Mid Game Play

[TubbyBoy419]

All,

I'm playing with all of Bob's Mods, and I'm to the point of having Red and Green Science, and looking to start on Blue.

My base is currently Spaghetti City! I'm assuming that most of you start building some distance away for the Late Game base, and start diverting resources to the new area.

How do you manage it! Loads of Chests to store resources while you build out the Late Game Area? I seem to be living in a resource bind most of the time.

Any help is appreciated!

[septemberWaves]

I seldom store resources for any build. Especially with mods. If you're producing enough resources that a large buffer is needed to store them, either you've overbuilt your production or you need to start consuming resources faster; similarly if you're consuming resources too fast you need to increase production. The ideal factory is one which produces and consumes resources at roughly the same rate. I do store a couple of stacks of each end product (e.g. machines, inserters, rails, that kind of thing) but for anything intermediate I never store large quantities. This is largely because resources sitting in a buffer chest are just sitting there not doing anything, instead of getting consumed to produce useful things.


What I would recommend for Bob's mods is to avoid a main-bus setup or even having a base in a single location if possible. It's not practical to produce everything on the same production line with Bob's mods; there are simply too many resources to deal with. I generally split up my base and convey resources between areas by train (and Bob adds some nice upgraded trains that help with this) or by Angel's cargo robots (of course only an option if Angel's mods are installed too).

I suggest producing circuits all in a single dedicated circuit factory; ship in raw materials one end and take circuits out the other. Or perhaps split up even further and produce each tier of circuit at a different location; this can allow for easier expansion, depending on how you build it. I'd also suggest several different chemical plants for gas production (as many as you feel like you need) and ore-processing facilities that only process ores with similar processes. If you have several ores which require oxygen, for example, process them at the same place to reduce the need for oxygen shipments from chemical facilities.
Finally, all the finished products (circuits, plates, complex chemicals, etc) can be shipped to different production facilities for similar end products. By "similar" I mean ones which require similar resources to manufacture. This way you can reduce the need to ship too many different resources to the same place, and it makes using a main-bus-like setup practical within the smaller production facilities because you're not dealing with too many resources - hence no more spaghetti.

[bobingabout]

I'm not sure I'd agree with splitting up tiers of electronics, there are a lot of parts in common between the boards, such as the "Transistors" being used on everything from T2 up. if you spread it out, it means you either have to produce transistors at each base, or produce the raw components in 1 factory, then ship them out to each electronics factory.

[septemberWaves]

I'm not sure I'd agree with splitting up tiers of electronics, there are a lot of parts in common between the boards, such as the "Transistors" being used on everything from T2 up. if you spread it out, it means you either have to produce transistors at each base, or produce the raw components in 1 factory, then ship them out to each electronics factory.

This is true of course. I was actually thinking more along the lines of producing the components in one place and shipping them to circuit factories. The reason behind this is just that it might make expanding the circuit arrays a bit simpler depending on how they're built. Although it's absolutely possible to build easily-expandable circuit arrays for all circuits in one location (generally what I prefer to do). Just a personal preference thing which is better I think (that and the throughput required of the circuit facilities, which, if large enough, I imagine might necessitate huge arrays devoted to one circuit type).

[bobingabout]

I just built 2 factories, hooked them up with a single requested and passive provider chest, and used an express inserter to fill/empty the factories. Then filled them with god modules.


I've never actually played the game with my mods beginning to end. I've had a few goes getting to the mid-game, but my endgame is just this mess of stand alone factories in a logistic network, in an old save game where I'd already got to the end. (Tests migration scripts in there, and that things actually work)

I don't get time to play when my attention turns to factorio, I'm too busy modding.

[mrvn]

I'm not sure I'd agree with splitting up tiers of electronics, there are a lot of parts in common between the boards, such as the "Transistors" being used on everything from T2 up. if you spread it out, it means you either have to produce transistors at each base, or produce the raw components in 1 factory, then ship them out to each electronics factory.

But resistors and transitors you need in such quantities that the production facilities for the first tier don't have anything to spare for the second tire. You simply have to produce more and you can produce them in the exact ratios needed for consumption. And the amount needed won't fit on a yellow belt. You probably want more than a red belt. With the ratio of input to output it is impractical to ship them around. Easier to ship the raw materials instead and produce them as needed. Move them directly from the assembler producing them to the assembler consuming them.

It's also easy enough to copy the setup from T1 for the T2 factory and then modify for the new products.

[RocketManChronicles]

All,

I'm playing with all of Bob's Mods, and I'm to the point of having Red and Green Science, and looking to start on Blue.

My base is currently Spaghetti City! I'm assuming that most of you start building some distance away for the Late Game base, and start diverting resources to the new area.

How do you manage it! Loads of Chests to store resources while you build out the Late Game Area? I seem to be living in a resource bind most of the time.

Any help is appreciated!

Getting to the mid game is a good start. I highly recommend you get the Logistics science pack going, because the techs it unlocks will greatly help you with the mod set. Once you unlock logistic bots, things become a lot easier to manage, especially as your base starts to scale up in production.

As for base, I always have a spaghetti mess to get a lot of the science going to push towards late game. Once I have science pushing through red, green, blue, military, and logistic, I start to consider having new mid- to late-game facilities built up to accommodate the new stuff to be made. I transport everything by train between the facilities and then each one has its own logistic bot network to manage most of the item movement. Trains bring in the materials and then the final products are sent out. For example, for the electronic circuit board, I bring in the resistors, transistors, solder, etc from other facilities and ship the boards out the other side. To keep train traffic under control, I use long(er) trains for less trains on the rails. A 1-4-1 train of resistors is so much more efficient than four 1-1 trains. The chests at the train stations are enough of a buffer for the train to make the trip back and forth. Late-game, I have 1-8-1 trains moving materials, just because I have so many various trains on the rail lines, I try to keep them limited. Plus, these larger trains help keep up with the facilities that have beacons and high tier modules.

With this in mind, I usually deconstruct the original spaghetti science lab facility and rebuild it to a modern (late game) setup. This allows me room to expand it to also include the production and high tech science packs, and then bring the space science in from the rocket silos. The best part of this game is being able to easily deconstruct old areas and replace them with new better areas.

[HOSH]

Unknown what all others do, but in my bobs games we setup a mini-bus in the starting area and turret wall it in w/mk2 gun, sniper turrets in hot spots, and reinforced wall far enough out we have all the resources we need for mid-game at the end of early game. Then starting mid-game we have expanded enough to get the resources needed to do a temp build with some rail stops and get to electric furnaces to start building a city block design with resource blocks for processing them and then product/intermediate blocks for circuits that we bring in raw and output products to go to other blocks. Circuits and modules have their own blocks with requesting in plate/bar materials and output circuits or modules. We are using LTN and warehouse mods for buffers to make LTN stops and storing resources easier. To make the system handle trains better we use a quad rail and safe(er) gates so that we can walk/drive/ride by the rails, using player/human stops at key spots. By the end of mid-game we are starting to upgrade all buildings to the highest tier and getting materials flowing where nothing is needed, and plan some for the late game rocket parts and Space Ex as it adds nicely to the late game play. (although waiting for the compatibility for bobs to be updated for my current 0.16 testing game.) During mid-game we also spiral out with our gun turret wall to expand (eventually mk5 w/ mk3 snipers at certain spacing) so that by the end of mid-game we bring up nuclear power for a laser wall final expansions. We leave the last gun wall as a $&!@ hit the fan non-power needed backup for the laser turret wall and just run mining trains out past it, even through our laser wall has a few sniper's in it as well. Arty train also gets to go out to the outermost wall and have fun in our next bobs game, as we fully tested it in a vanilla game.

We did successfully build a main bus bobs mod back on 0.12 with all raw material processing on one end and then gem processing being logistics bot-net to supply the military portion of the line. It was something like 49 lanes wide and we still had bottlenecks with raw materials getting down the line at some materials (4 iron, 4 steel, 3 copper, 3 titanium, 2 coal) having purple lines of resources going down the bus. And then had water and other liquids running down both sides as needed. So we know it can be done, but it is one very linear factory requiring a lot of landfill and planning for throughput.