Oktokolo wrote: Wed Nov 20, 2019 12:49 am
mr_fancy_pants wrote: Tue Nov 19, 2019 2:43 am
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It looks to me like you have layd a fine grid of rails over the entire continent!
But why?
A cell size of three smelter columns is way too small to be of any use. Enlarge the cells four times near your base and even more further out. Then you can expand as much as you want without train pathfinding becomming an issue.
Glad you asked, quite a lot of reasons actually! My rail grid blueprint has Roboports, power, radar and an optimally signalled junction on each corner built in (and is sized based on max Roboport range), so let's look at the benefits:
0) No more "oops, I didn't leave enough room for x" - the cardinal sin of Factorio (see below for further explanation).
1) Highly redundant power everywhere. No more "Oops, I accidentally removed the single power pole that was connecting half of the base to power". No more shuffling random power poles around that are in the way of your big blueprint placements.
2) Roboport coverage everywhere. Everything gets repaired/(re)built/etc without needing to worry about connecting networks or coverage. Also, bots don't get stuck flying over large uncovered areas - in particular, consider capturing a large area for resources but only having roboports around your mining outposts and your perimeter wall. No more shuffling random Roboports around that are in the way of your big blueprint placements.
3) Rail coverage everywhere (with already constructed junctions!). Need more resources? Rails are right there already! Want to send yourself somewhere fast? Use a temporary train stop, rails are already there!
4) No manual rail signals required while still keeping rail sections reasonably sized. In OpenTTD, you can lay down rails from point A to B with signals automagically placed at predefined distances. Factorio kinda has this with blueprints, but it breaks down fast if your rails aren't 100% straight. Manually signalling something you plopped down with the rail planner is extremely awful at anything beyond trivial scales. Not signalling it leaves you a grossly non-optimal rail network in terms of rail bandwidth.
5) Full radar coverage everywhere! Zoom to view makes this infinitely awesome.
6) Rail bandwidth that massively exceeds that of a single rail line. This is a real concern with a decent number of trains.
7) Built in stackers around train stations. Due to the built in redundancy, it's rarely necessary to build proper stackers at larger train stops to avoid gridlock.
8) Build free standing designs that fit inside a standard rail grid and put them anywhere! Have a bigger design? Use more rail grids and still put them anywhere! I have built entire bases like this with everything hooked together via rail or skynet, and it is very awesome (mostly not pictured in this base (with the rather large exception of solar) because I opted for a pure main bus design).
9) Spam as much solar as you want without worrying about it getting in the way. Note that I have ~345k solar panels and ~289k accumulators deployed without getting in the way of anything.
10) Expand your rails in any direction at any time without having to worry about whether they're going to hook back up again nicely with your network on the other end, because all rail expansion happens in grids at a time.
I have built a lot of megabases and I have faced all of the above problems many times. This is not the first solution I've come up with, but it is by far the best solution I've come up with so far. I've probably missed a few benefits, but the above list will have to do for now.
You suggested larger grids, but that's not necessary from a gameplay perspective as you can simply merge multiple smaller grids into a larger one if you need more space. Conversely, splitting a bigger grid into smaller ones works markedly less well for a variety of reasons. Larger grids are also harder to fit nicely on the map without covering up resources, running through perimeter walls, requiring extensive landfilling, etc. Make the grids too large and your bots will start getting stuck too.
