Construction network

[cerbulex]

I've been playing for a while, but not megabase level.
I have a question.

Is it possible to have a unified construction zone, but have multiple logistics zones inside it?
For example, I want to build several mini-factories - but I have a single "factory factory", therefore, it seems I have to manually carry the components over (or via train, etc).

I was hoping there was a way to have a huge construction network, but multiple logistics inside it.

[quinor]

For now, sadly nope.

[Qon]

Yes, kind of.
If you make a single gigantic network then you have construction area and bots with access to material anywhere. When you want a disconnected logistics network within it you simply construct the production factory and then sever all connections immediatly around it to the larger construction network. If you want to do more construction then a single roboport is enough to connect the two networks, bots will happily cross areas that are not in the network to get to places within the network.

This does require some free space around the production networks though. And you have to connect and disconnect the world spanning con network with your target production network every time you want for the conbots from the outside network. It's simple to place a single roboport and remove it again but it might get annoying. Another maybe larger problem is that your con bots will likely go to sleep in roboports within the production networks. Filter inserters can pull them out and logi bots can transfer them out from the network automatically, but this has to be done on every roboport within the production networks to be guaranteed to pull out all of them.

[cerbulex]

That's what I thought.
It's inconvenient to do it "manually, as in segragate the networks based on demands, and it's not scalable.
I can't have tens of micro factories unless I build them manually.
Thanks for the answers.

[Qon]

It's inconvenient to do it "manually, as in segragate the networks based on demands, and it's not scalable.
I can't have tens of micro factories unless I build them manually.

The "demands" are reconstruction. If it's properly constructed then just build it normally in the world spanning construction network and cut it off with 4 cuts with your deconstruction planner. If you often want to expand each minifactory individually then it could be a hassle.

If the minifactories are on a line/grid with regular spacing then you can connect/disconnect them all at once with blueprints when you want to replace them all at once.
If you want to do small changes to individual factories then you connect it with a roboport, do your changes with ghost/blueprints and then remove the connecting roboport later when the construction is done from map view with decon planner.

Having tens of minifactories with this method is definitly doable as long as your building style isn't very unorganised and haphazard. If you are working with standardised blueprints that you know work then it's not a big differenceto how it would otherwise be done. So once you have experience and reached the mid-game it should be possible to to it without too much issues.

You always have to "build them manually" in vanilla factorio. There's no way to place blueprints automatically without mods. Doesn't make a difference if you use a big construction network or not.

[Jap2.0]

There is no very good way to do this, however you can do this to a limited extent with some setup. What you do is, say, if you have part A and part B, you put requester chests in part A for things you want put in part B, then have inserters putting the items from there into passive provider chests. You can do the opposite as well. Unfortunately, this doesn't completely do what you want, because you have to set it up manually (blueprints might work after the first time) and requesting items not in the network will not request them from the other network(s) automatically. You also have to be careful to limit the amount in the passive provider chests so you don't have, say, a full chest of chemical plants. By the way, why would you want to build your factory this way and have multiple logistics networks?

[cerbulex]

The reason I'd like this is because I want to use bots exclusively, and have many mini-factories for each product.
For example for green, red, blue, iron plates, copper plates, plastic, batteries, etc.
And inter-connect them by trains, of course.
Each mini factory would have input station (raw materials) and output stations (finished products). It's not a new concept by any means.
USe a 4lane system between the mini facotries, and 2 lane for raw resources.

But I"m lazy, so I want bots to build it, without ruining the logistics of it.
I guess the main idea is to keep the logistics networks as small as possible (inside each mini factory), and still be able to build stuff anywhere automatically (laziness).

[Jap2.0]

Ah, makes sense. Unfortunately, there isn't any really good way to do this .

[vanatteveldt]

tl;dr: no, but you can probably get close by having an automatic train system transport building material between your bases


IIUC, you want to have separate bases with each their own logistic networks, and move stuff around presumably by train. What you don't want to do is manual construction because it sucks, even with personal roboports, because you want to fire and forget blueprinted bases. Correct?

What you could do is have a separate train with building material (including roboports and bots), and start each base by ("manually") building a bootstrap station consisting of a train stop for the equipment train, a roboport, and chests for the building materials and an inserter for bots. Then you can put down the real blueprint for that base, and the bots will start working on it fed by the equipment train. If you insert bots based on # of available bots from the roboport you can manage the number of bots automatically as well, possibly you can even send back construction bots when they are no longer needed (but it might be easier to just make too many of them...)

If you disable the equipment station when no materials are needed, hopefully the equipment train will automatically visit any stations that need building materials if they all have the same name, but there are some active threads on automatic train routing by people that know more about it