1) Yep. Belts have lower throughput and far more lag end to end. And you can't use the belt for other types of shipments. 2) Rails are omnidirectional. You can run trains back up the track, and put a factory where the ore patch was without changing anything except the stops. The track will also cont...

I like the idea of building bridges with concrete and iron/steel as an option, rather than simply dumping landfill rocks to make more land. (Rail bridges would need to be added too.) Such a bridge would allow you to walk/drive across it, but not build things on it (since it is a building already), a...

I found a 1:1 ratio is a great fit for my needs; that allows me to reserve a hearty 10% margin before the emergency power logic kicks in.

Between laser turrets and 30 MW of partial duty cycle factories, power use is quite spiky.

At the least, the bots should grab the item from your inventory on the same tick as they leave, before you have a chance to move out of range. I wouldn't mind having bots jump out to lay down some solar panels as I scream by on my way to somewhere and have them eventually catch up, as long as they a...

What if you place a buffer chest next to your passive provider? Have it request 1 item. An inserter will pick that item and start to move it to your PP chest. While in hand, the logistics bots will run off and grab an item out of storage for your butter chest. I can't think of a good way to make it ...

As far as prioritizing types of things (EG deconstruction, then power poles, then other stuff), that seems simple. Just take the existing ghost list, and split it into multiple shorter lists. Each tick, the top priority ghost list is checked as it is now. If no bot can be assigned, then again act as...

I've made an update worth mentioning: By swapping most of the combinators over to using Each, and a bit of futzing to isloate the clock, the memory is now multichannel (everything except S is remembered since that is used for the clocked shifting signal) I've eliminated a tick and a combinator from ...

I had a desire to see my power history and came up with this tonight: PowerHistoryGraph.png It was pretty straightforward, once the plan was set. - The starting block measures an accumulator and divides by 13 to get a 3-bit value (0-7) (Any input could be used of course, as long as you divide it dow...

I think you might have done too much computer science and not enough cheating :) Congrats on sticking it out and actually making legit memory cells that work - you can probably work that into an actual computer. If you don't need to know the exact values, and just want to know if the last change was...

Another complication here is that manual wires which you will need to use in the setup are really badly blueprinted. They do blueprint but poles will automatically interconnect right after you place blueprint if they can reach one another. The suggestion to add circuit connection to radars to detec...

Is there any clever way for a circuit network to detect biters? The majority of my base's power usage is currently going to idle laser towers, and the spikes during an attack are surprisingly small. I'd like to make peril-sensitive firebases that bring additional guns online when there is an imminen...

I think I've solved the problem by with a bit of parallel track to move the exit's connection point. Making the on-ramp and off-ramp be the same block with no forks other than the branch to the stops.
The train should certainly not path to its current location.

I've been suffering this with my copper train trying to do a loop-de-loop through my drill factory, which generates a cascade failure of two thirds of my entire network. If I'm following the thread's speculations correctly, would it help to use varying block sizes with the signals, and ensure a smal...

While that should avoid the rapid switching problem, that much effort is unnecessary, because heat/steam in boilers does not decay if it isn't used by the steam machines and boilers (contrary to nuclear reactors) only burn fuel at the rate that is actually drawn by your system. The overall resource...

I've just made some modular armor, and have the solar panels, but they take a while to juice things up, the fusion reactor is a ways off, and I can't plug in to the main grid. However I do have a whole stack of these copper top batteries. What about using batteries straight out of the chemical plant...

Updated:
Math fix - assembly machine works 25% faster than assumed, saving energy and driving up the efficiency by a few more percent.

The "B" signal is not even necessary. An even simpler way to make it is: "A > 0; Output A = 1" (and feed it back to itself). This one is toggled on with any positive "A" (of any length), and toggled off with any negative "A". A great use for this is to have a...

I had some time on a long car trip and made a spreadsheet to do some figuring for an optimal way to boost chemical energy storage. After I got some interesting numbers out, I was able to wrangle them into an over-unity device. (Sadly not a perpetual motion machine since it can't use the rocket fuel ...

Is it possible to mirror (not rotate) the fluid inputs/outputs on chemical plants? They always seem to be on the most inconvenient side and I haven't been trained to subconsciously lay out my base in the ideal manner yet. If it is smart enough to take either input from either pipe and I simply haven...

I did see those.
I'll play around with the train parts first, but if I can't figure out why it isn't working, then I'll hit those tutorials.