Curious how I'm doing

[sashima8]

Hello, I'm still a bit of a beginner but after taking ideas from when I played with my brother, and from watching various videos especially Markiplier, I came up with this setup.

For me the idea became to use belts as moving chests to maximize output. I might have caused the green research to produce faster than the other bases can keep up but I'm hoping the setup isn't entirely terrible.

There's probably tracks I could do without but for now this is what I had. I feel I got pretty lucky with the abundance of resources, because I left all stats on default settings.

I am thankful to any advice, or suggestions that could be given for improvement.

[Azraelle]

I'm not sure I understand the reasoning behind some of the little twists and bumps in your belts, and why there are inserters moving items from the belt to another part of the same belt. Particularly in your coal line, you have inserters doing a more complicated version of what a single splitter would do.

[Happiej]

I'm not sure I understand the reasoning behind some of the little twists and bumps in your belts, and why there are inserters moving items from the belt to another part of the same belt. Particularly in your coal line, you have inserters doing a more complicated version of what a single splitter would do.

Yeah I noticed the same point haha.

To OP:

given that you're a beginner and everything is actually working, so far so good.

However, I am sure you already are having trouble adding more assembly machines, and getting the resources to them. If you haven't had this problem yet, you will soon.

Some advice:
-look into splitters. How do they work, when can you use them etc.

-Do you have a close-up screenshot from your steam engine setup? If I am not mistaking, there is only 1 boiler for 3 engines. My advice: For your first power use 2 engines and 3 boilers. as soon as you need to upgrade that, make an array with 14 boilers and 10 engines. That is the ideal ratio, and just as much as 1 offshore pump can handle. https://wiki.factorio.com/index.php?tit ... mal_ratios

-Do not make a full belt (both sides) with red science packs or green science packs. Best is to make 1 belt with red and green (each on a side) and save room for another belt for blue and purple.

-Create 'buffer storage'. Example: normale belt is being placed directly on a belt. However, at some point you will realise you suddenly need a LOT of those. Just like inserters. At that point, you can go running along the belt while holding "F", but wouldn't it be much easier to always have a chest ready for that? Setup would be pretty much: "AICI>>>>" (Assembler, Inserter, Chest, Inserter, Belt). You want to limit the chest by opening it, pressing the red X and selecting a chest size. the inserter that is going into the chest will stop once that number of stacks have been reached. For belts 2 stacks would be enough in early game.

-Space is the only thing that is free in this game. use it. You have this wide open field right in your starting area, but you decided to put everything as close together as possible right next to 2 puddles of water which will become annoying pretty soon (if it hasn't already)

-Last, but definitely not least, are you familiar with the central bus? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkP8UyFqmow
I suggest you take the time to look at that video. That guy has really thought me how to play the game with his videos(check out his channel) but especially this one is a video which I watched several times to make sure I knew it all. There are some very efficient designs here, and he will teach you how to use the central bus, so you will always have a nice, organised factory with enough resources coming trough EVERYWHERE.

And yeah, you have been lucky with you starting area. very nice

I hope these tips can be usefull to you. If you have any more questions about what I said here feel free to pm me or just put it here

[sashima8]

Well, to answer the coal question... admittably I forgot splitters even existed going in soooo.... >.>; I still don't mind the setup.


As for the closeness, I really don't mind the snugness as you will for the setup, I realize I have a lot of open space but I was afraid early on (as happened to me in a different run) a ton of monsters kept running in and killing me when I was still working towards red research.

To answer why I have grabbers move parts to the same belt, is because I wanted the parts to be on both parts of the tread and not just the outside or the inside.

The central bus thing was very interesting, I'll look into that if I can. You said that I'd have trouble adding machines for space, but I built the construct to function as my finalized unit. The goal was for it to be able to pump enough research out to run on my labs fast enough to keep researching.

Concerning the full line of red and green research. I plan on putting a full line of blue and purple to the left side of the research facilities (also where I plan to build the production line.)

Thanks for those thoughts though, you made good points, I will definitely think about my blue research line in a new light. I'm not going for a speed run so I'm not worried about crafting belts as I need them. I want to take it slow and steady and in some ways learn as I go.

My biggest issue going into blue research is I know I have to deal with the waste from the other 2 materials created and not sure what to plan for that.

[DerivePi]

My biggest issue going into blue research is I know I have to deal with the waste from the other 2 materials created and not sure what to plan for that.

Are you referring to heavy oil and light oil? I suggest keeping it easy for your first time through blue science. Getting blue science automated is fairly challenging, but, once complete, satisfying. Try these steps:
- Steel - get this going now. No blue research is required and steel is useful for lots of simple things (power poles comes to mind).
- Smart Inserters - Same as steel.
- For the blue science assemblers you will need to feed 4 items, so you should setup 2 belts on one side of the assemblers for input and an output belt on the other side that leads to the research labs. Side load the steel and smart inserters onto one of those input belts
- Now the hard part - for the other two ingredients, you need oil processing, specifically petro. Set your oil processing away from your main factory so you aren't tripping on all the pipes. Place a refinery and 2 storage tanks there. Initially, you just want the petro, so put the heavy and light oils into the storage tanks and then run only the petro pipeline into the factory proper.
- Advanced Circuits - You will need plastic so place a chemical plant next where you want to produce advanced circuits. Get the petro pipe to the plastic chem plant and feed coal into it. Note, advanced circuit assemblers are slow so plan to place 8 or so assemblers together for future.
- Batteries - you will need chem plants for - Petro to sulfur - Sulfur to H2SO4 - H2SO4 to batteries
- Side load batteries and advanced circuits onto the other belt feeding your blue science assemblers and you have automated blue science
- Streamline your research to get "Advanced Refining" - Once you have completed this, you will need to go back to your refinery area with about 4 more chem plants. Change the refinery to advanced refining and hook up the water feed. Set a chem plant to take your heavy oil and produce lubricant into another storage tank. You will also want to place a heavy oil cracking plant near there if you ever have heavy oil overflowing. Feed the light oil into a line of light oil cracking plants and get those running. Without these, light oil will get backed up and for now, you need petro.

[Happiej]

My biggest issue going into blue research is I know I have to deal with the waste from the other 2 materials created and not sure what to plan for that.

What materials do you mean exactly that will be wasted?

just a video about the belt rebalancing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlNqRkwflBI

[ProphetofEden]

couple things just take in as tips. straight lines are your best friends, the help you stay organized try to avoid all the wiggles an bumps.
try to keep enough room between assemblies to be able to stand and walk without being on belts. later on in your development when you have blue belts it can turn into a real struggle to walk around your factory
also try too use the tree and branch methods, this goes hand an hand with using straight lines