So how's your OCD doing?

[Bauer]

Hit F4, "show tile grid" --> see chunks marked on map --> place radar --> F4 to switch off "show tile grid"

[Trebor]

Hit F4, "show tile grid" --> see chunks marked on map --> place radar --> F4 to switch off "show tile grid"

Now I don’t have to pause the game! That makes my OCD a little more bearable, but is that a good thing?

[HurkWurk]

Hit F4, "show tile grid" --> see chunks marked on map --> place radar --> F4 to switch off "show tile grid"

was going to suggest the same. i mostly play with grid on. it also helps when placing factories, etc, so that you dont have update issues where one machine or pipe in a series is in a different chunk so updated differently. etc.

i play with a lot of mods, so it also matters for power. I tend to place mark 3 sub stations on the corner of every chunk, and stop using power poles at all inside my walls.

[Trebor]

I tend to place mark 3 sub stations on the corner of every chunk, and stop using power poles at all inside my walls.

That's very different from what I've done. I use a lot of power switches so I've got power poles all over the place so power only goes where it should and doesn't leak between units.

[Trebor]

So chunks are 32 tile wide and large power poles span 30 tiles. If you place a large pole on one edge of a chunk and go as far as you can before placing the next it will just reach the other side of the chunk. What this means is if you want chunk aligned rail AND you want your large poles on their natural grid all your chunk aligned rail/power blueprints need to be 16x16 chunks!

[Trebor]

I've been thinking about my next factory. I'm thinking rail world with each production unit being walled and self solar powered. Each unit should be aligned on chunk boundaries with two or more chunks separating them. The rail will probably be on a grid of 16 chunks between crossings (see prior post).

[HurkWurk]

I tend to place mark 3 sub stations on the corner of every chunk, and stop using power poles at all inside my walls.

That's very different from what I've done. I use a lot of power switches so I've got power poles all over the place so power only goes where it should and doesn't leak between units.

yea, i've never worked with having sections of my factory "off" before. the only time ive played with power switches was when i tried to design a battery bank with a steam turbine charging system if available accumulators ran below 20%, but even that i just scrapped and laid down more solar and accumulators.

[Trebor]

It's done, here is the base designed by an idiot with OCD:

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A small base by many standards.

I was going to have an unit that created everything in the game, but then I built a robot item mall and ran into water I didn't want to land fill and 0.18 is coming out soon. It doesn't quite do the 60 science/minute it was designed to do, at least not sustainably.

The steam power plant doesn't have all the steam engines it was sized for since nothing is currently running out of power.

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The solar panels in the above image are radar units that are too close to the permitter defenses.

I found some simple statistics helped in finding problems: #units being requested to produce, #units producing, #units that are short resources, #units without power:

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That last one determined when to add steam engines to the power grid. For various reasons the numbers don't always add up. And sometimes they flat out lie, but it was better than nothing.

I added lights for these statistics at each unit, that also helped find which unit was having problems by zipping back and forth in map mode.

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This unit (Batteries/accumulators) is being asked to produce (right green light), and is producing (left green light). The right (resources missing) and left (power < 10%) red lights are off (the way we want them). Each unit has one of these control circuits to control the power switch and request resources. Note the unit requests resources when below a limit and stops working when below a lower limit. To prevent power cycling a timer is started so a unit is guaranteed to work for a minimum time. Each unit has two power zones: to the south is permanent power via accumulators for the control circuit and buffer inserters and barreling, to the north is the main unit's production via a power switch. Also note oil and mining are not considered production units so use a simpler power management, though oil does isolate via accumulators.

Science also uses a simple power management. Science determines when research is being done to turn on labs and turns on each science pack when it's low. Note resources for science packs are belted in on north 16 wide belt.

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I found by placing belt gates every few poles a way to get a good response without having to fill the belts. When the resource is produced 1000s of tiles away when an item is requested production is started and items are added to the end of the belt but before the item travels the full belt length an item closer gets released to fulfill the request.

The next base will be in 0.18, rail world modular. Each unit will be walled in and self powered (solar).

[Locane]

Your base is fucking incredible. I thought I was thinking big making 4 rows of 15 electric furnaces.... how wrong I was.

I clicked in to this thread because yeah - this game is an OCD person's nightmare / heaven.

[Trebor]

For scale, just realize this base was having trouble doing 1 science pack a second but some mega-bases do 100s per second.

[JimBarracus]

My wall has a minor flaw.

I noticed too late that underground pipes for the flame throwers leave a gap of 9 tiles.
Now I have to redo everything to fill the gaps with laser turrets and shorten the gap length to 8.

I also wanted to create blueprints for my wall setup and share them with you.
There are not that many threads about walls.

[Trebor]

There are not that many threads about walls.

Try searches on "dragon teeth".

[Light]

It not only takes me several hours to do a single design, but it has also worsened my OCD in reality as well.

I completely redid my office space to be more functional, I've now started to use more macros for automation than I used to, and I see flaws almost everywhere I go which makes me twitch at the fact I can't do anything about it.

Previously when visiting a family friends house I used to not care about the state of the place, but today it drives me insane seeing such a disastrous mess before me. They think it's fine, but boy does it bother me.

Be careful that your heightened OCD doesn't ruin friendships outside of the game.

[Bauer]

So chunks are 32 tile wide and large power poles span 30 tiles. If you place a large pole on one edge of a chunk and go as far as you can before placing the next it will just reach the other side of the chunk. What this means is if you want chunk aligned rail AND you want your large poles on their natural grid all your chunk aligned rail/power blueprints need to be 16x16 chunks!

There is another option: Make your design block a multiple of 32 tiles.
I suggest 4 or 7, because of radar coverage. "7" is obvious, "4" because it will allow you to place a blueprint for the next chunk in map view. That can be done with "7" with temporary radars.

[Trebor]

I'm thinking of building walled units of 4/9 chunks. That way a group of 6x3 will fit into a rail grid of 32 chunks. Something like this:

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I know it will not be the fastest for loading/unloading trains but the larger the station the less room for production. This has alternating run/laser turrets and logistic coverage of everything within the perimeter belt. The two stations in the upper left will be for supplies (ammo, walls etc) and a garbage pickup (for when I empty my logistics slots).

The rail configuration may change, I'm currently contemplating LCCCCCCC (speed is not important).

[quyxkh]

(If anyone has a prettier self powered setup I could be persuaded to change.)

Turns out six accumulators is enough for a radar:

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[Trebor]

It’s prettier but my calculations say its 5 seconds without power.

[quyxkh]

I did test this, the accumulators don't go below 1.8MJ.

[Trebor]

By actually building it, it looks like you are right 6 accumulators are enough. This make me wonder what is wrong with my math. The radar uses 300k, one solar panel produces 60k so 5 solar panels are needed for day time use with nothing left over to charge accumulators for night time. For night power we need accumulators and extra solar panels. Accumulators can supply 300k for 17 seconds (or as measured 16.66666), so the question is how many 17 seconds are in the sunset + night + sunrise interval? Since sunset and sunrise have partial light I've treated them as half full day and half full night (a simplification I've seen several places). These are the numbers I've used:

• Day 208.33
• Sunset 83.33
• Night 41.66
• Sunrise 83.33
• Total 416.65

• Solar available 291.66
• No solar power 124.99
• Total 416.65

124.99/17 = 7.5 accumulators + 2.5 additional solar panels to charge them (8 total).

So why does are these numbers not matching what is observed in the game?

Whatever the problem is it also effects the spreadsheet here:
viewtopic.php?f=134&t=63729

[Trebor]

Well this sucks. I just did a preliminary power calculation on my proposed production unit with nothing in it but a scattering of inserters (for trains), roboports, and laser turrets. According to this I need 5478 solar panels and 5751 accumulators just for these few items (add everything in column 5 [power] and 7 [drain]).

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Total area of unit 4x9x(32x32) = 36864
Area of solar panels 5478x3x3 = 49302