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Renewable energy sources are not part of this game's philosophy, I take it.
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Oct 7, 2017 15:14
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100 HOGS AGREE posted:Renewable energy sources are not part of this game's philosophy, I take it. Solar is available, and you can pair it with batteries to work around the clock. It just takes a LOT of space and resources.
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Oct 7, 2017 15:35
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A three-pronged production split with oil seems like some fun to manage.
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Oct 7, 2017 23:47
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Dunno why I didn't figure out the dead simple conveyor way to have two products on one delivery line without messing things up.  On the plus side it accelerated my independent work on some very silly looking conveyor layouts.
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Oct 8, 2017 01:28
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GreyjoyBastard posted:Dunno why I didn't figure out the dead simple conveyor way to have two products on one delivery line without messing things up. Should have seen my very first factory attempt. I had one conveyor, which was basically a rectangle. My idea was to just put everything I could build on one conveyor, that way each machine could grab what it needed when it needed it. So there was coal. And copper ore. And iron ore. And stone. And bricks. And iron plates. And copper plates. And raw wood. And ... all going basically in a circle, soon very clogged and discombobulated as you might imagine, with zero organization whatsoever. Wish I still had the save. Didn't take me long to figure out it really wasn't brilliant in it's simplicity -- it was just profoundly stupid and counterpreductive.
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Oct 8, 2017 01:52
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I have already learned something from this LP, I didn't know that drills mined a 5x5 area. And my played hours are 192 according to Steam, so I have no idea how I didn't figure that out before.
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Oct 8, 2017 02:31
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EponymousMrYar posted:I'd argue that if you're going to refine oil at all you might as well make use of it since it stores better as crude (it's a 1-1 crude to heavy/light/petro refinement but you need 3x the storage because it's 3x the product You are not wrong.
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Oct 8, 2017 16:00
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Next on the agenda is getting some more basics going; pipes, underground pipes, and storage tanks. The small area where the supply of piercing ammo magazines gets made in the southwest already has what is needed to get that done. That went quickly, and then another bunch of lamps got put in place, an overdue project to improve illumination at night. With the borders still under control, I decided that it was perhaps time to boost our research a bit. And then ... Circuit Networks, Combinators, and other Craziness Big caveat here. Before getting to this, I had never used a circuit network or a combinator for any purpose. I'd thought about it, seen a couple examples of it being done, etc. But that's about it. So I'm sure vets will be jump in and tell me what I'm wrong about helpfully. Here's the stuff that came with that tech advance, and what the game says about it. It's one of those things that is a powerful, beneficial feature, and yet completely optional to actually winning the game.  From left to right: ** Red Wire ** Green Wire -- the purposes of both red and green is to create a circuit network to pass information along and control various activities in the factory. There's two of them so that you can have two networks active in the same area. ** Arithmetic Combinator -- Performs arithmetic calculations on circuit network signals ** Decider Combinator -- Compares circuit network signals ** Constant Combinator -- Outputs constant circuit network signals ** Power Switch -- Used to control the connections of the electric network. Can also be controlled by the circuit network. ** Programmable Speaker The last one, the speaker, has to do with making your factory play various music. Not as in background music, but actually generated by the factory itself. Interesting, but not something I expect to be messing with. Ok, so starting at the beginning. The two different-colored wires essentially transmit what items you have stored. This can be later used to communicate with other machines and control what they do.  Basic example here. This is where I have the fast inserters made. I've got this chest limited to one stack, which is 50. I don't need 50 stored at all times: I've only used 7 so far. But the choices when I built this area were go with the 50, or just what the assembler will store itself(2), or even more clunky, throw down a belt long enough to fill up with whatever number I wanted.  Here I've connected the chest storing the fast inserters to the long-handed inserter that loads it. I can't connect the assembler itself to the circuit network.  Here's what the inserter gui displays now. Under 'Mode of Operation', stack size is not relevant yet. 'None' simply means the inserter will ignore the signal it gets from the circuit network. That signal will tell it what is in the chest, since that's what it's hooked up to(50 fast inserters in this case). I've set it to only put more in the chest if it is less than 10. Now I can take half of them out(down to 25) and it still does nothing. It will load only up to 10, and then stop. So I've achieved a finer level of control in terms of how much product I want to make and store.  This is the power switch. Shown here, it connects the research area in the north to the rest of the base. It's on here, but if we turn it off ...  Everything past it will not get power any longer. This should prove useful for saving power usage when a particular area of the factory is not needed. Times when I want to pause research to go clear out some biters, build a product line for a newly-discovered item, etc. Of course this could be achieved almost as easily by simply placing and removing a well-positioned electric pole. But these switches can be connected to the circuit network, allowing control over it from a distance and/or based on specific conditions. Combinators So what about these different combinators?  The arithmetic combinator manipulates the value of the incoming signal. In our 50 Fast Inserters example, I could add, subtract, multiply, divide, etc. that value by whatever I feel like.  This one compares values with stuff like >, < , = , etc. It's a boolean true/false deal, and will send out a signal only if the expression evaluates as true. Could be used in conjunction with a power switch to set it to turn off when a certain amount of product is reached, for example.  Last but not least is the Constant combinator. This outputs a constant signal to the network. Not just one: it's got 18 slots for them. So what do I want to do with all this? Whatever it is, I'm going to need a supply of all six components. I think I can craft the combinators and power switches for now; they're quick and cheap and I don't think I want a ton of them, at least not yet. I think it's worth having a stash of the red and green wires though. ** Flamethrower(50 Red, 50 Green, 50 Black). The wire lines didn't take long to set up, but by the time they did this was the latest research item to come through. Flamethrowers do significant area-affect damage. They also continue burning for a couple seconds afterwards. That combination makes them a quality, if risky, weapon at this point. I say risky, because you can burn down things you don't want to if you aren't quite careful. The big thing here is the ammunition. It's made in a chemical plant, which gives us an excuse to make one of those. Heavy Oil, Light Oil, and Steel are required. A practical use for two of our three oil products. I don't really want to use these yet: I think our SMG with the various upgrades so far is going to be more effective in most cases. But it sure doesn't hurt to have it ready just in case. That's worth extending the steel line over to the oil area for. I don't really want to spend the time on it now though, so I'll just keep going with more upgrades research. Control Center That's not the name of any item or concept in the game; it's more what I want to do with this circuit network stuff. A central location for me to make changes and pick up things. The factory isn't very big but I still have to move around to do a lot of things that I can do in one place now. Again this is completely un-necessary, but should help with some efficiency and get me using the network. Technically very little beyond smelting in Factorio is NECESSARY ... I don't have to make assemblers at all. I could just craft everything by hand, but that would be stupid and take forever, for example.  First up, let's meet possibly the strangest 'health potion' you'll ever see. Since you only recover health when you've been out of combat for a while, these can actually be use it. There are actually fish in the bodies of water in the game, which you can 'mine' by the usual method quite quickly.  They are actually programmed as a weapon, with a 'shooting speed' of 2/second, and inflict -80 Physical damage. In Factorio terms, you 'fire' at yourselves with the raw fish by holding them and clicking anywhere roughly near your character/avatar. This is one of those items that most people don't discover for a while -- I don't know if I ever would have known about it if I hadn't stumbled upon it in a video. Not sure if it's possible to fish the waters dry, but you certainly shouldn't need enough to do that. You get 5 from each one you mine, so I take a moment and snatch up some. Ok, back to the Control Center. For now, a single constant combinator will serve as the 'nerve center' of the operation.  A single value here: R is set to 1. Up by the research area, I have a power switch with red wires following the power cables all the way up to connect them to the network.  I no longer can shut this power switch on and off manually now that it's hooked in to the network; that tells it to operate off the information it gets, not my control. I shouldn't want to though. As I have it set here, it will remain on as long as "R" equals 1. Any other value, and it will turn off. I try this out to make sure it works. Any time I want to stop doing research for a while, I simply change R at this constant combinator, the 'Control Center', to anything else and I'm no longer needing to power that area. Change it back to 1 to start researching again. Now let's add more to this. I run the network connections out to the oil area, and connect them to all of storage tanks.  This is just informational. At any power pole that's on the network, including the ones at the Control Center where I'd most commonly check it, I can see how much I have of the various products.  Initially I throw this up: another power switch that will shut off the refinery if crude reaches a minimal level, arbitrarily set at 500 here. Note that I can't connect the network to the refinery itself directly. This will work, but isn't optimal. When supply gets down to that level, it will be constantly shutting off and on. What would be better is to have it shut off at 500, then restart at say 5k. Then it would run for a while, turn off when supply is too low, then turn on when it's got enough to do another burst of activity. Actually making that happen is a bit more complicated. After spending far too much time and not being able to make it work, I decided to move on. I know it can be done, but my brain isn't connecting the dots on how to accomplish it. So I'll stick at simply an on/off at 500 crude here. Added another storage tank of each type while I was at it; petroleum gas is more than half full at 14k+, the others close to half at over 11k. Don't want to run out of space. Next project was a little more time-consuming, but not particularly difficult. Some spaghetti would be involved though. Transporting all of the 'basics' product to a central location, then setting up the network to control how many of each to store. While in the middle of this I finally got to the point in research where it became to pause the process because I'd acquired new, usable products. That'll get dealt with once I get this set up -- a few steps to the east and the research area was disconnected from the grid.  At the end of the next hour, I had it almost wired. Not completely, but mostly. Here's the end of it, near the control center, where I've got a couple of steel chests. The various iron ones scattered all over are now completely gone. I think the stone walls and steel furnaces are fine up by the stone line, but everything else directs here. Notice I've got the chests themselves hooked up to the network. This allows it to determine how much I have:  Eeek. Something's gone wrong for the crude to be up that high(24k). Must have set something incorrectly. In any case, here I've got the instructions for how much to build of everything set on the inserters that remove them from the various assemblers -- or in the case of the metal plates(steel, iron, copper), from the belt itself. I could have more signals coming out from the control center, but memorizing which signal goes to which item would drive me up the wall and down the other side. I don't have to change amounts often enough to make that worth it. Of course, when the inserters disable themselves, there will be still be some coming down the belt so this isn't super-precise, but given how infrequently I need to restock I don't foresee there being a logjam. I'll take a central location over precision,.  This is the first time I've used these. One chest isn't quite enough to store everything right now, so I've got a few of the more popular items being taken out by this thing. I can add more chests and inserters as needed. As you can see, the filter inserter can intelligently select up to five items, and only those items, to be moved. Their power load is 52kw, slightly above the fast inserter's 46kw, and they move about as quickly I think. Definitely a useful tool for the right situation.  Last 20 minutes or so of the 7th hour of operations, power needs dove with the shut-down of the research. Max. Capacity = 28.8 MW 65 Electric Mining Drills = 5.85 MW 19 Radar Stations = 5.7 MW 36 Assembling Machine 2s = 5.4 MW 260 Inserters = 3.38 MW 19 Assembling Machine 1s = 1.71 MW 76 Long handed Inserters = 1.44 MW 15 Labs = 1.35 MW 10 Fast Inserters = 460 KW 1 Oil Refinery = 420 KW 2 Pumpjacks = 180 KW 36 Lamps = 180 KW 1 Filter Inserter = 52 KW Maximum Usage = 26.02 MW Actually removed one drill that had exhausted the resources in it's area, and there's one more I noticed that needs to go. I also re-organized this list from biggest to smallest in terms of power usage; that way it can be seen quickly where the majority of the bill is going. We saw only a slight increase here, having spent the majority of the time on using the circuit networks to increase ease of control and efficiency of the factory. It doesn't look like we are going any higher than 12-13 MW at peak during this period.  Item Count: 41(+2) Total Production: 137k(-5% from 144k) Another brief, if expected, dip. Again the research stall is the cause here. However, this does not include the oil products:  1.4 million units of water for the power plant, 75.2k units of oil-related stuff. There is also a 'Buildings' category, which shows how much physical stuff was placed down/deconstructed during the time period.  575 built, 109 deconstructed. The latter number includes 11 fish ... apparently they are considered a building for this purpose. Interesting. This is useful for seeing how much the actual physical infrastructure of the factory is expanding, as compared to how much it is producing. Production is a lot more important, but still worth looking at here. Resources ** Iron: 375k primary(25k used), 110k steel(14k used). 15 and just under 8 hours remain. It's clear that we'll soon need to divert iron from our primary field to feed the steel beast. ** Copper: 111k(10k used). Holding steady, 11 hours left. ** Stone: 379k(1k used). Down to just a trickle now as expected. ** Coal: 264k power(12k used), 352k factory(4k used), 599k steel(1k used). All the time in the world for the last two, but the power field is down to about 22 hours. There's plenty within our borders to supplement this, when the time comes. ** Crude Oil: 14.3/second. That's already down 23% from the 18+ we had when the pumpjacks were placed. Oil patches do not last long.
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Oct 8, 2017 16:14
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Thotimx posted:Initially I throw this up: another power switch that will shut off the refinery if crude reaches a minimal level, arbitrarily set at 500 here. Note that I can't connect the network to the refinery itself directly. This will work, but isn't optimal. When supply gets down to that level, it will be constantly shutting off and on. What would be better is to have it shut off at 500, then restart at say 5k. Then it would run for a while, turn off when supply is too low, then turn on when it's got enough to do another burst of activity. I have never played Factorio, but I think this should work: 2 deciders linked to the crude storage. One outputs 1 if crude is over 500, the other if crude is over 5k Edit: thus you have a total value of 0 under 500, 1 between 500 and 5k, 2 over 5k One arithmetic combinator to sum the outputs of the former deciders and the output of the next decider One decider that takes the output of the preceding arithmetic and outputs 1 if the sum is >= 2 This way if crude is under 500 the sum is at most 1 shutting the refinery down and if it's over 5k the sum is at least 2 starting it up.
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Oct 8, 2017 17:51
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Playing along, automating the same things you do. I have 30 iron drills and I still don't have enough iron for my belt being processed thanks to the steel furnaces. Guess I need to get more iron mined!
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Oct 8, 2017 19:46
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I think I started using circuit networks the last time I played Factorio to try and save on power usage. In retrospect, the system I set up for that was way too time-consuming to set up for what little I gained from it. Also, I spotted a typo. Thotimx posted:
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Oct 8, 2017 21:33
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It's a fish! They tend to spawn randomly near the shores of big enough water sources and can be grabbed once you're close enough. Pollution doesn't appear to affect them and if you want you can grab an infinite amount but it's generally never worth doing.
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Oct 8, 2017 21:56
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Sage Grimm posted:It's a fish! They tend to spawn randomly near the shores of big enough water sources and can be grabbed once you're close enough. Pollution doesn't appear to affect them and if you want you can grab an infinite amount but it's generally never worth doing. Agreed. Especially later on the window between "I am in perfect health" and "oh poo poo I'm dead" is entirely too small to click a fish on yourself in, especially when that click could have been used to toss out something that could have reduced incoming damage and saved your rear end instead.
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Oct 8, 2017 22:10
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The vast majority of what I do with circuits is just to hook up lamps to those constant things and have them set to a color. The stuff is tricky if you're dumb.
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Oct 8, 2017 22:47
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Meanwhile I mostly use circuit networks to control where fluids go (two pumps connected to a storage tank, one pump always on and the other set to turn on when fluids are greater than or equal to 2k) and to toggle backup steam power whenever it's needed (much like the refinery example posted, only I don't really care that the switch constantly flicks on and off when it mainly serves as a notice that I need more solar footprint period.)
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Oct 9, 2017 00:06
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The trick for adding hysteresis is that you need some way to actually store information - the output of combinators only depends on their input, they don't have any inbuilt storage. The secret is to wire the output of a combinator back to its own input. If you pick a signal, let's call it S, then you can make a decider combinator that outputs 1 S when S>=1. If you wire that up to itself, it will "turn on" when you send it a 1, and then "turn off" when you send it a -1. This is one of the places where having multiple wire types comes in really handy - you don't want to pollute the internal logic of your combinator circuits with signals from unrelated circuits.
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Oct 9, 2017 01:24
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Was just playing some co-op Factorio. Hell is other people.
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Oct 9, 2017 03:16
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I bought this game, drat you. I keep restarting as I learn new things which inevitably lead me to conclude that my current setup is woefully inefficient. I feel like that's probably normal? Does Iron continue being a ridiculous bottleneck forever, because I'm getting to the point where one belt just isn't enough.... or I have way too many diverters on it and the constant halving means things downstream just don't get enough. Does this mean I should use power switches to turn off production lines I don't need right now so it can continue downstream? And do diverters work "in reverse"? Can I put two input streams in and extend only one output and it'll merge them, or is there something to do that later? I don't like what this is doing to me.
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Oct 9, 2017 07:30
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MarquiseMindfang posted:I keep restarting as I learn new things which inevitably lead me to conclude that my current setup is woefully inefficient. I feel like that's probably normal? Does Iron continue being a ridiculous bottleneck forever, because I'm getting to the point where one belt just isn't enough.... or I have way too many diverters on it and the constant halving means things downstream just don't get enough. Does this mean I should use power switches to turn off production lines I don't need right now so it can continue downstream? And do diverters work "in reverse"? Can I put two input streams in and extend only one output and it'll merge them, or is there something to do that later? This feeling sums up my whole experience with Factorio. I'm hoping the LP will help point me in the right direction so that restarting, and all the frustration that comes with it, happens less frequently.
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Oct 9, 2017 08:04
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Never, never, never restart. Leave your old inefficient factories where they stand and just build a new one elsewhere. Space is functionally infinite, and those old inefficient factories keep producing their goods as long as you have materials to supply them. So you can use those goods as a springboard for your new, more efficient factory without having to spend the first half hour in the burner tech stage again.
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Oct 9, 2017 09:28
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Presumably you could use the speakers to sound various alarms? Making it less necessary to continuously monitor things, because you will be told if something goes wrong.
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Oct 9, 2017 10:34
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Part of the fun of Factorio is learning to live with your terrible terrible engineering mistakes. Because you are too lazy to tear that poo poo down.
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Oct 9, 2017 11:29
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MarquiseMindfang posted:Does Iron continue being a ridiculous bottleneck forever, because I'm getting to the point where one belt just isn't enough.... or I have way too many diverters on it and the constant halving means things downstream just don't get enough. Does this mean I should use power switches to turn off production lines I don't need right now so it can continue downstream? And do diverters work "in reverse"? Can I put two input streams in and extend only one output and it'll merge them, or is there something to do that later? Splitters don't work in reverse, but you can merge two lanes of product. The solution to this kind of thing you describe is almost always 'build more'. If you come to the conclusion that you just don't have enough iron and you are smelting a full belt of it ... then build another column of furnaces and add another lane to your bus. Iron will always be a major, major need, but it doesn't have to be a bottleneck. Veloxyll posted:Part of the fun of Factorio is learning to live with your terrible terrible engineering mistakes. The struggle is real.
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Oct 9, 2017 13:00
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Thotimx posted:
I have a long row of electric smelters sitting on top of a big field of iron ore that agrees with this.
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Oct 9, 2017 18:26
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The Lone Badger posted:Presumably you could use the speakers to sound various alarms? Making it less necessary to continuously monitor things, because you will be told if something goes wrong. Yep. The speakers support a global GUI alert that you can use for things like "your main accumulator bank dropped below 30% charge, something's all hosed up with your power plant coal supply, come fix it."
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Oct 9, 2017 18:41
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MarquiseMindfang posted:I keep restarting as I learn new things which inevitably lead me to conclude that my current setup is woefully inefficient. I feel like that's probably normal? Does Iron continue being a ridiculous bottleneck forever, because I'm getting to the point where one belt just isn't enough.... or I have way too many diverters on it and the constant halving means things downstream just don't get enough. Does this mean I should use power switches to turn off production lines I don't need right now so it can continue downstream? And do diverters work "in reverse"? Can I put two input streams in and extend only one output and it'll merge them, or is there something to do that later? An answer to both your questions here:  The answer as Thotmix says is 'build more.' More iron, more splitters more more more. This 3 splitter configuration allows you to split roughly 33% of a product off of a line without completely starving it and the steel configuration also shows how to do a 'single splitter load balancer' efficiently. It's one of the things I picked up early in Factorio, along with the Green Circuit Ideal Ratio configuration and the realization of 'stop caring how much underground pipes cost you need them.' Also don't be afraid to just let part of your factory sit idle. Yeah things drain power when idle but that drain is often a pittance to your total power production and you can always learn circuits to let you turn parts of your factory off if you really want to save the power. DoubleNegative posted:Never, never, never restart. Leave your old inefficient factories where they stand and just build a new one elsewhere. Space is functionally infinite, and those old inefficient factories keep producing their goods as long as you have materials to supply them. So you can use those goods as a springboard for your new, more efficient factory without having to spend the first half hour in the burner tech stage again. I'd argue taking the middle ground: stockpile a bunch of resources from your inefficient factory and then rebuild the entire thing with those resources to not only make them more efficient but also expand their scope. There's kind of a natural point to do this when you've hit the technologies that let you make things efficient. Red Belts, all 3 types of Power Poles and Crafting Machine 2's is generally when I start thinking 'I should make an inserter/transport/crafting/power' section of my factory rather than simply 'building as I need it' (also a certain long distance transport technology but that's because I tend to play with the RSO mod.) That's really only feasible to do once though, since while I thought of redesigning my factory again after that point to take into account new transport technologies (and the novel idea of bussing green circuits) but by that point my factory was literally 5x larger than before and thus would take me 5x longer to tear up. The appeal of restarting is often because while space is infinite, it's way easier to build things off of what you've already built since everything you need is right there which means that you're building efficient setups off of an inefficient supply line (which sort of defeats the point.) Also those factories tend to take up convenient space. Also moving to a completely new locations means clearing that location of trees, biters, etc. and it can be surprisingly hard to find a good location that contains all four resources you need (iron, copper, coal, water) in close proximity. Because really: Veloxyll posted:Part of the fun of Factorio is learning to live with your terrible terrible engineering mistakes. This is the game. I have three problems to deal with in my current factory (more iron, more copper, more power) and another two annoyances (both related to a intermediate product) that I'll need to get to eventually after applying some bandaids to tidy them up a bit. EponymousMrYar fucked around with this message at 22:23 on Oct 9, 2017 |
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Oct 9, 2017 22:09
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Omobono posted:I have never played Factorio, but I think this should work: I will try this at some point. Jabor posted:The trick for adding hysteresis Thanks for this! MayOrMayNotBeACat posted:I spotted a typo. Even I wasn't sure what I meant by that at first. I'm fairly confident after thinking about it that 'be use it' was meant to say 'be useful'. But I'm not really sure how I expected anyone else to understand that if I barely do myself. MarquiseMindfang posted:I bought this game, drat you. Muwahahahahaha!!
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Oct 10, 2017 18:53
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Ok, first job is to check on the oil. The problem was absurdly simple ...  That underground pipe, supposed to be carrying heavy oil to storage, got rotated sideways somehow during all my messing around over here with the network, and I didn't notice it. The refinery clogged up with the stuff, and couldn't continue working, so the crude tank filled up. By the time I got over here it had stopped. It's remarkable how easy it is to screw up something like that. Only takes one small mistake to make your whole factory grind to a halt sometimes. Just oil in this case. Ok, now on to that research item I mentioned ** Electric Energy Distribution(120 Red, 120 Green). Everything else available takes 150 of a kind minimum, so we're starting to ramp up a bit in cost and get to the more expensive part of the Green/Black tier. This one brings in two more types of electric poles. Large ones are good for stringing cable across large distances(like out to the perimeter radars for instance). They have a small radius around them that they can connect that power to buildings though. That's where the mediums come in: they have the largest radius(7x7, 4x4 for large, 5x5 for small), and slightly longer reach for spacing between them compared to the small ones(9 to 7.5 -- the large's have a massive 30 here). Other than satisfying OCD tendencies stronger than mine, it doesn't serve a purpose to replace most of the existing power poles that are out there. Definitely want to add these two to our basics production though and have some for when they are needed. Both require steel and copper, more for the large ones naturally, which are already set up and available on my western-most line that makes pipes, storage tanks, and ammo. I'll just add to it, finishing up the rest of the inserter settings for the network's storage instructions on my way out there.  This is the last remaining loose end to tie up at this point. Once the new power pole production was going, I restarted research and ran the steel bus line out to the east near the oil. This is just a bit north of our storage tanks. Our first operational Chemical Plant, which are basically assembling machines for oil-related products. In this case, steel comes in from the right, light and heavy oil from below, and the belt to the left carries flamethrower ammunition back to central storage. ** Sulfur Processing(150 Red, 150 Green) was invented while this was being set up. There's no actual practical use for it yet ... but there will be soon. Sulfur itself requires equal parts water and petroleum gas(30 each, producing a pair of sulfur). This is then turned into Sulfuric Acid(5 Sulfur, 1 Iron plate, 100 Water to produce 50 units). It's basically time to start getting a little more serious about oil here. We're going to need H20 over here and the rest of the bus -- or at least the iron for now. Before I do that though, I think I'm going to want to have automated production of chemical plants eventually. So why not now? Noticed that a copper drill was no longer functioning, so I took it down and put up six more. That's more than we need, but it finishes off our current field. For the chemical plants, I'll need to do quite a bit of tree-cutting in the western forest. That could wait, but it's going to need to be done eventually. There's no good reason not to just bite the bullet ... err, steel axe ... and do the necessary. In the meantime, here's some research that got completed. ** Landmines(100 Red, 100 Green, 100 Black). These are made from Steel and Explosives, and as you'd expect they do area damage to enemies that come near. I've never really felt the need for them, though I suppose if there were repeated, concentrated attacks in an area they would be useful. For now at least I won't be making any. ** Rocketry(120 Red, 120 Green, 120 Black). This is a lot more useful, basically serving the same purpose as the shotgun for this tier, just as the flamethrower more or less replaces the SMG. Range of 22, damage of 200 explosion for the rockets themselves. The shotgun, even taking into account it's accuracy issues, does much less damage at slightly lower range of 20. We definitely want this. Rockets take Electronic Circuits, Explosives, and Iron Plates. So now we have a good reason to make those Explosives. A couple of upgrades for the shooting speed and damage of said rockets follow this.  Here's where the chemical plants are going to get built(to the west). I had been waiting to see if things caught up at all, and maybe they will eventually, but we've obviously got a steel shortage. More and more stuff requires it, and we have the room, so I headed back down to double our output there from 8 to 16 furnaces. We're already draining that iron field pretty fast -- now it's going to go even more quickly. This is also one area where the new power poles can help us: we can compress this a bit.  Here's the way it is with the smaller poles; a gap in between every other furnace to connect the power.  This is afterwards. No gaps, so we can fit 25% more furnaces in the same space. ** Battery(150 Red, 150 Green). Another product used to make other things. Batteries come from sulfuric acid, along with a little iron and copper. The chemical plant setup was done shortly after this, so I finally got around to extending the bus over to our oil area. I'm going to need to watch supplies carefully; I normally like to have the research area be the 'end', so that will run dry before anything I need immediately does. At least for a while here though, things will run past research and then on to oil. ** Electric Energy Accumulators(150 Red, 150 Green). These are very important -- but early. They're made from batteries and iron, and store power for use later. A LOT more military upgrades were available for 200 each of the three types: they got the nod next. Went back to central storage for supplies, including putting down a third chest and initially forgetting to hook it up to the network which caused a lot more stuff to turn on than really should have, but this kind of building sucks up a lot of transport belts. Then with the bus basically over to the oil section, I needed to put together some sort of sensible flow chart. That would have to wait though -- I noticed that I hadn't connected the second storage tank of each type(heavy, light, petroleum gas) to the network. Oops. Almost 90% full on the last one there, so I definitely want a couple more of those. That takes us to our next hourly review.  We're pretty much at our peak usage right now, and have stayed there for nearly a half-hour. Call it 16 MW, a significant jump. Max. Capacity = 28.8 MW 65 Electric Mining Drills = 6.39 MW 19 Radar Stations = 5.7 MW 37 Assembling Machine 2s = 5.55 MW 260 Inserters = 3.93 MW 22 Assembling Machine 1s = 1.98 MW 95 Long handed Inserters = 1.81 MW 15 Labs = 1.35 MW 11 Fast Inserters = 506 KW 1 Oil Refinery = 420 KW 1 Chemical Plant = 210 KW 41 Lamps = 205 KW 2 Pumpjacks = 180 KW 1 Filter Inserter = 52 KW Maximum Usage = 28.3 MW Basically right where we need to be, and we can get away with this for now but another expansion is on the horizon.  Item Count: 37(-4) Total Production: 161k(+18% from 137k) Reaching new heights with the iron ... and basically staying there. Looks like that operation will need expanding again soon. That fuels our rise to a new high in total activity. Liquid oil-based products increased significantly as well, as they were pretty much running solid the whole hour. Resources ** Iron: 350k primary(25k used), 93k steel(17k used). 14 and about 5.5 hours here. I'm now thinking about getting to a secure place where I'm able to go tap that western field. It's almost time, and I'd probably be doing it now if I didn't know that I'll soon be inventing something to make it more convenient. ** Copper: 97k(14k used). The draw here increased and it's just under 7 hours remaining. The only reason this is still a non-issue is how trivial it will be to move the mines a short distance away to a larger field. ** Stone: 378k(1k used). ** Coal: 252k power(12k used), 347k factory(5k used), 597k steel(2k used). Holding steady within expected parameters. ** Crude Oil: 14.5/sec. I had this at 14.3 an hour ago but I think I misread it: it was probably 16.3.
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Oct 10, 2017 19:03
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MarquiseMindfang posted:Does Iron continue being a ridiculous bottleneck forever Thotimx posted:Splitters don't work in reverse, but you can merge two lanes of product.  In a real factory only do this with the same types of items. There's basically never a reason to do this kind of mixing. Using two different items on the same belt in different lanes is fine, but mixing multiple types of items on the same lane is a recipe for disaster. Luckily, splitters handle that correctly too: 
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Oct 10, 2017 21:16
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BonfireLit posted:They do work in reverse: Oops.
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Oct 11, 2017 22:46
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Bonfire Lit posted:Oh yes. Also everything else will become a bottleneck too. But that's what trains are for! Until the inputs become imbalanced which they inevitably will especially if you're dealing with something like copper and iron. Getting ready to set up top tier science: Iron still a bottleneck. Even with 2 iron smelting arrays and 2 lanes of the fastest belts. THE STRUGGLE IS REAL
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Oct 12, 2017 03:22
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Cheers guys. I've made progress in expanding my understanding of the game, but I'm waiting for a few things to be covered in the LP before playing too hard with them. Like Uranium and its associated mess, and logistics, and trains. I know there's a bunch of stuff on the wiki and such, but that's such a dense block of information, it's been much easier understanding things from the LP. I've gotten red/green/blue/black science up and running, but I've hit a power (steam doesn't cut it no more) and space (can't physically jam any more conveyors in) wall, so I'm just messing around refining my standard templates for constructing research, smelting and construction areas to be as space-efficient (yet infinitely expandable) as possible. Part of me wishes this game had a Wii U/Switch version so I could draw all over the map. No, I don't know why I'm like this.
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Oct 12, 2017 11:29
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As an fyi, I don't find trains to be useful as quickly as you get them. Logistics and other power stuff, definitely and I know more about those anyway. I think I mentioned this before but in my 0.14 run, I used a single, minimalistic(two-car) train than ran around to a few locations picking up oil. And that's it. Anyway those things will be coming up soon.
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Oct 13, 2017 02:37
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 Been a while since we looked at this. Just look at the lovely, toxic, ecosystem-destroying(except for ours) pollution!  This is our one pressing problem at the moment. Looks like the pollution cloud in the southeast extends a bit beyond our radar ... and there is a sizable enemy presence not far beyond that. We've got work to do here, and I expect we will very shortly be thankful for all those military upgrades we've been doing.  This is a moderate distance east of our wall at the moment, and guarded by a sizable concentration of biters. It's also about twice as large as any other crude deposit within radar range. Not an immediate goal, but once our oil needs really start to ramp up we're going to need to invest the time and ammunition to clear out these nests, and those around it. The pumpjacks alone will cause significant pollution, but it'll be well worth the effort. Even the few other smaller sources aren't any easier to get to from what I can see. #1 priority has to be extending that wall in the southeast and getting a handle on how close we are to antagonizing that base. I'd like to get as many upgrades as possible done before I go after them though. The extensiion went without incident, though I did have a facepalm moment here:  That turret wouldn't do a whole lot of good now would it. Tons of ammunition, I just didn't load any in it before.  Here was a chance for the new electric poles to take center stage. Just 3-4 of them -- they actually stretch about twice this far -- to get the new radar's power connected. It shows we still have some margin ... but not a lot. Back to that oil flow concept: ** Crude -- Heavy, Light, and Petroleum Gas are produced at the Refinery. Oh yeah ... hadn't checked those levels in a long time. Turns out they are doing just fine, but ... oops. ** Petroleum Gas - Sulfur - Sulfuric Acid/Explosives. Other stuff like water, coal, metals are needed here but this is purely for the oil part to get my head around it. ** Sulfuric Acid - Batteries, which are not needed for anything immediately but will be later. ** Explosives - Rockets. And Land Mines that we don't need, and other things later I'm sure, but this one we want right away. It's our new top-dog in terms of out-ranging the enemy. First thing at the moment is that we want to produce as much sulfur as we can from the petroleum gas we are producing, and leave LOTS of room for expansion later. I do recall that oil products in particular need an obscene amount of room. So, we need water over here to do that.  This sizable lake to the northeast, forming part of our border in that direction, should do the job nicely. One Offshore Pump and a whole bunch of underground pipes later, and we've got our supply. I could just guess how many Chemical Plants we'll need to satisfy the refinery, but you know I'm not going to do that. Time for more math! ** Chemical Plants have a crafting speed of 1.25 and are rated at using up 30 Petroleum Gas/sec. for this sulfur recipe. That means each one actually will consume 37.5. ** The refinery produces 40 every 5 seconds, and crafts at 1.00 so no adjustments are needed. I would need almost five refineries working at full speed(and we don't produce enough crude to fully satisfy one) to make enough for a single chemical plant. One sulfur-producing plant should suffice for quite some time. Leaving a substantial amount of room, I slap one down and connect up the water and petroleum gas. This going to make up to 2.5 sulfur/second, so I'll need significant inserter power here. A bit of testing determines one fast and one standard unit can handle the workload.  As an aside, I've always rather liked the distinctive look of items like sulfur in Factorio. This setup will empty the sulfur plant slightly faster than it can produce the smelly yellow stuff. Next, this line needs to split into two parts. Explosives is the immediate concern: we need to add coal to the mix for that. After pondering the matter I decide to add coal to the bus, partly because I don't have a more convenient way of getting it over here. In needlessly convoluted fashion, I split off a line of that heading over this way and add a couple more miners to make sure at least some actually comes.  Of the cutting of trees there shall(seemingly) be no end. Here's the sulfur setup at the bottom from an overhead view, and to the north(and quite a bit beyond this image) is a decent-sized forest preventing getting the coal or anything else from the bus through. Quite frankly I'm going to need the whole area for oil-related stuff and then some eventually, so I might as well just clear-cut it. Exactly eight minutes later I had felled almost 300 trees and had nearly 1.5k wood in my inventory ... but I was clear of obstacles. Goes without saying that I'm never going to use all of this. I'm just going to store it because that's what I do with stuff I don't use. Spotted an issue on the way to store it; some of the iron furnaces aren't working. I made a miscalculation somewhere obviously; we need more iron mining drills. A quick count, and we've got 20 while we need about 24(just over one for each electric furnace, of which we have 22). Two of the drills are not operating either, so that makes the situation worse. Ok. Eight more, some of which are not going to last long, are placed to finish off the current field. That's not enough, particularly considering how close we are to burning through our supply for the steel. There's a small 40k patch to the north, just past where the research area is. It's the closest source though, and I throw four mining drills on there to supplement things a little. It'll hold for now ... but not for long. Back over to the east, I get production set up for the Rockets for the launcher, headed back west to central storage like everything else. The shotgun is now obsolete as far as I'm concerned, though I'll hang onto the SMG.  Latest equipment bar here. It's full now, I've got three weapons and after we get some produced and stored I'll have the Rockets too. Took a look next up at the research area ...  Appears we have enough production to boost this a bit. I throw down five more, increasing from 15 to 20. There's something I want to get before grabbing the iron field out west. ** Logistics 2(200 Red, 200 Green). There are only two military upgrades left that we can do, and they are of similar cost to this. Three new items allowing for greater throughput in our belt network arrive: Fast transport belts, Fast splitters, and Fast underground belts. They are more expensive to build of course, but move at twice the speed; 26.67 items per second. The end of another hour has been reached, but that'll definitely be top priority afterwards.  Actual peak usage is still holding at about 16 MW. Max. Capacity = 28.8 MW 83 Electric Mining Drills = 7.47 MW 20 Radar Stations = 6.0 MW 38 Assembling Machine 2s = 5.7 MW 315 Inserters = 4.10 MW 21 Assembling Machine 1s = 1.89 MW 97 Long handed Inserters = 1.84 MW 20 Labs = 1.2 MW 3 Chemical Plants = 630 KW 12 Fast Inserters = 552 KW 1 Oil Refinery = 420 KW 62 Lamps = 310 KW 2 Pumpjacks = 180 KW 1 Filter Inserter = 52 KW Maximum Usage = 30.3 MW Time for a few more steam engines to ensure that we stay ahead of things.  Item Count: 35(-2) Total Production: 197k(+22% from 161k) Iron now dwarfs everything else to a rather absurd degree, but we've got less significant amounts of a number of other things. Several hundred sulfur and explosives, four thousand steel plates, a bunch of coal and copper as usual, etc. Resources Iron: 313k primary(37k used), 71k steel(22k used), 37k supplmental(2k used). That last one is the small field to the north. Nine hours on the main supply, just over three on the steel one. Copper: 86k(11k used). Almost eight hours; we used a few thousand less than the previous period. Stone: 378k(unchanged). Coal: 239k power(13k used), 338k factory(9k used), 596k steel(1k used). 18+ hours on the power one, the most important to watch right now . Crude Oil: 12.9/sec. Down about 11% from 14.5. I'm not going to build any more storage for the time being; we are just over half right now on our products, with room for 50k each on the heavy and light oil, 100k on the petroleum gas. The refinery is only running part-time. I like where this is at for the moment.
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Oct 13, 2017 02:48
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Thotimx posted:As an fyi, I don't find trains to be useful as quickly as you get them. Logistics and other power stuff, definitely and I know more about those anyway. I think I mentioned this before but in my 0.14 run, I used a single, minimalistic(two-car) train than ran around to a few locations picking up oil. And that's it. Anyway those things will be coming up soon. Agreed, in Vanilla you've got tons of resource patches spread all around and it'll take a really long time for you to chew through them before you really need to get a train system set up to pull resources to your main factory. One of the things I like about the Resource System Overhaul (RSO) mod is that it makes trains a whole lot more important by spreading resource patches out (while making them that much more rich.) Which is a good thing since trains are fun and a decently set up train system is pretty satisfying to get going.
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Oct 13, 2017 06:03
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Petrogas gets pumped around like it's a liquid, I imagine? The logistics are fairly similar.
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Oct 15, 2017 03:14
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Glazius posted:Petrogas gets pumped around like it's a liquid, I imagine? The logistics are fairly similar. Yes. Water, petrogas, Light + heavy oil, and crude all obey effectively the same physics in Factorio.
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Oct 15, 2017 07:59
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Even steam. Everything you can describe as a gas/liquid does AFAIK.
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Oct 16, 2017 03:53
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Ok so first up is more steam engines, then getting production of the new Fast transport options automated, and after that tapping that iron field to the west and getting them hooked up to the factory. everything else can wait for that. ** Railway(75 Red, 75 Green). The gateway tech to rail travel, a whole other can of worms that can revolutionize how you think about your factory. This came in while I was setting up the power situation. At this point I basically put 'new stuff' research on hold, but there were still those last remaining military upgrades to go after so I switched to that. As far the new transport gear, everything that requires is made out west where I carved a hole in the forest to make chemical plants not that long ago. It'll take a bit of adjusting and some more tree-cutting, but it shouldn't be too difficult. After about 10 minutes, this is up and operational.  Had to make it a little small to fit it in, but this is where the chemical plants, fast/regular undergrounds, fast transport belts, fast/regular splitters will come from. Standard splitters and undergrounds were built at another location before; I have to build them here anyway since they are ingredients in the fast ones, so I'll just remove the originals. All of these are hooked into the circuit network with inserter instructions, so it's just a matter of time before I have enough to get going. This is going to suck up a lot of materials, esp. iron and gear wheels. I'll worry about that after we have mining set up on the new field though. After spending another 10 minutes reorganizing the storage chests, something that has to be done from time to time unless I want to make more chests and more filter inserters(probably should, but I've been too lazy to), I noticed that the definite bottleneck in getting more fast transport belts out was iron gear wheels. For the first time since it was built several hours ago, I headed back down there and doubled the number of assembling machines on that task from two to four. Then it was time to run out and get that iron field mined. 19 drills for this one. It soon became clear that I needed to wait for more belts to finish, but there's always something else to do ...  That small base on the coast is going to become a problem soon. It also wasn't a bad idea to try and clear out the big one south of it, but after a trial run I decided not to do that yet. I can handle it, but not that easily. The small one had just a single spawner and no worms, and was quickly dealt with. Ok so back to ... Trains Etc. Seemed the best use of my time to work on getting this going while waiting for more fast transport belts. Right now, as a result of our last research, we can build three things: ** Straight Rail(Stone, Iron, Steel) -- Tracks for a train to run on. ** Locomotive(20 Engine Units, 10 Electronic Circuits, 30 Steel Plate). Eeek. These power the trains down the track, and can be fueled by whatever(coal works fine for our purposes, solid fuel allows them to accelerate faster but I don't care about that right now. I might later). ** Cargo Wagon(10x Iron Gear Wheels, 20x Iron Plate, 20x Steel Plate). These carry stuff. Lots of stuff. Trains are the best option for long-range transportation. You don't have to use them; 'stupid-long' transport belts work just fine. Build enough of them though and Factorio itself will slow down. More to the point, trains are a more elegant solution. They are faster, more flexible, higher-capacity, etc -- but there is some infrastructure and planning required. At the entry level to the concept here, we need to get rail sections and engine units built. And that means, like so very many things do in Factorio, correcting and/or changing a not-entirely sound section of the factory.  Here's the stone section. Coal and raw stone come in from the west, get baked into bricks, and off to the east where the bricks are turned into wall sections or steel furnaces. But now I need raw stone for some things, and I run the risk of getting all spaghettified in trying to do so. I need iron to come in here for that, get the steel involved, and then there's that now-annoyingly-placed coal line headed north -- that's for the black research vials. I can't push this to the east, because the bus it just off-screen in that direction. Quite possibly I should just rip the whole thing up and rebuild it somewhere else with more room. Concrete(iron ore not plates, water, and raw stone) is coming up soonish and that'll complicate things even further). After pondering a bit though I decide that screw it, I'll put up with a bit of spaghetti and try to make the most of this. I don't really need more room than I have here, there's plenty of space to the west and some to the north.  I split off some stone, run it a ways to the west closer to our power area, and take some iron and steel from the bus to the north. This I can expand later if I need to. Make that when. After this shot, I connect an inserter for the rail sections to the network, which I'll put an "arbitrarily sizable" number. Right now, that's 500, which is what I'm using for the regular and fast transport belts as well. Needs change over time but that's a starter amount that can get moving to central storage. Took another 150+ fast belt sections out and placed them, but it's not enough to connect up yet. Probably need about that many more. Of course I could expand the production of those -- but that would require more iron which is why I'm setting this up in the first place, to increase and secure supply of that. These kind of dependencies are why it's a really good idea to stay way ahead of the game on resources where possible. Only one more thing to do so I figured it was time to turn research back on. Then engine units. All the required materials are present out where the fast transport stuff is being built. No gear wheels are getting that far down the line right now but they will eventually. A couple more things were finished in the meantime: ** Automated Rail Transportation(75 Red, 75 Green). Now I can build train stops, easy enough to craft by hand, that allow for scheduling and automating train routes. ** Rail Signals(100 Red, 100 Green). Further steps down the train development path, unlocking rail signals and rail chain signals. These allow multiple trains to operate safely on the same rail network. I've never used them -- in my 0.14 game I only had one train. I'm hoping to more fully develop things for this effort, so I'll have to figure these out. Also quite cheap and easy to make so no pre-production necessary. A few minute later(I stocked up, but did nothing much else in the interim): ** Automobilism(100/100) -- Another practical thing to use Engine Units on. It's time to build ourselves a car! Literally. A mobile storage space, transport, and weapons platform. Moving around faster than you can run is often it's main purpose, and in theory it can make it easier to take out biter bases. I say in theory, because I suck at using it. But that'll have to wait for engine units, which will have to wait for more gear wheels, which will have to wait for more iron plates, which .... you know the deal here. I went through a rare stretch of basically standing there waiting for research to finish and fast belt sections to build at this point. There's just not a ton else going on, borders are secure, and we're nearing the end of this tech tier anyway so nothing else was compelling. ** Fluid Wagon(200 Red, 200 Green) -- A new creation to 0.15. Like the cargo wagon, they are a freight car for trains that carry liquids. Previously all liquids had to be barrelled before transporting via rail. You can still put them in barrels, but this gives you the option of transporting them without doing that. I think. And that does it for the 10th hour of this run.  A dip there for the research stall I did, but other than that really things are the same. We're at the point of there not being enough raw materials to boost our energy usage. That'll change soon. Actual peak usage is still holding at about 16 MW. Max. Capacity = 36 MW(40 Steam Engines) 83 Electric Mining Drills = 7.47 MW 43 Assembling Machine 2s = 6.45 MW 20 Radar Stations = 6.0 MW 338 Inserters = 4.39 MW 27 Assembling Machine 1s = 2.43 MW 102 Long handed Inserters = 1.94 MW 20 Labs = 1.2 MW 14 Fast Inserters = 644 KW 3 Chemical Plants = 630 KW 1 Oil Refinery = 420 KW 65 Lamps = 325 KW 2 Pumpjacks = 180 KW 2 Filter Inserters = 104 KW Maximum Usage = 32.2 MW Still well within limits. The radars are an interesting case. When I first put them up they dwarfed all other consumers, and now they are slowly sliding down the list as other things fill out the list.  Item Count: 47(+12!) Total Production: 165k(-16% from 197k) Steel was down; that's the main takeaway here. As usual, that's a temporary situation. With the new transportation infrastructure ramping up, it was a more diverse selection of products however. Resources ** Iron: 274k primary(39k used), 62k steel(9k used), 35k supplmental(2k used). Steel didn't require as much here, but both there and the primary field are still at seven hours and fading fast. ** Copper: 76k(10k used). Very consistent. ** Stone: 377k(1k used). The initial run of rail sections is nearly done, and it didn't take that much. ** Coal: 225k power(14k used), 332k factory(6k used), 595k steel(1k used). Still set for some while. ** Crude Oil: 11.3/sec. A few more hours and we won't have much more than a trickle. Still room in the tanks, and the refinery is off about half the time now.
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Oct 16, 2017 13:11
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EponymousMrYar posted:'It's time to overhaul the whole thing ugghhhhhh.' MarquiseMindfang posted:I keep restarting as I learn new things which inevitably lead me to conclude that my current setup is woefully inefficient. DoubleNegative posted:Never, never, never restart. Leave your old inefficient factories where they stand and just build a new one elsewhere. This really cannot be stated enough. Ignore the old mistakes, dwell on it as little as possible. Brutally shunt the main bus to a new area and build anew. At some point later you will be happy enough with your shiny new area that you can joyfully reclaim the land & parts of the old mistakes Don't forget blueprints are available right from the start and are all different kinds of awesome. It saves a lot of mental effort to manually build on top of a ghost template rather than manually build and concurrently think about placement
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Oct 16, 2017 18:20
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