My first factory

[Aza-Industries]

Hello!
Just felt like sharing the factory I've built,
This is my first factory and I'm still working on it.
So far I've spent 27 hours on it, at the moment I'm just slowly expanding claiming more ground.

By this point I probably could have tripled my production but what I had was providing everything I needed for combat and steady research I didn't feel the need.

I only just finished a wall all the way around with turrets using AP ammo, supplied by a belt that goes all the way around.

Steam turns off during the day and boilers stop taking coal, solar power is awesome! (looking forward to power storage update)

Note: It looks like the robots have too much work in this pic, but they are just doing their occasional "everyone pick up ore to try and fill a 1 spot in this requester chest!" which they then return to storage and continue more important stuff.


Here is a picture of a nice way of supplied factories with basic ingredients I like, it allows me to keep smelting stuff when the factories aren't producing anything.
The logistic robots easily keep up with it.

I use a similar method to mine extra ores and place them into storage for use if I ever run out, with a similar setup placing ores on tracks before smelter.
I have about 50k iron / bronze / coal each stored at the moment.

The picture is way earlier in gameplay, since then the belts have been upgraded to blue and the robots still keep up.

[Dakkanor]

Really cool work man, it looks quite efficient for a first factory, i expect that with the amount of turrets you have you could probably use basic ammo AND reduce your turrets by 50%.

apart from that you should keep an eye out for what others have done here for more ideas and things you could do.

I'll be quite interested to see how you develop from here

[Aza-Industries]

Yeah a few other peoples work already gave me some inspiration.
And the save is 27 hours old so I've had plenty of time to evolve my factory into its current state and learn how things work.

The turrets can barely keep some waves at bay, sometimes they get a few hits on the wall. =/
More and more creeps attack all the time, and its seems like the waves are much much more common now. I can't go a couple minutes without them attacking anymore.

So the amount of turrets is a bit of paranoid insurance, I'll probably replace them with fewer laser turrets once power storage comes along.
It's also probably part of my turtling habbit in RTS games..

Thanks for your feedback! =P

[Dakkanor]

[quote="Aza-Industries"
The turrets can barely keep some waves at bay, sometimes they get a few hits on the wall. =/

...

It's also probably part of my turtling habbit in RTS games..

Thanks for your feedback! =P[/quote]

okay, by the looks of it you can place some laser turrets between your inserters, if you focus this at the most heavily hit places initially you shouldn't have too much excess power draw.

i'm only 10 hours in atm but i find having clusters of laser turrets surrounded by a double wall to be quite useful to redirect creeper movement. i have a 7X7 grid with the center being a power pole, then 8 turrets circling it followed by double wall, this can also be upgraded to 24 turrets fairly easily,

for power generation i use a modified version of ilnors Machine http://i.imgur.com/rdmOjJH.jpg?1 but i have altered it to be more scalable, i'm actually quite proud of making a power plant of around 80 steam engines while still being fairly neat.
its here -> https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... 4614#p4614

i can't blame you for turtling either, sometimes my play-style would be accurately represented by a blastoise.
i always like to have more turrets in use than needed

have fun playing man

[Wardiaper]

Wow, you guys are building amazing forts/factories. Just keeping up with the sheer volume of stuff going on shows what a fantastic game/engine this is. Inspiration everywhere from the devs to the gamers to build bigger, better things.

[Aza-Industries]

Just a little update, I'm still working on it.
Slowly expanding and tweaking things to get more efficiency out of the current setup. I could probably build a new factory with more efficiency, but improving and compacting what I already have is proving really fun.

I've added little side factories on the side of the main production line that store items till an iron chest fills up, so I always have a small stockpile of the more exotic items.
-smart chests.
-Flamethrower ammo.
-Mines.
-Blue belts.
-Red belts.
-All the basic intermediate products.

Figured out a little logistic robot behavioral quirk that improved performance tenfold.
At the moment I'm clearing out a large iron deposit to fill with solar panels/factories.

This truly is the most fun I've had in a game in a long time.

Note: Right click view image to view the whole thing, it doesn't fit in the browser.


RESOURCES YAY!

[Aza-Industries]

Our beeees will blot out the sun!

Also I've got my whole factory running on solar power / accumulators. Man you need a lot of accumulators to keep going through the night!

I don't have a picture of my solar/acumulator farm cause it's kinda boring.

[MF-]

what is your solar panel : accumulator ratio?

[Aza-Industries]

Really hard to tell.. but maybe close to 25% accumulator and 75% Solar panel in terms of actual area they take up.
If your accumulators are charging to 100% at the end of a day it means your power production is enough to provide the factory, fill the accumulators and then waste whatever is left.

If that is the case you could probably add more accumulators. Till the point where they just make the daily charge.

If you're worried you can build a backup system with steam coal that will only turn on if the accumulators are all empty.
Just have 2 separate power lines, 1 being the main grid and 1 the steam power plants. In between the power line overlap put accumulators.

Every-time they turn on my game lags a bit =/

Here is a horribly compressed image to give you a rough idea how many acum/solar I have. Although I can't fit all my solar panels in vertically =/
There are maybe 2-3 more of those substation solar chunks off screen.

[MF-]

If you're worried you can build a backup system with steam coal that will only turn on if the accumulators are all empty.
Just have 2 separate power lines, 1 being the main grid and 1 the steam power plants. In between the power line overlap put accumulators.

I am sure I don't have enough capacitor power to resist creepers and thus need the coal to trigger as they happen.
Oh. I didn't know that. Such information should be posted somewhere so everyone knows that it's possible to spare coal even during the night and survive creeper waves with the same build.

I wonder why it works like that, though.
(Specifically - how does it trigger on empty. Can the capacitor be only charging or discharging at one time?)

How many "bridge" capacitors do I need per coal power plant?

[Aza-Industries]

If you're worried you can build a backup system with steam coal that will only turn on if the accumulators are all empty.
Just have 2 separate power lines, 1 being the main grid and 1 the steam power plants. In between the power line overlap put accumulators.

I am sure I don't have enough capacitor power to resist creepers and thus need the coal to trigger as they happen.
Oh. I didn't know that. Such information should be posted somewhere so everyone knows that it's possible to spare coal even during the night and survive creeper waves with the same build.

I wonder why it works like that, though.
(Specifically - how does it trigger on empty. Can the capacitor be only charging or discharging at one time?)

How many "bridge" capacitors do I need per coal power plant?

I have no idea..
A couple?

Also the bridged capacitors don't seem to be used till the normal ones are out of power, really weird. Sometimes the capacitors aren't sparking but the backup system is still producing power, idk what's going on there. After I cut out my backup system I didn't notice much difference.

And another thing, there is very short window at night when solor isn't producing any amount of power, with hundreds producing 1-4 power each during very late and very early parts of the day can prolong the big drain on capacitors for a while.

So.. you can either trade off space for storage or build excess power plants to get more juice during these dark parts of the day. Or both!

I'm using a giant wall around my base of regular turrets for defense, complemented with a few lasers to thin them out.

[MF-]

I have no idea..
A couple?

Also the bridged capacitors don't seem to be used till the normal ones are out of power, really weird. Sometimes the capacitors aren't sparking but the backup system is still producing power, idk what's going on there. After I cut out my backup system I didn't notice much difference.

I used to have 4, but I reduced them to 2
I think that it ~ halved the coal power usage during daytime creeper attacks.

That leads me to a hypothesis, that the bridge capacitors are insta-recharged by the coal power, relaying instead of discharging.

So if you had one regularly used capacitor and one in the bridge.. and an overkill solar powerplant
Then the two capacitors would share the power peaks during the laser action in 1:1. The regular capacitor by discharging, the bridge capacitor by relaying.

In another words: the bridge:regular ratio is also the same ratio of coal:capacitor power covering the demand peeks.

Did that make any sense?


The design works pretty nicely, thanks once again. 60 caps don't get me even through the midnight.

BTW: Do you connect your substations, or let the caps handle the links?

[Aza-Industries]

connect my substations to what?

I connect them to the grid with wire, They don't attach to poles automatically, because they use the poles wire reach not substation.
For the bridges I used just poles and a handful of caps, build a row of poles spaced apart, put 2 poles directly on either side so they connect to center, remove center pole and wire up the now connectionless close proximity poles to have 2 overlapping grids.

Er, is that what you meant?

EDIT: Also I think I would easily have over a 300 caps by now, planning for the future. =P
As long as you have the resources and space may as well build tons, they don't have any running costs. =D

[MF-]

connect my substations to what?

Yes, with wires. You could have let their areas overlap a bit without making a wired connection.

I connect them to the grid with wire, They don't attach to poles automatically, because they use the poles wire reach not substation.
For the bridges I used just poles and a handful of caps, build a row of poles spaced apart, put 2 poles directly on either side so they connect to center, remove center pole and wire up the now connectionless close proximity poles to have 2 overlapping grids.

oh, good to know.
Could be a bug, though.

I switched over to one bridge cap and it seems to work well. There are some lamps and coal-supply inserters in the fallback network, so I gave it two solar panels
I guess I would see the bridge capacitor to discharge if it wasn't enough?

Er, is that what you meant?

One more rephrase attempt: More bridge caps cause higher fallback_power consumption on creeper attacks or other power consumption spikes that take energy from capacitors, because the bridge caps get charged from the fallback_power instead of the primary power source

EDIT: Also I think I would easily have over a 300 caps by now, planning for the future. =P
As long as you have the resources and space may as well build tons, they don't have any running costs. =D

I have ~180 caps right now, in a nice sphere (https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... ?f=8&t=789)
It seems to be around the amount I need for the night with the sience-pack lines stopped (but mining, smelting and lighting going) and a creeper attack going on the entire night.
It could use a bit more of them, but I couldn't fit them it.
(Yes, the attacks that start when the lights turn on don't end before the the sun completely rises again)

[Aza-Industries]

In my 60 hours save I feel like the creepers never stop attacking. But I haven't had to modify my defense for at least 30 hours of gameplay. I set up a reliable ammo production line and built a wall around a big empty area, and up until the 55 hour mark I was still using up the space in the middle for factories and stuff.

I wish I could build artillery, or cannons, maybe sniper turrets... mmmmm.

EDIT: Is there some way I can find out more specific numbers of entities in game? I reckon there are atleast a few hundred frozen creepers around the place.

EDIT 2: 500 active out of 700 logistic bees flying in loose formation. A picture doesn't do it justice sadly.. especially a highly compressed one.
I feel like I need flight of the bumblebee playing in the background.

EDIT 3: I killed myself to see how many creepers I have killed. 140000+, yep 140 thousand plus. O.o

I'm slowly updating my factory/smelter layout using the new more efficient power poles/substations. I think I've managed to squeeze in an extra 20 smelters using this layout.
Oh and yes there isn't enough ore going on that belt, around where my cursor is in the middle of the screen will be another bunch of feeder chests.

[Aza-Industries]

I just did the math, and.

I have over 800 Capacitors
I have over 1000 Solar Panels

I will be getting a screenshot of them eventually, I'm rearranging everything to be neater.
I've expanded my wall so I have nearly twice as much room to work with. Beforehand everything was starting to get cramped and I was squeezing in caps and solar panels where they would fit.

EDIT:
Here's an image! Caps, Solar panels and Storage on the right!
Still in the process of adding caps/solar but I got distracted rebuilding my steel fabs.

[rk84]

Nooo not the bees!!!
I'm a fan of belts.
Nice to see your factory doing good.

I just did the math, and.

I have over 800 Capacitors
I have over 1000 Solar Panels

I will be getting a screenshot of them eventually, I'm rearranging everything to be neater.
I've expanded my wall so I have nearly twice as much room to work with. Beforehand everything was starting to get cramped and I was squeezing in caps and solar panels where they would fit.

btw have you try game.printentitystatistics() ?

[Aza-Industries]

Nooo not the bees!!!
I'm a fan of belts.
Nice to see your factory doing good.

btw have you try game.printentitystatistics() ?

Nah I don't know any commands.

EDIT: I tried it out.

I got my math wrong =/

I have 1000+ caps and
800+ solar.

[MF-]

Interesting.. I have roughly 200 caps to 200 solars and the solars charge them from zero to full before the daylight reaches it's full strength int the morning.

[kovarex]

I want to see trains in action