What factory setup do you prefer?

[elkar]

So do you prefer to build factories-assembly lines. As I see it there are two ways how to do that.

A) build bunch of them feeding each other to make the final product therfore having transporte belts only for raw materials

B) build clusters of assembly lines to craft intermediate products in mass so them you feed them to anothe bunch of assembly lines to massproduce the final product.

I guess both methods are viable but i also think that A) is more effective as those assembly lines take only what they need but its slower. B) on the other hand can produce a lot stuff fast but its much harder to balance it so you have enough raw materials incoming.


So what´s your thoughts?

[Xerath]

Yeah I myself tend to build clusters of mini-factories, then I have a box or two that I can stock up with raw materials that is pulled from. A little annoying stocking up boxes when things are low but it's really nice to section off my production, I've had a little solar panel manufacturing unit separate from my base that meets my demands pretty well on this system.

[BurnHard]

I build very small but effective clusters with only the absolute raw materials provided (see screenshots from 0.8.8 with science pack 1, 2 and 3) My whole core factory fits on 1 to 2 screens total and was extremely productive. One offsite big solar field. Electronic circuits etc are stored in one chest inside the clusters and I take then out If I need to craft something by hand. Most people build way too much assemblers for early intermediate products which have a very fast crafting time although they never have the raw material masses or even enough inserters to run them at 100%.

I have seen a lot of savegames with HUGE structures of conveyour belts transporting all intermediate products simultaneously over large distances, but I could never play that way. In my eyes this is just way to ineffectice, blocks large quantities of material and is very unflexible and limited by conveyor belt transport capacity, and wastes a LOT of space.

[LoSboccacc]

I use both depending on the quantity involved.

For example cables and gears don't get their production zone as it would need too much belts to ferry them around.
Instead each assembly requiring either gets it's own cable/gear assembler directly connected via an inserter

That way I need a huge logistic for raw copper and iron, but I'd need that anyway, it is only a bit longer.

Another example is advanced circuits. The basic circuits needed and their cables are produced locally to the advanced circuit assembler, while other stuff comes from specialized area of the factory

[Zourin]

Small, compact, purpose-separated with the minimum amount of invested resources (as few stray map-spanning belt lines as possible). Every individual factory complex exists for a purpose, whether it's research, resourcing, personal production, smelting, etc.

Megacomplexes to me are just horrifically wasteful. While a testament to the builders ability to plan and organize processes, to me they are wasteful and inefficient in the material investment in the construction itself.

Base copper and iron are routed (often dualbanded), and stray products are either manually or bot-lifted to where they need to go to prevent spaghetti-belts and materials langushing on belts better used elsewhere. Outputs are buffered and stored for personal manual retrieval or incorporated into the logistics network.

The materials I save by not building huge megacomplexes conserves resources for more meangingful projects. Rather than over-investing in research packs, which are a fairly continuous resource drain, I invest it instead into infrastructure development. Individual projects that are lagging behind in my needs can be resource injected for faster output.

Early on, I tap my flows (via splitter) of iron and copper, and maintain personal factories for gears, circuits, and steel. Coal/Fuel is typically collected and manually dispersed to where it's needed rather than belted around, generally as a part of my routine checkups on how infrastructures and processes are holding up.

[Darthlawsuit]

Huge overly large assembly lines with a massive train yard fueling as many furnaces as is possible. If I ain't stripmining the world it isn't large enough.

[liq3]

I used to do the first method almost exclusively, albiet with stuff like copper wires right next to the circuit factories (i.e. dropping straight into them). I'm now starting to think that doing things like putting a cogs assembler at the start of the green science pack line is a better idea. A single cog assembler can service 12 green assemblers (which can then service about up to 60 science labs) so it's much easier then running cogs through belts in my mainline. I think the only materials I may run through my mainline now is copper, iron, steel and circuits.

Advanced circuits as another example, are really only used for blue packs and modules (and other random stuff I build myself). So there's little point to put them into the main belt line. By the time I start building modules, I have logistics, so I can use bots to transport them all. I think this hybrid approach is probably the best method overall.

Also never transport copper cables. It's horrifying D:.

[elkar]

Also never transport copper cables. It's horrifying D:.

You mean like this?

Factorio 2014-02-21 19-58-02-29.jpg (442.14 KiB) Viewed 8381 times

[liq3]

*horrible disgusting picture*

Oh god why, why!? You can put them right next to the circuit factories, and you don't waste all that metal or blue belts! AND BLUE BELTS AREN'T EVEN FASTER THEN RED ONES* ANYWAY. ahuaughauhauhahu



*Turns in the belt cause it to slow down.

[Sedado77]

I like a mixed thing... I do CB's for cables, gears, circiuts and advanced circs... After that, logistic robots make CB's obsolete.
My way would be like inzania's videos. I like that way

[Zourin]

Cables are a good candidate for the inserter stack size bonus. There's no reason to not go directly from factory to factory, as using belts limits the transfer rate to 1 cable at a time.

In fact, I often use two inserters to insert copper, and where possible, two inserters to fling all those cables into the chip factory just to keep up with demand. Less power draw than using two 1-at-a-time fast/smart inserters

[elkar]

*horrible disgusting picture*

Oh god why, why!? You can put them right next to the circuit factories, and you don't waste all that metal or blue belts! AND BLUE BELTS AREN'T EVEN FASTER THEN RED ONES* ANYWAY. ahuaughauhauhahu



*Turns in the belt cause it to slow down.

Well I dont know about blue belts not to be faster than red but even two bluebelts at 100% capacity couldnt feed all those assembly lines along the way, so now I kinda know it's not the best way to do it.