Factorio

Tuco

Tuco

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Tuco said:
Behold, Arco Balancer Mk. I

View attachment 526778

It uses a rules based system ( Rule-based system - Wikipedia ). Basically for each of the 10 balancing machines,

  1. If output too low, we want to run this machine
  2. If input is too high, we want to run this machine
  3. If we want to run this machine and have enough of the input, then run this machine by requesting its inputs.
It works well but I haven't really seen what other people have built so I don't know how other people have solved this. It also seems like the balancer has to run a bunch of cycles every time the other factories that Naquium Tesseracts or sciences run and disrupt the natural order. The one thing I wanted to integrate was some logic to defer running a given machine if it has too much of the output.

The other idea I had was to use a score-based system that would score the inputs and outputs and run if it exceeds some threshold. I think I'll let this one run and continue building my factory.
Click to expand...
I redid the Arcosphere Balancer using a score-based system, which after reading what other people do is generally the "right" solution. There's a ton of craaaaazy shit people have come up with to solve this including linear alegebra ( arco linear algebra ) a sushi looking belt thing ( Space Exploration, combinator-free arcosphere handling... ) some kind of flowchart thing for producing a tesseract, ( Space Exploration Arcospheres: The Overengineered Flowchart Solution ). I also saw another one that used like, 200 hundred Gravimetric Facilities, which is crazy.

I wanted to repeat the look of concentric rings with a core that the Gravimetrics Facility has, and I kind of got it. I lucked out in that I can just barely fit exactly 16 gravimetrics facilities around the provider warehouse, which serve as the core of my balncers. Them being able to access the arcospheres with an inserter makes the system very responsive.

The outer ring of gravimetrics facilities isn't as lucky and the size of the wide beacons is just a bit toooo small to respect the ring shape, plus the amount of fluid makes it cumbersome. The outer ring is composed of the circuits for each recipe, which is transported via wire. This enables a significant amount of compression which is useful for shortening the logistic bot travel distance. I've seen a few dozen arco balancers and haven't seen anyone build anything like this. I'm tempted to go further and use decorative platforms for the first time ever to further frame the concentric ring design, but I probably won't. The usage of Bob's Inserters makes this design possible, without it I'd have to spread out a bit more and use 4 beacons instead of 2, which isn't a huge deal.

This is a super fun puzzle, easily the best factory puzzle in any game I've played. Even once you have a working solution, the difference between it working OK and good is significant, and because the number of arcospheres you get decreases logarithmically, simply scaling up isn't a great solution.

53730171684_f234ab3485_o.jpg
 
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meStevo

meStevo

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I can't get over the hump now that I have the space elevator unlocked. Hoping one of my friends starts to do some in-orbit building as we start to re-architect all that. Adapting the ground base and the orbit base to work via trains is just so much to take on at one time in my head that I have difficulty taking it piece by piece. I start to do some things and then just end up logging, then we chew throught a bunch of resources keeping an unused elevator up and aren't getting much/any research done. Blah.

Cataclysm Classic launch was a nice break, but I need to sit down and work through the initial foundations of the orbital base and supplying it so we can move forward. More of a rant at myself than a cry for help or anything. If I was playing solo this is where the game would probably end, if it wouldn't have already.
 
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Tuco

Tuco

I got Tuco'd!
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meStevo said:
I can't get over the hump now that I have the space elevator unlocked. Hoping one of my friends starts to do some in-orbit building as we start to re-architect all that. Adapting the ground base and the orbit base to work via trains is just so much to take on at one time in my head that I have difficulty taking it piece by piece. I start to do some things and then just end up logging, then we chew throught a bunch of resources keeping an unused elevator up and aren't getting much/any research done. Blah.

Cataclysm Classic launch was a nice break, but I need to sit down and work through the initial foundations of the orbital base and supplying it so we can move forward. More of a rant at myself than a cry for help or anything. If I was playing solo this is where the game would probably end, if it wouldn't have already.
Click to expand...
For me, this is year 3 of this save. The first yearish long break I took was when I chose to integrate city block rails into Nauvis. The second was when I unlocked space elevator.

The most common reason I see people quit SE is when they unlock space rails or space elevators (and are probably like me and ignored rails until this point), because it's sooo much work to redo everything. It's a shame because the most interesting stuff in SE is near the end with spaceships and arco balancing. My bet is that if you don't finish now you never will, because Space Age will be out soon and in a few years (at a guess...) Space Exploration based on Space Age will come out, and who knows what life will be like then?
 
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Tuco

Tuco

I got Tuco'd!
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Tuco said:
So I toyed with the idea of compressing trains even further and tried adding multiple inputs to my train. I just built my Matter 1 science using this idea and am pretty excited about it.

53649918868_5d1fec86d0_o.jpg


There are three train stations that have three inputs each and one that has two inputs, letting me directly feed these complex recipes without a bunch of stations.

View attachment 524488
Click to expand...
This was one of the rare times where I built too small. I didn't realize those Material Fabricator facilities aren't modified by the beacons and can't have modules, so they don't scale at all even if their base production is high. This meant they are a bottleneck.

I just redid my entire matter factory. Redoing it ended up not being tooooo big of a deal because I also merged it with a new scrap and matter production facility. I now handle scrap on the right side and turn it into matter (except for Stone...) and then turn the Heavy Oil into Anti-Matter fuel. I'm toying with juicing that further and using that scrap to create material testing packs for the antimatter facilitiy and lithium.


full res: https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/53746291668_eb84ab0dde_o.jpg

53746291668_7bfb5175a2_k.jpg
 
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Tuco

Tuco

I got Tuco'd!
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So one of the endgame capabilities granted by Krastorio2 is matter production, like I used in the above factory. This is synergistic with the Core Mining you use on outposts where you get a bunch of random stuff. In my outposts I used that random stuff to build ingots, circuits, stone stuffs etc instead of shipping it back to Nauvis, which is probably a mistake given how much time it takes to carefully handle all those resources, but whatever I enjoyed it. This approach has been improved moderately from the matter production, where I can turn stuff I don't need that much into stuff I do need. Here's an example on my Holminite planet:

holmatter.jpg


This one turns excess coal, iron, rare metals and stone into oil, copper. I'm not sure if the transmutation of coal->oil through matter is better than coal liquification, but whatever.

I'll do this differently on my Vitamelange planet, and turn just about everything into Stone so I don't have to ship it in. I did this on my Imersite planet which is waterless to bolster my mineral water, water, and rare metals.
 
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meStevo

meStevo

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Are you taking your screenshots and stitching them together or is there something that can do that for you?

It's harder to take a break when im paying for a dedicated server and have friends playing, heh. Love your screenshots though. Doesn't quite translate because we're not using some of these mods (man, just the space those inserters save is insane for things like train stops) but it's nice to see non-blueprint 'must be mega compact and use every square' style layouts. Reminds me that I don't have to do everything in as confined a space as I rework stuff.

My initial approach was that on the south side of orbit I'd provide from the surface, and have a train network at the north end moving materials produced from one block or another. Of course, I then setup a group of stations to receive basic fluids and then... set up space science to receive materials on the west side of a block and im already starting to spaghetti one block in. Torn between trying to do some kind of fluid bus or just doing foundational processing at the initial receiption block and then processing that as needed on site (as re-processing the byproducts would be necessary, so essentially just keeping those processes topped off with fresh stuff). Obviously the latter is the play there 99% of the time.

I'll spend a lot of time thinking about it, log in... start to approach doing some of it and just feel overwhelmed and need to step away. Fucking adhd man, game makes it never feel so clear and apparent that it's just hard to keep thoughts together and stay on top of a thing.

Another pain, scaffolding. Are do you have blueprints of a lot of common elements w/ scaffolding under them to develop stuff like in some of those screenshots? Or are you placing/removing chunks of it and cleaning it up after your elements are down? Feel like that'd be a good mod, automatically including scaffolding in the building if there is empty space below an object and the surface is orbit.
 
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Tuco

Tuco

I got Tuco'd!
<Gold Donor>
45,526
73,617
meStevo said:
Are you taking your screenshots and stitching them together or is there something that can do that for you?

It's harder to take a break when im paying for a dedicated server and have friends playing, heh. Love your screenshots though. Doesn't quite translate because we're not using some of these mods (man, just the space those inserters save is insane for things like train stops) but it's nice to see non-blueprint 'must be mega compact and use every square' style layouts. Reminds me that I don't have to do everything in as confined a space as I rework stuff.

My initial approach was that on the south side of orbit I'd provide from the surface, and have a train network at the north end moving materials produced from one block or another. Of course, I then setup a group of stations to receive basic fluids and then... set up space science to receive materials on the west side of a block and im already starting to spaghetti one block in. Torn between trying to do some kind of fluid bus or just doing foundational processing at the initial receiption block and then processing that as needed on site (as re-processing the byproducts would be necessary, so essentially just keeping those processes topped off with fresh stuff). Obviously the latter is the play there 99% of the time.

I'll spend a lot of time thinking about it, log in... start to approach doing some of it and just feel overwhelmed and need to step away. Fucking adhd man, game makes it never feel so clear and apparent that it's just hard to keep thoughts together and stay on top of a thing.

Another pain, scaffolding. Are do you have blueprints of a lot of common elements w/ scaffolding under them to develop stuff like in some of those screenshots? Or are you placing/removing chunks of it and cleaning it up after your elements are down? Feel like that'd be a good mod, automatically including scaffolding in the building if there is empty space below an object and the surface is orbit.
Click to expand...
I use screenshot toolkit for the screenshots:

Screenshot Toolkit

* Snipping: Screenshots a selected area, similar to programs like the Windows Snipping Tool or Flameshot.
mods.factorio.com mods.factorio.com

The key advantage it has over just using the /screenshot command is it will take screenshots in "daytime", even in space.

For scaffolding anytime I work in an area I just big dick drop an entire sheet of scaffolding over the entire thing (which can be like, 20k scaffolding for those double wide blocks I use for science) and then clean it up with a delete blueprint that only deletes scaffolding.

However, for precise copy-paste stuff I use Ghost On Water which lets you place buildings that require landfill or scaffolding in one go.
 
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Tuco

Tuco

I got Tuco'd!
<Gold Donor>
45,526
73,617
meStevo said:
I'll spend a lot of time thinking about it, log in... start to approach doing some of it and just feel overwhelmed and need to step away. Fucking adhd man, game makes it never feel so clear and apparent that it's just hard to keep thoughts together and stay on top of a thing.
Click to expand...
I have a task list for this. Here's my current set of tasks. I'll add to it while not playing Factorio, then loosely reference it as I play. I used to have warnings turned on for my trains so I could keep everything running, but turned all that off and primarily focus on one task at a time, then come up for air and check that stuff is generally processing. Factorio, especially SE, really rewards multi-tasking in that you should build something and let it run while you focus on other stuff, then come back to it later to use the output.

1716685326242.png
 
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Tuco

Tuco

I got Tuco'd!
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Friday Facts #413 - Gleba | Factorio

IntroductionAlbert Making a new world in Factorio is relatively "easy", just create a new set of tilesets for the ground, add some new models of trees, create a bunch of new decoratives, some decals (optional), a new skin for the cliffs (optional), and bam! you get a new planet. Well, to be...
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