How to Teach your Factory Building Codes

[Malkasphia]

Do you have an electrical engineering degree? No? Don't worry, neither do I. But I do know a thing or too about teaching factories to build things, stop building things, and be really really efficient. Check out this awesome Factory that can stop on a dime ( or a penny I guess, since we use copper plates to stop it) and bootstrap any factorio building venture.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Je4vbVv1Uf8 - Video Link for example, world file below if you want to fiddle with it

Saved Game File - https://www.dropbox.com/sh/p9cqi65pqeur ... fM6QxMTdIa

[JamesOFarrell]

This is an impressive build. I've not seen many uses for logic gates in factorio so it is awesome to see someone use them for something practical.

[Lee_newsum]

WOo that is a good use of Green wire in the Circuit network.

BUT Logistic network Roboport/Logistic robot and chest can do all that if setup rite way.

[jeroon]

That's very cool

(and a bit disturbing at the same time, but in a cool way )

[kisPocok]

Mind blown. I didn't get it first time. But I will build it (maybe try to build? )

[MtNak]

This is very very cool! I had the idea about it, but i don't need it yet for my playstile.

[ssilk]

Amazing. I can't await advanced circuit logic in v0.12.

From the setup I would split that in two circles: one for the assemblies and one for the control. I would also experiment with wagons, cause of their filters.

[Malkasphia]

Amazing. I can't await advanced circuit logic in v0.12.

From the setup I would split that in two circles: one for the assemblies and one for the control. I would also experiment with wagons, cause of their filters.

Advanced Circuit Logic? I have not read about this...do you have a link with the goods mr.ssilk?

Also, what are wagons?

[ssilk]

Circuit logic is the logic, he uses to make all those stuff.
It's in in the roadmaps, that it will be enhanced:
https://forums.factorio.com/wiki/inde ... torio_0.11
or
https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... ?f=3&t=678

And wagons are those big things you put behind a locomotive: https://forums.factorio.com/wiki/inde ... argo_wagon
With v0.10 the became filters, which may be useful to do things easier.

[Malkasphia]

Circuit logic is the logic, he uses to make all those stuff.
It's in in the roadmaps, that it will be enhanced:
https://forums.factorio.com/wiki/inde ... torio_0.11
or
https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... ?f=3&t=678

And wagons are those big things you put behind a locomotive: https://forums.factorio.com/wiki/inde ... argo_wagon
With v0.10 the became filters, which may be useful to do things easier.

Oh okay "(If time allows!) more circuit logic (circuits for electricity, trains, liquids, etc.)" Very cool. Thanks for the links.

[-root]

Great build Mal, its an absolute ingenious use. i suspect a little overkill, but thats what factorio is all about!

[FKODgaming]

Here's my own take on this idea with some slight tweaking to make it completely self contained.

http://youtu.be/krb4bk9OGZk

Let me know what you think!

[-root]

Not bad

What I'd like to see is one of these factories covering the entire build chain that automatically resets and batches the correct materials regardless of what you take out when. It would take a huge amount of work to get it set up, but it would be awesome (and blueprinterable and therefore infinitely repeatable)

[Malkasphia]

Wow Alex. I love the work you have done simplifying the design, awesome job!

[Malkasphia]

Not bad

What I'd like to see is one of these factories covering the entire build chain that automatically resets and batches the correct materials regardless of what you take out when. It would take a huge amount of work to get it set up, but it would be awesome (and blueprinterable and therefore infinitely repeatable)

Yeah, he did a great job on this.

To build something that can restart the resource you pluck from its chain of building would be amazing. Maybe even not that complicated... You would have to build a "subtraction logic circuit" to detect what item is missing and then remove enough of the building code material to get to that...cool part is that if you did this, you would not even need a bunch of little logic circuits to complete every build code.

[Aktai]

Okay this is an awesome idea so I just had to register to respond.

I have adapted this idea in one of my maps. Sadly I deleted the map so I can't show you at the moment.
There are some issues with the system I believe, which I had adjusted.

First of is why build everything in order?
If I were to use this I would make it so it produces a set amount of items. However since a lot of the basic stuff is needed in the last factories it seems silly to me to build everything from the ground up starting with the easiest like copper wire and gears and only moving up a factory once those are at their desired stacks. Instead make it so you produce the last items first and make the smaller scale factories build according to the needs of these.
This is also my issue with the redesign Alex did. Not only are his most common items produced first, they don't pass the other factories first as well. So no wonder it takes 40 minutes to produce everything.
So if you want to produce, let's say 20 fast inserters. Make the production of everything it needs depend on that.

Second issue leading up from the first one follows from this. Why the control circuit?
If you made the set-up to produce according to it's needs you don't need the control. You can just set up the storage for it to be the control. When you need extra conditions just add a chest like in the original. Instead make it depend on the to be produced items instead of stone/coal/wood in the control. Set smart inserters which remove the items from the factory as the control, the smart inserters going into the factory are unneeded this way.
Not only will this remove a lot of redundant space (the storage is almost the control in the original map) but it will make the system produce anything it is lacking, like root wanted. For instance if you remove the 20 fast inserters from the smart box it will make everything it needs until the stack is back at 20.

Third issue regarding speed, I like the idea from Alex using multiple inserters for items going in. However I would use two transport belts in this set-up. One for raw resources and one for products. This way you can achieve a faster production line.

I'll try to build one in my current map once I'm finished making a satisfying research lab to show what I mean.

[-root]

Not sure speed is the point of this factory, rather perfect efficiency with no waste. If speed is what you are going for, you end up with what we all build anyway and thats massive chains of factories just churning out the products as fast as machinely possible.

Mal mentioned in his video the idea was to have a self contained and small factory that could build everything up to a stage in a completely self reliant way without any waste. That way you can blueprint the entire thing and then drop it wherever you want a new outpost.

[Aktai]

Allright I made it, kinda fast and dirty but the idea is there.


Here is the basic layout as Malkasphia made it. Instead of one belt I have put in two for faster resources.
These come from the west.


This is the storage and control area. As you can see I have already set multiple smart inserters for the required goods. Both belts loop back for recycling.


Example for the gears. The red wire is to keep the last chest filled with just one gear, it connects the inserter in the middle with the last chest. The green is to count the total gears saved.


The inserter at the factory outputs gears as long as the total saved is less than 50. Note, this number is not based on anything. A higher number may be needed seeing as 5 factories use gears in varying numbers.


Also setting the transport belt factory to the desired 100. This is all the same green network.


Now the part which removes the extra control area from the original design. Set one of the output inserters of the gears-storage to remove gears as long as the transport belts stored are less than 100. Ensuring gears are delivered to the stream even if all gears are produced.


Now repeat this for every item you want to produce. Set the desired amount like inserters here....


...and the needed products in the storage area. Like gears here. Note that inserters need circuits as well so set one of those outputs to '< 50 inserters' as well.


The completed set-up looks like this. Smaller and compact. All the desired products for building a base are in the top left corner. And if you remove products the linked inserters will make sure only the needed items are made until storage is filled again. Once completed no resources will remain on the belts except for the iron and copper which has a separate belt. You can combine this with the idea of Alex to remove excess raw resources and only allow deploying if factories are in need.

I would make some changes to this design.
- The copper is only used for the circuits so direct input is better.
- The production of gears is too slow now. Better to add one more factory for it or else all gears will be used for basic inserters and you'll flood the belts with em (run it to find out why). (a slow inserter works as well, see last pic)
- Same for the circuits, one copper factory feeding two circuit would work better.

All in all it looks great. It needs some tweaks like I said but the basic idea can be used to produce anything without much excess (like engines, ammo and stuff).

When in use it looks like this:

[Aktai]

Tweaked the design a bit.
When building a new factory or outpost I never use the standard assemblers they're not fast enough for my tastes.
So I condensed the production of copper wire directly into circuits and Assembler 1 directly into the factory for Assembler 2.
Note that this removes two control/storage chests thus making the design smaller. The added benefit is less waste materials.

I could have removed the middle space making the design 1 smaller in width but I kept the space in case I ever upgrade or need to transport directly between rows.
For instance you could use an inserter between the gears and Assembler 2 to speed up that production.

The only thing I would change is using faster belts. This has the effect of allowing more gears and circuits to trickle down into the later factories thus increasing the speed of production.
Now the factory for Assembler 2 has to wait until all inserters are made to get the gears and circuits for production.

Of course an easier way may be to inverse the direction of the inner belt. I'll have to try that some time. It would cause less overproduction for sure.

[Neotix]

Could you share with us your save?