|
I do belts on multiple levels, which is real clean with the new elevators.
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2024 22:00
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 16, 2024 19:34 |
|
|
How do you get the most out of the new lifts? I've made use of them a little bit just to get things down to ground level in one fewer tile, but I haven't been able to wrap my head around the UI for using them to come down from 2 or 3.
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2024 22:38
|
|
|
Mandoric posted:How do you get the most out of the new lifts? I've made use of them a little bit just to get things down to ground level in one fewer tile, but I haven't been able to wrap my head around the UI for using them to come down from 2 or 3. grab a lift, click E or Q to raise and lower the position on the ground (like if you need to attach the low end to a belt at level 1, 2 or 3). After getting the bottom height set, click once. Now use E or Q to raise and lower the TOP of the lift. Once both the bottom and top of the lift are at the right heights, click again to 'fix' it for building. Now click back on it again and click the reverse thing if you need the lift to move stuff down instead of up. You can pick up from level 0, 1, 2, or 3, and drop off at level 0, 1, 2, or 3 in any way you want. Edit: This Nilaus video shows him using lifts to pull stuff from an elevated belt 'bus'. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiJfg9cZ_ns The Locator fucked around with this message at 22:54 on Apr 28, 2024 |
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2024 22:51
|
|
|
Took me ages to figure them out. Click once to place the bottom, then press E/Q to raise or lower the top height. Lets you fit elevation changes in just two tiles. You can also hit the flip key to reverse which direction it's going while you're building it. You can also set the top height a lot higher than the supports for belts allow, which I guess might be useful to scale cliffs? I haven't tried it though, seems very fiddly unless you've already set the cliff up artificially with retaining walls.
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2024 22:52
|
|
|
Using really tall lifts to get up a cliff is possible but it’s very fiddly. You need to be able to place a pole on the starting and ending tiles of a belt (more or less, there are some exceptions), so over-height lifts are only a good idea if you know you can place a belt tile there first. I’ve got a section where I’ve done it a bunch of times, and it’s a lot more of a pain in the rear end than just trying to find valid belt paths back and forth across a cliff face. Takes up much less room though, when you can get it going, so it’s worthwhile to try. Overall lifts are pretty finicky to place, but since I had to play with the alternative for like a year I have a great appreciation for them.
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2024 23:14
|
|
|
The Locator posted:grab a lift, click E or Q to raise and lower the position on the ground (like if you need to attach the low end to a belt at level 1, 2 or 3). After getting the bottom height set, click once. Now use E or Q to raise and lower the TOP of the lift. Once both the bottom and top of the lift are at the right heights, click again to 'fix' it for building. Now click back on it again and click the reverse thing if you need the lift to move stuff down instead of up. Ooh, I was wondering about the second click but had never pulled it together. Thanks!
|
|
#
?
Apr 28, 2024 23:44
|
|
|
I was today years old when I learned you can raise lifts. This changes things...
|
|
#
?
Apr 29, 2024 22:06
|
|
|
LonsomeSon posted:I have a blueprint saved for a tillable three-level flat belt feed system actually, it looks basically like that poster’s. The only recommendation I have is to make sure the center input is ground level in your blueprint. It's really handy for tiling things like cparts or electronics that take the previous tier as an input. DrHammond posted:I was today years old when I learned you can raise lifts. This changes things... This was one of the first things I learned when trying to place the little bastards. I haven't really found a use for it yet though since it's not going to magically give me height 4/5 belts. The Locator posted:grab a lift, click E or Q to raise and lower the position on the ground (like if you need to attach the low end to a belt at level 1, 2 or 3). After getting the bottom height set, click once. Now use E or Q to raise and lower the TOP of the lift. Once both the bottom and top of the lift are at the right heights, click again to 'fix' it for building. Now click back on it again and click the reverse thing if you need the lift to move stuff down instead of up. But I'm embarrassed that I hadn't thought of this yet, considering that I stepped away from busses after my first map because I hated the look and spacing requirements for a bus system with sloped belts.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2024 04:47
|
|
|
I'm using a variation on Nilaus' bus and it's both stylish and functional. My run this update has actually gone much smoother than previous runs. Still on T2 research and T3 construction, but I just cracked into Hydrogen and my next project is setting up a real farming location. My oil refinery that cracks down everything so far, giving me Fertilizer II, Paper, Sulfur, Rubber, Acid, and Fuel Gas  The main bus. I'll be adding glass next.  I'm trying to have a centralized desalinization plant, which will also give me all the salt and chlorine I could want for now. 
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2024 20:30
|
|
|
How does a bus work, when 1 belt can provide items only for two buildings?
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2024 20:48
|
|
|
There’s a limited number of recipes which call for 30/m of inputs, and also there are belts with more than 60/m capacity which you eventually can build.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2024 20:59
|
|
|
Ihmemies posted:How does a bus work, when 1 belt can provide items only for two buildings? It depends on the buildings, and the tier of the belt. T1 belts carry 60/min and many items are demanded in 6 or 12 per building, so a T1 belt could supply 12/m to 5 buildings. T2 belts carry 200 items per minute. T3 belts carry.. 450? I am not sure I've not gotten that far but I saw something like that. Just like pipes carry 60/200/450 depending on tier. Even at T2, your iron smelting would need to be kicking out over 200 iron plates per minute before a single belt on the bus was not enough, and just like Factorio.. you are allowed to have more than 1 belt of an item (although so far I've not hit that, as I think I'm making 96 iron plates per minute right now?). I just set up ghosts for advanced copper smelting where I'll be pushing out 144 copper plates from 3 forges, nearly tripling my copper plate output as I move into the plastics/silicon/circuits stuff. It all will move on a single T2 belt.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2024 20:59
|
|
|
I got tired of my spaghetti maze of inefficiency that was my first real run (beginner difficulty). Started a new run on Armageddon w/ normal difficulty, and got to pretty much the same point I was but much quicker and with a far more consistent and useful layout/design philosophy. I'm doing my own take on a 'bus' for my second manufacturing location on the map. Still keeping an overall "modular" design format but piping excess materials down a central bus, so every few "modules" you get to skip a foundry based on your excesses overflowing from prior modules. Putting down a little strip of concrete at the bus to write inputs and outputs on, keeping track of theoretical minimum output every module, made me feel clever. I would still benefit logistically from doing all my smelting somewhere else and piping mats in on a proper bus, but as it stands my locations and layouts are pretty central/accessible to my mines, and I'm not running into the factory-crashing truck logistics snarls that made me never want to load my first map up again. I think I'll go for a full bus when I transition to my 3rd production center, probably delete factory 1.0 at the docks fully at that point. Difficulty is just right. I haven't been threatened with any spirals after learning my lessons on my first map, but have had to be diligent about responsible and well planned expansion to keep it that way. I feel like the pace is just a bit slower than ideal the way I'm playing, but I'm just vibing to Jazz and watching the trucks do their thing while I wait for research/construction anyways, so having a good time. DrHammond fucked around with this message at 02:19 on May 1, 2024 |
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2024 21:10
|
|
|
So I started a new game on the Armageddon map, and playing my usual slow pace, I'm in something like Y238 and doing the 2nd set of exploration after upgrading the ship engine. Even with a much cleaner layout and better designs I'm up against the same point as I ended my previous game, where I need to set up plastic and start doing the semiconductor stuff to open up the next tier of construction parts, as I'm out of research to do with T2 lab equipment. I *think* I'm in a much better position to continue, as I've focused my refinery on pushing out diesel this time, and I am only producing hydrogen as a byproduct, which I push to my power-plant to burn in gas boilers in place of coal when it's available. Pretty sure the coal boilers are still doing 75% of the work though. My water pollution is non-existent but air pollution is like 11, as I'm not scrubbing any of my smelters yet. Armageddon has lots of space, but everything is really spread out, which brings it's own logistics problems... I have like 100 yellow trucks which are constantly running and mostly above stable. I can definitely see a food crunch coming so I think before I push into the next tier I need to completely revamp my farms (maybe use greenhouses for the first time, except drat they need a lot of glass) or I may hit a death spiral soon. The resources, while plentiful, also seem to be harder to get to, especially in pure form on this map. The original coal mine only went like 3 deep before becoming more rock than coal, so it's been completely filled in now and that entire middle section is now flat and ready for farms and greenhouses, maybe even with some automation now instead of fully truck served! My super-neat power plant design turned into a cluster-gently caress of pipes when I realized I didn't produce nearly enough hydrogen to keep the gas boilers running, so I had to snake belts of coal in, and also added an exhaust scrubber and a heated desalination thing to provide enough water. Of course every time I add new stuff I have to expand the village also, as I run out of workers. The designers really did an amazing job of balancing everything so that you are just constantly trying to juggle about 6 different spinning plates, but not making it too easy to crash and burn to the ground, although I've come close a couple of times by forgetting to put alerts on my coal supply and not realizing they were all sitting around doing nothing while all the coal buckets on the map ran dry. The alerts on the smelter buckets were what got my attention, by which time everything was very close to crashing. Good fun!
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2024 00:37
|
|
|
The Locator posted:So I started a new game on the Armageddon map, and playing my usual slow pace, I'm in something like Y238 and doing the 2nd set of exploration after upgrading the ship engine. So pollution sucks, but exhaust scrubbers are great, especially once you get late-game graphite production. I feel bad about the fact that my legacy coal plant is ready for decommissioning because the bonus sulfur from scrubbing the exhaust is always welcome. Save hydrogen for things like cars. Just because of how precarious gases are in the early/mid game, I just recommend avoiding gas-fired power plants. I'm building out the space for my FBR right now. Once that's up, I need to do a major reorganization of my factories to cut down on my truck reliance because of the exact problem you mentioned. Curland also had the distance problem.
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2024 03:54
|
|
|
Warmachine posted:So pollution sucks, but exhaust scrubbers are great, especially once you get late-game graphite production. I feel bad about the fact that my legacy coal plant is ready for decommissioning because the bonus sulfur from scrubbing the exhaust is always welcome. Save hydrogen for things like cars. Just because of how precarious gases are in the early/mid game, I just recommend avoiding gas-fired power plants. I made the mistake of building out a hydrogen boiler system since I’d had pollution issues in my last game. I was never able to get full hydrogen power running without some coal backup available since even the smallest lapse in steam production caused everything to fall apart. On the positive side, now that I have basic nuclear power up, I have a full hydrogen network for truck fuel ready to go. It’s just buried in a rats nest…
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2024 04:05
|
|
|
Is there any way to get an estimate, or is there a known estimate, for how much water a farm actually needs? I'm trying to redo my water infrastructure, and increase my farms significantly, but I just have no idea how much water I need to supply.
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2024 04:16
|
|
|
I liked Curland a lot, the giant crude patch in the middle which you have to fill to get to is a nice touch, and finally bridging the bay into an island was a great feeling.
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2024 04:28
|
|
|
I've got food sorted for a while now I think, couple of chicken farms bringing in meat and eggs, bread and tofu all being served up with vegetables and potatoes. Y251 overview pictures because threads always need pictures! The docks area converted to my new power plant and oil processing. I have 2 x 4 slot tankers but only using one currently, the other is paused as is the 2nd oil rig.  The new farm layout with the food processing and new markets up close, and the edge of the new desalination.  Just ye' ol boring coal mine. Really the only thing of note is that a lot of dirt is sitting on top of some coal here, so there are actually two digging crews at work. The coal mine crew digging up the coal, and my general clearing crew ramping down and stripping off the dirt to expose the coal that extended out away from the mountain that doesn't exist anymore. I think there are 5 or 6 levels of coal under that ramp.  The copper works. Nothing special really, the stuff on the right is the new advanced forges with crushed ore, with one yet to be built, because I got sidetracked onto the power, water and farm projects. Eventually all that stuff on the left will get removed and replaced with more crushed ore processing. I used a large crusher that can feed 6 smelters.  And finally, the main manufacturing center/bus arrangement along with maintenance and vehicle building. The paused buildings off to the upper right are my paper and research production, but I'm completely done with all research until I move to the next tier. The mess on the upper left is the iron works and steel. The paused stuff to the right is the original oil production site without the 3rd stage distillation or cracking, and also paused oil wells. The little clump of buildings on the upper left to the left of the belts is recyclable handling. 
The Locator fucked around with this message at 06:40 on May 1, 2024 |
|
#
?
May 1, 2024 06:36
|
|
|
The Locator posted:Is there any way to get an estimate, or is there a known estimate, for how much water a farm actually needs? I'm trying to redo my water infrastructure, and increase my farms significantly, but I just have no idea how much water I need to supply. If you go to your resource list and click on water, one of the lines is farm consumption. I plan for that and consider rain to be a bonus. The reduced water consumption edict is also a big help.
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2024 11:48
|
|
|
The Locator posted:Is there any way to get an estimate, or is there a known estimate, for how much water a farm actually needs? I'm trying to redo my water infrastructure, and increase my farms significantly, but I just have no idea how much water I need to supply. Here:  I don't know if this is including rainfall though, your actual need may be a bit lower.
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2024 12:44
|
|
|
It does but once you get greenhouses no more rainfall
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2024 13:26
|
|
|
euphronius posted:It does but once you get greenhouses no more rainfall Not true. I have the same memory from Update 1, but in my current game, Greenhouses are still regenerating water from rain. The extra consumption of a Greenhouse means you're going to need to irrigate it anyway, but rainy weather still takes some of the load off the water system. Warmachine fucked around with this message at 14:10 on May 1, 2024 |
|
#
?
May 1, 2024 14:06
|
|
|
Huh that’s weird
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2024 15:21
|
|
|
I don't know what magical forces are happening inside green houses that accelerate the plants growth in a way it drinks water faster up the the point potatoes will dry themselves out and die during rain storms but it's essential to the water alchemy cycle so I'm not going to ask too many questions.
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2024 15:25
|
|
|
euphronius posted:Huh that’s weird Yeah, it confused the hell out of me because what I remembered from a year ago was that transitioning from Irrigated (open air) farms to Greenhouses meant you lost the rainwater benefit, but in return got higher yields. The tech progression was: Farm: You're at the mercy of the elements and can't stabilize your production. Irrigated Farm: You can make up for lack of rain with water supplies, stabilizing your production, but you get no additional yield bonuses. Greenhouse 1 and 2: You give up the ability to water with rain for increased yields, but at the cost of needing more water inputs. I wonder if there might have been some walk back because people were preferring vast swaths of Irrigated Farms for water reasons over more compact groups of Greenhouses. At the end of the day I just kinda pretend the Greenhouses have on-site cisterns collecting rain water from the roof gutters or something similar. Warmachine fucked around with this message at 16:16 on May 1, 2024 |
|
#
?
May 1, 2024 16:13
|
|
|
Warmachine posted:At the end of the day I just kinda pretend the Greenhouses have on-site cisterns collecting rain water from the roof gutters or something similar. With as much recycling of water my factory has by the time I have the glass and other production to do greenhouses, I would say this is actually a solid assumption. I mean on-site rain-water capture for a water intensive crop operation makes perfect sense.
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2024 16:39
|
|
|
I have achieved Electronics II for the very first time, and am finishing off my T3 lab research before I have to move on to T4 labs and T3 lab equipment. Kind of a big milestone for me, and I'm mostly focused on removing all the local high-points and filling in the low-points to give me more space to work, since my line of assembly machines is about to run out of space for new stuff.
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2024 23:01
|
|
|
My FBR is up, and now I have a new set of tasks. I need to get my blast furnaces converted to arc furnaces to reduce my dependence on coal. I also want to completely divest myself from oil, which means producing ethanol to replace naptha in the rubber and plastic processes. And I want to do all of this with at least some form of organization. It's all being slowed down by my desire to flatten my building area and create vast swaths of concrete-paved land for these factories.
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2024 23:58
|
|
|
At least with the FBR you have access to super steam and the super steam hydrogen recipe and a giant pile of power to generate super steam, which makes fueling your vehicles with clean burning hydrogen easy.
|
|
#
?
May 2, 2024 01:27
|
|
|
Oh, right, the nuclear plant design I wanted to go with uses both desalinators and cooling towers. I probably should have not piped the low turbines directly into the desalinators. Debating whether I'd rather just eat the 3 unity to boost all 12 of them indefinitely to avoid redoing the pipe layout.
|
|
#
?
May 2, 2024 01:42
|
|
|
Mandoric posted:Oh, right, the nuclear plant design I wanted to go with uses both desalinators and cooling towers. I probably should have not piped the low turbines directly into the desalinators. I could have sworn I already responded to this, but the answer is throw some balancers in there and spaghetti your way out. Leave the problem for future Mandoric to deal with. Tumorous additions to your exquisitely planned factory is the free space on the CoI bingo card. Thinking about my CoI plans since my ADHD brain isn't letting me work right now, but: 1. Refactoring my blast furnaces basically means ripping out the old metalworks and putting a new one in. I have the basic skeleton of this laid out, but it does have the risk of taking things offline until they are rebuilt. Which is scary. 2. That refactoring also necessitates moving some critical production facilities, which I built too close to the existing metalworks and also where I want to put the new one. This means moving electronics, mech parts, and computer chips, all of which I want relatively close to the new metalworks as well because these are key "must keep running" production lines. 3. I need to actually put down my hydrogen production, which probably wants a second dedicated FBR since the (32) arc furnaces will happily gobble up the power from the first FBR. But a second FBR is overkill just for hydrogen production, and would be well served by including desalination as well. But... where should I place that? Also, this will produce a ton of oxygen that I should probably pipe to my steel furnaces and ethanol production somehow, which will require accounting for hydrogen backups and flaring off excess to keep the oxygen parts running, so I'll need to design this system with adequate relief valves. (The hydrogen flares alone will be a glorious torch.) 4. As part of my plan to devest from oil, I need to ensure my ethanol production is stable. Sugar actually seems relatively efficient for producing gobs of ethanol at this stage, which will take over the role of oil in plastic and rubber production (fuel will be all hydrogen). 5. But I have a bit of a fertilizer shortage, so I need to actually put together a fertilizer factory. I need to consider how much ammonia I need as well. I think I might be losing some through a misconfigured priority. 6. At this point, my last fossil fuel reliance is a tiny bit of coal for things like extra graphite production that doesn't come from carbon recapture and filter media, the only other thing requiring coal explicitly. I'd rather not import it, actually. I'm wondering if coal makers could serve the purpose here, giving me an infinitely renewable source of the meagre amount of coal I actually need. 7. With all of that solved, I need to establish the production lines to ensure that the other dig resources (Iron, Copper, Limestone, Quartz) are covered in perpetuity. Which is probably another 10 steps including some recursion back to the metalworks question. The good news is that with the exception of coal, I am absolutely sipping my non-renewables between 90% recycling and an FBR for power.
|
|
#
?
May 2, 2024 16:08
|
|
|
All my production which uses Oxygen is running off of Air Separators and venting their Nitrogen, except for a bit in the oil refinery which feeds Ammonia production to keep the fertilizer feed full even when Sour Water isn’t getting reprocessed in volume. My electrolyzer farm is just venting all of its Oxygen: I had to build a second large smokestack to be able to handle peak potential output. I’ve just finished building up two big rock-and-slag ‘trays’ off of some unused coastline, and filled them in with Dirt. Not remotely close to filling in my Coal seam so I had to improvise! It’s room for six new Greenhouses, though the first three went in a long time before the fill project was finished. Already making Antibiotics with Sugar and overflowing to Ethanol, but as soon as the new Wheat starts coming in we’re ready for Cakes (huge belt run needed to overflow Eggs here), and then Chips from the rest of the farming capacity. The settlement already eats every food type but Junk Food but I think they’ll really appreciate the product of all their mining and dumping work. Can we please get a Market III with two Flat and two Loose conveyor inputs?! Make it taller and put the second set right above the first. I don’t even need it to get more Worker-efficient again, I’ll even accept it needing its own supply of Water or something it’s just very weird to have four identical stores in a row just for basics, and not even all of them.
|
|
#
?
May 2, 2024 16:31
|
|
|
Yes but venting it all seems inefficient and it is just adding to my analysis paralysis. And I didn't even include rebalancing my farms on my to-do list, which I should definitely do to better reflect actual food consumption patterns since most of these configurations were set before I had every item in the health categories covered. Let alone adding snacks and cakes. Oh god. I'm probably going to need to get used to the fact that my coal seam won't get covered for a LONG time. The 2nd coal seam on Armageddon goes down to something like -35. To fill it in is going to take a good chunk of one of the satellite islands. I want to leave the crater mostly unmolested for scenic reasons, save the big chunk I'm cutting out for copper. Of which, because copper and recycling are so efficient, I don't think I've even hit 50% extracted over 1000 years. Gold and Copper are the big winners of recycling simply because their main uses are in recyclable goods, where as iron and glass tend to see a lot of use in things that aren't recoverable (cparts, vparts, Greenhouses).
|
|
#
?
May 2, 2024 16:41
|
|
|
Well, good luck trying to find enough Oxygen consumers to eat 720/min of Oxygen I guess? Once I ran the numbers on the initial 15-Electrolyzer build I laughed and gave up on trying to use as much of the Oxygen as possible, considering how little I actually needed. The Balancer is still there, if I ever feel like it I can prioritize an output to pipes which join up my three Oxygen consumer networks, but I have to keep one Separator going for Nitrogen to make Ammonia anyway, and that building would need to be prioritized into the distribution network so as to have Nitrogen available on demand.
|
|
#
?
May 2, 2024 17:08
|
|
|
Warmachine posted:I could have sworn I already responded to this, but the answer is throw some balancers in there and spaghetti your way out. Leave the problem for future Mandoric to deal with. Tumorous additions to your exquisitely planned factory is the free space on the CoI bingo card. Absolutely in general, and then come here and type about and use the thought of having to explain what I'm doing to plan my next step. Though in the particular, it's nested too drat tight to fit at all, I only left two tiles so the middle low turbine of each triad literally can't path out. Going to have to do some cutting and pasting, which means waiting for another row of the valley I'm carving into to be mined out--on the plus side, it did come to mind that the reflow will be easier if I plan the cooling towers first and then work back from them before reconnecting the desalinators. For anyone who's gotten nuclear up and running, am I correct in the assumption that at least power can disappear into the aether, and I'm safe to run at full power before I actually have 90MW of demand as long as that 288/m of steam is turning back into at least 288/m of water and feeding back in or being dumped/vented?
|
|
#
?
May 2, 2024 18:46
|
|
|
Yeah you can vent excess steam or covert it. You can also run the nuke plant at a lower setting to save fuel if you don't need all the steam yet.
|
|
#
?
May 2, 2024 20:23
|
|
|
Yes you can just spin turbines flat-out and nothing bad will happen if you’re not consuming the electricity. Generators won’t start visually turning until they’re needed though. It makes nuclear for base load very convenient!
|
|
#
?
May 2, 2024 21:18
|
|
|
Tier 2 and 3 nuclear reactors can auto-regulate, but you need to have them running at a minimum power level so you'll want steam turbines to eat up that minimum level. Good for if you're using the rest of the steam for industrial processes though. Or you can take a small hit and use electric boilers where needed.
|
|
#
?
May 2, 2024 21:30
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 16, 2024 19:34 |
|
|
I'm currently operating on complex-level replacement cycles, so my plan is to just overprovision like gently caress (specifically, 2x tier 1 plant into 12 high into 12 low into 12 desal + 3 large cooling) and hope it carries me up to a breeder. I'm at absolutely no pressure on space, because my overall plan involves flattening a mountain, so spent fuel piling up for a little while isn't an issue. Dropping electric boilers in where I'm currently on coal is definitely in my plans, as is scaling up electrolysis-based hydrogen production for use until I get that sweet sweet superheated steam. I do kind of feel like I'm underbuilding in a way, though, I'm currently doing fine powerwise with a pair of coal boilers even with a 50-50 diesel/hydrogen split. I guess automation will really kick this up, though.
|
|
#
?
May 2, 2024 22:13
|
|