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Factorio - a factory building game - Space Age expansion coming October 21st

Demo.Graph

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I now need to understand the circuit network system so I can balance out the oil refineries between their output of petroleum, heavy and light oil, that's going to be fun.
Make three storage tanks: light oil, heavy and petroleum. Connect each one to circuit grid. Each tank has 25k max.
If heavy > 20k, run heavy-to-light cracking.
If light > 10k, run light-to-solid.
If light > 20k, run light-to-petgas.
Also https://wiki.factorio.com/Oil_processing has info about ratios. IIRC, 8 adv oil refineries need 2 heavy-to-light chem plants and 7 light-to-gas to convert everything to petgas, but you better check.
 

Jaedar

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Project: Eternity Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Pathfinder: Kingmaker
and biters are eating away at the iron outpost that was only defended by the now out of power laser turrets,
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.
 

Andnjord

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and biters are eating away at the iron outpost that was only defended by the now out of power laser turrets,
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 :shredder:
 

Demo.Graph

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so I missed the early sign of the slower moving inserter
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.
If you have no batteries yet, you can invent something yourself, like
doing the same with a storage tank full of steam. Steam tank can actually be considered a very large battery. Add several of them and you'd have a gigantic power bank. With nuclear reactors it's even more efficient as their steam is hotter and so contains even more power.
 

Andnjord

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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.
:updatedmytxt:
By stationary battery you mean Accumulator, right? Great idea, I'll implement it tonight.
rating_thanks.png
 

Jaedar

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Project: Eternity Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Pathfinder: Kingmaker
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.
:updatedmytxt:
By stationary battery you mean Accumulator, right? Great idea, I'll implement it tonight.
rating_thanks.png
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.
 
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IXqaATo.png


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.
 

Andnjord

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IXqaATo.png


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.

Holy crap, I had absolutely no idea that it was even possible to store steam. So essentially I could have the alarm sound off when steam in the tank < 100%, notifying me that the back-up steam energy has kicked in and an alarm plugged into the accumulator to notify me that I either need more power for the base or that black-out is incoming, awesome.
 

Demo.Graph

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If you want an extreme amount of energy storage very early very cheaply
You've spoiled it!
Ah... :dealwithit:

Edit: Andnjord, I hid the same idea previously.
Steam storage is not an obvious idea. I thought it would be more inspiring should you invent it yourself. IIRC, even Wube hadn't really planned for it when they designed the game.
 
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Andnjord

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Query: I'm thinking of separating my power network in such a way that the laser turrets and fuel refineries would be in network A, and the rest of the factory in network B where network B receives power only if network A is at 100% power. Is that something that's possible?

Alternatively, I could have a separate group of steam engines powering only the refineries with an output priority from a splitter on the fuel/coal belt...
 
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Totally possible, though you need to take care when building it. Have network A connected directly to the power source, have network B connected ONLY through a power switch that turns on or off based on network A having power.

Keep in mind that if you ever place even a single other power line that bridges the networks that you'll have short circuited your power switch and made both networks always on. And since you'll normally have your factory running 100% of the time you'll only find out about this problem when the power goes off anyway and you're stuck looking for that rogue power pole. It's a nice idea but in practice I don't think it's that good because of this, better off just building more redundant power output. Worrying about keeping power networks separate is quite a hassle.

One place you can theoretically adapt this to well though is with beacons, which are always on and consume tons of energy even when the thing they are boosting isn't running. Have them turned off when they thing they are boosting isn't running. But again, by the point in the game you have mass beacons you tend to be able to easily build more power than you need.
 

Demo.Graph

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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.
A bit later you'd be able to create fields of solar panels and get
 

Andnjord

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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.

Yeah, I have a splitter on the fuel belt that receives both solid fuel and coal with an input priority of solid fuel, that way I have a large supply of coal as back-up.


Ok, so to do list for tonight's session: get nuclear power online, place a signal on the belt that brings the fuel to the steam engines to only run if power in the network is < 100% and run an alarm when that happens so that I know there is something wrong with the nuclear power or that I need more of it with plenty of time to spare. And also get some steam tanks for additional back-up. Thanks for the suggestions everyone!
 

Caim

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IXqaATo.png


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.
Holy crap, I had absolutely no idea that it was even possible to store steam.
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.
 

Jaedar

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Project: Eternity Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Pathfinder: Kingmaker
Query: I'm thinking of separating my power network in such a way that the laser turrets and fuel refineries would be in network A, and the rest of the factory in network B where network B receives power only if network A is at 100% power. Is that something that's possible?
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.
Steam doesn't lose its temperature over 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.
 

Caim

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Steam doesn't lose its temperature over 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.
 
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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.

I don't think they lose heat. What you are probably seeing is that liquids and gasses equalize their volume across a pipe really quickly while heat pipes are very slow to do so. This way you'll still see heat going up or down in some areas long after disconnecting the inputs/outputs.

Also I don't really see how its OP. Even in the steam tank storage solution, you could just as easily be storing coal in a chest buffer in front of all the boilers. It'd be a bit more annoying but accomplish close to the same thing.
 

Nutria

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Strap Yourselves In
If you've got any shortages of nuclear fuel, go for the Kovarex enrichment process. It's very expensive to research but it gives you pretty much unlimited fuel and the cost of actually building the thing is trivial.
 

Andnjord

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YdCjMxM.png


So I've been having fun creating this defensive network of outpost and figuring out its automated resupply system. The core of the system is the train station circuit network: each chest is supplied by a filter stack inserter that is enabled if the amount in the provider chest it's feeding is below a certain amount (X). Each chest is connected to a decider combinator that sends a signal if content in the chest < X/2. The combinator then sends a signal to the train station, the train station is only enabled if signals > 1. Otherwise the train station is disabled. Each train station in the outpost network (I have a couple of them facing different cardinal points) has the same name, and the resupply train is given that one train station name as a destination with wait condition = 5s of inactivity.

I had to create an extra step for the robots where they are first unloaded at the train station, send to a requester chest next to the roboport and fed into the roboport by the inserter enabled if the number of robots in the network falls below a certain threshold.

The result of this is that when an outpost runs low of any of its supplies (be it ammunition, drones, spare turrets, fuel for the flamethrower turrets or repair kits) the train station activates itself and the supply train immediately goes there. Once the train station deactivates itself the train automatically goes back to the main supply station at the base. One thing I did neglect (but it should be easy to fix) to bring in spare requester chest and insterters for the turrets though.

I was especially happy when I got the system working and each newly built outpost would automatically call on the supply train as soon as the train station wsa built and connected to the rail line, the only thing that I have to do manually is insert a few logistic robots into the roboport to get it started.

It's probably a little overkill for the biter waves I'm receiving, but it's a lot more fun to do than just ploinking down infinite ammounts of laser turrets in one long wall. Also, as others have mentionned, the laser turrets are struggling to deal with the behemots in a timely manner, something that the uranium ammo turrets certainly don't. I'm not sure how it would work under real intense strain, where multiple outposts were to run low on supplies at the same time though. I suppose I could just send in the artillery train the solve the problem :D
 
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Jaedar

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It's probably a little overkill for the biter waves I'm receiving, but it's a lot more fun to do than just ploinking down infinite ammounts of laser turrets in one long wall.
Laser turret goes brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
I'm not sure how it would work under real intense strain, where multiple outposts were to run low on supplies at the same time though. I suppose I could just send in the artillery train the solve the problem :D
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.

Neat system for resupply though. You can always add more trains and supply stations if one isn't able to keep up.

Although looking at your minimap you probably need to redesign your rail system, or adding more trains will probably not help too much.
 

Andnjord

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Although looking at your minimap you probably need to redesign your rail system, or adding more trains will probably not help too much.
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.

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.
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.

Laser turret goes brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
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!
 
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Demo.Graph

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So I've been having fun creating this defensive network of outpost and figuring out its automated resupply system.
Nice.
You might want to increase the depth of those dragon teeth. Right now nothing stops spitters from hitting your ammo crates or power grid.

Goddammit you've been playing for like 2 weeks and you're already better than me.
There's no right way to play. It's a management and programming (i.e. design) sandbox, not a competition.

I've made a similar station only recently. After about 200-250 hours and several finished games. Base like that is excessive for a vanilla rocket launch and should be necessary only for a megabase, probably even DW megabase...
And when I did it, my station turned out to be like three times bigger (read, less efficient), because I definitely wanted it to hold several trains at the same time (arty+refuel+ammo+personal) and be energy-independent and kinda symmetrical.

It's fun (for me) to try suboptimal weird shit with extra requirements.
I made like a 100 SPM base without any trains at all. It was fun, but too painful in the end.
I did several DW runs while trying different early-game builds and spent more time trying to decrease production cost of a furnace row than killing biters.
I spent a retarded amount of time trying to make a personal pretty solar field BP, that supported autoconstruction and had a pre-specified footprint. Even though I don't like solar and don't really intend to use it.
I've created a railroad-integrated storage house, complete with walls and logistical control system, in case I would really want to store several dozen millions of bricks or some shit. Then I lost BP in software wipe.
I guess I've spent more time reading about logistics and I/O systems in real world applications than making trains per se. Or using them. Even though I've began to read that stuff after I've tried to make an expandable modular train system.
 

Andnjord

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Goddammit you've been playing for like 2 weeks and you're already better than me.
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

And my railway system would probably come crashing down if I started having more than the current six trains (two for oil, two for iron ore, one for copper ore and one for coal, I have a separate off site copper plate facility that operates on a different line and I don't count stuff like the uranium and stone trains as they barely have to move around for now) regularly using it, and it has only one main intersection!
 

Andnjord

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Actually, let me show the unholy, creaky but still barely functional mess that my base has become:

Main view of the base:
d8uGy6H.png

I like that Demo.Graph mentionned programming, because a zoomed out Factorio base looks eerily similar to a circuit chip.
The little red and beige dots you can see around the mininng outposts are the legacy laser turret bunkers I placed there before making the defensive outposts you saw previously, there just isn't any real need to go and deconstruct them.

The main train station:
GYnPiRO.png

There is enough parking space there for a second train to wait in, but not enough for a third or more, so not really scaleable. Adding more parking slots to each station would be possible, but just barely. Even then, it wouldn't be really useful, because....

Smelting array, science station, main bus:

r0r2c29.png


Look at this main spaghetti-magnificience bus. It just doesn't have enough space to handle more throughput, so bringing in more ore from the train station would be pointless. As a result I've had to bring in copper and iron at weird and random points of the bus just to maintain productivity.

Also note how small the science array is, it can't even process all the space science packs I'm producing and I've had to stop rocket launches because of it.

Additional circuit array:
tAH20SU.png

Here is one of the input plug-ins I mentionned. These two green circuits arrays are barely enough to feed the modules and blue circuits facilities, and they even manage to use more copper plates than my off-site facility can produce (although that easily fixable) resulting in them stopping and starting as they wait for the train to bring in more copper plates. I was really taken aback by just how much faster the assemblers mark 3 produce, they're consuming more than a fully tapped 8M copper mine can output! Even then, if I was to fix that I just don't have the space to bring in more plastic due to not having enough space for another plastic belt.

Finally, the uranium processing facility:

2Wnf3oz.png


At least with that one I went massively overkill. This is feeding 12 nuclear reactors (two 2x3 arrays) and is still massively overproducing U-238 with just three koverex-enrichment centrifuges. At least I can ploink down more nuclear plants pretty much at will. Yes, those are three full chests of U-238.

So yeah, overall this base is capable of feeding one rocket launcher pretty much non-stop (although without speed-beaconing it). It creaks, it groans, it moans to do so but it manages it, averaging about 100 SPM in the last hour firing on all cylinders (in reality it should be about half that longer term, since the research facility isn't capable of using up that kind of input). But it has pretty much reached maximal efficiency without a complete redesign, so I think I'll leave this here and start anew, somewhere nicer, more welcoming. I've heard this place they call 'Deathworld' is lovely this time of the year, isn't it?
 

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