Making a Mess of Red and Green Science

[Elvenkind]

This is 6 hours play compressed into 5 min. Just to point on what I'm doing, so it can help illustrate how I'm NOT doing a good job with the inserters and assembly machines and had to rely too much on boxes with raw materials to make green cards. How do I do this right? The inserters seem to be the problem. Or to be precice: Me not doing what I should do with inserters and I really don't understand why some of them just don't work

https://youtu.be/SyKJiCZbnes

Then suddenly coal get into the flow. The "long" Inserters don't make sense, aren't they suppoused to grab things from the other side of the belt,unlike the others? It's normally this point I start to really struggle to get done what I want to get done.

I think next time (after writing this) I will make red science at one place and green at another one, even if I share a lot of materials,the cogs seem to be in really high demand anyway, I just just as well might do 2 of more assembly machines. It's not peaceful mode, I didn't get visited by any "natives", probably the forest doing a better job against them then thousands of turrets. I did get the tech though, armor and semi-automatic machinegun. At least doing a new map, I'll be likely to get attacked, and then get the achivement of natives that think my burning coal smell bad.


To make it short: Do anyone know of a REALLY GOOD/PERFECT way of getting the science done WITH NO ERROR? I've read about it, seen videos of others doing it, so seems like I need to get fed with a tiny spoon, and reading really simple explanations.

With Kind Regards Elvenkind, thank you all for such a helpful community,even wih such basic stuff like this. I was afraid of being chased out of here with a mob with pichforks and getting tarred and feathered for being such a hopeless newb. But haven't we all been that?

[mrvn]

Inserters always take from both sides of the belt. Long inserter take from a belt 2m way.

And inserter stop putting stuff into assemblers when it has 2 products in the output slot. You have to remove them before the inserters will put in more sutff to produce more.

[Elvenkind]

Hmmm, thanks mrvn, that certainly helped clearing up inserter mechanics for me, and explaining all the non-moving inserters, I actually built more of them at the same spot, because I didn't understand this, and a mix of long and normal ones.

So the long inserters ONLY do what the others do, from a larger distance? Do they put in more stuff if I have other, fast inserters pulling out stuff constantly? Because I did have to go around and manually fill them to the brim and all this took so much time I didn't have time to do anything else for hours. I think that was the reason for using so many chests too, to keep everything going at max speed.

I think I'll manage to get FIRST red science working by putting into stuff in the assembly machines and then, same time pulling out to a belt heading toward science. And how about there, will the science machines only pick up a few flasks at the time too? Does it all work like that with inserters?

How about turrets, do they still only store like 10 magazines (I've only seen a full series of tutorials from 2016) and with a normal - not a fast - inserter, will it manage to keep a non-stop spray of bullets just by picking up a new magazine while using the one it shoots out? Or I guess it does, or else everyone would be complaining about turrets being overwhelmed. Still a bit annoying though, because it leave so much stuff just laying on assembly lines and even if the assembly machines might not need a full inventory from the start, it could lead to stuff not moving at all and that explain my use of chests everywhere, since it logically seem to me that it is better to have a large storage of things that might not be needed at the moment, but could be of vital importance later.

So my conclusion is that large assembly line loops going in a pattern where it all going where it might be needed, is the best method of making sure that nothing is lacking anywhere.

This certainly made me want to play. Thanks again for the answer mrvn! It really helped me understand even things like the main bus and I look forward to the sight of them moving around in neat patterns, filled to the brim with all sorts of raw materials.

[Koub]

If I may add, have you ever tried to activate "Show inserter arrows in alt-mode" (Options > Interface > Alt Mode) ?
It might be of some help to see where inserters take items from and where they can drop them.

[hale42]

the red inserters allow you to place 2 belts on either side of an assembler for a total of 8 different items (2 sides of the belt x 4 belts) or you could place 2 belts on one side and have the output place onto a belt.

an inserter can take from assemblers(output slot only)/chests/or even items on the ground as well as from belts.

some rules the game follows,
inserters will only take from the output slot and insert into the input slot of an assembler.
inserters will "drop" items on the far side of a belt or on the right side of the belt
inserters will only place 2x production costs(modified by the speed of production) into the input slot (that's why you only get 10 magazines in a turret).
inserters feeding an assembler will only grab items that the assembler needs for production

the way i think of factorio is its a puzzle game where you make your own problems on accident.

with that line of thought, when i solve puzzles i do it backwards (work back from the solution)
so if i wanted to "make red and green science" the end of that is a lab with a belt to it with a belt of one side red and one side green science feeding it

so the next step is an assembler making red science with a belt of one side copper and one side gear feeding it and an assembler making green science with one side belt of "belt" and one side belt of inserters feeding it

the next step is belt and inserter both require gear and iron so you can have one belt with one side iron and one side gear feeding them with another assembler feeding the inserters green chips (and an assembler feeding copper wire to the green chips assembler)

just an example of how i go about solving some of factorio's puzzles

[Ranger_Aurelien]

Boxes have a use as buffers.

I suggest looking into videos of "main belt". What that lets you do is clear an area to bring in resources into your base, then you allocate room for four (double-sided) belts of science BACK down the belt to your science labs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtgtCZXj9CM (main belt)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6KnAkcu3rU (main belt red science)


Long-arm inserters are basically 50% faster inserters with 2x reach (same boosts from research). See wiki for pictures, speed tests:

https://wiki.factorio.com/Inserters

[mrvn]

Hmmm, thanks mrvn, that certainly helped clearing up inserter mechanics for me, and explaining all the non-moving inserters, I actually built more of them at the same spot, because I didn't understand this, and a mix of long and normal ones.

So the long inserters ONLY do what the others do, from a larger distance? Do they put in more stuff if I have other, fast inserters pulling out stuff constantly? Because I did have to go around and manually fill them to the brim and all this took so much time I didn't have time to do anything else for hours. I think that was the reason for using so many chests too, to keep everything going at max speed.

I think I'll manage to get FIRST red science working by putting into stuff in the assembly machines and then, same time pulling out to a belt heading toward science. And how about there, will the science machines only pick up a few flasks at the time too? Does it all work like that with inserters?

How about turrets, do they still only store like 10 magazines (I've only seen a full series of tutorials from 2016) and with a normal - not a fast - inserter, will it manage to keep a non-stop spray of bullets just by picking up a new magazine while using the one it shoots out? Or I guess it does, or else everyone would be complaining about turrets being overwhelmed. Still a bit annoying though, because it leave so much stuff just laying on assembly lines and even if the assembly machines might not need a full inventory from the start, it could lead to stuff not moving at all and that explain my use of chests everywhere, since it logically seem to me that it is better to have a large storage of things that might not be needed at the moment, but could be of vital importance later.

So my conclusion is that large assembly line loops going in a pattern where it all going where it might be needed, is the best method of making sure that nothing is lacking anywhere.

This certainly made me want to play. Thanks again for the answer mrvn! It really helped me understand even things like the main bus and I look forward to the sight of them moving around in neat patterns, filled to the brim with all sorts of raw materials.

And don't forget: You need an inserter putting stuff in AND an inserter taking stuff out.

I did see you running around rotating inserters from inserting to take out mode and back. That won't work. You would have to rotate all inserters every few seconds. Build dedicated inserters.

Separating production lines is also advised. That's what splitters are for. Split the iron plate belt in 2 then build red science from one and green science from the other. Also look at the underground belts.

Leave lots of space between production lines. And then double the space you think is enough. You will thank me later.