Mining Outpost, how do you make them?

[tobycar]

u mark ore patch with 2 walls in each corner then blueprint it and paste it into website... then pick if you want options you want such as laser/turrent/wall defence/train station/ bot/belt and so on then copy blueprint into game and put over ore patch

[Ringkeeper]

nobody uses http://autotorio.com/outpost ?

How does it work?

The explanation is the little line below the "Blueprint string here" field.

In short, you place a wall piece at f.e. top left corner of the field and bottom right corner. Then you make a blueprint with this 2 pieces , copy the string and enter the string in the field on the page.

Then you choose all the options you want on the page and let it generate a blueprint for you.

This blueprint contains (depending on the choosen options) all miners, belts, turrets, chests (for bot based harvesting), splitter etc etc to cover the whole ore patch in a kinda perfect manner. If choosen you have also a train station in the blueprint so you only need to connect your rails.

Really handy if you need to connect many ore fields.

*edit*
grrrr... beaten by 2 seconds

[Daid]

correct, now awesome hot water delivery comes into place

Hot water delivery for Steam Engine is an interesting idea, but I'm guessing you'll lose a lot of space to power them. I guess rocket fuel for boiler + Steam Engine could also be an aternative.

My map hardly had any water on it, so that complicated things. I didn't run laser turrets, only normal ones. So that saves a whole lot of power on the outposts, and still haves them defended the off chance that you run out of power. I only ran out of power when the mined product wasn't used, and thus the train was no longer coming in to supply the outpost. But then, the outpost was also no longer producing pollution, and started itself right up when I did use the production again.

[Tricorius]

I have tried various ways, but my favorite, and the one I’m still iterating on is my bot-maintained outpost.

viewtopic.php?p=196162#p196162

I belt the outgoing resources to the train station. The bots simply handle a few “high tech” things like repairs, ammo feeding to the bullet turrets. (I played with belting ammo to the turrets and that is fine too. But I like the bots better for this.)

I’ve also upgraded it with flame turrets, and I have a version of the wall with artillery (for when a periodic artillery train isn’t enough).

I now service it with two different trains (a supply train and a military train). I also use the resupply station as the PAX station as I’ve been trying to reduce the footprints of my stations. There is also a RAC (reclamations / recycling train) that gathers anything not requested by the station (wood, belts, random bits of stone, ore, etc)

I run power up, but it is intriguing to me to try an energy supply train for remote power. If I did that; I’d probably start with sending coal, upgraded to liquefaction, and then higher levels of solid fuels that can be burned in standard furnaces. Shipping steam is interesting as well. Especially if the outpost doesn’t have any water nearby.

I really haven’t had many problems stringing large power poles with my rails via bluprints though. I did play around with a bot-maintained “hardened” railroad with turrets for a bit. I ended up ripping it up since it was a lot to maintain.

[FactorioParadox]

Currently, my mining outposts consist of rows of miners that feed into a belt balancer that evenly distributes the output of all the miners to 5 rows of furnaces, though I will do 6 in the future since I have discovered that you can reserve slots in a train for certain items. There are enough furnaces that the system only backs up if I don't have enough train throughput. Additionally, the whole thing is surrounded by walls and turrets.

[ManaUser]

If you're gonna deliver steam, why not use nuclear steam and a turbine? It has about three times the energy density.

[Tricorius]

If you're gonna deliver steam, why not use nuclear steam and a turbine? It has about three times the energy density.

I’ve started a new map to play around with some of this stuff. But I prefer to barrel, so I’m unsure I can even send steam in barrels, and even if I can, can I send enough to keep outposts and production modules powered. I’ve never really played with outposts having separate power grids. So... :: shrug ::

I may need to send water barrels and fuel, depending on where the outpost is, etc.

Open to advice.

[PurpleGreen]

In my last game, the first one where I seriously got into trains, I made a set of blueprints with two rails and large electric poles in between them. So that way I can do the rails and more or less power takes care of itself. Plus high power lines along railroad tracks are a common sight IRL, so it looks pretty good too, IMHO. I don't connect them to the logistic network, because A) that would require a huge number of roboports, and B) bots "don't like" long windy logistic networks. They try to fly over the empty parts and run out of power. Thus far I haven't tried connecting mining outpost to the circuit network either.

Logistic network =/= bots. i think the mention of the logistic network means that the train station could be connected and the train leaves when it receives a signal from the network, or for example , all trains are parked in a train yard and start their tour -> go to outpost , pickup ore , deliver ore , go back to the train yard- on demand. in contrast to the train waiting in the outpost train station till full andalways leave when full.

[Elok]

In my last game, the first one where I seriously got into trains, I made a set of blueprints with two rails and large electric poles in between them. So that way I can do the rails and more or less power takes care of itself. Plus high power lines along railroad tracks are a common sight IRL, so it looks pretty good too, IMHO. I don't connect them to the logistic network, because A) that would require a huge number of roboports, and B) bots "don't like" long windy logistic networks. They try to fly over the empty parts and run out of power. Thus far I haven't tried connecting mining outpost to the circuit network either.

Logistic network =/= bots. i think the mention of the logistic network means that the train station could be connected and the train leaves when it receives a signal from the network, or for example , all trains are parked in a train yard and start their tour -> go to outpost , pickup ore , deliver ore , go back to the train yard- on demand. in contrast to the train waiting in the outpost train station till full andalways leave when full.

You mean the Circuit Network?

[TheTom]

In my last game, the first one where I seriously got into trains, I made a set of blueprints with two rails and large electric poles in between them. So that way I can do the rails and more or less power takes care of itself. Plus high power lines along railroad tracks are a common sight IRL, so it looks pretty good too, IMHO. I don't connect them to the logistic network, because A) that would require a huge number of roboports, and B) bots "don't like" long windy logistic networks. They try to fly over the empty parts and run out of power. Thus far I haven't tried connecting mining outpost to the circuit network either.

Logistic network =/= bots. i think the mention of the logistic network means that the train station could be connected and the train leaves when it receives a signal from the network, or for example , all trains are parked in a train yard and start their tour -> go to outpost , pickup ore , deliver ore , go back to the train yard- on demand. in contrast to the train waiting in the outpost train station till full andalways leave when full.

You mean the Circuit Network?

No, he means Logistics Network. More particular, Logistics Train Network, which is a mod - google being your friend and all. It automates dispatching of trains. Pretty nice amazing things actually.

[Tricorius]

In my last game, the first one where I seriously got into trains, I made a set of blueprints with two rails and large electric poles in between them. So that way I can do the rails and more or less power takes care of itself. Plus high power lines along railroad tracks are a common sight IRL, so it looks pretty good too, IMHO. I don't connect them to the logistic network, because A) that would require a huge number of roboports, and B) bots "don't like" long windy logistic networks. They try to fly over the empty parts and run out of power. Thus far I haven't tried connecting mining outpost to the circuit network either.

Logistic network =/= bots. i think the mention of the logistic network means that the train station could be connected and the train leaves when it receives a signal from the network, or for example , all trains are parked in a train yard and start their tour -> go to outpost , pickup ore , deliver ore , go back to the train yard- on demand. in contrast to the train waiting in the outpost train station till full andalways leave when full.

You mean the Circuit Network?

No, he means Logistics Network. More particular, Logistics Train Network, which is a mod - google being your friend and all. It automates dispatching of trains. Pretty nice amazing things actually.

You can implement the core features of LTN with the vanilla circuit network if you string up cables to all your outposts. LTN does seem to give a whole slew of “quality of life” optimizations though.

Personally, I use a rail yard as well in vanilla. However, I use train station enable/disable functionality to build a “poor man’s” LTN. Trains have the railyard at the top of their instruction list. The next stop in the itinerary is an outpost station (for a given type of resource). The third stop is a drop off. The load and unload stations are enabled if they can process at least a full train load of cargo, otherwise they stay disabled. There are a few glitches. It is far from perfect (LTN fixes most of the issues, but I still prefer vanilla).

I have all stations set to enable if they have a surplus or deficit of any item. Any good they are supplying (ore, stone, circuits, etc) above a threshold will enable the loading station, thereby enabling a train with that route to pick it up. Any good they are requesting (materials for smelting, building circuits, etc) below a threshold will enable an associated unloading station, thereby enabling a train with that route to deliver.

All outpost stations dealing with a given good have the same name. For instance, all iron ore loading is named “Outpost - L - Iron Ore”. This way I can have 1 or 20 and they will get serviced as they buffer up a full load of ore.

Again, it isn’t super efficient. LTN can trigger a small set of trains to go pick up an exact consist and deliver it where needed. This more rudimentary setup needs a dedicated set of trains reserved for that production chain, and can send all your iron trains (for instance) to the same outpost, resulting in a train beating the rest and loading, with the remainders to park in staging. If the train loading drops the resources below the threshold, the station will disable, causing the trains to sadly chug away. I actually find this humorous, and while it can be worked around, I’m really not too concerned about a little wasted fuel. (I like seeing the trains runnning anyway...even if they are on a fruitless run.)

Note: the above setup does not require you to string cables to your stations, though that would help activate more complex conditions, therefore reducing the “wasted trips” and other imperfections. However, I’m currently experimenting with a Death world in which I’m going to try running everything with “on premesis” power (instead of stringing long-range power poles along the railway). So far, I’m having fun, but haven’t built my first rail yet since I’ve been short on iron, and thus diverted by tech-ing up to reach out to so,e close iron with belts. After that situation is stabilized, I’m going to be running some rails up to a nice set of ore patches to start iterating the outpost design.

[Vykromod]

nobody uses http://autotorio.com/outpost ?

I do use it all the time!

As for my approach, I have my outposts connected to the main energy network (via large poles running near the rail tracks). This does have an issue of biters destroying the power poles from time to time, but with artillery gun in every outpost keeping a relatively large perimeter of land clean of biters, this happens quite rarely.

Outposts are defended by gun turrets (ammo fed from a belt running around the entire outpost) and flamethrowers, a combination which can easily kill anything up to and including endgame aliens, while not having the annoying energy upkeep cost of the laser turrets.

Each outpost also has a service train station. This station is wired to circuit network so that it's only active when the outpost runs short on any of the supplies (monitored by decider combinators, which send an appropriate signal). In that case a single train will dispatch from the main base, bringing ammo for gun turrets, repair packs, construction robots (which tend to be destroyed from time to time when repairing turrets and walls during an attack), spare walls and turrets and also ammo for artillery and light oil in a fluid wagon, both as fuel for flamethrowers and for producing solid fuel (refueling trains which are not traveling to the main base).

autotorio.com makes the whole process of building such a base much, much quicker and convenient (especially with use of dedicated train always stocked on needed construction supplies), though some modifications are needed, since by itself it doesn't support flamethrower fuels or gun turrets loaded from a belt.

[Elok]

autotorio.com makes the whole process of building such a base much, much quicker and convenient (especially with use of dedicated train always stocked on needed construction supplies), though some modifications are needed, since by itself it doesn't support flamethrower fuels or gun turrets loaded from a belt.

Just asking, could you (or someone else) take an onscreen video while you use autorio to build a mining outpost and share is here?

Windows 10 have a free efficient video recorder and you can share a video easily with Gdrive.

[purdueme91]

make sure you have some solar cells especially in your coal mine if you still need coal for power.
a few solar cells just to make sure everything WILL WORK (even if slowly) if you have a power outage.

since the mining outpost are connected to the main electricity grid you might as well use any solar cells you have to place them out of sight

I'm on a railworld, and my first major coal find was 18M and quite a distance. But there was water right there and am running an independent electric network just for the outpost. Never have the death spiral of not enough power

For all my other outposts, I take artillery in right now and clean out all the bases since they don't respawn on railworld. Running electric directly from the base. No defenses needed. But that is offset by the number of bases and how HUGE they have become. 100 artillery shells might take out 2 bases. Most of the time it is 2 or 3 nukes per base. Then brace for the swarm with laser turrets and walls.

[purdueme91]

Again, it isn’t super efficient. LTN can trigger a small set of trains to go pick up an exact consist and deliver it where needed. This more rudimentary setup needs a dedicated set of trains reserved for that production chain, and can send all your iron trains (for instance) to the same outpost, resulting in a train beating the rest and loading, with the remainders to park in staging. If the train loading drops the resources below the threshold, the station will disable, causing the trains to sadly chug away. I actually find this humorous, and while it can be worked around, I’m really not too concerned about a little wasted fuel. (I like seeing the trains runnning anyway...even if they are on a fruitless run.)

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I think this is where Aavak is going with his new Youtube series. He's counting trains by using combinators and such and only dispatching the exact number needed based on signals received from the networks. Of course he is going to have to string wire to them all. Be interesting to watch it develop.

I am going to try your naming convention on the stations and able or disable them based upon how much is stored. Baby steps for me, my first railworld and first time I've used stackers and trains bigger than 2-4.

[vanatteveldt]

Current game I have biters off (0.15) so I don't worry about defense. What I want to do is minimize manual labour to be able to get outposts up and running quickly.

I build using my personal roboport 3 train stops (PAX, supply, ore) with default names for supply and ore. Both are disabled if unneeded, e.g. no supplies needed or no ore available.

I use a local roboport network with 50 or so construction bots that build up the mining operations. Mines are organized into rows that output on belts. The belts empty into provider chests, and logistic bots do the "last mile" from the provider chests to the station. This has 2 huge advantages: no custom routing, everything is stamping down blueprints; and no balancing problems.

After I build the train stops I can leave and stamp down the rest remotely from the map screen. There is a supply train that automatically runs to all outpost that need supplies and I never visit an outpost again. Of course there is some inefficiency as unneeded supplies are left at the outpost, but I don't really care - a single field will produce 10M+ ore, so the investment is all marginal except for my own player time.

Trains are automated as well, there are just N trains that go from ore drop to ore outpost, and all outposts share the same name and activate when they have ore available. Of course, there is some waste here as well as ore can run out while they are en route, but all that is wasting is an engine, the fuel, and rail capacity, none of which are scarce (rail capacity in the main base is extremely scarce, but not on the outpost lines...)

[Tricorius]

Current game I have biters off (0.15) so I don't worry about defense. What I want to do is minimize manual labour to be able to get outposts up and running quickly.

I’m assuming you are stringing power along your lines if you’re running supply trains? Or are you producing power locally at the outposts?

I’m intrigued by botting the resources to the train station. Pretty brilliant. Honestly the station belt spaghetti is the part of outpost building I like the least. As you say, this avoids all the annoying balancers needed to get a train loading efficiently. And I expect would go very smoothly on my “OCD”. I’m just imagining all the nice clean lines and arrays of chests.

Yes, this would integrate marvelously with my auto-building stations. I do something similar to what I think you’re doing. I have a set of overlaying blueprints. I can stamp down the basic rail entrance / exit which includes the “supply” station. I can then set the train I’m riding (using manual control of my “construction” train—basically a 2-4 with consist for quickly building an outpost). I then set the train to auto which allows it to pull into the station, unload the basic outpost needs (which includes bots that get auto-loaded into the core roboport—part of that initial blueprint). I can then stamp down whichever blueprints are needed depending on the type of outpost. But I’ve always had to “glue” my stations together to the mining belt array with an appropriate n-m belt balancer. This would get rid of the manual glue phase.

It’s too bad vanilla doesn’t have a roboport wagon that can lay its own rails. :: cough ... devs ... cough ::

Again, brilliant.

[vanatteveldt]

I’m assuming you are stringing power along your lines if you’re running supply trains? Or are you producing power locally at the outposts?

I’m intrigued by botting the resources to the train station. Pretty brilliant. Honestly the station belt spaghetti is the part of outpost building I like the least. As you say, this avoids all the annoying balancers needed to get a train loading efficiently. And I expect would go very smoothly on my “OCD”. I’m just imagining all the nice clean lines and arrays of chests.

Yes, this would integrate marvelously with my auto-building stations. I do something similar to what I think you’re doing. I have a set of overlaying blueprints. I can stamp down the basic rail entrance / exit which includes the “supply” station. I can then set the train I’m riding (using manual control of my “construction” train—basically a 2-4 with consist for quickly building an outpost). I then set the train to auto which allows it to pull into the station, unload the basic outpost needs (which includes bots that get auto-loaded into the core roboport—part of that initial blueprint). I can then stamp down whichever blueprints are needed depending on the type of outpost. But I’ve always had to “glue” my stations together to the mining belt array with an appropriate n-m belt balancer. This would get rid of the manual glue phase.

It’s too bad vanilla doesn’t have a roboport wagon that can lay its own rails. :: cough ... devs ... cough ::

Again, brilliant.

Thanks

Yeah I do indeed just provide power to the outpost with power lines. I didn't consider shipping steam, somehow I assumed you wouldn't be able to ship it. I would love to build a compact power station per outpost, but the water requirement is putting me off.

I'm currently traveling and don't have factorio, I'll post some pictures when I get home - but it does sound indeed like our approaches are quite similar. I just use FARL for outpost building since it gets really old to paste blueprints for rails for longer distances.

BTW I tried a fully botted outpost first but I have pretty big ore patches (>10M per patch) so the distances get pretty big and the bots just couldn't keep up, and I don't really feel like shipping 10k bots per outpost. Using belts to get the ore to the station and then using bots for the last mile seems a good compromise, bots are really efficient on short-distance high-throughput tasks...