scale out efficiently?

[blacksun777]

I am stuck! I don't want to redo everything by hand and I have no more short term goal.

Technical problems

How do I scale out my Factory, meaning double production like iron or double space for the bus without needing to place everything by hand again? I made construction robots but I can not find where to research blueprints or where to create them (in the tutorial the *magically* appear in the inventory). Basically I want some CAD tools for the game Moving stuff around and automatically reconnect belts and stuff.

I also want to avoid Overproduction:
I want to feed my turrets with ammo but they are far away and apart, its just bad design when you have an overly full ammo belt to them right? Can I prevent expensive product belts from filling up efficiently? I don't want a kilometer of science packs working as a useless buffer.
This is why I do not want to automate production of end products: It will just stall the factory.

Is this the game play loop

I have played 47 hours of the game. I would like to explore it, I do not want to look at youtube videos for hours to find out how big I have to layout my base from the start so I can avoid this *space lock down* (also the walking omg). I feel this could be a fun game but at the moment I do not want to start over and over again because I made a mistake at the beginning (not enough space/ bad layout / did not know about main bus)

*space lock down* basically the connections and everything is so cramped and not fun to work with anymore, changes are only painful and time consuming/repetitive. I would need to start a new factory.

Intermediate goals?

Also I have no Idea what I should focus on now. I just got oil and the stuff to make the robots but now I can research so many things and it seems like there is not an interesting way forward. Just more science packs and time wasting? Maybe that is why the campaign stooped with the plastic: the rest is slow and repetitive.

I rally feel I am missing something here, that's why I post.

[Koub]

Blank blueprints can be crafted by clicking the 'new blueprint' button in the blueprints dialog. This dialog is opened by pressing B or clicking the blueprint icon above the mini-map.

The blank blueprint can now be used to 'copy' a set of buildings.

Source :
https://wiki.factorio.com/Blueprint

Factorio - Not so obvious blueprint library icon.jpg (18.8 KiB) Viewed 4858 times

[mrvn]

To prevent endless belts full of backlogged items you can use circuit logic. Have a small buffer at the end of the belt with a wire connected. Extend that wire all the way to the producer and connect it to an inserter there. Then set the inserter to only put e.g. an oil refinery from the assembler onto the belt when "oil refinery < 10". That way it will produce until 10 oil refineries have reached the end of the belt and then wait for you to consume them. Note: You will probably get 11-14 oil refineries because those currently on the belt aren't counted.

When you have roboports you can also use the logistics network instead of wire connections and provider chests. No long belts needed at all. Set the inserter to refill the provider chest when "oil refinery < 10". That way if you deconstruct oil refineries and they end up in storage chests they count as available too.

Another way of avoiding endless belt buffers are train stations. Although they incur some buffering themself too.


Here is another tip: Don't destroy and rebuild your existing factory, build another, bigger one. Why build the existing smelter, where you ahve no space for more belts, bigger when you can simply build a second where you have more space?

[zOldBulldog]

A couple ideas in response to your questions:

1) what to do?
- Blueprints. Factorioprints.com has a lot, and you can sort by popularity.
- Nuclear power. Research it early and setup assemblers to produce enough materials for at least a 4-reactor plant or two. You will need that much power. Wait until you have kovarex and spent fuel reprocessing (yellow science) before trying to setup your first power plant. There are early plant designs... but it is not worth the trouble.
- Science. Get up to yellow science. There are several things there that make playing much less manually annoying.

2) Avoiding restarts.
- Trains!
- Make smaller outposts that each do one or few jobs. Use trains to deliver the goods. For example, a smelting Outpost. An Outpost that takes in raw materials (or better yet oil, water, iron and copper plate, coal) and produces all the products in the oil tree like plastic, lubricant, sulfuric acid, batteries, solid and rocket fuel, and explosives. An Outpost to make circuits. An Outpost to produce and research science in large quantities. Once you have those and your bots are fast and many you can quickly recycle parts of the base around the bus and create a mall that supplies you with all the products... Via logistic bots of course! And when you are done... Make an Outpost that makes and launches rockets.

Problem solved

[evopwr]

Turrets,
For the reasons you're finding, I only use gun turrets in the starting phase of the game, and once I have got far enough, I do laser turrets alternating with flame turrets. Having gun turrets reloaded with bullets (either by belt, or bots), is just annoying. Especially once you get to a very large base. Robots start dying from flying in to biters, and so on. Or a belt going around a large base (like the size of your minimap), is just ridiculous. Trains are another option, but again, for supplying bullets, I thought was silly. Hence laser and flame combo worked really well.

So every 10-15 squares I have a flame turret, then 10-15 more squares a laser turret, then a flame turret, etc.
I use oil to feed the flame turrets, using underground pipes, and of course I have a single layer concrete wall as well. In addition, because lasers are very heavy on power, I also have an accumulator next to each laser. It can be quite expensive, and you'd want to automate the construction using blueprints and robots, but you'll hardly ever have a breach, and once you research more damage, they'll never get in.

I would share the blueprint, but I'm at work at the moment.

Whats Next,
Have you got blue science and grey science yet? If not, I'd say get those running. Then look at purple science.
If you start having power problems, I'd suggest looking at nuclear (unless you're just going full-on solar).
If you're going to do nuclear, I'd suggest farming the uranium ore now, and get it converted to uranium-235/238, and it takes a few hours to get 40 uranium-235, which you need for kovarex enrichment later.

Good luck,

[Mr. Tact]

You have played 47 hours and you are worried about rebuilding? That's half the game if you ask me -- rebuilding stuff better/more efficient. When using a main bus design, you can make it easier to expand by only putting assemblers on one side of the bus. That way the bus can always be expanded.

Lasers solve the ammo problems.

[zOldBulldog]

When using a main bus design, you can make it easier to expand by only putting assemblers on one side of the bus. That way the bus can always be expanded.

True, although by using an 8 bands of 4 belts (or pipes) each from my first bus I never felt the need for more. Actually, I had space left over. So I tend to build on both sides.

Of course, that does not include the short mini-bus that feeds 6 belts of copper and 4 of iron plates to my Green Circuit line. (assuming I build GC at the base)

[Mr. Tact]

Yeah, in Vanilla or minimally modded that is plenty. When you go full Bob's and Angel's... that might not be enough. Although with Angel's early bots you can pretty much skip the bus and go straight to a bot based base. Which with the extra complexity works out better anyway...

[blacksun777]

First of: Thanks for the answers!

Blueprint:

I am silly. But everything else was crafted before.. I think
I tried it with some kind of success. I tried moving around my motor and blue science production. But it took the robots way to long, and some just stopped working all together.. I guess I have to get the hang of the blueprint system first.

Overproduction:

I was guessing logic too. But the one I came up was not that great (A lot of work)

When you have roboports you can also use the logistics network instead of wire connections and provider chests

the logistics network is still far away in research. I can only have provider and storage chests atm.

lock down

2) Avoiding restarts.
- Trains!
- Make smaller outposts that each do one or few jobs. Use trains to deliver the goods. For example, a smelting Outpost. An Outpost that takes in raw materials (or better yet oil, water, iron and copper plate, coal) and produces all the products in the oil tree like plastic, lubricant, sulfuric acid, batteries, solid and rocket fuel, and explosives. An Outpost to make circuits. An Outpost to produce and research science in large quantities. Once you have those and your bots are fast and many you can quickly recycle parts of the base around the bus and create a mall that supplies you with all the products... Via logistic bots of course! And when you are done... Make an Outpost that makes and launches rockets.
Problem solved

I will try to do the new sub factory somewhere else thing. Outposts don't sound cramped

putting assemblers on one side of the bus.

Yeah that makes sense... although then you end up with a long base (maybe explains the ship at the start of Spaceballs )

Turret

no good solution just go lazer... okay... pew pew pew

Whats next

Hmm okay going for nuclear I guess. I have the military black science and the blue science, but because the blue science needs a refinery my base ended up in shambles. Maybe going to outpost that one first then move on.

Thanks yall

[zOldBulldog]

Also, don"t give up on robots.

- early robots are terrible, but notice the speed and cargo capacity upgrades in the research. By the time you are at yellow science they are good, and with rocket launches you get space science that allows infinite robot upgrades.. And the become amazing. Yes, the game does not end at the launch

- There is strength in numbers. 1000 robots of each do wonders. And with some smart design your assemblers can make them and deploy them through a roboport automatically. Make and forget.

- Again at yellow science you get some nice armor, a couple portable nuclear reactors, 4 or more portable roboports and over 100 robots on you... And reconstructing stuff becomes nearly instantaneous.


Moral of the story: Sticking to a game instead of restarting can really pay off.

Also (and thank you to Eradicator for this bit of insight) if you eventually build your main train track in a very long line and mine ores along it, you will reach bigger and bigger ore deposits. So eventually you will be making fewer and bigger mines that last for a very long time before you have to replace them.