The Hydra Dilemma - A Coop Factorio Playthrough!

[FishSandwich]

Next episode is up!

Please, Infectum! Please! - Factorio - The Hydra Dilemma #45

Thanks for watching, enjoy.

[-root]

nice title.

[_aD]

Basically recorded an entire episode before i got the joke.

I wouldn't have blamed you if you just passed it back to Fish to fix. I love being at the end of a practical joke but that one went a bit too far.

[JoshLittle]

@fish:

• If you want to make a
  module v2
  , do you really think a
  module v2
  is needed to make it?
• If you want to make more
  normal circuits
  , why do you build more assemblers to make
  advanced circuits
  that would suck out the
  normal circuits
  even more? Specially if the existing assemblers do not put out
  advanced circuits
  just because they have no
  normal inserters
  in the requesters (only
  plastic
  there). By building the second
  advanced circuits area
  you deepened the trouble for
  normal inserters
  dramaticly because at the moment there is no chance for
  normal circuits
  to be more produced than consumed.
• If you want to give the network some stuff, why do you throw it in the requester for the assembler it is made in instead of the provider?

@all:

• it is really some shame that even after over 40 episodes there are still
  parts of the wall unprotected - not just low protected, unprotected. And I also remember a part of the wall that isn't even build yet. Leaving a factory behind that is just one lucky biter away from total breakdown of production or even a complete destruction is really careless. And you have to go out soon. So please, protect the walls: Turrets and roboports everywhere. We don't even speak about a second layer of wall. But just the basic protection.
  So, Please @all (based on fishs title)

[Infectum13]

Episode 46 - Connecting the Dots

http://youtu.be/gXmOy_qQypk

Improving our purple potion production, and fixing some shortages in the factory.

[sbroadbent]

it is really some shame that even after over 40 episodes there are still...

Given that there are 5 people splitting the 40+ something episodes that's around 8 or so per person, everyone is going in blind not knowing what anyone else has done until after they have played, and everyone feels compelled to be productive with something in their limited time available, that the little things often get missed, because they are left to others to fix. Naturally, small problems only get fixed when the small problem becomes a big problem, such as Stone Brick clogging up the Copper line.

The Defenses will only become a big problem when a player is forced to deal with them, such as an immediate attack.

[Infectum13]

Given that there are 5 people splitting the 40+ something episodes that's around 8 or so per person, everyone is going in blind not knowing what anyone else has done until after they have played, and everyone feels compelled to be productive with something in their limited time available, that the little things often get missed, because they are left to others to fix. Naturally, small problems only get fixed when the small problem becomes a big problem, such as Stone Brick clogging up the Copper line.

The Defenses will only become a big problem when a player is forced to deal with them, such as an immediate attack.

I found a couple of places that we were getting attacked at. Hopefully it should be okay for a bit.

[JoshLittle]

Sorry infectum, but this was really a facepalm episode
(you can see the spoiler to see why it was)

facepalms and other trees

• Your SP4 production is really "nice" - apart from the fact that it needs 4x productivity 3 to be really nice. Anything down this is just a temporary situation (ok, this is just a lack of experience, nothing to blame). But don't you see the problem of upgrading three assemblers if there is not even a single artifact to get one assembler some work? from experience: One (remember: goal is 4x productivity 3) can totally be enough, two are ok if there are a lot of artifacts, but three are really not worthy. When there will be a considerable amount of artifacts (but before you put all of them in there, be patient, because other things will also need some artifacts), the one or two assemblers can work all the time. At first you will have trouble to gain enough artifacts to get one constantly some work. But no work for them is bad and so are too much assemblers bad. Why? Your modules increase polution and energy, and if this is raised, they have to work to take back the deficite. Speed is not the problem, the amount of input is
• It's nice you give it a try for defense, but you really should think of a real strategy. Defend a whole wall, set up poles just for defense (not just use randomly existing poles), do it not strongly pointed (do not put 20 turrets to 3 poles, put them to 20 poles for a longer wall coverage). With your strategy of just placing turrets randomly where the last problem was you will probably have defense trouble forever (because when you will finally close the last gap in defense, the first will be already too weak (= needs more turrets and/or double/triple walls).
• look back what you made with the copper inserters. before three of five inserters were resting, after it two were resting. you really did nothing else than it was before, you just got the splitter a slow corner closer to the inserters. you were happy about getting copper to both sides (what was already done before and would have had the same result with just a fast corner), but you didn't solve the problem of the resting inserters. three inserters will fill one side of a slow belt, six will fill both sides, but only if they are placed at both sides). look at the huge gaps on the belt (this was not as great as you thought. train to get belts filled, erase slow corners, set inserters to both sides. with the train and the mining drills there is enough ore to fully fill the slow belt. Speed of the belt is not the problem, the density of stuff on it is
• to make a fast corner you need only one fast tile, not three. use the fast belts at corners that are slow and not just these ones that are already get the fast tile. there are enough slow corners in the factory left. like the one at the copper station.. To get more stuff transported on a belt, first try to increase the density on it.
• you want to put fast modules into smelters while the half of the smelters doesn't even get a single ore (what you correctly realised)? Really? Come on... Again: Speed is not the problem, the amount of input is
• why do you put speed modules in assemblers and limit the output to just one stack after you have no idea how heavily they are requested? Speed modules have a big downside. You really should just use them if you know what you want to achieve. Better use productivity for random inserts. They have around the same downside but a much bigger use. No more speed modules until you really know what you do
• plastic. again: Speed is not the problem, the amount of input is!
• oil: ok how you traced it back (a bit too much guessing, but ok), but then in the only place where speed modules have a much bigger impact than productivity... you put in productivity. from experience: the first place you want to put speed modules in are jackpumps with 0.1. But then the area has also to be upgraded in regard to defense.
• one minute left: biter attack to gain artifacts. ( )

[_aD]

Seriously, how many times do we have to ask you to stop telling the Hydras what to do? Like paragraphs and every detail?

Sit back and enjoy the hilarity. If you wanna give gameplay tips, fine. But quit writing walls of text with every single thing they're doing wrong. Because they're doing two things right: having fun and entertaining us for free. Why must you insist on more?

[-root]

Seriously, how many times do we have to ask you to stop telling the Hydras what to do? Like paragraphs and every detail?

Sit back and enjoy the hilarity. If you wanna give gameplay tips, fine. But quit writing walls of text with every single thing they're doing wrong. Because they're doing two things right: having fun and entertaining us for free. Why must you insist on more?

I can only imagine what is in that spoiler...

[Blackence]

Sit back and enjoy the hilarity. If you wanna give gameplay tips, fine. But quit writing walls of text with every single thing they're doing wrong. Because they're doing two things right: having fun and entertaining us for free. Why must you insist on more?

I agree with this! I totally understand JoshLittle's desire to teach people about what they can do better in their factories. If you need hints to improve your play style, the best thing you can do is record a vid and ask JoshLittle for comments, then start a discussion about why you did it the way you did and why Josh thinks it's not the best way.

I do admit I also send comments about these little things like fast corners etc. from time to time. I try to keep it at a max of 2 paragraphs though. It's probably related to my background in computer science and mistaking factorio vids for code reviews. When looking at code, it's important to get rid of needlessly complicated things and stuff that could be optimized and simplified at the same time. It helps with maintaining the code in the future, and maintaining code is much more difficult than maintaining a factorio factory, so it's really quite important. Understanding code by looking at it can take quite some time, so it's important to express code as easy as possible. In factorio, on the other hand, it's not that bad. Factory optimization and fixing is not difficult, no matter how "special" the layout is, as long as it works. It's easy to recognize which parts of a factory do what by visual inspection. You can alwas add a completely new factory and merge that output into the old build. Or build a completely new factory. And it's not like the hydra dilemma players use stupid builds where they have to manually put stuff from factory A to factory B. Not everything is "best practice", but generally it's quite sane! Still, sometimes I feel that vulcan-like desire to tell the player that I don't think what he did is quite logical.

For example, when -root

added splitters to the iron input of the new battery factory so each of the chemical plants gets the same amount of iron input. Why? Maybe he thought it's unfair that the first chemical plant must do all the work and the last chemical plant in that line does nothing?

. However, I did not post this because… Why care? It's just 3 splitters that are not strictly required but they show a nice setup that could be important in other situations. And since these comments often sound like "your vid was so bad, you shouldn't do vids!", which is absolutely not the case, I simply kept this to myself. Well, until now.

[_aD]

I do admit I also send comments about these little things like fast corners etc. from time to time

Just don't mention the barrel! I mentioned the barrel earlier, but I think I got away with it. *wipes brow

[-root]

that freaking barrel...

[JoshLittle]

The funny thing is: For me these are just the short "gameplay tips"
No one saw yet what "long" means in my perspective

[Xterminator]

Episode 47, More Shortages! is now live! Enjoy!

[DerivePi]

No coal in the network and a shortage of petro. But, there is plenty of solid fuel that runs directly over the coal field to feed the boilers at a loss of 50% on efficiency so that they can produce electricity for the electric furnaces. Always fun and entertaining! Well done Xterminator! Although I think a car is in order for further escapades - (wasn't there one made?-TIC)

Love your "Jesus!" moment.

Definitely want poison for the "Makers."

[JoshLittle]

It's not that nobody told them about it
About why we see the problems in a time when

plastic

is heavily needed, I already wrote.

Three little things, I hope they are gameplay-based enough

• The positions in the toolbelt can be fixed to a special item. I they are, the background is slightly darker. They can be changed. But it makes sense (and I think -root is the only one who used the fixing yet) to have deconstruction in the toolbelt (ok, in the Hydra Dilemma it is a bit stricter).
• If the output of an assembler is blocked (full output chest, limited smart outputer), then the seemingly absense of an input item has no meaning. Thats why you went for the wrong missing item even if the
  battery
  -belt and the production of it was fuller than full.
• You can move the stacks in a chest faster to the first positions if you grab them with shift+click (if inventory is empty enough also with ctrl+click) and insert them back with ctrl+click

And a meaningless marker for future lookbacks

I doubt the "long long" lifetime of the sulfar-chest

[Infectum13]

[quote="JoshLittle"]Sorry infectum, but this was really a facepalm episode
(you can see the spoiler to see why it was)

Yup, I lot of people of commented on the modules and better setup for those. I can go back and change that around a bit. Also, a few users suggested adding more oil jacks to increase volume, or add speed modules to those. Those will need to be fixed as well. For defense...meh...what I put down works. As long as it kills biters, that's what I care about.

[Infectum13]

Seriously, how many times do we have to ask you to stop telling the Hydras what to do? Like paragraphs and every detail?

Sit back and enjoy the hilarity. If you wanna give gameplay tips, fine. But quit writing walls of text with every single thing they're doing wrong. Because they're doing two things right: having fun and entertaining us for free. Why must you insist on more?

JoshLittle has provided a lot of tips. I appreciate them. One thing that could help, is find things that other users haven't already commented on. I'm learning a lot from everyone, for me it's been helpful. With the spoiler tags, they can be hidden, so if a user doesn't want to read it, they don't have to.

[Infectum13]

Sit back and enjoy the hilarity. If you wanna give gameplay tips, fine. But quit writing walls of text with every single thing they're doing wrong. Because they're doing two things right: having fun and entertaining us for free. Why must you insist on more?

For example, when -root

added splitters to the iron input of the new battery factory so each of the chemical plants gets the same amount of iron input. Why? Maybe he thought it's unfair that the first chemical plant must do all the work and the last chemical plant in that line does nothing?

. However, I did not post this because… Why care? It's just 3 splitters that are not strictly required but they show a nice setup that could be important in other situations. And since these comments often sound like "your vid was so bad, you shouldn't do vids!", which is absolutely not the case, I simply kept this to myself. Well, until now.

Poor chemical plant has to do all the work. Totally not fair!, lol
The reason I did the fast belts around the corners, was just to speed it up a bit. I know I didn't need to do 3, but why not. We have the resources for it. And it looks cool.