First off, sorry for bad english grammar / phrasing / you name it. Not my mother tongue.
If you want the full story head to 'Backstory'. If you want some throughs on robots head to 'Experience'. If you are only here for screenshots well... I am not going to take your hand and teach you how to click on 'Screenshots'. You will also find the blueprint book of the base and a 'stable state' (i.e. 60 FPS no robots flying around) save of the map below.
I appologies if I did not post in the right forum section. I mostly want to showcase my base but I am very talkative and did no resist the desire to tell my story.
Backstory
Allow me to narrate my journey of a stupid challenge I got myself into : a full Factorio playthrough using only bots.
Little backstory : Right after the realease of buffer chests I told myself 'thats it, bots are finally gonna be useable as the only logistic mean'. I set off some basic ground rules. Not a single belt put down and no trains. I was only gonna rush the logistic robots research and not automate any science before this point. It mean that there was only a couple of assemblers doing science feed by hand. It was quite a long process. Meanwhile I was solely focusing on producing robot frames in advance. When I reached this point I simply put down a roboport and tear down my entire base. The only remaining was a legacy robot frame production center, for memories. Fun fact : during this process I had only 3 oil pump with a 130% oil yield for plastics production, that was the thing that cost me the most time.
With like 6000 logisticts roborts (yeah overkill but read till the end) and some other ressources in a train I moved on building my first real base. Building went well without real problem. Waste some time on cleaning biters and expending land (I like to play with bitters ON), but I had anticipate with some pollution modules on furnaces to avoid behing attack to frequently. The building of the base took a lot of ressources and near ore patches where dry out very fast. I was force (or just lazy to find another way) and cheated on one of my rules. I set up a couple of trains on each ore and continue my way to rocket. After rocket was launched I felt a little sad. My base was not totally what I wanted in the first place. Oh and do not mind the ultra-bad train network, I did not know a thing about them back then.
At the time I was doing a multiplayer base with a friend. A 3000 SPM full belt no train no robot (appart from construction) base. I really wanted my bot base to reach this state (or maybe at least 1000 SPM). So I decide to totally abandon my base and start a (technically) thrid one with also ore to furnace bot transportation. Well I did not really abandon my base right away. Beforhand I produce the most chests, roboports, solar panels, nuclear, etc I could do. I lay down a little artillery train for extension (again a real time consuming process) and move on to north.
I started by doing netword to network ore transportation for far away ore patches. But after some time my base was big enough to occupy the whole land, and I reach a state where I only got one logistic network. I first focus on only producing circuits and robot frames. Time went by and my non beaconed base started to show some flaws. Robots started to do longuer travels and traffics jams where dropping FPS and UPS a lot. I ended up playing at 10 FPS. So I tear down all assemblers (like 2/3 of the base) to rebuilt using modules. Thats when things hit the fan. Modules where so much expensive that even 100M ore patches where consumed really fast. Thats when I decide to install for the first time a mod in my 600 hours of overall factorio game time. A endless ressources mod. Just to build modules. But ressources not behing a limitation anymore I tend to build way to much and electricity became a major problem (and still is to this day). I decide to get rid of that mod.
I was getting bored. I was only moving around in a train when really needed but was using map view most of the time with blueprint book in hand to expand. The almost 90K solar panels where juste barely enough to sustain my base in idle mode. I was laying down bigger and bigger nuclear plant blueprints at that cost of FPS each time. I once try to start producing some science, putting together a ugly blueprint for 1000 SPM. While only focusing on that my base was only using 1/4 of furnaces and assemblers and was running at 30+ FPS only. This was to much, I had to restart once again to do it proprely. I figure the quantity of robots sprites displayed where the main raison of FPS dropping. I do not found a mod that was able to make them 'transparents'. I could write it myself (as I am a full time dev, shame on me) but got lazy. And I was not sure the way sprites are handled, because a transparent sprite would not solve the probleme, ressource are still loaded in memory. I was pretty much thinking as doing a mod that emulate robots without having them. And that sounded stupid. I forgot about factorio for a while (just came back with a friend to do the wave defense, quite easy after 2 or 3 restart once you know the map well). And now with 0.17 in the box ready for release I am going to forget about that history.
But I figure out my experience during this might be interesting to someone, and I have a pretty unique mega base to share. Maybe for dev tests?
Little backstory : Right after the realease of buffer chests I told myself 'thats it, bots are finally gonna be useable as the only logistic mean'. I set off some basic ground rules. Not a single belt put down and no trains. I was only gonna rush the logistic robots research and not automate any science before this point. It mean that there was only a couple of assemblers doing science feed by hand. It was quite a long process. Meanwhile I was solely focusing on producing robot frames in advance. When I reached this point I simply put down a roboport and tear down my entire base. The only remaining was a legacy robot frame production center, for memories. Fun fact : during this process I had only 3 oil pump with a 130% oil yield for plastics production, that was the thing that cost me the most time.
With like 6000 logisticts roborts (yeah overkill but read till the end) and some other ressources in a train I moved on building my first real base. Building went well without real problem. Waste some time on cleaning biters and expending land (I like to play with bitters ON), but I had anticipate with some pollution modules on furnaces to avoid behing attack to frequently. The building of the base took a lot of ressources and near ore patches where dry out very fast. I was force (or just lazy to find another way) and cheated on one of my rules. I set up a couple of trains on each ore and continue my way to rocket. After rocket was launched I felt a little sad. My base was not totally what I wanted in the first place. Oh and do not mind the ultra-bad train network, I did not know a thing about them back then.
At the time I was doing a multiplayer base with a friend. A 3000 SPM full belt no train no robot (appart from construction) base. I really wanted my bot base to reach this state (or maybe at least 1000 SPM). So I decide to totally abandon my base and start a (technically) thrid one with also ore to furnace bot transportation. Well I did not really abandon my base right away. Beforhand I produce the most chests, roboports, solar panels, nuclear, etc I could do. I lay down a little artillery train for extension (again a real time consuming process) and move on to north.
I started by doing netword to network ore transportation for far away ore patches. But after some time my base was big enough to occupy the whole land, and I reach a state where I only got one logistic network. I first focus on only producing circuits and robot frames. Time went by and my non beaconed base started to show some flaws. Robots started to do longuer travels and traffics jams where dropping FPS and UPS a lot. I ended up playing at 10 FPS. So I tear down all assemblers (like 2/3 of the base) to rebuilt using modules. Thats when things hit the fan. Modules where so much expensive that even 100M ore patches where consumed really fast. Thats when I decide to install for the first time a mod in my 600 hours of overall factorio game time. A endless ressources mod. Just to build modules. But ressources not behing a limitation anymore I tend to build way to much and electricity became a major problem (and still is to this day). I decide to get rid of that mod.
I was getting bored. I was only moving around in a train when really needed but was using map view most of the time with blueprint book in hand to expand. The almost 90K solar panels where juste barely enough to sustain my base in idle mode. I was laying down bigger and bigger nuclear plant blueprints at that cost of FPS each time. I once try to start producing some science, putting together a ugly blueprint for 1000 SPM. While only focusing on that my base was only using 1/4 of furnaces and assemblers and was running at 30+ FPS only. This was to much, I had to restart once again to do it proprely. I figure the quantity of robots sprites displayed where the main raison of FPS dropping. I do not found a mod that was able to make them 'transparents'. I could write it myself (as I am a full time dev, shame on me) but got lazy. And I was not sure the way sprites are handled, because a transparent sprite would not solve the probleme, ressource are still loaded in memory. I was pretty much thinking as doing a mod that emulate robots without having them. And that sounded stupid. I forgot about factorio for a while (just came back with a friend to do the wave defense, quite easy after 2 or 3 restart once you know the map well). And now with 0.17 in the box ready for release I am going to forget about that history.
But I figure out my experience during this might be interesting to someone, and I have a pretty unique mega base to share. Maybe for dev tests?
Experience
First some stupid stats. I have the following specs : Intel 6600K processor, AMD Radeaon 480RX graphic card, 32 Go DDR4 2166Hz RAM, 7200 tr/min SSHD (might try to run factorio on a SSD later on but I have other needs for it right now, big solutions compiling is a b****), and a 27' 4K screen (3840*2160).
The base can do 45 level 3 modules a minute of speed and productivity at the same time, but at 18 FPS. It can produce 1200 robots frame a minutes. That part of the base is not used anymore as I have 1.3M robots currently.
Secondly, my tips on making a heavy bot base. Main part is to widely use buffer chests. Try to put down some with twice the ressources needed next to requester chest (do not forgot to activate 'can request from buffer' in them). That saved me from a lot of traffic jams when you balance it quite well. If you do ore to product only with bots I think I would break down ratios and make something like (red circuits example) : one requester chest for base iron and copper plate into a green circuit assembly into a red circuit assembly. From the start I was not putting copper cable and gear on the netword. Similar to belts, it is more efficient to produce them on site. But, even if its not ratio friendly, this 'on site production scheme' need to be more widely applied. I do not know if I am behing clear. Most of my traffic jams where around green circuits. So you need to even produce green circuits on site when needed and directly inject them in other assembly machine. Yes this would mean totaly breaking down ratios for some products, but with less requester chests robots path finding tends to be more efficient. Prefer less requester chest and put more assembly machines even if it means some are not used 100% of the time.
As I said I have 1.3M robots. This is way to much overkill. Robots are idling inside the most pass-by roboports so they tend to travel more, and sometime need to recharge during a simple ore to furnace transport because near roboports storage are full.
I really do not want to do a belt vs train vs robot statement. Thats not the point. I found this way of playing really different. You do not have the same problems, until you reach the point of no return when game itself cannot handle anymore of your bulls***.
As for robots in the current game : I do not find them too overpower. Yes I said it. The 3000 SPM belt only base I mention earlier took less time to make. I think there might be some work to do on their pathfinding. For exemple the '0 request delay' is sometimes a problem. I have two major copper ore patches. One north and one in the center of the base. The furnaces in the center of the base are the most used ones. So to feed them robots tends to go to north patch because it is bigger and have overall more. But travel time is more important than waiting for middle patch to renew its stocks. I think this is because paths are make only while a request is up, and is not updated until completed. Second thing and how to 'balance' them. Robots are expensive, they are a late game thing. But to do a base only with them is not really possible at the moment. You ended up only updating speed infinite research. But that do not compensate their maximum cargo. I think a higher tier of robots, slower and with more cargo size could be tried. And of course with costy research like artillery to get them. This solution is moslty for 0.16. I really think the new 0.17 science recipes (that I found less hard to do) will reduce the number of robots needed.
The base can do 45 level 3 modules a minute of speed and productivity at the same time, but at 18 FPS. It can produce 1200 robots frame a minutes. That part of the base is not used anymore as I have 1.3M robots currently.
Secondly, my tips on making a heavy bot base. Main part is to widely use buffer chests. Try to put down some with twice the ressources needed next to requester chest (do not forgot to activate 'can request from buffer' in them). That saved me from a lot of traffic jams when you balance it quite well. If you do ore to product only with bots I think I would break down ratios and make something like (red circuits example) : one requester chest for base iron and copper plate into a green circuit assembly into a red circuit assembly. From the start I was not putting copper cable and gear on the netword. Similar to belts, it is more efficient to produce them on site. But, even if its not ratio friendly, this 'on site production scheme' need to be more widely applied. I do not know if I am behing clear. Most of my traffic jams where around green circuits. So you need to even produce green circuits on site when needed and directly inject them in other assembly machine. Yes this would mean totaly breaking down ratios for some products, but with less requester chests robots path finding tends to be more efficient. Prefer less requester chest and put more assembly machines even if it means some are not used 100% of the time.
As I said I have 1.3M robots. This is way to much overkill. Robots are idling inside the most pass-by roboports so they tend to travel more, and sometime need to recharge during a simple ore to furnace transport because near roboports storage are full.
I really do not want to do a belt vs train vs robot statement. Thats not the point. I found this way of playing really different. You do not have the same problems, until you reach the point of no return when game itself cannot handle anymore of your bulls***.
As for robots in the current game : I do not find them too overpower. Yes I said it. The 3000 SPM belt only base I mention earlier took less time to make. I think there might be some work to do on their pathfinding. For exemple the '0 request delay' is sometimes a problem. I have two major copper ore patches. One north and one in the center of the base. The furnaces in the center of the base are the most used ones. So to feed them robots tends to go to north patch because it is bigger and have overall more. But travel time is more important than waiting for middle patch to renew its stocks. I think this is because paths are make only while a request is up, and is not updated until completed. Second thing and how to 'balance' them. Robots are expensive, they are a late game thing. But to do a base only with them is not really possible at the moment. You ended up only updating speed infinite research. But that do not compensate their maximum cargo. I think a higher tier of robots, slower and with more cargo size could be tried. And of course with costy research like artillery to get them. This solution is moslty for 0.16. I really think the new 0.17 science recipes (that I found less hard to do) will reduce the number of robots needed.
Screenshots
Complete map view
Active Base map view
Active Base TownHall no alt
Active Base TownHall alt
Production graph for level 3 modules
Electricity with production
Logistic network hell
Robot Frame production
Oil base petroleum production (the rest is coal liquefaction)
Nuclear fuel production (one of these is more than enough for anybody, so I have 3)
First base remaining
Second base shutdowned
Active Base map view
Active Base TownHall no alt
Active Base TownHall alt
Production graph for level 3 modules
Electricity with production
Logistic network hell
Robot Frame production
Oil base petroleum production (the rest is coal liquefaction)
Nuclear fuel production (one of these is more than enough for anybody, so I have 3)
First base remaining
Second base shutdowned
BlueprintBook
Sorry I did not use the cool BluePrint button but I did not wanted to DDOS factorio forum with my 330 000 blueprint book string...
https://pastebin.com/xtB3jyJH
https://pastebin.com/xtB3jyJH
MapSave
I do not know good sites for free long time hosting. Link will be dead in seven days !
https://we.tl/t-9WN6jTGov9
https://we.tl/t-9WN6jTGov9
SpecialThanks
Diablo belt-less mega factory video (I based my second base ALOT on his 8 assembly layout) :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lxa6P5gZI7k
Nuclear plants :
https://factorioprints.com/view/-Kn2afLokZdBO-uHcIAF
Sovereign 2.55GW - Large (No Waste) [In-Com] (could not find it anymore on factorio prints)
Plastics blueprint where also from factorioprints.
Legacy bot production using cargo wagon. It was posted by someone in the forum a long time ago and I cannot find it.
Accumulator / Solar panel ratio great post I took the layout I use by Cilya :
viewtopic.php?t=5594
I really do not get new factorio prints website, I cannot find all posts in it. So if anyone knows the laking links I cannot provide please tell me, I really want to give credit to blueprint creators.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lxa6P5gZI7k
Nuclear plants :
https://factorioprints.com/view/-Kn2afLokZdBO-uHcIAF
Sovereign 2.55GW - Large (No Waste) [In-Com] (could not find it anymore on factorio prints)
Plastics blueprint where also from factorioprints.
Legacy bot production using cargo wagon. It was posted by someone in the forum a long time ago and I cannot find it.
Accumulator / Solar panel ratio great post I took the layout I use by Cilya :
viewtopic.php?t=5594
I really do not get new factorio prints website, I cannot find all posts in it. So if anyone knows the laking links I cannot provide please tell me, I really want to give credit to blueprint creators.
As we say in french : "Pavay César, ceux qui ne t'ont pas lu te saluent".
