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Hey everyone. I need help now . I've come to a point where I'm stuck and don't know how to further automate anything. It would be nice if there were in-game descriptions of what the objects do but there aren't any. I'm forced to alt-tab to the wiki and find the descriptions there.

Any help would be appreciated. Here's my map.

Maybe you should research automation
It helps automating a lot ^^

[Edit] : sorry : you've already searched automation. Now, you can build assembling machines. You feed them with inserters, and they build whatever you want. You take products they build with other inserters, and put them wherever you want (box, transport belt, ...)

Koub wrote:Maybe you should research automation
It helps automating a lot ^^

I did but I don't know how to use the parts I get!

So ... first of all, you have iron plates. With some of them, you can build iron gears.
You have copper plates. With some of them, you can build copper cables, and with cables and iron plates, you can make green circuits.
With a few iron gears, iron plates, and circuits, you can build your first assembling machine.

And the next step is to do all that building with assembling machines : one for the gears, one for the cables, one for the green circuits, and the last one to build assembling machines.

[Edit] : you can also build directly an assembling machine if you have enouch iron and copper plates for all the intermediary products + the machine. You'll just need a little patience.

Koub wrote:So ... first of all, you have iron plates. With some of them, you can build iron gears.
You have copper plates. With some of them, you can build copper cables, and with cables and iron plates, you can make green circuits.
With a few iron gears, iron plates, and circuits, you can build your first assembling machine.

And the next step is to do all that building with assembling machines : one for the gears, one for the cables, one for the green circuits, and the last one to build assembling machines.

[Edit] : you can also build directly an assembling machine if you have enouch iron and copper plates for all the intermediary products + the machine. You'll just need a little patience.

Gah, so much going on. I'm trying to figure out how to set up my arms to get stuff from boilers, put them on the line and get it to the assembly machine but it's not working

You should let your arms attached to your shoulders, they work better that way

Second : you should not take things from boilers : the sole function of boilers is to ... boil water. They take water from one side, heat it, and spit it hotter to the other side, up to 100°C.
To do that, they use wood, coal, or solid fuel (you'll discover that one later on).

Now for the inserters, you can rotate them with 'R' key (as for all buildings) before building them, or after if you want, just by hovering your cursor on top of one, and pressing 'R' key.
They take items from the yellow marker, and drop items on the yellow arrow. Simple

Koub wrote:You should let your arms attached to your shoulders, they work better that way

Second : you should not take things from boilers : the sole function of boilers is to ... boil water. They take water from one side, heat it, and spit it hotter to the other side, up to 100°C.
To do that, they use wood, coal, or solid fuel (you'll discover that one later on).

Now for the inserters, you can rotate them with 'R' key (as for all buildings) before building them, or after if you want, just by hovering your cursor on top of one, and pressing 'R' key.
They take items from the yellow marker, and drop items on the yellow arrow. Simple

Sorry, I didn't mean boiler. I got that set up going just fine. Here's what I need to do.

1. Automate coal insertion into boilers
2. Automate coal insertion into furnaces
3. Somehow not have to run around picking everything up

Also, why won't my inserters put more into the furnaces or assembly machines unless I take the output from them first?

Build a pair of mining drills, a stack or two of transport belts, and a few yellow inserters.
Place your mining drills on a coal patch, under their exits, place transport belts, and make a transport belt path towards your boiler.
Place an inserter to take coal from the belt, and insert it in the boiler.

Build a few power poles, and power all that setup, and voilà ! you have automated your power production.

[Edit] : Second step, research logistics, build a splitter to divide the output of your coal mining drills in two, and build another path with your transport belts towards your furnaces. Insert coal with inserters, and place another inserter to take plates from furnaces and place it in a wooden crate you'll have conveniently built, and there you are, automated plate production.

From now on, you've got the idea

Koub wrote:Build a pair of mining drills, a stack or two of transport belts, and a few yellow inserters.
Place your mining drills on a coal patch, under their exits, place transport belts, and make a transport belt path towards your boiler.
Place an inserter to take coal from the belt, and insert it in the boiler.

Build a few power poles, and power all that setup, and voilà ! you have automated your power production.

[Edit] : Second step, research logistics, build a splitter to divide the output of your coal mining drills in two, and build another path with your transport belts towards your furnaces. Insert coal with inserters, and place another inserter to take plates from furnaces and place it in a wooden crate you'll have conveniently built, and there you are, automated plate production.

From now on, you've got the idea

Can you only have one path of transport belts from one drill? Is it 1:1? Or can you have two belts to one drill?

Here's what I have after a little rework:



Why is the max coal stack size in a furnace only 5 when put in from an inserter? Is there a way to increase it to the 50 max?
Can boilers be loaded with coal automatically through an inserter?

Tyr4el wrote: Can you only have one path of transport belts from one drill? Is it 1:1? Or can you have two belts to one drill?

You have 2 sides on one belt. You can put one mining drill on each side of a belt, and both the sides will be used.
You have only one exit on a mining drill. Whetever is produced gets out from that single point. If there's a transport belt right at that place, it will mode that output, freeing space for the mining drill to output the next thing it has produced.

Tyr4el wrote:Why is the max coal stack size in a furnace only 5 when put in from an inserter? Is there a way to increase it to the 50 max?

Why would you want to do that ? there is no need to put 50 coal in one boiler, apart for making a buffer. You can make a buffer with a box, and a pair of inserters along the transport belt if you wish.

Tyr4el wrote:Can boilers be loaded with coal automatically through an inserter?

Yes

Okay, so it's a little messy, but here's what I have now after figuring all this out. I still don't understand the two sides to the belt thing though.

Looks like you guys are having a nic, helpful conversation here. Sorry to intrude for moment, but wanted to add in a couple things.
First of all, Tyr4el make sure to turn on Advanced Info by using the Apt key. It will help a lot with figuring things out, because it will show what way a miner is spitting things out, and what way an inserter is placing/picking up, and also very importantly, what an assembly is making, and furnace is smelitng.

Also to answer your question about inserters only putting a few items in, say like a boiler or furnace, that is just how it works. It will give it a few of the required item, and then just top it off when needed. :p This is so that if you have say a line of furnaces, the first one doesn't just take all the resources on the belt first.

Hope this helps, and feel free to post any other questions!

Xterminator wrote:Looks like you guys are having a nic, helpful conversation here. Sorry to intrude for moment, but wanted to add in a couple things.
First of all, Tyr4el make sure to turn on Advanced Info by using the Apt key. It will help a lot with figuring things out, because it will show what way a miner is spitting things out, and what way an inserter is placing/picking up, and also very importantly, what an assembly is making, and furnace is smelitng.

Also to answer your question about inserters only putting a few items in, say like a boiler or furnace, that is just how it works. It will give it a few of the required item, and then just top it off when needed. :p This is so that if you have say a line of furnaces, the first one doesn't just take all the resources on the belt first.

Hope this helps, and feel free to post any other questions!

Yep, I have Alt turned on almost always right now lol. I have my circuit boards being made but they just go into a chest right now. I'm not sure what else to do with them right now. I'm in peaceful mode so I'm sure they would be needed more urgently should it be turned off.

Koub wrote:

2 drills 1 belt.JPG

That helps! Thanks!

Some random thoughts to the ongoing discussion. I hope some of that helps you going on

If you got that green circuit production working, try to automate research. That's a good way to start! For that, you need:

- A furnace line with, say, 6-10 iron furnaces and maybe 4-6 copper furnaces. It's not that hard to build and gives you a feeling for expandable mass production.
- 2-3 Assemblies that make red science potions (set that one up first; green is a bit more advanced because it needs more steps before you get the finished product)
- 3-4 Assemblies that make green science potions
- Now put those red and green potions on a belt and lead it to some research labs (i would recommend 10 for starters)



For the furnace setup: try to lead your belts besides your furnaces, not right to them. Like this:

========
X X X X X
=======
=======
X X X X X
========

X are furnaces, = are transport belts. Bring in ore and coal on the two belts in the middle, and put the iron on the outer belts. You can then lead those outer belts wherever you need the iron! Same goes for copper. You need red (far) inserters, they take stuff from farther away (1 tile more range than the normal inserters). So both furnace lines can grab iron and coal from the middle, no matter if it's on the upper or bottom transport belt.



Some things you should know about the two lines of a transport belt:

When an inserter puts something on a belt, it will ALWAYS put it on the side which is farther away from it (just watch them work, you'll see). If they take something from a belt though, they will prefer the near side, but are able to take from BOTH sides of the belt (so you don't have to worry about what side to use to bring it to them). And if an inserter puts something in an assembler, it will ONLY take stuff from the belt that the assembly needs; you don't have to worry about inserters just taking random stuff.

One more thing about things like furnaces or assemblies and the buffer size: Imagine you have the setup I mentioned earlier. Now, the first furnace grabs like 50 coal and 50 ore before the second furnace can even start to work. That one does the same, and so on. Your furnace setup would be pretty ineffective, simply because the inserters load HUGE buffers into the machines. Instead, they only take enough to do two more production cycles I think (that's 4 or 5 in most cases). It's enough so the furnace can work all the time without stopping, but it's not so much buffer that no other furnace gets anything. I hope that clarified that.

Oh, and a general hint: If you got an idea, just build it. Don't overthink things (like I tend to do), just do it and fix / optimize it then. It's often times much better to simply start and see what's the problem while working on it. Factorio is fantastic in that regard: you should always be able to find the error by simply following your belts and looking at the production line. Often times, it's pretty obvious what went wrong (at least with a small bit of experience).

Maybe seeing a big factory in action would give you some ideas?
I've got a sandbox level I use to test designs and stuff in. The factory is mostly finished and there are thousands of resources to play with. The factory uses a 'bus' design like you'd see in electronics; parallel belts with everything stocked and factories in expandable rows tied in to the sides. It's certainly not the most efficient factory out there but it works and is easier to understand than some of the spaghetti factory designs.
The biters are defeated too, the only remaining hives are down in one corner of the world behind a self-repairing laser turret wall.
Feel free to go crazy with the auto-shottie if you like. Most of the structures in there will be repaired/auto-produced and replaced when destroyed.

It's was started on version 11.19
Mirror1:
http://wikisend.com/download/518278/San ... eserve.zip
Mirror2:
http://www.filedropper.com/sandboxnaturepreserve Just drop it in your C:\Program Files\Factorio\saves folder and load the Sandbox Nature Preserve saved game.

Hey, thank you guys for the help!

I actually started over using what I learned from looking at pictures and watching videos. And I'm currently watching MangledPork's Season 2: Railworld series which is helping a lot too. But I have a question about assembly lines. How much do you prefer form over function? For example, I'm weird and like symmetrical and neat assembly lines but I'm having trouble doing that and it's probably holding me back. Whereas if I just built it to get it working, I probably wouldn't be so stuck. Do you all just build for neat and pretty or do you just build it to work?

Thanks for all the help!

Here you go friend.

Try to figural it out by yourself. Remember all of us had difficulties at the beginning. If you have 0 imagination like my then google for "factorio furnances setup", "factorio steam engine setup".

Good luck!

Tyr4el wrote:I'm weird and like symmetrical and neat assembly lines but I'm having trouble doing that and it's probably holding me back. Whereas if I just built it to get it working, I probably wouldn't be so stuck. Do you all just build for neat and pretty or do you just build it to work?

I spent hours to make it symmetrical and just to look it great overkill with walls and turret just to make it look bountiful. Big suggestion: Play for 40hours and then only use mods (there are a lot of awesome mods!) Also multiplayer is much fun

Tyr4el wrote:Do you all just build for neat and pretty or do you just build it to work?

Just to answer to that question : If it works, but is ugly, you can always make it pretty later on, further away.
If it's pretty, aesthetically perfect, but totally disfunctional, you'll never get the chance to build something more efficient later on : you'll have lost long before.

Some people here will tell you yeah I build beautiful AND efficient things. That's true, but I'm sure none of them is in his first game, and if someone in his first game makes such an efficient and beautiful thing, it's most likely copied somewhere else. You have the basics. Practice, make mistakes, learn, and get better. Is you rely too much on what others have found to be clever designs, you'll miss the most important.

Koub wrote:

Tyr4el wrote:Do you all just build for neat and pretty or do you just build it to work?

Just to answer to that question : If it works, but is ugly, you can always make it pretty later on, further away.
If it's pretty, aesthetically perfect, but totally disfunctional, you'll never get the chance to build something more efficient later on : you'll have lost long before.

Some people here will tell you yeah I build beautiful AND efficient things. That's true, but I'm sure none of them is in his first game, and if someone in his first game makes such an efficient and beautiful thing, it's most likely copied somewhere else. You have the basics. Practice, make mistakes, learn, and get better. Is you rely too much on what others have found to be clever designs, you'll miss the most important.

So true. I'm just going to make it all work. I have a setup right now but was so afraid of tearing it down because it was giving me different parts I need, but I'll remake it in a different location lol.