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

[Average Manatee]

I feel a bit bad, because I kinda half assed every planet. I never upgraded Nauvis with anything from the other planets (except biolabs), I didn't even place a single green belt. My final ship couldn't even be stationary anywhere other than Nauvis for more than 30s, becuase it had no side facing guns. Aquilo is particularly bad, the spaghetti was absolute, there is no way I could fit in duplicates of any building (but you also only need like 3000 cold science packs and 1k quantum procs to beat the game so.... you don't need throughput).

Yeah, that was my takeaway too. Even on marathon mode I feel like the science packs were half-assable for all planets, especially Aquilo.

Especially with Biolabs, 4x prod 3 normal quality modules in a biolab makes your science packs worth almost 280% of normal. So basically divide all science requirements by 3 once you finish Gleba.

Funny enough I think Gleba is actually the strongest planet if you can finish it quickly. Stack Inserters are like getting a 4x multiplier on what your belts can carry without needing to mass replace belts, which means even a small bus on nauvis can scale up to near megabase levels. Spidertron is the other ultimate weapon for clearing biters out easily along with artillery. Biolab is basically cheating for research. The only thing missing is a way to deal with cliffs.

 

[Jaedar]

Funny enough I think Gleba is actually the strongest planet if you can finish it quickly.

Quite possibly yeah. I wouldn't want to do gleba without a flying suit though.
I also didn't use stack inserters at all until final spaceship. I didn't even need blue belts on any planet (except for undergrounds for the reach), so stacking was not relevant at all. But spidertron is great, although I'm not sure if it's capable of taking out worms on vulcanus?

 

[Average Manatee]

Spidertron is just 4 rocket turrets right? At my ending tech level that would give one about 3k DPS vs. the demolishers. That could slowly wear down the small ones. But you can make as many spidertrons as you want and just group them together and send orders like an RTS, so there's no reason they couldn't take one on in numbers. They can also have shields to keep them fairly safe from the AoE.

 

[Jaedar]

Spidertron is just 4 rocket turrets right? At my ending tech level that would give one about 3k DPS vs. the demolishers. That could slowly wear down the small ones. But you can make as many spidertrons as you want and just group them together and send orders like an RTS, so there's no reason they couldn't take one on in numbers. They can also have shields to keep them fairly safe from the AoE.

Yeah, 4 rocket turrets. My rockets were doing about 1k damage each, but I don't remember how fast rockets fire. I still think I'd prefer a single tank with uranium shells over an army of spidertrons. Especially since you have to take out one worm before gaining access to the purple ore (at least I had to).

 

[Average Manatee]

Oh yeah, if you're fighting the worms early then I'd use tank or a bunch of turrets. I was speaking of the spidertron as basically a post-game way to clear new areas. But its most useful on Gleba/Nauvis as something you send out to kill expansion nests, assuming you don't just have a full artillery patrol train.

 

[baturinsky]

Belt Weaving is essential for beacons

Or you can just send iron and wire on two sides of the one belt.

 

[Average Manatee]

Belt Weaving is essential for beacons

Or you can just send iron and wire on two sides of the one belt.

That would halve my potential throughput.

 

[Demo.Graph]

Belt Weaving is essential for beacons

Or you can just send iron and wire on two sides of the one belt.

That would halve my potential throughput.

In the grand scheme of things space conservation is relevant only before arty/trons.

 

[Average Manatee]

In the grand scheme of things space conservation is relevant only before arty/trons.

Less efficient on space, on power consumption, on infrastructure, on player time to connect up multiple belts. There's no reason not to feed in a full belt of your most input-limiting ingredient.

 

[Demo.Graph]

on infrastructure, on player time to connect up multiple belts

As an autist who spends several hours to make a BP that would save me ~5 seconds of thought (and would make the BP almost symmetrical), I cannot agree more.

 

[Andnjord]

In the grand scheme of things space conservation is relevant only before arty/trons.

Less efficient on space, on power consumption, on infrastructure, on player time to connect up multiple belts. There's no reason not to feed in a full belt of your most input-limiting ingredient.

I’ve had to redesign far too many factories due to belt throughput problem that only arose once I started slamming those modules not to agree with you.

 

[Average Manatee]

I’ve had to redesign far too many factories due to belt throughput problem that only arose once I started slamming those modules not to agree with you.

I do feel like stack inserters make the throughput problem a bit too easy once you get them. Basically turns yellow belts into green belts which is insane

 

[Tyrr]

Who cares about throughput, efficiency or other useless stuff as long the factory is symmetrical and perfectly align to the grid?
Buildings are 1 tile off? The belts aren't done harmonically? Delete everything and do it again.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Who cares about throughput, efficiency or other useless stuff as long the factory is symmetrical and perfectly align to the grid?
Buildings are 1 tile off? The belts aren't done harmonically? Delete everything and do it again.

There are games and even genres of games that I like, even love, but I almost never play for fear of having my entire life swallowed up by some sort of OCD typhoon. This is one of those games.

 

[baturinsky]

I had a week vacation. I hoped to do something worthwile during it. And instead has spent most of it routing belts and dodging trains...

 

[Jaedar]

I’ve had to redesign far too many factories due to belt throughput problem that only arose once I started slamming those modules not to agree with you.

I do feel like stack inserters make the throughput problem a bit too easy once you get them. Basically turns yellow belts into green belts which is insane

Stack inserters are cool. They do give belts a lot more throughput, but the fact that they never swing until they have a full stack means they are really bad/slow for some things.
(I only used them on final space platform, and probably placed less than 200 blue belts in total. Didn't place a single green. SA doesn't need throughput)

I had a week vacation. I hoped to do something worthwile during it. And instead has spent most of it routing belts and dodging trains...

Sounds worthwhile to me.

 

[baturinsky]

Has "beaten" Vulcanus. I.e. automated science and rocket construction, so I can collect science and calcite remotely.
Still learning how to make base fully remotable with drones.

Love how DLC is done in Factorio. Several "minigames" with some change of rules, which gives some new toys for the "main" game.

 

[Ranselknulf]

Slowly working my way through the space age expansion.

Game starts off just like vanilla factorio.

I did have a question though, how do alerts and base attacks work if you are focused on a different planet?

Will you find out if your buildings start to get destroyed?

 

[Jaedar]

I did have a question though, how do alerts and base attacks work if you are focused on a different planet?

Will you find out if your buildings start to get destroyed?

Alerts are global. But your ability to stop an ongoing attack if you are on a different planet is limited to bots and remotely piloted vehicles (requires radar coverage).

 

[Andnjord]

Meine liebe, it werks!

 

[Average Manatee]

I did have a question though, how do alerts and base attacks work if you are focused on a different planet?

Will you find out if your buildings start to get destroyed?

Alerts are global. But your ability to stop an ongoing attack if you are on a different planet is limited to bots and remotely piloted vehicles (requires radar coverage).

Since your piloted vehicles can carry bots, and radar, you can do just about everything as long as you've set it up properly before you leave. Also can't use the car for some reason. Tank can be piloted remotely and spidertron can be piloted or ordered around remotely to act as an autonomous turret.

 

[Jaedar]

Meine liebe, it werks!

That's a pretty big computer! Congratulations though, that's the biggest hurdle to finishing SE in terms of circuits and recipies.

 

[Average Manatee]

More cool mods:

Auto Switch Techs. Tracks what science packs your labs has and switches to research what they can do. Very helpful to run through your Gleba packs as soon as a shipment arrives then switch to something else when they are out.

Expensive Mode. Restores the original Marathon manufacturing formulas which made various things more expensive.

Pollution is the Solution. Biter nests are killed off by your pollution cloud after they've spawned 60 biters. Truly the mod that we never knew we needed. Only downside is that the number isn't configurable, 60 seems a bit low. But I like the idea of just polluting the fuck out of the map to clear more room on the map and only needed to defend around outposts rather than make a giant fucking wall and manually clear out huge areas.

Rail Signal Planner. Automatically set up your rail signals and chain rail signals when you place track, including intersections. Makes freestyling designs rather than relying only on premade blueprints easier, and makes making blueprints easier.

RP Rebalanced Tech Costs. Increases tech cost over time (as opposed to the game option which is a flat multiplier), while also increasing the amount of lower tier science packs you need for higher tier techs. e.g. Rocket Turret tech is (25 red, 16 green, 9 blue, 8 military, 4 space, 1 gleba) * 4126 science with default settings, meaning over 100k red science. Downside though is that this does make the "you never need to produce a lot of science on other planets" problem worse, ideally the space age science packs would increase as well so it ends up as a kind of U-shape.

Haven't decided to start a new game yet, will see if I can bug the tech costs mod guy to add my idea.

 

[Ironmonk]

Pollution is the Solution. Biter nests are killed off by your pollution cloud after they've spawned 60 biters. Truly the mod that we never knew we needed. Only downside is that the number isn't configurable, 60 seems a bit low. But I like the idea of just polluting the fuck out of the map to clear more room on the map and only needed to defend around outposts rather than make a giant fucking wall and manually clear out huge areas.

Interesting mod, and I just checked its code and its pretty easy to add settings or change the "60" for something else.

Some new mods I'm using:

Railway Reach: Adjustable Supports: Increase the reach of elevated rails and you need less Rail Supports... you can configure the length of the increase. Vanilla is 15 and the mod default is 23 (chunk aligned).. I just use the mod default.

Filter Mining Drills: Allow to filter the ore its going to be mined... good for situations where more than one type is close to another.

Gridlines: Same as Chunky Chunks... allow to add and configure 3 grid lines and create blocks for rail blocks or city blocks.... this is very good for OCD folks.

HelicopterRevival: relatively early, very fast and powerful flight mode transportation (no grid and very fuel hungry)... its the first time I'm using it and I liked.

Mineable Cliffs SpaceAge: Allow to manually remove Nauvis cliffs piece by piece after researching Steel Pickaxe... there is config and you can set the time needed to mine it... I just use it as the mod default (15s iirc)... This mod is really handy.

Omnimover: Allow to move ore patches... its a cheat, but allow to move ore fields from bellow my railway intersections, so, its necessary.

Project Cybersyn: with LTN dead, this became pretty much the only alternative... the main difference from the Railway 2.0 system, is that it lets you create multi-item stations, this coupled with a Warehouse mod, is very nice. Its easier to use than LTN, but I still liked the LTN approach better.

 

[Jaedar]

Pollution is the Solution. Biter nests are killed off by your pollution cloud after they've spawned 60 biters. Truly the mod that we never knew we needed. Only downside is that the number isn't configurable, 60 seems a bit low. But I like the idea of just polluting the fuck out of the map to clear more room on the map and only needed to defend around outposts rather than make a giant fucking wall and manually clear out huge areas.

I guess nests dying from this trigger the "defense" mode of the biters, making them spawn faster and attack your base? Very cool if so.

Auto Switch Techs. Tracks what science packs your labs has and switches to research what they can do. Very helpful to run through your Gleba packs as soon as a shipment arrives then switch to something else when they are out.

If I play vanilla SA again, I will just move my research labs to gleba. Would actually give me an excuse to increase Nauvis throughput so I can make all the rockets necessary.

RP Rebalanced Tech Costs. Increases tech cost over time (as opposed to the game option which is a flat multiplier), while also increasing the amount of lower tier science packs you need for higher tier techs. e.g. Rocket Turret tech is (25 red, 16 green, 9 blue, 8 military, 4 space, 1 gleba) * 4126 science with default settings, meaning over 100k red science. Downside though is that this does make the "you never need to produce a lot of science on other planets" problem worse, ideally the space age science packs would increase as well so it ends up as a kind of U-shape.

Eh, not a huge fan of this, for the reasons you point out. I actually like how SE does it a lot where the early science packs are obsolete by the end, but the various "planetary sciences" start with super cheap costs (we're talking low 100s) but then scale up to 1000s. SE packs are more expensive though (and there's 4 tiers of them), so the numbers wouldn't perfectly translate.
I actually think a lot of the basic unlocks of planetary science are too expensive (5k for mech suit, really?) and that the real issue is that you barely need any after getting the basic unlocks (most of the infinite research isn't that good imo).

Project Cybersyn: with LTN dead, this became pretty much the only alternative... the main difference from the Railway 2.0 system, is that it lets you create multi-item stations, this coupled with a Warehouse mod, is very nice. Its easier to use than LTN, but I still liked the LTN approach better.

What is the limitation of railway 2.0 that makes you need mods?