Direct insertion military science

Caine · Post by **Caine** » Wed Dec 27, 2017 11:50 am

I am trying to create a direct insertion military science build as I hate it when non ore materials pile up on a belt (it is waste due to overproduction).

This was my first attempt after some iterations and cleanup, but the ammunition is not inserted directly and it builds up (and so does the steel in the furnaces if the remainder stalls).

: Factorio_Military4.png (1.27 MiB) Viewed 1812 times

Here is my next attempt. It is a tad more messy. I am not all too happy with the off-ratio ammunition production, it makes the factory more expensive than needed. But due to the direct insertion at least they do not over produce. I had to add a simple circuit condition to the long handed inserters feeding the furnaces to prevent them from sucking up all the iron and stalling grenades. We could easily scrap a firearm magazine assembly without impacting performance.

: Factorio_Military_Direct.png (2.8 MiB) Viewed 1812 times

I am producing steel locally since we need 1 steel every 13.33 seconds (due to assembly machine 2 at 0.75 rate) times 5 factories which is about 0.38 steel per second. Half a yellow belt supplies 6.67 and would lead to massive waste due to belt buildup. Since we already need 10 coal every 13.33 seconds per factory (or 3.75 coal per second total), the surplus can easily be put into fuel.

Now that I do the math, I could probably get away with bringing in coal and copper via a yellow belt and iron on a red belt. I will check and try it out.
<edit>

Yes you can, here is a variation

You need some good compression on your belts and the 5th (leftmost) science pack factory needs some warm-up time as the other factories draw resources too hard until their buffers are full. This is related to the 8/10 ratio differences between the turrets and grenades vs the military science packs. The direct insertion also does not do a perfect round-robin distribution when it has multiple outputs.
</edit>

I would be interested to hear about other direct insertion military builds and/or ways that you avoid resource waste due to belt buffering. The metagame has currently mostly set on the main bus which is a horrible waste of resources. Belt buildup is a sign of overproduction and waste and should be avoided when possible (unless avoiding it is more costly than letting it buildup).