The von Neumann Thread

[Lato]

++==++
Slipstream Vector Locked
Target: Ring 4A139YT
Exiting Hyperspace in 3..... 2..... 1....

Commencing Orbital Insertion

WARNING!!! WARNING!!!
High Concentrations of Hydrogen Cyanide Detected in Atmosphere!
Ejecting Emergency Life Support
++==++

Hoo boy what a doozy. Someone over at command screwed up really bad this time. Dropped on a planet without a breathable atmosphere and less then an hours oxygen supply? Yeah so much for a nice relaxing assignment. Oxygen as such not the issue here. Guess that's why whichever fool sent me here missed it. I just need to filter all the toxins and whatnot out before I try breathing it.

The names Zach, I'm a Bio-Physicist. Not really much of an engineer but that's not the point. My job is to research the biters. Nasty little critters, but biologically fascinating. Now my mission ain't a standard one. I'm not here to colonise this place I'm here to find a way to harness the biters, tame them if you will. That said I'm gonna need another Deep Space Vehicle if I ever want to send my findings back home.

Starting Area

So. Here I am. No plan, no backup and a little over 40 minutes to live. There's little to no coal here meaning that actually powering my base is going to be interesting to say the least. Oh and did I mention Unlike most of the engineers in this program, I don't know how to build things. Sure the computer can handle it but assembling things is going to require power and machines. Good thing Control outfitted me with a solid fuel fed "Burner Assembler".

Lets get to work.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Side Note:
This challenge is being performed with a couple of mods to make my life harder.

Oxygen
In this world oxygen in its purified form is limited. I need to create an oxygen plant or suffocate soon after starting.

Dynamic Expansion
the biters are going to expand based on the evolution factor. More Evo Factor? More bases will be spawned

Clock
Exactly what it says on the tin

FARL
For all your Train Laying Needs

Natural Evolution
This allows me to research biters and eventually produce and control them. Getting all the tech in this mod and launching a rocket after is my goal for this playthrough.

Rail Tanker
Because having to barrel crude to move it in a train annoys me

Tree-Farm
I need some way to make starting fuel and this mod came to mind

No Hand Crafting
Yeah. This makes life a lot more difficult, you really don't realise just how much you rely on hand crafting till you use this mod. It is not gentle. This was also the reason I failed my first playthrough as I had only 20 mins of oxygen which is only enough to start making red science never mind the 25 green science you need to make an oxygen supply.




EDIT: Apparently it seems you need oil processing to fill oxygen bottles as it is done at a chemical plant. I'm going to add a basic chemical plant into the oxygen supply research chain. This should allow me to continue playing.

[Lato]

==++==
Update Log 1
==++==

Oh tank goodness. Finally got oxygen filtration up and running. Damn near suffocated, I made it all the way down to the read on emergency supply reaching 0%. Thankfully Since I had all the components ready All I had to do was install the filter from the lab and off it went. I think I can get on with my mission now, just after I note this complaint on my log for Command.

Oxygen Supply

Zach Out.

------------------------
Wow. That was hard I had to modify the oxygen mod so that chemical plants were unlocked along with the Oxygen Supply tech along with making bottling a chemistry process instead of a fluid combination construction. I mean seriously when the base mod gives you 20 minutes of oxygen to get both Automation 2 along with oil processing? That's impossible. Especially with the no handcrafting mod on. So yeah A close call. That said It all worked out I guess .

[Šedý]

---------------------------------
CHAPTER ONE: FRESH AIR
---------------------------------

*CRASH*

Ow. That hurt.

Emmm... I guess the first sentence of the log could be more formal, because the Supervisors will probably listen to it, but... you know what? I don't care! I am sixty and this is my last assignment, so screw you. I am going to buy my own farm and leave a peaceful life without travelling a single mile anywhere anymore, when I get paid for this planet. Speaking of the planet... it is not really a planet. It is a ringworld! A space pioneer can't wish for better end of his career than colonizing a rare megastructure.
Except it is low on fuels. And its star doesn't emit the usual solar spectrum. And it has no breathable air. And the surface is a swamp with ponds everywhere. And, most importantly, somebody already tried to colonize it and failed. Twice.
Oh. My senility. I've breathed through two air bottles, just talking here to the recorder. Whatever. I have my starter pack and the oxygen plant is left here from my precursors.*

Screenshot

Planet time 00:04:15
My starter pack contains TWO air support units, but NO bottle filler. It is not the first time the warehouse screwed things... but this looks suspicious. Somebody doesn't want this ring colonized. Either that, or they don't want to pay my pension. I will ask a lot of questions when I get outta here. If I get outta here, that is.
I will need fuel to research the bottle filler. A lot of fuel that I can't afford to cut down by hand, as I have to conserve the air. Also, I am too old for lumberjacking. There are no fossil fuels around, and I don't have the time for usual radar scan. Head north, tails south.

*FLIP A COIN*

I am going north.

Planet time 00:07:38
The coin was right! I found a patch of coal half a mile to the north, with convenient metal deposits nearby. That is going to be my science base. It is next to a nest, but whatever. I can deal with the fauna later, when I can breathe.

Planet time 0:27:02
That was close. The bottle filler recipe was easy, but getting the magic blue box where it is assembled was a close call. I spent almost twenty minutes setting up an improvised research center, handcrafting the other half of science all the time. My brain apparently works better in hypoxia.

Screenshot

Planet time 01:18:51
I finally set up proper science labs. Now I don't need to suffocate myself to come up with brilliant ideas anymore. Also I already have two days worth of air and water stocked. Sadly, the oxygen filter works on cellulose, so I have to cut down trees anyway. Bah. At least give me a steel axe!

...TO BE CONTINUED...

_____________________________________________________________________________
*I wanted to somehow continue in Lato's map, as he was here before me. So I rebuilt his starter base and launched a custom scenario from that map. I play with Survival mod and without solar for extra challenge. To compensate, I let my usual mesh of frustration preventers on, like Better fluid controls, Blueprint string, Squeak Through, Extra toolbelts or Warehousing.

[Šedý]

---------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER TWO: MR. MITTENS & COMPANY
---------------------------------------------------

Planet time 01:47:55

The air filter cellulose box is empty again. I got a steel axe and went postal on the forest. When I accidentally dropped a tree on one biter, it just curled up like a hedgehog. It was so cute... I picked it up and it gave out a high pitched squee. I will call him Mittens.

Screenshot

Planet time 3:43:29
Mittens has a lot of friends, who like to run around my factory. They are used to open nature, so they get lost here pretty easily. The alarm system just reported an attack in a boiler cascade. When I rushed there, I saw a frustrated, lost, poor little biter, trying to get to the other side of the boiler by bumping through its tanks. Poor boy... I stopped the power, picked up the tank and let it through.*

Screenshot

To prevent further incidents, I walled off their nest. But they already got used to wandering in my factory, so they just bumped the wall repeatedly. I built them a window, so they see me, but can't get in. They are happy now. They also use it as a treadmill.**

Screenshot

Planet time 04:18:02
When I met Mittens, I set up a wind generator factory to reduce the pollution of my new friend's environment. Now I found it. I think I will need some construction bots for this...

Screenshot

Planet time 08:31:26
Oh, no! Now Mittens went postal, too. Poor boy, I will have to tranquilize him. It seems the biters can't live in an industrialized area, but now I built too much stuff to move elsewhere. I will have to research the flamethrower.

Planet time 09:19:33
It looks like Mittens' friends have grown a bit since I saw them several hours ago. This calls for more than just a flamethrower.

Screenshot

...TO BE CONTINUED...

__________________________________________________________________
* I am amazed. The biters behave so realistically! When they can't find the way around something, they try to bite through. This may be intended to allow them easy movement in forests by taking down too dense forest formations... but whatever the reason, it looks so real! If you build a facory in the middle of a biters' colony (like me), the peaceful mode is not completely peaceful.
** The pathfinding algorithm apparently remembers paths that he found in past, so biters try them again even when I built a wall there... and the behaviour from footnote (*2) triggers. I let a part of the wall open, so the algorithm finds new path... and hilarity ensues.

[NotABiter]

mittens.jpg (160.09 KiB) Viewed 14285 times

[Šedý]

-----------------------------------------
CHAPTER THREE: BORED TO DEATH
-----------------------------------------

Planet time 13:25:58
I know all that I want and have all that I want, except cocktails. Drinking water all the time is boring. Also, automation is fun until you automate everything. Robots now do all the work, so I just walk around and tweak things here and there. I guess, I should start building the rocket.

Screenshot

Planet time 14:17:15
Research done. I am going to tear the research supply section down. Mainly because I need space for the rocket, of course. My sense of aestethics has nothing to do with it. At all. I promise.
This planet is post-modern now and uses robots for everything, so it doesn't need all the belts anyway...

Screenshot

Planet time 14:22:15
Oh, rockets! This big baby is quite power hungry. Also, it came just in the time of low wind. Things are slowly going to halt. Finally something to do! I had this forgotten wind generator factory somewhere...

Planet time 14:30:21
Now. That's better. Even in the low wind, things now can work full-speed.

Screenshot

Planet time 15:21:30
All is up and running, so I am killing time by nitpicking and optimisation. I didn't have solid fuel, so I added a row of refineries. I didn't have Iron, so I killed the engine unit assembly line and wind turbine factory. In general, I plug off or deconstruct all that doesn't contribute to the rocket construction. Retirement, here I come!

Screenshot

Planet time 16:53:21
When I was at the Explorers' College, I dreamt about watching rockets rise from my planet, with a Cuba Libre in one hand and remote controller in the other. I have the RC, but I still have no drink. I bet I will have enough time for that later, when they pick me up and I get my pension. There is one last thing left.

While I waited for the rocket to finish, I built a scanner array. Now I have the next target for colonisation in this sector. It is a young planet with two big moons that orbit it in high speed. The monstrous tidal waves are the reason why I picked it. They will be very valuable later, when the planet has its own population and high demand for sustainable sources of energy.

In the settlement phase, it would be hazardous to build anything in coastal areas, so I had to pick an oasis for the starting site. Keep in mind that there is no other surface water anywhere around. Minerals, on the other hand, are abundant. They lie in small patches everywhere, I am not even going to describe their positions.

As for the fauna... well... let's say it is not as friendly as Mittens was. On the other hand, it seems to be very rare.

Fine. I watch another rocket rise. The last one. There will be no more rockets from me. I finished my last job and deserve a drink. It's your turn, now.

>>>AAAMABUAAAABAAYAAAAEAAAAY29hbAIEAAoAAABjb3BwZXItb3Jl
BQIECQAAAGNydWRlLW9pbAQDAgoAAABlbmVteS1iYXNlBAECCAAAAGl
yb24tb3JlBQIEBQAAAHN0b25lAwMCQ1uvg/FcAADWQwAAAAAAAAAAAA
ACAA5wsik=<<<

[HammerPiano]

Connection established
Mission time: day 2, 23:00
Two days ago, got a mail with a request from the Starfleet Federation assigning me to a mission, i said top secret.
When I entered the Federation HQ(Luckily, I live very close to it, 10 minutes of walking) and showed the mail. Then, I found myself with Captain Jean-luk Picard, he told that I was chosen to prepare a planet for colonization , in the near Orion system. After 10 minutes, the captain beamed with me to the planet surface, very reach with resources. He also gave me an MP3 player(They still exsist?) with loads of music.

Then, he beamed and left me alone.

Now, I just finished the power making. The captain left a probe in orbit, and told me how to take satellite pictures with it.
Uploading....................100% complete

screenshot 1.png (2.25 MiB) Viewed 14222 times

See you in next report, bye
*disconnect"

[HammerPiano]

Connection established
Mission time: day 19, 7:00
The biters are attacking, and alot. In the past 2 and a half weeks I nearly died 3 times! The evil bastards. That's is way i didn't write any reports in the past 2 weeks.

I ran into a problem, a big one. There is no oil deposits, well just 5 with richness of lower than.... than I don't know what *sad laugh*.
I need to build a car, and quickly to find some oil deposits. I asked the captain if he could give me the Oil tank scheme for attaching it to the train, a very big scheme and I am still downloading it.

Here are some satellite pictures form the probe. Surprisingly, the probe is still functional.

screen shot 2.png (4.17 MiB) Viewed 14210 times

screen shot 3.png (177.88 KiB) Viewed 14210 times

See you in next report, bye
*disconnect"

[suprnova74]

Hmm, wonder if the biters got him

[NotABiter]

If so (or he was just having too much trouble and gave up), perhaps he could just be "resurrected" (mysteriously wake up) in this slightly updated version of the map he was playing:

sedy8.jpg (266.37 KiB) Viewed 13903 times

As can (mostly) be seen:
* the oil situation is taken care of to some degree (iron is now the resource that bottlenecks production, though that of course depends on what you're making),
* the base and outposts are well defended (and the last level of turret upgrades is in the process of being researched so they have some "kick" to them), and
* the player character has enough military capability that the biters pose no threat (unless one does something stupid).

The main base is pure turrets (no lasers) for defense, and there is a backup steel smelting setup for making sure the piercing ammo belt is kept full. (I repurposed steel furnaces to be additional steel smelting "in case of emergency" with their output being side-loaded onto the main steel belt which is primarily supplied using steel made with electric furnaces with level 1 efficiency modules - under normal conditions that belt is completely backed up to that join point, so the steel furnaces aren't running and polluting and causing attacks.) I've got solar and accumulators not only in the main base but stuffed into every available spot in the oil outposts (to make full use of the defended territory and conserve main-base space for other things) that, along with efficiency modules everywhere, are further keeping pollution down. Steam power is also set up to only run as backup (but it's not a good setup! - it's using pumps to control water input to the boilers, but a big enough laser-based power drain could bring those pumps to a standstill and, if that condition persisted long enough, it wouldn't be able to self-restart.)

HammerPiano (or anyone else if HammerPiano is just out) is welcome to switch to the attached save if that will get things rolling again. (At present I don't have the time or inclination to do it myself.) The attached save is from factorio version 0.13.9, no mods.

OT

I only played this map because of HammerPiano's "nearly died 3 times!" comment -- I thought maybe it was a challenging map. But the game up to this point wasn't. The biters were feisty and I didn't have oil early on so no lasers or electric furnaces or efficiency modules etc., but still, I don't know that I got a scratch on me the whole time. At this point the map has been reduced to "beginner level difficulty" so I abandoned the play-through for greener (more challenging) pastures. This save game is actually from July 19 -- I didn't know HammerPiano was going to be AWOL for so long or I would have uploaded it sooner.

[HammerPiano]

*reconnecting*
*connection succeded*
I couldn't countinue because of real life (and i forgot where is my save )
@NotABiter thank you for continuing that save I will take control from here
end of report
*disconnected*

[HammerPiano]

Connection established
Mission time: day 29 17:45
After searching for days I found some oil deposits, but each was 50-60%, and one at a time. One day I found an area with about 6 oil deposits, and each is 50-60 percent, not the best but it is good enough. BUT! It will take hours to move the barrels with belts, guess I will have to use trains...
Had to do so ant cleaning, they attack me non stop. Research takes forever to finish. I asked captain Pickard if he has some advice and he told me this:
"Research lab efficiency, it will help you research faster."
Steel smelting is up and running.
More power is needed, time for solar?
Good dang it, forgot how to connect to satelite....
There you go...
Uploading actual base image.......................................................................100%

factory picture 1.png (4.86 MiB) Viewed 13439 times

Canceling biter expansion analysis.................................................................100%
processing map image..............................................................................100%

map capture 1.png (120.15 KiB) Viewed 13439 times

A: the oil deposit
B: random ore deposit with both copper and iron, looks like a bone
See you later
Connection terminated

[suprnova74]

This is definitely a challenging map. i gave it a try myself before you restarted and i don't think it's a candidate for a speed run, let's just say that with the small starting area and oil supply limited/quite spread apart

[HammerPiano]

Connection established
Mission time: 21: day 39
I have been working on oil and trains in the past 10 days. Just now i finished working on it.
And when i decided to turn it on, a huge wave of biters went and ate a refining plant.... and the other plants were 6hp each.....
THOSE BASTARDS.
THAT'S IT! MUST KILL THE MO&%*#$^*&
anyway, here is the usual map picture(and satelite)
Uploading actual base image.......................................................................33%
ERROR camera not responding
Retrying...............................................................................................100%

factorio picture 1.png (4.17 MiB) Viewed 13346 times

Fetching satelite image.............................................................................100%
removing enemy expansion prediction............................................................100%

factorio map 1.png (192.56 KiB) Viewed 13346 times

*author note: I am going to do this once a week not everyday*
See ya in next report
Connection ceased to exist

[HammerPiano]

Connection established
Mission time: 0:45 day 50
I was so concentrated on build stuff that I forgot to upload mission report, silly me.
Any way, Oil processing is up and running. I thought why not have a light indicator for the amount of each product i have(Oil products ofc)
But right when I started working on it,everything was working so SLOWWWW.
And then - the power!! Almost no coal left in the conveyor belts that lead to the boilers. Oh my this is not good.
*author note:
Too many tests, can't upload as frequently as I want, sorry about that
*
And here is the regular maps and satellite pictures.
Satellite status: online and ready to use
Taking selfi.....................................................DONE 100%

capture 3.PNG (3.33 MiB) Viewed 13263 times

Decoding selfi into map.......................................DONE 100%
sending map....................................................DONE 100%

map 3.PNG (99.43 KiB) Viewed 13263 times

Do you see the progress, captain Picard?
Okey dockey, I will have to fix the power asap.
Connection is not available

[HammerPiano]

Connection established
Mission time: 14:00 day 61
The biter, are, everywhere!!
Had to do some house cleaning, around the nearest area. It had one spawner, attacked every day. Spawn like a truckload of biters in no time, lucky i found an excuse to use my 300 grenades .
Added some solar panels, working of batteries. Doubled the capability to produce circuits, but not nearly enough metal is coming in.
Hmmmm, hope I can start working on accumulators.
Ahhh god dang it the biters are feasting on my wall again.
Let me contact the satelite for some pictures.
Removing biter expansion prediction........................100% DONE
Uploading map..................................................100% DONE

MAP 4.png (139.12 KiB) Viewed 13167 times

Taking selfie
Say cheese biters!
*biters say cheese in biter language*

player map.PNG (2.6 MiB) Viewed 13167 times

byebye, see you in ten days!
P.S.
Forgot to say: I started working on robots, so it will be easier to live
*connection aborted*

[girasol]

I love this tread. I wonder if it is dead? I would love to give it a try but it serms like the latest seed does not work in the latest version of factorio. Is it possible to get a new seed?

[NotABiter]

HammerPiano should provide the seed for the next person. So far the thread has been run serially (one person finishes before the next starts), but there's no reason we couldn't pipeline things, especially if one person is going to take forever to finish. Send HammerPiano a PM and ask him if he'll post a seed for you. If you don't get a response from him (say within 1 week), then let us know and me or someone else can pick a seed for you to use.

[suprnova74]

the map generation is slightly different with 14.22, i know that. I'm not quite sure when that changed. If you revert to maybe 14.00 or some variant of 13, generate the map, and then update to 14.22 at least the starting area should look the same.

Or just take it as a slight variance in the landing area

[NotABiter]

girasol, if you just want to play the same map HammerPiano was playing, 0.13.9 works for sure. (That's the version I used to play that same map.) The only 0.13.x available for download now is 0.13.20 -- maybe that would work as well, maybe not. If you find a version of factorio you have or can get that works then I would just play that version (not start the game and then switch versions) for the "full, true experience" (rather than half original map, half something else). Factorio really hasn't changed much since 0.13.9 anyways. (If you grab 0.13.20 to try it, grab the zip package rather than the exe installer so you can keep it separate from whatever your current version of factorio is - just unzip it somewhere new and it won't mess with your current factorio install at all and you can then (maybe, if it works) just use 0.13.20 for this one map.)