Tips, Designs, & Tricks

[mward]

Forest clearance:

Construction bots are the fastest way to clear forests. You can even use the wood in your furnaces automatically. They will also pick up alien artifacts for you.

I research bots as soon as possible: before upgrading the shotgun or armor or capsules.
Construction bots placing laser turrets are also the fastest way to clear alien bases: faster than power armor 2 and a fully upgraded shotgun.

[Patric20878]

No, walking into a base with a combat shotgun, poison capsules, and 134 destroyer capsules following you is, lol.

[Skellitor301]

As mentioned an army of construction bots are not an early to mid game posibility, plus there are other ways to deforest an area as mentioned. To each their own honestly, the entry is to list the posible ways to effectively clear out a bunch of trees, the shotgun being the most likely candidate to be the earliest in use

[Skellitor301]

One thing I would like to try and do is get a variety of builds that do the same thing, that way people can play around and find which layout they would like to use. Cause one thing I noticed is there are more than one layout for just about everyone of them, especially furnace layouts.

Quoted here to share this idea with anyone who would like to help with this

[n9103]

I find grenades to be more effective, and are available just as early.
Probably the only reason they aren't more preferred by most is that there's not much need for them, since they're overkill on the small biters, and not overly effective against mediums.

[Peter34]

I've long struggled with how to "discipline" myself so as to achieve a factory that can be driven around in a car, enabling me to quickly and safely move around between various factory sections. I keep ending up not making those driving-paths.

Now I think I've thought out the best solution possible with current in-game tech (no mods, vanilla game alpha 11 only):

Make "roads" bordered by Electric Poles.

Even the wooden ones will suffice, as IIRC they can be placed at least 5 and probably 6 or 7 tiles apart, with 5 being plenty for single-player and even tolerable for coop MP.

Then condition your brain to never ever build anything at all in between such "pole roads". And every other chunk (I play with the grid permanently enabled, F4 or F5 key to tweak those settings) of 32 tiles, make a cross-wise road, so that there are 55-60 tiles between roads, and your factory ends up on a grid pattern.

I haven't actually tested this yet, but I often find myself waiting in-game, especially in the first few hours, for stuff to get produced and techs to get researched, so that's some spare time that can be used to run around Shift-key-placing these "pole roads", instead of saving the game then going AFK for 5-20 minutes.

In the games I've played so far, I've always wanted to try to make my factory based on "factory islands" with enough spacing (at least 3 tiles, prferably 4) to be able to drive around at full speed in the orthogonal directions (pure north, pure south, pure east, pure west) to get around faster, since moving on foot is crazy slow (and doesn't improve much with Modular Armor and later Power Armor Mk1, although Mk2 with Reactor!!!), but I'm quite confident that this will work. Gathering wood is fairly easy, and making poles doesn't require much Copper. So it's something to do.

The only thing I'm not sure about is the best spacing between lanes. My initial idea is "every other chunk" so that there'll be roughly 57 tiles between the roads, but it may turn out to be the case that roughly "every 2 chunks" should be roughly "every 1.5 chunks" or roughly "every 2.5 chunks". Or even that rather than a square pattern, a rectangular pattern of 1x3 chunks or 1.5x4 chunks is preferable. Although I think square will probably be best, regardless of how large the squares are made.

One could go for a system with a lot of narrower paths only 3 tiles wide, with one such path going through almost every chunk (i.e. they're spaced 30-40 tiles apart) but every 3rd path is instead a "highway" as wide as possible (I think that's 6 or maybe 7 tiles, using wooden poles) and well-lit with Lamps. This way you can drive fast on the highways, until you reach your turn and then drive more slowly (but still a lot faster than walking speed) on a "path" to get close to where you want to be.

But really. I think a simple square grid, every 2 chunks, would be quite good.

(In coop MP, you'd need to establish a convention, such as drive-on-the-right-side to avoid collissions.)

That said, I'd still very much like to see some cheap placeable "road tiles", simply as markers with no game-mechanical effect, implemented, as per my suggestion from some weeks ago. It's just, I think this "pole road" solution which would work in the vanilla game as of now, will probably be almost as good.

[Ashen44]

dude really nice collection of tips! really helpful!

one tip that should never be left out, and I don't know if anyone already mentioned this in the comments, SECTION YOUR BASE

as in, designate one area for power, one area for each ore, preferably really close to each other, one area for processing, and one area each for every piece of automation, with a main line for the basic resources running through it. this main line should be able to continue through all automation setups, so splitters are recommended so half the resources keep the line and half go into supplying the machines.

[Skellitor301]

That's more or a base layout which isn't the goal of this thread, these are a collection of tricks and builds that can easily be put into any base. There's more than one base layout and some work better for others. While yes I do think a good layout is key, part of the fun is discovering your own layout and building off of it.

[n9103]

<removed reply that went on a tangent so long that the original reply was lost>

Reworked and posted here, for those curious: https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... 950#p79950

[Skellitor301]

I dont think that really is on topic in this thread n9103, There are lore topics in the General Discussion

[n9103]

I dont think that really is on topic in this thread n9103, There are lore topics in the General Discussion

Yea. On a 3rd re-reading, it no longer connects to the reply I was writing originally.
Guess I'll do a snip.

[Frn]

How do I do a compact tillable solid fuel setup?

[Lee_newsum]

Factorio wiki page Tips & Tricks updatyed

[Peter34]

I think I've come up with something close to the ideal furnace setup, but it's too difficult to take screenshots, so I'll just describe it. Someone else is welcome to make a screenshot and share it (it's not as if an idea can be copyrighted anyway).

Many furnace setups have two Belt lines, in between two rows of Stone Furnaces or Steel Furnaces, one Belt carrying Iron Ore (or Copper Ore, or Iron Plates, or Stone) and the other Belt carrying Coal (or some other fuel). Then each Furnace has both a Long Inserter and a Normal Inserter to use to take from each belt.

But I think that's suboptimal, since the ideal ratio of ore-to-Coal isn't 1:1.

Instead, I think you get a better furnace if you have one Belt be pure ore, e.g. pure Iron Ore, and the other Belt be half Coal and half ore, e.g. Iron Ore, but otherwise the same setup. This way, you get 1/4 Coal and 3/4 Ore, meaning you can get pretty good throughput.

It might be possible that 1/6 Coal and 5/6 Ore is even better. To get that, you must have 3 Belt lanes, and now the middle one must be half Coal and half Ore, with the 2 outer ones being pure Ore. But my setup can probably already keep 24 Steel Furnaces fully fed, so... I'm not sure that 5-to-1 isn't overkill, even though some early tests I did in October or November last year actually suggests to me that close to 5 Iron Plate are made for each 1 Coal (and each 5 Iron Ore) furnaced.

[ssilk]

... close to the ideal furnace setup, but it's too difficult to take screenshots, so I'll just describe it ...
<long description>

[Skellitor301]

I think I've come up with something close to the ideal furnace setup, but it's too difficult to take screenshots, so I'll just describe it. Someone else is welcome to make a screenshot and share it (it's not as if an idea can be copyrighted anyway)...

Not sure if there really is a good ballance for the stone/steel furnaces in terms of ore to coal because of the speed they smelt, that's something worth looking into. One thing to keep in mind though is trying to keep the layouts upgrade friendly from the 2x2 stone/steel furnaces to the 3x3 electric furnaces. It's not a good layout if you have to take out most of it just to upgrade.

... close to the ideal furnace setup, but it's too difficult to take screenshots, so I'll just describe it ...
<long description>

Oh Ssilk, you so silly

[ssilk]

me much sillier some times

[Peter34]

... close to the ideal furnace setup, but it's too difficult to take screenshots, so I'll just describe it ...
<long description>

I can write very quickly.

[Koub]

What's the exact problem with posting a mere screenshot ? Maybe could we help you with that ? an example tells more that thousands words ^^

[orzelek]

It's visible for me on show your creations threads usually - some screenshots are posted with proper scroll slider but others are simply cut and to see them fully I need to open them in separate window.