More Power! More Resources! More Factory! My First Factory

[DrGravitas]

...is getting out of hand. 100+ hours in, and the sprawl is consumes so much that feeding it fast enough is almost unmanageable. (Sorry for the image heavy thread. The images get cutoff, so click them to see the full image at Imgur.)

11 dry wells aren't enough to supply the 164 Steam engines I need to keep this thing chugging. Especially after I have a dip and have to take offline everything but the powerhouse (the portion dedicated to power production.) When I need to bring the rest back online, it chews 83 MW until the roboports are charged.



Then it settles down to a manageable 65/70 or so. Frankly, the roboports are the real reason I need so much energy.



If the bots were a bit smarter about choosing their path, I wouldn't have quite so much redundancy. Ah well. With 1300+ logistical bots, you kind of have to have redundancy. Also pictured below is "The Hive" where new bots are automatically moved to, for activation. It also serves as a massive storehouse. For some reason, a lot of the logistic bots seem to go back to The Hive when their jobs are done. No idea if it's just my imagination or what.




Although it uses quite a bit more piping than is necessary, like the visual layout of my factory's powerhouse:




Technically, I have 34 dry wells, but the rest are mostly fueling the furnaces and giving me batteries/plastic/lube. I'm in the process of setting up a rail line that scrapes any solid fuel that survives the line, to send off to my powerhouse, but having some trouble with it and it probably won't be enough. The problem is that, even though it's my fourth train, it's the first one using the same line as another. I haven't quite figured out rail signals (although I learned something new about them recently, that will probably fix that) so there have been several collisions.

Ignore the winding conveyor belts in the upper right corner, that spaghetti is a leftover remnant that I just leave running. It produces some useful stuff, but it'd be more trouble rebuilding than its worth.



I have a distinct tendency to get carried away with expanding and neglecting my research until there's something specific I want. I guess I just don't want it to end. Then again, I'm woefully under prepared to defend this place when I get that last rocket system. The biters are set to peaceful. I am working on preparing for the final confrontation, though.



Not pictured is my destroyer capsule assembly line. From raws, to capsules. Technically, I partially decommissioned it after it finished 300 capsules. I wanted more resources elsewhere, but left select parts operational so I had lots of advanced circuits, and also a number of defender capsules. Generally my strategy for the humongous hives that remain, is to run around while the capsules do most of the damage. I throw lots of grenades, too, but those aren't too helpful these days. I have 5 exoskeletons on, so speed isn't an issue (I'm nearly as fast as my trains.) I think the defender capsules will ultimately be more useful than the grenades as destroying the spawners, even if I have to sacrafice the personal protection of the destroyer capsules following me. I could always go back to 9 shields with 3 exoskeletons. But, when I get hit enough, recharging those shields leaves me slow for way too long! My suit has 2 fusion plants, but it needs more power too! So, instead, not getting hit at all might be the best option.

Until then, I spend a lot of time just getting more resources. Even the largest coal fields don't last very long. That's why I'm trying to switch to oil. What I really wish I had was nuclear.

Miscellaneous images.

This game is fantastic!

[SuperSandro2000]

You should update to 0.10.3 and remove some of these way to much roboports. I have arround 2000 robots and not half of your ports and it's al working fine.
I think you should build some solar panels. In my last save game I had arround 3k solars.

[-root]

nice factory there... a lot of time invested in that bad boy. Can you post a pic of your minimap? I'd like to see how far it sprawls

[Xterminator]

Very awesome factory you have built. I also would like to see a picture of your map.
And why not switch to solar? Would save so much oil and trouble. Also somewhere I think you said something like, "the rest of the oil is used to power my furnaces". Maybe I just completely misunderstood but are you still on like steel furnaces? O.o

[DrGravitas]

I've mostly stayed away from solar because
1. I thought it would take up a lot of space (not much of a concern now)
2. I rather like the "Dr. Robotnik-esque Polluted Wasteland" aesthetic.

But, it sounds like I may need to switch for practical reasons. Most of the smelting is done by steel furnaces, purely because I overbuilt capacity so much, early on, that I haven't really needed to expand those capabilities much more. However, all new facilities are electric. I do rather like how much less room the steel ones use, though and I'm not really looking forward to replacing them as it will be hard to get them to fit in the same place.

It's funny, until this thread requested pictures of it, I didn't know about the Map screen function. It's nice to see the whole thing! Looking through other posts in the forum, I can see others even larger than mine, but it still feels quite huge for me to manage.

Full Factory: (Once again, click to link to the full sized image hosted on Imgur)


Pollution of the Factory:


Those blue squares in the upper center of the factory are roboports I'm placing to gear up for the construction of the Norther defenses. Although, I should probably complete the Western and Eastern Fortifications, first.

Western Fortifications Zoomed:


Eastern Fortifications General Plan:


Zoomed Out Full Map:


I haven't decided what I want to do up top, but it will probably be a huge minefield, dotted with regular instances of the following fortress:

(The stone mine is unrelated and I haven't reinforced the pylons, or the turrets, yet.)

I also grabbed a picture of my partially decommissioned Destroyer Capsule line. Some of the Piercing Round have temporarily been repurposed to produce new shotgun ammo. Also pictured is the Landmine production line, which was repurposed from a large Explosive Rocket line after I discovered that I had misread the tech tree and was not getting rocket turrets:


Most of those Oil Tanks are left over from a time where I wasn't using the product, but knew I would eventually, yet needed other products to still be produced in large quantities.

[starxplor]

Rocket turrets? ROCKET TURRETS!!!!!

I now await the rocket turret addition in the update log.

[DrGravitas]

I've thought about my power predicament. Even after redirecting the entire eastern supply, as well as finding and carpet bombing my way to 5 more wells, 25 wells are not enough to completely protect me from a power death spiral. I'm not exactly enthused about redirecting my energies towards vast solar farms, so I've come up with a new solution!

Short-circuit the death spiral's feedback loop.

I've rebuilt my hodgepodge solid fuel district into an orderly, well patterned design. More importantly, I've isolated it (as well as every single oil pumpjack and pipeline small pump) from the power grid that they're fueling. Each foundational component is self-sufficient with enough solar panels and accumulators to run full capacity 24/7. Now, no matter how dire the solid-fuel based steam engine situation gets, it will eventually recover once the big drain is over, instead of entering a "not enough power to power the pumps that give us fuel to produce power" death spiral!

Here's a couple pictures of the new solid fuel district. It consists of 4 oil refineries, 11 light-oil-to-solid chemical plants, a heavy-to-light cracker, and 6 petrol-gas-to-solid chemical plants. Each building has two level 2 efficiency modules.




I've constructed a blueprint of it and designed it to be fairly extensible, with additional modules latching on the line. Well, if I move those train tracks, anyways... Maybe the next one will be above it and rotated 90 degrees. Then it will be easier to extend as it will go northward.

I haven't fully tested it at peak capacity, as I don't have enough oil to flowing in to do so. But, I've calculated out the energy costs and inputs and added a number of additional panels and accumulators to give a buffer and ensure it won't accidentally not have enough power to make it through a night when the whole thing is running at max capacity for a full day/night cycle. The solid fuel district, based on my calculations should require 1092kW but that doesn't really matter since their cost is offset entirely. The total energy from solid fuel produced when each of the 4 refineries have enough crude for one cracking event (which is above my current input rate), should be 800 MJ or 24 GW per second... which strikes me as wrong. I'm terrible at calculations...

[jeroon]

wow, I'm impressed, especially since it's your first base, well done for sticking with it

If you want, can you share the save? Would love to run around your base for a bit

[DrGravitas]

Sure, what the hell. The thing's pretty messy and full of old or abandoned sections, but knock yourself out.

It's just the .zip file from the save folder, right? There's nothing else that's need? It's 35 MB, so I had to use an old MediaFire account from my Dwarf Fortress days. Let me know if you have trouble getting it or anything. It's been a while since I've used their site, so I don't know if their download policy has changed or anything.




EDIT: OK! So, first real test of the new power idea and it kind of flopped. Well, I mean it kept producing solid fuel just as intended, but the boiler's inserters didn't have enough power to grab stuff to insert them...

No matter! I'm devising a solar powered setup that will isolate the inserters, too! Kind of tricky, because their poles can't connect with the steam engines right next to them. But, ye olde wood pole's range is just short enough to miss it! Plus, my original design for the powerhouse rows had poles to connect the engines to the network, running behind the engines instead of in front, so it's already setup very well for this kind of isolation! I have to do just a couple pieces of advanced wiring one one or two poles, to keep them isolated, but it seems to work! Having enough room for all of the solar panels for all the inserts is going to be challenging, but doable.

I'll have a auto-recovering network yet!

[DrGravitas]

Solar Farms...


(Click for the full pollution map. It's ridiculous!)


Least. Green. Solar. Farm. Ever.

I've thought of another way to work on my power problem! Since the pumpjacks don't consume any of the power they produce, I can jack them up with all the speed and efficiency modules I can throw panels at! I've worked on two of the largest clusters of pumpjacks, a 6 and a 4. The 6 has room for more speed beacons, but since each beacon would be able to affect exactly one pump, it'll be way more expensive to upgrade it further than to hit smaller clusters first. The 4 pumpjack cluster, pictured above, has an ideal arrangement with only enough space between them for pipes and poles, allowing me to maximize the beacon placement. The full image has complete stats on the typical pump there, but it's 150% speed increase for starters. Almost 100 pollution from each pumpjack, too. On the pollution map, it is the Northeast blightspot.

Still not nearly enough power, but I'm running a surplus in the daylight hours (what? I like lights! They're pretty...) Although I had to cut off my northern and western defenses. I need more oil. I see 6-8 more wells further North, surrounded by 4 large hives of spawners...

I'm cooking up a means to improve my carpet bombing technique. I will build a sort of "Doom Train" that will haul initial setup supplies to wherever I plan to invade next. Coupled with a smaller resupply "fate locomotive" (OK, ok, the name needs work...) I'll devise a detached, mobilized airforce for bombing campaigns wherever I lay the tracks too, like a sort of land aircraft carrier. No need to extend the base's robot network out to wherever I plan to invade! While I conduct the forces, the rest of the factory can prepare the next load on the Doom Train. If I get it right, I can move from invasion to invasion at an industrialized pace!

The tricky part will be powering the whole thing. But, I'm also adding further resources to support it:

[Neotix]

I like big factories and i really like yours.
I'm also building mega factory but divided on departments. Each section have it's own purpose and all is connected by trains. One section is to storage raw materials, next one have furnaces, next refinery, next produce all tiers of electronics circuits, etc. Right now all it's under construction but already have energy demand around 170MW.

[DrGravitas]

I'm fully operational again!

(click for fullsize.)

With a little supplemental solar, my solid fuel lines are backed up to their boxes! Apparently, the image I captured of my pumpjack wasn't up to speed yet. When I looked at it today, it read like this:

[DrGravitas]

Really rollin' now!


Err, maybe this one will be more helpful... (Both link to the full size)


Added a couple stone mines because I finally found some larger deposits in the farthest reaches of my factory. For this, I unified all of my rail lines so now trains can travel to any stop in the factory. Except the new Doom Train lines. Yep! The Doom Train is nearly complete! I never notice how little room the train containers had until now. The Doom Train needs 15 Train cars and I had to expand the resupply train because I ended up only having enough room for 3 cars of landmines. Not nearly enough! I've also completed a massive new logistic/construction robot factory line. Needs a lot more batteries and that means I need a lot more oil. Added 4 more wells, but I need more, if I want this to move at an appreciable rate!

[DrGravitas]

It's all mine! MWAHAHAHAHA! 9 or so Oil deposits and a few more within easy reach! Not a bad haul in Orbs, either!

The first two biter nests didn't put up much of a fight.


The third hive, the largest of the three, actually did some damage! It all started when they surprised me by attacking before I have finished setting up. For some reason, they were already spawning big biters when I was setting up.



The nest ended up being so large, that I needed to remove some landmines, after they had destroyed some of the nest, and build more firebase roboports over them to reach the rest of the hive. The bombing campaign didn't take long after the fighting started, and I know that if I had gone in with shields, destroyers and shotguns alone, it would have taken way longer. The rate they spawn at and the sheer number of spawners, makes it hard for me to make progress on these size hives, but with the carpet bombing technique, it was a breeze!

I've collected screenshots in an album to save thread space.



My power didn't crash after this one, either:



Finally, a look at the factory and pollution currently.


Next up? I see two even larger nests just North, with 4 or 5 more oil plots...