I think "terrain building area" is the keys that control the size when laying down stone or concrete path material. + and - on the keypad do that for me, at least.

I'm not aware of any way to zoom the minimap in or out. There's an orange/yellow dot several pixels around at the center of it ...

You'll probably have to use something like the old power sensor trick using accumulators bridging two power networks. Pumping fluids between tanks sounds a lot like the old trick of using one inserter to keep a chest empty or not empty while another tries to do the opposite, with the items ...

One of many problems here was that I had not looked into exactly how many - or rather how few - recipes that raw Copper Plate is actually used for. The two main ones are Red Potions and Copper Wire.

Early game, red potions may seem like a "main use", yeah... And I won't argue with copper wire ...

Set the requesters to some small amount like 50, then have smart inserters fill the passive providers when logistics storage levels of iron are below 999, and empty the requesters when storage of iron is over 1000? That should result in any excess amounts in storage getting shifted gradually into ...

I don't actually see any way to do that without wiring up specific chests. I've barely started to mess with the new circuit network features, but combinators appear to lack the logistics network functionality of smart inserters.

If you're trying to put a specific amount of coal (or whatever) into something and are separating it out into appropriately sized stacks in your own inventory first, try shift-clicking one of those stacks instead of ctrl-clicking. That should transfer only the stack you click.

I'm a little confused. Any time I've placed a blueprint where all the blueprinted objects perfectly overlap with identical items, I never have to use shift-click to place it. I've been using this trick a lot today, to build one arm of a rail junction, with all the signals properly placed, copy it ...

That's a really excellent breakdown of their behavior, I don't think I could've explained it quite that clearly. :D I would add, however, that chain signals will "chain" their search through other chain signals until they reach a normal signal - if a chain signal can lead to a blue chain signal, it ...

it's the entry+internal signals that must be chain signals

This is correct. You really only need three chain signals in a well constructed T junction though - one for each path that requires crossing over other tracks. Here's an example:

http://i.imgur.com/yp5UqNz.png

There's no reason to ...

That's right. All your turrets will simply become the new versions. This will result in some strange placement and overlapping, but they will all function - assuming your power grid can support the equivalent of four times as many laser turrets as you used to have, since each one now is 4x as ...

So a few days ago I came up with something I haven't seen anyone else make before. Considering how many circuits these things guzzle, I'd say this is almost as great as not putting wire on belts! :D I made a blueprint out of this and tiled it a total of five in a row ( like so ) and was producing ...

If I have a dozen passive provider chests on the outputs of various assemblers, each making sure that they contain a certain number of various crafted items at all times, the rest of the chest's large inventory is often going to waste. At the same time, when I deconstruct a section of my factory ...

For all the critics: http://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-87

Look at the picture for the concrete paths. He already built a setup worth a working crossing.
The picture just shows gates surrounding a stone (not concrete) path crossing some tracks. The blog doesn't say anything about the gates ...

This is something I have wished for so many times. It's currently extremely cumbersome to get damaged items out of your inventory and into the world where they can be repaired. The only other idea I had for this was to be able to use repair packs on inventory items, but that would probably require ...

Crafting inserters instead of requesting them is a poor counter-example. They take 0.5 second and use basic, very common materials. For example, I typically carry at least 100 gears and one full stack of circuits plus a few hundred iron and a bit of copper, so I can easily make whatever inserters I ...

That might theoretically solve the first problem (I think it might still break because there would still be two overlapping curved tracks where the signal is placed) but it definitely wouldn't solve the second problem (can't put a signal in the middle of a curved piece). Plus it would mean refitting ...

I struggled to get a properly working Y-shaped rail intersection here for a couple of hours, going through several awkward designs (and at one point getting fed up and putting in a roundabout, then going back and ripping it out after figuring out how to do an unjammable T intersection elsewhere ...

When done properly this is guaranteed to result in the same number of items coming out of each output belt *
*as long as there are no item collisions on belts.

Right, that's what I meant when I said I wasn't sure how well it would work on fully packed belts.

As pointed out earlier, it's ...

I just now needed to come up with an even 5-way splitter. Fortunately, I remembered seeing some even 3-way splitters a ways back (I think it was here), and I was able to figure out how to apply the same principle. Here are a couple of more compact variants of the result.

http://i.imgur.com/gFO9NK7 ...

So I got around to a new world and I think I managed to understand what you were referring to with the Fuel Belt.
Like this?
~snip~
Is inserting to the belt faster than to a fast/express side belt? I have noticed that my metal plate output line's are sometimes patchy.
Yeah, that's what I was ...