Factorio Forums

Since most people play the game a bit differently, I figured we could have a thread about the things you do or don't do that might bother other players or look weird, and vice-versa.

Some things for me:

Spaghetti doesn't bother me, and I won't rebuild or tear-down spaghetti unless it's required or I've built a much more productive line since. Sometimes this ends up using a bunch of splitters/underground belts and long inserters reaching over other inserters and putting things in weird places because that's the quickest spot for those ingredients (laser turret production near inserters/belts comes to mind).

I use slow inserters for slow things, and generally only upgrade belts as needed. My friend prefers using fast inserters and faster belts everywhere when possible.

I don't like trains that much, and will run a hundreds of belts, and chain ore patches so they feed one to another if they're "nearby".

Manually feeding the copper furnaces coal, because until mid-game it's sufficient. (I really don't like that they nerfed fuel blocks hard by pushing heavy/light oil out further). If I need more I'll place a box at the end of a belt and shove in hundreds of coal instead of just routing a fuel belt.

The two things I think are unusual that I do.

Belt lockers. In various locations I set up a little circuit thing eith a belt that turns the belt ofd if a forbidden item goes through. This because I tend to accidently contaminate things and this ensures it isn't a complete mess.

Hobbiest -> normal -> industrial. When I get a new recipe unlocked, I immediately set up a thing for it, no ratio checking or anything, fed by chests. Later I hook it up to belts as spaghetti, and later still I do it all properly. I also never tear down anl hobbiest setup unless the industrial one is functional.

Honktown wrote: ↑

Mon Oct 14, 2019 4:15 pm

I use slow inserters for slow things, and generally only upgrade belts as needed. My friend prefers using fast inserters and faster belts everywhere when possible.

Same. You can do a lot with just red belt. No need to waste blue belt on everything.

Since the assembler ingredient limit removal I also use Assembly Machine 1 in some places where it's fast enough. That's the case quite a lot even when the machines it feeds are a lot faster.

Serenity wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 15, 2019 11:39 am

Honktown wrote: ↑

Mon Oct 14, 2019 4:15 pm

I use slow inserters for slow things, and generally only upgrade belts as needed. My friend prefers using fast inserters and faster belts everywhere when possible.

Since the assembler ingredient limit removal I also use Assembly Machine 1 in some places where it's fast enough. That's the case quite a lot even when the machines it feeds are a lot faster.

Note that for the same job an assember3 will give off less pollution than an assembler1, even granted it uses more kW per minute, it will operate less than half the time...

https://wiki.factorio.com/Assembler

Similarly a Fast inserter only uses 20% more power than a normal inserter while operating for less than 1/3 the time, so will use less power AND emit less pollution...

https://wiki.factorio.com/Inserter

I have my robots pull old versions of the above (and belts) in the logistics network to a pool to upgrade so when I run an UpdatePlanBP they are not wasted...

I almost never use beacons or modules. I also hate anything with more than a couple combinators.

My mantra is "spaghetti locally, train globally." If it gets the job done spaghetti doesn't bother me at all.

Ranger_Aurelien wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 15, 2019 6:58 pm

Note that for the same job an assember3 will give off less pollution than an assembler1, even granted it uses more kW per minute, it will operate less than half the time...

... and on top of that, you can put in a couple of efficiency-1 modules.

Ranger_Aurelien wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 15, 2019 6:58 pm

Similarly a Fast inserter only uses 20% more power than a normal inserter while operating for less than 1/3 the time, so will use less power AND emit less pollution...

Actually, that's three-and-a-half times the power (46kW vs. 13kW) while operating for slightly more than 1/3 the time. (Perhaps you were looking at the drain power, which is 25% higher.)

Didn't know the ingredient limit was removed on assembler 1's, could be useful in a future game. Engine crafting comes to mind, though I normally use the same machine to feed the elbow pipes, or better put, use the machine I was using to feed elbow pipes to also feed engines.

Ranger_Aurelien wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 15, 2019 6:58 pm

I have my robots pull old versions of the above (and belts) in the logistics network to a pool to upgrade so when I run an UpdatePlanBP they are not wasted...

Figured it was normal to have a requester chest set-up inserting the old stuff into assemblers, and auto-trash red/yellow everything if you want blue everywhere.

Also, screw basic power poles. Wooden boxes have a good use (items you don't need a bazillion of) but small power poles can go to hell. In a large factory, somehow 1 always ends up in my inventory.

use the slowest belts, assembly machines, inserters, stone furnaces, wooden chests, wooden power poles everywhere even if better options are available. Unless really needed.
(I do use electric furnaces IMO, jumping straight from stone furnaces, skipping steel.

make a turn on my bus for whatever reason because something is in the way

using very short (1-2-1, 1-2, even 1-1) trains for delivering ores from outposts to bases.

directly chain-insert ammo for turrets, and not using laser or flamethrower turrets.

pass stuffs, particularly aforementioned ammos, by simply having inserters leaving things on ground, without using any chests or belts.

apply efficiency modules to all mines, electric furnaces and sometimes even assembly machines even if not in death world

avoid landfills and cliff explosives, and have lots of underground belts go under cliffs instead.

use robots to chop trees (or by hand!) instead of grenading or flamethrowering them.

keep trees even if they get in the way. Heck, what about building a factory inside a forest while keeping most of it intact??

I dont like the combinator sr latch
I have my own inserter version, which uses a token item that is passed around.

Ranger_Aurelien wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 15, 2019 6:58 pm

Serenity wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 15, 2019 11:39 am

Honktown wrote: ↑

Mon Oct 14, 2019 4:15 pm

I use slow inserters for slow things, and generally only upgrade belts as needed. My friend prefers using fast inserters and faster belts everywhere when possible.

Since the assembler ingredient limit removal I also use Assembly Machine 1 in some places where it's fast enough. That's the case quite a lot even when the machines it feeds are a lot faster.

Note that for the same job an assember3 will give off less pollution than an assembler1, even granted it uses more kW per minute, it will operate less than half the time...

https://wiki.factorio.com/Assembler

Similarly a Fast inserter only uses 20% more power than a normal inserter while operating for less than 1/3 the time, so will use less power AND emit less pollution...

https://wiki.factorio.com/Inserter

I have my robots pull old versions of the above (and belts) in the logistics network to a pool to upgrade so when I run an UpdatePlanBP they are not wasted...

With there being a huge pollution overhead in producing fast inserter and assembler mk3 instead of regular ones, are there calculations as to when they start being more pollution friendly?

Something like: fast inserter becomes less polluting after 500 inserts and assembler mk3 after crafting for 90min? (Numbers made up for illustration purpose)

Honktown wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 15, 2019 10:05 pm

Also, screw basic power poles. Wooden boxes have a good use (items you don't need a bazillion of) but small power poles can go to hell. In a large factory, somehow 1 always ends up in my inventory.

Basic power poles are actually perfectly useful even into the end game, since no power pole has a flow rate limit and they are dirt cheap. Arguably they're the best way to run power long distances on a per-resource investment, since wood is effectively free. You're using half a copper plate every seven tiles; mediums need two copper and twelve iron to go nine, and larges need five copper and twenty four iron to go thirty. In all cases the small electric pole uses much less copper per tile covered, and no iron at all.

It looks stupid and you need a bunch in inventory, but it's super efficient. Sucks if you have to do circuit wiring over long distances though, and/or if Factorio's electric network ever gets more realism.

Even if you're not running them all over the place, there's a few other points where they're handy:

1. Their power area and wire reach is sufficient to fully cover a steam engine or turbine array in the standard 2xN row layout; no more advanced poles are needed, and, as above, the small guys are stupid cheap.
2. Their shorter wire reach can be useful in places where you're trying to avoid automatic connections, e.g. blueprinting out things that are meant to have separate power grids. Obviously you can just manually rewire stuff, but that's a pain.

I have to build based on city blocks.

I can't do anything remotely except mine.

Ratios must be balanced (Helmod is a godsend).

Everything (after rails are used) has to be designed and blueprinted in a separate game, to maximise use of a city block.

Molay wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 17, 2019 4:58 am

With there being a huge pollution overhead in producing fast inserter and assembler mk3 instead of regular ones, are there calculations as to when they start being more pollution friendly?

Something like: fast inserter becomes less polluting after 500 inserts and assembler mk3 after crafting for 90min? (Numbers made up for illustration purpose)

I don't know the counts for assemblers, but i assume they pay off pretty fast in terms of pollution, if using efficiency modules 1, since the can support up to 4 modules, which max. it out (80%) with 3 efficiency modules, while blue assemblers are stuck at 2 (60%). efficiency 2 modules would work too, but they are just too expensive.
without modules, i would guess, it takes a bit longer.

To the topic: I enjoy lazy bastard as playstyle

Molay wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 17, 2019 4:58 am

With there being a huge pollution overhead in producing fast inserter and assembler mk3 instead of regular ones, are there calculations as to when they start being more pollution friendly?

Something like: fast inserter becomes less polluting after 500 inserts and assembler mk3 after crafting for 90min? (Numbers made up for illustration purpose)

If you're most worried about pollution, switch to solar panels and put efficiency modules in electric furnaces. If you're only using basic inserters, you also need to account for down-time of a machine, because drain is a thing. It's not much, but an assembler 1 has 2.5 kW drain. Looking at the numbers, of course it's not something smooth like fast vs slow is 3:1 items, but 2.77, but there would be a break-even with pollution from down-time vs inserter efficiency (nuclear stuff come to mind, those suckers can take 100 plates and you need hundreds of the darn things).

Technically the only difference in pollution overhead for crafting is how many plates one needs (5.5 vs 12.5, checking basic vs fast inserters). The rest of the crafting can be done by hand.

This is all talking about the most miniscule amount of pollution though. Since small guys are technically more wasteful of damage resources (more overkill as a percent of health), having more small guys is less efficient per resource than bigger guys. While you're waiting on inserters, if you get even one wave of enemies, you've burned up a lot of resources. I admit I've used multiple basic inserters on certain recipes (especially magazines at the beginning of the game).

foamy wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 17, 2019 6:43 pm

...

I admit they are super resource efficient (why do medium poles even take steel plates? that's really costly). The main reason I probably hate them is 1) how much spaghetti wiring you end up with and 2) the smaller selection box. There's also the tiny range, they can't even cover three spaces in front of an assembler! I noticed the steam engine stuff. I started doing steam-engine -> pipe -> steam-engine. Much more efficient than leaving an empty row between every two or three rows for power lines. Used to switch to solar as early as possible so I didn't think about it. Pole re-cabling is a pain too, but then you have to deal with the short range of the poles and how many extra circuit wires you need to go a distance.

csduff wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 17, 2019 7:06 pm

...

Let's never play multiplayer

Honktown wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 17, 2019 7:23 pm

foamy wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 17, 2019 6:43 pm

...

I admit they are super resource efficient (why do medium poles even take steel plates? that's really costly). The main reason I probably hate them is 1) how much spaghetti wiring you end up with and 2) the smaller selection box. There's also the tiny range, they can't even cover three spaces in front of an assembler! I noticed the steam engine stuff. I started doing steam-engine -> pipe -> steam-engine. Much more efficient than leaving an empty row between every two or three rows for power lines. Used to switch to solar as early as possible so I didn't think about it. Pole re-cabling is a pain too, but then you have to deal with the short range of the poles and how many extra circuit wires you need to go a distance.

Let's never play multiplayer

Nah. With a nuclear setup, you want no pipes at all in your turbine row, for throughput reasons, and the pipe layout in general works really nicely in seven-width columns, since that tiles with an exchanger column (also doable at 7 width), and with steam tanks (which gives you the air gap to avoid giant fluid networks). Small poles will work just fine to cover that array.

Boiler steam doesn't have the throughput issues of nuclear, but I build my boiler steam perhaps a bit unconventionally:



Inside a seven-tile column, which incidentally is also the length of a train car if you want to go that route, you can fit a triple rank of boilers, for a total of six. They can then drive twelve steam turbines in a 2x6 layout, with power poles on either side, and be chain-fed by ordinary burner inserters. With coal at full draw (which requires a higher belt speed, hence the inclusion of yellow belts that the burners actually pick from, and a secondary belt that supplies those via priority splitters) at maximum inserter bonus, it runs at just under full nominal throughput. Solid fuel trivially satisfies it.

foamy wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 17, 2019 7:35 pm

...

That's some steam obsession. Only once did I need to run a ton of steam engines (...hundreds). I'd probably bother a lot of people because now I run mods at all, and one of them adds higher temp boilers/steam-engines and exchangers/turbines. Also other mods that add higher-power reactors. Don't megabase, so never had any UPS problems with nuclear, though throughput has been an issue (probably heat pipe throughput issues too, looking back on it).

I like how you're running steam engines but there's no modules in your furnaces

Honktown wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 17, 2019 8:49 pm

foamy wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 17, 2019 7:35 pm

...

That's some steam obsession. Only once did I need to run a ton of steam engines (...hundreds). I'd probably bother a lot of people because now I run mods at all, and one of them adds higher temp boilers/steam-engines and exchangers/turbines. Also other mods that add higher-power reactors. Don't megabase, so never had any UPS problems with nuclear, though throughput has been an issue (probably heat pipe throughput issues too, looking back on it).

I like how you're running steam engines but there's no modules in your furnaces

The additional draw required by beaconed & prod-modded furnaces (and, especially, the production of the modules :v) would've required an even larger steam layout, which is possible if I can jam more water throughput into the thing (which is doable as there's room for at least two more pipes in it). I eventually converted it into turbines to handle spike loading if the nuke plant + accumulators can't supply the draw (rigged up an accumulator to a circuit that generates pulse-on-change, if the moving average of that hits 90%+ of the 300kW an accumulator maxes at, the steam rig kicks on until the accumulator banks start charging again).

foamy wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 17, 2019 11:18 pm

The additional draw required by beaconed & prod-modded furnaces (and, especially, the production of the modules :v) would've required an even larger steam layout, which is possible if I can jam more water throughput into the thing (which is doable as there's room for at least two more pipes in it). I eventually converted it into turbines to handle spike loading if the nuke plant + accumulators can't supply the draw (rigged up an accumulator to a circuit that generates pulse-on-change, if the moving average of that hits 90%+ of the 300kW an accumulator maxes at, the steam rig kicks on until the accumulator banks start charging again).

I was talking efficiency modules bro. If you're not using production then efficiency modules can be nice. I normally never use them, but I'm running a mod where a machine has 10 MW power consumption, can't use production modules, has three module slots, and needs to run for very long times per item. Furnaces have 180 kW draw and will probably run constantly, so don't know if that's significant or not in your case (beaconed assemblers absolutely dwarf other things, even if they're more energy efficient per-item). The good news, they only have two slots so they wouldn't waste the last 10% of a third module.

In another thread, someone mentioned using nuclear steam + tanks as accumulators that trip on if the steam in regular tanks is low. I had never thought about it, but a nuclear steam tank holds 2.4 GJ and a single turbine can deliver 5.8 MW.

Honktown wrote: ↑

Fri Oct 18, 2019 12:20 am

foamy wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 17, 2019 11:18 pm

The additional draw required by beaconed & prod-modded furnaces (and, especially, the production of the modules :v) would've required an even larger steam layout, which is possible if I can jam more water throughput into the thing (which is doable as there's room for at least two more pipes in it). I eventually converted it into turbines to handle spike loading if the nuke plant + accumulators can't supply the draw (rigged up an accumulator to a circuit that generates pulse-on-change, if the moving average of that hits 90%+ of the 300kW an accumulator maxes at, the steam rig kicks on until the accumulator banks start charging again).

I was talking efficiency modules bro. If you're not using production then efficiency modules can be nice. I normally never use them, but I'm running a mod where a machine has 10 MW power consumption, can't use production modules, has three module slots, and needs to run for very long times per item. Furnaces have 180 kW draw and will probably run constantly, so don't know if that's significant or not in your case (beaconed assemblers absolutely dwarf other things, even if they're more energy efficient per-item). The good news, they only have two slots so they wouldn't waste the last 10% of a third module.

In another thread, someone mentioned using nuclear steam + tanks as accumulators that trip on if the steam in regular tanks is low. I had never thought about it, but a nuclear steam tank holds 2.4 GJ and a single turbine can deliver 5.8 MW.

You can absolutely use nuke steam (or boiler steam) as an alternative to accumulators. Accumulators are handy for detecting brownouts since they have a known maximum discharge rate and are consumed dead last, so if they're going at that maximum rate you know there isn't enough power. The downside to steam banks are UPS, since they're a fluid entity, and that they consume resources/emit pollution in order to generate the steam in the first place. I like to take my starting boiler banks and swap out the engines for turbines, and then use it as an emergency brownout supplemental power source. By using strictly burner inserters in the setup it can run on zero power and has zero drain.

I put eff1 modules in almost everything until it's ready for prod3 + beacons. Miners to reduce pollution in addition to electrical burden. Anything over 90kw gets 2, and over 120kw or so gets 3, since they're cheaper than a solar panel.

I sphaget until it's time for prod3 + beacons.

I space my miners so that patches last longer and then colonize more patches.