Factorio Forums

Hi All,

I was wondering which way is the best to get the most productivity out of the steam engines. I watched some videos and most people seem to set up with the pump, then place the boilers right on that, then add the water pipes to the steam engines. I set it up where after the pump, I placed the water pipes, then 4-6 boilers then the steam engines. It would make sense to heat the water up closest to the steam engines, not between the water. I tried both ways, but I dont really see much difference. Does that matter?

Also, how can I get my Steam Engines at max proficiency? No matter how I set it up, they always run at around 50% to 70%. How can push them higher?

To the first: no.

Second: just added this
https://forums.factorio.com/wiki/inde ... etwork#FAQ

Awesome! Thank you - I will go over it in detail!

"Max performance" is how much power the steam engines can produce. It depends on the water temperature.
"Performance" is how much power they are producing right now.

If "Performance" is less than "max performance" then you don't need all the power you could be producing. This is a good thing. When you need more power, the performance will go up, and you won't need to build more steam engines (until the performance = max performance).

Yes, that makes sense! I will keep an eye on that as i start to reach the maximum load they can handle. Thanks!

Also, remember that if you use laser turrets you want to have plenty of extra power. Laser turrets use a LOT of power when shooting constantly, and if you don't have enough power they'll have to wait to recharge between shots, so they'll take longer to kill the biters.

In my experience so far it seems that the number of boilers is about 1.3x more than number of steam engines to be able to keep water at 100° even when at 100% load.

And of course only two pumps for one pipe and max about 16 engines for one pipe.

Personally I'm going for rows of 1 pump, 14 boilers and 9 steam engines. Everything is running at100% efficiency.

ray4ever wrote:Personally I'm going for rows of 1 pump, 14 boilers and 9 steam engines. Everything is running at100% efficiency.

How can you have 1 pump servicing 9 engines? Doesn't the lower water level decrease the maximum output? I have 1 pump servicing 6 engines and the water level is down to 9.5/10, and thus the engine can only output 95% of it's maximum output. Or am I misunderstanding?

Edit: For clarification, I have the 6 engines daisy-chained to the 1 pump. Not sure if this makes a difference.

Hmm. good question. At least I never noticed any decrease in the power output even though the water level isn't at 10. So I think that the maximum output is only dependent on the water temperature (has to be 100 for 100% efficiency).

elkar wrote:In my experience so far it seems that the number of boilers is about 1.3x more than number of steam engines to be able to keep water at 100° even when at 100% load.

And of course only two pumps for one pipe and max about 16 engines for one pipe.

Yeh this is about right. I checked every number, and it'sseems to be exactly 1 1/3rd. If you take the number of steam engines you want, multiply it by 1.33, and then roundup, you get the exact number of boilers you need for maximum efficiency.