Make three storage tanks: light oil, heavy and petroleum. Connect each one to circuit grid. Each tank has 25k max.
This is admittedly a very real drawback to laser turrets. Usually you start seeing brownouts before total power failure though, giving you some indication that it's about to get ugly.
Yeah, I was busy optimising the green and red electronic circuit facility when that happened, so I missed the early sign of the slower moving inserter until was too late to understand what was going on before it was too late. Fun times though, because even after having fixed the signal problem (and temporarily stopping all but the oil train) there was still no power to get the fuel plants running, so I had a pretty hectic time disconnecting everything but them from the power grid while running around grabbing every spare bit of coal, wood and fuel to get 50+ boilers running again before the bitters would breach my main laser-deficient defences
You can make a stationary battery and connect that programmable megaphone thing to it. When battery would become low on charge, it would sound the alarm and run a warning on screen.
There's also a programmable power switch which you can use to automatically disconnect the entire factory except for the stuff needed to produce power (with good pole placement) if the accumulator gets sufficiently low.
If you want an extreme amount of energy storage very early very cheaply, make a line of storage tanks to store steam on the edge of your steam engines. A single tank of 165C steam stores 750 MJ of energy, which is the same as 150 accumulators or enough to run two 900kW steam engines for about 6.5 minutes even if fuel is completely cut off. In a more realistic scenario where your power needs are only slightly more than coal delivery you've got like an hour of time before the tanks run dry and you can run a warning speaker if its getting at all low to give you plenty of time to react. Also it works great as a backup to solar if you are transitioning over to it.
Keep in mind that this won't save you if your power needs are greater than what your steam engines can supply. If you wanted super redundancy you could make a 3rd line of steam engines that would give you a 50% buffer on total energy output there.
You've spoiled it!
To add to that, you'd be better long-term if you double the power production, than if you divide the power grid into segments. If you run out of coal for some reason, you can make more solid fuel. It's more efficient than coal; and oil is an endless resource in Factorio, so you won't lose anything in this case.
Steam doesn't lose its temperature over time. As such, you can pump it into a fluid wagon, transport it to wherever you need it, unload it into a couple of storage tanks, connect them to steam engines. Bam, on-site power without having to worry about coal, water, inserters, boilers, belts and what have you.Holy crap, I had absolutely no idea that it was even possible to store steam.
If you want an extreme amount of energy storage very early very cheaply, make a line of storage tanks to store steam on the edge of your steam engines. A single tank of 165C steam stores 750 MJ of energy, which is the same as 150 accumulators or enough to run two 900kW steam engines for about 6.5 minutes even if fuel is completely cut off. In a more realistic scenario where your power needs are only slightly more than coal delivery you've got like an hour of time before the tanks run dry and you can run a warning speaker if its getting at all low to give you plenty of time to react. Also it works great as a backup to solar if you are transitioning over to it.
Keep in mind that this won't save you if your power needs are greater than what your steam engines can supply. If you wanted super redundancy you could make a 3rd line of steam engines that would give you a 50% buffer on total energy output there.
It is possible, but probably nor worth the hassle. Instead of spending hours fiddling with it, making sure there's no overlap between the grids, building everything very carefully.... just spend 30 minutes double, triping or quadrupling your power income. Build 4 nuclear reactors and you'll have more power then you'll know how to spend for a long time.
Pretty op really. Iirc the nuclear reactors and heat pipes do lose some heat naturally. They should make that apply to steam as well, make the store amount of steam drop by 0.1% every tic or something.
The way I understand it they don't do this becaus this would require a massive overhaul of the already complex fluid system, and it would be a pain in the ass to keep your steam on temperature. Also you might have to deal with the temperatures of your other fluids, which might go wrong if they get too hot.
Laser turret goes brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
If you have artillery I think you are far better off using radars+manual targeting to destroy any alien nest groups big enough to be threatening, rather than letting them continually send attack waves.
Yeah, that was plugged into the very first rail network I built, the one for the oil station I had mentionned in my first post so it's....let's charitably call it 'legacy', alright? The northern side was built from scratch, so it's much better.
At the moment I want them to become bigger and more numerous, I'm even thinking of taking out the tank to go and exterminate all the trees and get some massed boilers running on their own to increase polution, I want to test my system to the limit! But yeah, if things get out of control there is always Spidertron + remote artillery.
With enough techs it's more the gun turrets that go brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr, at this point those things sound like the freaking Avenger Autocannon from the A-10!
Nice.
There's no right way to play. It's a management and programming (i.e. design) sandbox, not a competition.
You're saying this, but you haven't seen the main bus in my base. That one would probably send you reeling in horror :D
