How to do Outpost Expansion in a non tedious way?

[Mojo]

I love this game, but there is one part, that i find to get boring quickly and that is establishing new outposts for ressources. In late game i normaly have a train equipped with all the Materials i need to build a new Outpost including Bots and some blueprints. So i basically clear out the Biters, but down Blueprints for defense, miners etc. and then let the Bots do their thing.

In my last game i tried to build my first mega Factory and building all those Outposts for my ressource hungry factory was a huge pain in the ass. Now i am thinking about starting a new game which also should turn out to be a mega factory but i don´t want to do all the outpost building, at least not in that inefficient way.

How do you do it?

[MeduSalem]

Easiest way would be some kind of Infinite Ores mod like the one from Angel's. Setup the outpost and forget about it. Eventually you have enough output from there that it stops the need for further expansion.


But for Vanilla the way I am doing it is that I use roboports in parallel of the railtrack. Basically blueprints of straight/interseciton/curved railsections that also contain roboports and also radars... making it possible for me to expand the railnetwork remotely over the mapscreen without having go out there personally.

I extend the railnetwork out to the resources I want this way and then also slap down blueprints of the outposts with a seperated logistic network for trainstation loading. Seperate for the reason that they don't start flying all the way home to my main base.

[Mojo]

Do you play without Bitters or do you build that setup with walls and defence?

[vanatteveldt]

I think two elements are important:

1) Really big ore patches. Get those sliders all up to max, and explore primarily in one direction to get distance

2) Semi-Automatic building of outposts. The best I got was driving there with FARL, then setup a 'bare bones' outpost myself which contains the train stations including a 'supplies' station, which then calls for a train to bring other material as needed. I used bots for the 'last mile' from belt to chests to avoid having to wire up balancers etc. https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comme ... _building/

[MeduSalem]

Do you play without Bitters or do you build that setup with walls and defence?

Obviously I guard the roboports with turrets and walls in non-peaceful playthroughs. They are automatically stocked up and repaired thanks to the roboports as well.

Also hinders biters from migrating to certain territories if their expansion parties are shot down when they want to cross the rails.

I could easily wall off the entire rail network this way, but I haven't had the need for that yet. Vanilla biters are easily disposed off with higher damage upgrades from infinite research.

But then again usually my artillery which I place in outposts takes care of all the biter nests getting too close to any of my facillities anyway... and only during the beginnings of a map they ever get close to the main base... later on they usually only want to attack outposts which are at the edge of the land I control... and the biters become less and less interested in the main base or rail sections leading out to the outposts.

Also like vanatteveldt wrote above I am limiting my expansion into certain ways/directions to limit the attack angle and priorities of biters. I basically build only a star network with the main base being in the center. Avoid having rails that go circular around the mainbase and far away. (Though I have a circle around my mainbase but it's behind the walls of my mainbase)

Currently I am trying out the Rapant mod... Haven't played far yet so I don't know how my strategy works there but it is supposed to make biters a lot harder to deal with since they look for weak spots or something... Have yet to see it though.

[Qon]

You don't need mods that make ores infinite in 0.17. The settings go higher if you want big and rich patches that last a long time. The starting patches will run out but the ones a bit further out will last a while.

Even if they do run out eventually that happens just a fraction of the time it did before so it's not really a chore. With good blueprints that make it less tedious and bots that make stations simple, it can be quite nice just fiddling with logistics and trains.

If you are going for megabase then infinite miner productivity will make sure that every mine becomes essentially infinite. And if you go far enough from spawn you will find patches that will also never run out regardless of mining productivity level. And productivity bonus also speeds mining up to the point that even a small patch can sustain a megabase eventually.

So just enjoy building a nice train network for your ores while you can. Because in the late game you might miss expanding your network looking for ores once you no longer need it anymore

[MeduSalem]

You don't need mods that make ores infinite in 0.17. The settings go higher if you want big and rich patches that last a long time. The starting patches will run out but the ones a bit further out will last a while.

Even if they do run out eventually that happens just a fraction of the time it did before so it's not really a chore. With good blueprints that make it less tedious and bots that make stations simple, it can be quite nice just fiddling with logistics and trains.

If you are going for megabase then infinite miner productivity will make sure that every mine becomes essentially infinite. And if you go far enough from spawn you will find patches that will also never run out regardless of mining productivity level. And productivity bonus also speeds mining up to the point that even a small patch can sustain a megabase eventually.

Further out yes. Playing with low frequency and huge richness settings all the time when playing without RSO.

The Vanilla 4k SPM base I tried to build a few weeks back ate more than 1mil of each Iron and Copper Ore in 4 minutes. So the big starting area 50mil patches were gone in a matter of 2-3 hours... and that without counting all the machines/modules that also had to be crafted.

But yeah, productivity research eventually slows the depletion of patches down drastically. But in the beginning there is quite some time where one will have to hurry building new outposts until the equilibrium point is surpassed where the productivity bonus effect starts to carry the entire thing.

And mods change the scope completely... with Angel+Bobs which I am playing currently I barely notice the consumption of ore at all. It's like "man this patch will last forever, damn it... I want it to be gone already so I can start building there" and with that I don't even mean the infinite ore patches from angel's mods outside the starting area. The only thing I notice there is that the coal consumption is ridiculous compared to everything else.

[vanatteveldt]

But for Vanilla the way I am doing it is that I use roboports in parallel of the railtrack. Basically blueprints of straight/interseciton/curved railsections that also contain roboports and also radars... making it possible for me to expand the railnetwork remotely over the mapscreen without having go out there personally.

Doesn't it take ages for a section of track to finish if it's far away from the main base? Or do you place resupply stops at certain intervals?

Or do you simply not care as long as it gets done at some point...?

[MeduSalem]

Doesn't it take ages for a section of track to finish if it's far away from the main base? Or do you place resupply stops at certain intervals?

Or do you simply not care as long as it gets done at some point...?

Buffer Chests at regular intervals. Speeds up the expansion and repairs etc. Don't notice much of a delay thanks to them. Without Buffer chests it would be a nightmare so I am glad they finally got added.

Only thing that can take a while is when I decide to tear down an outpost and stuff being delivered back to the main base's storage chests.

Also I can't deny a certain "place blueprint and forget" habit and only check up when there appear yellow icons which don't go away for a certain period... meaning there is something wrong somewhere for some reason. Usually when I haven't automated some item yet or haven't added it to logistic network availabillity... or there being a shortage on building material. xD

Also I have a circuit network speaker alert going on that kills my ears when the ore stock in the main base drops below a certain threshold... that reminds me to check up on outposts or on newly built ones if for some reason something got stuck there that doesn't show as a warning icon (like a missing electric pole somewhere not connecting things or so and me not noticing for hours until the ore stock runs almost dry... happened to me more than once)

What can get a bit annoying though is if one wants to expand further than the currently furthest radar can actively see... since you can't place anything in the Fog of War and have to wait for the construction robots to place the next radar before you can progress further. Wish there would be at least some higher tier Radars with greater field of view like those in Bobs Mods. Would help greatly in finding the next ore deposits as well instead of randomly expanding and hoping that something suitable is located near where the track will be running along, especially with lowest frequency settings.

Also don't forget that some aggravated biters can always make your life miserable when chewing through rails or electric poles that lead to outposts in the middle of nowhere and then you have to get your ass out there personally and fix the mess. With my method the chance of it happening is greatly reduced because they get killed when trying to chew on the electric poles or rails... and even if they succeed in destroying something it is only a temporary problem that is automatically fixed/repaired by the bots thanks to the roboports along the way.

There just is no 100% perfect method, just ones that are somewhat easier than others. Others obviously like to use FARL and automated construction trains. Also tried that and hated the circuit network complexity and still didn't get it to work properly with outposts either not being stocked up by the trains at all or receiving too many items or I couldn't get it to work with automatically deconstructing things and delivering them back to the main base. Then after buffer chests came around I eventually abandoned the crappy circuit network contraption and never looked back. This way I at least spare myself having to walk out into the netherlands to fix stuff.

On a side note about the outposts what I wonder though is what I am going to do with Angels+Bobs because of the Alien Artifacts... I wonder if there is a neat mod that can collect that stuff off the ground from the dead bodies at outposts because I don't feel like going out there myself to collect the crap. Also using Alien Biomes mod too and it is often tough to differentiate the artifacts from the random background doodads like flowers and whatnot that almost look the same. Not really much of a problem, because eventually I am planning on automating the alien artifacts production anyway, but I kinda hate the thought that there are thousands of glowing artifacts lying all about in the wasteland. Brrr.

[Qon]

On a side note about the outposts what I wonder though is what I am going to do with Angels+Bobs because of the Alien Artifacts... I wonder if there is a neat mod that can collect that stuff off the ground from the dead bodies at outposts because I don't feel like going out there myself to collect the crap.

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/LootChestPlus

Only collects crtain kinds of loot but the modification of it to collect any loot dropped is trivial. If there's a ton of loot then you need to empty the chest with 4 express loaders to get it all out before the next collection cycle (every 10 seconds) because loot that doesn't fit in the chest when it is collected is sent to /dev/null. I'm thinking of making a better mod that allows you to place several of these chests for larger capacity and faster unloading from the chests. And they should probably be active providers also.

But it collects from the entire map in a somewhat performant way so you don't have to spam down lots of ups draining entities everywhere you want to collect loot. That means better UPS than probably most other similar mods and also less hassle incorporating this new entity into every blueprint to be able to collect the loot. You lose out on the logistics of transporting the loot back to base though if you place the chest where you want the loot.

[vanatteveldt]

@MeduSalem

Very interesting, I thought it would be hopeless, but you've convinced me to go and try as soon as I get back home in a couple weeks. I use automatic supply train to outposts, so I guess they could actually double as buffers.

[Hannu]

On a side note about the outposts what I wonder though is what I am going to do with Angels+Bobs because of the Alien Artifacts... I wonder if there is a neat mod that can collect that stuff off the ground from the dead bodies at outposts because I don't feel like going out there myself to collect the crap. Also using Alien Biomes mod too and it is often tough to differentiate the artifacts from the random background doodads like flowers and whatnot that almost look the same. Not really much of a problem, because eventually I am planning on automating the alien artifacts production anyway, but I kinda hate the thought that there are thousands of glowing artifacts lying all about in the wasteland. Brrr.

Someone linked a mod. I have a scrap production mod which gives stuff from biter nests and worms. I do not hesitate to use command to clear terrain. With Bob's it is easy to collect enough artifacts you need and clear others by command. I do not remember exact command right now, but I found it easily with Google. Someone says that huge number of items on ground could affect performance.

[MeduSalem]

@MeduSalem

Very interesting, I thought it would be hopeless, but you've convinced me to go and try as soon as I get back home in a couple weeks. I use automatic supply train to outposts, so I guess they could actually double as buffers.

Outpost expansion IS kinda hopeless until the productivity is so far up that further expansion is pointless because of how it would take 50-100 hours deplete the ore field and you are not going to see that because you are more likely to abandon the map before that.

But I also say that my way may or may not suit your playstyle. If you mastered automatic supply trains and the entire infrastructure behind it then you might be a lot more happy with that.

On a side note about the outposts what I wonder though is what I am going to do with Angels+Bobs because of the Alien Artifacts... I wonder if there is a neat mod that can collect that stuff off the ground from the dead bodies at outposts because I don't feel like going out there myself to collect the crap.

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/LootChestPlus

Only collects crtain kinds of loot but the modification of it to collect any loot dropped is trivial. If there's a ton of loot then you need to empty the chest with 4 express loaders to get it all out before the next collection cycle (every 10 seconds) because loot that doesn't fit in the chest when it is collected is sent to /dev/null. I'm thinking of making a better mod that allows you to place several of these chests for larger capacity and faster unloading from the chests. And they should probably be active providers also.

But it collects from the entire map in a somewhat performant way so you don't have to spam down lots of ups draining entities everywhere you want to collect loot. That means better UPS than probably most other similar mods and also less hassle incorporating this new entity into every blueprint to be able to collect the loot. You lose out on the logistics of transporting the loot back to base though if you place the chest where you want the loot.

I will look into it and might give it a try.

Went on to google myself earlier today after I wrote the post and found out that Nanobots seems to have a feature where on can tell constrution bots to pick everything up from the ground. So I might check that out as well.

The performance of a pick-up script isn't that much of a problem in my opinion... I wouldn't be running the script all the time but rather call it every now and then to collect everything at once... and then I could take a temporary UPS hit for a short period until everything is collected.

Someone linked a mod. I have a scrap production mod which gives stuff from biter nests and worms. I do not hesitate to use command to clear terrain. With Bob's it is easy to collect enough artifacts you need and clear others by command. I do not remember exact command right now, but I found it easily with Google. Someone says that huge number of items on ground could affect performance.

I also imagine that a huge amount of items on the ground might be problematic eventually for the performance. I wonder what other more experienced Bob's players do about it or if they experienced problems with it.

[vanatteveldt]

But I also say that my way may or may not suit your playstyle. If you mastered automatic supply trains and the entire infrastructure behind it then you might be a lot more happy with that.

The way I set it up is relatively simple:
1- All stations of the same type (mining outpost, defensive outpost, etc.) share a name and a train*.
2- Sink stations unload each type into its own chest using crossed out slots to limit oversupply
3- Circuitry: all chests are linked to a constant combinator with negative values for needs, e.g. -25 mines, -25 conbots. The chests are added to it so it a negative value remains it means that it is undersupplied
4- Train stop is set to be enabled if anything < 0, train is set to leave on inactive
5- Bots are inserted into a roboport if needed, e.g. if available bots < 50.

This works pretty well. There's a bit of oversupply/buffer, but who cares. Usually the train carries a lot more than can be buffered, but it will stay at the outpost as long as active construction is going on because of the inactive condition. Biggest downside is that you if you allocate multiple trains to a single outpost type they tend to all go to the same outpost at the same time. I guess disabling the station if a train is present will help a bit. I sometimes split outposts into groups with unique names, e.g. 'defense N', 'defense S' so I can dedicate a train to each part of the base.

I think our strategies can be combined pretty well: your "creeping expansion" builds what I normally do with FARL, and once it hits an outpost side, I manually blueprint the outpost starter from map mode (which sets up the supply sink station) to be built by the "railbots" and then the full outpost which will mostly be built by the outpost bots. It would be nice to make sure the railbots don't participate in the outpost construction (as it could cause e.g. a critical piece to be hauled by bot rather than by train, causing a huge delay, but not sure how that would work except by deconstructing some of the rail roboports...