Factorio Forums

Well.. my laptop definitely isn't high end..
So, when I'm designing mega factory I have to look not only for best factory performance but mostly about best computer performance.
I have a concept of a 10k beakers/min factory that im trying to implement, however im concerned about an impact on my UPS it will have..
I've built recently a 3k beakers/min factory and it was running at 30ups/fps max when at full production (and 100k bots flying around at the same time )
So my question is, what designs are most ups unfriendly. What should I avoid (and everyone not having high-end PC).

Are 100 fully beaconed assemblers ( about 600 entities counting assemblers and beacons) more ups friendly than a 900 of non beaconed?
My plan is: ~5k of fully beaconed assemblers, nearly 9k fully beaconed furnaces, lots of chemical plants, refineries, centrifuges etc. + nearly 100k of beacons. [ and is there a way to disable certain entities animation? like beacons e.g.?]

Are Individual logistic areas for every production part of my factory is better than a "monolith" kind of a factory?

Are laser turrets more UPS friendly than gun turrets? I like to build a perimeter using both but I'm guessing that 100k+ of gun turrets must have some impact on my UPS. They have to request a clip if they are short of one.

Im playing on a death world. Well, I've even tweak a little evolution/pollution settings to make a world a little harder
I'm not trying to guess the numbers so here is the snap: Is the presence of.. lets say "a lot" of biters is what will cause most of my UPS problems?

Next thing, trains.. I love them and I'm using them pretty much everywhere possible My future nuclear plant will be water feeded by tank trains. I am aware this will have HUGE impact on my UPS (640 reactors plant, 100GW) but it is a sacrifice that i can make. I want to check if it is possible to do this on such a scale .. What I'm asking is, is it matter for UPS case that all of my water trains are in same "network", they have same destinations and choose loading/unloading stations in a simple way, stations are disabled if occupied. Would it be better if every station had different names and an one/few assigned train/s?
Only a nuclear plan will have 640 water unloading stations. Probably with more than one train (1 loco+1 tank wagon) assigned for each. And then, to provide enough resources for whole factory (about 1M iron ore and 500K copper ore per minute) I'll need few hundreds outpost trains (those will be 10+ wagons)

About artillery and radars.. is artillery trains/stationary artillery/radars giving big impact on UPS? I assume they have to scan their range constantly?

Lastly. I've found, that my UPS drops instantly when arriving at the mining outpost to make some tweaks. Since my outposts will be bot based it isn't a belt issue. Number of bots either, only about 2k on an outpost. Is it caused by an animation of 1k+ drills or or just calculations of "how many ore to subtract and from what spot" [same thing I've asked above, can I somehow disable drill animation?]

I don't bother about FPS issue. My graphic can mostly keep up and even if not it is not a problem for me.

I've already changed my graphic settings to be most UPS friendly, and I'm not buying new computer in the near future so don't post those suggestions

I'll appreciate any substantial answer. Thanks

Currently, nuclear is a lot less UPS friendly than solar + accus.
Also, if you have some mods, like warehouse (or other mods that make huge storing places), they are a big hit to performance.

Szpak wrote:Well.. my laptop definitely isn't high end..
So, when I'm designing mega factory I have to look not only for best factory performance but mostly about best computer performance.
I have a concept of a 10k beakers/min factory that im trying to implement, however im concerned about an impact on my UPS it will have..

Factorio is very well optimized; however, with a laptop and a megabase you will run into performance drops. It would help a lot if you could give us a screenshot of your base with show-time-usage enabled in the debug (F4) menu, especially as your megabase expands. Now for your questions:

Szpak wrote:I've built recently a 3k beakers/min factory and it was running at 30ups/fps max when at full production (and 100k bots flying around at the same time )
So my question is, what designs are most ups unfriendly. What should I avoid (and everyone not having high-end PC).

Are 100 fully beaconed assemblers ( about 600 entities counting assemblers and beacons) more ups friendly than a 900 of non beaconed?
My plan is: ~5k of fully beaconed assemblers, nearly 9k fully beaconed furnaces, lots of chemical plants, refineries, centrifuges etc. + nearly 100k of beacons. [ and is there a way to disable certain entities animation? like beacons e.g.?]

Beacons have little effect on performance, so having 100 assemblers and 500 beacons is far more efficient than 900 assemblers. You can't disable animations - I doubt they have much impact on anything other than fps, though.

Szpak wrote:Are Individual logistic areas for every production part of my factory is better than a "monolith" kind of a factory?

Yes, smaller, separated logistics networks are far more efficient (in terms of bot use and item travel time, and, conversely, UPS) than one large network.

Szpak wrote:Are laser turrets more UPS friendly than gun turrets? I like to build a perimeter using both but I'm guessing that 100k+ of gun turrets must have some impact on my UPS. They have to request a clip if they are short of one.

This is speculation, but laser turrets are probably better - they end up doing less damage than gun turrets, and I don't know how much the increased range would affect performance; however, it likely outweighs the infrastructure and UPS costs of producing ammo, sending it via belt/bot/train, and inserting it into the turrets. Of course, your means of power generation is also a factor in this; solar panels cost no UPS other than that coming from the space they occupy (in terms of defense infrastructure and map size); fluid physics are notoriously UPS-unfriendly (hopefully optimized in 0.17), but the sheer amount of power generated by nuclear plants can make it worth the cost.

Szpak wrote:Im playing on a death world. Well, I've even tweak a little evolution/pollution settings to make a world a little harder
I'm not trying to guess the numbers so here is the snap:

lot of trouble....jpg

Is the presence of.. lets say "a lot" of biters is what will cause most of my UPS problems?

Biters (like everything) do consume UPS, but there is a cap on how much they will use, and those outside of your pollution cloud or who are doing nothing consume practically none. (seeing how large you pollution cloud is would be nice as well - maybe just provide a map - the more information we have, the more we can help.)

Szpak wrote:Next thing, trains.. I love them and I'm using them pretty much everywhere possible My future nuclear plant will be water feeded by tank trains. I am aware this will have HUGE impact on my UPS (640 reactors plant, 100GW) but it is a sacrifice that i can make. I want to check if it is possible to do this on such a scale .. What I'm asking is, is it matter for UPS case that all of my water trains are in same "network", they have same destinations and choose loading/unloading stations in a simple way, stations are disabled if occupied. Would it be better if every station had different names and an one/few assigned train/s?
Only a nuclear plan will have 640 water unloading stations. Probably with more than one train (1 loco+1 tank wagon) assigned for each. And then, to provide enough resources for whole factory (about 1M iron ore and 500K copper ore per minute) I'll need few hundreds outpost trains (those will be 10+ wagons)

Trains won't be a huge issue; sure, they do take up some UPS, but there is no other feasible way to transport large amounts of goods. Do you need a nuclear plant that large? I saw one that produced 1TW once and it tore my UPS to shreds. I suppose it may not be ideal, but it may be the only feasible option (and we can always hope for 0.17 fluid optimizations).

Szpak wrote:About artillery and radars.. is artillery trains/stationary artillery/radars giving big impact on UPS? I assume they have to scan their range constantly?

As far as I know, compared to everything else, they're a fairly minor concern.

Szpak wrote:Lastly. I've found, that my UPS drops instantly when arriving at the mining outpost to make some tweaks. Since my outposts will be bot based it isn't a belt issue. Number of bots either, only about 2k on an outpost. Is it caused by an animation of 1k+ drills or or just calculations of "how many ore to subtract and from what spot" [same thing I've asked above, can I somehow disable drill animation?]

Are you sure this is UPS, or is it FPS? If you are certain it's UPS, can you please post a screenshot with show-time-usage enabled both while it's fine and while you have issues?

Szpak wrote:I don't bother about FPS issue. My graphic can mostly keep up and even if not it is not a problem for me.

I've already changed my graphic settings to be most UPS friendly, and I'm not buying new computer in the near future so don't post those suggestions

I'll appreciate any substantial answer. Thanks

Attention: Somewhat technical answer. I'll try to outline this to the best of my knowledge (wait for other people to aggressively correct me and call me names :p). [as of 0.16.51 for future reference]

First, there's no single "this one thing eats UPS", it's always the sheer number of things that accumulate. So let's try this:

Things that do not have a high impact:

Solar panels, accumulators: These are highly optimized and do not need to be simulated "one-by-one". They're calculated as one entity regardless of how many you have. This means that the main burden of these is not the calculation needed to run them, but the memory needed to store them.

Beacons: Beacons are almost completely idle as long as their modules don't change. This is why beaconed assemblers are far more UPS friendly than unbeaconed ones. Because the UPS impact from one assembler is always the same, regardless of if it's beaconed or not.

Pollution: Calculation of pollution and pollution spread itself is not very costly. Its mostly the induced biter behavior that makes it costly.

Things that have a medium(?) impact (not totally sure):

Train pathing: Trains mostly need CPU cycles to determine their path. So if they constantly get in each others way that'll have some impact. The easiest way to reduce this is obviously to have fewer very long trains, i.e. L20-C100 or such.

Biter pathing: Biters need to calculate their ways too. If you have lots of them, this can be quite a large impact. Especially if they're directly sucking in pollution. So if you play with biters make sure they never touch polluted chunks, and thus stay dormant. This is also possibly the cause of your frame drop when going to outposts. Attacking biters also activate your turrents and thus consume more cpu cycles again. Personally i'd just disable them, because when your defense is "UPS optimal" they don't attack anyway.

Belts/Bots: Both are fairly well optimized. But the sheer number you will need of them is going to have some impact. After the big belt optimization they're now considered more "UPS friendly" than bots, because they're calculated in segments now, instead of every belt tile on its own.

Assemblers/Furnaces: Assemblers have to progress their recipes every tick. And you have lots of them. Modules and beacons help. 4Prod+Speed Beacons gives the best speed and energy ratios per item. Productivity also reduces the number of miners and assemblers you need.

Things that eat the most cpu cycles:

Pipes/Heat-pipes (basically anything with fluids): Pipes have to constantly update fluids in all connected directions for each pipe seperately. This is what makes people say that "nuclear is UPS unfriendly". It's not the reactors, but the huge amounts of (heat-)pipes you need to connect the turbines.

Inserters: The main workers of your factory. Not only do you have metric tons of them, they also constantly have to do inventory interactions (see below), or chase items on belts.

Underpowered objects: An object (assemblers/furnaces/inserters/...) that has nothing to do due to insufficient input/full output will go into "suspended animation" (sleep) and save CPU cycles until it is used again. Unless it has insufficient power, then it can not sleep. If you want to switch off part of your factory switch off the input/output belts, but not the power.

Inventory interactions: Every time a bot/inserter wants to take something out of/put into a chest/assembler/etcpp it has to first get a list of the whole inventory. This is as far as i know the biggest factor. It means that the bigger an inventory is (warehouses) the more UPS it costs you to use. It means that theoretically wooden chests are better than steel chests, and that not using chests at all is cheapest. Also consider that something like Train->Chest->Belt has twice the amount of interactions than straight Train->Belt. This is also the reason why clocked inserters are cheaper than unclocked ones. (Clocked means a circuit network clock controlls when they are allowed to grab, reducing unnessecary interaction when they can't grab a full stack/the belt is full/empty/etcpp...).

_____________
Disabling animations can only be done by modding them away as far as i understand.
Laser turrents are better because they don't require item transfer.
Monolith vs Production areas depends on the factors above. A good monolithic design can probably get a way with fewer inventory interactions and/or shorter bot paths.
The main thing you want to optimize is the number of times each item gets "handled". I.e. you know it's better to put cables directly into circuit assemblers instead of on a belt/into a bot chest. Now try to apply that principle to every. single. recipe.
640 reactors + turbines alone will ruin your UPS. Unless you're fine with playing at sub 10 UPS you should consider something else. "Mk 99 solar panel" style mods are boring, but they do solve that problem.

: Jap2.0
I'll try to take some shots tomorrow. About power production, yes. Only producing 10K beakers ( fully beaconed) will take about 35GW. And there are roboports, those will be counted in tens of thousands probably.. And there are laser turrets.. also tens of thousands to provide a perimeter to such a big factory.. And You always need some backup in energy producing.

And as I've said, I want to try to make nuclear only factory. Not a single solar/accu. I know I'll eventually end up with <5 UPS but i want to make sure that I've made everything possible to prevent this.

:eredicator

So it would be better to have 1500+ trains that supply water to my nuke plant than trying to fit 800 independent water pipes to my reactors? Because as my nuclear plants grows ( first was 8 cores, than 20, than 100, than 200, now 640) the biggest problem is how to provide water for all those heat exchangers.

Szpak wrote: So it would be better to have 1500+ trains that supply water to my nuke plant than trying to fit 800 independent water pipes to my reactors? Because as my nuclear plants grows ( first was 8 cores, than 20, than 100, than 200, now 640) the biggest problem is how to provide water for all those heat exchangers.

Well. No/yes/maybe. Depends on the layout and the length of those pipes. That number of trains for water alone will cause significant repathing, and you also need to fill/empty the wagons, which is 2 more interactions than a straight pipe into the reactor (though they're not inventories so not as bad(?)). Also remember that two underground pipe-bits are the same as two pipes regardless of length. If you have waterfill you could put pumps into the reactor, or use landfill to built several artificial islands into large lakes. I've also seen designs based on barreled water which would utilize the well optimized belts (but barrels got nerfed recently so you'd have to unnerf them). And i remember someone simply had a train station parralell to the 2*N reactor row.

Summary: That question is far too vague. And i can't read minds :D. Technically a fluid wagon + 2 pumps are 3 fluid boxes, but does that make them equal to three pipes? I have no clue.

Addendum: Also trying to use the train interface with that many trains might not be fun.

(Sidenode: I've updated my original post several times, so you might have missed at least the bottom bit.)

Well. No/yes/maybe. Depends on the layout and the length of those pipes. That number of trains for water alone will cause significant repathing, and you also need to fill/empty the wagons, which is 2 more interactions than a straight pipe into the reactor (though they're not inventories so not as bad(?)). Also remember that two underground pipe-bits are the same as two pipes regardless of length. If you have waterfill you could put pumps into the reactor, or use landfill to built several artificial islands into large lakes. I've also seen designs based on barreled water which would utilize the well optimized belts (but barrels got nerfed recently so you'd have to unnerf them). And i remember someone simply had a train station parralell to the 2*N reactor row.

Summary: That question is far too vague. And i can't read minds . Technically a fluid wagon + 2 pumps are 3 fluid boxes, but does that make them equal to three pipes? I have no clue.

Addendum: Also trying to use the train interface with that many trains might not be fun.

(Sidenode: I've updated my original post several times, so you might have missed at least the bottom bit.)

Thanks for your quick response

You can see actual world and a halve of my "soon to be constructed" nuclear plant on screenshot in my original post. So you see that water will be a problem. I will need 800 water pumps to provide water only for nuclear ( not sure how much I'll need for `600 chem plants and `150 refineries although), I wont be able to put them all on a nearby water source. and long distance is what trains are made for. so this is why I've ended with a solution to provide my factory using trains.

Enough for today.

I can see that you don't have much water in the explored region, yea. Exploration might reveal a better water source. And electricity is by far the easiest thing to transport long-distance =).

Oh, and also due to belt optimizations a fully compressed belt (segment) is better than an only partially filled belt.

Btw, just out of personal interest: Someone suggested a simplified UPS friendly modded reactor here, would that be a theoretical option for someone like you or would you consider it "too cheaty"? (under the assumption that mods would be ok)

@eredicator

Took me a while to response cause I'm very busy at work now and I don't have time to play actually
100% Vanilla is my goal.
I'll try to update this topic whenever there will be some visible changes to show.
Patience. It is one word that describe building mega factory ')

One thing I highly recommend is to turn off the smoke animations in the graphics. While not directly affecting UPS, it does put a strain on the graphics system, which on laptops usually is handled by the CPU these days.
As for water trains: Not recommended. Nuclear plants just eat too much water to be transporting it.

Aeternus wrote:As for water trains: Not recommended. Nuclear plants just eat too much water to be transporting it.

I am pretty sure about that But I'll try so no one will have to

As I said previously. It is a death world so it takes a lot of time to clear, build perimeter. Nothing substantial to show yet. But I'm sleeping less and work 50% harder just to have more time to play Wife and kids are on holiday so my only worry is to feed the cats (and myself sometimes )

Edit: typos