12 furnaces + beacon

[Coolthulhu]

factorio-beacon.png (2.11 MiB) Viewed 35018 times

No one is talking about beacons and beacons are kinda cool, so here's a basic beacon used to its fullest potential (fullest with only 3x3 buildings).
4 steel furnaces could be added, but steel furnaces are wasteful and can't have productivity above 110% without major shenanigans. It would also require logistic bots.

The design could possibly be improved a bit. It can be easily changed to have 4 of the furnaces produce steel (and other 4 to supply them), but as far as I know producing 5 iron plates takes as much time as producing 1 steel one, so with productivity above 100% it would be a suboptimal usage. It could be remedied by adding speed modules to the furnaces producing steel, but speed modules aren't productivity modules and thus are evil.

[RawCode]

you can insert and output stuff on same belt, everything needed for this is overflow control, can be done with long side belt and splitters.

[ssilk]

@ Coolthulhu: I knew that more than 10 should be possible.

@ RawCode: input=output-belt makes only problems in my experience, when the output stucks. How did you get along with that? I see much possibilities to improve the above layout... but what is a "long side belt"?

[Coolthulhu]

Overflow is actually handled quite well - what you see here is a result of long-term stalling due to me moving my only lab cluster. In its regular mode (full ore input, constantly emptied plate output) all furnaces are working at all times.
Even at 120% productivity, the regular belts can handle full output of this factory as long as they're joined into a fast one and don't have regular belt inner turns. 130% would probably be fine too. I think at 145% it might need fast belts, but getting 145% productivity in all 12 furnaces would cost 10508 iron plates and 15362 copper ones for the modules alone (+26 artifacts), assuming all module components were created at 140% productivity.
I just wasted 30 minutes learning about Python fractions, operators and tuples just to calculate it, so it has to be right.

Input-output belt would be a bad idea here - you'd end up producing an unbalanced flow of mix of iron and steel plates unless you managed to keep the whole half of the belt full of ore at almost all times. Secondary ore belt accessed by long inserters would work fine, but it's just not needed. The current "output to the inside" style has only 1 major flaw - that output inserter in the lower right looks ugly (though it might be possible to make it place stuff on the underground belt entrance).

[applemachine]

I personally prefer to create 2 rows of furnaces and a row of beacons down the middle and on the outsides. I'm not sure if it's worth the resources to produce the beacons and the modules, but it sure is fun to watch once it gets going.

[Neotix]

Wow, I'm using almost the same construction.

Mine looks like this:

[slpwnd]

@Neotix nice schema

[ssilk]

Would be cool, if factorio hat such a layer. Also useful for choosing blueprints or so.

[StanFear]

I actually use a different layout, (for the transport belt I mean)
it allows me to stack my "cooking sites" (I tried with four, I was creating over 10K/mins iron plates ^^)

it works best with logistic chest at the output though !
anyway, my construction :

factorio Cooking site.png (1.44 MiB) Viewed 33913 times

(imagine a beacon instead of my character)

[BurnHard]

slightly offtopic, but: Since I can't put productivity modules in beacons any more, I really don't use beacons any more. When I need more output I just install another assembler/smelter instead of speed modules etc.

i just construct straight lines with a small storage space afterwards (picture 1). Since all my furnaces have a productivity bonus of 1.3, and the assember are 1.6, I only store small amounts of the plates and other intermediate products and rather store the metal ore instead in massive amounts. The splitters are double-fed from my ore sorting-and storage facility (combined with a 4-rail-train station, picture 2) and prepared for a second double-furnace line.

[ssilk]

Wow. Impressive and inspiring. I like the train station. It's a cool idea to use the bots for that.

And to the beacon itself: yes, I found me also in this situation, that I thought: what the hell, I don't need it. I don't know what to do against it, currently it's just too time consuming. I hope with blueprints this might work better.

[Username]

My english is broken and I hope I don't need much explain my images.
Blue - beacons. Green - assembly machine/furnace/drill. Each building on center will be effected by 5 beacons. Space between buildings can be 0, 1 or 2.
I have green modules in beacons and full productivity - result in the picture. Also I tried to make like a chessboard. It's more beautifull but in this way only 4 beacons in deal.
It is spend much energy. My consumption is about 60 kW. So we will need "Big solar farm" from nearby thread.

[Username]

Suddenly I felt my first idea is not so good. There is a more simple and efficient way. Now assemblers surrounded by 6 beacons and it's quite enough to get -80% consumption.

[BurnHard]

At first: Impressive size...

The beacons thereself need a lot of power, does it pay off (energy-wise) for the assemblers? Can't really think so.

[EDIT] I had a quick look ingame into it, it actually DOES pay off if the structure is large enough, aka. one beacon covers 4 or more assemblers

[Username]

...

Your solar farm was very helpfull for me.

I just add some arithmetics.
Assuming assemblers inserted with productivity modules 3
1 beacon - 480W
1 assembler(with beacons) - 42W
1 assembler(without beacons) - 966W

In my last picture ratio 1:2 (assembler to beacon). If I add some rows below ratio will be 2:3, 3:4, 4:5 ...
Ok, let's suppose 2:3. And for simplicity 10 in length.

With beacons:
20 x 42W + 30 x 480W = 15240W

Without beacons:
20 x 966W = 19320W

It saves about 4 kW. Also don't forget about pollution.

[BurnHard]

Yes, thanks for your calculations, and you are absolutely right, the pollution decreases by an significant amount.

But to be honest, I like my high pollution levels and the following alien attacks, otherwise my defences and laserturrents would be of no use

[BurnHard]

Something that came to my mind: Don't forget that assemblers only need energy when they are working and producing. (I think 1/15 of the max energy was mentioned last) The beacons always use energy.

So if you build these beacons near assemblers, that are not working more than 75% of the time, the beacons will use a lot more energy than saved with the assemblers. ( you are still reducing the pollution)

[ssilk]

I'm the opinion, that theoretical thought are ok, but at some point it must be tried out, to see, if I'm right or to measure, what's right.