Hi all! Just finished an achievement run, where I cleared almost everything. Now I'm setting my sights towards a "megabase" or "gigabase", over a long time. I'll be starting a new map and working my way up. I plan to have a few mods going for this build.
The plan is to use only bots, as I've not really had a chance to really get in to bot use before, and I've heard it can be good for performance if done correctly. I also really like the idea of a bot factory. I have a few things that I've been trying to figure out before I start, so there won't be a huge restart when I figure something out 300 hours in! Any help is much appreciated.
I'm going to use RSO mod for map gen, to get more consistent ore generation. The plan is to build a decent base, get supplies, then load it on a train and move a huge distance in one direction, to get enormous ore patches that won't run out as quickly. There will be a lot of moving things around by train, from mines to smelters to factories... Basically a "railworld"
The plan was to have different lanes of tracks for each type of material, with two-headed trains, and terminal stations. I was thinking of having inner lane for ore, middle for plate (copper, iron, steel), and outer lane for the rest (circuits, building components, etc).
1) Is this a good way to do things to avoid blockages? I've seen some designs with up to 4 lanes each way, but I'm unclear if some of these are separated lines, or just bypasses for overtaking at junctions where trains aren't going to be turning etc.
2) What's a good length for trains? I have been playing around with 4-12-4 trains, but is this only good for ore (where infrequent, long distance trips are better)? Would it be better to do 2-8-2 or 1-4-1 trains for the valuables, or can 4-12-4 be used throughout? I have heard that more trains on the network increases load, so less, but larger trains would help?
3) What's the "optimal" number of engines per carriage when using nuclear fuel on two-headed trains? I plan on using solar for power, and having uranium for fueling trains when I get to the point of having a good supply going through mining and kovarex.
4) Do people find that having a "fueling train" going around the map to keep outposts stocked is the best method for fuel delivery, or is it better to have each train go to a "depot" to get fuel. The former is what I have planned, but I'm curious.
5) Is it a bad idea to have biter expansion turned on with a very large base? I was thinking of turning off pollution (for performance), but having expansion, to keep things interesting. With the new artillery cannons, I expect that keeping them a good distance away from train lines wont be as big of an issue as it used to be.
6) On that note, is turning off pollution really going to do me many favours in terms of performance. 0.16 has brought pretty substantial performance improvements for big bases from what I've seen. I do want to keep it challenging.
7) Are there any particularly nice mods people recommend? My current list is as follows:
RSO
SpaceX
Logistics Train Network
Auto Deconstruct
Foreman
YARM
FARL
Atomic Artillery
Nuclear Robots
Thanks for any help. Just trying to get an idea on a good starting mentality. Any links to tutorial series etc are also welcome!
Megabase tips
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ChickenMacNugget
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JimBarracus
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Re: Megabase tips
1: I prefer on-way-trains, they need more space but the railgrid can take much more trains and you safe on train length.
2: It depends on the ore patch size, if you can feed long trains in a decent time go for longer trains.
for valuables even three wagons are just fine.
3: your engine/wagon ratio is ok, stick to that
4: a train with nuclear fuel can go 99mins full speed with "a full tank"; 3 nuclear fuel cells. It is enough to fill the engines up at one point for example the smelting area
5: I think biter expansion doesnt work without pollution since they feed on pollution to grow.
6/7: The game becomes boring at a certain point when it is just more upscaling or hunting for new ores.
2: It depends on the ore patch size, if you can feed long trains in a decent time go for longer trains.
for valuables even three wagons are just fine.
3: your engine/wagon ratio is ok, stick to that
4: a train with nuclear fuel can go 99mins full speed with "a full tank"; 3 nuclear fuel cells. It is enough to fill the engines up at one point for example the smelting area
5: I think biter expansion doesnt work without pollution since they feed on pollution to grow.
6/7: The game becomes boring at a certain point when it is just more upscaling or hunting for new ores.
Re: Megabase tips
Biter expansion is based on time. Every couple of minutes they send out expansion parties. The default setting of 4 minutes is a bit extreme (especially if you play slow), but it can be turned down in the optionsJimBarracus wrote: 5: I think biter expansion doesnt work without pollution since they feed on pollution to grow.
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Frightning
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Re: Megabase tips
I too have aspirations of building a large train-bot style megabase, and have built a modest sized base that was running at a steady 6k+ plates/min (my kilobase that I posted about on these boards). I learned a lot from that base...
My advice: I recommend using 1-way trains instead of 2-way, the basic reason is because 1-way trains have much better travelling performance (lower loco-to-wagon ratios to achieve max speed, for instance). The layouts are a bit more space consuming, but it's very worth it when you finally get huge and need good rail throughput (also, larger trains are marginally better than more shorter trains for throughput, but it takes a pretty massive base to really motivate using larger than 2-4-0 trains, imo). Since you also want to use Logistic bots heavily (as I did in my kilobase), let me make some broad suggestions: Group related processes together (such as circuits, Iron+Steel smelting and Iron Gears, Modules, etc.). Beaconized layouts were meant to be used with bots and trains, use alternating rows of beacons and assembly machine 3s (or chem plants/electric furnaces where applicable), fed them via requestor chests and have them output to passive provider chests (in most cases, fluids can be done just fine via pipes, as pipes can handle up to 12000 fluid/sec), which go to train stations flanking the beaconized production area, this kind of layout is extremely efficient, and you can get 10,000s items/sec from a low time recipe with a production block that fits in one screen when zoomed all the way out (such a block can be fed by (and perhaps feed) multiple stations in parallel next to it). In order to handle concentration of raw materials, I suggest having your many mines feed a few 'hubs' which concentrate like a dozen mine's worth of raw materials brought by smaller trains into singular larger trains which then feed into your smeltery. The advantage is that you cut down on traffic at the smelter and hence can support a higher maximum throughput, though you pay in UPS for this a bit.
1: Covered above
2: Covered above
3: Since I suggested 1-way, the optimal ratio, for max travel speed, before fuel got the vehicle acceleration modifiers was 6 to 13, but now, I am not sure if that has changed for fuel types with a boost to vehicle acceleration or not.
4: This is one that I have been thinking about more recently (my few attempts at a full-on towns game have revealed just how much of a pain this particular issue is to address). My conclusion has been that the best way to deal with this is to actually use your existing train system to also distribute fuel. The idea is the train's which travel between a place that has fuel and one that needs it have an extra wagon (e.g. the first one behind the locos), which contains only fuel, which is used to supply the place in need of fuel. The idea then is that trains fuel is propagated through your train system in a tree like manner, starting from your fuel production plant and working outwards to other processes (e.g. for Solid fuel burning trains systems, you would have fuel travelling back to your Light oil station via the same train that brings Light oil to be converted to solid fuel, and from there, it could be spread via the same method to crude oil, and to other oil derivatives from there, etc.) The hard part for me, is how to build into this kind of design, as the fuel you ideally want to use, come endgame is pretty far up the recipe tree, so you need infrastructure to feed it, yet at the same time, you want all your trains to be fed by that high tier fuel.
5: You can do it with biter expansion on, but that will probably just boil down to more things you have to do before you can get to the really fun part of setting up endgame style train-bot operated production blocks and starting to produce items at breakneck pacing. If you leave them on, but with expansion turned off, you still have reason to consider defenses (the amount of pollution beaconized setups produce is utterly insane, so unless you clear like multiple radars worth of buffer space, they will be smelling it, and hence will come a knocking). Pretty much unless you set biters to peaceful or off completely, you can expect to need to wall yourself in a turret wall eventually.
6: Every bit helps, but tbh, you're likely to run into other UPS hogs being a problem before pollution is a major contributor to low UPS.
7: I only play vanilla myself so far, and what you're looking to do is honestly pretty doable in vanilla (if a bit more tedious than with some of the nice convenience mods out there).
My advice: I recommend using 1-way trains instead of 2-way, the basic reason is because 1-way trains have much better travelling performance (lower loco-to-wagon ratios to achieve max speed, for instance). The layouts are a bit more space consuming, but it's very worth it when you finally get huge and need good rail throughput (also, larger trains are marginally better than more shorter trains for throughput, but it takes a pretty massive base to really motivate using larger than 2-4-0 trains, imo). Since you also want to use Logistic bots heavily (as I did in my kilobase), let me make some broad suggestions: Group related processes together (such as circuits, Iron+Steel smelting and Iron Gears, Modules, etc.). Beaconized layouts were meant to be used with bots and trains, use alternating rows of beacons and assembly machine 3s (or chem plants/electric furnaces where applicable), fed them via requestor chests and have them output to passive provider chests (in most cases, fluids can be done just fine via pipes, as pipes can handle up to 12000 fluid/sec), which go to train stations flanking the beaconized production area, this kind of layout is extremely efficient, and you can get 10,000s items/sec from a low time recipe with a production block that fits in one screen when zoomed all the way out (such a block can be fed by (and perhaps feed) multiple stations in parallel next to it). In order to handle concentration of raw materials, I suggest having your many mines feed a few 'hubs' which concentrate like a dozen mine's worth of raw materials brought by smaller trains into singular larger trains which then feed into your smeltery. The advantage is that you cut down on traffic at the smelter and hence can support a higher maximum throughput, though you pay in UPS for this a bit.
1: Covered above
2: Covered above
3: Since I suggested 1-way, the optimal ratio, for max travel speed, before fuel got the vehicle acceleration modifiers was 6 to 13, but now, I am not sure if that has changed for fuel types with a boost to vehicle acceleration or not.
4: This is one that I have been thinking about more recently (my few attempts at a full-on towns game have revealed just how much of a pain this particular issue is to address). My conclusion has been that the best way to deal with this is to actually use your existing train system to also distribute fuel. The idea is the train's which travel between a place that has fuel and one that needs it have an extra wagon (e.g. the first one behind the locos), which contains only fuel, which is used to supply the place in need of fuel. The idea then is that trains fuel is propagated through your train system in a tree like manner, starting from your fuel production plant and working outwards to other processes (e.g. for Solid fuel burning trains systems, you would have fuel travelling back to your Light oil station via the same train that brings Light oil to be converted to solid fuel, and from there, it could be spread via the same method to crude oil, and to other oil derivatives from there, etc.) The hard part for me, is how to build into this kind of design, as the fuel you ideally want to use, come endgame is pretty far up the recipe tree, so you need infrastructure to feed it, yet at the same time, you want all your trains to be fed by that high tier fuel.
5: You can do it with biter expansion on, but that will probably just boil down to more things you have to do before you can get to the really fun part of setting up endgame style train-bot operated production blocks and starting to produce items at breakneck pacing. If you leave them on, but with expansion turned off, you still have reason to consider defenses (the amount of pollution beaconized setups produce is utterly insane, so unless you clear like multiple radars worth of buffer space, they will be smelling it, and hence will come a knocking). Pretty much unless you set biters to peaceful or off completely, you can expect to need to wall yourself in a turret wall eventually.
6: Every bit helps, but tbh, you're likely to run into other UPS hogs being a problem before pollution is a major contributor to low UPS.
7: I only play vanilla myself so far, and what you're looking to do is honestly pretty doable in vanilla (if a bit more tedious than with some of the nice convenience mods out there).