[Bob's] 1.6 million SPM/55 UPS, train-only gigabase.

[ptx0]

final stats

• Playtime: 1453h39m
• Research: Stack inserter capacity bonus 50 (stack size 140) - not really possible to complete. costs 4.2P.
• Latest science pack (re)build: ~1.7 million space science pack per minute, totally dependent on stack size
• 780k SPM at inserter level 22
• Overall science rate: 1.6 million SPM over 50 hours
• Science pack benchmarks: (from my Research Sink mod)
  • Automation 1.6m SPM
  • Transport 1.6m SPM
  • Chemical 1.6m SPM
  • Logistics 1.6m SPM
  • Utility 1.6m SPM
  • Production (not outposted, not used much) 80k SPM
  • Space 3.2 million SPM because it's unstacked, the other sciences are limited by beltboxes
• Game performance: 14.1-18ms with mimalloc (47-60+ UPS)

important mods

• aesthetic: dectorio, artisanal reskins, mechanicus (character skin), realistic heat glow, automatic train/station painting, mapshot, rocket-silo-stats, silent-belts, textplates, enhanced map colours, industrial display plates
• overhaul: bobores, bobplates, bobrevamp, bobtech, bobelectronics, bobmodules, bobgreenhouse, space extension, schall radioactive waste,
• moar tiers: bobassembly, bobclasses, boblogistics, bobmining, bobpower, bobwarfare, bobenemies, alien loot rebalanced (my version), Ultimate Belts,
• moar productivity: stacked mining, stacking beltboxes, compressed fluids, pressurized barrels,
• engine bug avoidance: miniloader (though i'm mostly using infinite stack research instead), schall machine scaling, schall recipe scaling, deadlock stacked recipes, schall pipe scaling, zzzzStopChasingBeltItems,
• QoL: copy paste modules, death markers, Fill4Me, Infinite Tech, QoL research, LootChestUPS, RSO, bobequipment, bp flip&turn, WellPlanner, Vehicle Grid, Volume Control,
• utility: rate calculator mod (Raiguard's), spidertron-extended, spidertron logistics,
• cheats: overpowered train fuel & braking power, biter-proof, RPG System, Schall minor tweaks, Schall_LabModules (for balance with Bob's), SunResources (remove excess/relocate ore patches), TagToTeleport, bobinserters, WideChests,
• unimportant, but here: wildfire season, railloader, BRL has smaller inventory size (better for UPS), cargo-ships,

background

This is not my first attempt. last time I tried to do 1 million science per minute, I did naive approach at first and put everything on trains and belts, on demand delivery. this was terrible. It was miserable performance and I started rebuilding it with direct insertion everywhere, mining into furnaces, oil pumpjacks straight into refineries.

but still, ran into game engine limitation with performance... in order to move that many science packs per minute, the game starts to suffer. I added Schall Machine Scaling in an attempt to overcome, but it's not the number of assemblers/furnaces at that point, but the number of inserters and, locating resource patches that are nearby the things you want. I eventually used the editor just to see if it's possible, placing resource patches and inserters galore. it was about 38 UPS just with 1 million science per minute of Utility science.

so I've made it my mission:

• to keep 60 UPS and attain 1 million UPS for all sciences.
• train-to-train as much as possible - if I need to use bots at some point, I will, but for now I'm exploiting the inventory-to-inventory transfer rate without them just fine.
• no buffer chests at the train builds. this means I have to equally drain each wagon - they can drain at different rates but must pull overall the same number of inputs and push the same number of outputs per cycle.
• Productivity bug will be exploited wherever I can. this isn't many places, because it knocks the train-to-train build out of balance, since I have no buffer chests.
• no God modules. I like having nuclear power, but I'm using Schall +6 Reactor, equivalent to 4096 vanilla reactors. It outputs something like 168GW on its own.
• solar is backup only.
• each science pack has its own supply chain and outpost.
• each outpost will be ~10km+ away. further is better.

some pictures

most of the base. you can't see further down south where the 2nd science pack is produced.


that'd be this.


central core of the base. it's where it all started. i built up until launching rockets and then pushed to 5600 SPM before expanding to first science outpost. I came back and doubled to 10k SPM. eventually after bringing in outposted science, I'm at something like 23,000 SPM.


Schall's +6 lab uses something like 36GW of power and it's hard to feed full rates:


a typical mine configuration dumping directly into trains.


my old iron smelting uses 2-way trains and has no queueing, it was adequate for a long time before I needed add'l throughput.


new style iron smelting, you can see i don't overlap the stackers, so it results in .... interesting looking build:


"sometimes the best choice of action is to ignore the stupid things you've done and press on until you've forgotten" -- wintstint churchilled


this whole outpost is all dedicated to blue science:


simple build (2-in, 1-out) of it, some resin boards for circuits:

map view:


complicated build, 3-in, 1-out:



another restriction, i don't want unnecessary inventory transfers.. so i don't have buffer chests outside of the train like you do.

to workaround the complicated build requirements for circuits, i have this bedlam occurring; a train goes and gets resin boards, and then ideally unloads all of them while picking up circuits, then goes and hopefully unloads all of those to pick up electronic circuits, but sometimes you see it gets stuck with things. it doesn't grind to a halt anymore, since i discovered that the productivity bug was causing imbalances. now I use scaled recipe to avoid the bug entirely unless it's a build where I've got essentially infinite inputs and void excess byproduct - i.e. water electrolysis.

[ptx0]

I've been expanding the base in my off-work hours!
mapshot link: https://tripleback.net/public/mapshot/bobs

• Playtime: 776h51m
• Current Research: Stack inserter capacity bonus 35 (stack size 95)
• Latest science pack (re)build: ~4.3 million logistic science pack per minute
• Overall science rate: 168k SPM over 10 minutes, 110k SPM over 1 hour (after several hours)
• Science pack benchmarks: (from my Research Sink mod)
  • Automation ~666k SPM
  • Transport ~606k SPM
  • Chemical ~1.1M SPM
  • Logistics ~760k SPM
  • Utility (not outposted) 360k SPM
  • Production (not outposted, not used much yet) 80k SPM
  • Space (not outposted) 200k SPM
• Game performance (with vehicle equipment grid mod): 22ms+ vanilla (40 UPS), 13.1ms with mimalloc (60+ UPS)
• Game performance (without vehicle equipment grid mod): 11ms+ vanilla (60+ UPS), 8.1ms with mimalloc (60+ UPS)

Added Mods:

• Custom flare stack speed modifier to speed up incinerators
• Fluid must flow (just in case - but so far, haven't needed it)
• Custom inserter mod for extra reach beyond Bob's inserters, so that I can butt 3 trains side by side for direct loading

Removed Mods:

• bob's vehicle equipment (hurts performance too much with tons of vehicles)
• cargo-ships, industrial display plates (wasn't using it)
• alien loot rebalanced (wasn't using it)
• vehicle grid (performance)
• spidertron logistics (wasn't using it)
• RPG system, SunResources (using /editor now)

Core base now has expanded rocket launches just to get an edge on that stack inserter research.



Heading south to the new science outpost is quite a journey..


It's called Cathedral, and it's based on 8L-99C locomotives.


We've got some dedicated direct-insertion smelters here that save space over in the higher-density productions in Cathedral's satellite cells.


Oh, right! I've switched to using Schall's machines to avoid beacons because of the irritating train imbalance they were causing in my chemical sci outpost.


To recap, here's a circuit build from my chemical science outpost. It was becoming imbalanced as beacons would affect different machines at different rates, which means some machines would consume fewer inputs and produce greater outputs. This would make the trains sit there forever. My solution was to rework a few of the stops to have a buffer box to check and send green "go" signal to train when one is low. That, of course, required me to rework a few other parts of the production chain to ensure they were capable of handling a train returning with partial load.


So, continuing back to Cathedral - if we head to the far west end of the northern line, we've got this cell:


It's producing iron gears, basic/yellow/red/blue belts for the southern cell that produces Bob's logistics science:


I think one of my favourites in here is the circuits build where I decided to "go the distance" with D.I. and see whether I can avoid bringing in ANY materials at all via rail. Everything is added via editor with tiny resource patches and mining drills whose range do not overlap.


The overhead map view reminds me of that laptop scene from Hackers:


One challenge of Bob's is how many ingredients are coming into these buildings. It's easy as heck when it's 1 in, 1 out - but 5 in, 1 out? Some compromises must be made.. I had to add a custom inserter (the red ones) that reaches that extra distance for the train.


I've tweaked its default pickup_target so that it's about as far from the cargo wagon as it can be without breaking it.


In order to jam that many trains together, it helps to have a length of locomotives off the front of the train so it can curve a bit, otherwise the stations get in the way - the train at the very top of the curve is waiting for its turn to fill up.


Struggling with space science output, this is my next focus:

[ptx0]

Just a small update this time. I'm now running the game on a dedicated server so the research keeps churning 24h.

• Playtime: 1077h14m
• Satellites launched: 2,411,248
• Current Research: Stack inserter capacity bonus 42 (stack size 120)
• Latest science pack (re)build: ~4.3 million logistic science pack per minute
• Overall science rate: 244k SPM over 10 minutes, 247k SPM over 1 hour (after several hours)
• Science pack benchmarks: (from my Research Sink mod)
  • Haven't re-executed them
• Game performance (without vehicle equipment grid mod): 11.5ms-13ms with mimalloc (catch-up to server at 97 UPS)

Added Mods:

• Circuit Controlled Silo - for access to stacked satellites. WHY?!
• Longer Ultimate Undies - extend ultimate belts underground to match Bob's 155 length on my map.

Removed Mods:

• none

Downtown "starter base" (only place bots are in use)


I'm struggling with stability for 470k SPM:



I've created a new outpost 95km away from the central core, Midlothian, where I've built Multi-layer circuit boards, Rocket Engines, Rocket Fuel, LDS, and next will be heat shielding, off-site, to bring in to the downtown core for now. You can see the long trains at the lower right corner of the "starter base".


My Ryzen 3700x struggles in Map View when connected to the Intel E3-1270 v6 box because it is running slightly lower latency access to slower ECC modules than the ones my Ryzen is using. Go figure. In single player it'll dip to 48 or 54 UPS in map view. Drops to 4-9 FPS to keep 60 UPS in map view when in multiplayer.


However, despite that, I've built the Sputnik outpost west of the downtown core and it's terribly disorganized Work In Progress, but it'll be where the rockets eventually launch from.


I had to build Tungsten, in order to progress to the next tiers at gigabase scale.


It's only after I put this together that I realised I needed tungsten powder more than I need tungsten plates

[ptx0]

i haz rockets!

zoomed out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCfV1f5V7-o

zoomed in:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXpexZ-J-0w

that sound! oh man

[ptx0]

labs have 6 sciences delivered, currently this campus has logistics in mind for stack inserter research focus.




1100 Rocket silo are required for the throughput - if I didn't use belts here, it would have required an enormous number of trains if I wanted to direct-insert on a 100-long wagon. Oddly enough, my trains just aren't long enough for that to be efficient.


I created this module here with silos staggered so that they can directly feed from the wagon without any wonky belt routing.


There's a massive row of undies at the bottom, the outlined area is a single modules' belts. You can see what I mean above when I say I staggered them so their belts can sit next to each other.

This is one of the few places I have buffer chests or circuits on the map. All of the silos have a buffer chest and their contents are wired up to the local grid; the substations will read off almost a million science packs when they've all launched. All rockets launch simultaneously, which sounds pretty crazy. The launches can be sustained indefinitely at ~1.6 million SPM.

I'm using Ultimate Loaders to pull packs out of the lab without having too many inserters around (miniloader). The belt is already a hard limit on the throughput, the inserter stack research doesn't apply for this build. That's the nature of rocket silo. It's a hard limit on throughput.








The satellite build required belts too; they don't stack so stack inserter bonus is meaningless. Loaders make more sense. 6 ingredients mean the direct-insertion won't reach anyway.

[ptx0]

I wondered what would happen if I build an extension for Cathedral with some replacement builds for my inferior chemistry/automation/transport science packs.

This is a column where trains travel south on the left side, then turn east and park in their business lane before leaving out the right side, travelling north.


I had some problems with throughput since there were no stackers and some ingredients were coming from rather far away in Midlothian outpost (83km) so I went ahead and made some duplicate builds in a new part of Cathedral I'm calling the Annex (:

Apparently Sputnik was closer by about 60km so pulling LDS in from there made sense, too.

[ptx0]

• Playtime: 1453h39m
• Current Research: Stack inserter capacity bonus 50 (stack size 140)
• Latest science pack (re)build: ~1.7 million space science pack per minute
• Overall science rate: 1.6 million SPM over 10 minutes, 1.1 million SPM over 10 hour (after several hours)
• Science pack benchmarks: (from my Research Sink mod)
  • Automation 1.6m SPM
  • Transport 1.6m SPM
  • Chemical 1.6m SPM
  • Logistics 1.6m SPM
  • Utility 1.6m SPM
  • Production (not outposted, not used much yet) 80k SPM
  • Space 3.2 million SPM because it's unstacked, the other sciences are limited by beltboxes
• Game performance: 14.1-16ms with mimalloc (50-60+ UPS)

Added Mods:

• power grid comb to fix that silo mess - it didn't help
• bobores and other 1.1.3 bob's updates except metals and library which are incompatible with stacking
• Train Announcer mod

Removed Mods:

• SpaceX - pointless

Goal achieved!

1.1 million SPM over 10 hours now! The rocket silos have been a bit of a challenge.


I had a bottleneck here when the silos were all on the north half of the rail.

In my previous iteration of the design, the whole field of silos had their inserters and inventories all wired together. This meant they all launch simultaneously, and it sounded really neat, but it meant they would sometimes bind up where one column for some reason ended up producing slightly more than another did. I never figured out why that is.

I added an inventory at the train and wired that to the field, ensuring that the belts would completely empty before the silos launched. This wasted 37 seconds of possible time. I had to make the belts faster (unreasonable) or fix the design by adding silos on the south side of the rail.


I first relocated the plastic plant to the 2nd cell out here so there was room south of the trains.


A parallel idea was to refactor it so that each column sharing a train wagon group would all have their inventories wired together. I tried this before, but it was too messy and fragile. I mean, look at that mess.


You can see that each wagon has its own vertical column of Power Pole 4 with green wire connected all the way up to the top of the column of silos. This means that they fire off in an ugly pattern and sometimes slowly empty the trains at different rates. Silos are hard.


By the way, I had to manually rebuild the silo design for the south half because of how the belts had to mirror...



There was literally zero underground real estate left to do it any other way! They would all overlap otherwise, and unfortunately blueprint flipping doesn't fix that one for me.


I modified my lab build to accommodate stacked or unstacked science as a way to integrate my starter base output with the stacked outposts, but I'll probably set it up just for one specific flow since my outposts are complete now.

If I do production science, I'll have to set up a 2nd set of labs with all trains the same except purple in place of pink.

What next?

\o/

I could go ahead and put Production Science online, or Military Science, and begin adding defenses to the map and enable enemies. We'll see next month, I guess.