Development and Discussion

[Light]

Even if I stopped replying to every comment, I read everything that is posted here, the subforum, pinged in discord or even on reddit. So yes I have read your comment, I'm considering a change but I have no brilliant idea at the moment how to handle it. It might be part of bio processing though, instead of just turning wood into resin, you may have to find, grow and sap certain trees for an initial production of resin. The problem is probably also dependent on playstyle since most of the time I'm drowning in wood, even in a desert start.
Later on you are supposed to use the chemical route through petrochem. The update for bio processing will take quiet a while because of all the additions and changes I'm making, so dont expect a bug free version next week.

I didn't intend to come across as harsh, which I do admit it seems to come across that way. Simply undoing the resin change was all that was expected until you do come up with a better option which will be better thought out.

I will however question how you could drown in wood when playstyle isn't entirely relevant thanks to science packs.

To create 100 blue science packs you require 337.5 wood with the new 5 wood per 1 resin recipe. Using wood to create the plastic will add another 250 wood to this already rather sizable demand. This naturally doesn't include the wood requirements in other recipes, such as the very important basic electronic boards used in pretty much everything. (87.5 wood per 100 basic electronic boards)

Removing that resin change gave a lot of breathing room back, allowing you to hunt trees occasionally rather than becoming a full time lumberjack just to make some progress.

[jodokus31]

Removing that resin change gave a lot of breathing room back, allowing you to hunt trees occasionally rather than becoming a full time lumberjack just to make some progress.

In the meantime:
The problem disappears, if you use the greenhouse. But is a matter of taste to use it. I even didn't recognize that wood is a problem.
Regarding early plastic, you can use green algae from crushed stone and coal.
Or even dip into petrochem early on. By the time you want to research blue science, you already have many possibilities here. f.e. resin/synthetic wood from naphta.

I never tried it without a greenhouse, so my assumptions may lack of reality.

[foodfactorio]

hi, in my angel+bobs solo, i made 2 different woodfarm areas for wood.
i expanded with more later but main setup was this:

1 was a mini, 4 farm self-repleninishing greenhouses, (with a belt to carry wood around, but with a 50% splitter to take wood to make resin, and the other half went to the wood belt area. (this also got a splitter to send 50% to the wooden boards, and rest (25%) to an assembler to make saplings again...which went to the auto feeding belt into greenhouses to repeat the cycle)

the other farm was made near the oil processing area, where i used fertiliser and gasses to grow wood in greenhouses more quickly)

then i made some more with help of logistic robots as i progressed - i might have a screenshot somewhere too

[foodfactorio]

the 2nd quick farm goes straight into a chemplant to make coal + creosote oil
and that coal feeds into another to make solid fuel + creosote oil
+ all that creosote oil is used to make solid fuel

and look at how much i managed to make (including some compressed cubes)
to make 54 rockets per hour, just over a minute each

[Wildejackson]

Is it possible to employ the bob's containers in the current omnibarrel system? Because it seems simple enough to run a search at startup for "*gas" and change the barreling recipe to use gas bottles. I feel like the same could also be done with *acid and canisters

[Termak]

Have you considered balancing the smelting times of when using multiple different ingots, it just feels weird having 2-3times throughput when you use iron etc alloys.
Or maybe keep ratios/times and tune the ingot/molten metal amounts.

[ridesdragons]

Have you considered balancing the smelting times of when using multiple different ingots, it just feels weird having 2-3times throughput when you use iron etc alloys.
Or maybe keep ratios/times and tune the ingot/molten metal amounts.

the purpose of the advanced smelting recipes is to increase throughput while simultaneously reducing the amount of X resource used. normally I'd agree with you because clogged belts, but these recipes output to pipes. so long as you use a short enough pipe, enough casting machines, or a bunch of pumps/bigger pipes, you should never suffer from resource backup. fluid mechanics are weird. there are no downsides to this increase in throughput where other processes would suffer from no belt in existence being capable of dealing with it lol. also, these recipes run at the opportunity cost of not being able to use your nickel or silicon for something else (mostly silicon, nickel doesn't seem to be needed for too much) and requiring multiple belts to feed into the casting furnace instead of just one (I run the belts between 2 rows of melting stations and have the pipes on the outside, so a full belt of ingots is preferable to a split belt of 2 different ingots, which means in the case of iron+nickel+silicon, that's 3 belts). there's also the reasoning that, while it outputs 3 times the amount as before, it also consumes 3 times the amount as before (instead of 1 blast furnace, you now need 3. one for each different ingot, but still). throughput only increases if you increase the input, in which case it's natural to also increase the output so as to handle the increased flow.

though that's just me

[Termak]

Im not talking about resource effectiveness but actual throughput items/second. I like the increased production but getting 2 and 3 times the product for same amount of time just feels bit too much. I am not suffering from it either. The same time is used through very basic alloys like bronze1 and solder1 all the way to the 3 ingot rank3 stuff. In base and bobs the smelting times go up when the amount of stuff increases to make it more balanced.

[jodokus31]

Im not talking about resource effectiveness but actual throughput items/second. I like the increased production but getting 2 and 3 times the product for same amount of time just feels bit too much. I am not suffering from it either. The same time is used through very basic alloys like bronze1 and solder1 all the way to the 3 ingot rank3 stuff. In base and bobs the smelting times go up when the amount of stuff increases to make it more balanced.

Its indeed a bit strange, that it takes 4 sec. to craft 120 molten iron from iron ingots and 4 sec. to craft 360 molten iron from iron, cobalt and nickel ingots.
It reduces the amounts of induction furnaces needed.

[aklesey1]

Why we can't use concrete bricks and reinforced concrete bricks o build more strong walls?

[Arch666Angel]

Some more eye candy from tinkering around.

[Sedar]

looks cool!
/a little worried about UPS

[Zyrconia]

In my latest map I barely reached green science and blue is still far away, but I can't stop thinking about plastic already.

I'm starting to think that the full Petrochem setup that uses mostly natural gas and a bit of oil and has 20 by-products is more of a late game setup. Am I right?

What setup do you use for just plastic in the early game? Is there something you can set up quickly early game to give you some plastic or should I go with the full setup and many pressure tanks for the by-products that you can't use without blue science or higher?

[ridesdragons]

In my latest map I barely reached green science and blue is still far away, but I can't stop thinking about plastic already.

I'm starting to think that the full Petrochem setup that uses mostly natural gas and a bit of oil and has 20 by-products is more of a late game setup. Am I right?

What setup do you use for just plastic in the early game? Is there something you can set up quickly early game to give you some plastic or should I go with the full setup and many pressure tanks for the by-products that you can't use without blue science or higher?

there's an angel's petrochem tutorial video I saw, and yea, basically, until you reach later technologies, you're gonna want to store it. and when you get a large amount of storage that you can't use up, then you should void it. that said, I think it might be better to barrel it rather than stick it in storage containers. unless you're using pumps, storage containers will never be full until everything connected to them is full. you also can't sent it long range unless you use a fluid tanker. barreling allows you to easily store large quantities and still be able to ship it to wherever it needs to go, either by train or by logistics bots. the video in particular heavily recommends barreling, since you can space out each step and reduce the spaghetti, making petrochem much less of a nightmare to worry about

here's the first video of the tutorial. in one of the videos, it explains plastic in particular (I think the 3rd), which should answer your question of how to get plastic early game. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DZqDdK ... nel=Nilaus

[BlakeMW]

What setup do you use for just plastic in the early game? Is there something you can set up quickly early game to give you some plastic or should I go with the full setup and many pressure tanks for the by-products that you can't use without blue science or higher?

Usually in the early game I use natural gas to make plastics and store the unusable gases, you don't have a heap of choice really. Later on you can crack all kinds of oil to synthesis gas then convert the synthesis gas to methanol, so in the mid game oil is a really good feedstock for plastic with no real waste (unlike natural gas, which will still require storing or venting one of the gas fractions). Once you've unlocked most the techs you can utilize all the gas fractions to make plastic and at higher efficiency than the basic plastic recipe.

[Northgate]

Could someone explain me how sheet coils are supposed to be used? I tried to calculate ratios but couldn't find a way to get a benefit from them.

[fractalman]

Could someone explain me how sheet coils are supposed to be used? I tried to calculate ratios but couldn't find a way to get a benefit from them.

Sheet coils are nice if you want to ship a lot of stuff more efficiently, at the small cost of needing to unpack them wherever they're needed.

[Northgate]

So they're iron sheet coils are basically compressed iron, that you have to uncompress again to get access to it? But they don't provide any benefits otherwise?

[torne]

Yes, exactly. It's just a way to pack more metal into the same space for transport purposes, nothing else.

[Zyrconia]

Could someone explain me how sheet coils are supposed to be used? I tried to calculate ratios but couldn't find a way to get a benefit from them.

Sheet coils are nice if you want to ship a lot of stuff more efficiently, at the small cost of needing to unpack them wherever they're needed.

Holly shit!

Do you imagine what this can do for trains?

Maybe you don't even need trains anymore .