Things you misunderstood when you were noob, and mistakes

[Peter34]

One mistake I did was I kept trying to make these Grand Loops, humongous 4-lane loops with Iron Plate, Copper Plate, Gear Wheels and Electronic Cirsuits. And I'd take Iron and Copper from the loop to make the Gear Wheels and the Circuits. Towards the end, before I realized how inefficient it was, I made looks that were 7 chunks tall (9x32 tiles) and a bit over 1 chunk wide (like 36-40 tiles).

I found some good methods to make the concept work less badly, but it still boiled down to polishing a turd. The stink won't go away. The Iron Plates kept getting used up, same with the Green Circuits, and my Loop never was packed very densely with Copper Plate or Gear Wheels.

One of many problems here was that I had not looked into exactly how many - or rather how few - recipes that raw Copper Plate is actually used for. The two main ones are Red Potions and Copper Wire.



Another mistake of mine, rather lesser, was that it took me quite some time to look into exactly what Plastic is used for. Turns out it's almost only used to make Red Circuits. If I had known that earlier, I could have made better, more efficient factories. One sub-mistake of this I made, was to put Batteries and Plastic on the same Belt each on its own lane. I figured both were kinda sorta mid-game root products and so it'd make sense to have then share a Belt, but that turned out to be a mistake, since Batteries are used in a fair amount of items, with Plastic almost only being used for Red Circuits.



I'd also start out, back in November last year, by always having each Electric Miner mining into an unlimited chest. Favouring Iron Chests. Then an Inserter taking from the Chest moving to the Belt. In this way I used up enormous amounts of electrical power, and built up a huge cloud of pollution from both Boilers and Miners, to build huge buffers of Iron Ore in the Chests, and of course also Copper Ore and Coal. Rather silly.

I then changed it a bit, so I started to limit each such Chest to 1 stack. That made a lot more sense. I'd build a small buffer, so I'd have a continuing supply for a brief period of time, as some of the other mines were depleted. But really there was no point in that, so eventually I stopped that, and began to mine directly onto Belts.



Your turn! What things did you misunderstand or get wrong, when you first started playing? What mistakes and clear errors did you make?

[daniel34]

On my first playthrough I had no idea what a splitter actually does, so I didn't use any.
To split belts I only used inserters, a whole lot of them.
Additionally I had the habit of putting items that didn't belong together on the same belt. When I needed these items anywhere else, I would make a new transport belt next to the old one and use smart inserters to pick them up.

I kept my steam engine setups rather short, like 3 boilers to 2 steam engines. And because I didn't use splitters the steam setup alone had so much inserters, I think some steam engines only powered inserters.
I had coal that was picked up by 10 different inserters before it actually reached the boilers.

[Peter34]

Somewhat minor things, compared to the severe crimes I confessed to above:

It took me a while to understand that Splitters can also be used to combine Belts, and even longer to understand that this means that Splitters can also be used to "pump" looped Belts quite hard, relative to the setup where you use Inserters to just insert objects directly onto a loop - that works but the items won't be packed very densely.



Very early on, I'd actually create a lookup table for my own use, for the correct number of Boilers per Steam Engine, based on the 14-to-10 ratio (x1.4 per). Not that I lack the mental muscles to do that kind of mental arithmetic (or even slightly more advanced mental arithmetic), but it's simply faster to use a lookup table.

Anyway, the reason I did that was that I hadn't yet realized that it's not really that expensive to just make 14 Boilers right away (or even 28), and that even if I can't afford to make 10 Steam Engines right away, I can at least make 5, half of them, then add the other half later, or I can start with a few, then add more gradually until I max out at 10.

Part of my misunderstanding was that back then I still wasn't 100% clear on whether there were any problems with having more Boilers or more Stean Engines than needed, i.e. I didn't know if they'd consume more Coal and more boiling Water than needed. Now I know that that's not the case, and so I just plonk them down right away, knowing they'll be on standby until I actually need their services.

[Xterminator]

On my first playthrough I had no idea what a splitter actually does, so I didn't use any.
To split belts I only used inserters, a whole lot of them.
Additionally I had the habit of putting items that didn't belong together on the same belt. When I needed these items anywhere else, I would make a new transport belt next to the old one and use smart inserters to pick them up.

I kept my steam engine setups rather short, like 3 boilers to 2 steam engines. And because I didn't use splitters the steam setup alone had so much inserters, I think some steam engines only powered inserters.
I had coal that was picked up by 10 different inserters before it actually reached the boilers.

I did the same thing with trying to split belts! On my first playthrough I used fast inserters to split items from one belt onto another. It didn't go well...

I also never thought of expandability, so I built my first smelting area with like 3-4 furnaces and then completely built around them and blocked it all in.

I think the only other big one was with setting up trains. I had no idea that the train stop had to be on right-hand side of the track from the driver's perspective for it work. I spent like 2 hours trying to figure it out and nearly rage quit because of it. Haha

[FishSandwich]

[Koub]

[Image]

This, my friend, is a big lol

[Takezu]

Well i didn't noticed that the liquid input of an assembler could be rotatet.

Ny first maps where piping madness.

But thats something i'Ve never thought off ^^

[Lishget]

I was died many times, before i realized, that my trains not stop for me, when i stand on the rails...

[oLaudix]

Not that I'm not a newbie anymore ...

[Peter34]

A general mistake is to fail to grasp the scale. As per my earlier post, failing to imagine how many tens of Steam Engines an endgame factory will have.

Also in MP in particular, perhaps, failure to communicate to less experienced players about the need for space, so that for instance they might assume that if they just Wall in 4 or 6 map chunks (of 32x32 tiles) then that's plenty of room, when it actually isn't.

[matjojo]

A general mistake is to fail to grasp the scale. As per my earlier post, failing to imagine how many tens of Steam Engines an endgame factory will have.

Also in MP in particular, perhaps, failure to communicate to less experienced players about the need for space, so that for instance they might assume that if they just Wall in 4 or 6 map chunks (of 32x32 tiles) then that's plenty of room, when it actually isn't.

I always make solar panles ASAP, so in my current factory i have more then 200 solarpanels and 300 battery thnings

[DerivePi]

didn't realize that underground pipes and belts can cross each other.

[Tallinu]

One of many problems here was that I had not looked into exactly how many - or rather how few - recipes that raw Copper Plate is actually used for. The two main ones are Red Potions and Copper Wire.

Early game, red potions may seem like a "main use", yeah... And I won't argue with copper wire being the highest single consumer by far. But raw copper plates are used for a wide variety of other things, like all but the most basic electric poles, solar panels, batteries (and through them, accumulators), percing bullets and all shotgun shells.

If you count things which involve copper by way of electronic circuits, its uses skyrocket, but that involves turning it into wire first. The thing about copper wire, though, is that it is almost always better to make it on-site and transfer directly from one assembler to another, rather than putting it on a belt. Each plate of input becomes two wires of output, so the inserter stack size bonus is a big help - and if you do put it on a belt, you typically need two output inserters for every one input inserter. When you get to the stage of using level 3 assemblers, you can just barely keep up using two fast inserters for input and three for output, but you need fast or express belts whisking away the output of even a single one of these assemblers, and any more will clog the belt and reduce the speed of the assemblers.

The only situation in which I put wire on a belt is when making advanced circuits, since a single wire assembler supplies enough for eight advanced circuit assemblers, like so: http://imgur.com/a/Extyc#1 Even then, if you like logistics bots, you can avoid putting it on a belt by doing something like this build by FishSandwich (which doesn't actually require a faster assembler in the center, they all can be the same speed). Normal circuits are frequently made using the 3:2 pattern you can see encapsulated in my advanced circuit factory above, and also in this nifty processor factory (which is actually still missing a couple of fast inserters between the wire and circuit assemblers - I should really update that screenshot).

The point is, trying to drop enough copper wire on a belt to make a significant number of electronic circuits - and worse yet, trying to feed that wire along a main bus like I did waaaaaay back when I started - just doesn't work well at all.

I was also guilty of using smart inserters to separate two item types on the same belt, splitting using inserters, and absolutely horrible spaghetti belts with massive slowdowns from corners and side-loading... not to mention attempting to cram way too much stuff into way too small a space. Not to mention failing at the proper ratios of different stage products, and things like having a single slow inserter feeding a gear factory and wondering why the green science wasn't keeping up.

[Enigmatica]

A general mistake is to fail to grasp the scale. As per my earlier post, failing to imagine how many tens of Steam Engines an endgame factory will have.

Also in MP in particular, perhaps, failure to communicate to less experienced players about the need for space, so that for instance they might assume that if they just Wall in 4 or 6 map chunks (of 32x32 tiles) then that's plenty of room, when it actually isn't.

I always make solar panles ASAP, so in my current factory i have more then 200 solarpanels and 300 battery thnings

Same here. I think it is so important to get solar up and running ASAP. The first thing I did when i researched solars and accumulators was built factories to produce them. Then I researched Substations and made huge solar farms. I currently have 1.5k solar panels and 1.1k accumulators. I managed to move to solar when I was only using 10 steam engines.

[Ackos]

I was died many times, before i realized, that my trains not stop for me, when i stand on the rails...

I still have that problem.

[ARC190]

My probably biggest noob mistake on my first playthrough (didn't actually finish the game) was using thin but long belt loops for the production of everything from green circuits to blue science, which, while ineffective, is very good for expanding later on...up to a point, at which even blue belt reaches it's limits.

I didn't have a lot of these other problems because I first got to factorio through a let's play.