Factorio Speedrun in Less Then 4 Hours!

[mikehendi]

Just finished another run on the same map, same rules as last time (peaceful, rich ores, ingame timer so with reloads (reloaded more liberally this time). Breaking the 4-hour mark was really satisfying, this will really (really!) (really?) be my last run for a while. Maybe I'll try a live run and try to set an official any%run (one sitting, external timer, I think reloads/resets are still allowed by the way, except they won't be beneficial due to external timer)

I guess I'll have to re-do the video

[Artman40]

You're a speed demon. How much do you think you can still shave off and is it detrimental to not craft things all the time?

[Gandalf]

Nice runs!
I was wondering why you don't set up more green/red/blue circuit production? As per your calculations that is the basic time limiting factor, so you went with a set number of 16 red circuit assemblers (iirc) and then just chilled out till they were done. Why not add a couple more assemblers in your "spare time"? Do raw materials become the limiting factor here?

Then again, since your latest run beats your calculated minimum time of 4:10, maybe that's just what you did? Looking forward to some updated commentary!

[Blackence]

Good point on using the heavy and light oil for power, I didn't think of that. Just hooking up a couple boilers and steam engines (does someone know how much fluid/s a boiler uses?) might save time, as I'd have to set up power anyway.

You could simply use 2 steam engines (and 0 boilers) to "destroy" all the light/heavy oil, this should be faster than crafting / placing / mining oil tanks repeatedly? You won't get any more power without boilers, but as you said, it's probably not as reliable as a standard water-based steam plant. Who knows, maybe that's what you did in the (4hours-2seconds) run. Good job!

[mikehendi]

@Artman, this is probably it. With great efforts I might be able to shave off a couple of minutes, but I think I reached the limit of what is possible with my current strategy (Someone could come up with a different strategy that is faster still; This would be a good moment for DaveMcW to come in with a great idea summarized in 2 lines of text brought in a slightly or somewhat less slightly sarcastic way. (I still remember one comment in particular from back in the days at the Civ IV forums: "btw your worker management is horrible, you'd do better automating them" /nostalgea /didIjustgetsidetrackedagain)

@Gandalf: Time and resources for the infrastructure. Just to fully supply 16 reds and 8 blues I have over 60 mines and steel furnaces (+hundreds of belts, inserters etc), over 50 blue crafting machines (which cost almost half a stack of iron each), and about 10 oil refineries + the nessecary infrastructure for those. I looked into going slightly bigger (like 20 reds and 10 blue's), but the increased production vs the longer setup time resulted only in an estimated 5 minutes earlier finished production, which comes at a cost of having a lot less time to do the rest (it's not like I sit around doing nothing after red and blue are up

However, this time I did store up a chest full of plastic and a chest full of copper cables to go along with intentional overproduction of green circuits, which were hand-fed into assemblers to make 800 reds and 160 blue's (which still saved only 7 minutes or so)


I also looked into the earlier suggestion of using the heavy/light oil to produce power. It doesn't work, for two reasons: The required fluid throughput is way higher than my oil production can handle (so power generated quantity will wear off and be not useful, which makes it faster just to delete/replace the oil storage tanks). Also, boilers/steam engines don't 'suck' in the fluid like for instance refineries and chemical plants do. If the tanks/pipes are 20% filled, your boilers and steam engines will have only 20% of max capacity. This can of course be solved with (lots of) small pumps, but they require electric engine, at least 2 unneeded techs I can't afford.

Edit: Ah, I didn't know the thing that blackence suggested above. If that works, fluid handling could become a skippable tech entirely!

[Artman40]

Can't wait for replay.

[mikehendi]

@Artman, I probably screwed up - https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... =49&t=8376

[Artman40]

Hate when this happens. This means that second attempt is less likely.

[mward]

Did you consider using contstruction bots to speed the building process?

They take time to research and make, but then you can copy/paste your entire mining/smelting/circuit production setup in one go.