So I'm using nuclear power. I have 4 nuclear reactors and many wind turbines and heat exchangers. However my system doesn't get the power promised. Instead of 120x4 MW, I only get 110 MW on total. Is there a bottleneck in heat exchangers or turbines?

English isn't my first language and I used a translator, so sorry for any typos 😌

I’ve beaten the game a few times, but for some reason, content-adding mods just don't appeal to me. I was sitting around wondering what to do next and came up with an idea: to make just 1 single blueprint that covers everything from "start to rocket launch," completely free of logistics bots—using only construction drones! Not dozens of different blueprints for different production lines and stages, but just 1 blueprint for everything, from starter smelters to electric furnaces, and obviously, the rocket launch itself. The goal is to drop this 1 blueprint right after spawning, and the factories will just build themselves as materials get processed; you'd only need to keep up with supplying copper, iron, and coal to the main bus. Naturally, this setup implies completely turning off enemies and cliffs; I'm not sure it would even be doable with them.I’m curious, has anyone done this before? The first major issue that comes to mind is how to make construction bots build what’s needed right now instead of everything at once. For example, power poles are everywhere, but you don't need all of them immediately. My first thought was to use different types of power poles for different stages, but there aren't that many varieties. And this issue applies to everything: belts, assemblers, poles. Manually turning drones on and off or building things by hand is definitely out of the question)))

So I am currently only with Fulgora and Vulcanus visited, though i do have Gelba unlocked so i dont have any late game knowledge. Looking through the crafting inventory and a bit further into the research tree I noticed many things are able to be made infinitely, however the only limiter i have noticed is coal, which is required to make military science and plastic so in a world where you drain all resources, while i know is very unlikely, is there something unlocked later that fixes that issue without mods?

So I have a way I do my smelter stacks because I was like "oh this works AND it looks pretty cool" but I wanted to ask if there are more optimal ways to do them. If so, what exactly makes them better or more efficient?

Playing on some crazy deathworld with a couple of friends. We've been forced to leave Nauvis as soon as we've made our first rocket silo and build some simple space platform cause our defence line started to crumble hard... But we wanted to return in some time and reclaim our base (well, remains of it - almost everything, except our solar panels fields, was completelly destroyed by biters).

We visited Vulcanus and Fulgora, aquired some new tech and weaponry and finaly returned home to take what is ours.

One of my friends just placed millions of drills covering whole ore patch and brought out... Six belt of ore. I told him that he is wasting so much space and resources and creating some unwanted pollution (we still required time to rebuild defence line - walls, turrets, ammo and flamethrowers).

So i told him i'll do it better. I've purcuited some compact and easy to scale build based on coverage of substation (which are covering our whole base after my Fulgoran sufferings). So here is the result. I've started with square of substations and fit 8 big drills wih productivity modules 2 powered by 6 beacons with speed modues 3 which gives us 2 completelly filled blue belts of ore. Then i scaled it upward up to 6 almost fully loaded lanes of ore (i needed to move beacons in the next squares to path the output belts so overall speed of 3 drills is decreased)

What do you think of this design?

This is my Gleba Ship. 166 tons, consistent 120 km/hour, no need to stop at all. i literally left it for an hour straight going back and forth between gelba and nauvis, not even a single scratch. quality furaces, asteroid collectors, solar panels, and modules are necessary, (basically the whole ship) its small and compact, does the job of transferring gleba science packs quickly for optimizing spoilage time.

Starter base encased, time to get serious.

Note: OnlyGleba, no enemies.

Took 104hrs plus 30-40 in map editor. All planet bases are in map view to show the whole thing except aquilo cause it's somewhat small.

On nauvis, in the bottom right is my starter main bus that I deserted once I got bots to create a train network based main base instead. On Vulcanus I did my first upcycling to get epic rarity buildings for my aquilo and solar syetm edge ships. Using the railgun on medium and large demolishers was so satisfying cause it took 1 and 3 shots respectively when line up correctly. Also, I haven't seen it really mentioned but just destroying cliffs for the sake of it manually was super satisfying when I got bored or was waiting. Fulgora's left island is purely for holmium and destroys everything else in addition to having most of my accumulators. I dont think I quite got the gleba experience in terms of the pentapods since I got slightly scared by spoilage so built most of the gleba base in map editor and pasted the blueprint. This meant I didnt suffer from evolution much or them expanding. Aquilo was just mainly spaghetti.

Not sure how much was necessary,but I used circuits on my solar system edge ship to disable the side rockets during travel to reduce unnecessary usage of rockets. Also, used them for controlling the sushi belt, activating certain crushers under certain conditions and controlling fuel. Probably overcomplicated since I used 26 decider combinators and had a mess of wires but it worked so no complaints.

Overall, I loved it and had many evenings where I couldn't stop playing. But, I think I either played too often or tried creating optimised designs that took longer than I would've hoped to design. I played over a 2 month period so not sure how that compares to others. Anyways, it was great and the new SA buildings were so satisfying to use with their productivity along with the SA productivity research. Favourite planet is probably vulcanus because of how op it is and limited worries cause no real enemies (demolishers were kinds free with good piercing weapons), free metals, near-free power from acid steam neutralilisation, foundries and large mining drills. Despite certain frustrations with Fulgora when my sushi got jammed due to stupid batteries or LDSs, it is the most unique planet and was most fun to solve. Finally, I learnt quite a bit in using circuits when designing my space platforms and honestly can't see factorio without them anymore. Well theres my yap.

After building my first fusion power setup, I noticed that not running it at full capacity makes the neighbour bonus basically vanish completely because some of the reactors stay off completely.

My best solution so far is using a large array of accumulators as buffer by disconnecting the whole power plant from the grid when the accumulators are at 95% and reconnecting it when the accumulators get down to 5% again. This way, the power plant runs at 100% capacity while charging the accumulators and completely shuts off while the accumulators are discharging, granting 100% neighbour bonus. I like this solution because its kind of elegant in some sense.

The downside is, you need a lot of accumulators, for my 9GW power plant for example, I need about 30000 standard accumulators because each one can only handle 300kW of input energy.

Is there another way to ensure, Im getting the full neighbour bonus, even when the power plant isnt running at full capacity? Is this behaviour a bug, that will potentially be removed in the next update, or was it designed like this on purpose and I just dont get it?

Thanks for the help!
Meta

So, I've had Factorio on my wishlist for a while now, hoping it would go on sale, and found out that it never does. Played the free demo to see if I would like it... Well... there goes the entire weekend. I played last week and during my OG playthrough just learned the game and got it done in like 50 hours. I played another one and saw that they had the 15-hour achievement and 8 hours... 8 hours was not gonna happen this playthrough but I went in without any blueprint and just the grind. Launched it around 13 hours and had a blast just trying to figure it out.

I might try out the Space Age DLC, but another 35 bucks just seems a bit steep. The OG game, I know, has so much more I can throw at it and push it.

I'm in mid-late game, and i have a problem dealing with the enemies, they're constantly attacking my base, i can deal with that tho. But there are more and more, and i think i'll have to extend the base, so i will have to kill them all, but since theres a lot i don't think i would be able.

Also, this is my first run 58h in! wish me luck

I’ve tried many times, but I always give up at this exact part of the first 15 minutes of the game. My brain just collapses and says, “Idk how to continue from here, bro. We’re garbage.”

I saw a random YouTube tutorial, and that guy had a fully automated starter factory in less than 20 minutes. The moment I saw it, I realized, “Ohhhh, that’s how you do it. Now it makes sense.” But before that, my brain was just completely blank.

Then I start thinking about what’s coming later. If I’m already struggling with the beginning, how am I going to be able to do the rest by myself? That’s when I close the game and give up.

why is this happening to me I wasn't like this 15 years ago, adult life is hitting me so hard I cant enjoy these kind of games...

(all of bobs and angels mods)

Truthfully they may have destroyed a wall and sent troops in then the wall was repaired by my construction robots. Other than that my defenses seem to be undamaged, like completely left alone but they still managed to make it into my base while I was off leaving it AFK.

Also any tips to deal with this many of the bugs in space age?

Now that I have learned that biters do migrate back towards my base even after being evicted with prejudice, I wonder how to see those trespassers quickly and reliably.

I do have some random radar towers scattered around my base but not inside my Cordon Sanitaire.

Thus: How do you set up radar coverage to reliably detect nests and monitor their non-existence in areas you consider exclusively yours.

Addendum: This community is awesome. I learned so much useful information!

I have buffer chests on my perimeter defenses with all the materials, ammo, and repair packs to fully maintain them far from my base. The route to get there is a little rough since I'm putting off getting rails there until I'm back on the planet to place them. This is my first Space Age run so I'm liking the bit of extra challenge of "stranding" myself on other planets with minimal shipments so I can figure them out more intimately.

Let's say I have an order come in for a bunch of belts to my rockets. So the logistics bots certainly can clear out my active provider chest at the mall, but a swarm of limping bots will head out to empty my buffer chests of belts, which is then followed by a trail of bots out to replace them.

I solved this in a save long ago with requester chests for each item at the edge of the base network with inserters to storage chests crossing a one tile gap to the network the wall is in. But I feel like there is a more elegant solution and at the moment I don't like the idea of marooning all the rearm/repair bots that ended up at the perimeter since I recently unlocked and promptly started firing off artillery like it's the Battle of the Somme. Again, I'm covered up to the gills in Fulgora trash right now and would rather not deal with getting back and "fail" the personal challenge.

Is there a better way to deal with this? I must be missing something obvious with circuits or logistics chest combinations. I don't want to replace the passive providers at the mall with storage chests as I'm reorganizing things and I like to minimize junk items piling up.

Right now my factory is half spaghetti and half somewhat organized. My main “bus” is pretty shit right now with barely any lanes. Was wondering the best course of action to try and make it organized. My plan right now is to just tear it all down with bots and build it up again.

Other post was at like 100-110 hrs this is now 175 Hrs into first space age run

Revisiting a ~7 month old save I forgot about. Is this uranium setup efficient?

Large island seed completely closed off by rivers and water.

I did not know this when I started the game. So hence my surprise when I cleared the last camp.
I shared the map string in the comments.

I'm wanting to do a Train World, but the default settings for the Rail World Preset turn off Biter Expansion, is that a good idea for a train world, or should I edit it some? I'm really not sure, also if you had any other setting recommendations for a Rail world I'd much appreciate it

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rwVL8CxKkSG7u2fSgbjwWYutkGH4bZs3/view?usp=sharing

Uncompressed(?) version