Main bus, a whole belt of processing units?

[sparr]

I keep seeing guides that suggest one (or, even worse) two belts of processing units, to go with four belts of green circuits.

1 blue takes 20 green and 2 red. 1 red takes 2 green. So, it would take *24* input belts of green circuits to make a single belt of blue circuits.

Even half a belt would still take three times as many green circuits as are being used by the entire rest of the factory.

Are people using a whole belt for convenience, but not planning to saturate it? Or are people actually diverting 75% of their green circuit production to make blue circuits?

[Mehve]

If memory serves me right, processing units used to be important in earlier versions of Factorio (pre 0.12?), to build missile defenses. You might be looking at an older guide?

But in the current version, a full belt of processing units is ridiculous. Even with my 2 rocket/minute build, I was only using half a blue belt of processing units.

[sparr]

The guides in question are definitely newer than that. I think they just aren't planning to saturate that belt.

[Mehve]

Well, far be it for me to say someone is doing things "wrong" in a game like this, but even if you wanted to keep processing units close at hand, I can't see any practical reason that you'd want more than a single lane dedicated to them. Aside from rockets, the stuff that uses processing units includes things like modules and armor equipment - none of which are disposable.

[bk5115545]

By the time you have processing units you should have a bunch of logistic drones to move things around. I find that they're used so rarely that I just use drones to move them around.

If you're going for the achievement where you don't use requestor chests then using drones is a lot more of a manual-labor solution.

[Hannu]

I keep seeing guides that suggest one (or, even worse) two belts of processing units, to go with four belts of green circuits.

1 blue takes 20 green and 2 red. 1 red takes 2 green. So, it would take *24* input belts of green circuits to make a single belt of blue circuits.

Such huge factories are usually done with productivity modules and speed moduled beacons. Then one blue circuit needs 16.3 green circuits. One yellow belt can be filled by using 5.4 blue belts of green circuits.

Are people using a whole belt for convenience, but not planning to saturate it? Or are people actually diverting 75% of their green circuit production to make blue circuits?

Most players do not fill even one half of yellow belt. Filled belt is needed only if you are going to do one rocket per minute base or use end game mods which uses massive amounts of resources.

75 % is ratio which does not depend on scale of production. If you launch rockets most of your green circuits are used (straight and through reds) to blues which are used in control units.

[iceman_1212]

My observation is that the vast majority of folks choose # of main bus lanes for items such as steel, blue circuits and red circuits for purposes of aesthetics/symmetry.

2 full blue belts of blue circuits is just about good for ~10RPM, which is obviously well beyond the limits of a main bus type base.

[Linosaurus]

It would indeed look pretty neat to have them fill up when you're not using them for a while.