Factorio Forums

Here is some alternative to “Main BUS” design.
Factory producing everything independently.

This design allow to scale production completely. Each square produce final
product while using only raw material (iron copper, steel). In those cases when
lower tier products needed for further production (yellow belt to build red) chests
with made products used as provider chests.

System depend on logistics robots completely though it might be handled
manually, by players hands.

Production in each square can be tuned for best speed by adjusting material
feeding speed. This may solve problems of “bottle neck” in designs with central “feeding systems”.

Finally, while limit of made product in specific production is reached, whole
system stops and refilling it`s basic materials up to adjusted maximum, making
system ready for further production when goods took from chest.


Guys please tell me what you think about that design. Critics and conversations are highly desirable.

Example of Advanced circuit production


Save file on dropbox
Save file

I was just contemplating starting a heavily logistic robot based factory design, so seeing how you did it is interesting. Once you commit to logistic robots though, I have to wonder if there is something more efficient/compact that can be done. For example, with optimal production ratios a single adv circuit factory would have 5x basic circuit factories and 10x copper wire factories (assuming my mental math is right). (and some serious duplication of input arms to get all that into the adv circuit factory each second.)

I think that is where I will start, we shall see how I do.

EDIT: Upon further consideration, logistic chests are fking expensive (never noticed since resources tend to not be as much of an issue at that point). Any kind of space saving would be offset by huge costs in chests. I cant think of a situation where it would need to be that compact and also where spending all those extra resources on chests would be beneficial.

That's an awesome layout. I was just thinking about how I could separate each step of my production, so I came here to give a quick look on how other handle it, and there is your factory.

That's really nice. I'm still in the early steps of the technology tree, so I'm forced to use regular conveyor belts right now to transfer materials between each area, but I hope later on I will come up with something as neat as you.

I really like the cleanliness of the layout and the expandability. Everything is modular and could be easily duplicated for higher productivity.
Bonus points for the Carport

But I hate the complete dependency on logistics robots. Guess I just don't like them because they pretty much feel like cheating your way out of managing a complex, but in the end more effective throughput wise, belt route.

How about mass transport of iron and copper plates? I somehow can't image those logistic robots being as effective as a steady stream of materials delivered by an express conveyor.
Seeing my 10+ advanced factories emptying a full and constant express belt stream of iron plates is quite a sight.

I think I'll try a different concept next time and mix your layout with the usual stuff. Having conventional factory conveyor loops for the mass items like gears, copper cable and such, and then use the logistics robots for the advanced fabs.
Until now I haven't used the logistics robots much besides some testing and goofing around.