Aesthetic Factory

[Nirahiel]

Hi all !
I'm a great fan of things that looks nice.
I will never make a factory with a messy setup and things "just working".
So, to give you an idea of what I'm talking about, here are two screenshots.
(Please note : the pictures are cropped, right click and open in a new tab to see them to full size)

The smelting part.

Smelting.png (2.1 MiB) Viewed 6915 times

On this screenshot, you can see coal coming from the bottom, directly from the storage, and raw resources come from the left. This design allow me to add more furnaces if the smelting is not fast enough, and when I switch to electric furnaces, I just have to remove the coal line and move some inserters, and I'm done.
Coal continue to the top to feed the boilers.

The storage.

storage.png (1.42 MiB) Viewed 6915 times

Here you can see my storage system, I really like this setup, each type of items (except coal) has two input lines, the one from the top has priority, and if the two lines are full, the top one will get stored before the left one has a chance to be stored. Basically if I'm mining locally, the items will go to the furnaces and then be stored, but if a train arrives, the resources from the train will come from the top line, so I need to empty this line as fast as possible so the train can leave with an empty cargo
Right after the priority setup is a basic 1/8 splitter, 7/8 of the items will just do a U turn and leave the storage, while 1/8 will be stored.
If the output happens to be blocked for any reason, then all the input will be stored. The reason for this is to not use power to store everything and put everything back on the main line if the items are being used.

Now the main problem is, I need a really aesthetic way to move all the items from my storage to the production lines, and I need an aesthetic way to setup my production lines.
I don't know what to do !
Should I go with something like, one line making cables, non stop, another one making circuits, non stop too, etc for all the different resources, and then split all the lines when resources are needed somewhere, or just bring only the 3 main resources (copper, iron, steel) and split them at each "building" entrance, making each building a specialized area making only one kind of things (e.g. one area will only make lab potions, one area will make solar panels and accus, one area will make laser turrets, etc etc..

I need your help guys

(And yeah, you can use my designs )

[ficolas]

Love this

Today I was thinking about how ugly things can get on factorio :0

[Nirahiel]

Yeah, that's why I want a nice solution for my assembler fields

[ssilk]

Well. I'm really no expert, but I know some things.

First to the items you bring back after the u-turn: side insert has in this case the disadvantage ( from my experiments with it), that sometimes items flow from the sides into the stream, even, when the flow is fully compressed. When that happens it always blocks the flow a little bit.

You may know, that the left side of the splitter is preferred. So I suggest that you take an underground belt after the u-turn and put that into the left input of a splitter and the joined stuff from storage into the right side. The output of the splitter (in this case joiner) is only from the right input, if the left doesn't deliver.

Now to your question: in my opinion there is not so much sense in making lines of only one item, especially those, which will produce more output than input. Copper wire for example. Very bad idea!

There are other reasons, why that is the better strategy: with the research of the bigger hand inserters really begin to rock. Two updates and the inserters grep 3 instead one item from assembly to assembly. So the strategy to built only one item per line is not so good, because taking directly from belts is always slower.

My current strategy is in most cases to make "assembly lines". Green potion for example! To produce green potion you need belts, and electric circuits. The belt needs just many wheels and iron plates and the wheels also iron plates. The circuits needs copper wire and iron plates and the copper wire copper plates. So you have two small assembly lines (circuits and belts). The belt line needs only iron plates. And so on I won't explain it in detail.

The only thing, which makes sense to produce in masses in own sub factories are electric circuits and steel plates. And that only, if you have the transport capacity.

After developing logistic robots, everything changes. I mean the logistic bots are a big change in strategy, from the gameplay view, I would say, they are a milestone. You don't need so much belts anymore, no complicated routing, just built assembly, put request chest in front of it and provider chest as output and a smart inserter, which fill the chest to a limit;

and the rest is done by the robots.

[Nirahiel]

First to the items you bring back after the u-turn: side insert has in this case the disadvantage ( from my experiments with it), that sometimes items flow from the sides into the stream, even, when the flow is fully compressed. When that happens it always blocks the flow a little bit.

You may know, that the left side of the splitter is preferred. So I suggest that you take an underground belt after the u-turn and put that into the left input of a splitter and the joined stuff from storage into the right side. The output of the splitter (in this case joiner) is only from the right input, if the left doesn't deliver.

I didn't understand anything from this !
First, who said left side is preferred ?
I made a tons of tests to try and confirm this, and I couldn't.

Also in my case it doesnt matter, the first splitter is not a joiner, it's a splitter.
Look closely to see how it works.

[ssilk]

Not explained completly, but you may have a look at this
https://forums.factorio.com/wiki/inde ... or_experts

Please take a look at the last two pics. In my tests all items from the storage have only lower priority, when I connected them to the right input side of the splitter. That rule was valid for all four directions.

So what I meant was: you may create one belt for the output of the storage and one for the "main-belt" and then rejoin them with a splitter, where the main is left- and the storage right input.

This page is under construction and will changed heavily. I will test, if the showed behavior is already working.

[Nirahiel]

I know this guide, and I don't trust it.
My tests shows that some things are wrong here

[ssilk]

Maybe. The last time I tested it with 0.6...

Could you make notes in the text, where you found those? I will try to test/fix that first.

As said this page is not ready and I want to make the tests replicable. Something like a map, where I can load and see, how it works. But time is the problem...

[Nirahiel]

Anyway, no one has an idea about how I could setup my production lines, so they are pretty and stuff ?

[Nirahiel]

Ooooh I just found this topic again, it's nice to see my old creations.
I think i'll be updating this one instead of using my "Scalable creations" topic.
(Mods, you can close the other one, here : https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... 052#p41052 )