Personal Experience With Factorio.

[brandon99901]

This is a post that i hope to add and change depending on what i'm doing. It is here to help myself and maybe others who want to learn a bit of my take on designs and the math behind choices i make in the game. This i based on my views and i do not care if their is a more efficient design out there i just want a place to store my repository of designs and numbers and to share them on the internet so maybe it can help influence others. i would like some feedback on designs and errors in my equations so that i can better myself but i will not outright change my play style because some one else has a better design.

I started this after i had played a few hours into the 0.12.x campaign with some life improvement mods so most of the posts will be in the blue science era of the game with trains and oil etc. i have a few early game designs for simple early game automation to upload but not much.

Start Game
You will need all of the following start resources nearby; Copper, iron, coal, stone and water everything else is not needed though a small amount of wood is nice to have. i'm assuming you know at least the basics as their are tons of tutorials out there plus in game tutorials i'm showing people with basic understanding some early game designs for quick automated and cheap resources. *keep in mind i'm starting at blue science so i only have a small number of early game stuff and no red or green science automation yet.

Early game resource mining

Early Game Resource Mining

Early Game Resource

Early Game Resource.jpg (743.35 KiB) Viewed 10497 times

Early Game Brick Production
This is for quick walls before the biters arrive in the start game whilst using the space as efficiently as possible, i took the burning drills from the old copper and iron mine and used it here so i was not wasting them so quickly when you get electric miners

Early Brick Production

Early Game Bricks

Early Game Bricks Resize.jpg (710.74 KiB) Viewed 10498 times

Early Game Millitary
This is designed poorly but it works. You put the resources in the right chests and the right amount and it outs the crafted items into one chest

Early Game Military

Early Game Military

Early Game Millitary.jpg (699.09 KiB) Viewed 10497 times

Now that i've shown you some early game stuff let's move on to oil, Yes that is all the early game stuff i could be bothered to do. Their will be more but when i start a new campaign which means i'll probably start a new post as it is unlikely to happen any time soon.

Oil Formula
i'll start with the basic formula, you need 10 crude oil for both advanced and regular oil processing, water is free so i exclude it from the refinery formula, It takes 5 seconds to craft the outputs so that means per refinery you will need 2 crude oil being pumped per second. i use at early oil 2 refineries meaning i will need 4 crude oil per second to keep them cooking. as oil slowly degrades with time it is best to set up 4 crude oil storage tanks to create a backlog that will then be burned through when you drop below the 4 crude oil per second demand. i use a mod called rail tanker to transport oil from stations as it just makes sense and is being added to the main game if i'm not confusing my mods. this way i keep a constant oil backlog for refining.
Oil Processing Formula
This is gonna be long so i'm gonna keep it short and sweet here, Advanced oil is %100 the way forward

these formulas exclude water as a resource as it is free and places heavy oil as trash as it's only good use is lubricant. here's why

Heavy oil has one useful use, Lubricant. it can also be used for flamethrower fuel but who uses that, cracking which is inefficient and solid fuel which is expensive compared to light oil. "but wait could basic oil refining be good if you crack the heavy to light?" The answer is no. I've done the maths if you set aside one oil for lubricant which you need and use the rest for cracking you get the same amount of light oil but lose 1.5 petrol as a result. so you can crack heavy to light with basic oil processing but you will be losing petrol and it takes longer to get then just using advanced oil. This is the part i've been dreading. Posting the maths, i know it's right but it's still a bit complex so look out. * this factors in that you are using the light oil to make solid fuel which is the best oil to use for making solid fuel.

This maths is based off of having two refineries as it would be a pain to work out otherwise. it can of course be expanded as needed. keeping in even digits

2 Petrol = 1 solid fuel' 3 secs,
1 Light oil = 1 solid fuel' 3 secs
2 Heavy oil = 1 solid fuel' 3 secs
so every 3 secs you get one solid fuel at these amount of costs and as you can see light fuel is the least amount and here's the cracking formula

4 Heavy Oil = 2 solid fuel' 6secs/ or 3 light oil' 5 secs
3 Light oil = 3 solid fuel' 9secs/ or 2 petrol' 5 secs
2 petrol =1 solid fuel' 1secs/ can't crack further
as you can see heavy oil is best cracked to light and light should not be cracked as it would be a waste for solid fuel but i need petrol for science so what's the difference between Advanced oil processing and regular for petrol.

This maths is based off of having two refineries as it would be a pain to work out otherwise. it can of course be expanded as needed. keeping in even digits

_____________X2__________________2 heavy oil for lubricant____2 Lubricant
Oil Processing =3 Heavy oil_________ 6_4 Heavy oil____cracked to 3 Light oil
5 secs_______=3 Light oil_____________6 Light oil_______________6 Light oil
10 crude oil__=4 Petrol_______________8 Petrol_________________8 Petrol

In the end you get 2 Lubricant, 9 Light oil and 8 petrol. If you half it for one process that mean you get 1 lube, 4.5 Light oil and 4 petrol


______________________X2
Advanced Oil Processing_=1 Heavy Oil______2 Heavy Oil__2 Lubricant
5 secs________________=4.5Light Oil______9 Light Oil___9 Light Oil
10 Crude oil___________=5.5petrol________11 Petrol____11 Petrol

And as you can see advanced oil Processing gets you 2 more petrol for free and is the same as regular but without needing to crack the oil. instead just use it for it's required crafting and with combinators you can set it up so that any excess heavy oil from lubricant after you feel a storage tank is cracked to light oil then turned into solid fuel and you still get 11 petrol. or 1.1 petrol per second per refinery.

[ratchetfreak]

First thing: use the transport belt.

You can also put a chest at the output of the mining drill so there is more of a buffer.

[brandon99901]

I'll leave all that below so people can see but i misread your comment thinking you meant to put a chest at the ore output. it is i good idea to store the iron into a chest i just didn't feel like it was needed but is something you could do if you wanted. sorry if i caused offense.

the ratio for mining and smelting is perfect for 1 electric drill to two furnaces and so the buffer chest would only fill if the furnaces are full and if it does fill the buffer chest there isn't enough furnaces to burn through the backlog so the outcome would be a buffer chest that never empties. the output chest is an idea but i only needed 4 hundred plates at a time so i didn't need the excess plates and can just leave the furnace to fill up. i designed it without transport belt so i can be as small as fully automation can be. obviously you do make a furnace chain eventually but this is just a placeholder for early game resource efficiency.

[ssilk]

I recommend playing the tutorial first.