Awkward Building Constraints
Posted: Mon Aug 24, 2015 11:21 am
What's worse than being stranded on a planet infested with ravenous beasts, with only a few bits of iron and the ability to craft universal assembly machines with your bare hands? Being forced to build those machines in accordance with strict and awkward layout rules! Actually it's a lot more fun than you might imagine.
Currently I'm labouring under the following conditions:
1. The mono-factory: Every assembler and smelter that can produce a particular product must be touching another which produces the same thing. Only ONE such group is allowed for each product in the factory. Note, every machine in the group must be capable of producing, ie it must have valid inputs and outputs, but it doesn't have to be running if there is insufficient throughput. You may add that as a condition for extra challenge.
2. The sqare-factory: Every group of assemblers or smelters must be arranged such that its most extremities lie on a square. They don't have to form a complete square, but all machines must fit within a square, with at least one machine touching each side. You'll see form the pictures what this means. It's really to avoid long straight lines of machines, which are boring.
3. The packed-factory: unused space within the square of machines must be minimized. pack in as many machines as possible.
The choice to avoid or rely on long handed inserters makes a big difference to the layouts. I generally avoid them for the sake of throughput, but more symmetric and aesthetically pleasing layouts may be obtainable using them. Perfect symmetry is not a goal here. I'm not OCD about such things. If you are, go for it. I'm sure the results will be beautiful.
This is what I have so far. This is just early experimentation with layouts. I'm playing on peaceful and not really trying to build a complete factory.
Basic 8 smelter square Packing 17 smelters in a 4 by 4 square Basic 4 assembler block Coil and circuits. The coil assemblers are still technically within a square. I'm not claiming this is a sensible ratio or anything. This is NOT about the sensible way to build anything! However, with some fast belt, this will run all the circuit assembler at a good rate. A nice symmetric 8 assembler layout with 2 fast inputs per machine. Not sure what to use this for yet. I'm pretty new to all this, so I'm sure others can do way better.
Currently I'm labouring under the following conditions:
1. The mono-factory: Every assembler and smelter that can produce a particular product must be touching another which produces the same thing. Only ONE such group is allowed for each product in the factory. Note, every machine in the group must be capable of producing, ie it must have valid inputs and outputs, but it doesn't have to be running if there is insufficient throughput. You may add that as a condition for extra challenge.
2. The sqare-factory: Every group of assemblers or smelters must be arranged such that its most extremities lie on a square. They don't have to form a complete square, but all machines must fit within a square, with at least one machine touching each side. You'll see form the pictures what this means. It's really to avoid long straight lines of machines, which are boring.
3. The packed-factory: unused space within the square of machines must be minimized. pack in as many machines as possible.
The choice to avoid or rely on long handed inserters makes a big difference to the layouts. I generally avoid them for the sake of throughput, but more symmetric and aesthetically pleasing layouts may be obtainable using them. Perfect symmetry is not a goal here. I'm not OCD about such things. If you are, go for it. I'm sure the results will be beautiful.
This is what I have so far. This is just early experimentation with layouts. I'm playing on peaceful and not really trying to build a complete factory.
Basic 8 smelter square Packing 17 smelters in a 4 by 4 square Basic 4 assembler block Coil and circuits. The coil assemblers are still technically within a square. I'm not claiming this is a sensible ratio or anything. This is NOT about the sensible way to build anything! However, with some fast belt, this will run all the circuit assembler at a good rate. A nice symmetric 8 assembler layout with 2 fast inputs per machine. Not sure what to use this for yet. I'm pretty new to all this, so I'm sure others can do way better.