Factorio Forums

Hi all - I haven't seen anything like this come through so thought I'd post it for you.
I like building megabases. I DO NOT like building solar farms. So... use the robots.
Here's what I built - I don't recall anymore where I got the base solar farm print from but I love it.
It is a little hard to use but eventually I got the hang of it. However, I got really tired of placing
even those around. So made a bigger blueprint. I had no idea if there was a limit on blueprint size,
and still don't. I'm hoping I'll be able to include it in this post. Pastebin won't work I'm pretty sure.
The size of the blueprint is 1880 x 1485. Yeah, pretty big. But gets the job done. I figure I'll build
at least one more of these - well, the robots will. I did use the Landfill mod to add landfill to it.
Thank you Hadramal for that Landfill Everything mod. You may be happy to know it works on this
blueprint too.
So, the zoomed out map image: Be warned - putting this blueprint into your hand will crush your UPS. Mine drops to somewhere below 5,
usually about 1.2 or so. It makes it very difficult to move around. So, hotbar it - put it into your hand and
shift-click to place it.
First up, you'll want to run around and clear the fog of war for that 1880x1485 area I mentioned.
Drive if you want but I've always found running with exoskeletons and a shotgun to clear the way much faster.
First you'll want to place what I call the foundation. There's a blueprint for that. It includes the various
radar, rails, stations and support infrastructure for building the farm itself. It also includes landfill in it.
Once you've placed that blueprint, you'll probably want to build it out yourself with personal robots and a train
hauling what you need for it. Once this is done and you have radar coverage you can build the actual solar farm.
Run to the midpoint of the area - I placed two steel chests there. Put your mouse right in between the two
chests - hotbar the very large solar farm blueprint; when you can see all blue on the already built stuff, shift-click
the blueprint. Then you'll probably want to start filling up the Solar Drop stations as well as bringing in construction
robots. I end up with upwards of 10k of them by the time this is built. Removing them all from that space
would be a different post I think.
Enjoy!

If you find better ways of doing this, please let me know.
Possibly the developers can work with blueprints like this to make placing them a bit easier. That would be great.
I'm probably forgetting to mention something here... I'll do my best to reply to questions and/or comments.

Yeah.... well, it seems the forum doesn't like the size of my blueprint. It's 10.4 MB and when I try to add it as
an attachment I get a yellow hazard triangle for the Status. Any suggestions anyone? Is there someplace that can
host a 10.5 MB or so blueprint file?
Edit:
I put it on google drive at: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1aOHGP ... xrfCOdsXx6

-Hydra

Personally I use FARL to lay down solar fields. I found this tutorial very helpful

In my current seablock game it looks like this:

I know about FARL but have never used it. I'm one of those die-hard vanilla fans.
I didn't know FARL could build whatever. I always figured it was for building out some rails.
Thanks for the idea though.

Hydra wrote: Tue May 07, 2019 5:54 pm I did use the Landfill mod to add landfill to it. [..] I know about FARL but have never used it. I'm one of those die-hard vanilla fans.

lol! Yeah, trust me - I understand the irony there.

To be clear - I play vanilla, no QOL mods even.
I used the Landfill mod along with the creative mod to add landfill to my blueprint. That's one save.

I also use the creative mod to find out the performance of the various factories and
blueprints I either find/use and build.

For anyone who may be interested in using this or is trying to, I updated the blueprint.
The full blueprint is still available on Google Drive at: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1aOHGP ... xrfCOdsXx6
The Foundation print is also available there now as: https://drive.google.com/open?id=13Hcit ... nfSI8Cxsr3
And the Foundation is attached here: The changes were to make this easier to use:

• The train stations now have disablers - constant combinators that are on and feed in a signal to disable the station until you turn off the combinator and the station then becomes "active" and will begin to function normally. I recommend enabling the western station before the eastern one as this is also where the robots are brought to.

• After your first solar farm is built, or building; you can now more easily begin a second. From the two steel chests in the middle of the blueprint run directly south (or north? - I only did South) exactly 1440 units to place the next blueprint. This way the rails on the top of the blueprint will overlay the ones that are already there.

My second build of this blueprint ended up loading in about 7700 construction robots that I needed to then siphon off after the build was complete.

If anyone figures out the distances for either east or west travel when laying down another blueprint please let me know. The math for the south direction was fairly simple, it's the height of the blueprint minus the height of the four way intersections at the corners to get the rails to line up. As the top rail setup doesn't exactly match the bottom - things like radars are slightly different - there is some small interference when placing a new rail. I may or may not straighten this out some day. If I do I'll update the blueprint and repost.
Enjoy!