I wasn't looking for TWO minutes...

[DanielHall15]

Ka-bomf!! Iron plates ate my green science industry!



This keeps happening...

What is an effective way to limit the flow of ingredients into these more complex systems? (Well, the most complex I have tackled so far...) I have tried to use smart inserters and chests at the end of such lines to remove any overspill but sometimes ...

This particular eruption occurred when I found that three of my twelve furnaces had no iron ore to burn. Slap up another iron mine. Then: this. Just when I had gotten over that flashflood of coal clogging up my transport belts...

Is it more effective to put a smart inserter at the end of such lines and feed the overspill onto a transport belt that leads it back to where it came from to re-enter the system there? I obviously have no clue right now...

[Lee_newsum]

this may help you to fix it https://forums.factorio.com/wiki/inde ... tart_Guide

[DerivePi]

I've been working on a sorter for receiving different material, and I keep a similar problem. Perhaps one of the most enjoyable aspects of this game is figuring out an efficient way to keep this from happening.

[SHiRKiT]

The catch is to learn that you can't have two different materials on the same side of the belt, unless you want to explode things.

[Mangledpork]

It looks to me like you overcomplicated your production in a way that you thought would keep it simple by using individual belts to transport a bunch of different things. The problem is that without super-careful balancing and all sorts of sorting systems and such you'll be clearing up clogs all the time. Conventional factories will allocate one resource to one side of a belt and allow no crossover, to prevent this sort of mess.
I advise you switch to not mixing resources on belts, because while it will turn your factory into conveyor belt city, once it's done you'll never have any headaches about mixing resources again.
Assuming you haven't changed much since the screenshot there are only two fixes I can see you needing:
First, move turret production to somewhere around the top left so that iron never joins up with the inserters and conveyors for green science at all. The entire reason your iron is mixing with that stuff is because you're transporting it to the random point where you built those two assemblers, which can be anywhere.
Second, where the iron and copper belts combine, instead keep them separate and send the iron to the gear assembler. That frees up the iron side of that iron/copper belt to put the gears on, meaning they aren't mixed in with the red science packs below anymore.
From there just make sure not to allocate two resources to the same side of a belt, no matter how easy to maintain it may look.

While the example used is much further into the game, you may find this video (of mine, I admit) a little helpful by showing a good production line setup that prevents conveyor-based headaches: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DOHLCCrE_M

I hope this helped!

[DanielHall15]

Thanks guys!

One point I have to make is that the turret production was never intended to be there. I just ended up with this lump of iron plates in the spillover chest and slapped two assemblies there. There isn't even copper going into that production. I dumped a few thousand copper plates from another spillover (I have lots of those) in another box down there...

The bottom belt in turn was there to feed the initial iron plate spillover back into the system once the green science production fell dry due to some other clogging further up the production line.

I think my main mistake here is to have one loooooooong conveyor belt for too many purposes. I tried to fix this here yesterday after posting, but failed... (might try again once I come home from the office today...).

Dabbled a bit with a fresh map late yesterday and came up with this initial setup (no green science yet):



That's 98 minutes into the game. At that point in the other game shown above I had all that green science already slapped into place. The noob's thought process: go slower, go cleaner. I have the belts much more neatly arranged this time. The only thing that is lacking right here (in my bad eyes...) is that the coal belt (which is only for coal! I promise!) only uses one side...

Ah. Learning curve. Very steep...

I appreciate your attempts to help me, though.

[Mangledpork]

To get the coal on both sides you could use a splitter that separates the line into two and sends one to each side of the belt. I don't actually have any videos out on uses of splitters... I'll add it to the list.

[DanielHall15]

Gee, something things are that simple in this game -.-

Yeah, well, six hours into it, going slowly and somewhat thoughtfully:



Sciencey stuff is to the north. I guess next up is digging up oil and doing something with that to get blue beakers.

And as far as the "two minutes" theme is concerned: I was far away in the southwest (some 15 cable lengths of the biggest power poles) linking up a new stone resource, when I was kindly notified that biters were eating my semi-unprotected base. And Daniel manned up, headed home and shot them to pulp. Daniel's a hero, y'know?

[DanielHall15]

First oil processing I got started! Woot!!



Now for the dumb question. I guess, these oil storage tanks will run full after a while (heavy and light oil), and then the basic oil processing would stop, leaving my battery production dry, right?

Next: make sure everything around my (wiiiiiide spread) base got clogged up in the 25 minutes I set this (and the iron and copper plate production down here) up, then go after the solar energy stuff. I already *have* some 200 solar panels, but didn't have any accumulators so far...

OIL!! WHEEEE!!!!

[Mangledpork]

Nice work! And yes, oil processing will stop if one of the fractions can't be drained out of the refinery. You can turn all oil types into solid fuel if you want (works like coal and wood) and once you've researched advanced oil processing you can produce more petroleum gas and also crack the heavier oils into lighter oils to keep your supplies balanced.
It just so happens I have a tutorial on this very topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqqBSz6szDM

[DanielHall15]

Good tutorial! I thumbed you for that one. If I had seen it earlier, the sharp dropoff in oil yield wouldn't have been such a nasty surprise.

That's my whole oil / blue beakers production. You don't actually see any blue beakers, because my oil yield dropped off and my petroleum gas ran out, and I can't get the battery line moving again before drilling into the four oil wells further west (yellow circle). No batteries also means no accumulators (red circle) for the moment, so I can't get that solar farm up to size and can't divest myself of the steam engines. But being a noob I managed to come up with 2.5k of lubricants I have no real use for. Other than (manually) feeding an assembler for the odd electric engine and such (orange circle). I don't have advanced oil processing yet, which is kind of sad given my battery problems...



By the way, yes there are enemies in this game, but I set them to "low", and this whole area is free of them. The eastern side of the big lake here and the area to the north and northwest here is buzzing however. Taking out nests, that's going to be the next task after cleaning up this mess here.

[DanielHall15]

Additional questions:

1. Only crude oil can be barrelled, right?
2. Why the heck is that so?

I would really, really, really, really like to get that lubricant elsewhere, but I don't want to lay a jungle of pipes.

[Mangledpork]

1: yes
2: I guess they decided they needed barrels, but that being able to barrel everything would be a bit too much with having 6 extra items and such.

You can use electric pumps to move liquids around and drain containers/systems, if that helps.

[DanielHall15]

Well, that's unfortunate. There's a barrel, there's some lubricant or light oil or whatever, and there's a Higher Law that forbids to combine them both.

Knowing precious little when you set up your first oil / blue beaker "line" (more like a convoluted maze) brings with it a constant need to tweak and adjust.



After getting the process of breaking down the heavier oil components running, I was suddenly drowning in sulphuric acid. Which is as bad as it sounds.

I am also off steam power now, and I am getting attacked more and more from the western edge. Once, the biters got through the opening in the wall I use to check after some remote coal mines (which are unprotected) and wrecked my secondary iron and copper plate production (which is feeding the blue beaker line). Need more defenses.

[Lee_newsum]

tips:

1) a Steam engine will eat ne Liquids
2) there is some mods that add barreling for all liquids (https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... =14&t=4496)
3) barrels and Trains work well