The Compound (Tiny, Efficient, Modular)

[TylerB]

This pic is my entire production factory. The rest are mining outposts. It's meant to be super compact and as efficient as I can get with the limitation that all my production must fit inside a 100 x 100 grid compound, while resource gathering can be external. Pollution was also a consideration and barely extends past the minefield now.

Any interest in me doing a youtube series building my factory from scratch and showing all the tricks I've learned along the way?

I get about 21 science packs per minute and 1 module 3 per minute. You can easily blueprint the entire factory, load up a car with your materials, and stamp it down wherever you want and connect it to your existing railway for X times the production.

PS. I'm aware that the map/resources are infinite, but I feel making restrictions and forcing myself to be super lean and efficient is more rewarding than having a huge factory that is less efficient and uses brute force.

http://i.imgur.com/AzKPQRI.jpg

[Choumiko]

That looks really neat!
Is there any external powerproduction? What modules are using, furnace count and all seems so low, how would it work if you striped all the stored stuff? Questions over questions, loving it!

[TylerB]

That looks really neat!
Is there any external powerproduction? What modules are using, furnace count and all seems so low, how would it work if you striped all the stored stuff? Questions over questions, loving it!

The compound has 186 solar panels generating 11 MW of power and 200 accumulators storing 1 GJ of battery. That is enough for the factory to run with the current module setup with plenty left over. There is a steam power backup but it is completely off unless power goes out and then it kicks in automatically using stored heated water and pumps so there is no downtime. There is also power surplus being generated at the mining outposts in order to power the radar but that's on it's own network.

This factory was balanced around low pollution so I try and get the -80% bonus on everything that can take a module. Using this as a baseline you can easily swap out speed or productivity modules to manage any throughput issues if you needed to. You would definitely have to consider adding external power then but with enough buffer storage this is usually unnecessary.

There are 12 dedicated iron furnaces, 14 dedicated copper, 2 dedicated steel, 1 dedicated stone, and 10 flexible auxillary smelters that insure the logic system has buffer. The auxillary smelters are there to boost the line when needed. The furnace count may seem low but I use a couple tricks to make sure ALL the furnaces are operating 100% of the time. I've watched a lot of people setup their smelting operations with large amounts of smelters but as soon as there is any backup, their effectiveness drops down significantly. Those dedicated furnaces never turn off. they don't even have to wait for plates to pass by on the belt to output because they output directly into inline buffer storage which leverages the inserter stack bonus.

It works fine if the buffer storage is not packed. The reason for the buffer storage is to insure that the intended machines are working 100% of the time and are not slowed waiting on either input or output. I turned off some of the production so you can see the actual product lines but normally those belts are not packed. If you have an assembler trying to output to a packed belt, it's productivity is effectively zero.

There are some subtle things that require a lot more detail that help address the problems your questions pose but that hopefully answers your questions in general.

[Choumiko]

I've watched a lot of people setup their smelting operations with large amounts of smelters but as soon as there is any backup, their effectiveness drops down significantly. Those dedicated furnaces never turn off. they don't even have to wait for plates to pass by on the belt to output because they output directly into inline buffer storage which leverages the inserter stack bonus.

That makes perfect sense. Didn't see the chest at the furnaces. The way i play is like you described. Guess i like noticing a iron/copper shortage after extending the factory and then slapping down more furnaces


Could you post a screenshot of the inner square only, like zoomed in more?

[TylerB]

http://i.imgur.com/2Sa1y3i.jpg

[User_Name]

Wow, this is the coolest thing I've seen so far.
It should be included in the screenshots on the official website.

[Arbiter]

I'd watch it

[n9103]

Feels kind of out of the spirit of your imposed challenge to have outsourced smelting to one of your outposts.
That aside, pretty impressive factory you've got.

That minefield though. o_o;

[keyboardhack]

Most awesome factory i have ever seen. I am looking forward to see more from you

[spacesloth]

Feels kind of out of the spirit of your imposed challenge to have outsourced smelting to one of your outposts.

I could be wrong but I do not believe he has outsourced smelting to an outpost. The trains are bringing in ore. The 10 auxiliary furnaces are included in the base - they just are not dedicated to any particular output - they are flexible and designed to smelt on demand what there is a shortage of.

[TylerB]

Feels kind of out of the spirit of your imposed challenge to have outsourced smelting to one of your outposts.

I could be wrong but I do not believe he has outsourced smelting to an outpost. The trains are bringing in ore. The 10 auxiliary furnaces are included in the base - they just are not dedicated to any particular output - they are flexible and designed to smelt on demand what there is a shortage of.

Actually, you both are half right. The top train is the main train and the only one that was running until my factory had stabilized. In hindsight, I found the second track unnecessary so after my factory was completely setup and running smoothly I got bored and played around with smelting outposts on the second track. The reason there is so much plate built up in my logistic network is because they weren't needed, it was more of an exercise for me to address possible scaling issues that choumiko alluded to.

The flexible auxillary smelters are enough to keep everything running without importing it from smelting outposts. Their buffer storage fills up way faster than the dedicated smelters so they will be turned off a lot of the time which I'm more than ok with since their purpose is different from the dedicated smelthers. If you dedicate all 10 of them toward something and speed boost, that's basically adding 20 extra smelters on the fly. For reference, those bottom boxes were being filled by an outpost that only had 8 smelters running, non speed boosted.

I can see what you mean by defeating the spirit of the challenge but the challenge was already long beaten by the time I set that up. I had it in mind that the outpost smelters would not exceed the production capabilities of my 10 flex smelters. At that point it was just me experimenting.

Thanks for the comments everyone. My hope was to show off the difference between efficiency and scaling. I see a lot of Let's plays that mostly focus on scaling and don't give enough consideration to the efficiency portion of the equation. I think I'll try and do a Let's play that teaches what I learned from this factory.

PS. OMG LAND MINES! Highly condensed minefields like what I have are OP. Having a tight factory like this really opened up the power of land mines to me. It didn't even take long to set up. Even in large waves, the spitters don't even come within laser turret range before they are all dead. My laser turrets rusted away and the robots would automatically replace the land mines.

[chosenken]

Wow...that factory is sick. I would love to see a making of video. I've played 3 session so far and haven't even touched logistics or rail yet, I have so much to learn!