.15 marathon 400 spm with modular ore2science plants

[vanatteveldt]

Not sure if this forum is also good for 'show your failures', but I guess a failure is also a creation

So I wanted to make a 1k spm base (marathon/expensive/no biters) with the following design principles:

1) science outposts turn raw resources (ore/crude/water) into 60/min science, fully beaconed
2) each resource has a dedicated 'warehouse' where the outposts trains unload and the science trains load

I wanted to put some pressure on the rail designs, so I set everything up to work with LCC trains. This was a mistake, I think, as even with 4 lane rail the rail system is definitely the bottleneck. I could have calculated this beforehand, as 60s/min requires about 20k ore and 40k fluid per minute, or about 5 cargo trains and <1 fluid train per minute. For 1k spm, this comes at about 80 cargo trains per minute and 10 (.15) fluid trains, which is more than a 4 lane junction can handle. Also, I built way too compact (my perennial problem), so it's hard to increase capacity now without building more warehouses, which defeats the point of the setup.

So, I'm giving up at a sustained 400-500 spm (which I guess is not bad for marathon ) out of a current max of 600 spm (10x 60 spm plants) since it just doesn't help to add more outposts or plants as the bottleneck is rail. I will try this same idea again with more planning but first I will play around with artillery turrets a bit on a new map, so I wanted to share this base and get it out of my system.

I would welcome any hints for improving train throughput as I will revisit this design pattern somewhere in the future for .17. Below I share the general setup, if anybody wants more detail or blueprints of any part let me know.

production stats for burst output

production stats for sustained output

base overview

Top are nuclear power plants, each plant has 6x2 reactors for 1.7G per plant (design: viewtopic.php?f=208&t=47895#p304962&#41;. There is a central nuclear processing facility which produces the fuel cells and reprocesses spent fuel cells.

The 10 numbered plants are all science producers following the design linked above.

The named stations COAL, IRON etc are warehouses/multiplexers using bots to transport ore from outpost trains to plant trains.

The bottom has the 'home/mall' which produces all needed supplies and building material, and on the bottom right are three ore2module plants which produce prod3 and speed3 modules.

zoom in on rail junction and problems

This is a screenshot of the central area of the rail network. It contains a central intersection with science plants to the N, S, and W. It has the iron warehouse in the NW corner, coal in NE, and copper in the E. There is an old copper warehouse N but I moved it E to avoid ore and iron being on the same spoke. As you can see, the main intersection and the iron junction are causing congestion are are the current bottleneck for increasing science output. I use the 4 lane intersection from the intersections thread with added lane balancers and "my" 4x2 intersection from the same thread.

It would be interesting to try to increase this e.g. by adding more lanes, combinator signals to let trains pass in bursts rather than 1 by 1, or improving the setup. In retrospect, I think the biggest current problem is the single output lane from the iron warehouse, using multiple output lanes and merging them more smartly into the 4 lanes of the trunk line might be the best way to improve throughput. However I am currently fed up with this map, partly because everything is way too compact so it really needs a redesign, and I want to try a new game, so I might revisit this setup in .16 as soon as the compression issue is worked out, and I will blast some aliens until then

[MeduSalem]

I think the general idea of doing sciene modules is quite interesting. Might even consider doing that for the next map.

About the rail throughput problem... From my experience there is not really much you can do about rail crossings when it comes to the throughput bottleneck, except avoiding crossings.

More sophisticated crossings and more lanes only get you a few percent more, but it is not really scalable in the long term. Add another science module... and boom... same problem again... and at some point you can't place even more lanes or even bigger crossings.

From my perspective the only 3 realistic things you can do are:

1. Make the trains longer... at least LLCCCCC or something, maybe even more. Cut it down to only max. 2 trains for each resource type for each module, so that one train is always loading while the other is unloading.
2. Make the modules bigger... Like 100 SP/min or 200 SP/min per module... and increase the train length accordingly like in 1) ... that should also cut down on the amount of trains.
3. Avoid having a shared central crossing and instead make 4 independent axes... 1 to North, 1 to South, 1 to West, 1 to East... and serve each axis only with resources coming from that direction. North axis is fed from resources coming from north of the base, South from South, and so on. I am pretty sure you can easily get to 1000 SP/min and more without running into rail throughput issues. Something about so:
   

   

   Science Outposts.png (13.38 KiB) Viewed 3131 times

   I am currently using such an approach in my base, I feed my base from all 4 directions with 4 from each other independent train networks. It also has the advantage of expanding the map in all 4 directions somewhat equally (depending on the landscape and resource distribution, altough in the grand scale it should equalize eventually)... and if one axis runs out of resources the other 3 axis aren't affected by it and can continue to research while I fix the issue for the one affected axis.
   
   You may connect the 4 axis with a shared central cross though to make a centralized mall/home or other servicing stuff like uranium ore that can use the entire train network infrastructure as long as they are only a handful of trains etc, but then the train stations names for each of the 4 axis must be different from each other so that the resource trains dedicated to an axis stay only within their axis and don't decide to go over the cross to another axis for whatever dumb reason.
   
   Obviously you can also make it a windmill if you don't want to waste as much space in the center.
   
   One could also make 4 additional axis for NW, NE, SW, SE when one has expanded the map enough to the point where dedicated diagonal train networks make sense (though I haven't reached that point yet). Pretty sure that you can go beyond 2000 SP/min that way, if not way more when making the science modules bigger and the trains longer.

[vanatteveldt]

Yeah, very good idea!

For 1kspm you need around 400k resources per minute, or about 200 wagonloads. If you make trains 6 wagons long you need about 30 trains per minute, which should be doable.

So, I think you should be able to get 1kspm per "direction"...

(but I'm currently trying to make a no-bot, no-beacon base to celebrate the belt compression fix... so it'll have to wait )

[MeduSalem]

Yeah, very good idea!

Thanks, put a lot of thought / trial & error into it.

Even though it is such an obvious and straight-forward solution... It kinda feels embarassing that it came only so late to me after all these years. Probably because I never saw anyone else doing it that way on the forum yet. Everyone usually goes either for one of those:

1. A centralized base (no matter if bot or belts) with only 1 huge unloading terminal for each resource, which mostly leads to huge congestion in that terminal.
2. A completely chaotic disarray of a modular base where trains interconnect every stage in no particular rhyme or order, which mostly leads to huge congestions on the intersections due to trains going crisscross all over the network.

For 1kspm you need around 400k resources per minute, or about 200 wagonloads. If you make trains 6 wagons long you need about 30 trains per minute, which should be doable.

So, I think you should be able to get 1kspm per "direction"...

Sounds solid...

I am currently around 600 SP/m as well... but I am barely into the process of turning it into a mega base. Currently I am in the process of expanding my nuclear power plant which is my bottleneck... and expanding it is a nightmare ever since land fills can't be blueprinted anymore.

(but I'm currently trying to make a no-bot, no-beacon base to celebrate the belt compression fix... so it'll have to wait )

Which reminds me... that I would like to see a screenshot from one of the science modules above...

[vanatteveldt]

I'd already posted that one earlier, I guess I should have put a link in the OP. Anyway: viewtopic.php?f=204&t=54237, including train station for unloading the ore

[MeduSalem]

I'd already posted that one earlier, I guess I should have put a link in the OP. Anyway: viewtopic.php?f=204&t=54237, including train station for unloading the ore

Thanks, I hadn't looked into the other thread because I didn't think about the possibility that they were related.