When I built my first bob’s mod factory everything went just silly after making god modules.
Most parts of the factory just stopped because there were no need for resources and the supersonic bot’s are so much more effective than even the 5x belts. So I realized I have to set up a much bigger goal to make it fun. And down everything went into storage boxes and I built a big bot grid factory and where almost sending a rocket/s and doing all the science.
Then I tore down that to because of bad UPS on my computer from the stone age and I am now trying to figure out how to build an more effective larger factory.
Here is some findings and questions I have in the Quest for bob’s big rocket.
1. Inserter speed
Even with express stack inserters that has max stack size bonus you are going to have problem to keep up. Inserter angle and offset make a huge difference in speed.
This setting and one longer is the fastest I have found. Even with that fast high demand recipes as electronic boards may need double up with inserters to keep up.
Questions is there other good settings and when can I use other angles when it is needed for the layout.
2. Modules , speed and productivity
The god modules are insane and OP as f*ck. With highest tiers of machines you usually can insert 6 modules, that ends up with 300% productivity bonus, that equates to 4 times the product!
The game engine have a limit to 60 recipes/s so if you speed up your assembler more than that they are only going to use resources faster and you are losing productivity.
The math:
The productivity multiplier (pm) = 1+productivity/100
Crafting speed (cs) can be seen when hover over the machine and is the machines speed multiplied from modules.
Recipe time (rt) is seen when hover over the product slot in the assembly machine screen.
So the recipes/s = pm*cs/rt and you should try to hit 60 recipes/s
So Crafting speed (cs) should be = 15*rt (recipe time) with 6 god modules to be optimal.
For a gear assembler mk6 (recipe speed 0.5) with 6 god modules ends up over 60 recipes/s so 4* productivity is impossible. So I should use 3 god modules and 3 raw productivity modules with 270% productivity and 600% crafting speed and ends up losing a little to the 60/s limit.
Questions: How does miners and lab’s work? How many good modules and beacons can I have without losing the productivity? There also seems to be quite wonky and strange stuff happens when working close to the limit.
3. Setting the requestor amount
There are some delay from when a requestor chests requests an item until the bots deliver them so set the amount so it is enough for several assembler cycles. The bot net has an unlimited throughput but there is some latency.
4. Battling the UPS with reducing the number of requestor chests
Sharing requestor chests and if the same recipe also providers can half the amount of chests and reduce the number of entities that calls for bots. My guess is that the complexity for the bot network is something like O(bots*chests) so this is possibly a huge UPS saver.
5. Direct inserting between machines
With direct inserting between machines you can further reduce the need for bots and inserters with often the cost of non-optimal ratios and an increase in the number of assemblers. Remember try make the machines doing 60 recipes/s.
6. The macro structure of the factory and compression
With the silly 4x matter multiplier god modules the factory topples on it ends and ends up with little ore draw and lot of end chain items. So you don’t end up with huge smelters and few science assemblers. A recipe that takes fewer than 4 items decompresses the stuff and makes it harder to move around, so in conclusion stuff like melting ore should be made where it is needed and you should deliver the ore. Stack size also matter when using trains but not for bot’s and the inserters.
The ore patches are going to run out and the mining have to be moved around, the lab’s (consumers) on the other hand can be placed where I want. So I need a logistic chain from inflexible moving around ore patches to lab’s that can be placed where you want and even be spread out. Where recipes that takes fewer than 4 items/product makes the product harder to move and recipes with fewer than 4 items/product makes the product easier to move around. And just doing on big bot network will be bad for the UPS so I think building separate “bases” (one logistic network) that takes ore and low demand stuff and send rockets to space. Then just blueprint and copy paste the amount of them I need. I have built a “base” with to rocket silos but it feels to small and lot of the assembling machines are working to little so I will try with maxing for rocket silos in one “base” logistic network.
7. Trains or bot bridges
There are a lot of different ore’s and stuff that is needed in Bob’s mods so the model with one train per ore as I am using in vanilla needing way to many train station. So my question is if there is some “easy” way to use one train for many different things without one type of ore piling up and blocking the others. No I am using one cargo wagon for each type of ore but that is suboptimal in loading speed (annoying to setup) and I still need a lot of train stations.
Should I just give up on the fun trains and use bot’s with bridges. I am thinking about to use one long and narrow logistic network that couples with the others using bridges (I have logistic bots mk4 with cargo size+3 and speed +1085%). Or should I try to wire up filter inserters on the train stations so they only is loading the stuff that is needed?
9. Combining bot bridges with melting/crafting
Train stations and bot bridges ad extra requestor chests and inserters that take CPU so why not try to combine a bot bridge with melting with placing the smelters/asemblers in between the networks and in that way separate logistic networks without any extra cost. The separation of logistics network could be a must depending on the complexity of the bots CPU usage.
Questions what is the complexity of CPU usage of logistic networks and how large can they be without taxing the CPU to much.
8. Power
Nuclear power is fun and makes a lot of power but the take a lot of UPS that is the ultimate resource in a Mega base. The bob’s heat exchanges and turbines makes the a little bit more effective but should I use solar instead. I assume the large solar panel mk3 is the best for UPS or is the smaller better? And what type of batteries is the best for UPS.
9. Rocket animation time?
You realize you can speed up almost everything to silliness but the rockets have their animation time, so I surprisingly big part of your factory is going to be rocket silos. By the way does anyone know exactly how long the animation is? Does anyone have a good testing setup for throughput with blueprint strings?
