Factorio Forums

Hi guys,

I play the game like everyone else, but time-to-time it pops in my mind: Am I thinking too much about costs? Micro costs? Does it worth to think 1 more minute, on how to place belts and pipes to be as cost effective as possible? For example using normal pipes instead of underground pipes where possible. Or using simple belts without splitterse, undergrounds to save a little bit of resource. Or not using medium power poles all the time, because the small ones are much cheaper.
I don't want to be wasteful, but does it really matter? I am thinking minutes to be more cost effective and maybe that saved resource can be mined in few seconds.

Tell me your opinions! I am not in a megabase phase, that is important!

Well, it depends... is it very early in the game where you really struggle with all kind of ressources? Here you should be frugal.

In the middle phase of the game you can afford some slack - don't bother with small power poles, for example, to simplify your inventory and logistics. Just build one model fit for all. The important part is to have a mall which will provide you with plenty of building material which you can use in this phase. As long as you can get the materials there quickly and don't have to wait for them too long, just use them reasonably and don't overthink it. The time you wasted in planning your factory probably is more than the "wasted" ressources. (Which are not even really wasted as you can always tear down something later.)

Of course, in your general designs, especially in those which you apply on a large scale, some ressource saving isn't bad. For example - for my wall blueprints which use a line of gun turrets fed by a belt with flamethrower turrets behind that, I use just yellow inserters and a yellow belt.That is absolutely sufficient for that purpose, so I don't intend to use "better" models for those inserters and belts. I'll need to build a lot of them after all, and I need to build them as base products for the advanced versions anyway.

I only save resources when I am still defending against biters and cannot or do not want to have to use ore patches that are in hostile territory. When it takes a lot of work to try to reach a new ore patch because I have to manually clear out biters, or I may not have the resources to defend against biters (ie: not enough electricity for more lasers, or not enough iron for bullets, or not enough oil for flamethrowers, etc.), I will certainly think twice before spending extra resources on building unnecessary stuff.

*BUT*... some spends on infrastructure will help this problem right away. For example, spending on level 2 assemblers instead of level 1 assemblers does cost resources, but it immediately reduces my pollution cloud, so that helps right away. So that I will do.

Infrastructure like green inserters and red & blue belts all have to wait.

Once I can easily defend myself from biters (kovarex + lasers), I treat resources as unlimited, and I don't worry about cost. At that point, it's just a question of if I want to spend my time building whatever it is.

I don't try to explicitly save as much as I can, I just try to use the appropriate item for the task. If there is no need for a faster/more advanced item, I use the cheaper item. Sometimes it's appropriate to use some more advanced item for unifying purposes, for example the medium power pole or faster assembling machines even for items I almost never use (speaker, power switch). If there is a recipe requiring more than 3 items of the same kind, I place a bulk inserter so it's just one swing. If there is an item with stack size 1 to move I use an ordinary inserter, because a bulk inserter gives no benefit. If there is a long line of pipes to put down, I use underground pipes because ordinary pipes are an obstacle I have to walk around.

Harb42 wrote: ↑Sun Dec 01, 2024 6:37 pm I don't want to be wasteful, but does it really matter? I am thinking minutes to be more cost effective and maybe that saved resource can be mined in few seconds.

Short answer: you are thinking about it too much


Your biggest resource is time, when your factory isn't producing something, you are really wasting time.
I also sometimes tend to overoptimise, but it helps to look at your production tab, and see how much is going into science vs infrastructure.

E.g. green science is going to eat many times more yellow inserters and belts than you can ever place. Really no point worrying about that.

Death world is the only one that it really matters on, and then only early game as you need to minimize pollution so you don’t get overwhelmed. Most death worlds that die die in a loop of “mining to make the weapons/ammo results in more attacks than the weapons/ammo can deal with”.

But you pass a point where it no longer matters and then it’s just a question of how often you need to expand.

And space age removes even most of that - uranium and tungsten become the only actually limited by the map items iirc.

Thank for the insights guys!
I really love to read your thougts and experiences. This is the game where you have so much liberty to do things in your way, that everybody does it a bit differently.
I tend to overoptimize and spending too much time with hasseling. In the early phases (game, new planet), this is somewhat good, as the bases are resource efficient. But later on when I try to "repair" some logistic issue I realize that I spent hours on improving stuff, where adding 1 or 2 more resource patches would make the problem obsolete and exceed current production - so basically it is a wasted time to optimize.

As is, I started to think on optimizing for expansions. Area and infrastructure wise too, because time is the most precious resource after the early and mid phases.

I optimize by building the next one better.

I won’t replace my iron factories with the new Vulcanus machines but by NEW iron expansion certainly is using them.

Eventually I remember the dead ore patches and deconstruct them.

I think infrastructure costs can be divided into at least 2 subcategories like "micro" and "macro", where at a micro level, you may want to optimize the cost of them, such if you are designing a furnace array, or a train loading/unloading station and you plan to use several of them, it may really be worth some time and effort to try and get rid of 1 or 2 unecessary splitters, as that would translate into maybe 100 or 1000 when you want to expand and speed up by seconds, minutes or hour the time a blueprint need to be copy pasted.

I think "macro" would refer to things like quality and modules, or megabase /speedrun. Those are more general consideration. How much of your base is dedicated to making science versus to making more base. I think it highly depend on playstyle and objective what is "worth" or not. Sometimes my objective is to "make a base than can produce XX science", sometimes it's "reach mining productivity XX" , sometimes it's just "try to get the win screen", that leads to different plans in mind for the size of the base and what is possible to do.

Harb42 wrote: ↑Sun Dec 01, 2024 6:37 pm Hi guys,

I play the game like everyone else, but time-to-time it pops in my mind: Am I thinking too much about costs? Micro costs? Does it worth to think 1 more minute, on how to place belts and pipes to be as cost effective as possible? For example using normal pipes instead of underground pipes where possible. Or using simple belts without splitterse, undergrounds to save a little bit of resource. Or not using medium power poles all the time, because the small ones are much cheaper.
I don't want to be wasteful, but does it really matter? I am thinking minutes to be more cost effective and maybe that saved resource can be mined in few seconds.

Tell me your opinions! I am not in a megabase phase, that is important!

There's thing I consider to be form and I follow it. And it probably looks OCD till someone walks about 30 units and sees some horrible abomination smiling at them. But at some point I just stopped doing things like worrying about powerpoles because getting a design "too market" was more important than spending my weekend in the same place.

When I look for optimizations I have to feel like they cut measurable time, more than 10%. Because if I have shaky hands one day that's 10% right? I won't be able to tell if I'm doing good work till then. Or it has to visibly give me joy in some other fashion.

Harb42 wrote: ↑Sun Dec 01, 2024 6:37 pm Hi guys,

I play the game like everyone else, but time-to-time it pops in my mind: Am I thinking too much about costs? Micro costs? Does it worth to think 1 more minute, on how to place belts and pipes to be as cost effective as possible? For example using normal pipes instead of underground pipes where possible. Or using simple belts without splitterse, undergrounds to save a little bit of resource. Or not using medium power poles all the time, because the small ones are much cheaper.
I don't want to be wasteful, but does it really matter? I am thinking minutes to be more cost effective and maybe that saved resource can be mined in few seconds.

Tell me your opinions! I am not in a megabase phase, that is important!

The ultimate cost is your own time. You have only a very finite amount of it, so you should favour using it to your best advantage. Will optimising your infrastructure costs free more time for you to do other stuff you wish you had more time for ? Then do optimise. Will optimising your infrastructure use up way more time than it deserves for you do to more interesting stuff ? Then don't .

Harb42 wrote: ↑Sun Dec 01, 2024 6:37 pm Hi guys,

I play the game like everyone else, but time-to-time it pops in my mind: Am I thinking too much about costs? Micro costs? Does it worth to think 1 more minute, on how to place belts and pipes to be as cost effective as possible? For example using normal pipes instead of underground pipes where possible. Or using simple belts without splitterse, undergrounds to save a little bit of resource. Or not using medium power poles all the time, because the small ones are much cheaper.
I don't want to be wasteful, but does it really matter? I am thinking minutes to be more cost effective and maybe that saved resource can be mined in few seconds.

Tell me your opinions! I am not in a megabase phase, that is important!

With the caveat of general play (ie not in a heavily constrained scenarios)
I never really care about the cost of infrastructure or even the power costs of inserters (was a recent thread about that) etc assuming supplies in a stable state rather than just researched and few available. In the latter case, I may just hold of doing much with them until they stabilize and storage starts to fill etc. Where I know I will be power constrained, (early space age platform, pre-nuclear for eg), then build according to the power you will have available, usually using efficiency modules etc.

As for power poles, for me they tend to be largely defined by the high level build approach/architecture we are/will be using (often play multiplayer) - ie city blocks, substation cells or whatever.

In early game you may be supply constrained, but for those of us who have been at it for years, we kind of know what to expect when and build accordingly and likely have a fairly predictable tech tree progression as well, probably a bunch of game stage blueprints we have used before or at least remembered designs we have built lots before etc. I assume in time most regular players end up with that and settle on ways of doing things, and/or maybe mix it up now and then just to be different.

My main priority tends to be does it meet it production quotas (not too little and not to much) and space/zoning (multiplayer, someone in charge of zoning) constraints and is it neatly laid out, and ideally easy understood and repeatable by others on the server (tileable etc) if useful. Aesthetics are kind of there too, but only really in not being messy/hacky/obscure etc.

It depends on scale. It may worth not to add Beacons to a new iron plates production factory, since it will require hundreds of them, and twice more speed modules, so may delay building for a while. And it may appear more productive just to place more smelters.

But for base elements, like power supply, conveyors, pipes I think there is no reason to save at all.
For sample, rather small Space Age base on Nauvis, consumes about 10k/min green chips, 20k/min copper plates, 30k/min iron plates.
With such production/consumption, extra materials that goes to building is not a big part. Building faster or more optimal way are goals, resource saving is not mentioned at all.
I almost never care to use "proper way" extra items that appear in inventory (and not taken away by bots for some reason), I just put them in a wooden box and shoot.

I consider the O-Notation (the one from informatics) - stuff that I build only once I don‘t care about optimal ressource/energyconsumption or layout footprint. Stuff that is has a higher tier (e.g. blue circuits) I care only very little about optimality and low tier stuff (e.g. iron plates) I care more. Because when scaling up this multiplies.

And QOL stuff I usually care about a lot - especially underground pipes even when there is only a small or no gap to bridge.