Planning vs Winging it

[blazespinnaker]

Yeah at some point you graduate from the discovery aspect and move onto the building on shoulders of giants phase. That’s a lot of fun too

[starlinvf]

My first game was an undescribeable mess. my green circuit production: 10 assemblies feed by one belt of wires. And then the trains came out, barely playable, and I built a train which goes about 100 tiles.

But I played it! Yeah.

This is my Factory. There are no other ones like it..... so this one is mine. My Factory is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life. Without me, my factory is useless. Without my Factory, I am useless. Except when I unlock construction bots and blue prints; then my Factory can be built without me. I must shoot straighter then my enemy, who is trying to kill me. But once I get turrets, the turrets will shoot for me.

My Factory and I know what counts in war is not the size of our ore field, the noise of our AMs, or the pollution cloud we make. We know its the UPS of the throughput that count.

My factory is Human... well not really. But it is my Life. Thus I will learn it like a Brother. I will learn its bottlenecks, its production ratios, its assemblers, its beltways, and its pipes. I will keep my Factory clean... but only after getting Nuclear. We well become a part of each other.

Before Spidertron, I swear this creed. My Factory and I are defenders of my industry. We are masters of our enemy. We are the saviors of efficiency. So be it, until I unlock Science packs, and there is no enemy..... because Artillery.

[Hannu]

So I guess my question is, can I enjoy and win this game by winging it? Or is proper planning absolutely necessary to both optimization and victory?

As many already told, you can send a rocket (an official win) without optimizations and plannings. Just add more production when needed, some turrets where needed etc. and do not care about engineering or aesthetic nitpicking. Area and resources are practically unlimited. Factorio is no so difficult after all. Production chain is very simple and straightforward tree-like structure from resources through intermediates to science packs. Only exception is advanced oil and coal liquefaction and they are very simple to control too.

But if you think fancy megabases you can see in Youtube, building such needs some understanding of game mechanics and planning.

[Pentium100]

As many already told, you can send a rocket (an official win) without optimizations and plannings.

Yeah, I launched the rocket without many optimizations. It took a while to build it and I was in no rush. I was expanding the territory, killing nests and the rocket was slowly built. I think at the time my base used 100-200MW of power, rather large part of that being laser turrets and radars.

[starlinvf]

So I guess my question is, can I enjoy and win this game by winging it? Or is proper planning absolutely necessary to both optimization and victory?

As many already told, you can send a rocket (an official win) without optimizations and plannings. Just add more production when needed, some turrets where needed etc. and do not care about engineering or aesthetic nitpicking. Area and resources are practically unlimited. Factorio is no so difficult after all. Production chain is very simple and straightforward tree-like structure from resources through intermediates to science packs. Only exception is advanced oil and coal liquefaction and they are very simple to control too.

But if you think fancy megabases you can see in Youtube, building such needs some understanding of game mechanics and planning.

Or just download someone else's blueprints. Its like this game's equivalent to Raid Meta, where people just copy builds without understanding them, and later wonder why something doesn't work right.

[starlinvf]

As many already told, you can send a rocket (an official win) without optimizations and plannings.

Yeah, I launched the rocket without many optimizations. It took a while to build it and I was in no rush. I was expanding the territory, killing nests and the rocket was slowly built. I think at the time my base used 100-200MW of power, rather large part of that being laser turrets and radars.

Speaking of power.... I've never done a launch on more then 80MW power. And most of the time demand doesn't go past 60 or 70, and I'm being totally sloppy at this point.

One disastrous biter attack got me paranoid, and rapidly fell down the pollution control rabbit hole. But on the plus side.... I can do purple research on 7MW of pure solar (after transitioning off 6 steam engines), ride that out till Nuclear power is fully up, and then go nuts with Electric smelting. Its amazing how how little electricity you need with Eff1s in everything that can take it. And Yellow, Low Density, Rocket Silo, and Processors each take up almost double the power of the rest of the factory combined, since thats the places where I start using Prod/Spd modules. For the majority of the game, the pollution cloud never goes too far until the end. ....but then again, I also reroll on dessert maps, and favor trees in my starting zone. So thats kind of cheating.

[Pentium100]

Speaking of power.... I've never done a launch on more then 80MW power. And most of the time demand doesn't go past 60 or 70, and I'm being totally sloppy at this point.

One disastrous biter attack got me paranoid, and rapidly fell down the pollution control rabbit hole.
...
For the majority of the game, the pollution cloud never goes too far until the end.

That's one way of doing it. My way is probably the opposite, lots of turrets - lots of lasers (with flamethrowers on the borders close to the base or close to railway tracks). Big bank of accumulators to handle the power requirements of firing laser turrets. No solar power (got the "steam all the way" achievement). Even now, my base uses about 300-500MW, which is produced with steam engines. I am now trying out nuclear power though (I have 2x3 reactors set up, but have to figure out how to automate fuel insertion so as not to waste the fuel cells, since the reactors produce more power than my base needs). Still no solar. Oh, and all smelting is done with steel furnaces that are relatively close to the power plant (easy access to fuel). My most used modules are speed and productivity, with efficiency module only used in the coal conversion to solid fuel plant.

OTOH, I like the new green water effect.

[starlinvf]

Speaking of power.... I've never done a launch on more then 80MW power. And most of the time demand doesn't go past 60 or 70, and I'm being totally sloppy at this point.

One disastrous biter attack got me paranoid, and rapidly fell down the pollution control rabbit hole.
...
For the majority of the game, the pollution cloud never goes too far until the end.

That's one way of doing it. My way is probably the opposite, lots of turrets - lots of lasers (with flamethrowers on the borders close to the base or close to railway tracks). Big bank of accumulators to handle the power requirements of firing laser turrets. No solar power (got the "steam all the way" achievement). Even now, my base uses about 300-500MW, which is produced with steam engines. I am now trying out nuclear power though (I have 2x3 reactors set up, but have to figure out how to automate fuel insertion so as not to waste the fuel cells, since the reactors produce more power than my base needs). Still no solar. Oh, and all smelting is done with steel furnaces that are relatively close to the power plant (easy access to fuel). My most used modules are speed and productivity, with efficiency module only used in the coal conversion to solid fuel plant.

OTOH, I like the new green water effect.

The no waste problem is basically solved with Steam tanks and Circuit network monitoring. Reactors burn all the fuel, but they are basically like an Accumulator when it comes to heat storage. So where Boilers burn (inserted) coal as needed, Reactors bleed heat on an "as consumed basis". In fact... every piece of the Nuclear power systems are Heat Buffers by nature. In fact, you have to switch your thinking of it to an almost alt-fluid to understand its quirks.

The blue print I use has a fairly simple Logic system that plays off the fact that a properly compact system can generate steam around as fast as it can consume it; so the tanks are mainly there to check if heat exchangers had shut down (ran out of heat and fell below 500C), and offer some buffer time for the Reactor to warm it back up. (Liquids don't lose temp in transport or storage, and steam is literally liquid heat)

viewtopic.php?t=48532


Digging in to the math, the concept of a Joule as a unit of energy starts to become more important. Oddly enough, steam power (or all burner power for that matter) has all this same math..... but the simplicity of boiler production line causes people to not think about it. In boilers it takes 30kj to make 1 steam. Coal has 4Mj per unit. Solid Fuel has 12Mj per unit. Hence Solid fuel lasts 3 times longer then coal doing the same job. But a reason you don't see solid fuel used often ni burners is that coal is much simpler to process and deliver (basically 2 steps), where Solid fuel takes 5 steps plus extra energy cost to do all the oil processing.

Which leads to 2 fun facts about Steam generators. Steam Engines work at 165c... which is exactly what boilers put out. However, their power math works on units of steam consumed; so higher temp steams still yield the same amount of electricity. This is more or less an artifact of the original system only having one source.

Turbines on the other hand yield energy based on the energy of the steam, which means it produces more or less power based on the Temps of the steam, but can only processes them at 60 units per second. The short version is 1 Turbine is basically 2 steam engines when on boiler temps, and don't reach their potential unless on Heat Exchanges. You CAN mix steam temps, and they'll average out.... but doing so has no useful applications as of yet (and lowers the output of turbines).


I'm hoping we see more use of fluid temps to manage and move energy around the factory for reasons other then electricity.

[starlinvf]

Oh, and another fun thing I've found is that you can cart 500c steam around using Fluid Wagons. And set up a Storage Tank + Turbines for multi-megawatt power instead of huge solar and accumulator farms at remote sites.

[Pentium100]

But a reason you don't see solid fuel used often ni burners is that coal is much simpler to process and deliver (basically 2 steps), where Solid fuel takes 5 steps plus extra energy cost to do all the oil processing.

I figured out that using coal liquefaction, then converting heavy oil->light oil and light oil -> solid fuel results in more energy per unit of coal consumed (including the energy used for the process), so my boilers are powered by solid fuel now.

As for nuclear power, yeah, my setup with 2x3 reactors can absorb about 18 fuel cells (3 for each reactor) of energy without overheating (I measured this with the turbines disconnected from power grid. So, I now have to build a circuit network that would insert no more than 3 fuel cells per reactor when steam in the tanks runs low. But instead of doing that I have been optimizing rocket part and science bottle production.

[eradicator]

I figured out that using coal liquefaction, then converting heavy oil->light oil and light oil -> solid fuel results in more energy per unit of coal consumed (including the energy used for the process),

There's a thread about that:
Challenge: maximum net energy from a blue belt of coal.

[HadesSupreme]

Every game I have, I also start up a parallel sandbox game on the same map. Whenever I want to play far into the future or think about thinks like layout I'll save my normal game, load up the sandbox game and play around until I figure something out. This relieves a lot of the distractions and helps you think ahead a few extra steps beyond the immediate future.

[MEOWMI]

You can absolutely get very far just by winging it. I usually do so, though over time I've found and designed a few builds that I like, which I keep blueprinted.

There are some general principles you can apply to make it easier and can take a lot of hassle out of just "winging it", but from thereon, it's just about how much you enjoy the journey. Sometimes bigger projects need to be done in small steps, but those can still be plenty of fun.

Here are a few such principles:

1. Give yourself a lot of space to work with, especially if you only have a moderate amount of experience.
2. For a guaranteed way to not get stuck tangled your own spaghetti, build one big main bus with all important materials and build all production buildings perpendicular to it on one side of the bus. This guarantees you can always expand the bus and can always expand each production line.
3. Use robots and utilize them to build/deconstruct/reposition parts of the factory a lot. They are very powerful.

I never wanna just make one big bus so I don't really do that... but I do recognize its potential.