Factorio Forums

How is this possible?

From the Factorio Wiki:

https://wiki.factorio.com/World_generat ... sed_memory

Maximum map size and used memory
The map size is limited to 2,000 x 2,000 kilometers; internally, this is a square 2,000,000 tiles on a side, with an area of 4,000,000,000,000 (4 trillion) square tiles (assuming 1 tile = 1 meter on a side yields 2,000 x 2,000 km = 4 million square km). In real-world terms, this is between the sizes of India and Australia (or about 40% the area of the United States, or over 10 times the area of Germany). It would take around 200 game-minutes (ca 3.3 hours real time) to reach that border from the center when riding a train fueled with rocket or nuclear fuel. This makes the world essentially endless for practical purposes.

Because chunks are only generated in and close around the area revealed by radar, it is possible to reach that border without overloading your computer, as the size of the map in computer memory is dependent only on chunks actually generated. If only a narrow stripe of land is explored to far away, this remains manageable.

The generated chunks are fully mapped and stored in the player's RAM, which is the practical limiting factor of exploration.

On the less computer side, you only have so much space in designated areas, You want to put areas as close together as you can because of travel/logistics distance, and density tends to increase as a result, to the point that you run out of space.
Biters, if not disabled, restrict the safe, available area significantly, at least until late game with artillery or similar. As such, you have a safe perimeter, which takes time to expand.

well, the price of space depends on needs. Example: You could plop your assemblers anywhere, but you probabilly want to place them near plates. Since you do t want to long supply lines (latency, performance), ypu cram stuff together as close as reasonable possible. while there is still space else. Limiting yourself (by ribbon map for example) gave me some interesting insights on this topic. think about your prodct flow