Need help with transition to mega-factory

[Syrchalis]

I've been playing with SyncViews a lot lately and while he is a seasoned Factorio Veteran (~1000 hours, compared to my 350) we still ran into problems when we were upscaling our factory. I ask less for our multiplayer game, as we are two smart people who will probably figure it out, but more for myself when I play solo, because I have some real trouble with this.

Exposition
0.15.x - All normal research finished. Rocket launch every few minutes. Many blue belts of iron and copper, half of the production runs on productivity/speed beacons (all smelting, green/red/blue circuits)

Problem
How do you manage belts?
Managing 4 blue belts of something is easy enough. I usually design the main bus for this. Something we do is produce certain things locally (e.g. green circuits for red circuits) and put items on the main bus that aren't necessarily usual, like gears (because 2 iron = 1 gear = less stuff on the bus).
Eventually you get to a point where your green circuits ALONE need 3-4 blue belts of iron and copper. How do you design your factory for that? How can you even sustain a main bus without leaving literally screens of space? Does everyone just switches to full-on robot production?
I just always feel a bit lost when the game gets to late game and your resource requirements become ridiculous.

And as for robots - you need a lot for them to do the belts work, right? I think a while back I tried in an outpost to make some green circuits with beacons using robots and it failed horribly because the robots couldn't even remotely handle the copper wires and iron plates - and I brought a substantial amount with me.

Questions
Do you switch to robots entirely eventually?
What do you do when you start needing 8 blue belts of Iron etc.?
Do you already design your factory for this point?
Do you rebuild?
Or do you just start a whole new main bus that is way upscaled?

[Ranakastrasz]

*Blink*

Green circuits take up 2/5th the space of the iron/copper used to make them. I can't fathom why you wouldn't put them on the belt.
Gears, yea, they aren't used as often, but the higher density and sheer number you tend to need, at least for belts, makes it seem worth it to me.
Red circuits and processing units are even worse.


I am just starting my first serious game where I try to use a proper bus. (Usually it all degenerates into spaghetti instead)

This is how I am building my bus currently. (only red belt tech, just starting on oil)

Each line is a set of 4 belts, with two spaces between them for tunnel-jumps.
(Might extend it to 8 in the future, given blue belts now jump 8)

Have 4 lanes of gears
4 Lanes green circuits.
2 Lanes Copper, 1 Red Circuit, 1 Blue Circuit. (Don't need anywhere near as much copper throughput, it all goes into circuits anyway)
4 Lanes Iron.
2 Lanes steel, 1 Coal, 1 Stone/Brick(Half and half, since some things need one and some the other)
2 Batterie, 2 Plastic
4 Lanes of Pipes, (using flow control) Sulfuric Acid, Lubricant, Petroleum, and Water (Because frikkin desert)


Overall, Its working, even though I am not producing enough to satisfy 100% throughput on even red belts on some of them yet, but Its a work in progress.


Not really sure what else to say

Robot-wise, I can't justify them for logistics most of the time. Their throughput is just too low. until flow control and Squeakthrough I used them to transport barrels of oil, but that isn't really needed anymore. Aside, ofc, for providing the player with stuff, but that's a given.

[Syrchalis]

I usually have a main bus like that, but once you start making like 600 processing units a minute, 4000 advanced circuits per minute you just need sooooo many raw materials.

The processing unit array alone swallows three to four blue belts of green circuits.

[Aeternus]

For a megaplant, it's probably wiser to make some smaller buses for the specific production you are running at that part of the factory, and hook it all together with trains. That allows you to centralize, and typically, scale production as needed. For instance, you can have a large iron smelter (with a steel smelting facility nearby) that supplies your production sections with iron, steel and if you're feeling for it, even gears. Copper too needs just a single big smelting unit. An electronics section can produce circuits, advanced circuits and processing units as well as various modules and rocket control units in one big section that only needs plastic, iron, lots of copper and a bit of plastic and small quantities of sulfuric acid. Just examples, you can clump together a lot of production and hook all that onto a railway "main bus" instead, that generally solves capacity and range issues for megafactories easily.

[Shokubai]

I
Do you switch to robots entirely eventually?
What do you do when you start needing 8 blue belts of Iron etc.?
Do you already design your factory for this point?
Do you rebuild?
Or do you just start a whole new main bus that is way upscaled?

Think heavily about Compression.
2 Iron Compresses to 1 gear
1.5 Copper + 1 Iron Compress to 1 ECircuit
2 Ecircuite + 2 plastic +2 copper Compress to 1 ACircuit

You see how this goes. The idea is simply to avoid pushing more and more iron plate down the belt to make things inline when you can convert it and save space.

YES, switching to all bots is a solution but for me it is often a game goal to limit or avoid doing so.

Rebuilding is an option. Frequently I will decentralize my base and create smaller bases for Oil, Science, smelting, etc and use trains to move products. My original base becomes a tool factory to build base building things

Starting a new bus is an option if you have room but how you planned for this will effect you. For myself I only ever build on one side of the bus so that i can expand/move belts the other way without penalty.

[Syrchalis]

Those are some good starting points, let's hope I can translate them to concrete solutions for my future bases. Wouldn't mind more ideas and tips though, can't have enough of those, right?

[SpeedDaemon]

IMO, a main bus setup doesn't really scale up well past a certain point. I usually use that architecture at the beginning to get the basics automated, but quickly switch over to separate "sub-factories" connected via a rail network once I need to scale up output. Not only does it free you from space constraints, but you can do things like have an entire iron/copper ore->green circuit factory blueprint that you can just plop down anywhere on the map to increase your output as much as you want, as long as you can mine enough ore fast enough.

[iceman_1212]

Setting a numeric goal for your factory (e.g., 1k science per min, etc.) will go a long way towards helping you plan your base and designs.

My most recent save was ~200 hours long and I used belts + trains for 95% of production - as reference, I ripped out my main bus at the ~30 hour mark. Dedicated production lines are much more UPS efficient as the factory grows larger.

[Engimage]

Take a look at my designs.
viewtopic.php?f=202&t=49452
They are there to avoid transition from ore to plates and give tou directly the result you want.
Saves a lot of belts and logistics.

Just feed these directly from outpost trains in the place you want it to be (might be many dedicated places)

[Serenity]

Eventually you get to a point where your green circuits ALONE need 3-4 blue belts of iron and copper. How do you design your factory for that?

So don't feed the green circuit factory from the mainbus. Give it its own iron and copper lines