Simple Questions and Short Answers

Don't know how to use a machine? Looking for efficient setups? Stuck in a mission?
torne
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Re: Simple Questions and Short Answers

Post by torne »

DOM78 wrote:- my researches are going too fast :( not have the time to master something when 20 new features are available...). I've seen a mod to increase the cost of technology but it does not work with the last version. I've seen an expensive mode available but it seems that all the costs are increased, not only technology. Is there a way to increase the cose of technology only ??
The preset expensive mode sets several settings together as you noticed, but you can set them separately: The thing that makes the cost of items higher is "recipe difficulty", which you want to leave on "normal", but you can set a "technology price multiplier" which just makes research more expensive.

I might suggest that instead you just don't bother researching a new thing until you're ready for it, though. When you're getting used to the game it isn't important to have your labs going all the time.
- perhaps I have too much lab (around 12 before being at the blue bottles), is it too much ? at the end of the game, how much of lab do you have when you are ready to close the rocket ?
About 12-20 labs seems to be common for a base whose goal is just to launch a rocket. Megabases doing infinite research might use many more. Near the start, if you can keep 8-10 labs fully supplied that's probably plenty of science.
- I can't understant the purpose of the radar... what they are for ??
Radar does two things:
1) Each one permanently "lights up" the area around the radar on the map, which means you will see anything that happens in that area of the map as soon as it happens (e.g. you will see enemies coming as moving red dots. You usually want your entire base and a bit of area outside your base covered in this way, so that you can see enemies coming. In the latest version of the game, it's also possible to "zoom in" on any radar-covered area in the map and look at what's going on there in detail, and even place blueprints and order deconstruction once you have robots, so you can use it to "remote control" parts of your base in that way.
2) Each one also periodically "scans" a chunk of the map outside of the permanently lit up area, within a larger (not shown on the map) radius. This will add that chunk of the world to the map, with whatever was in it at the time it was scanned, but won't show you any updates in realtime (so, you will see where enemy bases *were*, for example, but when they make a new base you won't see it until that area of the map is scanned again).
- is the map infinite ?? my map does not seem very large, I'm afraid to be limited at the end of the game, I didn't configured it at the begin of my game, not an issue ?
The map is really really big. It's not technically infinite (there's a cap for game engine reasons) but you won't get to the edge in any reasonable amount of time. The reason your map looks small is because you only get to see parts of the map that your character has been to or that have been scanned by radar: if you walk up to the "edge" then it will just add more to the visible map, and if you build radars they will gradually expand the map around themselves up to their maximum scan radius.
- is it possible to improve the action range of the character ? I always need to move him when I'm building something, it's very painfull
Not in the base game. There's a lot of mods which do this, either just "for free" or which add research that does this, but the base game doesn't provide any such thing. Later in the game when you have robots you will be using them for most construction (along with blueprints) and you won't really have to worry too much about your build reach.
- which mod do you consider as necessary or very usefull for a first game ? (especially gameplay or little improvements, not big ones as bobs mod, that will be for a further game)
I'd suggest getting to the point where you understand most of the game mechanics and can launch a rocket before adding any mods, even small UI improvements. Being familiar with what works in the base game is pretty useful and you'll likely be able to decide for yourself what kinds of mods you'd think are interesting or useful. Also, right now many multiplayer servers don't use any mods (because there isn't currently a great mechanism for getting the same mod configuration as the server), so if you're used to a lot of UI mods and haven't played with the basic game that much then it can feel awkward playing on a multiplayer server (which is fun, and you should try it!) Also, having any mods enabled switches you over to a separate storage for achievements which don't sync with Steam/etc, if you care about that. (some of the trickier achievements can be quite fun to think about how to get, or can prompt you to play in a different way to usual)

DOM78
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Re: Simple Questions and Short Answers

Post by DOM78 »

many thanks for your quick and accurate answer !

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Re: Simple Questions and Short Answers

Post by DOM78 »

and one other question:

is it useful for your factory to be efficient (except for your own pleasure ;) ) ?? if you're wasting energy for nothing, it doesn't matter, just build new steam machine ?

I start a new game and, I guess I can start by building a mass mass production for iron/copper plate, and then considering the following.... In a game like Anno, that was not possible, because you had to manage money and also your building had a maintenance cost, so you had to have revenue, by doing a first little supply chain and then to improve it. In factorio you have to build your have to build your factory but not to manage it, and for sure, you will win the game, it's just a question of time, and can't lose due to a bad or not efficient enough management

I have the feeling this aspect is not include in this game, am I correct ? not a critic, just a question ;)

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Re: Simple Questions and Short Answers

Post by Zavian »

In one sense it doesn't matter, but if are doing a speed run, it could be waste of your time building something that you don't need yet. It also creates more pollution earlier than you might otherwise need to. In a normal run none of this matters, but If you are playing on deathworld settings you might value a more efficient use you your time/care more that you don't cause more pollution than you need to, to make sure the aliens don't evolve into a threat you aren't ready to deal with.

torne
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Re: Simple Questions and Short Answers

Post by torne »

Yeah, the enemies are the only forcing function preventing you from being infinitely wasteful. If you spend dozens of hours building the perfect mining and smelting setup, burn tons of coal to power it all, and don't build any walls or turrets then the enemies will become more and more powerful and attack more and more frequently, and if you don't do something about it you may be overwhelmed. However, unless the enemy settings are turned up very high, this is almost always something you can recover from even if you end up in that situation: the research for basic defences is cheap and the most powerful enemies don't spawn until very high levels of evolution, so you're only likely to end up actually losing if you run out of some resource within your reach and can't expand outward because of the enemies' presence.

On deathworld settings where the enemy bases are large and frequent and attacks are aggressive, you do actually have to plan quite carefully early on to make sure that you don't waste the resources inside your defended area on things that don't help you expand to claim more resources, because your defences will constantly be depleting ammo (costing you iron) or energy (costing you coal) on the frequent attacks. Taking care to be energy-efficient where possible can help you in this scenario because you will both use up your coal more slowly and also produce less pollution, and so you'll have more chance to develop your base and research to a sufficient state for long-term survival :)

DOM78
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Re: Simple Questions and Short Answers

Post by DOM78 »

HI,

pff, this game is a hard drug, I spent 5 hours yesterday jsut to optimize totally my melting process (wanted to have a full belt of iron ore in entry and a full belt (with no hole at all) at the outside whithout wasting too much energy), that was a challenge !

another question: I can't see information behind the weapon windows (like power or assembly machine speed), is there a way to remove it ?

same question for the map, possible to remove it ?

Jap2.0
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Re: Simple Questions and Short Answers

Post by Jap2.0 »

Why are your infoboxes so long? You can't remove the weapons bar, but you can remove the minimap (look in the settings - I believe it's in other).
there are GUI changes planned for 0.17, so we can look forward to that :)
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Shenpen
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Re: Simple Questions and Short Answers

Post by Shenpen »

DOM78 wrote:and one other question:

is it useful for your factory to be efficient (except for your own pleasure ;) ) ?? if you're wasting energy for nothing, it doesn't matter, just build new steam machine ?

I start a new game and, I guess I can start by building a mass mass production for iron/copper plate, and then considering the following.... In a game like Anno, that was not possible, because you had to manage money and also your building had a maintenance cost, so you had to have revenue, by doing a first little supply chain and then to improve it. In factorio you have to build your have to build your factory but not to manage it, and for sure, you will win the game, it's just a question of time, and can't lose due to a bad or not efficient enough management

I have the feeling this aspect is not include in this game, am I correct ? not a critic, just a question ;)
In Factorio everything is free, in a way. That is you can make anything from the planet that you have landed on. But if you want to grow a big base you still can't afford to be wasteful or inefficient. Being inefficient will slow down growth and that will limit your factory. What could be done in a week then takes a month, a year or forever. If you want to build big you need to do things right.

That said, nothing prevents you from doing all with an iron axe if that is your fancy.... :)

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Re: Simple Questions and Short Answers

Post by DOM78 »

Is there a way t change the research cost after starting the game (perhaps with the console...). I found my research was going to fast and I restarted a game with x4 research cost. But I want now to to go with spaceX mods and it requires around 600 rocket launches, but I have a work and a family so I would like to go back to normal cost

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Re: Simple Questions and Short Answers

Post by live22morrow »

The command to change research costs to normal is

Code: Select all

/c game.difficulty_settings.technology_price_multiplier=1
Note that this will disable achievements on this save.

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Re: Simple Questions and Short Answers

Post by hreintke »

Hi,

Rather new to the game and have a question on splitters.
The splitters can also be used to combine two belts into one.

I am using this when I transport iron plates to the main line.
Expected from the desriptions that both lanes would merge completely.

But see the picture below :
splitter2.JPG
splitter2.JPG (78.48 KiB) Viewed 5595 times
Looks like the right splitter is working on a lane by lane base. (items on the right lane keep right and do not move to left lane.
The left splitter however, looks like that is working as I expected.

Is there some specific configuration/setting to for this ?

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Re: Simple Questions and Short Answers

Post by Deadly-Bagel »

No, it's as designed. You can have say Iron Plates on one half of the belt and Copper Plates on the other, even when you put them through a splitter the two will not be mixed.

What you need to do is design a Lane Balancer, which splits and mixes the lanes too.
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Re: Simple Questions and Short Answers

Post by FactorioParadox »

When using the "go to" functionality on trains to make it go to a certain train stop in its schedule, is it possible to use this functionality to make it go to disabled stops? I want to have a stop for occasional maintenance if I notice they are damaged or want to take a train off the line without trying to catch up to it rather than having them go there at the end of every schedule.

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Re: Simple Questions and Short Answers

Post by Jap2.0 »

FactorioParadox wrote:When using the "go to" functionality on trains to make it go to a certain train stop in its schedule, is it possible to use this functionality to make it go to disabled stops? I want to have a stop for occasional maintenance if I notice they are damaged or want to take a train off the line without trying to catch up to it rather than having them go there at the end of every schedule.
No. If the station is disabled, you can't make the train go there automatically. You can drive it manually, and you might be able to make this work partially with temporary stops in 0.17.
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Re: Simple Questions and Short Answers

Post by hreintke »

Hi,

Am I correct that train switches can only be used with mininmun two "spaces" between the tracks ?
So that, in the picture below, I cannot get switches in the two left track layouts ?
train_switch.JPG
train_switch.JPG (86.06 KiB) Viewed 5518 times

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DaveMcW
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Re: Simple Questions and Short Answers

Post by DaveMcW »

Yes. But if you are using 2 tracks, you should really consider making them 1-way and not having any connections.

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Re: Simple Questions and Short Answers

Post by LazyLoneLion »

hreintke wrote:Hi,

Am I correct that train switches can only be used with mininmun two "spaces" between the tracks ?
So that, in the picture below, I cannot get switches in the two left track layouts ?
train_switch.JPG
Well, in fact you can use two tracks without any space in-between. But to switch tracks in such case you will need a bigger loop: first out and then back in again, not just a short track.

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Re: Simple Questions and Short Answers

Post by hreintke »

Thanks for the replies.

I've been looking for a mod to be able to create these switches but no luck.
Are you aware of such a mod ?

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Re: Simple Questions and Short Answers

Post by Engimage »

hreintke wrote:Thanks for the replies.

I've been looking for a mod to be able to create these switches but no luck.
Are you aware of such a mod ?
There are no custom rails that I am aware of. So you have to adopt to existing rail tiles curves included.

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Re: Simple Questions and Short Answers

Post by hreintke »

OK,

Another train related question.

I have multiple trains running and all do an "automated refuel" at one of the stations they pass during a trip.

For one of the locomotives this does not work.
I placed inserters all along the loc but still no load.
FuelIssue.JPG
FuelIssue.JPG (124.35 KiB) Viewed 5449 times
All other loc's fuel correctly, also the one on the other end of the "issue loc"

Any hint on where I have a mistake in this setup ?

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