What can I create using the circuit network (combinators)?

[MineGame159]

Hello.
I don't know what I can create from circuit network(combinators). Please help.

[Tekky]

EDIT: This response is out of date, since, meanwhile, the original poster has clarified that he was asking about circuit networks and not about the item green circuits ("electronic circuits").

Here is my original (outdated) response:

In future, please post all questions regarding gameplay help in the "Gameplay Help" forum and not the "General discussion" forum.

There are many items that require green circuits ("electronic circuits") as part of the recipe to create them. I could compile a long list of all items that require them, but I don't think that would help you much. Making items just for the sake of using up ingredients is not the point of the game.

The problem you are having seems to me that you don't know what to do next, i.e. that you don't have any goal.

The first thing you should do, assuming that you have not already done so, is to complete the tutorial, i.e. the "First steps" campaign. Afterwards, I would recommend reading the official Factorio guide. In the "Gameplay Help" forum you will also find an FAQ and several links to guides that may help you, including YouTube video guides. However, some of these guides may be a bit outdated, since they were made for a previous version of Factorio. Therefore, some things may look or behave slightly differently.

[MineGame159]

Sorry.
And i make mistake. No electronic circuit. Circuit network (combinators)

[Tekky]

Ah, yes, that is a completely different issue and (potentially) very complex.

In the"Gameplay Help" forum, on the first page, you will find a thread labeled "Combinators 101", which may be helpful. Also, in the official Factorio wiki, you will find a page on circuit networks, which also contains links to several tutorials in the "Tutorials" section.

In most of my games, I only use circuit networks for only two things:

1. To pump light oil to my chemical plans which crack it into petroleum, but only on the condition that my storage tank for light oil is nearly full. That way, my light oil storage tank will never be empty (so that I always have enough to produce solid fuel), but will also never be full (thereby clogging the refinery output).
2. To only have the offshore water pumps that pump water into my power plants active on the condition that my accumulators (battery power) is low. That way, I normally run on solar power during the day and battery power collected from solar power during the night. The burner power plant will only start working if my battery power gets low.

However, there are many other cool things you can do with them, of example to create safe rail crossings.

[fishycat]

Here's a pretty good tutorial from Gepwin:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MedApxoUuo0

[Shaymes]

aye there are a lot of pissibilities like:

railcrossing


7-segment Display


or stuff
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=indN4kcshB0

[MineGame159]

Can you give me idea? What i can create?

[Tekky]

One of the tutorials on the wiki page I mentioned in my last post is a circuit network "cookbook", i.e. many examples of things you can do with circuit networks. For example, it explains how to do conditional oil cracking.

[steinio]

One of the tutorials on the wiki page I mentioned in my last post is a circuit network "cookbook", i.e. many examples of things you can do with circuit networks. For example, it explains how to do conditional oil cracking.

Very nice.

Some blueprint strings would be great.

Greetings steinio

[Shaymes]

wait for tuesday

[Frightning]

The full power of the Circuit network is basically boundless: it's literally Turing complete. That said, here is a short list, in rough order of difficulty of some practical circuit applications to consider trying:
-Regulating oil cracking (or more generally stockpile management of ingredients v things they are turned into).
-Safe railway crossings (so you're not at risk of becoming rail-kill).
-Automating outpost resupply via trains. (turrets, ammo, repair packs, con. robots, etc.)
-State machines (S-R latch is pretty basic, but much more complex things are possible, useful for controlling processes according to specific conditions)
-Displays (not as easy as you might think in vanilla factorio)
-Memory cells (cells themselves are simple enough, knowing how to use them to do interesting things...no so easy)
-Clocks and timing based designs (one use of this is achieving perfect compression onto belts from a line of assemblers with enough throughput)
-CPUs (Yes you can literally implement full CPUs with circuit network, they run at maximum of 60 Hz, usually only a factor of that at best)

The hardest part about the circuit network imo, is that you basically need the understanding of an electrical engineer to fully realize what you can do with it, as well as how to actually do it. Have a look at an S-R latch and see if you can intuit how it works and you'll see what I mean (took quite a while of staring at an efficiently designed S-R latch to realize how it operated; it only needs 2 combinators, btw).

[Kelderek]

I'm not very good at circuit networks, but I can manage a few useful tricks, including a few mentioned above.

My latest is using the circuit network to open and close train unloading stations that share the same name. I have a pair of stations named "Iron Main" and if neither has a train parked there then the circuit will disable the one that has more iron in the chests by turning off the rail signal. If a bay is disabled in this fashion, it will be enabled again if a train arrives at the open station, thus allowing two trains to use the two stations simultaneously (the whole reason to have two stations to begin with). This seems to solve the problem of trains always going for the station nearest them and using the same one over and over while ignoring the other one. This forces the trains to alternate from one station to another whenever only one train is coming to unload.

It probably will break under a higher throughput, but for my small factory it works nicely.

[leoch]

I've started using the circuit network to switch off production of science packs when there few resources in the base (several combinators output a 'Z' on the network if something is low), and also when there are plenty of this type of science pack (I move them into a box as a buffer).

You can also make "suschi belts" to get four types of science pack on one belt (do a search).