Using a main conveyor track.

[InsaneFox]

So I've been playing for about two days now, and on my first factory, decimated by biters and left the save. On my second world and second factory, I had this "Genius" idea to set up a main conveyor belt to transport virtually everything down and simply use smart inserters... It was actually running quite nicely until I ran into the *slight* issue of a clogged conveyor system, preventing a lot of expansion, but that was only one of the problems I had with it, the other issue came when I got to adding blue science to the mix, I thought that three assembly lines, wrapped up in a mess of conveyors, would suffice. They didn't, I went from grindingly slow science to even more grindingly slow science... Now for problem number three: Using a single main conveyor track to trasport nearly all of your materials is a terrible idea because it needs to keep moving all the time, all unused resources (Like coal and copper, the two that I ran out of quickly) went into chests and sat there, not turning into precious science.

So, to recap, here's what I learned today:
Do not put everything on the same conveyor track, it's terrible when it comes to expandability.
Logistics Drones are a godsend that would have made my science facility SOOO much more efficient if I had them researched.
Ore deposits don't last forever, neither does a warehouse to keep your supply line moving.

Time to make my second factory of my second save.

[safan]

the fun part of factorio is that you can see this happening yourself by experimenting.

But yes, this is one of the first things you learn. However its still useful to use 2 sides of the belt, so with 2 conveyors you can move 4 materials.

[InsaneFox]

This game really reminds me of a little school project we did in history regarding the industrialization era. We were basically given some of the paper book covers and were shown a slide show, we had to do what the slide show told us to do in 30 seconds (i.e. draw 30 factories for one slide and connect all factories via railway for the next slide) or we face penalties. And we did this two times: The first time to represent Britain's industrialization (they were the first to go and you get the idea) and the second time to do the rest of Europe (they saw how it went with Britain so they had an idea of what was in store for them.

[DerivePi]

Here is a previous example of the main conveyor track idea. The throughput and flexibility is limited, but I'd imagine it would be a fun challenge.

https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... ELT#p30136

[SHiRKiT]

Here is a previous example of the main conveyor track idea. The throughput and flexibility is limited, but I'd imagine it would be a fun challenge.

https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... ELT#p30136

That's actually a really nice topic, thanks for the link.

[PharAway]

I would suspect the one conveyor idea would work if you had smaller lines run off of the main line or if you have a smart inserter putting the items into a chest. Also, I suspect what a circular system would look like.

[Skellitor301]

You mean something like this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Je4vbVv1Uf8

[MaxStrategy]

Lately I tend to use 2 main conveyor belts with an auxiliary later on to support high end research. Copper/Iron on one, Electronics/Steel on the second, Battery/Plastics on the last one.

[PharAway]

You mean something like this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Je4vbVv1Uf8

I'm not worthy! I'm not worthy! LOL

[Skellitor301]

I have sort of adopted a "tree" format where you have several lines of conveyors, each carrying one resource, and to have the conveyors branch out to the assemblers with the needed item, then add the new item to the tree.

here is a simple screenshot of what I'm talking about:



South of this are where the base resources are coming in after being smelted, the "roots" of the tree.

Each assembler as you can see splits the resources they need, and the branches are easily stackable as you can see with the labs

[DerivePi]

I have sort of adopted a "tree" format ...

https://www.dropbox.com/s/syufyiud5vxpk ... LAYOUT.pdf
Here is a tree schematic I came up with - Big file and you need to zoom to about 190% to read it - but I enjoyed making it. Main trunk runs left to right.

[PharAway]

That is very cool looking. love the concept.

[Skellitor301]

I like to keep my main line a bit more compact as you can see in my screenshot, takes up a bit less space over all. Organizing the branches however I never thought to do which intrigues me

[Mangledpork]

I have sort of adopted a "tree" format

Did you get that name from me? I did a video on the tree design a few weeks ago.

[Skellitor301]

I have sort of adopted a "tree" format

Did you get that name from me? I did a video on the tree design a few weeks ago.

As a matter of a fact yes, quite the modular design I must say

[Mangledpork]

I have sort of adopted a "tree" format

Did you get that name from me? I did a video on the tree design a few weeks ago.

As a matter of a fact yes, quite the modular design I must say

Awesome! It's great to see my suggestions being used, and more importantly built on, in the community!
You've done a much better job with keeping the central column compact and efficient.

[Skellitor301]

Did you get that name from me? I did a video on the tree design a few weeks ago.

As a matter of a fact yes, quite the modular design I must say

Awesome! It's great to see my suggestions being used, and more importantly built on, in the community!
You've done a much better job with keeping the central column compact and efficient.

Thanks! It's kinda fun figuring out how to branch out the resources needed while keeping the goal of the 'trunk' to be as tight as possible.

[MeduSalem]

I have sort of adopted a "tree" format ...

https://www.dropbox.com/s/syufyiud5vxpk ... LAYOUT.pdf
Here is a tree schematic I came up with - Big file and you need to zoom to about 190% to read it - but I enjoyed making it. Main trunk runs left to right.

I had developed a similar modular layout... With a main highway and assembly lines branching out orthogonally from it. With Splitters and Belts taking the ingredients needed for the assembly lines and the resulting item being inserted into the main highway (again with splitters) to be used further down the road. When using the splitters it is basically ensured that even if one assembly line eats up all the ingredients that it doesn't starve the assembly lines further down the tree to death - they will eventually get some ingredients, depending on how many splitters draw stuff. The ratio is getting uglier and uglier eventually and only a few items make it through down to the end of the tree.

After a while that starvation problem led me to the idea of expanding the main highway to a full circle so items on the highway are circling in an endless loop... that way no item is wasted and will eventually be used in another assembly line further down the circle. It adds a nice buffer to the system when it is filled up... because when there's a peak in one of the assembly lines and ingredients are being used rapidly the production lines have enough time to produce more ingredients to fill in the gaps that emerge in the circle.

When I had the circle I had much time to experiment around with different placements of assembly lines further down the circle because with a circle it doesn't really matter when which item is produced as it gets inserted to the circle anyways. So even stuff like the circuits could be on the far end of the highway circle... being the last in the member of the circle before stuff like Iron/Copper plates get inserted. This priority shift is pretty interesting as the early production lines in the circle influence how much ingredients the later ones get and production will eventually balance itself out. Only the overproduction left over from advanced products will get inserted into the electronics department further down the road. That way the electronics department doesn't eat up all the resources resulting in overproduced circuits I can't use because the later production lines lack basic stuff like Iron/Copper Plates.



Eventually I abandoned the thought of having a massive highway for ALL individual ingredients. It takes just too much space, doesn't scale well and most of the intermediate ingredients are used in only ONE assembly directly afterwards anyways... So I changed over to having only the basics like Iron/Copper/Steel Plates as well as Coal/Solid Fuel and all the fluids being transported with the main highway circle with 2 belts for Iron and 2 belts for Copper (which can be easily doubled to 4 each, but isn't needed anyways since I can always add another inserting point for a resource to the circle if I feel like there's some starvation)... and 1 belt for each Steel/Coal/Solid Fuel.

Here's my current base... after many reworks, trials & errors (Some stuff is far away off screen (especial bigger resource fields and the biter warfront), but it's about my mainbase so I zoomed in):



One can easily see that the circle is oversized since I'm not using all the belts anymore after I abandoned most of the former ingredients:



You always have the possibility to make a second or third insert point for Iron/Copper plates further down the circle. My layout works this way... on the east and west flank of the circle I have the assembly lines and on the north and south flank I have my smelter banks dual-inserting into the circle. Here's the bottom smelter bank with a large inserter based storage and a local bus system for each step re-inserting all the excess stuff that went by the inserts unused:



I started to produce stuff like circuits, gearwheels, plastic bars and so on locally in a selfsuficient assembly-modules that only uses Inserter Stack bonus to transfer from one assembler/chemical plant to the next and only stuff like Iron/Copper/Steel/Coal is delivered by belts from the main-highway-circle. This drastically reduced the amount of belts needed and I have Provider chests for various intermediate products like Engine Units, Circuits/Advanced Circuits and so on which are taken on by the logistic bots and delivered to produce the final product.

Like for example I've an assembly module that produces everything up from the basic resources up to flying robot frames. That block contains an assembler for Flying Robot Frames, Electric Engine Unit, Engine Unit, Circuits/Pipes/Gear Wheels as well as Batteries. Stuff is moved by Inserter from Assembly to Chest to Assembly in most cases so I can extract the excess intermediate products by Logistic bots so they can use that stuff for the finishing line.



Same for volume circuit manufacturing (Needed for mass-producing the Speed/Production/Efficiency-Modules), I know it's not that perfect in design but it does it's job:





So basically my setup is a mix of using the main highway circle for high volume basic resources to be used in assembly modules which create all sorts of high-level intermediate products and those high-level intermediate products are then delivered by logistic bots to the center of my circle to produce the final products.

I made many attempts to use one belt for everything with advanced logistic/circuit networks controlling the input and output but I basically said "screw it" at some point because it always became way too complex and with diminishing returns... So I basically hopped back onto the "Go big or go home"-train and control the production with filled provider chests and let the factory waste resources like it feels like. It's not that I need it anyways. xD

One thing the Devs should really think about is adding an option to the menu of a splitter to adjust which side of the incoming belt is prefered when there's congestion... I hate building a factory design around the fact that it prefers to take from the left incoming belt. I just hate it. It should either be 50:50 chance which side gets taken, the same as with the output or it should be toggle-able if it should prefer left or right or 50:50.

[Factorian]

One thing the Devs should really think about is adding an option to the menu of a splitter to adjust which side of the incoming belt is prefered when there's congestion... I hate building a factory design around the fact that it prefers to take from the left incoming belt. I just hate it. It should either be 50:50 chance which side gets taken, the same as with the output or it should be toggle-able if it should prefer left or right or 50:50.

Maybe they should add a smart splitter that lets you control this kind of thing, maybe even by hooking it up with red and green wires to say 'prefer left if this is full, right if this is below 12' ect would be really useful in making 'smarter' factories

[MeduSalem]

One thing the Devs should really think about is adding an option to the menu of a splitter to adjust which side of the incoming belt is prefered when there's congestion... I hate building a factory design around the fact that it prefers to take from the left incoming belt. I just hate it. It should either be 50:50 chance which side gets taken, the same as with the output or it should be toggle-able if it should prefer left or right or 50:50.

Maybe they should add a smart splitter that lets you control this kind of thing, maybe even by hooking it up with red and green wires to say 'prefer left if this is full, right if this is below 12' ect would be really useful in making 'smarter' factories

That would actually be an interesting idea. A smart splitter that's as fast as an express splitter... and allows you to select on which conditions it takes from which incoming belt and on which condition it outputs to a specific outgoing belt. That way you don't have to rely on slow smart inserters if you want to split a belt on a specific condition. Such a smart splitter could use a processing unit to be crafted or something since the Express Splitter already uses Advanced Circuits.