Bunch of questions from new player

[Peter34]

I've read the official wiki. Probably every single page of it. But I still have some unanswered questions.

1. Is there a way to move electricity long distances without setting up a line of poles (which costs Wood, which must be gathered manually)? I think I once read something that alluded o being able to lay down coppe wire to move power from one "zone of industry" to another, but when I tried that in-game with Copper Wire nothing happened. I know later in the game I can get better poles, with longer wires, longer zone effect, and not requiring Wood to build, but I'm talking early game and early-mid game.

2. How can I know when I need to build more Steam Engines? I think I know when I need to add more Boilers, or start adding fuel to passive reserve Boilers that I've already built (even though the game behaves inconsistently with regards to temperature in piping), but it's not clear to me when I'm close to the edge of electricity supply. Suddenly some of my Inserters start to move slowly, or erratically, or just hang there and dance, and then I rush to add another Steam Engine or two. But I'd like to get advance warning of this, so I can skip the several-minutes-long phase-of-nonautomation. What in-game tools helps me to know this?

3. Is heat energy lost if I move pipes underground? I like to have some segments of underground pipe, so I can more easily move around in my base and defend it, but I'm concerned that that causes thermal energy loss, compared to if the pipes are run above ground for the same distance. Realistically, as in physics, it should be the other way around, but this is a game, and games sometimes gets things wrong. So is more thermal energy lost, or is it the same?

4. Is significant heat lost if I have a long length of pipe between the Boilers and the Steam Engine?

5. Is it a good or bad idea to split the pipes, so that I start with a Pump, then I have one Boiler section, and after the Boiler section to heat the water I split the water up into 2 or 3 or even 4 separate lines. Then I add a Steam Engine to one line, leaving the others passive. Later again I add another Steam Engine, then after that I start adding Steam Engines to the other lines.

6. Is there a bug or some strange behaviour when re-joining lines? Once I had a setup where I had a Pump, then I piped water from it, split it into 2 lines, each line got 7 Boilers (only 2 on one line got fueled, none on the other line), then I re-joined those into a single pipe line and put a couple of Steam Engines on it. Which seemed to not work well.

7. Is there a printer-friendly version of the early tech tree? As in black-and-white?

More questions to come later, perhaps in a couple of days.

[Florian]

1. Poles are the only way afaik. but you can gather wood with construction robots by using the red bluprint (don't know the exact name).

2. click on a pole and you get an overview of the electric network. but only the network which the pole is connected.

[Peter34]

1. Poles are the only way afaik. but you can gather wood with construction robots by using the red bluprint (don't know the exact name).

Is this robotic wood-gathering process available in the early game phase?

[Eurofighter1200]

1. You can make other Poles its not so hard only need the research and steel and copper plates

3./4. I dont know but i know that if the pips is to long you lost thermal heat so its good if the steamengines are really close to the boilers

5. You can split the boiled waterpipes yes but you can see on the pipes hoch much water is in it an how warm it is so you split too much both goes down and the effectiveness on the steamenginnes go down

6. dont know about a bug

[sillyfly]

Some more answers (as far as I know):

1. As said earlier - the only way is with poles. The tech for the medium and big poles only requires red and green science packs, so it shouldn't be hard to get fairly early.ew

2. Again, as said before - click on any power pole to open the electric overview screen. There is a page on the wiki describing it, but the main thing you should look at is the two bars at the top - the consumption bar shows the amount of energy consumed, relative to how much is desired. In ideal conditions this bar is full. If it is less than full - you don't have enough electricity production - if it is 50% full it means you only produce 50% of the electricity you actually need, etc.
The second bar shows the amount of energy produced, relative to the maximum potential to produce. In ideal conditions this bar should not be full. If it is full it means that your steam engines are working at full capacity, and it may not be enough. If it is 50% full it means you only consume half of what you can produce.
The numbers here are also helpful - every steam engine can produce 510kW in ideal conditions (enough water and temperature). For simplicity let's say it's 0.5MW. So if your consumption is at 5MW but the bar is only half full it means you actually need 10MW, so - at least 10 (10*0.5MW = 5MW) more steam engines. If on the other hand your consumption bar is full at say 2MW it means you could have as little as 4 (4*0.5MW = 2MW) steam engines. But it's always good to have some extra.

3/4. As far as I know heatloss is not modeled - heat is only lost in steam engines. I remember a post showing you can store heated liquids in storage tanks, then use them as necessary. This is not to say that it won't be a factor in the future - I don't know what the devs plan for it. If anyone has a reference as to heat loss in pipes I'll be happy to see it

5. Generally I don't think there is a problem with splitting, as long as you have enough water capacity - 1 pump can support up to ~10 steam engines. I admit though that I never splitted to more than 2 branches. I try to plan in advance for room for 13-14 boilers and 10 steam engines.

6. re-joining doesn't really work, and should probably be avoided. Again, I remember a post (can't find it now) where one of the developers says we should be thankful it even works, and perhaps some work will be done into it in the future.

7. Not that I know of, and it is subject to change anyways with subsequent releases.

Hope this helps, and please correct me if I got anything wrong (which I'm sure I have! )

[n9103]

Long time player, confirming sillyfly's statements.

The Steam Energy Ratio: 1 Pump to 14 Boilers to 10 Engines for every 5 MW

Stick to that, and keep your layouts as simple as possible, and you'll be fine.

[ssilk]

See also the wiki https://forums.factorio.com/wiki/inde ... le=Liquids
I think all questions are answered there.

[Florian]

1. Poles are the only way afaik. but you can gather wood with construction robots by using the red bluprint (don't know the exact name).

Is this robotic wood-gathering process available in the early game phase?

i would say in early-mid game. You don't need blue sience packs.

[n9103]

It's clearly a mid-game process, since you need everything that goes into blue packs to build the bots.