I made a distributed base so I could try out my dynamic train scheduler. So I deliberately spread out everything and shipped around a lot of intermediate products on trains. I had a dedicated refinery (producing plastic, sulfur and solid fuel), dedicated smelting (copper, iron, steel), a chip facto...

If the belt content is moving then the inserters can't pick up the items from underneath the belt cover (from the sides). So it will at least slow down production, even if the belt is saturated, because it becomes "un-saturated" as soon as items are picked up and the resupply moves in fro...

I was just responding to your remark that underground pipes have higher throughput than an express belt. Which is not really the case in realistic scenarios :). It's probably best to find a balance of oil outposts and pipeline connections. So if the wells are reasonably close to each other (maybe 1...

If you use underground pipes you have higher throughput than an express belt for many kilometers. Are you talking about an express belt with barrels? An express belt with barrels transports up to 1000 oil per SECOND. You need lot of parallel pipes to reach that amount. No, I'm not q: Well yes that ...

Pumps are important yes! As soon as you have distance get a pump, and if you can't make a note to get one ASAP. Once the pipes are half empty the pump can't do catch-up so it is needed before wells begin to slow down. A good rule of thumb is to get engines made fast - they are used in so many thing...

It is plausible that in the case of recipes like Processing Units and Science Pack 3 you might use even less energy with Prod+Speed than with eff1, simply by saving so much assembly time on the intermediates. This is the most interesting part. When do you save more energy with PM+SM than EM? In the...

These modules produce enough of everything to work at close to 100% saturation. Making more just to back up the belts (if that would even work in that setup) is not the solution. The solution is to use red belts. You don't overproduce to back up the belt. If the supply is enough for all consumers t...

If your inserters can't pick the items up you aren't producing enough. Nah, that's not the problem in that screenshot. Inserters can't pick up from underneath the "hood" of an underground express belt, unless it's from an incoming belt (not from the flanks/sides). Not even fast inserters....

It's also slightly broken in this screenshot because the inserters can't pick up everything from the blue belts (I was experimenting with this, had no perfect version at hand for taking a screenie right now), but I guess the principle is clear. This is far better than putting all the EC and Plastic...

If you build modular mini-factories, which is arguably the best design principle for mega-bases, then shutting down the beacons along with the machines that they boost is entirely sufficient. Why would you want to shut down single beacons and leave the machines running? For megabases with beacons y...

@MeduSalem that was a long post with a lot of wrong. I'll try to avoid reapeating too much of what siggboy says. Beacons reduce overall energy used by a lot if used properly. Compared to which setups? There are only three possible setups to compare: No Modules in machines. EM2s in all machines. PM3s...

how does one make something REALLY dirty. More electricity used creates more pollution from polluting things like assembly machines so speedmodules are help. Also productivity modules increase pollution directly and electric usage. Boilers pollute, and so does miners and pumpjacks a fair bit. Burin...

This building store (above) and the map with ridiculous resources has me wondering what's next for the map. Just making a rocket.... done that. Rocket production will be part of the design but I see a long game, many trains, a blueprint book, a horde of construction robots.... Are you proud that I'...

In my opinion, with current mechanics, word gen is quite good as a default and non moded. It shoud be good enough for everybody but it will also never be exelent in any playstyle. Want something premium get RSO. RSO modifies resources, not terrain. At least in Factorio0.12. It's not quite good at a...

I'm considering building a whole starter base on artificial land. Witha a building store I don't need that much space anyways.

Also, landfill enabled 30 steam engines ona row.

I have a pure bot megabase One thing about bots, before you get the upgrades they are *much* more energy intensive. Well, my megabase bots are fairly upgraded :] A loop takes almost no space at all for labs - you run the belt down and build 16 labs on both sides, then run it back up and build 16 la...

I consider it a practical way to handle science packs. As I noted, you can run about 60-70 labs off a single basic belt - that's a lot of labs, more than most players ever build (unless you're speed running completionist or something), using a rainbow belt is cheaper and more compact than a pair of...

The other alternative is logistic bots. Not to forget that Logistic Bots are much, much, much more costly with 0.13 now. The energy consumption skyrocketed and I am really considering to go back to belts due to how inefficient bots have become for mass delivery. Not really my results. I have a pure...

The Energy consumption still far outweights anything that could be done with Efficiency Modules. It still requires almost the same amount of power (average being 80MW now compared to the 90MW from before). Though it dropped for about 20 minutes to 70MW, probably an effect where everything tried to ...

Electricity consumption per rocket fuel: 2538kW * 30s / 5.5 = 13843kJ (14MJ) Energy increase over solid fuel: 225 * 1.4 - 10 * 25 = 65MJ Net electricity profit: 65MJ / 2 - 14MJ = 18.5MJ Your electric consumption per rocket fuel doesn't consider that you get 40% more rocket fuel for each successful ...