first factory, Improvement?

[Blü]

I was playing the tutorial and while scanning the territory I messed around with some things you could do and I got this at the end



I got:
- assembling machine making Copper cables, Circuits, conveyor belts, bullets and furnaces
- Iron plate factory (wasn't able to store the plates in a chest with this setup)
- satellite with two turret (I could've made a automatic reloading system but I didn't think of that)
- if there's to many coal, some inserters put the overload of coal in a chest
- two steam boilers (I've made a third one but it's not in the picture)

Is that good for a first factory?
how can I Improve that?

[HellEye]

Hello!
For the first time is well... Good, but could be better. I'm not sure, if you have long hand inserters in demo. You need to experiment a little with them and then you're able to take plates into chest with no need to pull them manually. Second: you can stack engines. You should use inserters to automatically put coal into boilers and stack about 5 of them on one pump with 3 engines and it's pretty stable. Then good traning on how to use assembling machines is building electric circuts or transprt belts. You should make some early to have tons of circuts when you will really need them. Not sure what else. Mainly work on your smelting, later you will need to do it automaticky due to big amount of resources. When you will be playing alpha maje factory of red and green science packs.
I hope that I helped

[EditorRUS]

A normal factory has a few modules:
1. Coal miner / Boilers for automatic generating electricity.
2. These turrets useless in this place. Moreover - iron plates shouldn't be in big amounts. One part used for green-red science packs, other to make magazine for turrets. Make turrets in external place, and use your iron plates to make magazines and deliver it to turrets.
3. Factory shouldn't have manual inserters. Than more your factory is automatic, than better.
4. Belts, which leading to furnace usually fill with iron ore and coal. Connect your coal belt and iron belt, and lead to furnaces.
5. If you would do 1 and 4, then remember important rule - boilers don't uses coal in big amounts. You easily can use coal to heat boilers and smelting ore.

[wrtlprnft]

2. These turrets useless in this place.

I disagree. They're right next to the radar, which is the only thing the creepers will attack besides the player.

Also note that on this map the player doesn't have access to underground belts and long handed inserters, so building anything complex is kind of difficult. Since there is no pressing need to automate anything but the production of iron/copper plates and possibly bullets, I think it's good enough

I would improve it by automating the insertion of coal into the boilers and generally producing more electricity to support more than one radar.

[HellEye]

So as other told, there's no underground belts and long handed inserters... That's hard to manage. So, you need to have iron ore and coal on the same belt, on 2 diferent sides. When I made my first factory I had only one row for furnaces and two ores smelting in one. That worked for first levels where you don't really need so much resources. My suggestion #3 (I believe) is to make one row of furnaces smelting both iron and copper. You really can't make automatic smelters with high effeciency without using long handed inserters. So like 8 furnaces should be able to manage output from maybe even 12 drills, you should be able to easly use 4 with your 4 drills. I think you need to learn on your own untill there's proper wiki or good tutorials on youtube or ask specific questions like "how smart chests work" and then I'll probably answer it for You

[GragSmash]

the lack of underground belts in the early part of the regular campaign is a pain.

[Blü]

the lack of underground belts in the early part of the regular campaign is a pain.

that was made in the demo, you don't have underground belt

[Dakkanor]

the lack of underground belts in the early part of the regular campaign is a pain.

that was made in the demo, you don't have underground belt

i found it really good (if frustrating) it meant i had to find ways to plan and circumvent the limitations of not being able to cross conveyors, i i spent 5-10 hours playing on the last level while waiting for the email with my account upgrade.

after mining out the map and killing all the creepers, i went back and modded some iron deposits to be nearly unlimited. that was fun

it helped me adjust to thinking the right way and showed me a better way to problem solve