Factorio - a factory building game - now with Space Age expansion

[Ironmonk]

A multi-station is a single station for unloading and another for loading lots of different items... for example: a independent Advanced Circuit production line would require copper plate + iron plate + plastic bar... in vanilla you need 3 different stations, one for each item (+1 station for exporting)... with LTN/Cybersyn you have one single station dynamically requesting all 3 (+1 station for exporting)... ideally you use Warehouses to facilitate things, but its doable with regular chests, you will end up with reduced the storage overall though.

EDIT: Actually, in LTN you could have the same station as requester and provider at the same time.

 

[Ironmonk]

IF you have time, you can check these 2 videos below... they are both for LTN and Factorio 1.1.. so right now, they aren't spoilers of anything since its basically deprecated.

 

[Average Manatee]

I can think of two ways to do that:

Option 1:

Cargo wagons can be filtered.

Spoiler

Middle click a spot, select an item, then ctrl right click to copy and then hold down ctrl left click to paste and drag across other cells

Downside here is that you can't have generic trains that can visit any stop, you have to have a specific train that goes to iron/copper/plastic and then to advanced circuits. But it is really nice and easy to set up.

Option 2:
Stations can be stacked.

Spoiler

Downside here is you either need a waiting area for 3 trains, or you need to do circuit logic to only enable one station at a time. Which is pretty easy, just figure out what resource is lowest and activate that stop. This is actually significantly better than your video because I have 6 inserters worth of throughput per good rather than only 3. Of course you could do that with his example if you also had circuitry to dynamically modify the filters on inserters. Also only works up to 4 trains because then the stops will back up to the inserters, though you could have another set of 4 stops behind that.

EDIT: Actually, in LTN you could have the same station as requester and provider at the same time.

Not sure what you mean by this. It's trivial to code it in your train schedule to both wait for goods to be unloaded and wait for advanced circuits to be loaded. It does get messy to put into practice since inputs could back up or outputs could go dry so you'd need some circuitry to handle that, or just have the train depart after x amount of inactivity.

Incidentally I've never thought of trying either of these before, I might do it in the future for stops that don't need much throughput. Lord knows its not like I'm building factories that have a train full of blue circuits that needs to leave every 5s.

 

[Average Manatee]

Played around with parameterization a bit more, turns out you can include formulas in it. But only if you have a constant combinator, which is annoying (and hard to discover). This allows me to do this:

Spoiler

This takes the item as a parameter, gets the total that the station can hold, then sets the priority of the station to 100 * item count / capacity. This helps avoid the constant issue in train-heavy bases where everything is so slow to get going because if you have two stations needing blue circuits the one nearest will be filled up to 76,800 of those blue circuits before the further one gets a visit.

Kinda tempted to restart, put what I know into practice from the start as opposed to tearing things down. I've got much more efficient and easier to manage trains, blueprints, way better planet knowledge (won't be stuck for hours on Gleba). I also won't do the stupid build on the lake thing (takes forever, even if you have landfill the bots are slow), will put more quality in things ASAP, and I'll add the rail world options to my settings (totally slipped my mind that this was a thing, fucking annoying having all these small patches that mine so slowly). I'll also build a better defensive rail network, 9 lasers per big pole rather than 2 and gates around them.

 

[Ironmonk]

I think I finally finished my Rail Block setup, this is the complete block with all segments joined together.

 

[Average Manatee]

Spoiler

Restarted. Early game factorio is just really comfy. Got the rocket up in 10 hours. Wasn't specifically trying to go for the speedrun achievement but I did set a goal for my starter base to have 2x the normal SPM I build and building and supplying that makes you work quick. Considering its deathworld marathon and I spend about a third of my time defending/destroying bases/resupplying its pretty good imo. Also adhering to the other achievement constraints of no laser turrets or solar (solar would take too long but lasers would be useful, starting on them now for easier defense). I'm also using way more power than I have before at this point, 72 MW and that's with efficiency modules on almost everything.

Pushing out ASAP really seems to make deathworld easier. The way it seems to work is that the enemy expansion timer is global and based on evolution (so once every 60 mins at 0 evolution, once every 4 minutes at 1 evolution, once every 32 minutes at 0.5 evolution?). But they choose a random spot, so the more of the map you have revealed, the lower the chance that they'll decide to crowd in your base. So getting to the car/turret spam to push the initial small nests out of your area seems to help. Not sure if having radar helps "activate" map squares or not but I run out big power poles as far as I can and place a radar early.

Also check out my very convenient in-line train to smelter blueprint. Which does of course intelligently prioritize trains to maximize throughput.

Spoiler

 

[Andnjord]

Not sure if having radar helps "activate" map squares or not but I run out big power poles as far as I can and place a radar early.

Just in case you’re not aware of it, but bitters have a preference to expand into empty chunks that don’t have player made buildings. This means that if you explored far and wide and put down a lot of power poles the bitters will likely expand far away from your base.

 

[Average Manatee]

Not sure if having radar helps "activate" map squares or not but I run out big power poles as far as I can and place a radar early.

Just in case you’re not aware of it, but bitters have a preference to expand into empty chunks that don’t have player made buildings. This means that if you explored far and wide and put down a lot of power poles the bitters will likely expand far away from your base.

I'm aware but putting a building in every chunk is kind of tedious. If you just reveal (or activate map gen on) a 200x200 chunk block the chance they expand into your base is fairly minimal until you're 50 hours in and the whole map is filled. And that's something you want to do anyway to find resources for future expansion.

 

[Andnjord]

I'm aware but putting a building in every chunk is kind of tedious. If you just reveal (or activate map gen on) a 200x200 chunk block the chance they expand into your base is fairly minimal until you're 50 hours in and the whole map is filled. And that's something you want to do anyway to find resources for future expansion.

I meant to say that by exploring AND placing lots of radar around you probably had a double whammy of forcing the bitters into expanding away from your base. Or in another words: nice.

 

[Hellraiser]

It wasn't until yesterday that I finally flew to Gleba. I spent a day (well the few hours of that day I could play) just expanding Vulcanus and Fulgora, primarly the former to deliver a steady stream of tungsten and calcite for aritllery shell production on Nauvis (read: getting the rocket launch rate on Vulcanus to sufficiently high levels), and fixing some production blockages on Fulgora. Also had to put down some b*ters and ad hoc remote fix some shit they wrecked in a copper mining outpost, but now with the artillery wagon added to the defence distribution train the b*ter menace is getting contained, one artillery shell at a time.

Of course I only realized after landing on Gleba that the reason why I haven't seen my quality module gambling machine output an epic or legendary quality module was because those levels are locked by Gleba research. Bah.

As for Gleba. Man, Gleba early game really bogs you down *badum-tish*. Vulcanus and Fulgora make it easy to get an industry up and running regarding both access to power and metals, Gleba seems to take forever just to setup the basics like hands-off gears/green chips production. I think it took a few hours yesterday before I managed to get the basics up and running, not even going for science yet, just trying to make the damn base self-sufficient.

BTW what's the standard long-term solution to power on Gleba when starting naked, burning unspoiled fruit in the heating tower or what? Spoilage barely raises temperature while wood is not renewable (at least not early on). Solar power is too weak. I ended up importing a reactor and automating it for peak autistic fuel-efficiency and use only when batteries are too low, because of course fuel cells have some absurdly low rocket capacity due to balance(tm).

 

[Average Manatee]

BTW what's the standard long-term solution to power on Gleba when starting naked, burning unspoiled fruit in the heating tower or what? Spoilage barely raises temperature while wood is not renewable (at least not early on). Solar power is too weak. I ended up importing a reactor and automating it for peak autistic fuel-efficiency and use only when batteries are too low, because of course fuel cells have some absurdly low rocket capacity due to balance(tm).

Spoiler

The production chain for rocket fuel is also your best fuel for boilers. Surprised me too, I was thinking "I should get 100 MW of power on first before worrying about advanced stuff", but if you get duped into trying to produce carbon for that you're both producing inefficiently and opening up your factory to yet another way things can get backed up or run out and everything fall apart. Which is the continuing issue on Gleba.

In general Biofuel should be the basis for all of your production lines since it has such a long spoilage timer, anything measured in minutes should be directly inserted into whatever consumes it or be a few seconds away by belt. Producing Biofuel should be right next to your jellynut harvesting since the Jelly has much shorter spoilage timer than Yumako

Of course I only realized after landing on Gleba that the reason why I haven't seen my quality module gambling machine output an epic or legendary quality module was because those levels are locked by Gleba research. Bah.

Not just that, it's also a really freaking long research. I think it might be the highest priced in the game, twice the spiderbot (also a Gleba research).

 

[Jaedar]

Ok, I'm probably going to start reading thread.

I've """finished""" gleba, ie I managed to make 150 science packs and then I left. Not really enjoying rot mechanic, DEFINITELY not enjoying needing to go out hunting on the map to get eggs to make the science, and then the science also decays pretty rapidly.

Also not sure how to make power work, burning all the rot doesn't seem like enough (possibly you need to actually prioritize letting some things rot or something for fuel?).

Probably I am going to """solve""" this planet by importing vast quantities of garbage from more fun planets.

This is somehow worse than bio science from SE.

 

[Average Manatee]

DEFINITELY not enjoying needing to go out hunting on the map to get eggs to make the science, and then the science also decays pretty rapidly.

Spoiler

The eggs don't spoilage of the input egg AFAIK, instead the timer is reset. So you can set up a system with circuits where eggs are kept going forever. Top and bottom have inserters set to pull the most spoiled egg and are only active if there are less than 3 eggs in the chest. Left and right are pulling the least spoiled but only if there's at least 2 eggs in the chest already. The system will never run dry. Have your rocket logistically requesting research packs nearby and you should be able to get them to your Nauvis base within a few minutes. You could do this without circuits but it'd be a bit more complex.

Also not sure how to make power work, burning all the rot doesn't seem like enough (possibly you need to actually prioritize letting some things rot or something for fuel?).

See my previous post. I think everyone tried either rot or carbon burning at first. Feed your boilers the good stuff, rocket fuel.

FWIW I'm still not a Gleba fan either and have not returned to mass produce science yet. Mostly because fighting those enemies is fucking annoying and unlike Vulcanus its forced upon you even when you're off planet rather than something you tackle at your own pace. Once you get a few tight production chains and fix your power it's alright though. Remember you can relocate where you grow your plants so once you have room and artificial soil to work with they can be part of your blueprint that you spam down a few rows of.

 

[Jaedar]

Remember you can relocate where you grow your plants so once you have room and artificial soil to work with they can be part of your blueprint that you spam down a few rows of.

Needs research to be able to properly relocate though.

I didn't realize that eggs ignored the standard rot mechanic where the products inherit the rot factor of the ingredients. With this knowledge, it shouldn't be that hard to set up an infinity machine.

ostly because fighting those enemies is fucking annoying and unlike Vulcanus its forced upon you even when you're off planet rather than something you tackle at your own pace.

I haven't had my base attacked yet, cause I've been proactive about clearing nests before yellow pollution reaches them. Even gun turrets did a pretty good job with the stompers, flying armor and +100% move speed did a good job with the runners. I also shipped in some tesla tech now from fulgora, which does a pretty good job.

But it does seem like gleba tiles don't absorb any pollution, unlike on nauvis, and radars are pitiful, so I have to figure out a real solution. Maybe walls won't be so bad since there's a lot of water that naturally blocks pathing?

 

[Hellraiser]

Gleba egg farming is just iron/copper bacteria cultivation with far less spoilage on the output belt, even before factoring in that the produced eggs are fresh and spoil far slower IIRC. While I setup automation through circuits to make sure I send just enough eggs back to the input belt I think you can honestly ignore it and just use a regular splitter (especially without prod modules where you need exactly half of the output to continue production without an external source of eggs), with a turret or two in case something spoils.

 

[Average Manatee]

A few more "oh duh" things I've learned:

- You can store deconstruction and upgrade planner presets in your blueprint library for easy recall. For example, upgrading belts or power pole types.
- Vehicle quality does improve their weapon range. Very useful in the case of the tank cannon.
- You can prioritize your turrets to target specific things. Useful to take out spitters before biters (higher DPS to resilience ratio) or have laser turrets go for some asteroids while bullets go for others.
- Ship speed doesn't seem to affect the speed of asteroids coming in so vroom vroom.

Messed up and forgot to add quality to my plastic before heading to Vulcanus. Very annoying because plastic is also the one ingredient that I can't put 4 modules into a Foundry or EM plant, and Gleba stuff is annoying if I'm not forced to use it. Will delay my quality power armor mk 2 a lot. Base is coming along well though, defenses hold up with a bunch of gates around 9 lasers per power pole and the rapid response tanks with rebuilding materials keep things at bay.

Spoiler

I gotta say it is a little annoying that 2 quality levels are locked behind Gleba, feel like space science or something should gatekeep the 2nd to last level.

I haven't had my base attacked yet, cause I've been proactive about clearing nests before yellow pollution reaches them. Even gun turrets did a pretty good job with the stompers, flying armor and +100% move speed did a good job with the runners. I also shipped in some tesla tech now from fulgora, which does a pretty good job.

Yeah I think it was mainly deathworld evolution factor + being stuck there for a few hours that did me in + not high tech stuff. The problem was that gun turrets had low enough range and not enough DPS that any stomper would automatically take out 20 of them before it died, while the strafers had too much range for gun turrets to hit.

 

[Jaedar]

Gleba egg farming is just iron/copper bacteria cultivation with far less spoilage on the output belt, even before factoring in that the produced eggs are fresh and spoil far slower IIRC. While I setup automation through circuits to make sure I send just enough eggs back to the input belt I think you can honestly ignore it and just use a regular splitter (especially without prod modules where you need exactly half of the output to continue production without an external source of eggs), with a turret or two in case something spoils.

I set up a circuit based thing with 2 bioplants for research and 2 bioplants for eggs. It should hold for all time, and it still produces research at a good pace (even if half of it is half rotted before it reaches the labs on nauvis).
Held long enough so far, so I managed to research biolabs and build 10 of them, as well as prod3s. That should be enough to comfortably take me to endgame.

Still have no real defences on Gleba, I should probably ship in a tank with heavy armaments (nuclear cannon shells should do well I think), just for when they natives ineveitably aggro. I know you can remotely equip tanks now, not sure you can remotely fill their ammo supplies, but I assume there's a way.

But for now I jumped on a ship to vulcanus.

 

[Average Manatee]

Tanks can take logistics requests and also carry their own roboports for the purpose of having construction bots build and repair things. The one thing to be aware of is that you need radar coverage to enter a tank. Though you can drive through areas without radar coverage just fine once you're remotely "in" the tank, just don't leave or you can't get back in.

The only big issue I've found is that you can't actually manipulate the inventory of the tanks while you're remoting into them. This includes changing the type of shell you're firing or loading new ones in. You need to fuck around with having bots unload your ammo from the trunk and then make a new request and they'll fill the open weapon ammo slot.

 

[Hellraiser]

Of course after setting up my Gleba industry to sufficient levels and finally fucking off to start preparing for Aquilo, the damn thing experiences nutrient collapse at some point due to a shitty failsafe/restart that I forgot to update to work correctly with an "improved" nutrient setup (honestly don't know even what/how failed). Now the question is should I try to fix it with bots, hoping maybe deconstructing one of the stomper corpses slain by my Tesla turrets gives me an egg to restard production or if I have to go in there in person and steal some eggs, again, just when I almost have a ship ready to help me become a Prisoner of Ice.

Also is there even some way to automatically dump items below 50% freshness or something? Seems like the only option I can see is "fresh/spoiled" first on inserters which doesn't seem to be very reliable.

 

[Average Manatee]

For a failsafe you can use nutrients from spoilage, it can be crafted by an assembler rather than a biolab. No way to fix the egg problem unfortunately.

I'm hoping my second attempt at Gleba will be much better with faster belts, beaconed production, and bots. This stupid big armor shouldn't hurt either.

Spoiler

Also holy fuck are turbo belt expensive. 5 Tungsten plates requires 20 Tungsten ores and those ores are 500% mining time so imma need a lot of drills. At least with the Holmium stuff on Fulgora you can prod up the ass at every step to get like 100 output ingredients out of a single ore. Including using foundries from Volcanus, I was happy to discover.

 

[Jaedar]

I'm hoping my second attempt at Gleba will be much better with faster belts, beaconed production, and bots. This stupid big armor shouldn't hurt either.

Why aren't you using proper personal reactors?

 

[Average Manatee]

I'm hoping my second attempt at Gleba will be much better with faster belts, beaconed production, and bots. This stupid big armor shouldn't hurt either.

Why aren't you using proper personal reactors?

Don't have them unlocked... I probably should. But my quality setup was all finished before I went to Fulgara and I'm now remaking most of my base from scratch for EM plants/foundries/beacons.

Looking at the numbers though, it's only 56% more power per square than baseline personal solar. But I have quality solar, which is 30% per tier. So the power output is actually fairly similar, and portable fission reactors look like they'd be really hard to make quality needing uranium cells.

I may have made my freighter a bit bigger than it needed to be...

Spoiler

 

[Jaedar]

I may have made my freighter a bit bigger than it needed to be...

Lol. I think that's bigger than all my freighters put together.

But my quality setup was all finished before I went to Fulgara

How do you even quality on nauvis? It seems very annoying without recyclers.

 

[Average Manatee]

How do you even quality on nauvis? It seems very annoying without recyclers.

All my smelting has quality modules, filtering everything above normal quality to a line that goes to an active provider chest. From there I have just like 30 buffer chests requesting both levels of every base input type. Bots handle it from there.

 

[Jaedar]

Well, vulcanus science pack automation and rocketry is done.

I can't quite decide if I like it more or less than Gleba. I can also see how this might be your favorite planet. It just feels so... vanilla. Nauvis without pollution and some infinite resource fields. Fulgora feels like a clear winner of the first three for me.

So how did people deal with the worms? I have pretty high level physical damage research, so I just instantly vaporize them with uranium shells from a tank. Seems like they could be pretty tricky if it's your first planet.