They are an arrangement of splitters to draw from or distribute from belts equally: https://wiki.factorio.com/Balancer_mechanics They still have their uses, but with the introduction of splitter priorities their usefulness on a bus has drastically decreased. People used to split from a bus and then ...

You're playing a character on the screen, not some invisible god/overlord. And as the game progresses your physical presence becomes less important

There are mods to increase reach:
https://mods.factorio.com/query/reach?version=1.1

It really depends on your overall goals and also the design of the base. You can go with 8 belts iron and copper each if you want to go big, but 4 or 6 of each can be fine too. Personally I don't put the copper and iron for the green circuits on the main bus anymore. Those eventually get their own d...

Also keep in mind that one copper plate turns into two copper cables. Combined with the very fast production time of green circuits (0.5s), and them needing three cables per craft, that makes it a really bad idea to belt the cables in this case. As shown above direct insertion is the solution here. ...

If you build big you still need to out and kill biters just for the necessary space

You're having two tracks east-west. So why do you want both of them to be two way? Usually when you do that you have one track for each direction. Makes signaling far easier. Also for two-track lanes: instead of putting them right next to each other leave some space in the middle and place the power...

I've heard that its very difficult to play Factorio without some outside knowledge It depends. It may not look nice and have the "correct" ratios, but it's very much possible to play the game and figure the basics things out on your own. Newbie bases like that have their own charm even. I...

Just use Shuttle Train Refresh. It does everything you want and more.

Mods aren't a big deal. You can add and usually remove them during an ongoing game.

And then how is that stuff getting to the bus itself without causing a mess of everything? I don't really understand the problem. At the start of the bus you either have your smelters and bring in the ore by train eventually. Or you bring in the plates by train from off-site smelters. You can also ...

This really confused me until I remembered operator precedence: At first glance this looks like you're taking the address of the this pointer

One tile of belt can hold a certain amount of items. Length doesn't matter. If you try to put on more there isn't enough space. So you can can only move a certain amount of items along a belt per second - depending on the speed (i.e. the tier) of the belt. https://wiki.factorio.com/Belt_transport_sy...

You don't have to do this based directly on the bots in the network. You can keep a chest with a few bots at an outpost. And insert into the network from that chest (limit the inserter depending on the network statistics). Then call a train when the bots in the chest fall below a certain number. Tha...

It can be done, but I don't think it's worth the effort. One wagon can fit more than enough requester chests to use one per item type

By the way, if you want to turn cracking on and off it's easier to switch pumps instead of using power switches

What is reasonable or not depends on your taste. You can definitely build a large base with biters activated. But some people consider clearing out new areas tedious. Which it can be. Even using artillery can get repetitive. A compromise is to turn expansion off. Then you only need to clear areas on...

There are several settings in the graphics options that lower graphics memory usage. Which in your case is probably shared with your RAM

It really depends on the scale you build at. 1000 or 2000 SPM is a megabase too. And doesn't necessarily need extreme amounts of optimization. You certainly don't need to worry about nonsense like visible trees if you have pollution or biters activated in the first place. You probably shouldn't do w...

SimpCommander wrote: ↑

Mon Apr 05, 2021 10:11 pm

but when i try to run it manually it works fine

Signals don't matter in manual mode. They are for automatic trains.

Well, you listed almost all the big and popular overhaul mods. Krastorio is the most approachable of those. The one you didn't mention is Industrial Revolution 2, which easily comes with the best graphics of all the large mods Another option is to pick several smaller mods to add things that interes...

You're only feeding half a lane into your smelters. The issue is in the area where you merge the iron with the coal. Do this instead: https://forums.factorio.com/download/file.php?id=62162 The splitter takes a full belt and divides into two half-belts. One goes up and one down. And then you supply c...