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Now that I have been able to solve my fluid loading and unloading station issues thanks to the thread I am looking at making a big block of production for plastics. Does this kind of thing make sense? It seems like my limiting factors are that the plastic output belt is getting saturated, and it can be tricky to ensure that fluids (petroleum) make it all the way down to the end of the line in consistent enough quantities, but this arrangement seems to be giving me pretty stable output if I give it saturated input, so I'm assuming I could probably just stamp this down a couple of times to increase the overall plastic output. I'm mostly asking because until very recently I didn't understand the benefits of doing on-site production for things like copper wire, etc. and was shipping it in from other sites, and I want to make sure I am not doing something equally dumb here.
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Jan 5, 2024 23:03
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You only need 15 chem plants for one red belt, but that wouldn't be symmetrical so 16 is fine. This is why the belt is too full for the last buildings to work 100% of the time. Those double pipes in the middle might be doing weird things, so I'd leave one free row if you have the space. (e: or try it with only a single pipe, it might be enough?) Other than that it seems fine until you start using modules  e2: Yeah, I looked it up and you can get easily get over 900 petroleum per second out of a pipe that length from a pump and you only need 300, so even a single tank --> pump --> split into 4 would be enough to supply all that. Tamba fucked around with this message at 23:41 on Jan 5, 2024 |
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Jan 5, 2024 23:25
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one trick for the petroleum is to pump it in from both sides of the line. So in your case a second output pump for the tank that goes into underground pipes to the top and then feeds the plants from both directions. The only actually not optimal thing here is not using beacons and modules.
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Jan 5, 2024 23:34
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VictualSquid posted:The only actually not optimal thing here is not using beacons and modules. I'm doing a slow-rear end Space Exploration run and haven't unlocked them yet, and I'm sure as soon as I do I will have to redesign everything. 
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Jan 6, 2024 00:00
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I have some cursed factory to show today in Ultracube. I was having a severe raw input problem so it was time to remake the cube line (and you can see why below), so I grabbed a cap of the place with bonus cube route. Everything eastward is experimental and is another reason it was time for a retrofit.
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Jan 6, 2024 00:12
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Harvey Baldman posted:Now that I have been able to solve my fluid loading and unloading station issues thanks to the thread I am looking at making a big block of production for plastics. Does this kind of thing make sense? I bring coal on the outside with the pipes, double up the output belts, and run 15 per side. Use mergers every 2-3 rows to balance the outputs since each side hits one side of the belt. I use a merger every row but that’s prolly overkill, just easy to slap down. Uses more underground pipes but iron is cheap when you’re building this much anyway.
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Jan 6, 2024 00:53
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Can anyone explain what the values of grid position and absolute x/y have to do with each other? I'm trying to make my own absolute grid rail prints with a city block ( well, brick) design. So far every BP I make I have to randomly stab around for the right values to type in grid position to make everything match up. It works but is tedious and feels antithetical to the game. How am I supposed to reason about them?
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Jan 6, 2024 01:56
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Chin Strap posted:Can anyone explain what the values of grid position and absolute x/y have to do with each other? Shift click in the visual and you can place the center. Then use the width/height to adjust the green border. Takes some experimentation to get used to. I found starting with a chunk aligned size helped me “get it”, 2x2 is a wxh of 96x96 iirc. E: that’s 3x3 :facepalm: I can post more later if you need, on phone now so kinda limited. edit: I wanna say the snapping to the center is based on the world 0,0 coord for fixed-grid blueprints (as opposed to the “click and drag” gridding) necrotic fucked around with this message at 02:16 on Jan 6, 2024 |
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Jan 6, 2024 02:12
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K8.0 posted:The new selector combinator they are adding outputs stack size as one of its functions, so that's already automatable before this. I had forgotten about this! Train station blueprints can now be set up based on loading/unloading and number of wagons. Very cool! Unless you're one of those weirdos who mix fluid and cargo wagons.
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Jan 6, 2024 22:06
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Unless I missed something I don't think parameters can change the quantity or orientation of things in a blueprint. That said you could probably just do it with a set of 3 blueprints; the first sets up the station and a couple combinators to save the parameters (like which item the station is for), which then connects to blueprints for your chests and inserters (one blueprint for input, one for output) using power poles to carry the filter signal. Actually this got me thinking about what they didn't mention and if those things are going to be doable - I didn't see anything about filter slots (like in cargo wagons) or equipment grids (e.g. spidertrons). I guess while you could make equipment grids work with some warnings and failure states, it would be pretty difficult to pull off intuitively - what happens when you replace a smaller item with a larger item?
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Jan 6, 2024 22:56
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New to this game, didn't like my radars and stuff being named after internet people, made a list of the episodes from the first three Star Trek series as a replacement. https://pastebin.com/raw/xvG6VFMF Save as backers.json, replace the original. A very low effort mod, but IMO a necessary one after seeing a radar named "SmallDisturbedChild." No thanks. And yes, I'm fine with a train station getting named "The Best of Both Worlds (Part 2)."
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Jan 7, 2024 00:56
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I forget that lots of things have backer names and not just train stations, and those get renamed anyway.
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Jan 7, 2024 01:28
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Probably worth it to make a report on the official forums when you see any backer names that have not aged well. I don't know if that list has ever been sanitized or updated.
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Jan 7, 2024 01:34
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M_Gargantua posted:Probably worth it to make a report on the official forums when you see any backer names that have not aged well. I don't know if that list has ever been sanitized or updated. Hehe Anyone interested in fixing the backer names should be ready to stick to mods.
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Jan 7, 2024 03:17
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M_Gargantua posted:Probably worth it to make a report on the official forums when you see any backer names that have not aged well. I don't know if that list has ever been sanitized or updated. That'd be great bait to get Kovarex to say more bigoted things.
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Jan 7, 2024 04:28
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doctorfrog posted:New to this game, didn't like my radars and stuff being named after internet people, made a list of the episodes from the first three Star Trek series as a replacement. This is really cool and I think I'll make a Stargate themed one
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Jan 7, 2024 06:43
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I feel like naming depots and radars after Culture GSVs and what not would be equally appropriate.
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Jan 7, 2024 21:07
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VostokProgram posted:This is really cool and I think I'll make a Stargate themed one You must share this if you do
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Jan 7, 2024 22:15
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So in Ultracube there's a building which accepts 6 things in pairs, but it doesn't tell you which pair it accepts and it changes every time it succeeds (otherwise it spits out junk and you can try again). I knew there was no good way to solve this effectively without circuitry but I've never really used them. So I watched the two Dosh videos and read some examples and I think I have something simple that works and I feel really good about it. So with 6 possible paired inputs including itself that's 21 pairs. Since the accepted pair doesn't change on failure if you can give it all pairs you will get it eventually. In fact, since it randomly changes the only way to really do it is to feed it all 21 pairs over and over again. So, I came to the solution of feeding a belt with the 21 pairs sequentially one set at a time and using a loader to guarantee they get into the machine in that order. Then I ordered the inserters to wait until the belt was clear before loading another set by using a belt reader. It works! It actually took more time than it should have to come to this conclusion because I didn't know you can override the stack size on inserters so I was wracking my head over how to deal with an inserter sticking 3 qubits on the belt at once. With that solved it was obvious what to do. Lesson learned.  (one of these boxes is requesting the wrong qubit lmao) This is actually pretty flimsy, as if there's a qubit shortage then the order gets all messed up but not horribly so. I'm still thinking of a way to fix that. I thought I could sum all the blue chests, make them negative, then send a signal if any were positive to disable the inserters until every chest had something, but with 7 chests per qubit all of them would need to be empty and that doesn't work. I could do it on a per-chest basis but that sounds tedious. I'm still thinking! tldr circuits are cool and I'm glad I'm learning them.
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Jan 8, 2024 21:46
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I am less far than you into Ultracube and I am baffled at how you passed the early/mid game without using circuits. the main "cube loop" in my factory is loving lousy with decider combinators (minor spoilers): This is where I'm at at the conclusion to blue science, about to switch over to (greater spoilers) ghost cubes, tryna figure out how to design a new, much less spaghetti system to handle that step. A short explanation of this spaghetti (only minor spoilers again): In the center there's a loop of belt that carries the cube around. Since there's only one and I can't have it sitting in a machine waiting to be used up, a machine only pulls the cube off the loop when it's needed. Inventory sensors pass signals to decider combinators, and all the combinators are set to "if (inputs >= enough) or (outputs = 0), output (arbitrary signal = 1)" (one combinator for each input and each output), so that each combinator stack outputs a number. The outputs are wired together and connected to the cube input, set to "enable when (arbitrary signal = correct number)" such that they only pull the cube off the main loop if there is both sufficient inputs and zero outputs in the machine. This ensures that the cube is always either working or traveling around the loop, never ever stuck in a machine. It's not very elegant but it works. The rest of the cause of the spaghetti is the fact that I want to keep the loop small to minimize cube travel time, and all of these machines have too many inputs and outputs. It's possibly the ugliest section of factory I've ever designed (complimentary).
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Jan 8, 2024 22:21
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Well, I used a few circuits. Wired inserters to buffer storage so I could tell them to not grab the cube if the box/tank was too full. This is was my first foray into actual logic. I'm trying to learn and apply more decider logic! There was/is a lot of hand feeding in my cube factory. I JUST got around to unifying all my cube consumers so the cube doesn't have to do a tour of my whole factory (this was killing my oil production).
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Jan 8, 2024 22:28
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zedprime posted:Haha Yeah I did a quick search of their forum, and similar complaints have been made with the types of responses you'd expect, and I don't feel like making my case to those guys. They did seem to remove a backer with "gay" in his name, but left "RETARDEDHAIR" in. Even if the name I came across wasn't a bit icky to me, I simply don't want Internet names in my video game, and I'm satisfied being able to easily mod them out.
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Jan 9, 2024 00:04
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Is there any mod out there that will let me hide the spidertron interface or stack it with the character one? The side by side of it is hiding too much of my screen on the steam deck.
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Jan 9, 2024 03:31
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https://mods.factorio.com/mod/No_Lab_Names The default objects just become: "Lab" or "Train Stop" or "Radar" etc. Works for me. Not that I'm against having backers be represented, but they just have a lot of dumb names.
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Jan 9, 2024 09:10
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Cube   Excellent mod. There's a lot of post victory stuff to think about and automate. Also these victory stats are incorrect. And I definitely ran myself over with the train (lol).
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Jan 9, 2024 17:34
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I’ve sort of stalled out playing Space Ex so maybe I’ll do a cube run. Anything that stands out as needing changing? Or is there really any ongoing cube development?
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Jan 9, 2024 17:41
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The mod is still pretty fresh and the dev has updated it quite a bit since he launched it two weeks ago. I have a tough time forming an opinion on things that feel off since the overhaul is extensive and everything is very deliberate. But the thing that annoyed me the most by far was that the anti-belt shoes aren't in so I'm slipping and sliding all over my nightmare base. E: Before anyone asks I used exactly one combinator in my entire base (in the build I talked about earlier). SettingSun fucked around with this message at 17:57 on Jan 9, 2024 |
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Jan 9, 2024 17:52
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What's the victory condition for K2? I've unlocked the last tech card I think.
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Jan 9, 2024 19:34
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Chin Strap posted:What's the victory condition for K2? I've unlocked the last tech card I think. Generate a gently caress load of power for a building that I forget the name of.
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Jan 9, 2024 19:58
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K2 also has a nice surprise when you finish that goal
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Jan 9, 2024 20:01
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You have to power up one galactic transceiver (?) and surprise made me laugh out loud and shake my head.
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Jan 9, 2024 20:02
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Don't watch the Dosh video on K2 if you want to preserve the surprise. But do watch it eventually because it is a Dosh video.
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Jan 9, 2024 20:05
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SettingSun posted:Don't watch the Dosh video on K2 if you want to preserve the surprise. But do watch it eventually because it is a Dosh video. Yeah that's the one I haven't watched yet. I've just started smelting immersium and unlocked the advanced smelters and assemblers. How long do I probably have left if I'm not going to try and megabase? This was a trial run with K2 with biters off so I'm looking to just get to the end, see all the stuff it offers, then starting over with biters on for the real experience. So far it has been a cool playthrough though. Definitely appreciate it isn't so overwhelming as like seablock looked like. What is a good next step in terms of overhaul mods after K2? Some increase in complexity but not like Space Ex big.
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Jan 9, 2024 20:47
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SettingSun posted:But the thing that annoyed me the most by far was that the anti-belt shoes aren't in so I'm slipping and sliding all over my nightmare base. I kind of just forgot about those since I don't think I've ever used them hah. Fixed for you!
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Jan 10, 2024 13:06
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Chin Strap posted:What is a good next step in terms of overhaul mods after K2? Some increase in complexity but not like Space Ex big. I did Freight forwarding for a bit of a mixup after K2. Otherwise I was going to do Industrial Revolution 3 as the early steam powered tech level interests me.
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Jan 10, 2024 13:20
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I have been using 2-4 trains so far for my pending city block design but I’m playing Space Exploration so my next step is Nauvis Orbit. I know I am probably a pretty good distance away from being able to do space elevator things, but I got to thinking how in orbit 1-1 trains probably make more sense. I know I can theoretically set up an unloading and reloading station to repack cargo wagons into other cargo wagons, but I was wondering - is there any way to have the locomotive engines actually do some kind of cargo wagon handoff? Disconnect a wagon of iron plates and have another engine pick it up, without unloading? If it exists, it is probably mod territory, but I’m curious what options exist along those lines. I’m sure it’s probably not even faster than unloading and reloading a wagon, but it feels like it would be fun to do regardless.
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Jan 10, 2024 17:33
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Bobsledboy posted:I did Freight forwarding for a bit of a mixup after K2. Otherwise I was going to do Industrial Revolution 3 as the early steam powered tech level interests me. The steam powered stuff in IR3 is interesting, but honestly you can get through it and put it in the rear-view mirror pretty early as you move on to electric.
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Jan 10, 2024 17:36
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Harvey Baldman posted:I have been using 2-4 trains so far for my pending city block design but I’m playing Space Exploration so my next step is Nauvis Orbit. I know I am probably a pretty good distance away from being able to do space elevator things, but I got to thinking how in orbit 1-1 trains probably make more sense. I know I can theoretically set up an unloading and reloading station to repack cargo wagons into other cargo wagons, but I was wondering - is there any way to have the locomotive engines actually do some kind of cargo wagon handoff? Disconnect a wagon of iron plates and have another engine pick it up, without unloading? If it exists, it is probably mod territory, but I’m curious what options exist along those lines. I’m sure it’s probably not even faster than unloading and reloading a wagon, but it feels like it would be fun to do regardless. There is a mod to disconnect and connect to rolling stock! The core game has a hotkey for it (v by default iirc). https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Automatic_Coupling_System Never used it so can’t speak to how well it works.
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Jan 10, 2024 17:51
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necrotic posted:There is a mod to disconnect and connect to rolling stock! The core game has a hotkey for it (v by default iirc). Hell yeah, I’ll need to check this out. My perfect world would be combining this with the mod that lets trains go off ramps and jumps so your could do a handoff between engines at speed.
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Jan 10, 2024 17:54
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seiken posted:I kind of just forgot about those since I don't think I've ever used them hah. Fixed for you! You're a cool dev, thanks! I have a habit of just cutting through my factory and over all its belts so this will make that feel so much better. The final production chain is kinda scary, so I feed it by hand for now and procrastinate by thinking about train-based manufacturing. The idea of bring in materials by train is strangely appealing for a mod with such an interesting premise.
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Jan 10, 2024 19:34
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