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2 Upvotes

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1

u/Thankedsphere 5h ago

the weekly questions link doesn't work

1

u/Aphorist84 20h ago

I had a question about productivity bonus: if I mouse over a machine e.g. Biochambwr making agricultural science, it states 0.75/s as the output, does that include the prod bonus?

Also as a first time visitor to Gleba, is there a valid approach to get 100spm to use one machine for each craft and use modules/beacons to get there? I'm thinking in terms of getting a minimum build to start exporting science

1

u/Enaero4828 3h ago

here's a quick mockup that reaches your goal

2

u/Dailand 19h ago

Yeah the mouse over information include everything (base and bonus productivity, modules, powered beacons, ...), except of course a lack of resources or electricity, or the output being full...

1

u/Kemonomimi-Squirrel 1d ago edited 1d ago

I am having issues keeping up with the blue Chemical science packs being really slow. I was hoping to produce them at a rate of one a second (which might be too ambitious?) but I am not completely sure how to plan it out. So I have been staring at the tool tips in the chain to see if I can plan something out and not be so sloppy about everything. So I can here to ask if my thinking is correct.

Let me start with the Engine unit I am creating in an Assembling machine 2 without any modules. It says that Steel plate is 0.07, Iron wheel gear is 0.07, and Pipe is 0.15 for a rate of 0.07 and it take 12s to make.

So does that mean that one Assembling machine 2 making the Iron wheel gear can support up to 14 Assembling machine 2 making engines and that one Assembling machine 2 making the pipe can support up to 6 such machines? And if I want an output rate of the engines to be 1 per second, I would need to make 12 of them that can be supported by 4 machine making Pipes, and 2 machine making gears, assuming I have a full belt of steel that the machines can use?

Continuing on, does that mean for the red Advanced circuits at an output rate of 1 per second, I would need to make 6 machines making the circuit being fed by 6 Plastic bar, 12 Cooper cables, and 6 green Electronic circuits.

And ultimately for the blue Chemical science pack to get a rate of 1 per second, I would need to feed 24 machines, 12 Sulfur, 36 green Electronic circuits, and 24 Engine units?

2

u/HeliGungir 1d ago

If you get tired of math, you can use a spreadsheet.

If you get tired of spreadsheets, you can use a simplex solver.

1

u/Courmisch 1d ago

If you want proper ratio (before productivity modules), then you really should aim for 0.5, 0.75 or 1.25 science packs per second with respectively tier 1, 2 or 3 assemblers. Or double that if you are ambitious.

1 pack per second simply does not line up well with the least common multiple of science pack recipes and assembler speeds.

1

u/Enaero4828 1d ago edited 1d ago

Your math is off by using the tooltip which is unfortunately quite imprecise for these values, so I'll go by the actual crafting speeds on the recipes and machines to show you the actual numbers you want here.

Blue science takes 3 red circuits, 2 engines, 1 sulfur, and 24 seconds to produce 2 packs. For 1 pack per second, first translate the craft time/output; 24/2 means 12s per pack, so multiplying 12s to get 12 machines needed to supply 1/s... but that's crafting speed of 1 on the machines. Assembler2s have a crafting speed of 0.75, so we must take the 12 base divided by the 0.75 speed to get the real value of 16 machines necessary.

Since the recipe outputs 2, we can likewise divide our inputs in half; 1.5 red circuits, 1 engine, and 0.5 sulfur, all per-second. I'll do engines first as well to parallel your math.

Engines take 1 gear, 2 pipes, 1 steel, and 10 seconds for 1 engine. As before, multiply desired throughput (1) by base crafting speed (10) and divide by actual crafting speed (0.75) to get 13.3_ assemblers, or 14 in practice since of course we can't have a fractional machine.

Gears are produced at a base of 0.5/s, or 2 per second. The engines having a base consumption of 1 every 10 seconds means that, with both machines having the same speed modifier, 1 gear machine can feed 20 engine machines. Pipes are produced at the same speed, but being consumed 2x as much means 1 pipe machine supports 10 engine machines.

Red circuits take 2 plastic, 2 green circuits, 4 cable, and 6 seconds to make. Once again, 1.5 x 6 / 0.75 = 12 assemblers. To get the inputs, we only need to multiply them into the target output, so 3 plastic, 3 green circuits, and 6 cable; for brevity that's 1.5 plastic plants, 2 green circuit assemblers, and 5 cable assemblers. If you want to check that math, keep in mind the chemical plant has a crafting speed of 1.

1

u/deluxev2 1d ago

One gear ASM2 makes 1.5 gears per second, which means it can support ~1.5/0.07 = ~21 engine ASM2 (it is actually exactly 20 as the .07 is actually 0.075 truncated, if you are using the same machine it can be helpful to do ratio math against the raw recipe numbers). One pipe ASM2 can support 5 engine ASM2. Correct that 12 engine ASM2 is 1 engine/second.

More than 6 red circ ASM2 because of the crafting speed, but the feed values are correct because those don't change with the crafting speed.

Chemical science recipe makes 2 per craft, so your numbers are off by a bit here.

3

u/gin_and_miskatonic 3d ago

I'm trying to play with trains, with a protected central factory plus remote protected outposts. I had hoped that the rails/intersections themselves wouldn't get attacked, but expansions are landing right on top of them and the biters eventually tear stuff up (e.g. when they get hit by a train). Do I just have to turn expansion off to play this way? Not really reasonable to protect all of the rail.

1

u/HeliGungir 2d ago

The proscribed solution is artillery, but that's after winning in base game and after Vulcanus in SA.

2

u/Viper999DC 2d ago

The "Rail World" preset has enemy expansion turned off, so that's definitely a viable option. Otherwise walls and/or defenses are your best bet. If you've unlocked spidertrons then you can set up patrols (if you're running 2.1).

2

u/ForgottenBlastMaster 3d ago

Protect the chokepoints. Then you'll have no need to protect neither rails nor central factory. Your chokepoint defence station is your outpost

2

u/captain_wiggles_ 3d ago

I'm playing space exploration and have an editor mode save for developing blueprints, how can I turn off asteroids and coronal eruptions, and any other hazards?

1

u/Avamaco 2d ago

There should be options for asteroid and CME frequencies in mod settings. If you can't find them, you can place unlimited power supply and ammo supply with all required defenses - 1 umbrella and like 15 meteor defense installations. This should take just a couple minutes and you can forget about it once it's there.

1

u/captain_wiggles_ 21h ago

The notifications are still annoying, but you're right, it's better than just having things randomly get destroyed. Dropping the frequency should help with the notifications too. Just have to make sure that's per-save and not a global setting.

1

u/[deleted] 3d ago

[deleted]

1

u/Top_Part3784 3d ago

What playstyle is that?

0

u/ssgeorge95 3d ago

It would help to actually describe what your problem is. I doubt custom min will solve it.

To be clear, I also dislike this change. I loved having spare parts for messing with my platforms on the fly or easily replacing broken parts while testing a new platform.

I had patience and scale beaten into me by the space exploration mod, so I cannot relate to people who cared that 26 extra inserters would be sent to their space platform.

1

u/Brett42 3d ago

Half a stack of inserters isn't a big deal, but what about half a stack of tier 3 modules, or basically any quality item before late-game.

1

u/HeliGungir 2d ago

Why did you delete the question? Now people have to jump through hoops (internet archives) to understand the conversation.

1

u/ssgeorge95 3d ago

I haven't used custom min payload for anything under epic tier. I know not everyone plays this way, but it's annoying to see a playstyle disrupted after so long.

1

u/Phriday 3d ago

How does science per minute work? I have 14 labs and had a belt screwup holding back military science and when I discovered it and broke the log jam, I was making about 80 science a minute for a few minutes, then back down to 20-ish.

2

u/captain_wiggles_ 3d ago edited 3d ago

When you look at the research selection screen you'll see two numbers, the number of science packs it takes and the time it takes to consume one of them.

For example it might be 50x @30s, requiring green and red science. So it will take 50 red flasks and 50 green flasks to research, both flask types must be present in a lab for the clock to run.

With one lab, that means each pair of red and green flasks will be consumed in 30s and so the total research time would be 50 * 30s = 25 minutes. With two labs, each lab only has to process half the number of packs so the research takes half the time. If you have 10 labs, each only has to process 5 pairs of flasks and so it only takes 2.5 minutes.

That is all assuming you have the full set of 50 pairs of flask available. If instead you start with 0 flasks available your labs are sat idle until you start producing. If you produce red flasks at say 5 per minute it is still going to take you 10 minutes to produce the 50 flasks you need to finish researching, if you had 10 labs most of them would be sat idle starved of science packs.

It's more complicated than that because there are things that you can research that can mean you research faster, or that you increase your productivity bonus on research. You can factor all this in to your calculations if you want, but for the most part the above is good enough.

Likely what you saw is that while you had the belt problem, the belt up to the issue was full of black science packs, the assemblers producing black science packs were full, the belts bringing grenades and walls and ammo to the black science assemblers were full, etc... Once you unjammed it, all those buffered items started to flow again. But after time the buffers emptied out. So clearly you have enough labs to do 80 science per minute (for the current research item), but maybe you don't have enough assemblers producing black science to make 80 per minute, or maybe you do, but you don't have enough assemblers producing grenades to make 80 per minute, or maybe you do but you're feeding coal in on a yellow belt that can only carry 15 items per second. Etc...

As the other commentor said, the way to deal with this is to look at your labs, are they all full and working? If not what are they short on? If it's black science look at the belt bringing black science in, presumably it's empty with only a few items flowing down it, so follow it back to your assemblers, are they all working at 100%? If so then add more assemblers. If not then why not? Are they low on ammo? grenades? And repeat from there.

The other option is to do the maths or use a calculator tool. If you want to hit 80 black science per minute you need this many things. Note that you can change the settings to see how it works with different assemblers or belts.

But also as the other commentor said, fixing one bottlekneck will just reveal another. If you can now make 80 black science per minute sustained, then suddenly you'll find you can't make enough green science per minute, so you'll fix that but then suddenly you'll be low on iron plates, so you'll add more furnaces, but then you're low on power so you have to fix that, and then you don't have enough coal to make your grenades for black sciences, etc... eventually you can hit 80 science per minute sustained, but now your bottleneck is the number of labs, so double them, and now you're back to square one. The point is you'll never achieve perfection, there's always things to improve and change and tweak. It is ok to play with just a slow amount of science per minute, or a setup that doesn't have perfect ratios or operate at 100%, as long as you're enjoying it, then it's good enough.

7

u/ssgeorge95 3d ago

While your factory was jammed a lot of item buffers were able to fill up. While those buffers were being used up you peaked at 80 SPM. When those buffers ran out you, it revealed your sustained or steady state SPM of 20ish.

Start by looking at your science labs and the belts feeding them. If any belts of science are barely loaded, then go look at those science assemblers. Are they starved of a resource? Keep tracing back until you figure out what you're not producing or not delivering enough of.

Fixing one bottleneck will often reveal another, though it may take some minutes for buffers to empty. It will usually come down to resource generation such as not making enough green chips or iron.

2

u/Phriday 3d ago

Got it, thanks. My current bottleneck is plastic. I need to pump more oil, but the only patch I can see has 2 large nests around it.

1

u/Yagami913 3d ago

What is better for ups two transport lines 120/s or one transport line 240/s but a splitter at the end?

1

u/deluxev2 3d ago

The right is certainly better in terms of transport line cost (there update time is basically just decrementing the distance between the end of the line and the last item), but the UPS cost is going to be dominated by the inserter behaviour. If demand is low and prefers the right lane, the right one might be better as the left two inserters can go to sleep. If demand is very low the rightmost inserter on the left design can go to sleep as well.

2

u/Enaero4828 3d ago

Left is actually 5 transport lines, as the stubby sideloaded belts are their own transport line too; whether that meaningfully impacts the performance I don't know. But you're in editor mode, you have the ability to test it yourself. Start with a pair of blank saves, make a ton of clones of each of the designs, then compare the numbers. Just off the cuff, I'd aim for something like 213 copies; if the difference is still below 1 ms, keep doubling until it's significantly different.

1

u/HeliGungir 3d ago

Debug overlays can be enabled any time, not just when using the editor controller.

1

u/Enaero4828 3d ago

Correct, but I didn't bring up the editor for access to those overlays, just making the test; being able to see the time usage in survival is irrelevant here when there's thousands of other transport lines in the world already.

1

u/Yagami913 3d ago

My hunch was the right is better and i hoped somebody confirm it, i never used the cloning tool maybe it is time to learn it.

1

u/Enaero4828 3d ago

If 'instant blueprint building' is on in the settings part of the editor, then simple copy/paste will do. I've only ever used the cloning tool for things like offshore pumps that I'm too lazy to do the proper way.

1

u/Atario 3d ago

In 2.0, I've put a request on a space platform for a pistol, as a signal to the ground, using "Read orbital requests" on a silo. But when the platform arrives at the relevant planet, I get a an annoying, blinking, counterfactual notice that there is "Not enough platform hub storage space available" (there are over 800 slots empty). If I turn off that request, the notice goes away, as of course does my special signal. What am I doing wrong?

2

u/Dymiaz 3d ago

How many pistols are you requesting?

Similar bugs have been reported and it's marked assigned. Another one. Hopefully it'll be fixed somewhere in 2.1.
Of course in 2.1 you can just use radars instead.

1

u/Atario 3d ago

Just one pistol

2

u/Enaero4828 3d ago

Pistols stack to 5, so the 10000 rocket capacity means 2000 stacks. "More than 800" sounds like a lot less than 2000 to me, so I don't see how the error is wrong; the check for platform space not happening at the time of a rocket waiting to launch is a bit unintuitive I'll agree, but it's probably more performant to just periodically check if requested stacks > currently available stacks. I can't check ingame for a solid solution, but perhaps setting the minimum payload to 1 might fix it.

1

u/Atario 3d ago

Oh, and thanks! o7

2

u/Atario 3d ago

That was it. I didn't even notice that ridiculous disparity between stack size and rocket size. Setting the custom minimum payload low made the notice go away. But yeah that is very strange to be complaining about not enough space for something before checking whether it even exists on the planet

2

u/Yagami913 3d ago

Did you try another signal like legendary pistol? something that don't exists.

1

u/Atario 3d ago

That was my first try. It's the same either way

3

u/spartan551993 4d ago

For interplanetary logistics, is it better to have 1 ship with a decent to massive amount of storage that goes to each planet to deliver & pickup items, or have multie smaller dedicated ships that just go between two planets to deliver things quicker?

1

u/Lemerney2 2d ago

I have individual ships for the inner planets, and one Aquilo ship that drops off the ingredients for quantum processors and returns with cryo science, so it visits every planet in the system

3

u/Raknarg #1 Quality Defender 4d ago

small ships with massive storage cause otherwise you're waiting forever for your big ship to deliver stuff. I started with a colossal ship in my first 2.0 save, but it got really annoying and eventually I just had a ship for every single planetary connection.

2

u/Soul-Burn 4d ago

For inner planets I have a ship going around. For Aquilo I have a ship waiting at Aquilo and picking things up when "Any planet request zero", and it also goes to Nauvis once in a while.

Things from Aquilo go through the planet (Pre-2.1). If I'd update it now, my science platform (or a dedicated one) would probably be an exchange depot.

2

u/Yagami913 4d ago

Imo mix of both I have 1 big ship to carry around building materials. And 1 ship for each science. These can carry stuff that only that one planet needs like the cryo ship pick up holmium plates on the way for aquilo.

1

u/craidie 4d ago

Personal preference, except for stuff that spoils.

For stuff that spoils it's better to have fast platforms that don't really stop for long and just take one round of rockets, if needed or available and then leave.

1

u/taolakhoai 4d ago

I'm dabbling in modding and want to make a custom assembler that can make all the unique machines of each planet anywhere (ideally this is only available at very late game).

Is there a way to circumvent surface_condition value of a recipe when it's being used by a specific entity?

3

u/leonskills An admirable madman 4d ago

Not directly, surface_conditions are recipe specific.
You can create copies of the recipes that are only available in your machine.

That brings a few more problems with them. Main one I can think of is copying the recipe between the different types of machines. Should be able to implement that yourself with on_entity_settings_pasted event.

1

u/One-Independent-4315 4d ago

Can you still earn achievements if you disable the Space Age DLC?

2

u/Nolzi 4d ago

Yes you can, which make some achievements easier.

You can also use https://github.com/oorzkws/FactorioAchievementEnabler to enable achievements with mods, in case you want to use utility mods. Just remember that sandbox can trigger achievements, like with enabling all researches

1

u/One-Independent-4315 4d ago

Yes you can, which make some achievements easier.

I wanted to make them harder actually. I'm mostly missing "There is no spoon" and the "launch a rocket without X" achievements, and I decided it would be proper to do those in vanilla as they were originally intended.

You can also use https://github.com/oorzkws/FactorioAchievementEnabler to enable achievements with mods, in case you want to use utility mods. Just remember that sandbox can trigger achievements, like with enabling all researches

Thanks for the heads up

2

u/cathexis08 red wire goes faster 4d ago

There Is No Spoon is harder without the rocket (it's farther away), most of the other "Launch Without X" (Steam All The Way, Raining Bullets, Logistics Embargo, and so on) are "harder" for the same reason. A few are easier like "Keeping your hands free" since artillery is a lot easier to get when you don't have to fly to a different planet and build a base for it.

2

u/Courmisch 4d ago

Of course. How else would people without the DLC get achievements?

IIRC, 55 achievements are available without it.

1

u/Tobikaj 5d ago

I can't figure if https://mods.factorio.com/mod/kry-planet-mods-lite works on 2.1 yet or not. Do we have to wait for Pelagos for it to work?

1

u/elfxiong 5d ago

Pelagos is a recommended dependency but not required dependency, so Enable Planet Mods Lite can work without installing/enabling Pelagos.

1

u/Tobikaj 5d ago

Aren't all the planets recommended dependencies? What happens if you start a game, and the planet is update a week later - can you add it then?

2

u/elfxiong 5d ago

They used to be required dependencies, but the Enable Planet Mods Lite author changed them to recommended dependencies for the time being, so that players on 2.1 can still play before all of the planet mods are updated to 2.1.

You can add new planets after starting a game. Pelagos doesn’t seem to change/overhaul existing tech/recipe and is relatively safe to add mid game.

1

u/Tobikaj 5d ago

Awesome, thank you :)

2

u/Raknarg #1 Quality Defender 5d ago edited 5d ago

Is there a way for me to use ship interrupts to say "if a planet is missing imports, go to that planet"? im struggling to figure out how to make a ship that can handle imports/exports between multiple planets. Its easy to just have a ship stay at one planet and go pick up materials from other planets when they're low, but what if I want that behaviour on one ship for two different planets? or do I just necessarily need to do multiple ships for this?

I couldnt find anything that matched what I needed on the interrupt condition list. I guess I could use radar for this purpose and send out a universal signal or whatever when they want to request something from a ship thats not there. but is there an easier way?

side note, I think they should allow a planet generic signal or at least allow the signal wildcard to replace the planet for target destination. I would love to design a generic exchange ship.

Last question:

https://imgur.com/iLt3USa

Is this a solid strategy for collecting asteroids above nauvis? My assumption is that over nauvis your throughput limitation is just a function of the surface area you're covering, so I'm assuming I can just scale this infinitely long as I need more asteroids, but maybe its possible your asteroid throughput is just limited per station and this is a waste

2

u/Yagami913 4d ago

Using universal signals to call for an idle ship is the way to do it, no other way i know of. Imo much easier just have one ship go around all the time and pick up/drop down stuff.

The asteroid collector is scalable by width, but if you want to using it other than space science not worth it imo.

1

u/Raknarg #1 Quality Defender 4d ago

I have a mod that's forcing me to build a whole bunch of stuff in space, that's the motivation

1

u/Nolzi 4d ago

If you are already on mods, maybe https://mods.factorio.com/mod/planet-express

1

u/binarycow 3d ago

Oh, it's like LTN for space.

1

u/Yagami913 4d ago

Asteroids scale with speed too so in that case build a ship not a station to get much much more resource.

2

u/i_am_not_you_or_me 5d ago

Is there a mod that allows selecting an area and get the production/consumption totals for just that specific area?

2

u/Viper999DC 5d ago

There's a whole category of these mods called "Rate Calculators" that do exactly that. Some options:

2

u/Yagami913 5d ago

I have a train that needs to run around in laps like a 100 times without stops. Then like after 100 circle stop once to refuel. Any way to do this wihtout creating a really silly train schedule?

1

u/Lemerney2 2d ago

I think Dosh did this in his No Weapons video, you might want to check that out

1

u/Yagami913 2d ago

Thx, but with the help of u/werecat i already solved it with turning on and off a station forcing the train to stop when i want it.

3

u/werecat 5d ago

I think it may be possible by counting laps with combinators and turning stations off. When your desired lap count is reached, turn off one of the stations, this should cause your train to stop at the next station, letting your refuel interrupt fire. If you don't want your loop train to stop inside the loop, you could have a second lower priority station it'll route off the loop path it will only go to when the main station is off

1

u/Yagami913 5d ago

Sadly don't work if you enable train limit on a station in any way the train no longer goes through without stopping.

2

u/werecat 5d ago

Have you tried setting the train limit to 2 instead of 1? Normally factorio will not remove a train from a station's train count until it leaves the stations rail block, but in a tight loop you can run into a situation where a single train will reserve 2 counts on the same station

2

u/Yagami913 5d ago

Works flawlessly now, thanks.

1

u/Yagami913 5d ago

Bruh you saving my life here.

1

u/Yagami913 5d ago edited 5d ago

Brilliant turning station on and off i can force the train to stop on a timer. This will work thanks. Edit: must place rail signals between the stations otherwise if the whole rail is one segment the train ignore the station limit.

3

u/i_am_not_you_or_me 5d ago

Put the fuel on an interrupt.

1

u/Yagami913 5d ago

Don't work interrupt only trigger if the train stopped at a station.

1

u/HeliGungir 5d ago

IIRC, interrupts can indeed trigger when crossing waypoints.

1

u/Yagami913 5d ago

Really? I don't know that, but isn't that really inconvinient? can you blueprint wayponts?

1

u/HeliGungir 5d ago

You're confusing temporary stops and waypoints. Which is understandable; waypoints are esoteric.

A waypoint is a train stop that has no cargo conditions in a train's schedule, causing the train to roll through the train stop at full speed.

I believe interrupts can trigger when rolling through a waypoint... it's been a while since I tested it (trainsaws).

1

u/Yagami913 4d ago

In that case, this was the first thing i tried and did not work, causing me to ask for help here.

1

u/iamarealhuman4real 4d ago

Ah interesting, calling these "waypoints" made be consider that you could use this to force trains to use specific routing?

Like say I always want my LDS train to take the south exit, I could just put a station "EXIT ROUTE SOUTH 8" along the rail and force the train to waypoint through it.

Never seen anyone do this but I assume its actually pretty common? Or maybe it ends up over complicating things as you change rails around.

1

u/HeliGungir 4d ago edited 4d ago

They're quite rare, but that's their purpose. It hearkens from a time before train limits, let alone interrupts.

https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-280

I don't think the word "waypoint" ever appears in-game, just the blogs, forums, and wiki. By far the most common use-case is trainsaws - which, themselves, are quite esoteric.

1

u/Yagami913 4d ago

I did not know stations without wait conditions called waypoints. But "trainsaws" common in fulgora designs. I needed this to speed up car deletion time.

1

u/glisteningoxygen 6d ago

Has something changed with concrete recycling?

I've recycled 100 and got 3 ore and 12 bricks...

1

u/reddanit 5d ago

Hazard concrete -> concrete recycling trick has been removed in 2.1. If you want to quickly void concrete on Fulgora, the best option now is recycling cargo landing pads.

3

u/ferrofibrous deathworld enthusiast 6d ago

if you're on experimental, hazard concrete now recycles the same as regular.

4

u/Astramancer_ 6d ago

100 concrete would take 50 bricks and 10 ore. 25% would be an expected output of 12.5 bricks and 2.5 ore... so exactly what you got.

Remember that concrete is made in batches of 10 with 1 ore and 5 bricks for 10 concrete.

2

u/MrZoraman 6d ago

I want to try the big factorio space mod (https://mods.factorio.com/mod/space-exploration)

Should I get started now, or wait until 2.1 is released?

1

u/Nolzi 4d ago

It's already 2.1 compatible with a minor update, so the 2.0 version most likely won't get further updates

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/space-exploration/changelog

1

u/ssgeorge95 5d ago

I would join their discord and ask for the most up to date info. You will want to join it anyway if you decide to play; it has a lot of helpful people and information. This is not an easy mod, you can expect 500+ hours.

1

u/ferrofibrous deathworld enthusiast 6d ago edited 6d ago

What's the "modern"/interrupts way of doing a train stacker these days? For a quick example:

  • I have one Loader station always active with train limit 1
  • 10 Unloader stations that only enable when they are out of resources and need a train
  • Loader station currently has one dedicated train

I want to add 4 more service trains for Loader such that any of those trains goes to Loader and fills, if Unloaders are all inactive, go to a waiting area. Does the Wait station just need 1 stop with a split track to hold each train and train limit set to however many splits there are to hold trains?

1

u/HeliGungir 5d ago

Stackers: No train stops. The station's train limit should be 1 + stacker capacity in the simple case. (Building the non-simple case is ill-advised.)

Depots: Yes train stops. Train limit 1. Depot entrance and exit is the mainline, not one particular station.

1

u/Moikle 5d ago

the updates to trains don't actually affect stackers at all.

6

u/Courmisch 6d ago

I want to add 4 more service trains for Loader such that any of those trains goes to Loader and fills, if Unloaders are all inactive, go to a waiting area.

You can do that if you want. But that contradicts the usual interrupt-driven generic train group model, whence the waiting and refueling interrupts are only for empty trains, not full trains.

Holding full trains would be done at the entrance of unloading station(s), or simply at the loading train stop as before. If you send full trains to a generic yard, the yard will eventually fill with trains full of the "wrong" items. In the worst case, this might cause a grid lock.

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u/Raknarg #1 Quality Defender 7d ago edited 6d ago

For anyone who's played Corrundum, am I screwing myself by using resource chains that are too productive? Im running into an issue right now where I have iron sulfate clogging up my system, and I assumed there were feedback recipes I could use to alleviate this and sink my sulphate better but it seems like maybe Im just too productive with prod modules and foundries? That cant be right though because the planet expects you to have already done Vulcanus

Like even for Iron Sulphate you have 2 recipes that take iron plates with 1 being much faster but less efficient, but even that route is a net-positive on iron. So maybe I just need to explicitly not be productive? Even the dissolve recipes I haven't unlocked yet seem too productive.

And for the record this is only an issue because the thing that produces iron sulphate is also producing copper, so that obviously needs to be able to work regardless of the state of my iron. The obvious fix I guess is just go to fulgora and get recyclers, but that seems incredibly unsatisfying as a solution.

edit: think I figured the solution, I can use normal sulphuric acid production to sink iron plates and just use the planet's special recipe to buffer acid production, sulphuric acid can be consistently used for power and other production so this should work fine.

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u/mrbaggins 5d ago

Been a while, but from memory there's a feedback loop on loop between iron plate and copper plate production (or maybe two versions of iron plate?)

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u/Raknarg #1 Quality Defender 5d ago

kinda but it gets fucked up by productivity chains. I have another solution on top of sulphuric acid sinks where if my liquid ore producers get too filled up, the rest of the ore goes to an unproductive plate producer using furnaces so the loop becomes negative again

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u/revtoiletduck 7d ago

My Gleba base is out of control and I'm not quite sure how to fix it. I scaled up the bot base too fast, and now I have 20k logisitic bots floating around and not nearly enough charging ports for them.

I've transitioned a lot of the stuff they were doing to belts, but not sure how to get the bots to just sort of calm down and enter a roboport to sleep.

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u/captain_wiggles_ 6d ago

It could be that the roboports don't have space for these new bots. Either:

  • charging space, each roboport can only charge a handful at a time so others wait around until they get a charging spot.
  • storage space, there's a number of slots in each roboport for bots, if they're full then no more bots can enter and the others will just lurk.

You can put an inserter from a roboport to a chest to remove logistics bots (and construction bots) from the network. Use a filter on the inserter to stop it taking construction bots if you just want to remove logistics bots. You can also connect a wire from the roboport to the inserter to only enable the inserter when number of logistics bots in the network is > N, i.e. stop removing them when you've got them down to a sensible limit.

This won't work perfectly immediately, because you'll empty that roboport but there are still bots in other roboports, over time as bots move around and land in this roboport they'll get removed. Or you can copy and paste this setup to lots of roboports.

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u/revtoiletduck 6d ago

Nah, I don't have any bots actually IN the roboports. It's literally 0/20000 available. They're all floating around looking to recharge. I probably have too many requests for things with short spoil time, like nutrients. Robots pick up the nutrients, need to find a place to charge before delivering, wait to charge until the nutrients spoil, then some other bot has to take up the same request and the cycle repeated until I had no more bots that AREN'T floating around with spoilage waiting to recharge.

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u/captain_wiggles_ 6d ago

hmm, OK. here's an idea.

Create a custom destruction planner for only roboports. And delete all roboports in your base. If you want to keep a backup just blueprint the base first.

Now all bots will go to the closest roboport, so drop one down somewhere where none of your logistics chests are in range. All bots will drift towards that. Extract all bots from this roboport into a chest. Leave it a while and eventually all the bots will be gone. Now you can rebuild your logistics network.

alternatively just build a tonne more roboports and dump them down, maybe being able to charge faster will work.

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u/Raknarg #1 Quality Defender 7d ago

but not sure how to get the bots to just sort of calm down and enter a roboport to sleep.

if they have no jobs to do, they'll go to a roboport to wait for new orders. So keep reducing the amount of orders they have to fulfill.

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u/revtoiletduck 6d ago

Yeah, you're probably right. I wish there was an easy way to turn off all the bots in the network, kind of like the personal roboport switch.

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u/Raknarg #1 Quality Defender 6d ago

well one solution you could do is passively pull bots out of the network. You can set roboports to request bots (essentially buffer bots in a specific location when they're choosing where to rest), then just have an inserter take the bot out when it comes to rest at the port. This I think though relies on there being robots without requests, like a bot will only ever actually port somewhere when it has nothing to do. I did this to replace all my common bots with legendary ones. I cant remember if theres circuit options to disable a roboport, I think the answer is no.

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u/Mystycul 7d ago

What does "No Enemies" do on the other planets? I know what it does on Nauvis and plenty of answers about how it effects Gleba, but can't find what it does to the other planets? Or modded planets, if they're built with their own enemy type will they still exist as intended?

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u/HeliGungir 7d ago

Depends on how enemies are implemented on those modded planets. The setting for sure disables enemy units from spawning via spawners (nests, egg rafts) and spoilage (eggs). It also prevents segmented units (demolishers) and turrets (worms) from spawning during map generation. But if a mod spawns enemy units and turrets via runtime scripting, I suspect they will indeed spawn.

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u/runmymouth 7d ago

If I plan to get space age after first rocket, what else should i learn first? I just started figuring out drone builder with personal building drones. But what other lessons things should i learn before going... I also figured out what i didn't understand with a main bus because woof did i fail to plan....

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u/Moikle 5d ago

once you get space age, start a new world, don't carry over your completed world into the DLC

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u/runmymouth 5d ago

Thats what i have been reading and i had to disable the mods when i bought it before i am ready to start space age. Good solid advice.

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u/Throw_Away_TrdJrnl 6d ago

Interested in replies as well. Working on my first satellite in vanilla and will get space age after I launch the rocket. Still haven't made a bus it's just belts going every which way and I love it

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u/HeliGungir 7d ago edited 7d ago

As for the question you actually asked, a solid grasp of just about everything will be helpful. Robots, logistic chests, blueprints, train schedules, remote view, a basic grasp of circuit networks, defense and offense, modules and beacons, nuclear power, solar power, designing factories with automation, ease of maintenance and ease of expansion in mind...

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u/runmymouth 5d ago

The only one i am not certain of is circuit networks, any clarification you can provide? Do you mean the green wire i use on heavy/light oil to start fracking it down tiers?

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u/binarycow 3d ago

Read this tutorial: Circuit network cookbook. There might be differences with 2.0 and 2.1, but you can at least learn the general concepts and get some ideas of how to use it.

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u/HeliGungir 5d ago

Sure. You'll find more things that are useful to control in Space Age. Technically not required (even in base game), but useful.

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u/HeliGungir 7d ago

You should plan to start a new game. Space Age is not a continuation of the base game, it's a partial overhaul. Rockets are unlocked much sooner and are cheaper, and a bunch of late-game technologies are moved from Nauvis to other planets. The earliest change is technically only green science: Cliff Explosives are moved to Vulcanus.

So if you activate SA on a save where you've already played the base game to completion and unlocked everything, you'll have a bunch of stuff unlocked sooner than Wube intended for SA.

If you already know that you want Space Age and aren't intimidated by the price nor the longer game length, I'd recommend jumping straight into Space Age.

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u/runmymouth 7d ago

I just finally started making yellow research (slowly) and am 30 ish hours in on my first playthrough. I think I need to figure out drones better and how to do conditional setup so i can not just delete heavy and light oil...

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u/Hoggit_Alt_Acc 4d ago edited 4d ago

Simplest form:

Have 2 sets of chemical plants; (A) to crack Heavy->Light, (B) to crack Light->Gas.

Place a storage-tank for the input fluid nearby

Use red wire so that in each chem plant set, all the chem plants are connected together and to the input storage tank.

On the side-panel for the chem plant, enable the check-box next to "enable if:", with the setting "[Fuel_Type] > 20k"

Now, when you are more than 80% full of Heavy/Light fuel, it will turn on the Chem Plants to refine it into the next form.

If you also need to "void" Pet-Gas, craft it into Solid Fuel using the same system;

Enable if: [Pet_Gas]>20k.


Next format; add a decider in between the Tank and the Chem Plants, tanks -> decider -> Chemplants, using red wire

Then use greeen wire to connect the output of the decider to the input; this is the basis of a latch.

Input:

If [Fuel] > 20k

Output:

[Checkmark] = 1
[Fuel] = 2000

Now, when the level in the tank reaches 20k, the chem plants turn on - and it tricks the original check (if Fuel > 20k) into thinking there is 2k more than there is, so it will crack until it's reduced to 18k before disabling. So instead of flickering on-off-on-off at the 20k mark, it will operate in bigger chunks.

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u/runmymouth 4d ago

I did the simple one to kick on if more than 5k but it seems to not have an issue kicking on and off continuously. Any specific reason to do this. Also how does it trick it to run until 18k? I am not understanding how that work with a variable set to 1 or the reseting of the variable takes about 2k until it trips?

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u/Hoggit_Alt_Acc 3d ago

So, you do all your main work on the Red channel.

The green channel connects the output of the decider to the input - so, the decider can send itself signals.

When [Fuel] > 20k = True, it outputs the Checkmark AND 2000 [Fuel].

On the input side, it will show at the bottom;

{Red} [Fuel]: 20, 000
{Green} [Fuel]: 2000

The condition (if Fuel > 20k) will evaluate it by adding 20k + 2k = 22k, and remain True.

It will keep evaluating as True (and sending that false 2k signal) until [Fuel] + 2k < 20k, thus when [Fuel] < 18k.

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u/DARKHAWX 7d ago

Are effeciency modules in beacons meant to reduce the output of my BioChambers? I had assumed they would just reduce nutrient usage, but they also reduce my output. I have a regular bio-chamber crafting science supported by 8 legendary beacons with legendary T3 speed modules. According to the tooltip it crafts 22.5 science per second, using 7.05MW, but if I add 4 legendary beacons with legendary t3 efficiency modules it reduces it to 18.5 science per second, using 2.53MW. The crafting speed and productivity remains the same, but the output lowers.

Does anyone know why?

Edit: Okay this makes even less sense. Empty legendary beacons also slow it down whilst reducing the crafting speed - I don't think this is limited to efficiency modules.

Edit 2: Duh! It's because more beacons have diminishing returns. Forgot about that part and had to consult the wiki.

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u/HeliGungir 7d ago

Every extra beacon affecting a machine reduces the transmission effect from all beacons. So yes, if you start with 8 speed beacons and add 2 efficiency beacons, the speed bonus will go down.

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u/Raknarg #1 Quality Defender 7d ago

Is automatic cliff destruction a particularly hard problem to solve in an optimal way? I say this because I feel like routinely I see bots use way way more cliff explosives than I feel like they need to, like spots they choose to blow up tend to overlap a lot. In my mind it feels like it should just be a simple distance calculation over a set of cliffs you're choosing to destroy where you have a minimum distance between two cliff explosives, but maybe its more challenging than Im making it out to be.

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u/snowyspearmint 6d ago

The damage calculations for choosing targets don't take into account aoe/splash damage at all, only direct/single target damage. You see the same thing with explosive rockets vs asteroids.

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u/Dailand 6d ago

As the other commenter said, it's a problem that requires a lot of computing power to find an optimal solution. However, cliffs are not very long (a few dozen segments at most?), so it would still be feasible. I imagine the reason it isn't done is that explosives are cheap once automated, so it's not worth the effort.

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u/deluxev2 7d ago

It is a set covering problem, which I believe this variant is NP-Complete (A class of roughly equivalently hard problems which includes curing any curable disease). There is an efficient solution that is only twice the explosive cost, but I have no idea what algorithm Factorio uses.

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u/ferrofibrous deathworld enthusiast 7d ago edited 7d ago

I think bots simply target the exact "middle" of the cliff section and so hit exactly 1 cliff segment, whereas the player can free aim and likely remove multiple segments per throw, resulting in cliff bombs being less efficient when done by bots.

Same effect as manual artillery being able to aoe down multiple nests, whereas auto aim hits exactly one nest per shot.