Factorio

Folanlron said:

I would do it how Laurence does it. Trains that size you are just asking for trouble.

Click to expand...

This is basically how I'm using trains.

I use trains that are either 1-1 or 1-4-1 (1 engine, 1 wagon or 1 engine, 4 wagons, 1 engine). It's worked really well so far, but all my trains between land and space are 1-1 and it's getting pretty ridiculous.

Gravel said:

So I'm almost 50 hours in now and I haven't made any forward progress in like 25 hours. I've literally just been trying to figure out city blocks. I've got most of the stuff up to red circuits going, but fucking hell, I realized I probably should've used a city block around the processing ones for loading/unloading. As it is, my blocks are super cramped, especially ones like sulphur and red circuits. I'm tempted to just fucking start all over again.

I really should've done a vanilla world to figure out city blocks first.

For some reason, every time I play this game I have the mindset of keeping everything tightly together, and then halfway realize space isn't at a premium whatsoever. Even with a main bus for the start of SE, I did 3 columns of 4 belts, with 2 in-between. Why didn't I do something like 5 or 6 belt lines of 4? Fuck if I know.

For instance:

View attachment 518675

Click to expand...

brother it's all fine. Don't start over!

You're using Krastorio2, right? If so everything you make is going to be obsolete, so don't worry if a given block is trash.

It's also good that you're not doing the dumbass mistake of overbuilding each block FOR ULTIMATE PRODUCTIVITY like I did only to realize it's either starved or full 98% of the time. I've given up trying to correct that behavior and am just repeating it every time because I like the aesthetics of full factories and thicc lasagna.

Gravel said:

Nope, I did a K2 run for about 25 hours, and then decided I wanted to try SE by itself.

Click to expand...

I'm not sure well-versed in what SE has by itself vs K2 + SE, but I'd bet that at the stage you're in, everything is still going to be made obsolete, so don't sweat some bad blocks.

This is what peak factorio looks like

Gravel said:

Took me 70 fucking hours to finally get my city blocks setup and everything ready to launch into orbit for the first time. Got up there not realizing that you needed a fuckload of life support so I only had 30 minutes to mess around and I didn't accomplish much (next time I'll bring coal so I can make more up there). Basically just enough to get some science going.

Feel like I have no clue what I'm doing now. Will be interesting to see how long it takes to figure this one out.

Edit: Oh, also in my haste, I did this (note the block I'm trying to show with the power pole). So yeah, the science I brought up and didn't put in the lab, and the automation of space science was all a waste of time. I think I got 200 total space science done. I've got a 2nd rocket ready to go, and bringing a 2nd rocket up with me (also have a landing pad on both ends and some cannon delivery chests up there already). And like 6 hours of life support this time. Bringing more science packs, but not really sure what else I'll need.

Click to expand...

Looking good brother!

These guides help with figuring out logistics between planets, which is a huuuge part of the challenge of space exploration




The big mistake I made around the point you're at is not having separate rocket landings for each science type. This guy created separate science blocks and had them all run via logistics bots and it's way cleaner than what I did with belts and trains.

So a week ago I disabled LTN warnings (that tell me my train network is failing) to focus on upgrading my space science. I turned it back on and....

Gravel said:

Alright, Tuco, I've been dicking around in space and got my first cryo outpost setup. I'm also doing my first space science, utility. My setup on my Nauvis Orbit base is below. What I can't figure out is how in the fuck do you get even remotely enough petroleum to sustain that? It seems like my only option at the moment is importing it with barrels. I know coal liquefaction is in the distant future, but what do you do in the meantime?

The stuff on the right of the science lab is my setup for cards/utility science. Pump in barrels of gas at the top, get chem, wash cards, etc down the chain. Shits out utility at the bottom space manufacturing thingy. Needs assloads of petroleum to keep the chem going, which makes the thermo shit to heat up the conductor.

View attachment 519855

Click to expand...

That's the core challenge of outposts: Extracting the needed resources in an effective way.

One thing that might be different about my game from vanilla (not sure if it's SE or K2 or what) is that oil is unlimited. Once you deplete it, you get uhm, 20% of the rate or something. Anyway, oil is cheap AF, and I regret deploying an outpost on an oil planet to build rocket fuel instead of building it on Nauvis.

Anyway, shipping liquids is necessary in some cases and it feels terrible since barrels stack to 10 and you have to recycle them to get steel, which you then generally ship back.

I'll check what I did on my cryo outpost, but I don't remember shipping in oil.


One idea I embraced in Space Exploration is really building up the outposts and trying to create semi-independent outposts that produced complete products, while minimizing the footprint of Nauvis. This meant embracing the Core Miners, using their byproducts, etc. This is probably a waste of time and it'd be more time effective to do minimal outposts and just yeet that shit back to Nauvis for processing, but whatever, I enjoy the aesthetics of big outposts.

Gravel said:

I realized my problem is that I really struggle with scaling things up as much as I need to. I really need to probably double everything I've got on Nauvis. And then set up a few more rockets and just start shooting shit up there constantly. I've been slow rolling it with loading the rockets manually and going up there physically each time, but I haven't automated space much at all. The big one that's fucking me is anything related to oil, primarily sulfur (with plastic being a close second) as I'm just always short on it and figuring out how to get the proper amount of petroleum oil being produced completely eludes me, still.

But if I can get that sorted, I can start up an actual automation of space platforms which then would allow me to setup an actual space factory instead of whatever hobbled together shit I have. Although at this point, it may be worthwhile just to finish up the Automation tree (I'm at about 250/500 on the Utility Space science packs) so I can make my own requestor chests and do it for real.

Oh, and apparently the answer to my question about petroleum in space was, in fact, barrels. Bummer.

Click to expand...

Overbuilding is the common SE sin that I commit regularly. It's just too tempting to want to saturate your need for XXX as soon as you unlock it. This results in massive factories that need massive resources to build that then sit idle 95% of the time until you unlock something new that needs them. This is made more dramatic because of how expensive modules can get.

Instead, you can be more effective by creating smaller factories that you then let run in the background while you do something else. I'm redoing huge parts of Nauvis right now and my outposts and am condensing them. It's satisfying but I also enjoy the huge lasagna bases I had before unlocking more effective Krastorio 2 buildings .

meStevo said:

lol meanwhile im over here playing with core miners for the first time just slapping things together having never messed w/ K2 OR SE before.... I still don't know what I'm going to do with half this shit, need to get it connected to the existing lines in our factory and stop backing things up so I can start automating things that I still recognize so I can get to more shit that I've never seen before, lol.

One thing ive never done but not sure i can do is connect water and an oil field to this and then turn that off and on based on levels, so that oil/water don't just cap from other sources and then back up the rest of the core mining stuffs.

(edit: ok, just did that, that was simple once it worked, seemed like I had to just kinda do it then do it 2-3 more times and then it all suddenly started working)

Our poor power grid looks like it has an arrythmia whenever that core drill kicks on.

Remedial compared to what you guys are doing, but thought I'd share anyways.


We're only like 15 hours into this game, most of that w/ 2 other players, occasionally 2-3 others who like to just come kill bugs.

Click to expand...

My first Core Mining factory maintained different belts for all the resources. I moved toward dumping them all to one warehouse and then using filtered loaders.

Speaking of indulging in wasting time for aesthetic reasons, here's one of what I call a "MegaFactory Block" on my Imersite planet. It consumes imersite core fragments and produces nearly every generic resource. This particular planet is waterless and has no mineral water (which is a resource introduced by krastorio2), which makes creating Imersite Crystals and Plates obnoxious. I have to ship both in (and will probably need to ship in Rare Metals, also a Krastorio 2 resource....). But the bonus is that if I build up my outpost enough to build rank 2 production modules onsite, I can use the massive amount of Sand and Sulfur that's created as a byproduct of Imersite production. I know Space Exploration generates planets, but I don't know if there are rules to make Imersite Planets shitholes like that. If Imersite planets in the Nauvis/Calidus star system can spawn with water and rare metals, then this is a pretty shitty roll.

here's a pic of one of my energy glaives in action. I have two massssssive solar farms near the sun that function as partial dyson spheres to energize this beam that autonomously roasts biters. It's one way to completely eliminate biters from a planet or moon. I've exterminated them from one moon so far, this one is 80% done


here's the beam emitter. Each one of those turbine looking things increases the speed and damage of the beam, and takes a whopping 1GW of energy.



I made Nauvis with Deathworld settings, so even the biter bases very far from any source of pollution are EXTREMELY dense. Here's an area I literally just generated. It's stuffed with biters.



Eliminating the biters from Nauvis is a huuuuuuuuuuuuge undertaking and will represent a massive achievement for Engineer Kind

Herr's my imersite crystal quadrant, that I'm pretty proud of. Most of my city blocks is separated in 4 quadrants. This one takes in Raw Imersite, Nitric Acid, Sulfuric Acid, Silicon and produces Sulfur, Sand and Imersite crystals. In the center is a Wide Area Beacon that hits all the factories. The inclusion of that beacon change makes Factorio wayyyy better aesthetically in my opinion. Efficient vanilla factories look terrible with tons of beacons. I use Bob's Inserters to add significant configurability to the inserter positions, which helps the aesthetics by handling corner cases (instead of needing ugly spaghetti or additional spacing). i use Krastorio 2 loaders for most container<->belt actions, and some belt<-> factories.

In this pic you can see belts coming into my raw imersite and out of my imersite crystals and sand. These route to other blocks. I call these "straws" and they are an essential way to avoid stressing a train network when using city blocks. I still need to add a few more to this block.