Factorio Forums

How many main lines of base resources( copper
iron, steel, stone, coal and brick) do you use, I generally go with 4 lines of both copper and iron 2 lines of steel 1 of coal, and then stone/ brick usually get half a line on the same belt

Personally, I’ll run 8 lines of copper, 8 lines of iron, 2 lines of steel, and 1 line each for coal and stone.

I’ll also run one line of most everything else, except for red and green circuits, which get 2 and 4 (or more!) respectively.

Although maintaining proper spacing is more challenging this way, I try not to extend any lines unless I really need to. Extending lines unnecessarily can lead to merely wasted belts.

Hmm I was doing 2 lines for green 1 each for blue and red and i also space my lines 4 spaces apart for all my fluids and a litter needs

You’re allowed to do your bus as you see fit. I don’t make any two buses identical unless I’m following a blueprint for some starter base.

I do, however, start with yellow belts, so my busses are 4 belts wide, with two spaces between each set of four, to allow for undergrounds. If you want to use a wider separation between belts, feel free. That might just help when it comes to finding ways of getting different materials on different sides of belts that are next to one another in your factory.

I ment it more like a general thing like if someone has a favorite setup they use it a cool to learn stuff from others like having 8 copper lines instead of just 4

astroshak wrote: ↑

Thu Jan 10, 2019 2:08 am

You’re allowed to do your bus as you see fit. I don’t make any two buses identical unless I’m following a blueprint for some starter base.

I do, however, start with yellow belts, so my busses are 4 belts wide, with two spaces between each set of four, to allow for undergrounds. If you want to use a wider separation between belts, feel free. That might just help when it comes to finding ways of getting different materials on different sides of belts that are next to one another in your factory.

I've never been a fan of the central bus. Instead, I have a decentralized system where separate modular areas have inputs/outputs delivered/retrieved by train.

astroshak wrote: ↑

Thu Jan 10, 2019 2:08 am

my busses are 4 belts wide, with two spaces between each set of four, to allow for undergrounds

I started out doing this but changed to three spaces to make routing a little easier.

4 iron
4 copper
2 steel
1 batteries
1 plastic
1 coal
1 stone / stonebrick
4 green circuits
2 red circuits
2 blue circuits
1 lube
1 sulfuric acid

2 extra lanes for various

The 4 line meta comes from a time of fixed underground lengths and the need for even balancer sizes. Now red belt can span 6 tiles, which is pretty good for parts of the bus. And instead of rebalancing you can use priority splitters.

4 iron and 4 copper is fine. If you need more inject more material later instead of widening the bus. But for some other parts of the bus you can easily do 6 belts next to each other

I also do a fluid bus with at least water, lube, acid and petroleum.

Just don't put the metal for circuits on the main bus except at the start of the game. It needs so much that it should have dedicated lines. Green circuits for reds and blues also don't need to be on the main bus. Same with the plastic for red

I usually go for KatherineOfSky's bus, especially in vanilla or slightly modified vanilla play, which is this:
4x Iron Plate
4x Copper Plate
2x Steel Plate
2xElectronic Circuit
2x Plastic
2x Advanced Circuit
2x Battery
1x Processing Unit
1x Coal
...and then some liquids, usually lubricant, varying depending on my factory's throughput needs.

CJ5Boss wrote: ↑

Thu Jan 10, 2019 2:40 pm

I usually go for KatherineOfSky's bus

The bus design from KatherineOfSky (https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/ ... =754378586) is a great place to start, to get an idea of how to make a main bus work. I also recommend her other guides, they are chock full of starting ideas.
And to really stretch your mind, take a look at some of the suggestions from Dry Hairy Tree here on the forums. viewtopic.php?f=8&t=56448

My current factory:
3 iron
2 copper
2 Electronic Circuits
1 Adv Circuit
1 Proc Units
1 Gears
1 Steel
1 Bricks
1 Coal

This supplies a seeder factory which constructs stuff for the rest of the factory - and has some small research going. It produces 4 belts of electronic circuits but 2 of those go to the proc units and adv circuits (ECs and gears allow you to compress a lot of resources). A fourth iron belt is diverted into the gearmakers. Plastic isn't used in structure construction so it's omitted from the main bus. Coal is terminated early at the black research cluster.

8 iron

4 copper

2 green
1 red
1 blue

2 steel
1 plastic
1 battery

1 coal
1 stone
1 brick
1 iron ore

plus each fluid. So that's 24 lanes plus the fluid bus.

but that's on the bus. I actually produce 4 green circuits and send 2.5 of them directly to red and blue circuits before the bus. I produce 2 plastics and send 1 directly to red. I have 2 coal coming in but send 1 to plastic before bus. And when I pull iron off for concrete it doesn't keep going. Things like that. I only pull off the bus for science and my mall. Right next to the mall everything goes into chests with a train stop so I just pull in for quick resupply in one spot.

I'm not a fan of linear buses, but I would urge you to plan out a production target and design according to that. I love using helmod to do all calculations in-game, but of course a spreadsheet is fine as well.

I did a belts-only no-modules 800spm base here:
viewtopic.php?f=204&t=59054

What is important to realize is that iron and copper are mostly needed for circuits and steel.

In my base, out of 69 belts of iron, 32 were used for green circuits, 24 for steel, and 6 more for gears. All other users were 9 belts (and engines produced steel on site because it was more convenient, so the actual numbers are even more skewed)

Out of 64 belts of copper, 58 were used for circuits (48 for green, 10 more for red). The rest of science+rocket production consumed only 6 belts.

This is a nice visualization of the same process:
https://i.redd.it/lr7gbpixh3h11.png

So in short, if you produce your circuits (and steel & gears) on the main bus, you'll need massive iron and copper which will be mostly empty after the circuit production.

If you produce circuits, steel (& gears) before the 'main bus' part, you can make do with pretty small numbers. To get 800 spm you'll need something like 8 belts of iron, 6 belts of copper, 5 belts of green, 4 belts of red, 1 belt of blue; 4 belts of steel and 3 belts of gears.

(of course, to produce those 10 belts of circuits the input will be 90 belts of plates (58 copper+32 iron) and the steel and gear will require 24+6 belts of iron, so the preprocessing part will be pretty massive compared to the actual bus...)

I have made about two lines of iron and copper in my last few vanilla games. After that I begin to distribute production to separate factories and do not have single main bus for all products. Usually I make factories which consume 500 k - 1M iron plates per hour (4-8 blue belts), but three trains transport iron to green circuit factory, steel factory and main base (in which science packs are produced).

When 0.17 is released I am going to make significantly larger base but again with distributed production. Single large bus is very boring way to make factory.

Generally my main bus consists of iron plate, copper plate, and coal. I also have a return bus that carries science packs back to the lab area. I tried using next-level products (i.e. steel, copper cable, iron gear wheel) but it gets way too complicated to belt weave and it winds up making more sense to having dedicated assemblers for each of their end products.

My bus lanes are wide enough to accommodate rail once it is removed after conversion to logistic bots. This way my previously bused products are now produced at the outposts and delivered by train right into the heart of my factory.

What is your definition of "main line bus" ?

I have several spaghetti factories spread out all over the map, each one is kind of 'organically' grown to meet the production.
I have mines, smelting lines, storage, and distribution dedicated to each sub-factory. I have no main lines

RLS0812 wrote: ↑

Thu Jan 31, 2019 3:22 am

What is your definition of "main line bus" ?

I have several spaghetti factories spread out all over the map, each one is kind of 'organically' grown to meet the production.
I have mines, smelting lines, storage, and distribution dedicated to each sub-factory. I have no main lines

Now that's an interesting idea, I've always been interested in stuff like that

You're going to need more than a single belt of iron and copper. Most likely you will need dedicated iron/copper smelting for green circuit production since so many things take them.

You won't usually be keeping all of the lanes of the bus full all the way through, if you are you aren't producing enough or your bus is too big. I generally use 2-4 lanes of copper and iron, depending on intended production, and occasionally drop lanes off the bus entirely as it goes down the line.

Is this a trick question?

I use as many as is needed...

The number is completely variable, though it may have an upper limit where it's not worth it anymore. Not sure where that number is at the moment though, but maybe somewhere below 20 lanes for the belt part of the base, that constructs the items needed for the bot stage.

Some people has build some big belt bases, but I personally think that is done for the sake of doing it.