whats a good starting strategy?

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cooltv27
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whats a good starting strategy?

Post by cooltv27 »

so ive restarted maps a few times now (playing several worlds different ways) and I noticed the start is always really slow, even slower then other resource gathering games
I normally place the miner on coal and get 5 by and for it to mine, then manually grab stone and iron and smelt the iron
I then get the second miner on coal facing into each other and grab more iron and stone for more drills and place the third on iron, and the fourth on stone
just wanted to know a faster way of starting, so I can jump into the game faster

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DaveMcW
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Re: whats a good starting strategy?

Post by DaveMcW »

Miner 1 on iron, filling a furnace.
Miner 2 on stone, filling a box.

Feed them with wood until you get coal set up.

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Re: whats a good starting strategy?

Post by cooltv27 »

alright, ill try that soon
but a constant problem I face (this has held true for over 50 maps) is I never spawn near any trees, so I have to save all the wood for power poles, and still normally dont have enough

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Re: whats a good starting strategy?

Post by bobingabout »

Yeah, can be hard when you don't spawn near trees.

Of course, this small guide works best if you do start with some trees, you need them to make the wooden boxes, but for the most part coal will work instead... Also helps if you staart with a patch of all 4 ores relatively close to each other, they don't need to be large patchs, just large enough to place a couple of drills on each.

Usual routine for me:
Use all iron to make axes
mine a couple trees
place miner on coal, insert single log
Placing a wooden box in the miner's exit tile helps
Mine some coal, or stone by hand, or more trees while the miner does it's cycle
pick up miner, place on iron, place furnace on miner exit, insert fuel in both.
once you have enough iron plates to make 3 more mining drills, pick it up and place on stone.
Turn your furnace into a second miner.
place one on coal, and one on stone, with boxes on exits.
as you get stone, make 3 more mining drills, and 2 furnaces. Place one on copper, and one on iron. Copper and iron furnaces feed into furnaces.
Fuel with coal, keep them all running.

Start building belts and burner inserters.
make a simple belt line that runs around one side of the coal miner, and past each of the other 3 miners.
add burner inserters to insert coal into each of the 4 mining drills and 2 furnaces.
Optionally add another inserter at the end of the line to move spare coal into a box.

you should now have automated mining of all 4 resources.
Build a second coal mine to add coal to the other side of the belt.
Build a second iron mine and furnace. (You'll need more iron than the other resources)

This should keep you ticking over while you work on other things, like a power system and some labs.
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Re: whats a good starting strategy?

Post by Boogieman14 »

My normal start goes roughly along these lines:
1. Craft iron axe
2. Chop a bunch of trees while I run around to get the lay of the land
3. Place a miner on an iron patch with a furnace at the exit, feed some wood
4. Manually mine some stone and probably more wood (I like to at least clear all ore patches of trees asap)
5. Craft next burner miner and furnace, place this combination on copper, feed trees to burn
6. Mine more stone, craft 3 miners, 3 chests and 2 burner inserters
7. Place 1 miner+chest on a stone patch
8. Place 2 miners on a coal patch, both exiting into a chest with a burner inserter feeding the other miner with fuel to burn:
Image

After this I'll usually start work on getting a steam engine up and periodically drop some coal into the various miners and furnaces (the latter is obviously not required for the coal miners, those will run until the coal runs out). Once I have power, I'll set up a lab and craft some science packs manually, and shortly after I'll have electric miners on iron and copper and furnaces with belts to feed ore and coal into them.
I don't have OCD, I have CDO. It's the same, but with the letters in the correct order.

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Re: whats a good starting strategy?

Post by Xecutor »

@Boogieman14: This coal mining setup just burns coal for nothing. You can put 2 miners to face each other and, as a result, feed each other.

Usually first 3 couples of miner+furnace I set on iron. It's most significant bottleneck early on.
Then 2 self-feeding miners for coal, and 2 for stone.
Then 2 more iron, 2 more coal, and only then 2 for copper.

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Re: whats a good starting strategy?

Post by Boogieman14 »

No, that mining setup burns coal to mine coal :) Feeding the miners directly into each other limits the amount stored to the max stacksize. My setup is only limted by the chest size.
I don't have OCD, I have CDO. It's the same, but with the letters in the correct order.

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Re: whats a good starting strategy?

Post by Xecutor »

Boogieman14 wrote:No, that mining setup burns coal to mine coal :) Feeding the miners directly into each other limits the amount stored to the max stacksize. My setup is only limted by the chest size.
Usually at that stage of the game you collect coal very often, so chances to reach stack size limit are very low.
At least in my games :)

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Re: whats a good starting strategy?

Post by Peter34 »

DaveMcW wrote:Miner 1 on iron, filling a furnace.
Miner 2 on stone, filling a box.

Feed them with wood until you get coal set up.
I mine coal with my starting Axe. The Wood I gather is too precious to burn - I need it to make Chests, and later Small Power Poles! And it has to be manually gathered, all of it, which is what makes it so precious. I'd be happy to manually dig out 5-6 units of Coal, if it means I'll have to chop down fewer trees, because Coal-gathering can be automated.

Plonk down the starting Mine on Iron, "farting" (that's a technical term, apparently) the ore directly into a Furnate. Then mine a little Coal. 2 Coal in the Mine gives you 14 Iron Ore, and 1 Coal in the Furnace is enough to melt 10 or 11 of those (yes, I've done stringent testing of early game efficiency figures). With those 10 Plates you can make a 2nd Mine. Plonk it down on Coal.



So I say, mine 7 units of Coal early on. Plonk down Mine+Furnace on Iron (add 4 to Mine, 2 to Furnace - save the last), then go out gathearing Wood which you'll need, some soon for Chests, much more later for Small Power Poles. You shouldo also gather 5 Stone, ir preferably 10 (you'll need 5 right away, but 5 more soon after). When you come back, take the Iron Plates and make a 2nd Miner Drill. Plonk that down on Coal and feed it your last unit of Coal. That'll give you 7 more Coal. If you feed all of that to the Coal Miner it'll become a bit over 50 additional Coal (7.4 Coal mined per Coal of fuel), but you should feed only most of it to the Coal Miner, and give a little to your Iron Miner too (the Furnace will probably still have some fuel in it).

You're also going to need some Stone, by the way. 5 Stone for the Coal Miner Drill. Then later on 5 more Stone to make a Stone Miner Drill. Only after that should you make a 2nd Coal Miner Drill and go for Copper Miner Drill. And I'd do 2 Coal Miners before I get into Copper. It's not needed in vast quantities early game, whereas Iron Plates are the limiter on your self-crafting.

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Re: whats a good starting strategy?

Post by DaveMcW »

Do you guys purposely restart until you land in the middle of a desert? I never have problems finding wood.

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Re: whats a good starting strategy?

Post by Peter34 »

Boogieman14 wrote:No, that mining setup burns coal to mine coal :) Feeding the miners directly into each other limits the amount stored to the max stacksize. My setup is only limted by the chest size.
Both of you have a point. But the problem with using chests as buffers, early game, is that each Burner Inserter burns 1 Coal to move only 47 items. I tested it with moving Stone, and 2 Coal as fuel gave me 94 moved Stone, 47 per Coal, with no reason to assume that Coal, Iron Ore or Copper Ore weighs any more or less than Coal does.

This means that the efficiency loss, per Burner Inserter used to move Coal, is a bit over 2%. If you have 50 Coal you need moved, you'll end up with actually only 47 point something Coal moved, the last 2 point something (2.13 to be more exact) having been wasted.

I sincerely hope electric Inserters are a lot more energy-efficien than that. Because I tend to find myself using multiple Inserters in any given process. Usually at least two, one to take it from a Chest and move it to a belt, and another to take it from the Belt and move it into another Chest. With ore it's usually four. One to take from the Miner's Chest to first Belt, another to take from first Belt to Furnace, a third to take from Furnace to 2nd Belt, a fourth to take from 2nd Belt to somewhere else (usually this somewhere else is a buffer Chest, adding a 5th step, then a 6th Inserter step to move it out from the buffer Chest onto another Belt).

Each Burner Inserter used to move Coal costs 2.13%, 0.0213 units of Coal. The remainder is thus 100% - 2.13% = 97.87%.

With a two-Burner Inserter "chain", the remainder is 97.87% times itself twice (or lifted to the 2nd power), so only 95.79% are left.

That's not bad. But if you have a "chain" of four Burner Inserters, then it's 97.87% lifted to the 4th power, showing that only 91,75% are left. You've now lost more than 8% in total.

For a "chain" of six, it's 97.87% lifted to the sixth power, which gives 87,89%. You've now lost more than 12% of the Coal you started with.

Of course, those figures are for Burner Inserters, which are easy to test. I just plonkd down 2 Chests, stuffed one with Stone, the other empty, then put a fresh Burner Inserter between then, fed it 2 Coal, and went AFK. When I came back, 94 Stone had been moved.

I am assuming that the efficiency loss for electric Inserters is less than 2.13%. Hopefully rather a lot less. 1.5%, one could hope. Which - again - sounds like a trivial difference, but when you compound it through the massive "chains" of Inserters used in the game, it adds up. 98.5% to the 6th power is 91,33%, so now a bit over 8.5% is lost, instead of a bit over 12%. If it's 1% then a bit under 6% are lost. If it is 0.5% then around 3% are lost.

I don't know what the inefficinecy value/loss value is for electric Inserters. I just know that it has got to be lower than 2.13%.

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Re: whats a good starting strategy?

Post by Peter34 »

DaveMcW wrote:Do you guys purposely restart until you land in the middle of a desert? I never have problems finding wood.
I like deserts. The terrain colour is a nice contrast to the various things I build and gather. So yes, I usually restart until I find meself in desertland with nice deposits of Iron and Coal nearby, some Copper not too far away, and at least a minimum of Stone and some water.

As for trees, you just have to run a bit, in a desert, to find them. Find a biome border or something, plenty of trees there. Or if you can't find that then run around gathering deadwood. Those are very scattered, which is annoying, but it's still doable to gather a stack of 50 or 60, although it's nicer to have 150-200, which is what I'll gather if I can find a patch of forest near my desert starting area.

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Re: whats a good starting strategy?

Post by Boogieman14 »

DaveMcW wrote:Do you guys purposely restart until you land in the middle of a desert? I never have problems finding wood.
Same here, I've actually been hoping for a somewhat less wooded starting area. In one of my more recent games, I've even added explosive termites because it was such a pain to get through that darn forest.
I don't have OCD, I have CDO. It's the same, but with the letters in the correct order.

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Re: whats a good starting strategy?

Post by Xecutor »

For me optimal starting point is something like wood to the left and desert to the right :)

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Re: whats a good starting strategy?

Post by Boogieman14 »

Peter34 wrote:This means that the efficiency loss, per Burner Inserter used to move Coal, is a bit over 2%.

You clearly play the game differently than me :P I absolutely don't care about efficiency, if there's not enough, I'll put down more miners. If there's no space for more miners, I'll build a train to somewhere I can put down more miners :) I've been known to build fields of radars to increase power usage so I have a reason to keep those trains running and hauling in coal :lol: (and yes, in my last few games, I stuck with steam power for that same reason ;) )
I don't have OCD, I have CDO. It's the same, but with the letters in the correct order.

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Re: whats a good starting strategy?

Post by Xecutor »

@Boogieman14 : But we are talking about game start, where every piece of coal counts :)
So, efficiency is important in context of OP.

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Re: whats a good starting strategy?

Post by Boogieman14 »

Hardly. At least in the games I've played there's only been one instance where I got into a bit of a tight spot because my base ran out of coal. In my latest game, I'm actually turning coal into oil (Bob's mods) because I have so much of the stuff (and hardly any oil in base) :)
I don't have OCD, I have CDO. It's the same, but with the letters in the correct order.

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Re: whats a good starting strategy?

Post by Peter34 »

Boogieman14 wrote:
Peter34 wrote:This means that the efficiency loss, per Burner Inserter used to move Coal, is a bit over 2%.

You clearly play the game differently than me :P I absolutely don't care about efficiency, if there's not enough, I'll put down more miners. If there's no space for more miners, I'll build a train to somewhere I can put down more miners :) I've been known to build fields of radars to increase power usage so I have a reason to keep those trains running and hauling in coal :lol: (and yes, in my last few games, I stuck with steam power for that same reason ;) )
The reason I did that analysis was for the early game. I was wondering how to best allocate my scarce early-game Coal. How much to Burner Drills, how much to Furnaces, how much to Burner Inserters

What I found is this:
1 Coal in Miner yields 7.4 result (e.g. almost 7.5 Coal, Iron Ore or Copper Ore, or presumably almost 7.5 Stone.
1 Coal in a Stone Furnace can melt a bit over 10 units of Iron Ore or Copper Ore. Maybe 11, but not much more. Between 10 and 11.5.
1 Coal in a Burner Inserter can move 47 items from one Chest to another Chest.

After the early game, I'll just shrug and use the power. I don't mind. But early game, I feel this urge to get out of the steam age, get electricity going, so I can do research and automated production.

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Re: whats a good starting strategy?

Post by Xterminator »

DaveMcW wrote:Do you guys purposely restart until you land in the middle of a desert? I never have problems finding wood.
Yeah same here. I rarely get a map without tries, and personally I like having tons of trees around as long as it leaves me room to build. Slows pollution, and is more pretty imo. :D

As for cooltv's question... I pretty much have the same answer as everyone, so not going to go in to detail. :p
I plop first miner on iron with it dumping into a furnace, then feed them with wood, then make 2 more miners and place them on coal facing each other, them one more with a furnace on stone, then last one on copper with furnace.
From there I just go straight to electricity. Unless I get a horrible starting area ( like no trees, or resources really spread out), then this whole process only takes me like 10-15 minutes max. ;)

Hope this helped mate!
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Re: whats a good starting strategy?

Post by Peter34 »

Do we have a time for how long it takes for two facing Coal Drills to fill up? As i how many minutes it's safe to leave then unattended?

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