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I decided the best way to take advantage of Factorio's infinite maps was to build a really cramped base in the starting location. Here's the result (hi rez warning: 12,000x6,500 pixels). There's nothing novel in the design outside of a few overly-Macgyvered belts and inserters. Oh, and the the mine depletion indicators. I'm kind of proud of those. What do you think? Praise, constructive criticism, and trolling are all equally welcome.

This is very sexy indeed. How big are your solar fields ? we just see the tip of them on your screenshot.
[Edit] : typos

This is one of the nicest set up that I have ever a seen - and I have seen many.
Please share the save file - one can learn a lot from this epic setup.

I wish I could build such beautiful factories... Mine always end up being a giant mess

True words were spoken, that's a handsome base you got here, thanks for sharing. Few questions, if OP does not mind:

1. I noticed you don't use chain signals. Doesn't your station get clogged with trains awaiting the entrance?
2. Did the base was planned ahead or rather it grew organically? Did you have a 'utility' base producing stuff which you used to build up this one?
3. Mind sharing a save?
4. Why stone furnaces?

Thanks once again.

Wow, that base is truly epic.

Here's a picture of the map showing my rails and solar arrays. Oil was hard to find (as always), so that determined the size and shape of the rail system. The game is vanilla with all default values except peaceful mode so I can prototype in peace.
Koub: I'm using the 9x9 Blueprint template linked from the wiki. It's a cell of 6 panels and 5 accumulators. My arrays are 5x5 cells, and I have 23 arrays. By my math, that's 3,450 panels and 2,875 accumulators. You can also see my old boiler setup below the train stations. I cut the coal lines to it, but I've had to reattach it a couple times when I overbuilt. It's enough to keep the lights on until my robots finish another field or three.

brunzenstein: Save file. I think you'll inherit my personal inventory, but if not there's a starter pack hidden in the belt balancers between the iron and copper train stations. I leave it there in case of visitors (multiplayer)

grouchysmurf:
1. I have a few chain signals in there somewhere, but yes. It does get a bit clogged. I'm going to have to redesign it at some point.
2. I had a basic idea of how to lay it out, but there was a lot of tear down and rebuild to get it right. I did have a bootstrap town in the beginning, but it was small: One lab with red science, one factory for yellow belts, and some extra iron in a box. If peaceful mode was turned off, I would've added 2 more for ammo. That's all. If you build the final base in the right order (hint: the top, right corner is the highest priority: science and manufacturing), that's all you need to get going.
3. See my response to brunzenstein.
4. They were all stone to begin with. I'm getting enough steel out of them, so I haven't bothered to upgrade the last two lanes. By the way, this is Arumba's design, which leaves room for in-place upgrade. I used it for all my furnaces.

all: Thank you so much for the kind words!

When opening your safe file I see dots surrounding rail signals I never saw before - any hint?

Lets start with the good.

1. This is a very elegant design.

2. It is clearly backpressure based, which means you have nearly a waste-free, mostly buffer-free (aside from the ore-buffer) factory.

----------------------

However...

1. That's a lot of copper cable machines. An Assembly Machine3 will produce 5 wires per second, and a blue belt can only support 40-items per second. So at most, each blue-belt can only support 8 AM3 machines worth of wires (thats 4 assembly machines per side, assuming perfect compression with either splitters or the underground belt trick). All of the other wire assembly machines will never be used, because the wire belts are too full of wire. Going for a 3:2 ratio with direct feeding into the Electric Circuit line is the optimal strategy. (Never have wire touch a belt or logistics network, aside for the Red Circuit and Beacon assembly plants)

2. The train stations are one-sided unloaders with six inserters. This is half the speed of a 12-inserter "double sided" setup. Eventually, when stack inserters, they will be able to feed approximately 1.5 blue belts worth of output with some amount of output balancing. (Splitters / joiners for the most efficiency). There is a very flat and elegant 8-inserter double-sided design that feeds 2-belts with full compression per train station.

3. Use of electric furnaces: without any productivity modules, steel furnaces are cheaper and more compact. See my post here for details. You already have coal running to all of your furnaces, so you might as well use steel furnaces for cheaper AND more compact designs.

Overall, a clean design although slightly suboptimal. Its still very impressive!

brunzenstein: I've never seen those before either. Maybe a mod going haywire? Odd.

dragontamer5788:
1. I was hoping no one would notice that . I was nearly done with my base before I realized that the AMs had different build speeds, which means all my ratio math is wrong. I assumed it was just the ingredient count that made them different. You'll find a lot of grey machines around, including those copper wire factories.
2. Good info. I'll have to look into it. Between that and my slightly clogged main exchange, I think the train system needs a moderate overhaul.
3. Oh geez. I thought I read somewhere they were the same size as electric, so I never bothered to build one. Consider your design stolen, and thanks!

@brunzenstein is it something to do with debug menu (F4)? There are debug options to highlight train stuff and maybe one is enabled somehow when you load the save?

NamelessPC wrote: dragontamer5788:
1. I was hoping no one would notice that . I was nearly done with my base before I realized that the AMs had different build speeds, which means all my ratio math is wrong. I assumed it was just the ingredient count that made them different. You'll find a lot of grey machines around, including those copper wire factories.

There's still one more issue if you solve the AM speed issue: and that's the "compression" issue.

As of 0.13, inserters need a lot of room to "drop" an item directly onto a belt. The last few assembling machines, even with a proper ratios, will not be able to insert into a "nearly" compressed belt.

That's why my steel furnace build has so many underground belts at the end: inserters can "drop" into an underground belt just fine for some reason with 100% max compression.

dragontamer5788: I've outlined a new design to replace my green circuits based on your feedback. It's not quite right yet. The splitters might not be necessary, since I don't need 100% compression anymore, and I don't know if I can feed multiple copies of this setup with only one belt of iron. I'll pick it up again tomorrow. Thanks again for the input!

NamelessPC wrote:brunzenstein: I've never seen those before either. Maybe a mod going haywire? Odd.

It was a open F4 debug feature

NamelessPC wrote:dragontamer5788: I've outlined a new design to replace my green circuits based on your feedback. It's not quite right yet. The splitters might not be necessary, since I don't need 100% compression anymore, and I don't know if I can feed multiple copies of this setup with only one belt of iron. I'll pick it up again tomorrow. Thanks again for the input!

greens.jpg

Looking good.

Circuits take 1-iron and 3-wires. Which means one blue belt of iron and 3-blue belts of wires will be your total input to a group of circuits that output 1-belt of circuits. To feed 3-blue belts of wires, you'll need 1.5 blue belts of copper.

Assuming of course, that you solve all the compression issues. But that would be the theoretical best setup. Productivity3x4 in everything changes things: 15 PM3 boosted Wire Assembly machines can feed 14 PM3 boosted circuits (close to a 1-to-1 ratio, if you're willing for the circuits to work at 93% speed). Share a speed beacon (or really, share 8 speed beacons between them) for even more efficiency.

Beacons are very hard to add to designs. Aiming for PM3x3 + Speed3 is also a good idea. The proper ratio here is 20:23, or roughly 6:7. You'll find that PM3x3 + Speed3 is the best non-beacon setup in the game in practice. (PM3x4 + Speed Beacons is the best setup), if you want to go for it

I stumbled over this obviously calculating loader setup I could not figure out how it works.
Pls. explain - its not the Madzuri's way but seems somehow to be a similar though

dragontamer5788: Beacons and productivity modules are more than my little brain can handle (and they're expensive!). I think I'll optimize for plain AM3s and steel furnaces everywhere. Even with that I'm going to save a lot of space. And since these resources are upstream of absolutely everything, I'll have to tear up the entire base. Sigh...

brunzenstein: That's actually part of the depletion indicators I made reference to in the original post. It's my own design. I'm not familiar with Madzuri's work. I might make a separate post to explain how it works. If you want to puzzle it out on your own, here are some hints: Everything is done in base 3. Each mine has its own power-of-three coefficient (1,3,9,27,...) in the arithmetic combinator to identify which base 3 digit it owns. The's a DEMUX for each resouce nestled between the rails of the corresponding loading stations. You can see them in the original screenshot. Additional hint: X-3(X/3) is equivalent to X MOD 3 under integer arithmetic.

Just downloaded the save and took a tour through the base - really nice looking. The kind of thing you might expect to see in a promo video

The mine depletion monitor looks neat, although I don't quite understand what it's doing. Makes me want to try and design one of my own though.

Your mine depletion monitor (I don't understand) don't let me sleep

Haha! I guess that means it's time to write up an explanation. Here you go. Be warned: there's a bit of math involved.