Looking at the bottom mines in that screenshot, those also show yellow without any ore beneath them. Makes me suspect the bottleneck mod shows mines as yellow for ore shortages too, since mines do not have any input. It's probably an optimization thing. If a mine has run out of ore, shut it down and...

Not sure what could be done about it. Biter bases that get an "Artillery shield"? A "return to sender" Biter that spawns, and lobs something back to your factory in retaliation? Outranging and bombarding static targets will always win against those... What artillery could use is ...

That's because the refineries aren't the only structure in that chain: Petrol: Most of the time you'll want a refinery complex to produce petrol - used for plastics and acid production. With chemical plants you can turn all heavy and light oil into petrol, causing your refinery cluster to have just ...

mrvn wrote:Can one change the coverage area using lua at runtime?

Not sure if it can be done using lua, but it is done at runtime each time you add/remove a roboport. I am not much into Factorio modding yet so I simply do not know.

if you are concerned with getting run over you can make a braking light to slow your trains so that you don't get run over. here is an example of my slow signal. example.jpg Neat design, but safer yet is to use a few circuit controlled gates to make a rail crossing that physically blocks the track ...

What's the average real life length of trains? If I'm not misstaken, a typical cargo train in my own country is upwards of 20 cars, with typically 2 engines. In the US, given the distance they go, trains are far, far longer - upwards of 2KM in total length. For Factorio's purposes, that'd pose probl...

I've ran into the issue described for my megabase that I wanted to get to 10k sci/min. Smelter feeding speed can become an issue. I was using 4-12 ore trains (4 engines, 12 cars monodirectional) - large trains, mainly to make sure that the trains can flatten any biter patrol without stalling out. Co...

Yup. The personal roboport just needs a simple on/off toggle. Suggested implementation (should be scriptable if I understand how Factorio works): When on it uses it's normal coverage area based on the roboports you have in the armor. When off, coverage area drops to 0. (calculate/get the current cov...

Prod mods in smelters is some new level of desperate. They are last on the wishlist, yes, but prod/speedmodded smelters make sense in a 10k sci megabase. Not so much in a "gonna launch my rocket and be done" game though. Needing to mine/train in 20% fewer minerals can make a big differenc...

The problem, the way I see it, is that batteries just load so damn slow, especially the MK2 variant. They are effective when charged, but not so much when you need to rapidly charge them. Why is there no means to have the power armor draw energy from the factory power grid (provided you're in a powe...

Smooth looking double wall. Looks like that would be much more stable then a single wall. Consider adding a max HP bonus to walls with adjacent wall sections maybe? These graphics definately suggest that would hold up. The train fuel alert is also very handy once the train grid becomes... big. Good ...

Were you using gas shells perhaps?

The tank/pipe connection isn't slow, it is just highly dependent on the level in the tank. Low tank level = low output pressure. Tanks make good buffers for pressure variations, refinery clusters for instance guzzle a large amount of fluid per production batch, causing sags in pressure. You'll eithe...

Or, if it hasn't been implemented yet, a manual slider to reduce UPS to a specific factor? It'll also allow you to slow down games for folks who want a more relaxed experience ('though honestly, Factorio's pace is fine).

Wouldn't make much sense. The limitation of a furnace is generally limited not by how much fuel you burn to heat it, but by the maximum temperature the furnace will support, as well as the temperature needed to perform the desired task (such as smelting). Also, @darkfrei: Supplying a furnace with Ro...

Maybe also USB controlled radiation dispenser support for when your nuclear plant goes boom or when you use nukes? If we're just throwing about crazy ideas...

Workaround: Constant combinator with the desired value on it, toggle on/off at will. Second workaround: Constant combinator with the desired value on it, and a blank one. Ctrl/shift-rightclick to copy the blank and desired values also emulates this on/off function. Third workaround, for gating multi...

This would make Factorio biased towards a certain hardware brand, and one that isn't all that widely used. Waste of valuable dev time in my opinion.

One thing I highly recommend is to turn off the smoke animations in the graphics. While not directly affecting UPS, it does put a strain on the graphics system, which on laptops usually is handled by the CPU these days. As for water trains: Not recommended. Nuclear plants just eat too much water to ...

Factorio benefits from a fast harddrive (autosave on large maps), a lot of graphics memory and system memory. For megabases, a beefy CPU is also useful. Graphics card speed as far as I can tell isn't all that important. I'd slap together something like: Ryzen / I7 8 or 16 GB RAM. 8 should suffice, b...