Factorio Forums

(picture with hand-colored resource colors for the most important flows)

Ore stations are on the left and right and unload into rows of smelters:
Iron
On the left, 2x3 stations unload iron ore onto 6x8=48 blue belts of iron, which are smelted by 3360 smelters to support green circuits (32 belts), gears (6 belts), blue science (3.5 belts), engines (4 belts including steel), and other science and sattelite (1.5 belts), for in total 45 belts consumed of out 48.

Copper
Copper is produced on the left and top right. The 3360 smelters on the left produce 6x8=48 belts of copper which are all consumed by green circuit production, while the 1120 smelters on the top right produce 16 more belts which are used for red circuits (10), yellow science (2.67 belts), LDS (1.33) and red science, sulfur+batteries, and sattelite (one yellow belt each).

Steel
Steel is produced directly from ore on the right. In total, 1680 iron and 1680 steel smetlers convert 3x8 belts of iron ore into 4.5 blue belts of steel, which are divided over LDS (2.7 belts), purple science (1.67 belts), and sattelite production (half a yellow belt). Note: Steel for engines is produced on-site to even out balancing between iron ore for iron plates and steel.

Circuits
32 belts of iron and 48 belts of copper are turned into 32 belts of green circuits by 1280 assemblers, which are used for red circuits (10 belts), blue circuits (16 belts), sp1 production (2 belts), and science and sattelites (3 belts in total).
Next, blocks of 8 cable plants and 48 red circuit plants each convert 1200 green, plastic, and copper per minute into 600 red circuits. In total 20 such setups produce the needed 5 blue belts of circuits, which go to blue circuits (1.67 belts), sp1 (2 belts), and purple and blue science.
Finally, 16 blue belts of green circuits and some red circuits go into blue circuit production to produce not even a single blue belt of blue circuits (1852/m).

(It's kind of interesting how producing this trickle of blue circuits requires in total 74k copper ore and 44k iron ore per minute... probably about half my base is there purely to produce these circuits..)

Oil
Finally, oil is brought in with a single station serving 6-wagon crude trains. Each wagon unloads into a column of 50 refineries, with 1 column uncracked to produce the lube needed for purple science, 1 column cracked to light to produce the rocket fuel (toghether with the LO from the first column), and the remainder producing PG, mostly for plastic (260k PG/min to produce 26k plastic) and a bit for sulfur (38k PG producting 25k SG, going to batteries and blue circuits). Plastic is mostly consumed by red circuits (22.7k) and a bit by LDS (32.3k).

Production of science packs is pretty smooth, only rocket science is punctuated because rockets launch only when stockpiled packs drop below X, so it has a tendency to launch all rockets at the same time. Without rocket science it looks pretty smooth:



(blue science (the purple line) is not quite right, need to have a look what's going on there)

Helmod plan:

All stations work more or less the same: 2 or 3 unloading bays feeding 8 wagons each into 8-8 balancers, yielding 16/24 belts of ore which are fed into smelters.



Trains are led via a stacker, I generally have 3 trains per bay, so at least 2 stackers per bay. I could have made waiting bays per unloader, but it seems that the delay caused by pathing from the stacker to the unloading bay can be handled by the buffers.

Each wagon contains 2k ore, and a blue belt has 2.4k/min throughput, so a train is required every 50 seconds. 4 stack inserters can unload the required 2.4k ore to the buffer chests in 22 seconds, so there is quite a lot of spare unloading capacity (which gives trains the time to arrive and depart). I use 2-8 trains powered by nuclear fuel everywhere except crude, which is 2-6.

West and East outposts are totally separate. W has highest requirements with 12 unloading bays in total, or 12 * 60 / 50 = 14 trains per minute in total, which is trivial to handle with standard junctions. I guess I need a bigger base to run into train throughput problems this time .

Green:


Red:


Blue:


I wanted to show off the impressive belts carrying green circuits to the blue plants, but what it mostly shows is a production problem with one green stack (missing balancers) and plastic (missing pipe from crackers for 2 of the columns) --- is this base never finished???. Anyway, those responsible have been fired .

Green and red:


Blue:


Purple:


Yellow:

Sattelite and rockets:


Science:


Note: all science have prod3 just so I could build more labs . In total I would need at least 800/2.45=326 labs, added a couple more to allow for insertion. It's a beauty at night because the labs flicker row and column wise, giving a very matrix-y feel to it