Poll of the Day > Factorio is rather relaxing

(+) Yeah! (+)

I know I could tryhard and build like 40 more furnaces.... but I can just get cozy with what I have

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i haven't played satisfactory, but I highly recommend Oxygen Not Included

The factory must grow.

adjl posted...

The factory must grow.

I will say that if 40 more furnaces seems like "tryhard" at this point, you're pretty quickly going to run up against shortages of whatever you're smelting as you try to make later stuff. But that's just the nature of the game. As a handy reference, 48 stone furnaces will saturate a yellow belt if you fill both sides (by extension, 48 steel furnaces will saturate a red belt, or 72 for blue), so don't bother extending your furnace stacks further than that (though creating parallel ones is highly recommended).

My initial base is rather windy; I don't have straight assembly lines so I'm basically running on 4 steel furnaces per resource... by current bottleneck is engines for Blue Potion.

Nothing wrong with a little spaghetti. Lots of people swear by main bus layouts, but just as many people embrace the chaos of a big ol' bowl of noodles. 4 steel furnaces per resource is basically nothing, though (I usually try for at least two yellow belts each of iron and copper, or 48 steel furnaces each), so I'm not surprised your engines are bottlenecked. If you want to stick with spaghetti, consider running split belts of iron ore and coal around to wherever you need them and smelting the iron/steel on site. That, or just make more mini-clusters of furnaces that feed extra plates in wherever you can find space.

well, basically I'm making a secondary base with every assembler on a horizontal so that I can expand indefinitely... I only have 5 engine printers

I usually set up engines for direct insertion when I do blue science. They take 10 seconds to build, blue science consumes 2 every 24, which is close enough to 1:1 that just slapping down a row of 12 engine assemblers next to a row of 12 science assemblers does the job nicely. With Assembler 2's, that works out to 0.75 engines per second, which consumes 3 iron and 0.75 steel per second, or about 5 steel furnaces producing iron and 6-7 producing steel.

As far as expanding indefinitely goes, remember that you're limited by belt throughput. Putting down a line of 200 engine assemblers might seem like an easy way to expand production, but a yellow belt full of pipes will only be able to supply 100 of those. Engines aren't necessarily the best way to illustrate this, since they're a slower recipe, but for something like green circuits you can pretty quickly exhaust what even a blue belt can give you (one AM2 will consume 2.25 copper per second, so one blue belt will cap out at 20). Scaling up will eventually require you to have multiple subfactories operating in parallel, though you'll likely be able to launch your first rocket without running into that issue.

i just watched a speedrun... ok, I'm at 15 hours and just unlocked Purple Potions

the speedrun... beats the game in just over an hour.

One of the first things they do is build like 100 furnaces... their base was bigger than my entire expansion after only like 6 minutes

Yeah, speedruns are wild. A typical first rocket launch can be expected to take around 40-60 hours, but a huge portion of that is the time it takes to design subfactories and fit them all together. If you know what you'll need and where/when you'll need it, you can cut out a ton of that time, especially when you also don't have to worry about biters or finding new ore patches. Furnaces are one of the best examples of that: They're cheap and easy to build right out of the gate and will be used for absolutely everything, so it's easy to just build the full stack that you'll need to finish the run right away, especially where you can start hand-feeding them as soon as they go down instead of waiting for belts and inserters.

i'm good on biters for now... since i discovered you can throw poison grenades out of the car; a poison grenade is enough to kill worms and then after that taking out the spawners is simple.

Yep, poison capsules are criminally underappreciated. They fall off a bit when you get into big worms and big/behemoth biters, but by then you generally have other tools at your disposal.

adjl posted...

Yep, poison capsules are criminally underappreciated. They fall off a bit when you get into big worms and big/behemoth biters, but by then you generally have other tools at your disposal.

Had to test something out...

poison grenades STACK! I am starting to encounter Medium Worms and one poison grenade will do 300 to it (out of 400 hp), but two grenades at the same time will work even though it seems like it would be a debuff

adjl posted...

Lots of people swear by main bus layouts,

i couldn't imagine surviving without a thicc main bus tbh

i try something similar in satisfactory, though obviously you can't do the exact same thing

how much iron do you even need? I could expand, but i'm comfortable where I'm at... my starting iron has about 150k left, same with my starting copper... but my iron expansion has 1.7 million. Unfortunately my iron expansion I don't have a lot of iron production since that's where my oil is.

My oil bottlenecked, my tanks have too much light oil even though I have two plants pumping out solid fuel just to waste it (although I am aware I need 1000 solid fuel for rockets, I'm trying not to spoil progression too much but I just didn't know what to do with all my light oil)

Lokarin posted...

how much iron do you even need? I could expand, but i'm comfortable where I'm at... my starting iron has about 150k left, same with my starting copper...

Well, just to craft the rocket (not counting the silo) costs 49,100 iron, 92,500 copper, 9,500 coal, and 277,778 crude oil. You can (and should) reduce that by ~28% with productivity modules, but given that you still have to finish all of the research to get there, build all of the machinery to help you do so, and probably do some incidental research and building as well just for personal interest, I'd say you're going to want to tap new iron and copper patches. I'm not sure off-hand what the bare minimum needed is, but it's probably going to be quite a bit more than 150k.

Lokarin posted...

Unfortunately my iron expansion I don't have a lot of iron production since that's where my oil is.

I'm not understanding the problem. Did you put your refineries on top of the patch or something? It should be possible to both mine iron and collect oil from the same area.

Lokarin posted...

My oil bottlenecked, my tanks have too much light oil even though I have two plants pumping out solid fuel just to waste it (although I am aware I need 1000 solid fuel for rockets, I'm trying not to spoil progression too much but I just didn't know what to do with all my light oil)

Look at the cracking recipes that unlocked with Advanced Oil Processing. Generally speaking, you should be cracking as much of your other oil products as possible into petroleum gas, except the heavy oil you need for lube and the light oil you need for solid/rocket fuel. If one of them is backing up, build more cracking (or just look up the cracking ratios).

That's one of the first things most players encounter that can really benefit from circuits. If you wire pumps to your heavy/light tanks that only send them to cracking when they're over a certain value, that will ensure they're available if you need them for lube/solid fuel, but turn any excess into petroleum because you'll generally need more of that in the long run.

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One of these days, I'll pick up Satisfactory, but I always just end up defaulting to Factorio if I want that itch scratched. It kind of interferes with finding the motivation to buy it.

adjl posted...

One of these days, I'll pick up Satisfactory, but I always just end up defaulting to Factorio if I want that itch scratched.

def try satisfactory eventually. the problems presented are in 3d and are pretty different from factorio. it's definitely "easier" (all veins are inherently infinite) but you can still optimize a LOT

Dyson Sphere Program too. it's a nice lovechild between satisfactory and factorio. probably is my fav of the 3

imo DSP > satisfactory >= factorio

I liked DSP, but it never really hooked me the way Factorio did. I got up to the point where I had like 2-3 planets connected and it was time to start ramping up production of everything to support higher tiers of research and further expansion, and I just lost interest. I'll probably give it another shot eventually, but I definitely prefer Factorio. Now (when I'm not Xenoblading) I'm working my way through Space Exploration in Factorio, which I'm quite liking. It hits a lot of the same thematic notes as DSP with the interplanetary logistics problems and whatnot (though not as stylistically, since taking off and flying directly to other planets was really quite cool, and Factorio just doesn't have the animations for that), but it's still Factorio and all the fun that entails.

I wish the SE mod for Factorio was more interesting. For like XX hours it felt like every tech unlock was just another recipe to unlock another tech for more tech recipes as opposed to a tech that actually might make my life easier (spidertron).

> I'm not understanding the problem. Did you put your refineries on top of the patch or something? It should be possible to both mine iron and collect oil from the same area.

hehe, yup!

I love Satisfactory but it's got the early access trap and I'm not gonna play it anymore until they finish it

Zareth posted...

I love Satisfactory but it's got the early access trap and I'm not gonna play it anymore until they finish it

IE: The indie version of Live Service

even though my base is like 20 hours old... I'm debating if I should restart, my evolution factor is already .36 and the evo-meter says 50% of that is from time (and about 25/25 ish for spawners killed and pollution)

I spent a lot of time just AFK, not even crafting... I didn't know that was a hazard.

josh posted...

I wish the SE mod for Factorio was more interesting. For like XX hours it felt like every tech unlock was just another recipe to unlock another tech for more tech recipes as opposed to a tech that actually might make my life easier (spidertron).

I can't say I've run into that yet, but I'm still in the early stages of sorting out offworld resources. Specifically, I'm expanding my starter base to be able to handle larger-scale rocket part production so I can keep factories on other planets supplied with the rocket parts they need to send stuff back to Nauvis. There's still plenty to do there, and I've got enough targets to work toward through the tech tree like spaceships, pylons, and the space elevator that I'm not too concerned about running out of interesting stuff, but I also haven't gotten into the meat of space sciences yet and I know they can get a little repetitive with the multiple tiers.

Lokarin posted...

> I'm not understanding the problem. Did you put your refineries on top of the patch or something? It should be possible to both mine iron and collect oil from the same area.

hehe, yup!

Yeah, try not to build on ore patches unless you know you won't need them any time soon. If you're into blue science you should be able to unlock construction bots, which will make it a lot easier to move your refineries (Ctrl+x and Ctrl+v will do the job). It sounds like you need to tweak your cracking setup anyway, so you might as well work that into moving them.

Lokarin posted...

even though my base is like 20 hours old... I'm debating if I should restart, my evolution factor is already .36 and the evo-meter says 50% of that is from time (and about 25/25 ish for spawners killed and pollution)

I spent a lot of time just AFK, not even crafting... I didn't know that was a hazard.

It should be fine. Big biters/spitters won't show up until 0.50, and even they aren't all that much of a problem (they're quite a bit tougher, but using a flamethrower still takes them down quickly, as do laser turrets/personal lasers). Behemoths are where you'll actually have problems if you're unprepared, but they don't show up until 0.90+, which you probably won't hit before launching your first rocket. Just don't completely neglect the military side of things and you're unlikely to have a real problem; default settings biters generally don't pose a genuine threat of putting you into a softlock position.

adjl posted...

I can't say I've run into that yet, but I'm still in the early stages of sorting out offworld resources. Specifically, I'm expanding my starter base to be able to handle larger-scale rocket part production so I can keep factories on other planets supplied with the rocket parts they need to send stuff back to Nauvis. There's still plenty to do there, and I've got enough targets to work toward through the tech tree like spaceships, pylons, and the space elevator that I'm not too concerned about running out of interesting stuff, but I also haven't gotten into the meat of space sciences yet and I know they can get a little repetitive with the multiple tiers.

Yeah, it's the multiple tiers that I got burned out on. Got the save though and still remember what me and a mate were doing so we still plan to hop back into exactly the same save in a few more months time. I wouldn't trade the time back though, it's a lot of fun.

> It sounds like you need to tweak your cracking setup anyway, so you might as well work that into moving them.

ya, I think I need 3 light oils to solid fuels instead of just one, my heavy oil is 50/50 split between lube and crack to light.

josh posted...

Yeah, it's the multiple tiers that I got burned out on. Got the save though and still remember what me and a mate were doing so we still plan to hop back into exactly the same save in a few more months time. I wouldn't trade the time back though, it's a lot of fun.

Which version were you on? 0.6 released relatively recently (like 4-5 months ago, I believe) and as I understand it rearranged a lot of stuff in ways that mean you are unlocking meaningful new toys more consistently as you progress through the tech tree (it also added space elevators, which are just plain cool) and those that played prior versions seem to generally agree that it was a considerable improvement in that regard. Personally, I can't compare because I started with 0.6.

Lokarin posted...

ya, I think I need 3 light oils to solid fuels instead of just one, my heavy oil is 50/50 split between lube and crack to light.

It sounds like you should just be cracking light oil, not burning it off as solid fuel. Until you start making rocket fuel (both for the rocket and to power trains), you generally don't need much solid fuel unless you're short on coal for some reason (especially where, once you're into blue science, solar/nuclear can start replacing boilers), and until the rocket you won't be going through all that much rocket fuel.

For heavy, what I usually do is add a pump from the heavy tank to the cracking and wire it up to my lube tank, setting it to only turn on (sending heavy oil to cracking) if my lube is above a certain threshold (usually like 20k). That ensures lube gets priority and I always have a supply available, while keeping me from ever getting backed up on heavy oil. Similarly, a pump on light oil to crack it to petroleum if the light tank goes over 20k or whatever ensures there's enough to turn into solid fuel if I need that, but it keeps me from getting backed up on light oil. I sometimes also add a third pump to turn petroleum into solid fuel (a less efficient recipe than using light oil) if petroleum gets backed up while I'm consuming light oil (producing a buttload of rocket fuel while not consuming any sulfur or plastic, for example), but that's a relatively niche case and you aren't likely to run into it very often in vanilla.

I don't think I need to crack light oil since I am PetroGas capped

If you're capped on petroleum and don't have a pressing need to produce lube or solid fuel, you don't need to do anything with your stored oils. They're fine to sit there until you need them. You talked about your oil being bottlenecked, which I figured meant you were starved for petroleum because your light oil was backing up.

adjl posted...

Which version were you on? 0.6 released relatively recently (like 4-5 months ago, I believe) and as I understand it rearranged a lot of stuff in ways that mean you are unlocking meaningful new toys more consistently as you progress through the tech tree (it also added space elevators, which are just plain cool) and those that played prior versions seem to generally agree that it was a considerable improvement in that regard. Personally, I can't compare because I started with 0.6.

bro why are you telling me this? I just feel like I got my life back. It definitely was more than 4-5 months ago lool

adjl posted...

If you're capped on petroleum and don't have a pressing need to produce lube or solid fuel, you don't need to do anything with your stored oils. They're fine to sit there until you need them. You talked about your oil being bottlenecked, which I figured meant you were starved for petroleum because your light oil was backing up.

it was, i had to start a solid fuel converter to ease the pressure

josh posted...

bro why are you telling me this? I just feel like I got my life back. It definitely was more than 4-5 months ago lool

Looking at the changelog, it looks like 0.6.1 was actually released last April, so you might have been on that version. One of the big changes was to move Production and Utility Sciences into space (requiring Vulcanite and Cryonite, respectively), so if that sounds familiar, you were probably on the current version. If you do have to update, the SE wiki has a guide on what's new and what will need to be done to make the update process go more smoothly:

https://spaceexploration.miraheze.org/wiki/Updating_to_Space_Exploration_v0.6.x

The factory must grow.

Lokarin posted...

it was, i had to start a solid fuel converter to ease the pressure

So you're starved for petroleum because light oil is backed up, but you're also capped on petroleum? I'm confus.

adjl posted...

So you're starved for petroleum because light oil is backed up, but you're also capped on petroleum? I'm confus.

it is confusing cuz they were separate problems that I solved 'during' the conversation :D

Ah. Well then carry on, it sounds like you're on track.

adjl posted...

Looking at the changelog, it looks like 0.6.1 was actually released last April, so you might have been on that version

We stopped around October 2022 so still on track. Getting close to starting back up again. We're at the point where our off-planet rockets are automated, it's just annoying having to go there and set everything up especially if it's a biter planet since we usually try to genocide it so they don't grow

I quite pointedly selected biter-free planets for as many offworld expansions as I could. I took the free spaceship from the asteroid belt and used it to drop landing pads on one planet/moon for each of the offworld resources, and I think the highest threat level I encountered doing that was like 15% (with no biters anywhere near the landing zone and no further exploration, so they won't be expanding until I actually get there). The only surface with cryonite as its main resource has biter meteors, unfortunately, but one of the moons next to Nauvis has plenty of Cryonite despite oil being its main resource (it's now a Rocket Fuel factory) and 0% threat, so I'm fine there.

The setup is indeed a bit of a pain, though. Getting ready to go build takes such a long time with all the running back and forth trying to make sure I don't forget anything and trying to plan out everything I'll need. I should really set up a bunch of delivery cannons for all of the raw materials just to manually send any extra stuff I end up needing that I can't readily mine there. And also set up a bunch of delivery cannons for delivery cannon capsule components, since I'm going to want to send those to each planet. And also set up larger-scale rocket part production. There are just so many QoL-type builds I want to do to streamline future progression that it gets a bit daunting to think about all of them.

dang the tank is strong, can just run over spawners and worms without issue... the personal laser defense can shoot out of the tank, which I wasn't expecting, as well as personal robo-port constructors making combat repairs.

And the main cannon can even penetrate multiple targets

Currently at 0.41 evolution and just need to mass produce Yellow pots to get the rocket controls, then finally the rocket proper. (and then probably more things)

...

my base did come under pollution attack even though there's no visible spawners around so I did a quick patrol to kill any expansions... I made some small radar stations (1 pole, 1 radar, 1 turret, 1 solar panel) and placed them around my perimeter to act as an early warning system.

Tanks are indeed awesome. There was a time when they were largely useless, but around 0.15 or 0.16 they got massively buffed and now they're the go-to method for destroying bases in the mid game.

Lokarin posted...

my base did come under pollution attack even though there's no visible spawners around

If you turn on the pollution display on the map, you can sometimes see chunks of pollution being consumed, which usually indicates that there's a nest there (especially if it's not densely forested). That can be helpful for avoiding unwanted surprises, if you aren't at the point of maintaining radar coverage.

Lokarin posted...

I made some small radar stations (1 pole, 1 radar, 1 turret, 1 solar panel) and placed them around my perimeter to act as an early warning system.

I might suggest a couple extra solar panels and some accumulators. A radar can consume 5 panels' worth of electricity, and having it go dark at night could let biters slip past undetected. That, or just run big poles out to the radar outposts, which might even be cheaper than one panel depending on how far you're going.

Best part about tanks? Tree destroyer.

Great biter home bulldozer too

... until 1 rock you didn't see in the carnage stops you in your tracks

josh posted...

Great biter home bulldozer too

... until 1 rock you didn't see in the carnage stops you in your tracks

ya, I'm an old gamer... but Factorio is the first game I played where I feel legitimate danger when distracted driving

josh posted...

Great biter home bulldozer too

... until 1 rock you didn't see in the carnage stops you in your tracks

Or worse, a cliff.

I now have the rocket silo, and I already had pre-built about 400 rocket fuel.

I'm still using lowdies for goldies so I'm currently crafting 10 Production Mk 3s to help optimize the final push

Evolution Factor 0.61

The silo itself only holds four prod mods (and you should absolutely use them, it takes the rocket cost from 1000 of each component to ~730ish), but the rest can go elsewhere in the chain. If you've unlocked beacons and have spare material production, you can put speed mods in them to help the silo go faster, but that probably won't be necessary for your first rocket.

ya, i need 4 for the silo and 2 each for the lowdies, rocket parts and rocket fuels for a total of 10

Ah, makes sense. I don't think I've ever done it without quite a few machines making all three of those parts, given how long the recipes take, but where that's an excellent way to realize just how little steel and plastic you're actually producing and it gets a lot harder to prod mod them all, I can understand taking it more slowly. You might still want to consider some speed beacons, assembler upgrades, and/or extra machines to hurry things along, though. A single Assembler 2 with Prod 3's in it produces one LDS every ~32 seconds, so the 714 you need for a rocket will take about 22,500 seconds to produce, or almost 6.5 hours. RCU's and rocket fuel are even worse, at ~48 seconds per craft and nearly 10 hours of crafting time to finish them all.

i'm glad there's no such thing as power surges... I hit one of the main power poles with my car

imagine if you could overload power grids like you can in ONI lol