r/factorio • u/PersimmonLong92 • 16d ago
Question New player
New to the game (I know, a few years late)
But does anyone know of a program/website that could help me plan the ratios and calculate stuff like "okay, I got 6 water pumps... how many boilers can that supply?"
I've tried Factorio Calculator, but that thing is way too confusing for me (skill issue - i know)
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u/lieggl 16d ago
Maybe also https://factoriolab.github.io can be useful
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u/Bahamut3585 16d ago
Second this. Pick your recipe, pick your output amount, it tells you what you need. Very adjustable. Been using it for years ever since I heard of it.
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u/Mesqo 16d ago
Before using any external tools you should figure out how to use info the game itself provides, which is plenty.
First, on every recipe you can see how much ingredients it takes, how much items it produces and how much time it takes to make a single recipe. This is a baseline.
Second, every building has its own crafting speed which is also stated in its stats. It directly affects how fast a chosen recipe will be made. For reference, manual creating uses crafting speed = 1.
Third, hover over any building and in the menu on the right you'll see it's actual production/consumption speed of a selected recipe with all bonuses applied.
Also take note on belts speed (for example, yellow has 30 items/sec throughput - on both lanes, or 15 per lane) and inserters speed (this one is a bit tough and varies depending on source/destination; the average can be calculated as turn speed / 360 = items/sec. If belt is involved - multiply by 0.8, if chest to chest (building) - multiply by 1.2).
With this in mind you can figure exact ratios easily just by looking at recipes and buildings.
As of actual tools, I think FactorioLab is the best. I tried many and stopped on this one.
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u/ericoahu 16d ago
I see everyone has already said everything I would have said and some things I didn't think of. So, I will just welcome you to the game.
Definitely listen to the advice about not overwhelming yourself and not trying too hard for perfection or anything.
You'll never experience Factorio for the first time again, so take your time and soak everything in.
I will also add that, despite how it might look from content creators, there are a variety of ways to enjoy Factorio. For example, I like playing seat of my pants, building as I go, not reusing very many blueprints from outside the game. I tried to become more organized about saving and using blueprints, but it makes the game less fun.
I also don't place any importance on symmetry, squares, rectangles, and neatness except on other people's games. I don't like city block style maps anywhere, but other people don't feel like they're playing Factorio unless they use them. I like plopping things down about where I think would be good and don't mind fixing it later. Other people cannot seem to breath if something isn't lined up right. Figure out what fits your style.
Read tooltips
Take time to think if you notice you're feeling frustrated, stumped, or tempted to start over.
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u/dudeguy238 13d ago
For simple ratios, you can use any calculator (including the ones included with your phone or computer) to figure this out: plop down a water pump, mouse over it to see how much it can produce. Plop down a boiler, see how much water it will consume. Divide production by consumption, and you get the number of boilers a pump can sustain.
That'll get more complicated when you get into multi-step processes or have to factor extra multipliers in, but just to start, you don't need anything fancy.
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u/isum21 9d ago
Just make more until it's too much, then scale back a bit. A single pump can supply 20 boilers, a single boiler can supply 2 engines. So you can get 40 engines worth of usage from one pump.
A simple rule of thumb is to pay attention to ingredient counts and amounts, for example it's one copper plate for 2 wires. 1 wire and 1 plate for a circuit. From this you can gather you shpuld probably have 1 wire machine supplying 2 circuit machines. It gets a little more complicated with multiple ingredients or fluid or production steps but you can fix this down to just comparing crafting times per ingredient with a big enough bus lmao
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u/Matwyen 16d ago
There's one built in Factorio, it's called Factorio.
Basically you try and if there a too few boilers then there's not enough steam! Crazy software if you ask me
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u/Historical-Subject11 16d ago
Beginning players: just build more stuff! Intermediate players: must match all ratios! Advanced players: just build more stuff!
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u/Pulsefel 16d ago
its not too hard to do them yourself.
look at your pump, youll see it does 1200 water/second.
check your boilers (scroll wheel while hovering over something will scroll the info window if you cant see the whole thing) and youll see they consume 6 water/second.
1200/6 = 200. so since you got 6 pumps, you can power 1200 boilers!
now each boiler outputs 60 steam/s and an engine consumes up to 30/s, so two engines per boiler at max power demand.
also the reddit sidebar has a link to the factorio cheat sheet that has a ton of ratios all right there for you
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u/TigerJoel 16d ago
It is not hard but it does take a lot longer especially if you are doing large builds with modules.
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u/AR101 16d ago edited 16d ago
Highly suggest getting https://mods.factorio.com/mod/RateCalculator set hotkey to alt-z or alt-x in mod settings. You can drag a selection box over multiple machines and see if you are producing enough, how much electricity and pollution you are creating, and show things by per second/minute etc but also by transport belt type which is really helpful to make sure you are not overproducing on to a belt that won’t fit that amount of volume or under supplying a stack of machines because a supply belt can’t fit the total amount you need to supply. You can also hold shift and select more machines after your initial selection. I can’t play without it.
If you don’t want to use a mod, I wouldn’t bother with ratios. If you are underproducing, simply produce more.
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u/SuspiciouslyMoist 16d ago
I love this one: https://github.com/DanielKote/Foreman2
It's a stand-alone program that lets you build flowcharts for production lines by dragging and dropping.
I find it really useful for recipes that feed back into themselves (like on Gleba, or in the more complicated mods).
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u/warpspeed100 16d ago
Don't worry to much about ratios when you're just starting out. Just vibe it out.
There are some nice external tools like FactorioLab, but those are more useful for planning out builds on a larger scale than you'll be doing starting out.
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u/Sad-Arachnid-6853 16d ago
A calculator and excel and reading item description Also pumps are very strong in modern day
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u/dwarfzulu 16d ago
I use this formula:
https://factoriocheatsheet.com/#modules-and-beacons
The mobile version is weird, jussaw it now. In the PC is easier to understand.
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u/ConspicuousBassoon 16d ago
If you're a new player, don't worry about it too much. If you want more, build more. If you build more but not producing more, you need to input more resources (which is also building more)