can see how the existing signals divide up the rails into blocks. Well, poo poo. I was afraid of that - I'm going to have to see if I can come up with an arrangement that can let me isolate that without changing the overall outline of things because I've got a bunch of infrastructure blueprints I've worked out inside this general boundary already that I'd hate to also change. Xerol posted:Since you have mid-block lane swaps available, is there a reason to have paths for trains to change lanes mid-intersection? I think you could cut down on complexity significantly by having the outer lanes only able to make right turns. Only other way I could think of getting the room to fix the intersection in general would be to move the stations back, and I'm not sure if you have room in your system for that. Limiting the trains to only right turns feels like it'd be a net loss in throughput, no? I know the trains can run at higher top speeds if they're doing the only-right-turns approach, but the trade-off is a lot of extra running around before arriving at the destination and that seems just as bad as having the trains slow down during crossovers.
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Dec 28, 2023 06:28
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Harvey Baldman posted:Limiting the trains to only right turns feels like it'd be a net loss in throughput, no? I know the trains can run at higher top speeds if they're doing the only-right-turns approach, but the trade-off is a lot of extra running around before arriving at the destination and that seems just as bad as having the trains slow down during crossovers. I meant just the outer lane limiting to right turns; if a train wants to turn left it can switch to the inner lane earlier in the block. And since there's roundabouts at every intersection it's not a huge deal for a train leaving a station to have to go down to the end of the block if it wants to go the other way.
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Dec 28, 2023 06:32
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I think if you changed the intersection so that the outer lane connects to the outer lane on the next arc (instead of jumping across to the inner lane), it would give you some more space for signalling, and might even improve traffic flow in general - as it is, you have three right-turning lanes but funnel everything through a single lane for any direction that isn't a right turn.
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Dec 28, 2023 06:41
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I'm also not a big fan of 4-lane systems to begin with; the extra capacity is rarely worth the added junction complexity - you end up with 4 times as many conflict points, so past a certain point it doesn't do much better for throughput than a 2-lane system. For larger systems, with stations much farther apart, it can work, but not in a fully built city block design with intersections every 150 tiles. That said since you have stations on the outer lanes, even though it looks like a 4-lane system, it's effectively a 2-lane system. Trains will try to avoid pathing through a station if any other path exists (iirc it gives a pathfinding penalty equal to 1000 extra rail segments) so this isn't even going to act like a 4-lane system 99% of the time. At that point, you should just have 2x2 intersections with the station lane feeding into the roundabout directly. e: e2: Actually no it is restricted, easier to see when you trace out the paths.  Traffic entering the bottom junction from any direction except east can't reach that station. Xerol fucked around with this message at 07:19 on Dec 28, 2023 |
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Dec 28, 2023 07:14
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Ultracube is progressing nicely, and weirdly. There's definitely a discovery element to the mod so I'll spoiler some of this. After the 3rd tier of science it seems to split into branches. One focusing on deep core materials, and one focusing on...transdimensional ghost tech?  The deep core vein is too drat far away so I guess I'm working on ghost tech first. This involves splitting the cube into 64 baby cubes and making those do work. They can produce materials in small quantities and there are 64 of them...but I don't think they can power the big furnace. I have a lot of planning to do for a new facility.
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Dec 28, 2023 08:03
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Rail talk as an excuse to segue into and show off my current base with an image-heavy post: My friends and I finished a SE game in January but I got the itch again recently. I beat that warptorio which was fun but it didn't quite satisfy so I decided to hit up seablock, a mod I had played with a friend a few years ago just to the rocket launch, but this time I decided to mix it up a bit. I've done the city block, I've done the main bus; in my SE game I really enjoyed building inside factorissimos and also liked the space restrictions in warptorio so I wanted something similar. In the past I've tended to mostly free-form builds so I decided to lean on blueprinting, and I enjoy the city block format and trains but square and two lanes is... boring. I read about hexes, which I thought were a neat idea, did a little research and saw that "ant farm" base on youtube but thought I could "improve" it. So I came up that as a concept, but with these design constraints: 1. Current version of Seablock, with some quality of life mods added and a few I've never used before (nanobots, cybersyn, miniloader, long reach, blueprint designer lab, squeak through and splatter guard but specifically no factorissimo) 2. A "City block" style base format, using trains to deliver raw materials, with cybersyn instead of LTN to try out the mod 3. Hex format, but using *single tracks* and scaled as small as possible. This means no left turns and mandatory 1-1 trains (seablock has mk3 trains so decreased throughput is doable) 4. Restricted bot use; drone mall is always mandatory but extremely limited bot material transfer between cells 5. Focus on blueprinting with an expectation of re-using blueprints, with heavy use of YASC to figure out chains and ratios 6. Small cells to encourage constrained building and blueprinting with a little self-inflicted pipe/belt hell I get through the early game of seablock as one does, break through red and green science then unlock trains:  The real factorio starts here. I spend some time in the designer lab and come up with... this:  This is the train direction path. Hexes aren't directly tileable, especially with single track and no left turns. IMO this is best-case, plus it looks cool.  Conceptually, it works, but because of the extra train travel time that means even lower throughput than normal. I spend some time trying to figure out how I can place stations with *some* usable build space. I have to compromise, any 2nd train in the station will block flow of traffic. I figure details like that will work themselves out.  Train paths will look a little silly:  But I get started:  I start designing cells. The constraints are fun but the hex shape makes it REALLY HARD to wiggle pipes/belts around the edges of buildings without dipping into neighboring cells (a crime)  The factory begins to grow:  Mall time! Seablock/bobangels has a crazy amount of new buildings and materials. Too many to realistically hand craft, besides hand crafting goes against my blueprint concept. There are too many different raw materials and buildings to easily bus mall since logistic bots are triple digit hours in, I steal this idea wholesale from YTer DoshDoshington, which uses the a each*-1 -> set filters inserter combinator just like a LTN station to pass raw materials from warehouse to warehouse. I slightly improve/modify it by adding a single constant combinator that's chained down the length of the mall so I don't have to specify iron plates on every warehouse:  It works!  Hex cells are really cool to look at. This was a great idea, well executed.  Fast forward to 3d20h played time and things are starting to take shape:  Trying to pack the cells stretch my creativity to the limit. I spent more than 3 hours on this design alone. It's a failure. I can't get the slag from the left looped down to the bottom. Ultimately, I declare it a failure and abandon the attempt for good when I discover I missed a needed hydro plant:  I come back the next day and scale it down from 6 to 4, add the needed buildings. It's not perfect, but it's good enough for now.  Other cells go better (cupric crystals)  And finally, after days played after that, logistic bots. Bot Mall, Engage. There's easily 4 times the number of buildings because not only are there more buildings most of them have mk2, mk3, mk4 variants:  There are still problems. I will spend an hour in the blueprint lab and then exit it to this:  This is fine.  And, here's how it stands today. 8d15h played. I am solidly through yellow science and starting to replace the early initial cells with their final, most efficient recipes. I haven't even gotten to modules yet, so everything is going to have to be redesigned around beacons and vastly expanded to get the end-game FTL recipes so this is really an intermediary base.  
Bhodi fucked around with this message at 16:02 on Dec 28, 2023 |
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Dec 28, 2023 15:56
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Bhodi posted:Rail talk as an excuse to segue into and show off my current base with an image-heavy post: Madness. Awesome, but madness. 
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Dec 28, 2023 19:30
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| # ? May 24, 2024 01:51 |
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That's amazing. That said, I decided to indeed go for a BobAngel run, but I took the seablock pack, removed seablock, and added the other two major angel mods for maximum sanity drain. It's been extremely fun, if EXTREMELY confusing so far. Already once I've torn down my entire crush/sort/smelt array to make a bit more sense for flow and probably gonna have to do it again once I make some cliff explosives and trains. 30 hours in and I've finally got my green circuit array up.  Got BEANS going as power too and ended up stealing Dosh's early tile-able design after banging my head trying to come up with one myself. Slowly working towards being able to properly dispose of all this slag/crushed stone I'm building up and am not turning directly into stone/bricks. Also, adjustable inserters are SO degenerate and LOVE them and will probably always use em in future runs. Speaking of Dosh designs though, how do you set up that warehouse mall exactly? I've never delved THAT much into circuits used like that and would like to learn. I'm to the point where I wanna phase white belts out completely but handcrafting undergrounds/splitters en-masse takes forever, so I wanna set up a mall now that I got green chips. Hell, in general I wanna learn more advanced circuit stuff but I feel it's real hard to find a good resource to learn em to do stuff like the warehouse mall or other goofy-yet-practical applications, and it'll be useful for whenever I eventually do Space-Ex. Or maybe I just suck at finding them?
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Dec 28, 2023 22:07
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