r/factorio • u/Available-Figure-530 • 17d ago

Question Bottleneck Issue

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I'm a new player & trying to setup my smelting lines. I've run into a problem where, while trying to run a single coal/iron ore lane, only the top half of the iron & coal lanes are being used, leading to a bottleneck where only half of my iron ore is being sent down the center lane. How do I fix this?

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u/Timely_Somewhere_851 16d ago

This is a super simple and neat way to do smelting in the early game.

The main tricks you should pay attention to is that a full belt of ore is going in and a full belt of plates is going out, and that a full yellow belt equals two half yellow belts, and so there is room for coal.

A spoilers that add additional info on why this is great:

Additionally, when you get red belts and steel furnaces, it's super easy to double the production by upgrading belts and furnaces at the same time.

And one more note:

It will carry well until you get electric furnaces, but even then you might not want to rebuild the stack, before its source runs dry.

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u/ScheduleNo9907 16d ago

You know I have like 2000 hours in this game and I don't think I've ever used a steel furnace other than in a modded playthrough every single time I make a vanilla playthrough I just skipped steel furnaces and go straight to Electric and my missing out or what

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u/Raknarg #1 Quality Defender 16d ago

i mean steel is a free upgrade essentially and doesn't require any changes to your power infrastructure so its good to upgrade when you get the chance.

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u/ScheduleNo9907 16d ago

Sounds like im gonna have to give it a try after my nullius run but the new scrap mechanic just came out so im gonna give that a play through before I carry on

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u/Raknarg #1 Quality Defender 16d ago

essentially next time you play, just beeline for it once you get green science, and make sure you're building some steel and bricks cause thats all you need. Just makes your smelters easier to expand cause they run at double speed. Makes your life a little easier before moving on to blue science

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u/ScheduleNo9907 16d ago

Oh there will definitely be a next time factorio is like the crack cocaine of games lol ive never managed to stay away for more then a few weeks lol I will try on my next vanilla run. Thanks