My guide to "There is no spoon" (15.X version)

Post all other topics which do not belong to any other category.
D0SBoots
Inserter
Inserter
Posts: 43
Joined: Sat Nov 05, 2016 10:11 pm
Contact:

My guide to "There is no spoon" (15.X version)

Post by D0SBoots »

This guide is for the still-experimental 15.X version. For the 14.X guide, see My guide to "There is no spoon" (14.X version).

Strap in for another wall o' text, I've updated the guide with an entirely new base design! Once again, I'll be using spoilers to split things up; that way everyone can read what they care about and skip the rest. If you don't want to follow a step-by-step guide, I suggest checking out "Overall Philosophy," "Research Order," and "The Map" for some general ideas that are applicable to any spoon run.

Despite the much higher resource requirements caused by the introduction of purple and gold science packs, I actually beat my old time for the rocket launch - I reached game end at 6:14:26. And if I hadn't made a dumb oversight in the design (more on that later), I would've been able to launch in six hours, easily. It's still a wild scramble for the first three hours, but the introduction of blueprint strings into the base game (no research or mods required) is *huge*, because it means no more alt-tabbing to consult screenshots every other second.

I've attached a replay (requires 0.15.27) if anyone wants to watch me build. I find it slightly embarrassing, myself; when I was playing, I felt like I was super-efficiently building and keeping the game paused the rest of the time, but watching the replay, apparently I spend a lot of time staring into space. :|
Spoon replay.zip
(7.47 MiB) Downloaded 1117 times
Overall philosophy
The map
The full-resolution map .warning. 13013x12001 its big
Research order
Game start
Bootstrap
Red-Green Science
Wandering towards blue science
Draw the rest of the owl
Finishing up
Last edited by D0SBoots on Tue Jul 18, 2017 3:53 am, edited 2 times in total.

D0SBoots
Inserter
Inserter
Posts: 43
Joined: Sat Nov 05, 2016 10:11 pm
Contact:

Re: My guide to "There is no spoon" (15.X version)

Post by D0SBoots »

Here's the blueprint string for the entire base, which was too large to fit in the main post.
Master Blueprint

Jap2.0
Smart Inserter
Smart Inserter
Posts: 2339
Joined: Tue Jun 20, 2017 12:02 am
Contact:

Re: My guide to "There is no spoon" (15.X version)

Post by Jap2.0 »

I'm not sure if I'll use this on my first try for there is no spoon or if I'll want to try it without first. After all, if I fail, it's only... more than 8 hours :). I'll keep it in mind. Good job!
There are 10 types of people: those who get this joke and those who don't.

User avatar
featherwinglove
Filter Inserter
Filter Inserter
Posts: 579
Joined: Sat Jun 25, 2016 6:14 am
Contact:

Re: My guide to "There is no spoon" (15.X version)

Post by featherwinglove »

I turned off Uranium since it's irrelevant to a spoon run
Heeelll! Why don't you place that one down there? I got so used to Anti in the year before achievements were even a thing that seeing a different two-vowel word in front of "run" is just too weird for me to even be able to read the rest of your guide. (That and such things for other games.)
Two basic factories cost the same as a blue factory to build, but produce at 4/3 the speed. They also consume less power per item.
Ah, but once into the sub-2hr realm, switching and rotating devices while building starts to become an issue, especially late game when even AM2s are pocket change and there aren't many recipes left which may succumb to automation which the AM1 can handle. Anti (not me, 'cus I'm not a :lol: :lol: :lol: "spoon" runner) ends up using only AM2s and long inserters for the entire front end. And to shave just a few seconds, he'll gladly waste half the AM2s throughput and build twice as big because he can build twice as big faster than flipping inserters and switching machines even with hotkeys building a smaller high efficiency factory. Getting ratios perfect in a real speedrun goes right out the window late game.
Yellow factories are ridiculously expensive, don't even bother researching them.
Actually, the research project is the problem, not the cost of the machines themselves. Building big and wasteful with AM2s, and even with 88 labs (yes, I actually counted them in Anti's build) leaves you just waiting for the research while you could be researching your rocket silo instead. Also, you'll be building big enough that you research beacons instead so that in addition to putting four P3 modules in your silo, it's also picking up a dozen S1 modules from beacons.
Two stone furnaces are much cheaper than a single steel furnace. The steel furnace uses coal more efficiently, but the partial extra mining drill used to supply the furnaces is still much cheaper than the difference.
At the sub-2hr level, you go with steel furnaces, but the reason is, well, subtle: walking time. You see...
Design your base with self-contained sections. For instance, my base has the red/green science production completely on its own, not depending on anything from the rest of the base.
...also includes primary back ends, i.e. mines, at the sub-2hr level. Since by the point of red circuits (which also need pumpjacks and refineries, i.e. things that need both stone brick and steel), steel furnace production is fully automated (just switch the pumpjack machine to steel furnaces and you just have a couple of inserters looking dumb.) Building a red belt feed with 16 steel furnaces waiting in a chest for you is far faster than doing it with 32 stone furnaces.
Always be hand-crafting *something*. You almost always need more belts and inserters; assemblers and mining drills are also good default choices.
If you're going for sub-2hr, automate belts and basic inserters as fast as you possibly can, otherwise you won't have time to craft assemblers and mining drills. Right early in the game, you should have AM1s filling chests with gears, pipes, and green circuits as well. When it comes up, automate your pumpjack production because you'll be too busy hand building your refineries at the same time (they can't be automated with AM2s and take forever.) That's why iron and copper for red and blue circuits come from steel furnaces, 'cus once you have your pumpjacks, it's a simple recipe flip to automate steel furnaces and within minutes have more than you can use.

Automation research should be before logistics. In a sub-2hr run, you don't have time to hand craft SK1s for logistics research because you'll be too busy crafting mining machines, furnaces, steam engines, boilers, power poles, and those first few belts and inserters to feed iron to your belt and inserter machines. Turrets and Military should be just after Automation 2 because that's when SL1 switches to SL2, and you can just get them out of the way before finishing your SL2 build (you'll probably be busy building the second iron mine and first copper mine while they research.) Also, for most of the SL2 research, the order doesn't matter because research progresses faster than you can build in that era of the game.

Actually, there isn't much to "really" criticize in this post: once I got familiar with Anti methods, I'm able to just wing an 8 hour build out of any map that isn't too bad, although usually with some save scumming because of stupid mistakes or lack of map knowledge. But, if you're looking for the basis of a sub-2hr run, this is almost, but not quite, a good place to start.

D0SBoots
Inserter
Inserter
Posts: 43
Joined: Sat Nov 05, 2016 10:11 pm
Contact:

Re: My guide to "There is no spoon" (15.X version)

Post by D0SBoots »

featherwinglove wrote:Actually, there isn't much to "really" criticize in this post: once I got familiar with Anti methods, I'm able to just wing an 8 hour build out of any map that isn't too bad, although usually with some save scumming because of stupid mistakes or lack of map knowledge. But, if you're looking for the basis of a sub-2hr run, this is almost, but not quite, a good place to start.
"There is no Spoon" is very much an "intro to speedrunning"-type achievement: You don't have time to just sit around, but it's not a a challenge for people who are familiar with true speedrunning techniques (nor do I think it is meant to be). The greater resource requirements have made it a *bit* more of a challenge - I'm gonna go out on a limb and say I expect the record for 15.X to settle in the 2:15-2:30 range (currently it's 3:40).

But this isn't meant to be a speedrunning guide. It's meant to be a guide for getting a specific achievement, without too much stress, and accessible to everyone. For instance, I limited the pace of research to 20/min by only building 4 green science assemblers. That means that research will always take 5 hours, minimum, and that's what differentiates a "spoon" run from a speed run. And even for that purpose, I know my base design isn't the best - I already acknowledged I could have shaved off 15 minutes if I hadn't messed up on calculating blue chip requirements. My main contribution is documenting the whole thing so that others can follow along. :)

User avatar
featherwinglove
Filter Inserter
Filter Inserter
Posts: 579
Joined: Sat Jun 25, 2016 6:14 am
Contact:

Re: My guide to "There is no spoon" (15.X version)

Post by featherwinglove »

D0SBoots wrote:That means that research will always take 5 hours, minimum, and that's what differentiates a "spoon" run from a speed run.
Even in this context, the word "spoon" immediately in front of the word "run" is making my lip twitch, lol!

I had my idea of replicating the scene from Matrix. Goes something like this: I'm holding a plastic spoon in one hand, staring at it intently. It starts to bend, just like in the movie. As it's looking very convincingly bent, the camera gets bumped to reveal the jet lighter I'm holding in my other hand. (A similar thing was done with a collection of kit model sprue and reversed to cause the regeneration effect of the Borg ship in the Star Trek TNG episode "Q Who"; Youtube apparently doesn't have a clip of it.)

BlakeMW
Filter Inserter
Filter Inserter
Posts: 950
Joined: Thu Jan 21, 2016 9:29 am
Contact:

Re: My guide to "There is no spoon" (15.X version)

Post by BlakeMW »

I like that you use productivity 1 modules. It is astonishing how good value they are. For example rocket silo tech costs 1000 high tech packs (in addition to other packs), that requires 1000 speed1 modules and 3000 processing units - a processing unit is about as expensive as a tier1 module, so right there is a cost equivalence of 4000 tier 1 modules. An 8% productivity bonus in labs is a saving equal to 300 tier1 modules so it is easily seen that just from the savings on the high tech packs of one tech alone you can afford to stuff prod1 modules in pretty much everything science related.

mrvn
Smart Inserter
Smart Inserter
Posts: 5682
Joined: Mon Sep 05, 2016 9:10 am
Contact:

Re: My guide to "There is no spoon" (15.X version)

Post by mrvn »

What settings did you use to get that much iron, copper and coal that close together? (sorry, can't try the map string at the moment)

D0SBoots
Inserter
Inserter
Posts: 43
Joined: Sat Nov 05, 2016 10:11 pm
Contact:

Re: My guide to "There is no spoon" (15.X version)

Post by D0SBoots »

mrvn wrote:What settings did you use to get that much iron, copper and coal that close together? (sorry, can't try the map string at the moment)
Glad you asked, because it made me realize I pasted the wrong string somehow... fixed now.

Here's the complete breakdown of settings. (Plus I also went through a lot of random seeds until I found one that had a lot of open space and everything was laid out nicely).

Code: Select all

Resource      | Frequency | Size                  | Richness  |
--------------+-----------+-----------------------+-----------+
Water         | Low       | Only in starting area |           |
Iron ore      | Very high | Very big              | Very good |
Copper ore    | Very high | Very big              | Very good |
Stone ore     | Very high | Medium                | Very good |
Coal          | High      | Very big              | Very good |
Uranium ore   | Low       | None                  | Poor      |
Crude oil     | Very high | Very big              | Very good |
Enemy bases   | Low       | None                  | Poor      |
Starting area |           | Medium                |           |

D0SBoots
Inserter
Inserter
Posts: 43
Joined: Sat Nov 05, 2016 10:11 pm
Contact:

Re: My guide to "There is no spoon" (15.X version)

Post by D0SBoots »

BlakeMW wrote:I like that you use productivity 1 modules. It is astonishing how good value they are. For example rocket silo tech costs 1000 high tech packs (in addition to other packs), that requires 1000 speed1 modules and 3000 processing units - a processing unit is about as expensive as a tier1 module, so right there is a cost equivalence of 4000 tier 1 modules. An 8% productivity bonus in labs is a saving equal to 300 tier1 modules so it is easily seen that just from the savings on the high tech packs of one tech alone you can afford to stuff prod1 modules in pretty much everything science related.
You're off by a factor of 2 - military, production and high tech science packs all produce 2 per cycle. Aside from that, your logic is sound for a resource-constrained game, but I don't think it holds for a time-constrained game where resources are only limited by how many drills you put down. In that regime, a 1.08 increase in research speed can be gotten much more cheaply by just building more infrastructure. The only reason I used productivity modules in all the labs was because I had 80 of them anyway, due to the silo, and after the science pack assemblers it seemed the most effective place to dump them.

But yeah, in a long game, where you were going for infinite mining productivity using space science? I haven't run the numbers, but it would probably make sense to put productivity module 2s or even 3s in the labs, due to the cost savings.

BlakeMW
Filter Inserter
Filter Inserter
Posts: 950
Joined: Thu Jan 21, 2016 9:29 am
Contact:

Re: My guide to "There is no spoon" (15.X version)

Post by BlakeMW »

Ah yeah, I forgot that High Tech packs come in pairs, still the high tech packs are less than half the cost of the tech (particularly when production packs are in play) so it still works out. It's also worth noting the current 0.15 speedrun uses prod1 modules https://youtu.be/szklOBcOXw8?t=2h8m48s - ultimately it might not prove to the best strategy but I think they are used for convenience rather than strictly cost savings (i.e. using 2xprod1 modules in three higher tiers of production, is more convenient than making everything 25% bigger).

metachimp
Manual Inserter
Manual Inserter
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri Jun 23, 2017 9:26 pm
Contact:

Re: My guide to "There is no spoon" (15.X version)

Post by metachimp »

This is amazing. Thank you so much for sharing!

torgo
Manual Inserter
Manual Inserter
Posts: 1
Joined: Wed Jun 14, 2017 9:28 pm
Contact:

Re: My guide to "There is no spoon" (15.X version)

Post by torgo »

Thanks for sharing this. I, a relative noob, was able to squeeze in at just over 7 hours.
The blue science seemed a bit slow. The electric drills were the bottleneck on the process.

Kuddlesnot
Manual Inserter
Manual Inserter
Posts: 1
Joined: Mon Sep 25, 2017 8:46 pm
Contact:

Re: My guide to "There is no spoon" (15.X version)

Post by Kuddlesnot »

Hey, I just wanted to say thanks for posting this! Worked for me and I urked in at about 7ish hours. I found the guide just googling "factorio no spoon .15 guide." Made this account to thank you, I got all of the achievements now!

To add to the speed run vs spoon run conversation, I have been watching factorio speedruns from when .15 first dropped, so Thul and Fishminer and some of Anti's .14 runs, and I have to agree with you that this is a fantastic intro to speedrunning achievement.

It introduces the concepts and forces you to think differently vs a regular play session, and forces you to make different decisions, which I think is fantastic. I have never speed run anything before, but this was a lot of fun and I am already thinking about how I could have easily changed what I did within this guide to make my time wayyyy better, and I am starting to see how guys like fishminer and thul think. The technique will come with time, but this achievement and guide helped me find the mindset!

I have to agree with what someone said above about blue seeming a bit short, my labs were definitely not running at full capacity throughout with blue being the bottleneck. That being said, I definitely did not build everything in the recommended order so I was not building very good buffers of anything, so what I should really be saying is that compared to production of everything else, blue just seems to be much less flexible.

A piece of advice to anyone else reading this - towards the end don't be afraid to step up production of anything if you are waiting on it. I was adding some miners and steel furnaces to copper and iron lines, 2 new blue science that I was hand feeding, and another blue circuit machine after the gold and purple science was done, re-directing the two green circuits used for those and adding another, as the iron and copper lines easily fed them because they were no longer feeding the science. If I did nothing I feel I would have been cutting it very close to the 8 hours. However, like I said, I am confident this was a flaw in my build order, so buffers of blue circuits and blue science were not being built properly. not a flaw in DOSBoots' design.

Thanks again DOSBoots for making this!

Nasabot
Fast Inserter
Fast Inserter
Posts: 102
Joined: Fri Oct 30, 2015 11:16 am
Contact:

Re: My guide to "There is no spoon" (15.X version)

Post by Nasabot »

Worked like a charm. After some hours, when the factorio is completed, its a good idea to manually adjust some parts. As other stated, blue science is a bottleneck, but with some better inserter and speed modules it can be improved.

aischos
Manual Inserter
Manual Inserter
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue Oct 17, 2017 3:52 am
Contact:

Re: My guide to "There is no spoon" (15.X version)

Post by aischos »

I hate to thread necro, but I'm not allowed to message as a new user.

I noticed what I think is a typo while following your guide.
In the Bootstrap section you list a selection of stuff to build and you repeat boiler, was this an error and if so, what else am I supposed to build 9 (or 1) of?
Your goal now is to hand-craft the infrastructure you'll need to start the real base, while keeping the drills running. You need 1 steam engine, 1 offshore pump, 1 boiler, 1 pair of pipe-to-ground, 2 pipes, 9 boilers, 7 electric mining drills, 10 burner inserters, ~80 transport belts, ~50 iron for emergencies, and as many power poles as you have the wood for. You can skimp on some of the drills, but it's important to have enough belts.

User avatar
DaveMcW
Smart Inserter
Smart Inserter
Posts: 3699
Joined: Tue May 13, 2014 11:06 am
Contact:

Re: My guide to "There is no spoon" (15.X version)

Post by DaveMcW »

I think the second one should be 9 stone furnaces.

lazyhamfist
Manual Inserter
Manual Inserter
Posts: 1
Joined: Sat Nov 04, 2017 1:15 am
Contact:

Re: My guide to "There is no spoon" (15.X version)

Post by lazyhamfist »

Great job DOSBoots! Managed to get the achievement with 55 minutes to spare. Thanks for the guide!

User avatar
numerials
Burner Inserter
Burner Inserter
Posts: 10
Joined: Tue Jul 26, 2016 11:54 pm
Contact:

Re: My guide to "There is no spoon" (15.X version)

Post by numerials »

I'm still struggling, have tried about 5 times now.

Im trying to get There is no spoon on RSO default settings resources (I feel like having classic resources on bigger than default is cheating), and I ALWAYS run out of iron almost RIGHT after getting red circuits going (note I run out of iron not copper)
I end up spending so much extra resources and time getting trains going to get the next nearest iron spots that I always fail.

To the people who are mocking those of us struggling, and get it in under 2 hours: Can you offer any guidance other than taunts? What am I doing wrong?

Zavian
Smart Inserter
Smart Inserter
Posts: 1641
Joined: Thu Mar 02, 2017 2:57 am
Contact:

Re: My guide to "There is no spoon" (15.X version)

Post by Zavian »

First, I'm pretty sure no-one has launched a rocket in 0.15 in 2 hrs. The only player I'm aware of to launch a rocket in 2 hr in 0.14 is anti-elite, who used a known seed with lots of ore patches. ie far from default settings.

Next I would ditch RSO. It sounds like it is just making your life harder. If you play on vanilla defaults there will normally be several iron ore patches within belt range of your starting location.

Post Reply

Return to “General discussion”