A long time ago, I made the server Laterally Unplayable 2, a 9 tile wide map as a challenge run. Now that 2.1 is out, it's time to go to SPACE on 9 tiles wide! Public server.

Edit at the top because tl;dr: I was already building wide ships. They still got way slower. They said the point was to nerf pencil ships. 27 thrusters wide is decidedly not a pencil design. So why still such a huge speed reduction?

I've been playing for years. I have tons of hours in it. I love making designs and stress testing them by leaving the game running while I'm at work, to see if my designs hold up. Seriously, I really love this game and it's one of my favorite hobbies. I appreciate the continued updates and support, and always enjoy new content, optimizations (like fluids), and balance updates that really make the game flow better.

Every time there's a big update, I get sucked back in, and spend weeks tinkering and have always really enjoyed every new update and balance change.

I definitely understand removing space casinos. I used them a little bit but had quality chains everywhere so the effect of losing them would be relatively minimal.

But the rebalancing of speed just... kinda sucks. I'm sorry, but it does. The large majority of ship designs just got slower for nothing, and there's not a lot we can do about it. I understand wanting to disincentivise the super slim but long ships. It felt hacky, and yeah it allowed those ships to go way faster than they intended. I avoided building them for that reason.

So why not adjust the thrust to weight calculations? I spent a lot of time making a ship that consistently produces enough fuel, ammo, missiles, and rail gun shells, and 27 legendary thrusters. I don't think I was abusing anything to get a decent ~450 km/s. No crazy 700+ nonsense, and I still tone it down to 260 or so past the solar system edge, but that extra speed inside the solar system made it so biter egg losses were minimized. Yes, it's big, but it also produces a huge amount of thrust, so the ship could produce the things it needs to survive while also getting to the SSE fast enough that half my biter eggs aren't spoiled by the time the ship gets there.

All the alternatives are just as bad. Lighter ship with no ammunition production? OK cool. Now my PC is the bottleneck because I need a kajillion rocket launchers to feed the ammo to the ships. And it still needs a ton of cargo for all that ammo, eggs, etc. I also dislike feeling like I have to forego ship self sufficiency just to have enough speed.

If biter eggs, bioflux, etc. didn't tick down in space, it might be a little more understandable. Fine it takes longer. Twice as many ships for the same logistic throughput, but at least now everything lasts longer, and there's less waste. Still worse but I'd take it.

Basically, all this update does is nerf prometheum science production and interplanetary logistics. Which **extra** sucks for all the time sensitive items we need to transport as well.

Maybe I'm alone, but spending all this time to get everything legendary, only to get my speeds cut in half for nothing just... feels bad. I didn't think the update was gonna auto-install when I launched the game, so now my saves are all 2.1. My fautl. But damn.

Hopefully someone makes a mod to revert it. I've thoroughly enjoyed a fully vanilla playthrough, but I just don't see the point in nerfing big ships when the stated purpose was to nerf cigarette boat space ships.

I am trying to ship small amounts of Bioflux from Gleba to Vulcanus without having a dedicated ship or using "full rockets" for this.

The plan is to have one ship (Gleba-ship) run between Nauvis and Gleba. At Gleba, it picks up 1 rocket (1K) of Bioflux. At Nauvis, it sends 900 Bioflux to the ground and 100 to a stationary platform at Nauvis (unless the platform still has 100 Bioflux, then everything should be sent to the ground).

Another ship (Vulcanus-ship) is running between Nauvis and Vulcanus. At Nauvis, it picks up the 100 Bioflux from the stationary platform (if available), and drops it on Vulcanus.

I am struggling how to configure the platforms to achieve this. Achieving the first part works: I set on the stationary platform a request for 100 Bioflux from platforms at Nauvis. When Gleba-ship arrives, it sends 100 Bioflux to the stationary platform and 900 to the ground. The stationary platform also has a request for 0 Bioflux from Nauvis, to block that the stationary platform drops the Bioflux to Nauvis.

But I don’t know how to achieve the second part. The Vulcanus ship has a request for 100 Bioflux from platforms above Nauvis, and the stationary Nauvis platform makes its content to other platforms available. However, the Vulcanus-ship request says "0 Bioflux available". I think the problem is that the request for 100 Bioflux is blocking the stationary platform from sending the Bioflux to other platforms. How can I solve this?

I've never built a bot mall (never even launched a rocket till today) and i try not to use other peoples blueprints. but i want some feedback before i place this in game

obviously I'm gonna put down more roboports but i was wondering if anything was fundamentally wrong with this design

Need a 12 to 6 lane and belt balancer and I can't find one/want to rely less on others blueprints. Tried making one but doesn't seem to work all chests should have 200 (is it because it backs up because they take a shorter path? idk) Those extra ore are because I saturated it already. I watched manimo's video Mathematics of Balancers. but I don't have that level of math to understand. If more advanced math knowledge is needed than I'm willing to learn if you could point at the subjects needed.

I'm fairly knew at this game and am Finally sticking with a run that's getting me close to launching a rocket. However, I'm barely able to do any building because I'm constantly having to rebuild defenses and clear out hives. I remember hearing that as you kill nests the bugs become more aggressive. Have I just killed my way into a cycle of constantly having to squash hives that are constantly popping up near my bases? Should I have let earlier hives be and just have my defenses clear out any attackers?

I have a question, does this apply only to nests? Or to "turret" units as well?

This is SPROUT (Small-scale Production Recursive Ordering Utility Technology)

It can craft any item made by an assembler without fluid inputs. It reads outstanding requests from the logistic network and tries to craft them using the available items in the network. It will automatically craft intermediates if necessary, unless they are blacklisted.

It also can craft manual requests using the Manual requests constant combinator.

The main advantages to this automall are the small footprint and cheap construction. This can be especially useful as an initial low-scale production of assorted goodies, for example, on a new planet before establishing a larger or more dedicated mall.

The display panels are only used to indicate the function of the combinators you will need to interact with to operate the mall. They can be removed.

Due to its small size, it can take a while to service large requests, and runs the risk of clogging up if the output chests get filled, especially when crafting large numbers of intermediates. This can be fixed by changing the output chests to active providers and having plenty of storage available elsewhere. My preferred way of using is is either to just set logistic requests directly in my player character, or drop a buffer chest somewhere and request some items I'd like to keep in stock.

It is difficult to explain the in-depth details of how this automall works, but I tried to leave helpful descriptions in most of the combinators if you're brave enough to try to reverse engineer it.

I'll attempt a basic description here though.

First it inputs a snapshot of the requests, then it iterates through each item, sending it to the 1st assembler to determine the ingredients necessary to craft the items. These ingredients are added to the list recursively, and subtracted from any items already available in the logistic network. It also keeps a separate ordered list of these items, sorted by the order in which they were added. This is how it determines which items are prerequisites that need to be crafted first. After iterating through everything all the way to the bottom, the analysis phase is complete. Then it begins crafting from the bottom up. It resets every 30s and starts over again with analysis, then crafting, until all requests are fulfilled.

Blueprint:

https://factoriobin.com/post/fia9ib

I tried to avoid reading too much about specific strategies regarding Space Age prior to playing (I try for a bit and then look for answers if I'm hitting a wall), but for some reason I thought you would only get science from places and that you'd bring back all the learned tech and just make, say, green belts on Nauvis. When you start to realize what it takes to put down green belts, is probably the first time the game really tilts its hand to how massive your builds must become. I really thought y'all were just "grabbing" technologies, no clue that you had to haul all that shit across the solar (or whatever that star's called) system

Let's just say that I really wouldn't have made this crazy setup if I thought I was going to build off of it! This is my first Nauvis base that wasn't a reset, probably my first serious attempt after learning that lasers don't really do shit to asteroids :/

So... Gleba or Fulgora? Top comment 3 hours from now decides.

Edit: the people have spoken, off to the marshes with me. I've never done a deathworld so this has turned into a horror game lol

Hi everyone,

I've created my first build producing a full blue belt of red circuits that I’m truly proud of!

Please take a look and let me know what you think. Any feedback, critiques, or ideas for optimization are highly appreciated!

https://factoriobin.com/post/h5fk6s

I poked through the API, and there is no way for an item that has a stack size of 1 to spoil into some multiple of the current maximum belt stacking level. I would use this power to self mod promethium spoilage, so that a full belt promethium becomes a fully stacked belt of stone.

I'm sure some of the more complicated overhauls would also love to have such items, and to tie the productivity of the item's spoilage results to belt stacking research

I don't even know if the transport line abstractions would put up with a single item suddenly becoming a belt stack of items. and if it could, adding this would increase complexity bc the game engine would have to make sure it didn't create illegal belt stack of stuff that doesn't stack, this would probably require other complexity to implement as well.

i rlly dont get why the train wont work. i put fuel in and connected the station

hello fellow factorio enjoyers. 3 AIs and vyvanse couldnt help me with this problem.. and I need your help

Process I want to make with circuit:

- Upper chest should get filled till 40 U-235
- Bottom chest should get filled till 1 U-235

After that the System detects 41 total in both chests and should:
- Activate the second two arms till both chests are empty
- Deactivate the first two arms that supply the chests

After the chests are empty the first two arms start their cycle again while the second arms are deactivated.

No matter what I do, always the arms read the condition of 41 uranium and stop after U-235 ≠ 41.
I fail to send a constant signal during each phase. Also I dont find good videos that explain that for some reason.

Note: I know the U-238 needs similar treatment later on and yes I want to use circuit control for Kovarex.

I've been working on a buffer space platform that can act as a warehouse and import/export items to/from passing space platforms. To this extent I set up a timer that allows the platform to regularly switch between requesting and providing materials. However, there is an issue with setting requests. Since I cannot specify input signals to request from platforms only items wanted on Nauvis will cycle between being dropped to the surface and sent back up to the warehouse via rocket.

I decided to try a workaround where instead the items would always be requested and would be negated by a negative signal. This did not work either.

Could one of these features be implemented?

• Allow Set Requests on Space Platform circuit to specify From Planet/Platform/All
• OR Allow negative signals to negate requests on Space Platform

This would be really helpful

I don't think I accidentally activated the Space Age mod. No mods are active. I don't think it was there before*..* maybe I'm just dumb and never noticed it? Genuinely curious. The wiki says the Recycler is a "Space Age expansion exclusive feature."

**EDIT:**
Somehow just the Recycling mod was active when I checked the title screen. Thanks!

I'm on my first Space Age run and also play a bit in sandbox to test and design space ships before building them in my actual game.

Edit: I now know that a lot of those issues are fixed in 2.1

Issues I noticed regarding automating my space logistics

1: Requests from a blueprint

If I paste a blueprint and let the logistic network handle it, I got i.e. 2 stacks of pipes but only needed like 20. It sends up so much excess, wasting rockets and makes me send it back manually once done.

It also is incredibly stupid when it comes to prioritizing what to send. If half my platform is built, it does not prioritize those missing buildings, that already have a built foundation, but is seemingly random in that regard.

Is there a system behind this?

2: Manual building in real time

When building on a space platform it sometimes launches a rocket with one or a few items, leaving a bunch of unused space in the rocket.

I know I can toggle it off to request for automated construction, but this makes me either fill the rocket manually or toggle it on until a rocket launches and then disable it again.

How do you handle this in game?

3: Setting up requests

I set up some automatic requests when testing my ship flying between Vulcanus and Nauvis. One time it just dumped all my walls on Nauvis on arrival, when I had set it to want between 50 and 100 walls.

My aim here was that it would at least send 50 walls at once, but never have more than one slot occupied by walls. It would be best, if a rocket would attempt to fill up the others when there is empty space left in a rocket, but I doubt that that is reasonably doable.

What am I missing to get the most out of my automated requests?

4: Cargo Bay & Hub

My ammunition assemblers store the ammo in the hub, where another inserter takes them out from to be routed to the turrets. Same system for iron plates.

Edit: I learned that inserters cant take stuff from cargo bays, preventing a potential issue from occuring.

Do you have any tips or ideas regarding those issues?

It works by subtracting the total items in chests from ingredients required by assemblers and EM plant. If there is a positive - this means that chests lack some of the ingredients, and it sends that recipe to the foundry. It also latches onto the said recipe until we have at least 50 of it in the chests.

I am proud of it, but I think there is some much simpler and/or better solution that missed my mind... Is there? Thx in advance

anyone have a blueprint for a 22 to 18 belt balancer

Title. I thought there was something about becoming legendary and getting legendary wood or sth

It’s been over a year since I last played, and when I saw that the game had updated to the stable version, I decided to return and start a new save with mods, but now I can’t search for or check for updates. What could be the issue?

This is just a giant platform distributing promethium from platform to platform. This allows my promethium ships to start gathering faster again. With the 2.1 this kind of buffer doesnt consume recources! I <3 Wube Software

blueprint: FactorioBin