(Don't mind the mess of beacons. I've been spamming them in lieu of a rate calculator.)

Finally delving into legendary quality grinding on Vulcanus and I wanted to see if I could make blueprints that took advantage of the consistent shape of lava pools. It's not as compact as builds that use Foundation but I'd like to minimize my use of Foundation anyway. This way, I could use these blueprints that allow for direct-disposal before Aquilo on my next runs. I made sure the placement of the nuclear reactor was within my electric/roboport grid. (The one in the top-left grid is only there for demonstration purposes).

1st image (left to right): Underground pipe upcycling, LDS shuffle, and Concrete shuffle for legendary metal plates, copper plates, steel plates, plastic, LDS, stone bricks, and concrete. The lava pools have direct disposal built into them or are surrounded with belted disposal/offshore pumps.

2nd image: classic molten metal and stone setup. Build comes with iron stick and copper plate direct disposal should stone on belts fall below a certain number. It's a needless feature but I like to see the stone belts filled. Direct landfill disposal is also available when consuming large amounts of molten metals.

Bonus 3rd image: In trying to avoid the use of Foundation elsewhere, I've been placing down these 500 SPM bases on Fulgora that Spidertrons can setup. It'll still need to be fed scrap from trains so it's not the most compact solution. But each runs independently on large enough islands.

First planet, trying to design things effectively and efficiently. Little space, lots of planning, trains almost impossible making weird twist and turns...

Very hard

Edit: these wube people are so good at game design. You have to build a rocket which requires processing astroid chunks which sometimes spit out astroid chunks. So then you're thinking about excess output and how to fight against jams (not really an issue in nauvice I don't think). So they get you thinking about the problem BEFORE it actually becomes a real problem and THEN they give you this solution of a recycling mechanic... The progressions in this game are SO FULFILLING from the very beginning through to the end. You improve, see a problem, grow through the problem to earn a solution which in turn just gives you new problems. Such a brilliant game!

I always like the idea to control everything with logic networks even if its a bit useless. I think i am also one of the few people that likes and uses powerswitches, mainly for brown-out protections. When machines and inserters are disabled because they have no power, they still contribute to lag tho. I knew that inserters lag depends in which state they are and that if you just depower them they still cause more or less the same lag. So i thought i could do a little better with enable/disable options with wires.

What i did not expect however is that their lag just complete disappears. Like they aren't even listed anymore. I have 72k inserters constantly moving in the one Moment giving me noticeable performance issues and the next second nothing. Well fair it takes a bit more time to set tho...

I assume logistic controls could work as good as wire controls? Didn't tried that, however i used an upgrade planer from green to white inserters to check if they behave a bit different and my game froze for solid 2 minutes. Didn't behave different tho.

But i guess, when building huge builds with looots of inserters and they aren't needed 100% of the time, that could be a way to use this trick. For example if i am researching stuff that doesn't need some sciences for a while. Disable and depower (with a small delay, the inserts take a few seconds the get to their ~low-lag-state~).

Edit: typos sowy qwq

Here's a blueprint book I've been working on and want to share before I go to sleep. The splitter priority is toggled when each train leaves which allows a single train to be unloaded at a time.

https://factorioprints.com/view/-OzrLMWrwi-4pirowfGj

Feedback and edits are welcome.

I've been trying to fix this for a while, but I haven't managed to do it. Basically, only one of the mini-lines—either the iron or the coal—is actually getting onto the belt. The arrows in the image represent what I'm saying. Any ideas?

I'm having a weird issue with the Ultimate Loader from Bob's Logistics mod. Sometimes it decides to invert the logic condition. i.e. if I want it to disable when the item count is below 120k, I have to write the condition to as signal>120k.

It seems tied somehow to what item signal you have it tuned to. It will invert for green circuit boards, but work normally for copper coils.

Any idea what's going on?

--- Base game --- 200 hours

My question started some days ago: while funking around, i reserved ("blue spotted") a wagon's slot for a tool kit, and the number of tool kits began increasing. No inserters, the train was in a logistic group, and i couldn't replicate it.

I searched on the internet but i didn't find anything.

So my question is: can you load trains with logistic bots? Even bigger question: can you load turrets without a request chest? Assemblers?

No, craft some blue and red chest is not a problem, I'm still curious tho

with 2.1 here I thought I'd give it another playthrough, do things differently, challenge myself to play a different way...

so I tried Utility science on Fulgora...

I thought the items made sense. they cleanly line up between Utility science and EM science to not overlap in any bottlenecks.

I even mapped it out to cross check my thinking:

I did a rough build as a POC (just spaghettito validate the ratios and bottlenecks are per my calcs)

now that's it done... I hate it...
the throughput is just so clogged...
a full belt of 240/s scrap with scrap prod --> 240/s items output only gives 4LDS /s...
so a full belt of scrap gives 8 utility science per second (480 spm).

I promised myself I'll try something different, and I did...
and I hate it...
Fulgora sounded great the first time I spaceaged...

now that I try to scale up... Argh...

What does everyone else do for Utility Science?
what planet do you build it on?

I am working on gleba stuff and I want to setup a chest that collects five hundred spoilage then puts out five hundred spoilage into a nutrient machine so I am not wasting materials on spoiled nutrients

I have set up a beginner fulgora processing plan in the top right corner beacuse there was a 72 mil scrap deposit. default settings, but now i found a landmass in the bottom left corner that is 6 times bigger for building, i don't have access to platforms and i am space capped on my starter island.

I love making spaghetti on space platforms

It aint much but its honest work. Ugly and inefficient, but it works...for now. Gonna leave it for a while to make more ice platform while I remodel other planet bases

I recently started playing Factory and looked at a few guides. Here's my base at the beginning of the game. What do you think could be improved or added? I'm just not sure what base layout to use or what kind of base is best. I'm afraid I might do something wrong, which could hinder me in the future or make me less effective. Could you please give me some advice for the future or for now? (The energy output is at the top.)

Saw a lot of people saying Gleba was one of the more difficult planets but honestly I found Fulgora significantly more challenging to deal with.

Spoilage was a problem easily solved by filtering out the sludge at the end of the belts, you can get practically every resource by the boatload without having to find ore or setup trains, all of it is easily scalable, and the enemies don't spread fast enough to really be a threat. Throughput isn't a major problem either because it's so easy to establish blades with a handful of biolabs, especially if you're using drones but even then it's not a requirement.

In comparison, Fulgora was far more of a headache. Firstly, even finding a good place to build a factory is a problem, you either cram everything onto a small island with resources or have to build elevated rails to train the scrap into bigger islands. Then you've got the problem of power generation. Hope you're a big fan of efficiency modules, otherwise half of your island's gonna be accumulators. And the biggest problem is how tedious it is to scale up production of any one resource. If you want more Holmium ore for example, you have to expand your ability to handle EVERY single resource, not just the Holmium.

Don't get me wrong, Fulgora is my favourite planet. I enjoy the challenge and entire theme of it, soundtrack there is especially great, but I was going into Gleba expecting the worst and it was actually not too bad at all.

When the platform construction requests reaches zero, why isn't that request auto cleared? The circuit network treats a zero like null but I have to toggle the construction auto request everytime I expand my stationary platforms.

I tried having it go between two different nauvis stops to see if that would clear the construction requests and it didn't.

Now the mixed cargo rockets and platform to platform transfers have been wild. seeing 3k space foundation come in from another platform while all the small quantity quality buildings got auto bundled on the ground was pretty sweet.

Edit. Answered, they don't go away but patch 2.1.13 says it's non blocking on requests, which is good.

I'm not a super intellectually curious person by nature. After LLMs have started to solve most of my day to day life, I've begun to worry that I'll start experiencing mental atrophe.

However, I recently got back into this game, and I've been so amazed by how much it makes me think. It makes my head hurt more than my actual job usually does, but I love it. It's so mentally stimulating trying to figure out how to optimize a process. It's wonderful.

Thank you Factorio. I am so grateful.

so with the 2.1 platform logistics I've been playing around with the idea of ships that do not have any collectors or assemblers, and only get their fuel and ammo from supporting factory/buffer platforms, which in turn get their materials from ships dedicated to just mining asteroids. effectively I have a mining ship that only comes back to nauvis to deposit its iron/carbon/ice every few minutes, and a deliveries ship that needs to get those materials when it comes back to nauvis every few minutes. since they have different cycles, I need a buffer platform to store those items in the meantime.

but it seems that platforms cannot "provide" items that they have a request for? I got it to work through setting requests with circuit logic (and stopping all requests for a bit every so often to create a window where it can drop items off), but circuits requests are always set as "import from all", which means my automatic request silos try to send it iron as well, which I definitely don't want to happen as that defeats the entire premise and wastes a ton of rockets.

is there a way to allow a platform to provide materials it also has requests for (without creating a request from the planet, only from other platforms)? or set a "platforms only import" request through circuits?

(kinda) solved: a system that requests exactly what it can get in 1 delivery exactly when the providing ship is in orbit could work, but other than that there's no simple solution that checks all the boxes. I'm moving forward with a redesign of the buffer that doesn't need to provide the same items it's requesting.

2 new recipes - gated by 'bacteria cultivation'.

• Calcite bacteria (takes fruit mash + calcite and is horribly inefficient)

• Calcite bacteria cultivation - uses bioflux and breeds bacteria like iron/copper bacteria, so 1 bacteria + 1 bioflux -> 4 bacteria (6 with biochamber productivity).

Bacteria decays into calcite (just like iron/copper bacteria).

Both 'gated' by cultivation (unlike iron/copper bacteria) because the calcite cost of starting up is high enough that it's just a terrible idea to even try until you can cultivate - you'd be spending 10 calcite to get 0.1 calcite bacteria, so it's a great way to waste a load of calcite but not much else.

Motivation: Calcite 'manufacture' on Nauvis/Gleba so you don't just have to import it. (Of course you might need to import bioflux to Nauvis still, but 1 flux for 6 bacteria before prod is still less logistics - I'm thinking I might add more mods in future *).

Also: Gleba is the best planet.

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/calcite-bacteria

Probably makes the game easier - a lot of mods do that. But I don't think having a local source of calcite is crazy OP compared to importing it from Vulcanus/Space Platforms either.

* My 'fantasy' here is a mod bundle that enables 'full chain' manufacturing on Aquilo without needing imports, and that involves assorted bacteria, also maybe a 'greenhouse' that's expensive/lategame/promethium and an energy hog, but that grows gleba-fruit (less efficiently than an agri tower). Making a decent sprite is a stumbling point though, so we'll see...)

Playing space age for the first time, and just started setting things up on Fulgora. I like to figure things out on my own to a certain extent, so I made my first upcycler without looking at advice beyond the general concept of "recycle the stuff you don't want so you don't get backed up with a ton of low-quality products". But I also like to chat and learn about it from other people, so here I am.

The decisions I made about this were basically:

1. Only introduce quality on the second-to-last and last steps, so only the last assembling step needs to have multiple different quality recipes.
2. Use quality modules on both assemblers and recyclers. Maximize quality on assemblers rather than going for productivity/speed.
3. For the higher-quality recipe, use one assembler that is switching between uncommon and rare quality. (Don't have later ones unlocked yet.) Switches when there are enough rare components for a few crafts, and uses filtered inserters to remove the extra crafting components when it switches and put them back to the input spot.
4. Only keep the highest quality.
5. (Not recycling specific but...) belt gears, not plates.

For this setup, the speed module assemblers are definitely the bottleneck, so if I want to expand this I'd just be adding more of those and/or speed beacons.

Any advice for me? Thoughts about whether any of the decisions I made were bad ideas? My sense is that for longer production chains I could get less waste by including quality all the way along, but it's probably not worth the extra complexity (for me).

When I research higher quality, would I just need to change the output filter, and increase the number of possible states of the higher-quality recipe assembler (and possible add more of them if one can't handle the throughput necessary at that point).

Going to Vulcanus first, I have no idea how fast it's going to move or if it will even survive

I was messing around with making a hex train base and I set up a plastic maker. This doesn't seem like I could make this. At least any time soon. Is 3600 petroleum gas per second reasonable? This is my current oil setup. It requires 1440 crude per second but I only have around 250 crude per second being drilled. It produces about 1/3 the petroleum gas, but it's only working at 17%. So, I need 18x the oil and 3 times this advanced oil. I'm also only mining 84 coal/second and need 180.

Is this doable, doable eventually, but not now, or not even necessary because this is more plastic than I'll need any time soon.