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If Thotmix doesn't mind I can throw together a post detailing how to get your first multi-train track system up and running. Rail signals can be weird to wrap your head around at first but are simple enough once you understand them. Edit: Update on last page. EponymousMrYar fucked around with this message at 22:19 on Oct 16, 2017 |
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Oct 16, 2017 22:05
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Have at it. I expect I'll learn quite a bit from it, and it'll make one game concept that I don't have to inflict my own suboptimal explanations of on the thread.
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Oct 17, 2017 02:49
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Aw man trains. Trains do look a whole lot more convenient than conveyors for moving things around.
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Oct 17, 2017 03:29
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Ok, so you might have played around with trains a bit, made a single line running from one place to another to try them out and such. You might have seen videos, pictures or joined a server or two where people had set up really elaborate train networks and wondered 'how they do that?' You might have even tried mimicking those rail networks only to find yourself caught in jams that you had no idea how to prevent. That was me before this thread started. While I was scratching the Factorio itch that resulted from this thread I sat down and figured out my first theoretically-infinite scaling train network. And now I'm going to pass down what I learned. Automated Locomotive 102 Or: 'The basics of how to get n-1 trains on the same track where n is the amount of trains you don't think you'll need.' First off everything begins at the concept level. Since you've decided that you want multiple trains on the same track we can go straight to the next phase: setting up some rules for laying out your track. Here's three simple rules that helped me get started: Rule 1 - Tracks never cross. Rule 2 - Trains only go one way. Rule 3 - Blocks are always longer than your longest train. To elaborate: Rule 1 - Tracks never cross. This means that if two tracks touch, they're either joining or splitting. It avoids the most complicated of train problems which is 'where the heck do I put my signals over these crossing tracks?' Rule 2 - Trains only go one way. This prevents head on collisions and more importantly turns your train network into a simple queue that won't give you as many headaches, especially when you're figuring things out. Rule 3 - Blocks are always longer than your longest train. This prevents fat train butts from clogging up your network by making sure there's always enough room for another train to pass at a junction or a detour. Otherwise you'll run into situations where two trains are waiting on each other and neither can move because their fat butts are blocking each other. 'But wait!' I hear you say, 'what do blocks have to do with trains?' Blocks and You, a Primer To fully answer that let's look at a mouse over of a trail track.  See that line that says Block? In Factorio a Block is defined as 'all connected rail segments that do not cross a signal.' If you haven't used rail signals at all then your entire train network is a single block. Adding Rail Signals splits that Block up.  Into an Incoming and Outgoing Block as such. The actual numbers of your Blocks don't matter as long as you know that they're there and what your signals are referring to. Now you know what Blocks are, here's how they work: Only one train can be in a Block at a time. That's it. All other trains looking to get into an occupied block will be stopped at the rail signal (it'll even glow red!) Note that this only applies to trains you set to be automatic. You can manually drive your train anywhere on your network as you please and the automatic trains will dynamically update their routes around you. You might accidentally cause a jam though, so keep that in mind. Here's a picture of my first iron/steel loading platform with some drawings on it to show you an example of how to envision Blocks:  There's a few things to note here: the red asterisk on Block 4 denotes where the Train Stop is and that Train Stops do not separate Blocks. Also Block 3 makes Block 2 kind of superfluous and shows that I'm still learning how to use Chain Signal's properly. Chain Signals are kind of weird.  Unlike Rail Signals they not only look at the Outgoing Block to see if there's a train in it, they look at the Signal ahead and see what it says. To use the picture above, the Rail Chain Signal that separates Block 1 and 2 will turn red if there is a train in Block 2 or if there's a train in Block 5. In our simple rail system most of the things that Chain Signals are designed to help with are avoided completely (rule 1 tracks do not cross and rule 2 trains only go one direction specifically.) As such I've found them useful mostly to segregate Stations into their own Blocks for organizational/sanity purposes. You can have as many or as few Blocks as you want. Generally whenever you do something with your tracks, make it a Block. Now that you have a set of rules to follow and you know what what Blocks are the rest is up to you! Additional Notes Here's some things that might help out but I didn't know quite where to put in the rest of the post. First off, an additional rule: Rule 4 - All Train Stops have a bypass. That way you don't have trains at a stop clogging up other trains who have business beyond that stop. Most of the time this will be your main thoroughfare. For very busy stations (like your resource dropoffs) it's good to keep this in mind so that you don't have your Iron trains keeping your Copper trains from leaving to pick up their next load and vice versa. Second, how to set up your Roundabouts since they're going to be the only way your trains can turn around. Another picture with doodles laid out:  All the green dots denote a normal Rail Signal and the arrows show the way your trains will go through this roundabout. Note the yellow exclamation'd Rail Signal. That's there so that a train isn't stuck in the roundabout hogging it up waiting for the straight track to be free. Follow Rule 3 (blocks are always longer than your longest train) when placing that particular signal and make sure to do any important joining/splitting after that point to keep your roundabouts as free as possible. Edit: Additional note: this is really as small as you can make your roundabout with signalling it like this. You need this much space, minimum. Also stick your roundabouts everywhere.  Every grey circle in this picture is a roundabout. Every time you need to make a turn on your main line, try and make it a roundabout. You'll never know when it'll be useful! Third a suggestion on train size: Plan around 4-5 car trains (including locomotives) because the game has a handy tool for planning out Stations and Blocks that pops up whenever you mouse over or place a Train Stop, Rail or Chain signal:  At first I thought the white sections were simply an indication of 'Train Car length +1 car' but then I made a 5 car train (Fluid Wagons are heavy) and found out that no, it's just 5 car lengths. Keeping your trains 5 cars and under lets you use this indicator in your planning without having to guesstimate the length of your trains. Super handy! Finally: the Rules and suggestions I've laid out here are what helped me learn the intricacies of Automated Trains and get a handle on how Blocks work. I'm still learning! Don't be afraid to break these rules and see how things mess up! That's how I learned about how to set up my roundabouts (and that Chain Signals are weird  )That's all I got. EponymousMrYar fucked around with this message at 10:37 on Jan 21, 2018 |
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Oct 17, 2017 07:55
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Good stuff, thanks!! To continue on with the game in progress ... Up to another 130 or so sections of fast transport belt, I headed out to lengthen the incoming iron line. That got it far enough to join one of our existing belts, which meant it was worth turning on the power to those drills out there. We can start getting things flowing.  This picture illustrates a point: I probably delayed this for no good reason, because I don't think I quite needed fast transport belts here. There are three columns of mining drills, and here I show them all merging onto one line. Probably one regular belt would have been enough. It would have been close if not. I've started getting more intelligent than I was in my first game about this, but still have quite a bit to learn; you don't need fast transport belts anywhere just cause you have them. Regular ones will work just fine, thank you, for many purposes. Only use them where they are helpful. ** Lab Research Speed 2(200 Red, 200 Green) -- Research now operates at 30% faster than normal. This came in while I was hooking up the power to our new iron field. This came in while hooking up the power. After thinking about this for a minute, I decided I wasn't going to leave this as it is. On my way back into the factory, I replaced this fast-transport line with normal belts. That way I don't have to wait for more to be produced.  Eventually I came to this. Here's where we need them. Stuff gets backed up here because of the limit of the normal transport belts. That's where you want the red(fast) ones to speed things along. In from the west comes the ore from our small field to the north and the bigger one we just got started on; it merges with the stuff from our primary, and still-operating, iron field. By the way, that's the original radar station there, still operating and keeping us updated on everything. Seems like forever ago that I built that. So starting right where they intersect and moving eastwards, the new belts are a very fine investment indeed. Pro-Tip: When upgrading belts, you really need to pay attention to detail and sweat the small stuff. A couple of examples here:  Here's a merge point with a problem. The north side is fast transport and full ... but the south side is neither full nor fast. The resulting belt going east is not nearly at capacity. A very small change leads to this ...  Just seconds after the change, ore is moving full speed ahead to the east. Now that south line isn't monopolizing half of the space, and the ore from there will only fill in where there is a gap. Then look at where the line turns south and it's starting to spread out. That's because of a single section of belt, the corner piece there, where you can just barely see the yellow of standard transport belt. I missed a section, and all it takes is one to slow the whole thing down to half-speed(because you can only cram in so much throughput, and the regular belt has half). These types of things aren't even an issue at the start, when you only have yellow, standard belts. This is the kind of aspect of Factorio's design that I really enjoy. It's the same exact concept; a transport/conveyor belt moving crap around. What could be simpler. And yet as you progress there's still more to deal with if you want to keep things running smoothly and optimally. Now you've got to pay more attention if you want to take advantage of the faster ones. Easy stuff to miss. Eventually I work the red belts all the way down to the smelters. A full one on each side(half ore, half coal still), and then the output line in the middle goes red/fast as well, continuing all the way down to here:  A lot more iron going into the gear wheel assembly area, and therefore a lot more wheels coming out. All four assembling machines are now getting used. Note that there's no point putting more fast belts on the part after the splitter where the plates feed down into the gear wheels ... half of a red belt is a yellow belt, so the best we are ever going to be able to do is to saturate that. Main reason that isn't happening yet here is that now it's back to the point where we need more furnaces. I've got enough lined up to saturate yellow, which means only half of what I could be producing. Instead of all this I could just have built another iron smelting column, more inputs on either side, more regular belts carrying the material, a second iron belt on the bus ... but the more you can do with one, the easier the logistics are going to be. I can now ramp up iron at my leisure until I get to about twice what I'm currently producing, and keep it on the one path for now. Already I'm getting a lot more product downstream, meaning more red belts heading to storage. ** Plastics(200 Red, 200 Green) -- A key tech comes in while I'm setting all that up and blathering on about it. Plastic Bars are made from petroleum gas and coal. Another 'by themselves they do nothing, but ... ' tech. While the next one percolates, I add 8 more furnaces for iron, going from 22 to an even 30. After checking a few mining areas and removing a couple exhausted drills ... ** Advanced Electronics(200 Red, 200 Green) -- Big one here. Advanced(red) circuits require standard(green) electronic circuits, along with plastic and copper cable. Also, another type of research vial(light blue). Those require advanced circuits, engine units, and electric mining drills. That'll be a fun, longer supply chain to build for our next stage. It also unlocks some more, somewhat cheaper research projects which I'll burn through next. There are other things I can work on. By this time, I've got more than enough engine units to build this:  Not exactly the Model T ... but we've got ourselves a vehicle. Note that there's no point in building more than one(unless an 'explosive accident' should befall this). I can't remote-control them and send them en masse at the biters. This isn't an RTS. These things require fuel, and burn in at 60% efficiency ... slightly better than what we get from the boilers, but not great.  More inventory space in the trunk than I can carry on my person, and more than any chest we've yet invented either. Spots for fuel and ammo ... and this 'vehicle machine gun' shoots the same stuff as our SMGs, standard ballistic magazines. At slightly longer range and 50% better Rate-of-Fire. So if I ever learn to control these things worth a darn, they will really help in combat. IF. So ... about that fuel. You may recall that under 'un-needed oil-related products', a heading that is growing, I mentioned solid fuel. With the 20% acceleration boost that it provides, I find it all of a sudden to be more interesting. Probably worth building some. All it needs is any of the refined oil products(light oil, heavy oil, or petroleum gas) at a chemical plant. This is not at all an urgent need, but it's very much a thing for when we want to start taking on biters more frequently. Always upgrade your military capabilities.  Light Oil is the one I have the least use for in terms of discovered products, so I go with that. It's an elementary matter to get a plant set up near our flamethrower ammo operation. We won't use much of it for the car; I set it up to maintain a stock of 100 units, which is absurd overkill at the moment.  Seemed to me that research was slowing down -- turns out I was right. A bit of production line problem-solving here. This is the 'problem' shot. The five labs on the left end of the line here aren't getting any green vials. Red and black ones are backed up, but no greens. Whenever something like this happens, just trace the issue back until you find the source. Next step: the green assemblers.  Plenty of ingredients here: both the inserters and the transport belts are available and backed up. That means there's a very simple solution; one more green vial assembling machine. Oftentimes you've got to trace things back a lot further to find the issue. This one was easy, but it gave me something to work on, and also speed up the process a bit. ** Mining Productivity 1(100 Red, 100 Green. This an 'infinite' research option; we can do these forever, with the cost continually increasing for each new step. Mining drills work 2% faster now. I ended up adding two more green vial assembling machines, which means I needed another red one as well to keep it reasonably balanced. ** Electric Engine(100/100) -- Electric Engine Units notably use Lubricant, along with standard electronic circuits and engine units. Can't do anything with them yet, but another step up the chain. ** Modules(same) -- Modules are devices that are built and integrated into buildings to enhance their performance. We don't actually get any available with this, is another gateway tech. ** Speed Modules(50/50) -- Speed increased 20%, at the cost of 50% more energy usage. I've never thought these were worth it. ** Productivity Modules(50/50) -- +40% energy usage, +4% productivity(extra product made from the same ingredients), -15% speed, +5% pollution. If you just don't care about anything but getting the most from your ingredients, particularly if something is in short supply, this could be worth it. Otherwhise ... no. ** Efficiency Modules(50/50) -- Decrease energy consumption by 30%, with no negative effects. Minimum energy usage is 20% of normal. These are basically magical handwavium, and I didn't use them before but frankly it's obviously a significant benefit. Advanced circuits and electronic circuits are required. We've got a good reason to make advanced circuits now, and we're going to have more of them. That means plastics first. I want to try and think ahead here. Might as well build the infrastructure for mass-producing this stuff, if we're going to need it for research. I may want to eventually bus the advanced circuits, but at the very least I'm going to want to be able to build a lot of them. ** Modular Armor(100/100). With this we start getting really serious with personal equipment. In terms of the basic capabilities, it offers increased protections over the current Heavy Armor: ** Acid -- 3/30% to 5/30% ** Explosions -- 20/30% to 30/35% ** Fire -- 0/30% to 0/40% ** Physical -- 6/30%, unchanged That's just the start though, it has other features: ** 10 extra slots for personal inventory ** A 5x5 grid where additional equipment can be added in to enhance capabilities. ** Double the durability from 5k to 10k ** NightVision Equipment(50/50). Time for a few quick tasks to get some of that gear for the armor. This takes up a 2x2 section of the grid, uses 10kw of power, and gives you better vision in the dark. ** Battery Equipment(50/50). Takes up 1x2 space, stores 20 MJ of energy for powering the armor. ** Portable Solar Panel(100/100). 1x1 space for these, which provide up to 10kw of power each. Our first adventure into renewable solar energy! The catch is that each requireds five standard solar panels to produce ... and we haven't invented those. Yet. That does it for armor equipment, for the moment.  The new advanced circuits area. I can extend this to the south as much as I want and will leave room for that. Plastics come in from the west, just south of our sulfur plant. These circuits take several seconds to produce each. ** Laser(150/150). Another gateway project that will reap benefits down the road. Nothing immediate. I get a single assembler set up doing efficiency modules. It'll take a long time for them to build, and a longer time for me get them spammed throughout the factory. I'm not in a particularly huge rush though. ** Robotics(150/150). Allow something called a 'flying robot frame' to be built. The first stage of something quite exciting, but not actually useful on it's own.  Then, for 30 red circuits and some steel, I make the new armor. Here's how it looks when you 'open' it. There's no point in building any equipment for it just yet, as I can't power it. ** Stack Inserters(150/150) -- These come in two varieties, standard and filter-capable. Both of them are capable of inserting multiple items at once, a great capability for high-volume operations. These prompt another 'crap I need to change a bunch of stuff' moment. I definitely want to have production of the regular stack inserters automated; as stuff starts to take more and more ingredients they'll become more valuable, even if they do basically take as much energy(132 k2) as the assemblers they'll feed. So I'll just add them to ... well, no I won't. See, they require Fast Inserters and Advanced Circuits, both of which I am building. In completely different places on opposite sides of the factory.  Great. Grand. WONDERFUL. '1' is where the red circuits are made, '2' for the existing inserter line. I can't just move the advanced circuits over to the west where the other inserters are ... because there's no oil over there. I'd have to transport the oil or the plastic or something. The more games of Factorio you play, the more you realize this stuff in advance. I was there for the first few stages but now I'm into stuff that's partly changed and which I've only done once before. A lot more 'how to learn Factorio' here, because you've got to constantly adjust to stuff like this. I've got a few different products that use red circuits, and I have a feeling there will be more. Screw it, I'm going to reinvent how things work on that side, bus the red circuits, then further east put a new production line for all of the different inserter types. I really think that's the best plan. It's just going to take some time -- but I'm still pounding away on research for some of it. ** Mining Productivity 2(200/200) -- Everything else is at least this expensive right now, so I might as well grab another one. Still ripping up the last of the very short-lived red circuits area, I came to the end of another hour. I'm probably not going to stop every single hour the whole game, but enough happened here to update our situation.  Still peaking at about 16 MW and we haven't seen that level for at least 45 minutes or so now. No real substantive change. Max. Capacity = 36 MW(40 Steam Engines) 101 Electric Mining Drills = 9.09 MW 43 Assembling Machine 2s = 6.45 MW 20 Radar Stations = 6.0 MW 356 Inserters = 4.63 MW 27 Assembling Machine 1s = 2.43 MW 99 Long handed Inserters = 1.88 MW 20 Labs = 1.2 MW 5 Chemical Plants = 1.05 MW 16 Fast Inserters = 736 KW 1 Oil Refinery = 420 KW 69 Lamps = 345 KW 2 Pumpjacks = 180 KW 2 Filter Inserters = 104 KW Maximum Usage = 34.5 MW Still ok here. Had about a 10-minute spike in drill requirements, then it went down as the iron line saturated.  Item Count: 30(-17!!) Total Production: 157k(-5% from 165k) Midway through the period here we got caught up on engine units and fast transport belts, and then iron took a significant dive, maybe about 30% less. A lot of less-common items were not needed at all, as you can see by the sharp drop there. Steel and copper requirements were also down some. There's a sense of being backed up with what we need everywhere at the moment. Usually what that means is it's time for a big expansion. Queue the red circuits. Resources ** Iron: 254k primary(20k used), 59k steel(3k used), 35k supplmental(no change), 379k western backup(22k used). Big-time drop in the steel draw here. ** Copper: 66k(10k used). This is actually split into two smaller fields now, since the 'middle' has been completely used up and a couple of drills removed. ** Stone: 377k(no change). The initial run of rail sections is nearly done, and it didn't take that much. ** Coal: 213k power(12k used), 330k factory(2k used), 595k steel(no change). A couple thousand less from the power supply field, which is at almost 18 hours now. ** Crude Oil: 10.0/sec(-1.3). Right now this is just filling the crude tank; the heavy oil is maxed out and the other types are close.
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Oct 17, 2017 14:28
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Yeah, the tech tree seems designed to put you off your game like that, when suddenly you can combine two things on the opposite sides of your sprawl.
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Oct 18, 2017 03:32
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Glazius posted:Yeah, the tech tree seems designed to put you off your game like that, when suddenly you can combine two things on the opposite sides of your sprawl. That's nothing a very long conveyor can't solve - seriously. The first base I launched a rocket from was such a mess of pipes and spaghetti belts it was hard to keep track of it all at times, with things like sulfur, batteries, iron, plastic, and other random components being shipped from one side of the base to the other because I didn't bother to plan it out ahead of time (and also because when you first play you'll have no idea what will be needed or when). Logistics bots can help but you'll need a lot of bots to keep a factory of any size running smoothly. Was it a mess and extraordinarily inefficient but it worked god drat it.
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Oct 18, 2017 04:07
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Psychotic Weasel posted:That's nothing a very long conveyor can't solve - seriously. The first base I launched a rocket from was such a mess of pipes and spaghetti belts it was hard to keep track of it all at times, with things like sulfur, batteries, iron, plastic, and other random components being shipped from one side of the base to the other because I didn't bother to plan it out ahead of time (and also because when you first play you'll have no idea what will be needed or when). Logistics bots can help but you'll need a lot of bots to keep a factory of any size running smoothly. Perhaps only because Factorio doesn't incude code for things jamming up and exploding the whole factory. Trains can make things a lot neater, by letting you keep Ore/Plates running through your previously established forges
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Oct 18, 2017 10:17
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** Flight(200/200). Another pre-requisite tech. The next one is where things start getting interesting. ** Construction Robotics(100/100). Beginning an enormously important tool for larger factories. Construction Robots automatically repair and build things -- you place down an order for what you want, and they grab the supplies and build it for you. We'll need to get into blueprints which are a powerful way to tell them what to make. Roboports are locations where the robots charge and repair. Storage and Passive Provider chests are new chest types that the robots use. I've got a major reworking to do once I get to this.  Red circuits are in place. Four assembling machines for now; the plastic got belted up north closer to the bus, and just above this the circuits will join it. The inserter rebuild is still coming, but I'd just have to change it a bit again after dealing with the robotics stuff. So I'll switch to that now. Here's what we need for that: ** Roboports require steel, gear wheels, and red circuits. 45 of each. ** Both chest types need steel and both circuit types. ** Construction Robots themselves need a couple green circuits and a flying robot frame. Which needs steel, green circuits, batteries, and electric engine units. The last two there we aren't making right now, and we'll need batteries(iron, copper, sulfuric acid) for other stuff soon. And we aren't making sulfuric acid(sulfur, iron, water) yet either. So that's going to be a fun chain to set up. As for the electric engine units, those need regular engine units, currently getting built on the extreme west of the base, green circuits, and lubricant(needs only heavy oil) which we aren't making yet. This is the point in the game where I don't play that much in one sitting, because my brain starts to hurt just thinking about it. If you're wondering just now, 'are these robots really worth it?'. Oh, they are ... but this will not be a short process. You want to keep an eye on the whole picture, but tackle one thing at a time. Won't take much to get sulfuric acid and batteries going, so I'll just start there. ** Logistic Robots(150/150). Another robot type, these take red circuits to make and where construction bots build, these guys move things around. ** Character Logistic Slots 1(100/100). Allows me to request items from the logistic network. We'll get to that. ** Character Logistic trash slots 1(100/100). Similar, although these are for putting things that you want put back in the network, not on your person.  Here's our basic setup for sulfuric acid on the left, feeding a straight shot to the right with lots of room to a couple of battery-producing chemical plants. I've got two for the batteries right now, which take five seconds each. I'm sure I'll need more in time. A lot more. But it's a start. No output belt for the batteries yet ... because I honestly don't know where they're going. Next up is the electric engine units. It's a trivial matter to get another plant going to turn Heavy Oil into Lubricant. The rest is a little less trivial. ** Character Logistics Slots 2(150/150) -- Adds six more slots which again we will get into and explain when we can. ** Combat Robotics(150 Red, 150 Green, 150 Black) -- The general field of robotics has combat applications as well. Here's the first one: Defender Capsules follow the player and use your latest standard ammo magazines. They have a limited lifespan of 45 seconds once created from the capsule and will shoot at whatever enemies are nearby. The rest of the electric engine setup was a little more involved, but we've already made engine unitson the west end and it's not that complicated; add those to some green circuits and the lubricant. Another step finished. ** Combat Robot Damage 1(100 RGB) -- There are also energy-based weapons for combat robots, and this increases their damage by 10%. ** Energy Shield Equipment(150 RGB) -- Energy shields, when powered and recharged, can absorb damage in combat, prolonging your life. At this point I made another supply run -- and realized I had totally forgotten to set up the new inserter line. *Facepalm*. So much going on. I had the red circuits set up ... and then it was ooh, Modular Armor. Wow, Robotics!! And ... I totally forgot about it. I've still got plenty for now but can't push forward for long without the basics. I've also not set up the efficiency modules again, which I should for the power-saving potential. There won't be a major cost to these mistakes, but it's still not a great idea to forget fundamental needs. ** Inserter Capacity bonus 1(200 RG) -- This boosts how many items not just the stack inserters, but regular inserters to a lesser degree, can move at once. The first one just means the stack ones can move a single extra item. There are several projects in this series. ** Laser Turrets(200 RGB) -- A new look at base defense. These are more effective(better range and damage) than our standard Gun Turrets that are currently deployed. They also need no ammunition supply system, save being hooked up to the grid. And that last part is the rub; lose power, you lose the turrets. If an attack knocks out even part of your power plant, or you don't have a quite considerable surplus when the enemy comes calling -- you're going to have an issue. So if we use these, we're going to want to go overkill on the power grid and make darn sure it's protected at all times. In my 0.14 game I stuck with standard Gun variants and was just fine with those; this time I plan to upgrade. Eventually. Next up were a few quick laser turret upgrade techs(damage and rate-of-fire) as the seemingly never-ending research unlocks for this tier continue unabated. While those went through, I finished up this:  From bottom to top, that's long-handed, standard, fast, and stack inserters, with efficiency modules at the very top. I need to remember to regularly go back for the modules and throw them in a bunch of machines -- I've only put a few out there in assembling machines so far. This whole line is near the oil area, but north of the bus instead of south. Most convenient available space at the moment. ** Combat Robot Damage(200 RGB) -- Damage bonus increased to +15%.  The spaghetti is strong here, but I've finally got construction and logistics bots being built. I didn't really care what it looked like, knowing I'm just going to rip it all up anyway soon for reasons that will become clear fairly shortly. This is very slow -- the robot frames take a long time. I'd need more assembling machines to get them faster, but I've got time and just want a basic starter amount right now to get the system up and running. Roboports, expensive beasts that they are, are being built to the north of this nearer to the bus. I then notice a second freaking power shortage. Not a severe one -- I spotted it just in time. Heading over to the coal field I notice over half of the steam engines are not working. Power drain has increased and some mining drills had run out of resources without me noticing. After throwing several more down:  Using almost the whole thing now. It's time to get another source, but the solution this time will take a rather different form.  As you can see we are still recovering, but a look at usage shows that total demand has never been much higher than it is right now. 21-22 MW I think. Max. Capacity = 36 MW(40 Steam Engines) 102 Electric Mining Drills = 9.18 MW 56 Assembling Machine 2s = 8.4 MW 20 Radar Stations = 6.0 MW 391 Inserters = 5.08 MW 31 Assembling Machine 1s = 2.79 MW 118 Long handed Inserters = 2.24 MW 9 Chemical Plants = 1.89 MW 20 Labs = 1.2 MW 21 Fast Inserters = 966 KW 1 Oil Refinery = 420 KW 75 Lamps = 375 KW 2 Pumpjacks = 180 KW 2 Filter Inserters = 104 KW Maximum Usage = 38.8 MW We technically could burst our capacity now, but haven't come close to that level of demand yet. Another solution will soon present itself, so I won't be adding more steam engines.  Item Count: 38(+8) Total Production: 200k(+27% from 157k) Copper and green circuits are the two that really jump out to me here, both reaching new highs. Bounced back with a little more item diversity and actually were 100+ items short of the 200k mark but close enough. Resources ** Iron: 235k primary(19k used), 54k steel(5k used), 35k supplmental(no change), 356k western backup(23k used). We're drawing a lot more off the western field than our main one ... which is causing pollution issues out that way and there was actually a small biter attack. I haven't dealt with that yet because I have more pressing concerns, but it's definitely going to need to happen before long. ** Copper: 51k(15k used). Two more drills have been silenced. We aren't running short on ore yet but this operation will move soon. ** Stone: 377k(no change). ** Coal: 199k power(14k used), 322k factory(8k used), 594k steel(1k used). That power field is definitely dropping quickly. ** Crude Oil: 8.9/sec(-1.1). The pumpjacks are now running only periodically. Heavy and Crude storage is full.
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Oct 22, 2017 17:02
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Thotimx posted:
The true Factorio experience. Get sidetracked making something new, forget what you were actually doing
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Oct 25, 2017 12:04
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Here's another handy bit of train advice that I always stick with: One engine can pull two wagons at full speed. Any more, and it wont reach full speed. So try to make sure your trains stick to the 1-to-2 ratio to be efficient. Most of my games I usually have two engines pulling four wagons and that's enough to service my base; for things that go really really far, three engines and six wagons is useful to minimize the number of return trips it has to make due to full inventory
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Oct 26, 2017 00:57
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ousire posted:Here's another handy bit of train advice that I always stick with: One engine can pull two wagons at full speed. Any more, and it wont reach full speed. So try to make sure your trains stick to the 1-to-2 ratio to be efficient. Most of my games I usually have two engines pulling four wagons and that's enough to service my base; for things that go really really far, three engines and six wagons is useful to minimize the number of return trips it has to make due to full inventory Huh, I didn't even know that was a thing. Though I tend to go for single purpose trains where possible, so only have 1-2 wagons. Does it chage at all with empty v full wagons? You could also commission a second train for the same route. Which also staggers the deliveries on longer routes. Depends if you want one big load or lots of smaller loads.
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Oct 26, 2017 02:17
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Veloxyll posted:Huh, I didn't even know that was a thing. Though I tend to go for single purpose trains where possible, so only have 1-2 wagons. Does it chage at all with empty v full wagons? They recently changed train engines so one-to-two isn't perfect anymore, but it's still a fine rule of thumb to keep until you get to later game fuel sources. Sometime in the last few versions they made it so the type of fuel used impacts the top speed and acceleration of a train. When you're using coal, a 1-2 or 2-4 train is fine, but with the most powerful fuel in the game I think a single engine can pull something like ten wagons behind it at top speed!
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Oct 26, 2017 05:34
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The 120% / 180% acceleration bonus from solid fuel / rocket fuel can make a big difference, particularly when paired with the Breaking Force upgrades to increase the amount of time spent at higher speeds I usually start my trains once I have Solid Fuel production going but I'm also a heathen who uses double ended trains, for more compact stations
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Oct 26, 2017 07:25
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So first time I saw factorio, it was a youtube lets play. The guy doing it had a very direct style. He set up a massive amount of energy production, created a massive radar farm, then beelined right to laser turrets. Once that was done he disconnected the radars, then built a ton of laser turrets and leap frogged to the biter bases the radar had spotted. Dont need to set up defenses if you have 25km of biter free space!
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Oct 26, 2017 16:28
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Depending on what settings you have selected the biters may slowly migrate back in to fill the space. Just be aware of that before trying it yourself and having your base destroyed. If you clean out and wall off a large swath it can help you expand later on without constantly having to fight and rearrange things but that can be very time consuming at the beginning of the game.
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Oct 26, 2017 23:23
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Popping in to say that this LP is great! Enough so that I went and bought Factorio pretty much immediately, and man the learning curve feels steep. I'm glad for tutorials like this (and elsewhere), because as soon as I sit down in the game I immediately have a hard time deciding what I need to do.
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Oct 27, 2017 17:53
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Psychotic Weasel posted:Depending on what settings you have selected the biters may slowly migrate back in to fill the space. Just be aware of that before trying it yourself and having your base destroyed. Yep. Many ways to skin the biter problem, but it all ultimately boils down to the fact that you're going to have to invest resources in it some way, somehow, eventually. Either proactively by taking out their bases regularly, or reactively by defending against their attacks. It's one or the other. Gully Foyle posted:Popping in to say that this LP is great! Thanks!
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Oct 30, 2017 23:44
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** Solar Energy(250 RG) -- A couple minutes past the 12-hour mark this comes in. You can get it a lot sooner, and for some playstyles it makes sense to rush it. Another major change, this one to power as I've alluded to. Solar panels can provide free, clean energy forever ... with a catch. They quite naturally only work during the day, so you either need to generate extra and store it for use at night(this is where accumulators come in), or go with a solar-steam mix. My approach has alwasys been why generate more biter-evolving and upsetting pollution than you need to? We're going full solar ... eventually. There's a significant space requirement, and the setup cost is considerable as well. There are many things we need to be working on right now. It seemed a useful thing to list them and prioritize, esp. since I haven't done a minimap in a while.  Pollution filter is off here to make things clearer. ** Ore -- Iron ore field in the west, which is aggravating a cluster or two of biters. No serious issues yet, and it's also temporary -- once that field starts winding down, we're not going to be bothering them anymore. ** Steam -- Current power plant ** Solar -- Location of new solar power plant. There's lots of trees there now, but we'll remove them. ** Oil -- All the petrol-related stuff. More and more production lines are going to get moved out that way out of necessity; they require oil-related products so they really can't be anywhere else. ** IC -- Iron and Copper smelting ** Steel -- Steel smelting ** Research -- Does what it says ** C&C -- Command & Control ... that's where our control center and storage are right now. To-Do List This is pretty big right now, but there are two major ones. ** Get Solar Power Going. We need a new coal field if we don't do this soon. That shouldn't be necessary, but there isn't time to dawdle. This means getting a significant amount of automated production of the two key ingredients, solar panels and energy accumulators. We're not building either yet. We need to clear the forest as mentioned for space, but that will be facilitiated with ** Logistics Network. Time to make use of those robots we've started building. This is going to radically rework how things get moved around, stored, built, etc. ** Outfit Modular Armor. I've got the armor itself, but no equipment for it yet. ** Install efficiency modules. I need to be doing this semi-regularly ... well, I don't NEED to, but it'll make things a lot easier. ** Finish Green/Black Research. We're close enough now that I intend to just spam my way through the rest of them and then shut it down -- we'll catch up on actually implementing the new stuff after the big two priorities are handled. ** Build Combat Robots -- Due to my sucking at using the car, I find it easier to fight the biters using the assistance of these. It'd be good to get production of them rolling. ** Borders + Oil Expansion. Still a long-range thing, but we need to get to that big cluster of oil patches to the east ... and of course the sooner we do it, the less the biters grow in the meantime. Something else had to be dealt first though. We're down to eight mining drills feeding 14 steel furnaces in the copper field. That math will never work. The big copper field just to the south boasts 738k though. At our current usage rate, that would last almost 50 hours. All I needed to do was get a grid of drills set up on that thing, and I should be able to forget about copper supply again for a while. By this point in the game I like to just saturate the field with drills and forget about it, even when it's overkill like this in. 33 of them, even with maximum spacing. ** Concrete(250 RG) -- The fastest surface we can make(+40% walking speed). It also can really change the visual aesthetic. For our purposes, I'll be eventually paving all the territory we've claimed just because I can. It's a statement to the biters(even though yes, it will cause more pollution, we don't care about that as much as we once did) that this territory no longer belongs to them. This'll wait for now, but it gets added to the list. Once the copper was hooked up, it was back to getting solar going.  This location is in the west on the edge of the forest. Not a ton of room but I don't think we need it. Solar panels require steel, copper, and more green circuits than both of those combined. 15 for each panel. They take over 13 seconds each with the assembler tech we possess, and I'm going to want a ridiculously epic crapton of them. These five assemblers are at the very least a decent starting point -- and they're going to suck up a lot of materials, probably more than I am going to produce on the green circuits at least, so I'll need to balance things out with more product before I think about expanding this. Just throwing them in chests for the moment, I'm not at all worried about making too many. ** Inserter capacity bonus 2(250 RG) -- +1 to both regular and stack inserters. Accumulators are not as important yet, but they are naturally going to have to built on the other end of the map. Mostly batteries plus some iron is the formula there. ** Follower robot count 1(300 RGB) -- This one increases the number or combat robots we can control by +4. I actually don't know what it was before this, but not very many. With a few dozen solar panels done, it's time get a starter area going for that.  I'll expand this grid a rather ridiculous amount to the west and south of this. You've got to provide power connections as well, and it can certainly be done better, but here's 21 panels already working. Each one provides a peak of 60kw, so this here is 1.26 MW. That's maybe 6% of our total need. Not much in the grand scheme of things. Get a few hundred more of these down and we'll have something. I had about double this amount, so I expanded this grid a bit. As expected we don't have enough green circuits to keep them producing full-tilt, but we're getting some and before I deal with that I need to get the Logistics Network rolling.  Ladies and gentlemen, the grand and glorious roboport. Also named ... "blooddrunkreaper". That's an omen if ever I've seen one. All kinds of stats there for you in the right-side panel, but note esp. the supply and construction range. With the supply range it'll bring me items(logistic bots), the construction range is where it will build/deconstruct stuff(construction bots) and is considerably larger. To get the bots to work, simply put them in the roboport. That's simple enough. I put the first one up at central storage for a reason. Grab the bots from the chests, throw them in, and we're ready to go.  Room for lots of them ... the row below the bots themselves are for repair packs. The robots will get recharged in the port, and will repair as well if we provide them with those tools. Good idea to do that. Ok, now for storage. Here's the two kinds of chests we've researched:  The yellow one on the bottom is a Storage Chest. These are the default destination for all items within the Logistics Network. The robots will ignore anything in a standard wooden/iron/steel chest; those aren't part of the network. Replacing my steel 'central storage' chests with these logistics ones is a good first step, because now the bots have access to the items I've got here. The red one is a Passive Provider Chest. There are two other types that we'll get later. Passive providers are different from storage chests in one very important aspect; robots won't put anything in them. Hence the name 'provider'. Robots will take what they need from them, but that's all. These are most typically used as the output storage from assembling machines. The term 'passive' refers to the fact that the robots don't care how long stuff stays in these chests; there's a later version that you can build which acts differently. One immediate application of this is that everything I'm building within the supply radius of the Logistics Network no longer needs a belt system to carry it to this storage area. I can just put provider chests as their output instead, and the logistic bots will bring stuff to me whenever I need it.  I radically shrunk this image because you couldn't see it all otherwhise even on maximum zoom. Main thing to see here are the brownish and greenish squares which show the supply and construction radius. I head over to stop the building of logistics bots(because I have enough for now, and only want construction versions), and work on expanding the network(by buildling more roboports) over to where the 'solar plain' will be. It's important to place them carefully;  There's a small gap between the supply radius of this proposed location and the existing roboport. Bots from the first one won't be able to reach this one for that purpose.  One space to the east, and all is good. The corners of the supply areas are in contact. Note the yellow dotted line to the southeast, indicating they are close enough to be connected. A grid of such connected roboports will allow robots to travel any distance within it(though they'll stop to recharge if need be). I replace the output chests for the solar panels with passive provider ones, and put a few storage chests around the nearest roboport. Now it's time to put these bots through their paces and really see what they can do instead of talking about it. Well, a little more talking first.  A new section for inventory here. Under 'Logistics', the spots at the top allow me to request specific items and amounts. These are 'build-tos'. If I'm within the network's supply area, logistics bots will bring me what I'm missing. You can see them doing just that here at the bottom. I don't have to go to storage to get the transport belts I need; storage will now come to me. Again this is the job description of the logistics bot; move items around. Next, we'll take a look at the construction version, and this works a lot better if you see them in action. I missed two achievement screens accidentally by the way; one a bit ago for producing a thousand red circuits an hour, and another here for supplying the player by robot. Wasn't fast enough on the screenshot because I was thinking about something else.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wD9FRkwKRIA As shown, the Deconstruction Planner is used to take stuff down, and the blueprints for giving them larger-scale construction to build. Factorio's beeping yellow alerts let you know when there's a problem; no lamps in the storage chests so I placed those myself, not enough bots to do the job, etc. The combination of blueprints and robot are a powerful one for clearing forests, doing large construction projects, etc. From here on out I should have to do very little myself. *** Mining Productivity 3(300 RG) -- Now up to 6% more productivity on the mining drills. This finally wraps up the Green/Black research tier. One thing off the list.  That's 7 down. The other two I missed, by the way, were titled "You've got a package" and "Circuit Veteran 1". I queue up a whole bunch of tree-cutting to make room for more roboports, and the counter of 'missing construction bots' reaches almost 200. We've got more being built, but in the meantime I can just go off and do other things while they work. When the number gets to zero and the beeping stops, it'll be time to queue up more work for them. As is I'm up to almost 4 MW of solar during the day.  Soon I'm annoyingly interrupted by an attack on our walls -- a spot that's just somewhat out of range of the turret, as shown here. After moving the gun to cover both this location and the radar, I bring a couple more wall sections down to seal the breach. The biters are slowly starting to request my attention more often. Still ignoring them until I get some other things done, but the cost for that decision will continue to increase until I deal with them.  After futzing about with it for a bit I come up with this setup for the logistics requests. There's a lot more stuff that I want but at least these common things I don't need to go pick up. Then I up the ante on the tree-clearing:  That's a lot of deconstructing. 400+ unfilled jobs even with quite a few more construction bots on the case. The job must be done though. I spend the next while cramming efficiency modules into every last thing that can use them(assembling machine 2s and electric mining drills are the capable machines at the moment).  It's close to 'dusk' timeframe right now, so the solar contribution here is close to it's low ebb. I don't have any accumulators in place just yet. Still, it's worth taking a look at this(1-hour timeframe as always). You can see on the solar part of the graph the very regular and precise valleys and plateaus as it ramps up in the morning and slows down at night. The steam used varies but the peaks there roughly correspond to when solar is out of commission. We've made some progress, but a long way to go. I do think the rundown of what consumers take how much has pretty much run it's course here. I'm going to keep gradually adding to the solar field until we are producing a rather obscene amount. That's pretty much necessary for a solar-only approach.  Item Count: 40(+2) Total Production: 241k(+21% from 200k) Highlighted with the filters here are the copper-related stuff, all of which reached new highs and by a long ways. At least double anything we'd done before, tripled or more in some cases. That's mostly a function of the solar panels. Almost a quarter-million now on the report. Resources ** Iron: 217k primary(21k used), 43 steel(11k used), 33k supplmental(2k used), 328k western backup(28k used). Overall just sucking those things dry. ** Copper: 44k(7k used), 716k(22k used) on the new one. I need to readjust the way the belts combine so that we are using more of the old fields, both here and the iron, to clear them out. Definitely not going to be long before our original field is gone though. ** Stone: 377k(no change). ** Coal: 184k power(15k used), 316k factory(6k used), 593k steel(1k used). More of a draw from the power one than before by a bit, even with the solar and the power outage. Still should be plenty there to get things transitioned over though. ** Crude Oil: 8.8/sec(-0.1). We're drawing very little now with storage remaining full ... but we're out of petroleum gas which means soon the battery supply will dry up, and after that other things will join it. With that in mind, a couple more tanks each of heavy and light oil are needed. We'll be able to use them eventually, but right now we need the gas to keep coming. Without it, we don't get more accumulators or robots.
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Nov 1, 2017 02:32
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Full solar...  Have you not unlocked the ability to research nuclear power yet?
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Nov 1, 2017 03:10
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DoubleNegative posted:Full solar... Solar unlocks after only Green Science whereas nuclear power requires a huge amount of Blue Science I usually rush for nuclear too  It looks like he's got only a very tiny amount of uranium readily available and blue science competes for resources with solar panel production to a large degree, so a case could be made for mass solar here
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Nov 1, 2017 06:04
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I also have never used nuclear power, this being my first 0.15 game. I know that it exists as a thing, and that it uses uranium, but that's all -- previously going 'full solar' is what you did because it was the better of the two options; there wasn't a third one available.
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Nov 1, 2017 13:09
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I wonder what a lowest-pollution run of this game would look like.
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Nov 1, 2017 20:02
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Overall it would look similar to a normal game except you'd be bum-rushing solar power ASAP. Most of the pollution a factory produces in the game is generated by the boilers and steam engines that you're reliant on for power. Also I've also gotten into dabbling with Uranium and while it is insane with the amount of power it can generate, it takes awhile to get going.
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Nov 1, 2017 21:51
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Also keeping as many trees up as possible, shoving efficiency modules everywhere, and switching to electric furnaces ASAP (once you've got green power at least).
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Nov 1, 2017 22:48
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EponymousMrYar posted:Also I've also gotten into dabbling with Uranium and while it is insane with the amount of power it can generate, it takes awhile to get going. Once you have nuclear up and running you're pretty much set for power though as it will scale infinitely. Past that point I usually only use solar panels and capacitors for radar that is really, really far out in the field and I don't feel like running powerlines to it.
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Nov 1, 2017 23:05
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It's not that random. it's also not kidding when it says 1% U-235, 99% U-238. it took about 5000 products before I had the 50 235 I needed for REASONS. Now that Robots are a thing: circuit nerds - is there a way to rig your grabby arms up to read the number of IDLE robots on the network? Because what I'd like is to add robots until I have like 50 idle constructors and 200 idle logistics bots.
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Nov 2, 2017 00:16
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Veloxyll posted:It's not that random. it's also not kidding when it says 1% U-235, 99% U-238. it took about 5000 products before I had the 50 235 I needed for REASONS. 0.7%  Hook the roboport up to the circuit network -> Set mode of operation to read robot statistics -> Note the signals for available construction or logistics bots  Hook the inserter up to the same circuit network as the roboport -> Set mode of operation to Enable/disable -> Set enable condition as the signal from roboport noted earlier, less than desired number of bots 
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Nov 2, 2017 01:06
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I absolutely love that they kept the actual ratio of U-235:U-238 physically accurate in this game.
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Nov 2, 2017 01:14
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While I've never sat there and watched I get the feeling that sometimes the game decides to be nice and spits out 2 or 3 pieces of U-238 in a row but other times you need to go through half a drat ore field just to get another. It should average out to ~1 out of every 100 but I feel it would be more like ~10 out of 1000 - you get a few at once but then need to wait for the refinery to cycle 999 times to get what you need. Once you have 5 or 6 refineries going at once it's not so bad though.
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Nov 2, 2017 01:38
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Psychotic Weasel posted:While I've never sat there and watched I get the feeling that sometimes the game decides to be nice and spits out 2 or 3 pieces of U-238 in a row but other times you need to go through half a drat ore field just to get another. It should average out to ~1 out of every 100 but I feel it would be more like ~10 out of 1000 - you get a few at once but then need to wait for the refinery to cycle 999 times to get what you need. This poo poo is what happens when you just roll the dice every time instead of caching the results in order to ensure realistic probabilities.
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Nov 2, 2017 02:47
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Aerdan posted:This poo poo is what happens when you just roll the dice every time instead of caching the results in order to ensure realistic probabilities. ? Isn't rolling the dice every time the way to get realistic probabilities over a large sample? I thought true random results get pretty streaky, which is consistent with the 10 / 1000 as opposed to 1 / 100 anecdotes. I admit that I don't know anything about random number generation.
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Nov 2, 2017 03:44
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TheWetFish posted:0.7% *blueprints*
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Nov 2, 2017 04:55
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Been interested in this game a long time and started reading this LP. I've never realized til now that it was all actually in service of rescuing one single person and the whole premise now seems horrifically wasteful! 
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Nov 2, 2017 05:00
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Veloxyll posted:*blueprints* You want me to do all the work for you? ....Yeah ok https://pastebin.com/KDwdCQWh
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Nov 2, 2017 05:20
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TheWetFish posted:You want me to do all the work for you? I already made a blueprint on my victorious game. Also made an AFK trap out of walls. I maybe should make a smaller scale one that is more likely to be able to use just the number of walls someone might have on them, but eh, effort
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Nov 2, 2017 05:35
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Wow. I did not expect solar would need so much space, but I guess it's to balance out pollution being a big drat deal.
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Nov 2, 2017 05:41
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Arcturas posted:? Over a large-enough dataset, you will approximate it, yes. However, it's possible, with a 7/1000 chance of getting U-238, to have no luck at all for several thousand runs because you're picking a number out of a hat every time—you don't decrease the quantity of U-235 you're pulling from as you would in the real world.
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Nov 2, 2017 10:49
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Aerdan posted:Over a large-enough dataset, you will approximate it, yes. However, it's possible, with a 7/1000 chance of getting U-238, to have no luck at all for several thousand runs because you're picking a number out of a hat every time—you don't decrease the quantity of U-235 you're pulling from as you would in the real world. Though what's the variance on u238 ratios in random chunks of ore in the real world, there must be some which have more or less than exactly 0.7%
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Nov 2, 2017 11:11
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| # ? May 11, 2024 10:34 |
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Alavaria posted:Sampling with or without replacement... The number of individual "bits" of uranium in any sizeable chunk of ore is so huge that it's almost off the top of the scale of SI units. It's a mind-bogglingly large amount. Suffice to say, the law of large numbers is very much in effect.
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Nov 2, 2017 12:35
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