Factorio Forums

Howdy guys, new to the game and actually only on my first factory. I am slightly ocd in compacting and efficiency and have rebuilt several times over..

Have now tried my hand at compacting both red and green research production down to as small an area and as efficient as I can.
using just belts and inserters as I haven't gotten around to trying bots or anything more advanced.

I am pretty happy with these two trial designs, in theory they should feed my 10 research labs pretty well.
Any feedback is helpful, especially constructive criticism or ideas to improve.
At the moment I am simply going off theory or efficiency, I really should look more into how many of one production can feed another. ie: one gear factory seems to feed several red production easily.

anyways, forum wont let me link in first post so I will link in followup

GREEN

RED

Hey Logan_72,

Looking nice, compact can work in many ways: how many tiles are used, how many tiles wasted between 2 compact blocks. And what is efficient, efficient to build in terms of resource or efficient in terms of power or efficient in terms of space.

Would be interesting to know how many tiles you are using here and how many you would use if you would go for a compact but not square layout and if that would satisfy your OCD. I think if you build the science assemblers in a line, they are still compact, thought not in both dimensions, and waste less tiles cause its easier to build the next section much closer.

6 Assemblers should indeed be enough to feed 10 labs, but here its "important" to keep in mind that the different science packs should be balanced as well. Red takes 5 seconds, Green 6, Blue 12. (at speed 1.0)

Ah thanks for those numbers, I was curious to know how much each one supplies, and as for the line design, yeah that was my original layout but I noticed you don't get the inserter stack bonus on belts, so this design was to try and feed the gears straight into the science production to skip the belt feed, this also stopped me over producing a resource I didn't need and allowed the raw materials to be used elsewhere while still getting exactly what was needed.

I still need to try and tackle a better layout for Blue, this one is proving much harder for mass production.. I can get single production very compact but I am still learning the speeds and the differences that the speed modules make to simplify and use as little production facilities as possible while maximising output.

Going with the numbers you just provided will help so so much in finding the sweetspots so thanks for that

One thing I am still curious about is the speed that the research is consumed by the labs.. this will give me a better understanding of how much production I need per lab. Is it a constant speed or does it vary based on the research costs/tier?

Stacking bonus is valid thinking, but it has limited use in this situation. Simply because you need only 1*item in these recipes. The stacking bonus becomes usefull when multiple units of the same type is being required, such as the copper wires for the circuits. Also even with this stacking bonus, keep in mind that 1 copper wire assembler is not enough to keep 1 circuit assembler of the same tier running full speed.
Still you are right about stuff on belt that is not immediately needed can be considered waste. But that would impact only the start, after the belts are filled up it should flatten out to the same production as you would have without belt storage.

The research time is indeed not the same for each research topic.. Basically what you see in the research screen how much time (in seconds) it takes to consume the shown number of bottes and how many times that cycle must complete. Researching 'lab efficiency' will increase research speed, by 10% +10% per level, the interface will unfortunately not update the numbers in the research screen to reflect this.
Because of that and because I am usually not researching 100% of the time, I tend to place a small buffer chest of 1 stack for each color somewhere between the labs and the assemblers.

Hopefully this post is still relevant... I mocked up a fairly compact research factory for all research packs. All the product ratios are either optimal or produce a slight excess (can't have 1.5 copper cable assemblers).

Here's an imgur link for higher resolution: i.imgur.com/vkMlRfX.jpg
Sorry for the lack of hyperlink, can't post urls in first post.

I think your assembling machines are not at optimal ratio. I usually go for 12 blue for 6 green and 5 red and 1 purple. 12 assembling machines for purple science packs are absolute overkill.
Other than that, very neat and tidy setup.

This is how I usually set up red and green science packs nowadays.

I ended up tying my science production into the rail network.
Trains come in to the Train Stop at the top left and unload Iron/Copper plates, which feed Blue/Green/Red production, as well unloading Steel, Batteries, Circuits and Advanced Circuits produced elsewhere for Blue production.

Finished science goes into a chest for that type, then a train will make a loop three times, stopping once each at the Red/Green/Blue Train Stop, loading up on Science Packs to take off to the lab complex.

It took a bit of doing to get the amount of Iron needed, but we just cleared out an area of spawners and claimed an Iron patch that I setup a mining outpost on.

I'm sure it could be more efficient, but it amuses me every single time the train loops around to pickup science. I probably could have made it load all three types in one stop, but I was playing with rail signals and toying with some ideas for a Rail Depot at the time, so I wanted to try out a few things while I had the opportunity. Transport in is more of a bottleneck than transport out, anyway.

Kalzekdor... Couldn't you have waited for it to be day to take screen shots. Its hard to see builds when the only light is of the flashlight.