0.17 / 0.18 - What to put on the main bus?

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0.17 / 0.18 - What to put on the main bus?

Post by Redstone_Tesla »

Hello everyone, the title says it all. I would like some tips on what to put on the main bus.
I used the Factorio Calculator to plan a factory that would produce a Rocket every 25 minutes and 40 scientific kits each per minute (the number of kits was a little random, I don't know what number would be good).

The website returned the following quantities per minute for the items I used to put on the main bus (using medium machines and a red belt):
Iron plate = 6457,333
Copper plate = 6960
Green circuit = 2760
Steel = 580
Red circuit = 526,667
Blue circuit = 66,667

* See more details on the calculator link

The problem is that I did not take military production into account, as I have no idea how much ammunition to produce per minute. I also don't know what else to put. I find tutorials, but they are old since many recipes have changed.

I'm playing version 0.18; but I don't think it changed the revenue of 0.17.

Any tips? How to define what goes on the main bus? How to be military production? How much scientific kit to produce?

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Re: 0.17 / 0.18 - What to put on the main bus?

Post by astroshak »

1 rocket every 25 minutes is 1000 space science every 25 minutes, or 40 per minute. So, that 40 science per minute figure is good for your purposes.

Just add 40/min military science to the calculator you used.

As far as regular consumption of things like ammo or the mall, I tend to have those prioritized by the bus, because they are not supposed to be working non-stop. That said, if they are pulling too much stuff off the bus and your science is hurting as a result, as long as you are only building on one side of the bus it is always very easy to add a little more of something on the far side of the bus.

Now, bear in mind that that 580 Steel (per minute?) is consuming 5 Iron Plate apiece, or 2900 Iron Plate (per minute?). So, depending on how you are doing things, those Iron Plates may not even be getting to your bus. Similar situation for the Green Circuits - that 2760 GC consumes 2760 Iron Plate and 4140 Copper Plate. Depending upon how you have things set up, those Iron and Copper Plates may not need to be on the bus either, not if they are simply going directly to the GC machines.

Things not listed, that usually find themselves on the bus for one reason or another : Batteries, Sulfur, Plastic, Lube (by pipe, obviously), Sulfuric Acid (also by pipe), Stone Brick, Stone, Coal. You may, depending upon where you want to produce them, or if you are going to produce them, want to put Explosives on the bus as well.

Remember, the Bus is nothing more than a centralized distribution trunk. If you produce something in one area, and need it elsewhere, you probably want to put it on the bus. Otherwise, you are making it right where you need it, and are bussing in the materials to produce it.

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Re: 0.17 / 0.18 - What to put on the main bus?

Post by Serenity »

Don't put the metal for circuit production on the main bus. You need so much of it that it should go directly to the circuit assemblers. Likewise the green circuits for red and blue circuits don't need to be on the bus either.

You can get by with two belts of copper and iron each. Two belts of green circuits (one may be enough in a smaller base, but two is safe). One belt of red circuits. One belt of steel. One combined belt of stone and stone brick (one lane each). One belt of coal. A half belt of blue circuit. A half belt of batteries. A half belt of low density structures.
Plastic depends on how you route it. As with other stuff the plastic for red circuits and low density structures doesn't necessarily need to be on the bus either. But you may need some plastic on the bus for cannon shells.

Sulfur can either be on the bus or produced locally from gas. That's personal preference.

You also need a fluid bus with water, lube, sulfuric acid and possibly petroleum gas

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Re: 0.17 / 0.18 - What to put on the main bus?

Post by ColonelSandersLite »

The long and short of it is that you should consider busing if the resource -

1 - Is used in multiple places
2 - Is more compact or at least equally compact in it's assembled form than it is in it's more raw form.
3 - Is complicated enough to produce that it's just much easier to have a dedicated production site for it than have redundant assembly sites.


For example -
Small numbers of green circuits are relatively easy to make on site but some sites use a lot of them. They are used in a *lot* of places. They are more compact than the raw iron and copper. This one is a no brainer to bus.

Copper cables are used in a few places but are less compact than copper and are not complicated to make on demand so it's probably not useful to bus these.

Gears are simple to make on site but are more compact than iron and are directly used for 3 sciences, indirectly used for two more sciences as engine parts, and are used for a ton of building materials so busing gears is pretty decent.



Just apply this logic to everything you can make and you'll figure it out.



Just below, I'll show what I went with in my most recent bus build BUT it is important to note that this bus wasn't designed to achieve any particular SPM. I viewed this early bus setup as nothing more than what I needed to use to unlock the techs I cared about and to build the parts I needed to build up the next stage of the factory.

4 Iron Lines

2 Copper lines
1 Steel
1 Gears

2 Green Circuits
1 Red Circuits
1 Blue Circuits

1/2 Brick 1/2 Concrete
1 Stone
1 Coal
1 Plastic

1/2 Batteries 1/2 Sulfur
1/2 Explosives 1/2 U-238
1/2 Engines 1/2 Electric Engines
1/2 Rocket Fuel 1/2 Low Density Structures

Sulfuric Acid
Lubricant



As for answering questions like, "how much resources do I need to devote to making factory components?" and "how much ammo do I need?" etc that's very tough to answer. It can vary greatly depending on play style, design style, number of players, biter settings, etc... For example, in the early phases of the game where you're building by hand, a single iron belt can fully satisfy your belt production needs. Building a belt+rail based megabase leaning heavily on bots supplied by train to do the building can fully consume 8 full belts of iron just for making building materials.

The trick with ammo, IMHO, is that it's not really about sustained production levels but my about surges in production. So long as you're keeping up with the biters, it's not that hard to keep your existing guns supplied. The issue is that when you go to expand by making a new outpost or whatever, you might be surprised at how much ammo it takes to initially load the guns. To give an example - I just built an outpost to manufacture gears. It is guarded by non-contiguous bunkers in the form of 4 corner bunkers and 14 straight bunkers. Each corner has 20 gun turrets and each straight has 13 gun turrets for a total of 262 gun turrets. Each bunker has an internal requestor chest loaded with 200 magazines. The requestor chest feeds a belt which has about 50 magazines sitting on it. The belt feeds the turrets which is each nominally loaded with 10 magazines. (200*18) + (50*18) + (262*10) = 7,120 magazines. So, while I may only be consuming around 32 magazines/minute by actually shooting at biters, I need a big surge in production to produce bucket loads of ammo every time I build a new outpost. Currently I do this with a munitions plant that has 12 yellow magazine assemblers, 36 red magazine assemblers, and 120 green magazine assemblers.

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Re: 0.17 / 0.18 - What to put on the main bus?

Post by Hannu »

Serenity wrote:
Sat May 16, 2020 3:22 pm
Don't put the metal for circuit production on the main bus. You need so much of it that it should go directly to the circuit assemblers. Likewise the green circuits for red and blue circuits don't need to be on the bus either.
I begin with circuits taking plates from main bus. I have smelters, green ciruits and other stuff. I cut some bus lines and replace them with green circuit lines because they are practically always on and consumes much.

At midgame I move smelting in separate factories and bring plates in instead of ore. Next step is to build separate green circuit factory and bring them in by trains in addition to plates. It releases bus lines and room in main base for more advanced products. At end I have trainworld and original main base is just headquarters with mall and ammo production and sometimes labs are there too. Ready made science bottles come from two science factory and a rocket launchpad.

It is even better with complex mods with many tiers and few tens of factories around large area.

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Re: 0.17 / 0.18 - What to put on the main bus?

Post by Hannu »

ColonelSandersLite wrote:
Sat May 16, 2020 11:08 pm
Currently I do this with a munitions plant that has 12 yellow magazine assemblers, 36 red magazine assemblers, and 120 green magazine assemblers.
Do you have crazy biter settings? I have never exceeded what 40 assemblers can produce (uranium ammo). Even I have typically completely enclosed few tens of square kilometers and often biter protection (biter right activists use sometimes insulting false words) zone in middle of my area. I use only gun turrets to defend and build mines and coal powerplants (which produce about 1/2 of all electricity) intentionally near borders to activate biters.

I handle expansion ammo need by four steel chests. I do have not even calculated how much time it takes to fill them but when I use all ammo and build new defense line and new production plant, it takes several hours and ammo boxes are filled for new expansion. They act also as a buffer for increased needs. Ammo need seems to grow somewhat stepwise. It may increase very moderately long time and then double suddenly.

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Re: 0.17 / 0.18 - What to put on the main bus?

Post by Serenity »

Hannu wrote:
Wed May 20, 2020 12:21 pm
I begin with circuits taking plates from main bus.
At the beginning, sure. You can get quite far with just 2 green circuit assemblers. But their consumption increases greatly as you get into red/blue circuits and higher sciences. That's when you expand circuit production and give them dedicated belts for plates

It's just there is no reason to plan for a huge amount of copper plate belts on the main bus. By providing dedicated belts for the gear wheel and belt production even the iron plate needs are quite modest. It used to be a lot higher when military science needed gun turrets.

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Re: 0.17 / 0.18 - What to put on the main bus?

Post by ColonelSandersLite »

@Hannu
My biter settings are ramped up some, yes, but that's not really the issue there.
Hannu wrote:
Wed May 20, 2020 12:30 pm
I do have not even calculated how much time it takes to fill them but when I use all ammo and build new defense line and new production plant, it takes several hours and ammo boxes are filled for new expansion.
That's the core of the problem IMHO. The "several hours" part in particular. I definitely don't want to wait. When I want my ammo, I want it *now*.

There are a few notes and caveats and stuff worth considering though. If your current map settings and game state allow for a unified perimeter wall like you're talking about, your ammo requirements do go down substantially. Personally, I enjoy a much more spread out style of base with a lot of scattered outposts connected via rail. With my map settings, I don't really find it to be practical to set up such a unified perimeter until after you have a few artillery range upgrades under your belt so in the mean time, every outpost must be independently defended.

I'm not saying "you should do this". I'm simply saying that "this is what I'm doing right now and it's working for me." Basing my ammo production on 12 yellow magazine assemblers has carried me through from the transition away from burner mining all the way to evolution 1.0 and will definitely keep me secure as I build up to what I intend to be a 3k X7 spm base.

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Re: 0.17 / 0.18 - What to put on the main bus?

Post by 5thHorseman »

I really don't see the practical difference between "Iron and Copper for Circuits on the bus" and "Iron and Copper fed to circuits directly." I mean sure there are differences, but you gotta get resources to the assemblers and that's what a bus is for.

I personally do a mix of the two. I run all my raw resources on the bus but as I split them off for circuits, I remove lines of copper for lines of circuits. Also once you start making low density structures you barely need any copper for anything else beyond that, so you can use copper lines to truck those.

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Re: 0.17 / 0.18 - What to put on the main bus?

Post by Serenity »

5thHorseman wrote:
Thu May 21, 2020 3:14 am
I really don't see the practical difference between "Iron and Copper for Circuits on the bus" and "Iron and Copper fed to circuits directly." I mean sure there are differences, but you gotta get resources to the assemblers and that's what a bus is for.
Not the way I lay out my circuit production. It eventually has its own smelters and train stations. Separate from the smelters and train stations that supply the bus.

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Re: 0.17 / 0.18 - What to put on the main bus?

Post by Impatient »

Serenity wrote:
Thu May 21, 2020 10:31 am
Not the way I lay out my circuit production. It eventually has its own smelters and train stations. Separate from the smelters and train stations that supply the bus.
That is an interesting point of discussion. My question is, what are the conditions we apply to deccide, what to produce locally vs what to produce centrallized? Why does no one ever put copper cable on the bus? Or gears?

For copper cable, I have an answer: Because the throughput necessary to transport cables "in form of copper plates" is 1/3rd compared to transporting cables directly.

But for eg gears it is the other way around. So why not produce them centralized? It would require less throughput on the bus. Still we don't put gears on the belt. Why not?

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Re: 0.17 / 0.18 - What to put on the main bus?

Post by Premu »

Impatient wrote:
Thu May 21, 2020 10:59 am
But for eg gears it is the other way around. So why not produce them centralized? It would require less throughput on the bus. Still we don't put gears on the belt. Why not?
The reason I don't do this is that there are many products which need both gears and iron plates as input. If I put both of them on the bus seperately, I have to split both of them from it to my production site, on top of other necessary ingrediants. If I only have iron plates on the bus, I just take the iron plates and turn them into gears very close by.

As handling several input belts is something which can potentially lead to a lot of spaghetti, I prefer to produce the gears locally where it has a far lower impact in that regard.

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Re: 0.17 / 0.18 - What to put on the main bus?

Post by Serenity »

Some people do gear wheels on the bus. As you said it's technically better than bussing iron plates

As for why I don't do it. Again, personal habits. Science doesn't need gun turrets or mining drills anymore, so that's a huge sink for gears gone. I find that I need the most gears in belt production. Red and blue Undergrounds especially need a huge number of gears. So most of my gear production is in the mall/make everything factory (which is located right at the start of the bus) and that too gets at least partially supplied with its own iron belts later on. The iron needs for the rest of the stuff that actually gets supplied from the bus are very modest and I don't run into throughput issues.

But it's easily possible to do it differently and bus the gears entirely. Maybe I should change things up some time to see how it turns out. There are plenty of ways to do things. And you don't need to do the most optimal thing in all situations

I've also seen people bussing engines. You need them for blue and yellow science and bot production. So I can see the appeal. But there is also nothing wrong with production them locally.

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Re: 0.17 / 0.18 - What to put on the main bus?

Post by 5thHorseman »

Impatient wrote:
Thu May 21, 2020 10:59 am
But for eg gears it is the other way around. So why not produce them centralized? It would require less throughput on the bus. Still we don't put gears on the belt. Why not?
I do put gears on the bus. I thought they were common bus items.

Every bus I've ever made, the first non-plate lane is gears.

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Re: 0.17 / 0.18 - What to put on the main bus?

Post by ickputzdirwech »

Impatient wrote:
Thu May 21, 2020 10:59 am
But for eg gears it is the other way around. So why not produce them centralized? It would require less throughput on the bus. Still we don't put gears on the belt. Why not?
I think it really depends on how big your bus is. When starting a new game I usually plan for 1.5 science per second. If your bus is about this size or smaller you shouldn’t put gears on the bus, since it would only need a fraction of a belt (half a yellow belt is more than enough as far as I now). It therefore it would only make the bus wider and require more complicated offsplits as mentioned above. I think it would be reasonable however to put gears and pipes on a belt together.

If your bus is much bigger it would make more sense to make a dedicated production area for gears and therefore putting them on the bus.
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Re: 0.17 / 0.18 - What to put on the main bus?

Post by ColonelSandersLite »

Re bussing gears vs producing them locally -

I will say that gears are so easy to make on demand that with a purely bus based factory, busing gears is genuinely debatable. That being said, once you have started to integrate rail based systems the picture starts to change imho.

If/when you expand such that you are smelting your iron ore offsite and shipping plates to your base, it is worthwhile to turn plates into gears either at the smelting site or very near to the smelting site. The reason being simply that it will reduce rail traffic because gears are twice as compact as raw iron when it comes to shipping. Arguably, if you're expecting your bus to do nothing but make science, the gain is marginal. If you're expecting your factory to actually do things like make factory components though, the gains seem pretty significant to me.

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Re: 0.17 / 0.18 - What to put on the main bus?

Post by skydivertricky »

In Factorio 16, so many items for science packs needed a lot of gears (mining machine for blue science, turret for military science) that is made sense to bus them.

In 17.6+ and the science changes, gear use for science has dropped dramatically. And because you need iron plates for every science pack, I just make gears on site now as the gear doesnt usually require that many assemblers. Even in my 1RPM factory you only need a handfull of assemblers at each science station. And because all recipes need iron plates in some form, it makes sense.

My biggest users of gears are red and blue belt production. And they really need their own dedicated gear production and plate delivery or you will starve everything else.

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Re: 0.17 / 0.18 - What to put on the main bus?

Post by SyncViews »

skydivertricky wrote:
Fri May 22, 2020 2:57 pm
My biggest users of gears are red and blue belt production. And they really need their own dedicated gear production and plate delivery or you will starve everything else.
This is still why I keep gears separate really. They basically need their own lanes or iron plates one way or the other, so it's not like I could use that gears lane "for something else", so just convenient to do it nearer the furnaces.

Also easier to upgrade to a beacon+productivity design later, chances are I did not leave enough space for one reason or another at the various places for belts/inserters/miners/etc..

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Re: 0.17 / 0.18 - What to put on the main bus?

Post by Impatient »

SyncViews wrote:
Sat May 23, 2020 4:34 am
...
Also easier to upgrade to a beacon+productivity design later, chances are I did not leave enough space for one reason or another at the various places for belts/inserters/miners/etc..
That is a very good point. ++

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Re: 0.17 / 0.18 - What to put on the main bus?

Post by lupinehorror »

intersting thread and thanks all for the useful info. just starting a 'properly' organised large factory (compared to my first) and i'm putting a lot more thought into logistics.

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