Resource-aware Power Strategy

[Aeternus]

Nothing has less surface area than a single box and if no biters are in that box, you minimize the amount of enemies calculating around in revealed chunks.
If you have multiple outposts all with their own defenses or super long corridors all surrounded by enemies, that's a lot of real estate of revealed map chunks belonging to the biters and guess what that will do to your UPS over time.

Not a whole lot unless you got pollution going to those. Idle biters aren't a big UPS hog the devs have stated. Attacking biters with move orders are. But if it bothers you, add an artillery cannon to each outpost, and a wagon full of shells to your supply train. It'll automagically clear those biter bases and keep your chunks nice and baseless.

There is no flaw. Just place 1 solar panel.

And wait for daylight while the steamcarrying train tries to unload with still no power. And have some kind of logic that disconnects the pump from the rest of the outpost. It's a little more complicated then "just toss a panel in there and you're good".

First of all running out is a failure that shouldn't happen in the first place, but if you are really concerned about it you can put down 1 accumulator as well and it will work during the night. You don't need any logic. If you get hung up on such small and trivial things I wonder how you deal with the rest of the game.[/quote]
I'm not getting "hung up" on something. I was pointing out a big flaw in your proposed solution that would potentially starve a base for energy for several ingame hours. I already proposed using just an accu, no solar panel, to keep the pumps powered. They have no drain so an accu that disconnects itself from the grid once it drops below a value, and reconnects once there's steam again, is sufficient.

The caveat of your design is that you spare no power for defenses. Therefor no laser turrets
...
Relatively frequent deliveries of steam to your mining outpost also increases the traffic on your mining grid, and requires a fast loading station at your nuclear power plant. If not deadlocks, it'll certainly increase congestion on the mining grid on megabases.

That was not a caveat. I didn't include them because how you deal with defense is another issue to how many miners you can run. I never said you couldn't bring extra power for laser turrets.
Regardless how you solve defense you can have a single supply train. A single train unloading on a separated supply station will never gridlock anything unless you totally mess up your signals. Again how you do it is up to you, but even if you chose to have multiple trains it is still an outpost and should receive a lot less traffic than some other sections of your base. If you can't deal with traffic at an outpost how does your main base not constantly gridlock?

It's the grid that'll become overloaded, not the bases themselves. With ~20 or so outposts, with 2 to 3 ore trains per outpost and one supply train per outpost that'll have to get both steam and supplies? Typically your nuclear power plant and structure factory are not in the same location. Sure, you can work around it by having a small nuclear plant purely for producing steam for the mining bases, but then you still got the issue of solving how to manage 16+ supply trains, arriving with erratic schedules and not tolerating much delay, to get loaded and returned to the outposts. From my, still meager, experience with megabases... ore input is one of the most traffic heavy issues to solve (I've had to limit my smelters to 3000/s output because any more meant I can't get ore into the clusters fast enough).

I prefer to not add to the congestion on that particular rail grid. Deadlocking may not be an issue, but traffic jams can slow things down significantly. With solar power I can use a single general supplies train for all outposts - and even that one spends most of it's time in the loading dock because no stations need supplies. The mine prototype I use uses a full single line of laser turrets. With all that it still has 12 MW of spare energy for mines when the turrets aren't firing - didn't run the math but I think that's enough for upward of 100 mines with efficiency mods - and if biter attacks chew up power a little faster then expected, a power latch shuts the mines down until the batteries are recharged.

I guess we just have differing ideas on how to manage mining outposts. Agree to disagree?

[bobucles]

The simple fact is that mega base builders don't bother trying to make isolated power networks for their outposts. The "steam outpost" strategy was always a cute niche thing but was never taken to any serious level.

Building power poles to an outpost is a trivial task and it works every time. Defending the power supply is no different from protecting your turf, just build more guns yo.

[mrvn]

The simple fact is that mega base builders don't bother trying to make isolated power networks for their outposts. The "steam outpost" strategy was always a cute niche thing but was never taken to any serious level.

Building power poles to an outpost is a trivial task and it works every time. Defending the power supply is no different from protecting your turf, just build more guns yo.

That depends on the mods you use. If the mod makes it so aliens attack power poles but leave train tracks alone then sending steam to outposts is a very viable option while power poles are hugely annoying to defend.

[dood]

I meant that at 10k sci, your mines will frequently run dry, forcing you to build new ones further out in the field. Not so much a matter of being able to afford the buildings - but getting them where they need to be and clearing out the biters before walling it all off is the issue. Tends to be a timesink and there's no easy way to automate (well, used to be no easy way - artillery may offer some options).

Oh yeah, it's a timesink. I never said it wasn't. At that stage, everything is.
A death train with shell range upgrades makes it easier and so do oldschool destroyer capsules, a leg suit and nukes, but yeah.

The thing is, you have to do it anyway.
Your mines eventually run out and then what? You build more outposts.
That is much less of an issue if the legwork is already done.
You don't have to lay rails into the wilderness, a rail connection is already there and defending power poles is something you never have to think about, power is already there.
And the more area the expansion of your defense grid covered, the more resources you will have boxed in already so it'll last a good long while.

Another fun fact, if you expand in any other fashion than expanding a rectangle, say, you keep going into 1 direction, all you do is maximize the travel time for your trains. There's no shortcut to traveling 1000 chunks in a straight line.

[Aeternus]

Your mines eventually run out and then what? You build more outposts. That is much less of an issue if the legwork is already done.

Not so much an issue in my way of doing it either. The addition of an artillery cannon to each outpost is something I hadn't considered but that should automate biter clearing from the outposts... that would automate it instead of legwork. The only legwork at that point is dragging the initial rail line to the base, calling the builder train and plopping the few buildings needed to unpack the outpost. Once you have basic power and construction bots on the local logistics grid and some inserters to unload the builder train, the outpost builds itself. Deconstructing once the mine is done can be done in a similar fashion, packing everything in with the local logistics grid, and dumping it into storage chests that unload into a garbage collector train, to take the played out outpost materials back to your structure factory for repurposing. At most you need to wipe out a biter hive that's in the way of where you want your outpost to be. One or two nukes solves that problem...

You don't have to lay rails into the wilderness, a rail connection is already there and defending power poles is something you never have to think about, power is already there.
And the more area the expansion of your defense grid covered, the more resources you will have boxed in already so it'll last a good long while.
Another fun fact, if you expand in any other fashion than expanding a rectangle, say, you keep going into 1 direction, all you do is maximize the travel time for your trains. There's no shortcut to traveling 1000 chunks in a straight line.

Not entirely true. It all depends where your cargo endpoints are. In my megabase I will need multiple smelters since 10k sci per minute requires such insane throughput that it simply cannot be handled by a single smelter cluster. Determining where you place your smelters allows for multiple ore entry points to your base, each with a relatively short travel time. But my base too has grown rectangular, slightly more wide then long. It's unfinished though - secondary iron smelter for blue science, secondary copper smelter for yellow science and the entire spaceport production cluster still need to be built. But it is more comfortable to be fully walled in and have the walls autorepaired by a local logistics grid. Golden rule of Factorio: For any problem you have the answer is always "automate it".

[dood]

Not so much an issue in my way of doing it either. The addition of an artillery cannon to each outpost is something I hadn't considered but that should automate biter clearing from the outposts... that would automate it instead of legwork. The only legwork at that point is dragging the initial rail line to the base, calling the builder train and plopping the few buildings needed to unpack the outpost.

And then you just expand your walls and never have to worry about that area again.

Not entirely true. It all depends where your cargo endpoints are.

In the case of a long line from your base to new ore fields, the cargo endpoint is at the end of the line.
https://youtu.be/vyME4rWgptY?t=6m1s

In my megabase I will need multiple smelters since 10k sci per minute requires such insane throughput that it simply cannot be handled by a single smelter cluster.

Smelt on-site.

[Hedning1390]

I'm not getting "hung up" on something. I was pointing out a big flaw in your proposed solution that would potentially starve a base for energy for several ingame hours.

That's not a "flaw in my solution". I never pretended to describe a complete blueprint. I omitted a triviality not worth mentioning. There was lots of things I didn't mention. Like the defense you pointed out later.

I prefer to not add to the congestion on that particular rail grid.
...
I guess we just have differing ideas on how to manage mining outposts. Agree to disagree?

Sure

The addition of an artillery cannon to each outpost is something I hadn't considered but that should automate biter clearing from the outposts... that would automate it instead of legwork.

Artillery doesn't have nearly enough range in automatic mode without getting a handful of range upgrades. You need range 4 to just about reach radar range, but that's when the artillery is right next to the radar, and since it's a circle, not a square it won't reach the corners even if placed right next to the radar, so you want more than that. For a train unless you want to line your wall with tracks and stop every centimeter you need a fair bit more than range 4, and it's a quadratic research.

The simple fact is that mega base builders don't bother trying to make isolated power networks for their outposts. The "steam outpost" strategy was always a cute niche thing but was never taken to any serious level.

Building power poles to an outpost is a trivial task and it works every time. Defending the power supply is no different from protecting your turf, just build more guns yo.

Most mega base builders build in creative, use combat mods, or play without biters etc, or are from 0.15 (playing on max resources in 0.15 meant you'd have close by ore forever, so no need for outposts). Of course I don't watch nearly all of the youtube and twich videos out there so I could be wrong.

Also if all you see is the end product then as I stated earlier you would see a completely circled base. Getting there it is more efficient to build outposts than to spend hours at something (clearing biters) that will be done much more efficiently later. Of course it's up to you what to do.

[Aeternus]

The addition of an artillery cannon to each outpost is something I hadn't considered but that should automate biter clearing from the outposts... that would automate it instead of legwork.

Artillery doesn't have nearly enough range in automatic mode without getting a handful of range upgrades. You need range 4 to just about reach radar range, but that's when the artillery is right next to the radar, and since it's a circle, not a square it won't reach the corners even if placed right next to the radar, so you want more than that. For a train unless you want to line your wall with tracks and stop every centimeter you need a fair bit more than range 4, and it's a quadratic research.

True, but by that time you can afford that research. Aside from that, if a few biter bases remain at the very edge of your line of sight... I'm not too worried about those. If it cleares the bulk of them then wiping what's left with a nuke or two works.

The simple fact is that mega base builders don't bother trying to make isolated power networks for their outposts. The "steam outpost" strategy was always a cute niche thing but was never taken to any serious level.
Building power poles to an outpost is a trivial task and it works every time. Defending the power supply is no different from protecting your turf, just build more guns yo.

Most mega base builders build in creative, use combat mods, or play without biters etc, or are from 0.15 (playing on max resources in 0.15 meant you'd have close by ore forever, so no need for outposts). Of course I don't watch nearly all of the youtube and twich videos out there so I could be wrong.

Also if all you see is the end product then as I stated earlier you would see a completely circled base. Getting there it is more efficient to build outposts than to spend hours at something (clearing biters) that will be done much more efficiently later. Of course it's up to you what to do.

Mh. Intermediate solution comes to mind. Unpowered rail grid into the contested area, some local gun defenses with a small solar grid and a roboport for auto repairs, and an artillery train that stops there for a Royal Delivery of Death. Creep that up every now and then until the area you intend to take is clear. Use multiple artillery trains if neccesary. Less legwork that way, but it will require a crapton of expensive artillery shells. Once the biters are gone, wall it off and build your mines.
The "just do more guns yo" solution does work, but guns also need to be maintained. Biters will hit them on occasion, so if you've got no repair bots over there those guns and the power pole they defend will eventually be overwhelmed.

Not so much an issue in my way of doing it either. The addition of an artillery cannon to each outpost is something I hadn't considered but that should automate biter clearing from the outposts... that would automate it instead of legwork. The only legwork at that point is dragging the initial rail line to the base, calling the builder train and plopping the few buildings needed to unpack the outpost.

And then you just expand your walls and never have to worry about that area again.

Well, if you play railworld, biters don't rebuild bases, so... why bother at that point. As long as you've got an overlapping artillery field of fire in an ever expanding ring, you clear the area without needing to worry about biters squatting vacated areas. It does make walling things off easier if you don't have to clear the biters anymore.

Not entirely true. It all depends where your cargo endpoints are.

In the case of a long line from your base to new ore fields, the cargo endpoint is at the end of the line.
https://youtu.be/vyME4rWgptY?t=6m1s

Again, depends on your setup. I've currently got a rail looping around the walls of my base that diverts ore trains away from the base's inner grid, but it is all connected. Ore input is currently only at the south end of my base, smelters and a refinery are located there, along with a coal storage and transfer point. It's not running as efficiently as I'd like it to be though, definate room for improvement there.

In my megabase I will need multiple smelters since 10k sci per minute requires such insane throughput that it simply cannot be handled by a single smelter cluster.

Smelt on-site.

I played around with that, it does compress cargo by a factor of 2-ish. Abandoned it since I wanted to centralize smelting so I could do a large beacon/production mod smelter and squeeze 1.2 plates out of every ore, reducing raw material intake needs. My preferred smelter block is now a bot-based 24x24 smelters with heavy beaconing resulting in ~800/s ore smelted.
A beacon/production mod smelter at a mine with a local power grid will overload that grid. It also makes remote mines more complex - I prefer to keep those as simple as possible. Aside from that you still need to get the plates from the mines to wherever they need to go. That usually requires a storage-and-transfer facility, and those in my experience are hard to scale up at the throughputs required for a megabase, even if you do them bot-based. Another option is to have those trains go directly from mine to the factories, but that requires a constant minimal output from each mine, and can shut down production if one of the mines runs out.

[dood]

Well, if you play railworld, biters don't rebuild bases, so... why bother at that point. As long as you've got an overlapping artillery field of fire in an ever expanding ring, you clear the area without needing to worry about biters squatting vacated areas. It does make walling things off easier if you don't have to clear the biters anymore.

Oh well, I like to just reduce ore field frequency to lowest and bumping ore size up for it without touching biter settings so my biters still expand.
I guess you might as well strafe all biter nests on the outer walls with your death train once and then fall into a coma because nothing happens if no pollution reaches them.
That whole incorporating artillery into outposts thing seems pointless in that case too.
I wonder what you have to "protect power poles" from in that case though?

Again, depends on your setup.

The setup in that case was expanding outward in 1 line from your base rather than expanding a cube.
It was an extreme example, though some people actually do that. My point was: don't.

A beacon/production mod smelter at a mine with a local power grid will overload that grid.

Golly gee, I sure wonder what the solution to that would be =P

Aside from that you still need to get the plates from the mines to wherever they need to go. That usually requires a storage-and-transfer facility, and those in my experience are hard to scale up at the throughputs required for a megabase, even if you do them bot-based.

What.
Centralized smelters are surely several magnitudes harder to scale up?

[Aeternus]

Well, if you play railworld, biters don't rebuild bases, so... why bother at that point. As long as you've got an overlapping artillery field of fire in an ever expanding ring, you clear the area without needing to worry about biters squatting vacated areas. It does make walling things off easier if you don't have to clear the biters anymore.

Oh well, I like to just reduce ore field frequency to lowest and bumping ore size up for it without touching biter settings so my biters still expand.
I guess you might as well strafe all biter nests on the outer walls with your death train once and then fall into a coma because nothing happens if no pollution reaches them.
That whole incorporating artillery into outposts thing seems pointless in that case too.
I wonder what you have to "protect power poles" from in that case though?

Depends on your main factory. If it produces so much pollution that biters keep sending attack waves from outside the artillery range to your base, then those mobile groups will hit your power poles if they happen to path through them. If you want to fully wall up to prevent those from sneaking through then yea, that's the way to go. It's just convenient to not have biter bases left within the area you're walling off.

A beacon/production mod smelter at a mine with a local power grid will overload that grid.

Golly gee, I sure wonder what the solution to that would be =P

Dumping 2 efficiency mods into the smelter and forgoing both fast and more productive smelting. You can still maintain local power for that kind of setup but your outposts become rather big, and produce a lot more pollution. Surprisingly, that works fine. But you still have the problem of having to transfer that smelted produce to your factories. Mines tend to produce in an irregular schedule, so you need a buffer between your mines and factory (with a stacker and rapid transfer station).

Aside from that you still need to get the plates from the mines to wherever they need to go. That usually requires a storage-and-transfer facility, and those in my experience are hard to scale up at the throughputs required for a megabase, even if you do them bot-based.

What.
Centralized smelters are surely several magnitudes harder to scale up?

Actually, due to the abovementioned transfer area, not so much. Peak transfer rates become the issue, there's a limit even to how fast bots can continually move stuff around before they eventually bunch up and all try to charge on the same roboports (even if you got a whole bunch in a tight area). So wether you push 2 trains of ore to the base smelter, or 1 train of plates to a transfer area - you still need to unload them and move the cargo. Centralizing the smelter eliminates the abovementioned transfer area between the mines and bases (I tried those to... ye gods what an UPS hog the first one was - tried to do it without bots. Failed plan was a failure ).
And sure, you can use multiple transfer areas... but you can use multiple smelters just as well.

We're kinda drifting offtopic though. This was about how to handle power generation originally, right?

[Hedning1390]

Golly gee, I sure wonder what the solution to that would be =P

Dumping 2 efficiency mods into the smelter and forgoing both fast and more productive smelting. You can still maintain local power for that kind of setup but your outposts become rather big, and produce a lot more pollution. Surprisingly, that works fine. But you still have the problem of having to transfer that smelted produce to your factories. Mines tend to produce in an irregular schedule, so you need a buffer between your mines and factory (with a stacker and rapid transfer station).

Peak transfer rates become the issue, there's a limit even to how fast bots can continually move stuff around before they eventually bunch up and all try to charge on the same roboports

I think he was implying that the solution is to connect the outpost to the main grid.
You can transfer directly between trains with no need for bots.
A transfer station can be nice, but it's not required.