Factorio, highly addictive game(alpha)

[The Meal]

I was under the impression that the removal of a spent cell would dictate "turning on" the circuit that would then wait to see if the steam got low enough to warrant a new cell being put it, to avoid accidentally loading up 5 cells into the reactor when steam didn't immediately jump back up to the right level to throw the switch back the other way. Like a one-for-one swap. One out, wait, steam low, one in, wait.

Gotcha. That sounds extreeeeemly fiddly. But if you're having fun troubleshooting it, then keep on keepin' on. I think I end up with too much of "well this just works, now let's move on..." in my base. For instance, I've got weird signaling on my not-so-straight railroad tracks, but since there's no issues I just let it be. I suppose if I enjoyed laying down railroad and optimizing my intersections, I'd spend more time straightening things out and the like. This game is amazing this way, giving you a chance to play with what you enjoy playing with (and simplifying the stuff you don't much care about).

[Paingod]

I do a whole lot of "it's good enough" in my bases as well. Usually looking at trying to push a surplus so I have excess goods, but often accepting that something is just going to run slower than I want because there's not enough of something until somewhere else earlier down the line backs up and satisfies its quota.

As I'm getting to trying to plan more, I feel more like I should be using more of the tools available.

[stessier]

New limits of my base.

Here's the base with my railroads laid in. And I just noticed I forgot to finish putting in the Roboports along the northern wall. Gah...Winter is Coming!



A few other shots -

I'm up to two rocket launch stations! That's a first for me.

Spoiler:

Looks like I'm producing about 65 of each science per minute except for white where I'm now at 200. On the flip side, I'm consuming about 88 of each science per minute. Time to expand!

Spoiler:

You can see my forays into the wilderness to kill stuff. Up to 173k Big Biters dead. I bet they don't like me very much.

Spoiler:

And finally here are all the upgrades I have. Makes killing things pretty easy.

Spoiler:

[LordMortis]

How much time do you have in that game?

I'm still trying to get out of my starting area and was lucky there was 2nd iron deposit close by. I'm finally expanding a bit (by foot which is slooow) and it's mainly to push my pollution from exposing the critters. Every push back sees my pollution expanding without the nests to act as sinks, so I'm afraid to move into to new extraction areas to jack up more pollution.

If breaches eventually start I may concede and start afresh.

I'm trying to figure out if I'm ready for the next leap, into robots, which I have not yet made. Currently there is little point. All I'm trying to do is expand territory, hopefully slowing down and decreasing strength of attacks long enough to build a better defense. Coal may put an end to this game though. Nights require far too much power and energy storage is blip on what I need to generate.

[stessier]

How much time do you have in that game?

About 241 hours.

I like spending time just killing biters some days and spreading my territory. I think my last 13 or so techs before i launched my first rocket were researched while I was expanding and it took like 30 hours. I was in no hurry.

[stessier]

Car science has been achieved! Not that I have enough science too keep up yet - but this should allow for some crazy scaling. Current roadblock is low density structures. Not sure where I'm going to find the space for all of those.



Oh, and I have a crazy amount of Red Circuits right now. Can't get the whole thing in a screenshot, but it's this close-up x2. (You can see the whole thing in the space image)

Spoiler:

[stessier]

Found a new way to die - I ran into a train. Not by stepping in front of it - I caught it from behind and got killed.

[Butterknife]

Found a new way to die - I ran into a train. Not by stepping in front of it - I caught it from behind and got killed.

I'm actually quite surprised that it took you this long to get hit by a train! Your base is really something. I've got 1347 hours in the game according to steam, but I've never stuck with one base as long as you have. I have been hit by several trains, though. You'd think I would learn.

[stessier]

Found a new way to die - I ran into a train. Not by stepping in front of it - I caught it from behind and got killed.

I'm actually quite surprised that it took you this long to get hit by a train! Your base is really something. I've got 1347 hours in the game according to steam, but I've never stuck with one base as long as you have. I have been hit by several trains, though. You'd think I would learn.

I've gotten killed by trains more times than I can count. This was the first time, though, that I was running along and came up on a train going in the same direction as the train (it was just starting up). I have a bunch of exoskeletons, so I was faster than the train at that point and touched the back of it and died. Quite ignominious.

[stessier]

I'm on 240 rockets launched over 250 hour. I'm trying to get more rockets than hours. It's a challenge to process enough oil fast enough.

[The Meal]

Rocket fuel is the bottleneck!

[Paingod]

It's a challenge to process enough oil fast enough.

I think this is cause to invade Texas, maybe. Git 'er done!

[stessier]

Rocket fuel is the bottleneck!

Actually plastic for low density structures!

[stessier]

251:24:55 of playtime and 248 rockets - close!

[LordMortis]

We must increase our pollution to meet the needs created from expanding and defending our borders against increased hostility due to increased pollution.

[Butterknife]

Here's my current base, 74 hours in. You can see my much smaller starter base off to the right -- it only produced up to yellow science if I remember, and that was only produced at a very very slow rate.

The goals for this base are primarily to try out the new Spidertron that got added in the 1.0 release of Factorio and to achieve 2,000 science per minute. Currently the base is only about 300 science per minute, but it is expanding reasonably quickly.

The base is a centralized main bus architecture. I like having all of my stuff in one place, makes it easier to run around and deal with whatever is currently the bottleneck. Iron and copper are smelted on the bottom, then fed into circuits between them, as that takes up the most resources. Finished products are then fed north to the bus. One of my favorite design features (invented by me!) is the split "Home" rail line going right through the middle of the base. It allows me to jump on the train to run out to wherever I want, but keeps any of my automated trains from going through the middle of my base and running me over.

I'm avoiding robots for the most part in this playthrough, just using them to stock me up when I hit the mall. I like using the transport belts instead because it is much easier to identify bottlenecks in production. I'm currently playing a vanilla game (no mods). This is a work-in-progress base, I'm probably going to have to expand the bus northward a bit to fit in more science production, and I'd like to make the whole thing a bit more symmetric once the ore deposits that are in my way get used up.

[stessier]

251:24:55 of playtime and 248 rockets - close!

254:10:18 and 269 rockets! Currently upgrading red motors so I can upgrade flying chasis(?) to upgrade yellow science. Then I'll finally get around to low density structures.

[stessier]

Nice base Butterknife! What kind of power are you using? It looks like it might be nuclear? I just figured out that putting the nuclear in the middle of the lakes is the most space efficient...I'm a bit slow.

Also, are you playing with Biters? It looks like you might have walls lined with red defense - what type are you using?

Isn't it fun looking at the little base you started with and then the behemoth next to it that is doing real work? That always amuses me.

[Butterknife]

Nice base Butterknife! What kind of power are you using? It looks like it might be nuclear? I just figured out that putting the nuclear in the middle of the lakes is the most space efficient...I'm a bit slow.

Also, are you playing with Biters? It looks like you might have walls lined with red defense - what type are you using?

Isn't it fun looking at the little base you started with and then the behemoth next to it that is doing real work? That always amuses me.

Glad you like it, stessier! I love looking at bases, it always gives me ideas. Yours is seriously impressive too, I've haven't seen very many that are so large!

I'm using nuclear power exclusively. It is just the easiest to set up and maintain. Solar power is cool but it is so time-consuming to build, and you seem to be constantly building power. With nuclear I just plop down another set of 4 when I need them.

Biters are on. I'm using a double-layer of laser turrets on the wall, that's the red you see. I've researched several laser upgrades to hopefully keep up with biter growth. My only problem with defenses is that I will occasionally cut power (accidentally) to the wall somewhere and then it all goes south pretty fast.

I have never left my old base near the new one before, but I had read about it somewhere and now I'm kind of glad I did.

[stessier]

A few more screenshots -

The Swarm!! I have 19k logistics bots available in my main network and only about 13k are in use at the moment.


Over the last hour, I'm averaging consuming about 543 science per minute.


But I've been upgrading and, assuming I can keep it up, am up to about 743 science per minute.


A view of how much fluids I'm using.


And finally, it's been about 25 hours since the last Biter Extinction Event (my last land grab). I'm heading out again as I need way more copper and iron.

[LordMortis]

One very long ugly bus system for everything now results in rocket... a long long time for now... Not sure how I fit satellite in there. I guess I'll find out... a long long time from now. So now that I have white science works, I suppose it's time to learn nuclear power and learn the new trains and new robotics so I can start a bit better production... that is after I expand my territory again to push out past pollution again... Not sure when evolution will start to outclass my defenses either.

Still a long way to go before I feel of gotten as well as I need to be to set the game down.

[stessier]

Congrats - now you enter the fun part of optimization!

I've completed 3/4 of my intended land grab over the last week. My move got interrupted when I noticed my rockets had stopped launching. Turned out I had a major train traffic jam and the whole show had come to a screeching halt. I've known for a while having all my ore trains going down one set of track was going to lead to trouble, but this was the first time it actually broke. I re-routed my copper trains and have an idea of how to re-route the steel ones. That would just leave Iron and Oil sharing the same line which should work.

While I was there, I also took a look at my refining lines. Fluid dynamics is still weird and sometimes it seems like I can process oil as fast as I can pump it, other times it backs up and I can't find any reason. I did some research and it appears that 10 refineries can fully consume a pipe full of oil. Since I have 8 cars of oil on each train and 80 refineries, this made it easy to give each 10 a tank of oil. After the reconfiguration, I watched it for about 10 minutes and it seemed like there was constant processing with no break, so perhaps it's actually fixed now.

I'm up to 579 rockets launched in 284 hours. Limiting factor seems to be rocket fuel. After I finish my land grab, I'm going to see if coal liquification can help me out.

[Paingod]

I've completed 3/4 of my intended land grab over the last week.

I'm having difficulty processing that you actually need more land after your last screen shots.

[stessier]

I've completed 3/4 of my intended land grab over the last week.

I'm having difficulty processing that you actually need more land after your last screen shots.

Just to keep the pollution contained. I wish there was a pollution sink that could be built. Maybe I should try building walls and lasers surrounding some nests. The lasers should kill the biters and worms, but leave the nests. The nests will soak up pollution and create biters which die to the lasers. Would probably be impossible to set up outside of a multiplayer game, but could be funny if it was successful.

Hmmmm, would lasers leave the nests alone? I know the ones mounted in my armor kill nests, but would land based ones do that as well?

[The Meal]

I'm up to 579 rockets launched in 284 hours. Limiting factor seems to be rocket fuel.

[The Meal]

Lasers do target nests, if close enough. "Turret creep" with lasers and power poles is a viable land expansion method.

[stessier]

I'm up to 579 rockets launched in 284 hours. Limiting factor seems to be rocket fuel.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it might have been because my refineries were so messed up. I'll have to see if straightening out the supply lines helps.

I'm consuming about 168 of each science/min if I remember correctly. I think it would be higher, but I somehow upgraded all my science except for Blue. Always something else to work on...

[LordMortis]

The lasers should kill the biters and worms, but leave the nests. The nests will soak up pollution and create biters which die to the lasers. Would probably be impossible to set up outside of a multiplayer game, but could be funny if it was successful.

Hmmm... where were you before? That is an interesting thought. Do nests and critters evolve after being spawned?

Lasers do target nests, if close enough. "Turret creep" with lasers and power poles is a viable land expansion method.

I've yet to get to any other. Turret Creep and missle advance/retreat to turrets.

[stessier]

The lasers should kill the biters and worms, but leave the nests. The nests will soak up pollution and create biters which die to the lasers. Would probably be impossible to set up outside of a multiplayer game, but could be funny if it was successful.

Hmmm... where were you before? That is an interesting thought. Do nests and critters evolve after being spawned?

Critters don't evolve after being spawned, but a nest will spawn different critters depending on evolution and available pollution. As Meal pointed out, though, it would have a be a fairly large area so the lasers don't take out the nests. I know it works in theory as I have a blinking patch of vanishing pollution on an island where I left a Bitter compound.

Lasers do target nests, if close enough. "Turret creep" with lasers and power poles is a viable land expansion method.

I've yet to get to any other. Turret Creep and missle advance/retreat to turrets.

You gotta try the Tank. And once you get nuclear up and running, you can get nuclear bullets which really, really help. Then you can work on the Spider - that really is the only way to take stuff out, especially once you can make enough rockets to use them willy-nilly. You can use the Spider and only the lasers in your armor to great effect, but those rockets really rain down the death.

[stessier]

I've been spending time expanding my base yet again.

Old limits of my base.



New limits of my base.


Just have to finish up putting railroads near all the new walls as well as Roboports and ripping down all the interior walls that are now superfluous, then it's back to the main base to fix my Plastic and Solid Fuel issues.

Can never have too much land!!!

[Paingod]

Got back into my factory last night and my gears churned slowly. I spent a couple hours just making adjustments and beginning the plastics/sulfur/explosives station. Once I have that done, I can begin producing microchips in abundance. I also noted my metal lines had no balancing on the output and fixed that. Trains that were stopping to be filled were having their first two cars filled faster than the last two.

I find myself still struggling sometimes with efficient construction. By default I keep trying to hand-place everything instead of using the library of blueprints I've made. Then I open my blueprint library and start skimming and realize half of it is one-off things I used for a specific purpose and may never need again.

Your land mass is impressive. That's a lot of work!

[stessier]

Glad you are getting back into it!

I only use blueprints for three things - railroads (a straightaway section and a 4 way intersection), wall defense, and my belt balancer. Everything else is too fiddly and I just copy/paste as needed from something that is close. I find it too hard to keep track of all the books and not accidently delete something otherwise.

[The Meal]

Glad you are getting back into it!

I only use blueprints for three things - railroads (a straightaway section and a 4 way intersection), wall defense, and my belt balancer. Everything else is too fiddly and I just copy/paste as needed from something that is close. I find it too hard to keep track of all the books and not accidently delete something otherwise.

This is almost exactly me as well. I have no idea how the GUI of the blueprint book works. (I have a handful of belt balancers and rail sections, but I'm back to the bespoke defense sections/copy the closest bespoke defense section.)

[Paingod]

I think my most used blueprints are:

• Wall defense - A solid pattern incorporating sparse laser turrets with solar panels behind them and an interlocking power grid.
• Rail segments - Dual corners, dual straight lanes, 2x2 crossings, loops, feed lanes - all with rail signals built in.
• Train Stops - left and right oriented pickup and unloading for 2 or 4 cars.
• Repetitious manufacturing - like green microchips. I can stamp out more factories that link to my power and belts.
• Balancers - 4, 6, and 8 belt balancers to keep product moving smoothly.
• Mining - I have a mining array saved that I plunk down over any resource and then tie in a rail stop.

I have a lot of other random crap saved too that I used once or twice and may never use again, including some experimental blueprints for individual buildings I was intending to use to build out from the map view using satellite vision.

The moment of the night:
Toiling away in a new manufacturing line and getting it set up. Out of the left side of my screen a lone construction drone plods in, wielding a repair tool. The poor bugger must have gotten out to fix something while I was waaaaay up north in my base and been left behind, slowly chasing me this whole time. I actually felt bad for it.

Satisfaction of the night:
Making a green microchip fab that produced just enough product per second that the entire blue belt was consumed without gaps. I think that's a first for me. Consumes a metric load of copper, though, and I need to open a couple new mines.

I'm still fighting with nuclear power regulation. I've burned through 134 power cells with 4k in reserve still and over 8k U235 in my refinery waiting to be used - but I really want it to only turn on when I need it. I've done this successfully at my oil plants to switch cleanly between creating lubricant and splitting heavy oil so I never run into a situation where I simply get bogged down with lubricant and can't keep making more petroleum gas - but juggling inserters to stuff just one power cell into a reactor based on power needs is more complex than turning pumps on and off based on the amount of liquid in a tank.

[stessier]

Edit: Ran out of time and had to go to work - see below for story.

[Paingod]

It's fascinating to me that you only have 5 steam tanks acting as buffers, but numerous water tanks feeding the system.

When I put together my reactor configuration, I tucked in one steam tank for each heat exchanger (or close to it). My tiny 2 reactor setup can hold something like 275k steam.

You mention being safe from attack because of how far out your walls are, and I'm going to need to consider expanding soon. I'm getting hit hard at three points because I'm bleeding pollution now well outside my base.

... and Mining Productivity level 19? Just how fast are your mines operating?

A question on removing Biters:
I know it's possible to build up to a nest with turrets and kill them that way, but is it more feasible to do that with some of the INSANELY large nests I'm seeing (like 20-30 hives) - or keep using my Tank/Personal Defense Lasers to run circles around it and blast away? I'm tempted to test a satellite expansion protocol where I have a blueprint for a phalanx of turrets that I simply march forward with, and then when a nest is clear I move my power lines to the next nest, again, by satellite and drones. I'd be content doing this and then simply dissolving the whole setup once the perimeter had been pushed back.

*Edit: A potentially insanely easy nuclear cell replacement process I bumped into online while looking at a complex one.

• Connect a red wire from steam tanks to the extractors.
• Set extractors to look for a steam level lower than whatever threshold you want.
• When that threshold is met, extract the spent cell and read that it's holding a cell.
• Connect green wire from extractor to inserter, set to override "1" inserted.
• When a signal comes through that a spent cell is being held, insert a cell.

Since the extraction and insertion take the same amount of time, it should only insert one cell - and only insert it when the steam tanks get low enough to trigger the extraction of the old cell.

I bumped into this in a comment on a YouTube video where the guy had set up a half dozen Combinators and switches to control a delicate process of measurement and toggling. This is so much easier and just as logical.

[stessier]

(I lost track of time and had to leave for work - this is completing the original story)

Well that was terrifying.

I was minding my own business kicking Biter-butt and taking names. I had just finished putting up a new wall segment and was stringing the last power pole to get it all up and running. As I made the final connection - nothing. Huh - maybe I ran to the wrong connection. I zoomed out and no, I'm in the right spot. Then I zoomed out more - I as completely out of power. Well, not completely - I had 40 MW. Unfortunately I usually run right around 4 GW. I started moving around in Map view trying to figure out what wasn't working when I realized all my radars were out (naturally). So now I'm blind and completely undefended.

This is when I'm glad I push my walls so far out. I am almost never attacked in the course of normal events. So I ran up to my nuclear power plants and found I was out of uranium fuel cells. This seemed impossible - I have a switch that monitors the supply of U-238 and turns on my centrifuges when it drops too low. The switch was on - meaning the centrifuges should have been running - but they weren't. Because I am careless - I had removed some uranium miners as their patches ran out and apparently accidently removed a key power pole.

So I ran to my Satellite Production area, grabbed some Capacitors and Solar Panels, and then ran back and plugged in my one Fuel Cell factory. I fortunately still had a bunch of U-238 lying around from Nuclear Bullet production, so I popped those in and was back up and running before the sun set. I've reconnected the power poles and am looking at installing a speaker to alarm whenever the U-238 drops below some level.

Was a very scary 20 minutes though.

Fixed U-238/U-235 production area


3 of the 5 Nuclear Plants (you can see the other 2 in the radar image)

[stessier]

It's fascinating to me that you only have 5 steam tanks acting as buffers, but numerous water tanks feeding the system.

When I put together my reactor configuration, I tucked in one steam tank for each heat exchanger (or close to it). My tiny 2 reactor setup can hold something like 275k steam.

That was my first Nuclear plant and not the layout I settled on. I forgot those water and steam tanks were even there - they aren't needed. And all my plants aren't connected to each other (water or steam wise) - only electrically. You can see my preferred layout at the bottom of the screen. Each row of boilers gets its own water line and can completely consume the water it gets and has enough generators to consume the steam produced. I have enough uranium fuel (under normal circumstances ) that I don't bother turning stuff on or off - they are all full power all the time.

... and Mining Productivity level 19? Just how fast are your mines operating?

Good question - I haven't checked. I'll let you know.

A question on removing Biters:
I know it's possible to build up to a nest with turrets and kill them that way, but is it more feasible to do that with some of the INSANELY large nests I'm seeing (like 20-30 hives) - or keep using my Tank/Personal Defense Lasers to run circles around it and blast away? I'm tempted to test a satellite expansion protocol where I have a blueprint for a phalanx of turrets that I simply march forward with, and then when a nest is clear I move my power lines to the next nest, again, by satellite and drones. I'd be content doing this and then simply dissolving the whole setup once the perimeter had been pushed back.

I preferred the Tank-Driving-In-Circles route. Nuclear Fuel (so the biters can't catch you) and Nuclear Bullets (so the biters melt) are highly recommended. Can you make a Spider yet? That is really the best method.

[Paingod]

I preferred the Tank-Driving-In-Circles route. Nuclear Fuel (so the biters can't catch you) and Nuclear Bullets (so the biters melt) are highly recommended. Can you make a Spider yet? That is really the best method.

I haven't researched the nuclear bullets/fuel yet (I think, maybe I have?). I haven't unlocked the Spider yet, no.

I actually haven't fired up my research yet. My factory is still being built in segments. Right now I have stations for:

• Numerous mines - Iron, Copper, Coal, Copper
• Refueling (Currently collecting and using Coal, will become Rocket Fuel)
• Iron Smelting (Iron Plates), collects ores from all mines
• Copper Smelting (Copper Plates), collects ores from all mines
• Steel Mill (Steel Bars), collects Iron Plates from the Smelter
• Stone Refining (Walls, Tracks, Refined Concrete, Bricks), collects iron ore from one mine and stone from all quarries
• Oil Refining (Petroleum Gas, Lubricant), collects oil from all pumps
• Plastics, Sulfur, and Explosives, collects goods from Coal mines, Oil Refinery
• Green Microchips, collects goods from Iron and Copper smelting

Each station collects the goods it needs for something further down the road to pull from it.

I also have a little substation set up where I piled up all of my old goods in Storage chests and have been chewing up the thousands of Iron, Copper, Microchips, Steel, and Plastics I had floating around my old factory - producing Belts, Inserters, Laser Turrets, and other essentials. It's all managed with chests and logistics. I'm actually starting to run dry here and need to get my "facilities" productions up and running as a next step now that green chips are in abundance (by my standards).

As I've been watching my factory grow, the inefficiency of having a single rail line that trains have to move all the way down to the end of in order to come back to something that may be next door (but on the other side) is becoming very clear to me. Still fun to watch, but it's slowing things down and I'll need more trains just because it takes so long for products to move from A to B. I'm likely going to install a few loopbacks where I can fit them to give trains an option to cut travel time.

[LordMortis]

Hit my first quality of life improvement in quite some time, adding construction bots to my armor. Hacking down forests becomes so much easier.

Working on what his hopefully my first permanent bus line for iron, trying to leave enough space for several lines and an eventual rail transport over looooooonnnnng conveyors and beacons and the unforeseen need for bot logistics.... And then I promptly but in a temp gear factory line to try and stimulate my single production line making literally almost everything I use. Still not enough gears and white science while part of line, is still no going.

I am pretty close to the point where I set the beta down years ago. I still don't have rocket, a bot network, or trains but I am on the verge of need of all three.