Tackling purple bottle production

[factoriobiker]

I mean this is ridiculous, i came to the stage of the game where i need pursple flaskets. But producing it - i cant even grasp my mind around it.....
it needs so many elements.....

i tried to copy blueprint from here
https://factorioprints.com/view/-L_XIDD8IjNqEbhK7KS6

i press copy and i cant paste it in my game, i press B and nothing happens i use ctrl + v

[Serenity]

The game obviously gets more complicated with time. It's not that difficult. Just take a step a time and don't worry too much about making it compact. You learn a lot more if you don't use other people's blueprints right away.
The only real issue is the huge number of rails, which can be solved by using red belt for that

[factoriobiker]

can you feed items into assembling machine with underground belts directly? I thought you need an inserter

[Khagan]

can you feed items into assembling machine with underground belts directly? I thought you need an inserter

You do need an inserter, and all the assemblers in the blueprint you linked to are fed by inserters. What may not be obvious is that the inserter can take from or put to the underground belt hood; you don't have to have a length of non-underground belt for it to work on. Note also that the description of that blueprint is not entirely accurate: it's 45 spm, not 60 spm (someone forgot to correct for blue assemblers); but that's plenty anyway.

[5thHorseman]

can you feed items into assembling machine with underground belts directly? I thought you need an inserter

You cannot. You do need an inserter.

In episode 47 of my Beginners series I talk about Purple science. I start at about 23:47

https://youtu.be/nifgTk_nSMQ?t=1427

I continue it in episode 48.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7N0Af_WagY

As it's more of a "Let's Play" there may be concepts in the videos that I don't cover. Feel free to ask if you have questions.

[factoriobiker]

I decided not to use blueprint but to do it myself, till now i never used any blueprint so my purple is almost done

[starlinvf]

You want to consider looking at your smelting set up.... because purple puts a huge demand on iron plates (because of the steel), and its around this point in the game you have a massive cascade of supply shortages on Iron production that require a bottom up increase in throughput.

The Rails require iron rods and steel plates. Both of which require iron plates.... so Iron plate demand sky rockets. So you'll need to expand your Iron smelting. This in turn demands more Iron ore, requiring more drills. Those drills require a lot of Electricity, which means you need to expand your power production if its already close to max... which it usually always is.

A pro tip to save on Electricity. Yellow inserters are fast enough to handle either of the coal-fuel furnaces, including steel production, but take up around a 1/3 of the electricity to operate. Given the large number of them in use, these can save a fair bit of electricity. A similar principle applies to many of the assemblers; as anything with a crafting time more then a few seconds (total, including speed bonuses) can usually be offloaded fast enough with the yellow inserters. Input, on the other hand, requires more calculation. Like Putting 2 Yellow to input for Iron gears on an AM1 keeps the machine from stalling- but that changes with both AM2 and Inserter stack bonuses, as one fast inserter able to grab 2 plates can just barely prevent it machine from stalling. Or how with Copper wire, you need the reverse, because it takes 1 plate to make 2 wire. And of course, Eff1 modules in drills until you're ready to put them on speed beacons.

...... but Belts? Belts are a damn nightmare. Red Belts being the first true taste of building a big production line just to make one item in bulk. Typically I have 4 AM2s (maybe 6) making enough gears to create Red belts (and the yellow pre-cusrors) in Bulk. And just to save me head aches later, I put a chest at the end to stock 3 stacks of excess gears, so I can craft UBs and splitters when I need them. Same with Blue inserters and Green/Red Circuits so I can make smart/stack inserters on the fly. And a stack of Copper wire for extra power poles and network wires, since its not really worth producing in bulk until late game (if ever).

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention you'll do it again when you start making Blue belts. And this time, you can't hand craft the blue splitters and UBs- so you'll want to set up a production line (which also demands even larger amounts of gears), so you're not standing around (waiting for gears) to make the red ones to stick into the machine like you would for some older items.

[factoriobiker]

biggest problem in making purple flasks are red circuits, lack of them, so for 4 purple flask production boxes I would need like 20 green ones to fill the red ones

[Serenity]

production boxes

Are you constantly inventing new names for things on purpose? It's getting tiresome.

And it's nowhere that bad:
https://kirkmcdonald.github.io/calc.htm ... e-pack:f:7

You need a lot of red circuit assemblers because of the slow crafting time. That's normal. The game has a natural progression where things get more complicated and bigger. But to feed 7 science assemblers you only need a little more than 4 green circuit assemblers. And that's including the circuits for the modules. Otherwise you need 1 green for 6 red

Needing to increase red circuit production is real, but as already noted the actual cost of the science pack is in the steel and iron. It's an incentive to massively upgrade your smelting and bring in iron with trains. Yes, you're going to have material shortages. Especially at this point. It's not the end of the world. You need to increase production accordingly. And eventually that won't be enough either. That's the whole game!

[starlinvf]

biggest problem in making purple flasks are red circuits, lack of them, so for 4 purple flask production boxes I would need like 20 green ones to fill the red ones

Look at the craft times of those items, and do a little math. Divide Purple's Red Circuit demand by crafting time in seconds to figure out how many Reds you need per second to satisfy one Purple producing AM. Multiply that number by 6, because a Red circuit takes 6s to craft. Thats how many Red circuit AMs you need to keep it running.

But to make things easy.... also look at the craft times of red, green and blue science packs, and then realize Red and Green produce one per cycle, while Blue and Purple make 2 and 3 respectively. So you only need 1/3rd the number of machines to roughly match Red/Green production rate. This makes the rest of the scaling equation a lot less daunting.... so you don't actually need 30 red circuit AMs to feed purple.

But if you think Red are bad.... wait until you get to Blue Circuits and the massive amounts of Green circuits it wants..... Hope you have a good copper smelting set up, because you're gonna need a LOT of copper wire here in a bit.

[Kyralessa]

Are you constantly inventing new names for things on purpose? It's getting tiresome.

Who's forcing you to post, then? How do you expect a new player to instantly know what everything is called?

Take your rudeness elsewhere.

[Serenity]

How do you expect a new player to instantly know what everything is called?

It's in the game. Jeez. And renaming some things here and there is fine. Everyone does that. Especially science packs and circuits. But literally everything?

[factoriobiker]

i cant remember what is each item called....i guess i ruined your day with that? really? did you have a bad day cause the spitters have no class?

[5thHorseman]

Verbal artillery aside, it's important to use correct terminology when discussing difficult topics. Do you really want to add misunderstandings by us into what you are trying to do into the mix?

Now calling inserters "arms" and Production Science "purple science" is one thing, but I don't actually know what a "production box" is. A crate holding production science? An assembler creating production science? The production science pack itself? Something else?

People (on both sides) could be nicer about it but when words are the only form of communication, taking care to use the correct ones will get you a lot farther than sparring with others over their issues with your incorrect terminology.