[0.17] Gardrek's Mall v4.2.3

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gardrek
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[0.17] Gardrek's Mall v4.2.3

Post by gardrek »

Inspired by KatherineOfSky's mall, I decided to make my own. As you can probably guess by the version number, it took quite a lot of redesigning before I was happy enough to share here.[1] A mall like this builds basically everything a player needs that can be supplied by one machine. The idea is that the mall builds up a small buffer of commonly-used items while you're out building and then you can come back and grab supplies (or later have them delivered). As seen in both of her "Entry Level to Mega Base" series, a mall like this can support the building of fairly large bases.

Image
The mall in action.

Let's talk about the design of the mall. First, what does it make? This mall makes almost everything you need to build the factory. It might be easier to list what it doesn't make. It doesn't make burner inserters. It doesn't make steam engines or boilers. It doesn't make stone furnaces. These are all things that, in my style of play, are usually crafted on-demand at the very start of the game and then never used later. Also falling into this category are wooden power poles a.k.a. small electric poles. They have the added detriment that wood-gathering can't exactly be automated. It doesn't make cars, tanks, armor, personal weapons, belt immunity equipment, discharge defense, or remotes. These are made in small enough quantities that they can just be crafted by hand. It doesn't make ammo, solar panels[2], accumulators, modules, or robots. These usually need to be made in larger quantities than the mall can support.

Next, how the mall is arranged. Generally I try to keep things needed the most and the earliest near the start of the mall. Belts, inserters, assemblers, and power poles are all at the start. After that is rails, fluid handling, then a few miscellaneous items, combinators, robot network, and finally it ends with armor equipment, nuclear, and lastly military. The military items are at the end because some people play without biters. The mall is arranged into two halves each with three rows of machines, with a bus of belts between and on the outside. This way none of the machines are too far from a split-off, so typically you don't have the last machine on the row not getting enough material. You may notice that everything is in a regular grid. The machines, the power poles, even the inserters all follow a pattern, although occasionally breaking the pattern was necessary to fit things in. I like things to be in a pattern; it makes it easier to spot mistakes and in theory it makes it easier to build.

In the provided blueprint book there are three variations of the mall. The main mall (with the assembly machine 1 icon) uses steel/medium electric poles. There is a variant with wooden poles for those who wish to start with the mall earlier[3], and a variant with buffer chests for recycling belts, inserters, assembling machines, etc. The blueprint is designed to be amenable to using the upgrade planner; simple turn iron chests into passive providers when you get bots and everything becomes available to the network. You can also turn wooden chests into iron chests for no-trees playthroughs. Upgrading the machines is of course also possible, and you might also want to upgrade the belts as well. There are many possibilities.

Finally, I'd like to thank everyone on the KatherineOfSky and Caledorn Discord server for helping me out and making this mall the best it can be. I look forward to more Factorio discussions in the future.

This is my first post so please let me know if I messed anything up or broke any etiquette, or just made any typos.

Without further ado, the blueprint book:



[1] The numbers correspond to different kinds of changes to the mall. The first number means a change that requires adjusting the input belts. The second means moving machines around, and the third is for minor changes like moving spur belts, inserters, or chests. If anyone is interested in the history I could make a short post about that.

[2] well, not very many

[3] Look forward to a post from me about the early game and my starter base.
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Mernom
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Re: [0.17] Gardrek's Mall v4.2.3

Post by Mernom »

I find that using steel chests in some places and iron chests in others makes it easier to use upgrade planner. Just set one for one type, other for the second.
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gardrek
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Re: [0.17] Gardrek's Mall v4.2.3

Post by gardrek »

Excellent point. I had come up with that idea myself (and actually I use wooden chests for the same purpose, although they are more for not upgrading). I decided against it because the only other chest type I wanted to use (besides the Irons being upgraded to Passive Providers) was Buffer Chests, and the upgrade to them required setting the filters, which upgrade planner can't do. So, I decided to make it a separate blueprint, which also allowed me to unset the "red-X" limit on the chests, and replace it with a "logistic network" limit on the inserters.
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