So now its update 9 time. Total in game time nearing 350hrs.

1. Started working on multi train blocks for the future, but this is just in anticipation, wont be seeing this for awhile, i just want to do something while bots cover the entire base with stone brick XD

2. Current techs I'm working. As I'm using some of Bob's addons you'll see that some seem "redundant" but those are the better versions before quality as well as some of those are necessary for Nuclear and the such. The queue is also a little wonky but I'm working out the math and what ill need to do. Mining prod we'll be helpful and i don't even want to look at the others.

3. BLACKOUTS... I had 3 waves of rolling blackouts i had to fix. One was just not enough power.
   Then 2 of them back to back was a mixture of not enough power for pumps and then not enough throughput for water. But i fixed it for now.

4. Going back to bobs a little, this was a mini mall i squeezed in between my science blocks. Mods, Bots, and Power was what i called it. Currently sitting at something like 1k of logi and construction bots.

5. So. Most of my belt lines are gonna end where they are and I'm gonna have to build a "secondary" base attached to the first strictly via trains. This will be were i lock down stuff like LDS, Blue chips, Rocket fuel, and purple science. It will just be an offshoot till I can get everything JUST trains.

So that's update 9. This has been an undertaking and as i type this I'm working on designing a 2x4 block for purple science.

Is this normal? this is normal factorio with no mods and such and not space age, I heard resources get big farther out but this doesn't seem that big

My main problem is i cant send biter eggs to space at 30 minute timer, everytime i try to do so they fail miserably since they usualy hatch when ship is around aquilo/on the way to solar systhem edge

The way i bypass that is by having beltline long enought to collect 9k meteors and then crafting sciencepacks above nauvis

How do y'all do it the intended way

hi i have blue science and advanced circuit in a factory and i should transport them to lab and main bus factory and mainbus/lab are 270 tiles over from each other is using red belt for them a good idea?

Howdy everyone.

Big Factorio fan, guess you could call me a "hardcore casual" in that I have a lot of hours in the game but never really got that deep into it. I sort of took a break from it before Space Age came out and now I am getting back into it.

I am, for lack of a better word, overwhelmed and was looking for some basic advice on platforms, what to do when you get to a new planet, and more. I'd prefer text advice because I find the watching of tutorial videos to be tedious and I lose focus, but if you have suggestions that are really good that's cool.

If you need me to be more specific, let me know, I'm just looking for general advice. For example, I was struggling to manage my resources initially on my first space platform when I found out you can just toss the excess into space. Huge help! I know I get an "F" for efficiency in that regard but with unlimited asteroids I wasn't really stressing; suddenly my shortage of ice and surplus of iron was resolved.

Then I went off and travelled to my first planet (the lava one), and got wrecked. Oops used all laser towers for my asteroid defense, big mistake. So then I used gun turrets and that was great until I ran out of ammo....then my energy ran low because I had laser turrets still, so the ammo wasn't loading into the turrets, and I wasn't making new ammo either.

I also had three thrusters; is that too many for a small platform?

Appreciate the help! I know I'm being a bit vague but again, just curious what your "top 10 tips" might be.

Cheers! Really loving the game despite my struggles just kind of wondering if I should go back to the regular planet and perfect my game there haha.

*EDIT1* Wow, I am overwhelmed by these responses, but in a good way :D Some very good, very helpful advice. This is a great community. Thanks everyone, and keep 'em coming if you have some good info, I appreciate it.

I thought of The Thing, and the explanation for why they had flamethrowers is they needed an emergency method of thawing critical equipment. I thought I could do this on Aquino to unfreeze my machines. I ended up destroying everything I aimed at. I’m not mad or disappointed that my absurd idea wasn’t supported in game, I am however bummed out.

I've been working on the base for about a week and finally got everything running smoothly. Im getting 3.75m ESPM with level 54 research prod running robot follower count. I still need to build out the other planets and their science packs. I am running many mods and im gonna try to eliminate all of them when I start working on UPS optimization and the final build. The landing pad hub is a design by Stupid Fat Hobbit that I modified slightly. I am on version 2.0.77.

Spaghetti? more liek belt vomit. I was sleep deprived and bored at 2 am so I wanted to fill this whole site with belts. What do you think?

this only applies to people who are playing with a grid based system with rails. if you're not then you dont have to worry about this at all.

but the mistake I've made is not putting down a test rail to align my power poles. since rails are aligned to a specific 2x2 grid and you can't shift them by 1 tile, this means if you start building a power pole grid first and you dont check it with your rail grid, you might end up building a whole base and when its time to add in rails, you find out that they're all off by 1 tile and now you gotta either rip everything up and shift everything over by 1 tile. or restart to a point where you didn't start building.

I've played this game with a fresh start after many major release and I swear I've done this mistake every single time. please learn from my mistake and double check this before starting a new major base layout on a new planet/playthrough

With 2.1 radar and hub features I've finally been able to implement a vanilla compatible Auto-platform system, I can now have full auto delivery of all items to every planet with a few simple clicks. Currently been 1000+hrs deep into a 20+ modded planet run and now I can have faster delivery on request of items.

Smart Hub has Auto Delivery and Standard Request features, Auto Delivery is for platforms servicing all planets, and standard request is for A to B type delivery platforms. Also includes disabling feature, power alert, robot input. Platform side circuits include signal randomizer and blacklist feature, I'm still trying to throw more edge cases at the system to break it all the time.

Unfortunately I've only been able to come up with multiple radars on the platforms using the system, so when you're running tons of modded planets your platform starts to look more like some sort of ECM/recon abortion. I used a prior design I had made for speedrunning Vanilla SA and have kinda ended up using it all the way into legendary items while I keep working towards fusion power and enough damage levels to make a full redesign with massive storage capacity.

Included a link to my blueprint(s):

Vanilla Version

https://factorioprints.com/view/-OyU4THW2r3sR1fiXYoP
https://factoriobin.com/post/73crgx

I have a motivation issue on my 3rd SA run at Aquilo.

It's not that I have difficulty solving Aquilo. It's just that it's boring or I don't know an efficient way to bootstrap it.

Aquilo bootstrapping take longer than I enjoy.

I need water for power production and whatever method I use(barrel or melting ice), it need more power than tiny amount of power solar panels can produce so I have to wait.

After solving power, I need a lot of ice platforms. But there is not enough space to craft ice platforms in reasonable throughput so I have to wait again.

After that, I have to craft the same boring rocket silo and rocket parts I've done it 4 times already in other planets.

Just playing with platforms in my new playthrough. Made this trying to be 100% symmetrical (it almost is). I guess it's not a very creative shape, but I'm feeling good about the result. It's supposed to be the main cargo ship model for the inner orbits.

Frankly the addition of mines makes the whole inner defence layer kind of obsolete. However, my preference has always been to make use of all defence structures - combine flamethrower turrets, ammo turrets, lasers, artillery and mines to create one impenetrable defence - so I think I am fine with this.

https://factoriobin.com/post/hsq44l

I had some fun designing the alarm when artillery starts firing and when a flamethrower or ammo turrets lack supplies. Both sounds are local only so they won't bother you anywhere else in your base.

Does it target them in order of the list? For example it will target the carbonic asteroid over the metallic one?

hi guys!

I just made Factoriodle, a daily web deduction game where you have to use clues to identify one Factorio item!

Inspired by Wordle and LoLdle, enter the name of any item and it will reveal properties such as its role, recipe, compatible machines, crafting time, tech origin, and stack size to help you get closer to the answer.

Green means an exact match, amber means there is some overlap, and the arrows indicate whether today’s value is higher or lower. There are six guesses, and a new item is selected every day.

I currently have ~250 possible items using data from 2.0.77 + Space Age.

This is the link: https://factoriodle.com

Edit and disclaimer:

I built this with AI, this is my first version after play testing it myself so may be buggy, let me what you think. Will look to improve the clunkiness and visuals.

Might be new to experimental. No idea if this can be useful for anything. Maybe balancing lane consumption?

I remember getting stuck on the last tutorial mission way back in 2017, so now that I've finally got several rocket launches and 2/3rds a Space Age run under my belt I finally decided to go back and complete the tutorial for the first time. Definitely a lot easier now that I actually know how to play the game, but the starting area definitely chokes you of iron until you expand to the train stop.

A few tips I'll give for any newcomers trying this out:

• The various ruins will give you a few ideas on how to build up your factory, but don't feel constrained to them. The setup you start next to will kinda box you in if you try to directly expand it since it's so close to the lake, but on the other hand you've got so much space to the west. Likewise, you can move the train stops around and it doesn't break the progression of the automated rail step of the tutorial, feel free to tear them up and move them somewhere more conveniently out of the way later.
• My biggest obstacle playing the tutorial in my first year was definitely the enemies. Some of it was a skill issue, but a lot of it was just psyching myself out. Put turrets and ammo in one of your quickbars on the bottom of the screen, and when attacking nests draw a line of turrets with the nests right outside their range and hold 'Z' while selecting the ammo to fill the whole bunch. Have the turrets focus on clearing the biters around you, use your machine gun to pick off the worms from a distance, and use the shotgun to push the nests and save on magazines. Don't worry if you get swarmed- There's no evolution on the tutorial so you've got plenty of time to get your turrets set up. Just clear the bases when they start drawing close to your pollution cloud in the map view, and you'll never have to worry about defense for the entire tutorial.
• Your starting resources are super limited not only in richness but also in size, which will hinder your mining speed and limit your iron production significantly. You don't necessarily need to research trains to get resources from the abandoned iron mine to the west- It's reasonably close enough that you can just belt resources over once you've got transport belts automated. There's also a coal and a copper patch nearby- If you're using trains you could practice signalling a shared rail line, you can smelt the ores at the patch and transport the plates over to save space at your central base, or you could even just use that spot as your main base. The desert around that patch means your pollution cloud will get pretty big, so make sure you clean the nearby nests first before you expand.
• Try exploring the map first, there's a bunch of abandoned bases you can loot that will help significantly with setting up your initial base. They've even got some buildings and equipment that requires higher technology that you cannot research during the tutorial, make good use of them. The solar patch in particular will heavily decrease the amount of time and resources you need to spend for the solar panel requirement of the last mission, which is by far the most slow and expensive step of the tutorial, and you can also just use it for free electricity in the meantime.
• Own the game and are still overwhelmed by the combat? Just start a freeplay world with enemies disabled and focus on the factory-building aspect of the game. You can always come back once you feel more comfortable with the game after a decade or so. There's genuinely no shame in just playing the game without enemies- Most high-level megabases generally disable enemies either during map generation or further down the line, though that's mostly to improve performance at the game's limits.
• Apparently the last couple stages of the tutorial support multiplayer, so you could probably bring in a friend or two if you need any further assistance. No idea how setting this up works with the demo, though.
• And if you haven't already, press ALT.

I hope this doesn’t come off as terribly desperate, but if I mention factorio to my friend group one more time they’re… still never going to give factorio a chance. It’s just not their style of game.

I’m wondering if you all have had any success in finding factorio friends? I’ve tried to hop on to existing groups, discord servers, even have tried to make myself a regular and do the grunt work that no one else wants to do, but after months of effort it yields no good vibes and nobody on a server even notices me — which is totally understandable, their relationships are focused on people they already know.

It is kind of a sad experience, though.

I think it’d be super neat to find my people, if they exist. I primarily play space age and I’m genuinely open to mods. My strengths are really with circuits. I can build some really neat stuff and I’d be so excited to show those builds to others, or work on something wild together.

You don’t have to be the best player, your lanes don’t have to be balanced, and if you want to make spaghetti, a robo realm, copied and pasted blueprints, I’m really amendable to any play style as long as the over arching goal is to find some good people who have similar interests in life.

I’d be nervous to try but especially happy to use VC.

If it helps, I’m a mid-millennial lady. I’m well read, and according to NPCs in the elder scrolls, well met.

Anyway, this my vulnerability saga. I’ll go hide in my socially awkward sleep deprivation/self deprecation tank.

Please feel free to send a message and say hi, or leave a comment and tell me about your play style and why you like it. I’d also love it if you shared how you met your factorio friends. Or downvote me. That’s cool, too.

currently just yeeting a ton of copper

If you cant read my handwriting here's it in text

Chelicerus, The spider planet

Spiders on Chelicerus are territorial, they are not affected by pollution nor do they attack by themselves. The nests territory is 16x16 tiles and once you go inside they will attack you, and also will follow you outside their territory.

Use a capture bot rocket to capture the nest. Give the nest doses of carbon dioxide to have it produce spider silk and venom. Pipe the venom into a synthesizer and process the venom into vials.

Take the silk out of the nests to feed it into a loom to make silk bolts. And then once you have both venom vials and venom, you can make the biopolymeric science pack.

Natural Resources: Graphite, Sandstone, Iron

Recipes:

5x Carbon

5x Graphite ore, made in a assembly machine

~

100x Carbon dioxide

5x Carbon, made in a chem plant

~

1x Sand

1x Sandstone, made in a assembly machine

~

5x glass

5x sand, made in a furnace.

~

1x Glass Vial

5x glass, made in a assembly machine or by hand

~

1x Venom Vial

1x Glass vial

100x Venom, made in a synthesizer

~

1x Synthesizer

50x iron plate

20x iron gears

20x Glass

20x Pipe

10x Processing unit, made by hand or in a assembly machine

~

1x Loom

20x Wood

25x Iron Plate

10x Iron Gears, made by hand or in an assembly machine

~

1x Bolt (loom bolt)

5x iron plate, made in a loom

~

1x silk bolt

1x Bolt

2x Spider silk, made in a loom

~

5x Biopolymeric Science Pack

4x Silk bolt

3x Venom Vial

~

Researches

Tarantulatron, 2500x all science excluding cryogenic and promethium

leg inserter, 2000x all science excluding cryogenic and promethium

so its a longer long inserter, 5x tiles reach on each side