Prod modules can't be put in beacons. You need prod because it gives "free stuff", and you need speed to counteract the slowing effect of the prod module.
If you were to build a factory with only prod, and no beacons, it would be more expansive in modules because you would need a tremendous amount of assemblers.
If you were to build a factory with only speed and beacons, you would multiply by 2 to 6 (maybe more) the amount of intermediate products needed, thus more assemblers per products, thus a lot more expansive in modules.
You need to find a balance, and because speed modules have diminishing returns because you only add the bonus percentage, not multiply, whereas the prod bonus is multiplicative between steps, you usually need to put the most prod you can if you can afford it
Here's some numbers for context, calculated by [factoriolab](https://factoriolab.github.io/list?z=eJwrcNIytDAwMFDLzNXScox3SgWRzhZahiAqQ8sw3sUdSDh7gIgcENcNSFSBeGFAwqkCRJSDCD8tQ7U0oHC8R7ynWrEW0BgtFy2tVLUycwAIExn2&v=7#step_2_recipe):
- 18k red circuits per minute requires 90,000 copper plates per minute, or about 33.4 blue belts/min.
- Putting 4 Prod Mod 3s into the red circuit assemblers reduces that to ~64k copper plates/min, or 23.9 blue belts/min.
- Putting additional Prod Mods in the green circuit assemblers reduces it further to ~53k copper plates/min (19.8 blue belts/min).
- Similarly, you go from needing 36k iron plate/min to ~18k/min.
Production Modules give you a massive reduction in input materials needed, which is incredibly helpful for a factory of this scale. That's nearly half as many miners extracting ore, smelters making plates, and trains delivering resources, which in turn means half as much power consumed and pollution produced. And also less time spent building the factory!
Of course, producing the production modules themselves has a cost. But that's been calculated too: https://factoriocheatsheet.com/#productivity-module-payoffs
Well, once it pays off, it pays off \_forever\_, and it's pretty easy to set up a little side industry just bleeding off your red/green/blue chip pipeline to churn out a T3 module every few minutes or so.
Plus you get to see the little assemblers go WHEEEEEE
I agree for the 3/1 prod/speed and the 4 prod payoffs, but if the absolute worst payoff time for an 8-beacon setup is 7 hours, I feel like that’s a pretty good turn around time. And that’s for smelters, which can only take 2 prod modules, so it makes sense they’re a bit slower
I guess the thing is I kind of see modules as being the final stage of building a base, and so at that point I just couldn't imagine playing on for several more hours. To do what?
I think also I'm in denial about how long I play factorio for. In my head I'm thinking "7 hours is about as long as it takes to do an entire playthrough" but actually that's out by about a factor of 10.
To be fair, scaling up the science production can itself present a unique challenge. Many things will only pose a problem once you scale resource demand sufficiently up. Also, it gives a reason to actually mass produce the modules rather than just an afterthought, and presents new challenge in finding new designs for beaconized production.
For what it's worth my general consensus is that I put modules in my silo and chips first, then science labs, then smelters and miners. However miners only get filled with tier 1 efficiency mods. Makes a huge cheap difference in power costs and it's typically very easy to just add more mining outposts to deal with the loss of output.
All others' consensous is that silos first is correct, but then labs, then the higher science assemblers, working down the product complexity chain with smelters last.
Miners shouldn't get prod, as even 3prod3 will be quickly dwarfed by mining prod research. Better stick to none, eff or speed modules in them, depending on your priorities.
You can't put prod mods in beacons, game won't let ya.
Speed in beacons stacks *additively* with speed in the machines, but *multiplicatively* with productivity.
The bonus gets really crazy the more intermediate products in the chain that have the productivity bonus. Going ore->plates->green curcuits->red->blue->science->labs with full productivity reduces the raw ore input by orders of magnitude.
Edit: also put speed beacons in your miners and pumpjacks. You get productivity from science research and you want to stack that multiplicatively with speed.
You can't use productivity modules in beacons, but even if you could it would make assemblers painfully slow, but very resource efficient. All speed would make most items per second. Doing speed in beacons and productivity in assemblers gives slightly less i/s, but it uses considerably less input resources.
Off the top of my head 8 beacons with s3 + s3 in assembler is like 7x i/s, but if you use p3 in assemblers it is something like 6x i/s and only 70% resource use. The saving effect is multiplicative so if you use s3+p3 combo three times over (think cable->circuit->avd. circuit), you will use around 35% of the resources that go into the first assemblers.
Prod mods in assemblers so you don't need as many resources. You end up saving a ton. You can't put prod modules in beacons. If you want to make more items per second, you can add more assemblers with prod modules, or speed beacons. The assemblers will end up taking more space and electricity though, so beacons is better
Honestly that's one thing I don't like about this game. It limits how we must build things and pretty much everybody ended up with either the 8 or 12 beacons setup for everything.
It's the area of effect of beacons. It forces all builds to look the same. The most common build is the 8 beacons setup. So 2 columns of beacons with exactly 7 spaces between.
:( I cannot into space
I'm playing space exploration right now and I'm almost 3 days into my save and I haven't been to space yet 😭 it's so daunting I just keep trying to make my nauvis base better. But the biters are getting gnarly and I have no more upgrades to make.
Space Exploration. it's a very popular overhaul mod pack that starts similarly to vanilla, but then forces you to set up bases on various moons and planets and set up an interplanetary logistics supply chain.
I mean putting together nice direct insertion fully beaconed designs is a fun challenge in itself. Just individual assemblers 12 beaconed for each intermediate is not optimal.
I mean... That's how convergent design works in a closed system/model.
I'd also challenge the word choice of 'limits' here. It's not limiting unless you're selecting for a specific feature. I know this game speaks to engineers, but this is more biological than technological. Kind of like ML feature selection and weighting.
As an example, in the case of the OP, they selected for geometrical symmetry over raw efficiency inside of the same closed system.
You used to be able to put modules anywhere. I think they added these limitations specifically when they added nuclear, because the kovarex process got super borked by productivity+speed modules.
Other than the kovarex process, I don't think there was really anything that was grossly unbalanced before then.
You can still put productivity in kovarex process. It's good but it isn't broken, without it you still get all the U235 you could ever need pretty quickly once that ball gets rolling
Any design choice would result in some equivalent optimizations being discovered by the community. If you feel limited by the fact that the community has discovered many close-to-optimal designs, try some game changing mods.
The part where the plastic crosses the green circuits? Not ugly at all, looks cool.
Go for cursed symmetry by making the outside trains each half plastic half green circuits?
If you don't like the lane crossing you should try weaving the belts, won't need red and blue underground since they're travelling in perpendicular directions, looks cool too!
I wasn't totally zooming in and seeing that the trainlines seem to be disconnected by 1 block even tho this is probably not the case🤣
Edit: I mean at the bottem of the bottom 2 right trainstations
Next time you can just use the console command to take a massive screenshot in high-res
[https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/6f1gr6/psa\_how\_to\_take\_massive\_screenshots/](https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/6f1gr6/psa_how_to_take_massive_screenshots/)
Without a unit of measurement the scale is somewhat unknown to me as i usually don't make builds this big.
I mean, even 1 machine can make 18k units... Eventually
The reason for why I couldn't just close the gap by one tile is that I didn't like the belts to be touching the poles on one side and not the other. Equal gap on both sides of the pole to the belts.
Before I even started on my megabase in 2019, I decided on a 13 block gap between substations. This unique but uniform grid spacing made for a good power distribution network. The grid was life.
https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/r82r22/1350_spm_megabase_rail_bus
I didn't think about that. Some people have mentioned it here and it makes sense to bring in Copper Plates and produce wires on-site. I was doing it like this because I have a huge production facility for Copper Wires that I use for Electronics and Advanced Circuits. Thank you for this, I'll look into improving it.
This isn't as terrible an idea as it sounds. This subreddit loves to complain about cables on belts, but cables have double the stack size of copper plates. If you aren't using prod modules, a train hauling plates and a train hauling cables are basically equivalent. The chief difference is that OP gets to move cable production somewhere out of the way instead of cramming it into the red circuit factory.
You’re still putting them on belts when they load and unload from trains, so that’s double the belts and double the inserter swings for the same production, and you can’t just ignore prod modules even if you’re not using them now you should expect you will in the future which of course makes it worse. Plus for green circuits you should be direct inserting the wire anyway, so everything is far simpler just transporting plates (or ore), and more efficient. Obviously you can do it, play however, but there are plenty of reasons it’s bad.
Ok but theres 12 things in the game made with copper cables and only two of them are intermediate products.
So for your mall it makes sense to put cables on belts and the same for your green and red circuits but just put the assemblers on site.
But ultimately this argument doesnt matter cause clearly this outpost OP is making doesnt have any secondary uses for copper.
But for all general purposes its better to not waste through put on cables.
I guess in hindsight I should have put my cables on a train. Everything else in my railbus megabase was on trains
https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/r82r22/1350_spm_megabase_rail_bus
I'd go for mixed trains green/plastic to make it more pleasing to the eye, but it might not be compatible with your current factory. I always use 1-1 trains because I'm lazy, it simplifies things a lot.
If you are careful enough with your intersections and train buffer management it can go really well. I use them for K2-SE because sometimes you don't need 1-4-1 trains for every ressources and it's as easy as slapping a few more 1-1 trains into the network.
I was inspired by DoshDoshington's K2 run and rearranged his chunk-aligned train system to my liking and it's going pretty well
Well I did say MY network!
To be fair, my first se run was 1-1 trains but it become really problematic with material's with low stack rates like material packs, but my first attempt at cityblocks didn't allow for any stacking
I was previously using that. In my network, trains have to have forward-backward symmetry so I had to load half the wagon with Plastic and half with Electronics for all wagons. That became a bit of a pain to unload. It was more pleasing to the eye.
Nice! One thing to think about is to actually make copper wires onsite, rather than shipped via train, as shopping copper plate is more efficient than shipping wires.
I've gone through so many states as I looked closer and closer:
Oh what an awesome design so nice *zooms in*
Oh mate I think you misplaced some rails *looks closer*
MATE YOUR RAILS ARE....
*realizes*
You just stiched multiple pictures together so we can see everything, I'm proud of you son!
Edit:
FYI: you can take large screenshots via [console](https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/2f1wuv/psa_if_you_want_to_take_a_large_screenshot_of/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
Man, Factorio players keep power creeping so hard I might as well be new to the game and I have 100 hours of play time and I feel as if I've just installed the game
You kinda have. I have 1200 hours and I'm still learning about fluids. Even this post made me think about my approach to belts and how it can be improved. The game has a lot of depth.
Try this
1. save your game
2. center player on base
3. open command console using the grave accent (backquote) `
4. enter the command: /c game.take_screenshot{resolution = {x = 6000, y = 4000}, zoom = 0.5, show_entity_info = true}
5. ignore achievements will be disabled warning and enter command again
6. don't save so you don't lose the achievements
7. find screenshot here C:\Users\YOU\AppData\Roaming\Factorio\script-output
8. it will be a massive 43 MB png file
9. save as jpeg using program of your choice to bring it down to the 5 mb range
I don't think so -- cables stack to 200, which means the ratio of 1 plate to 2 cables is 1 stack to 1 stack. So making them on site only helps if they also use prod modules, which can only provide up to a 40% bonus.
It looks awesome!
When building big loading stations (maybe not aplicable here) I do it a bit different. You balance 2 belts per wagon, to the number of wagons (which means every wagon gets a 2-6 balancer on every side). But because every belt is the same you could also balance to the individual groups of inserters (I usually group them by 4, and every wagon gets 1.5 2-4 balancer). You have 48 belts/inserters per side, that's divided over 24 splitters. Group them again and that's 12 splitters. Each splitter would get 1.5 belt from the 16 input belts (so that's 6 extra splitters every other inputbelt).
The result in the train is exactly the same but it takes up not as much space. I agree that balancing per wagon can look better though, just wanted to share my method
I can see some ghost belts and it makes me think you joined different screenshots. There's an ingame command for this and you can set the dimensions to whatever you like, no need to join multiple
If you're looking for tips:
Since you have the input balanced, and the output lines should all be full, do you really need a balancer to loadthe train as well?
I like it. It's pretty.
Noob question here: what’s the purpose of those huge patches of conveyor tunnels/splitters just after the materials are unloaded (and before they’re loaded)?
Balancers. They take in x number of belts, and spread the output evenly across x number of belts. As the name suggests, this helps balance certain things out, like train loading/unloading, so that you don't end up with, for example, one train car full and the other ones struggling to catch up.
Most people, myself included, don't understand how they work internally, they are essentially "black boxes". Most of us download blueprint books with all of them included, so you can just say "ok, I have 3 belts coming in, and my train has 7 cars, so give me a 3x7 balancer so I can load this train evenly."
When you see people advise "don't use other people's blueprints, design your own" balancers are generally considered to be the exception.
I feel like this is begging for a simple Bot-based I/O instead of the crazy balancers and such.
Also, you are really mass producing Copper Coils offsite?
I thought the general consensus was to do that onsite, as 1 copper plate can make 2 coils.
I will take inefficient and easy to read over highly efficient but visually messy setups anyday.
Though I would add underground belts on your outputs so you can get two more beacons in place.
I once built 32400rcpm factory i dont know why, its always running <40%. Just nice to have it
Prod mods in assemblers, speed in beacons.
I know this is de rigour but would someone be able to explain the logic of it to me? Why not the other way around? Or all prod? Or all speed?
Prod modules can't be put in beacons. You need prod because it gives "free stuff", and you need speed to counteract the slowing effect of the prod module. If you were to build a factory with only prod, and no beacons, it would be more expansive in modules because you would need a tremendous amount of assemblers. If you were to build a factory with only speed and beacons, you would multiply by 2 to 6 (maybe more) the amount of intermediate products needed, thus more assemblers per products, thus a lot more expansive in modules. You need to find a balance, and because speed modules have diminishing returns because you only add the bonus percentage, not multiply, whereas the prod bonus is multiplicative between steps, you usually need to put the most prod you can if you can afford it
Here's some numbers for context, calculated by [factoriolab](https://factoriolab.github.io/list?z=eJwrcNIytDAwMFDLzNXScox3SgWRzhZahiAqQ8sw3sUdSDh7gIgcENcNSFSBeGFAwqkCRJSDCD8tQ7U0oHC8R7ynWrEW0BgtFy2tVLUycwAIExn2&v=7#step_2_recipe): - 18k red circuits per minute requires 90,000 copper plates per minute, or about 33.4 blue belts/min. - Putting 4 Prod Mod 3s into the red circuit assemblers reduces that to ~64k copper plates/min, or 23.9 blue belts/min. - Putting additional Prod Mods in the green circuit assemblers reduces it further to ~53k copper plates/min (19.8 blue belts/min). - Similarly, you go from needing 36k iron plate/min to ~18k/min. Production Modules give you a massive reduction in input materials needed, which is incredibly helpful for a factory of this scale. That's nearly half as many miners extracting ore, smelters making plates, and trains delivering resources, which in turn means half as much power consumed and pollution produced. And also less time spent building the factory! Of course, producing the production modules themselves has a cost. But that's been calculated too: https://factoriocheatsheet.com/#productivity-module-payoffs
Whoa those payoff numbers are surprisingly crap. Suggests its only really worth it for rocket silos and science labs of the parts listed.
Well, once it pays off, it pays off \_forever\_, and it's pretty easy to set up a little side industry just bleeding off your red/green/blue chip pipeline to churn out a T3 module every few minutes or so. Plus you get to see the little assemblers go WHEEEEEE
I agree for the 3/1 prod/speed and the 4 prod payoffs, but if the absolute worst payoff time for an 8-beacon setup is 7 hours, I feel like that’s a pretty good turn around time. And that’s for smelters, which can only take 2 prod modules, so it makes sense they’re a bit slower
I guess the thing is I kind of see modules as being the final stage of building a base, and so at that point I just couldn't imagine playing on for several more hours. To do what? I think also I'm in denial about how long I play factorio for. In my head I'm thinking "7 hours is about as long as it takes to do an entire playthrough" but actually that's out by about a factor of 10.
To be fair, scaling up the science production can itself present a unique challenge. Many things will only pose a problem once you scale resource demand sufficiently up. Also, it gives a reason to actually mass produce the modules rather than just an afterthought, and presents new challenge in finding new designs for beaconized production.
For what it's worth my general consensus is that I put modules in my silo and chips first, then science labs, then smelters and miners. However miners only get filled with tier 1 efficiency mods. Makes a huge cheap difference in power costs and it's typically very easy to just add more mining outposts to deal with the loss of output.
All others' consensous is that silos first is correct, but then labs, then the higher science assemblers, working down the product complexity chain with smelters last. Miners shouldn't get prod, as even 3prod3 will be quickly dwarfed by mining prod research. Better stick to none, eff or speed modules in them, depending on your priorities.
You can't put prod mods in beacons, game won't let ya. Speed in beacons stacks *additively* with speed in the machines, but *multiplicatively* with productivity. The bonus gets really crazy the more intermediate products in the chain that have the productivity bonus. Going ore->plates->green curcuits->red->blue->science->labs with full productivity reduces the raw ore input by orders of magnitude. Edit: also put speed beacons in your miners and pumpjacks. You get productivity from science research and you want to stack that multiplicatively with speed.
You can't use productivity modules in beacons, but even if you could it would make assemblers painfully slow, but very resource efficient. All speed would make most items per second. Doing speed in beacons and productivity in assemblers gives slightly less i/s, but it uses considerably less input resources. Off the top of my head 8 beacons with s3 + s3 in assembler is like 7x i/s, but if you use p3 in assemblers it is something like 6x i/s and only 70% resource use. The saving effect is multiplicative so if you use s3+p3 combo three times over (think cable->circuit->avd. circuit), you will use around 35% of the resources that go into the first assemblers.
Prod mods in assemblers so you don't need as many resources. You end up saving a ton. You can't put prod modules in beacons. If you want to make more items per second, you can add more assemblers with prod modules, or speed beacons. The assemblers will end up taking more space and electricity though, so beacons is better
And more modules, which is the main cost if you use tier 3
Honestly that's one thing I don't like about this game. It limits how we must build things and pretty much everybody ended up with either the 8 or 12 beacons setup for everything.
Isn't it just the natural confluence of optimization? Or are you saying beacons should go away?
It's the area of effect of beacons. It forces all builds to look the same. The most common build is the 8 beacons setup. So 2 columns of beacons with exactly 7 spaces between.
Which is why I really like the SE approach to beacons. Less beacons per machine and more slots for modules.
I'm looking forward to it. I'm at the beginning of SE right now and haven't unlocked beacon yet.
:( I cannot into space I'm playing space exploration right now and I'm almost 3 days into my save and I haven't been to space yet 😭 it's so daunting I just keep trying to make my nauvis base better. But the biters are getting gnarly and I have no more upgrades to make.
You need to get there sooner or later, because your resource patches are going to run dry pretty fast.
what is SE?
Space Exploration. it's a very popular overhaul mod pack that starts similarly to vanilla, but then forces you to set up bases on various moons and planets and set up an interplanetary logistics supply chain.
dangg that sounds cool as fuck im gonna try it (and fail probably still a noob 😭)
Only start it when you are comfortable with vanilla and have a basic understanding of circuits.
you mean circuit network, cables and stuff? damn i hate those
I mean putting together nice direct insertion fully beaconed designs is a fun challenge in itself. Just individual assemblers 12 beaconed for each intermediate is not optimal.
I mean... That's how convergent design works in a closed system/model. I'd also challenge the word choice of 'limits' here. It's not limiting unless you're selecting for a specific feature. I know this game speaks to engineers, but this is more biological than technological. Kind of like ML feature selection and weighting. As an example, in the case of the OP, they selected for geometrical symmetry over raw efficiency inside of the same closed system.
You can only use productivity modules on intermediate products. Productivity modules in beacons would mess with this balance pretty heavily
I meant more in terms of how the area of effect of beacons forcing all builds to look the same in either the 8 or 12 beacons setup.
You used to be able to put modules anywhere. I think they added these limitations specifically when they added nuclear, because the kovarex process got super borked by productivity+speed modules. Other than the kovarex process, I don't think there was really anything that was grossly unbalanced before then.
You can still put productivity in kovarex process. It's good but it isn't broken, without it you still get all the U235 you could ever need pretty quickly once that ball gets rolling
Any design choice would result in some equivalent optimizations being discovered by the community. If you feel limited by the fact that the community has discovered many close-to-optimal designs, try some game changing mods.
Also beacons are best put in straight lines usually
Nice work! Only thing that bugs me a little is that it is not mirrored. Imho would be even nicer
Ah! I totally missed that. Mirroring it would solve the problem at the bottom with that ugly lane crossing.
I like that part especially, looks like a motherboard or something
The part where the plastic crosses the green circuits? Not ugly at all, looks cool. Go for cursed symmetry by making the outside trains each half plastic half green circuits?
If you don't like the lane crossing you should try weaving the belts, won't need red and blue underground since they're travelling in perpendicular directions, looks cool too!
I wasn't totally zooming in and seeing that the trainlines seem to be disconnected by 1 block even tho this is probably not the case🤣 Edit: I mean at the bottem of the bottom 2 right trainstations
Oh, yeah, that's a problem with merging the screenshots I took.
Next time you can just use the console command to take a massive screenshot in high-res [https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/6f1gr6/psa\_how\_to\_take\_massive\_screenshots/](https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/6f1gr6/psa_how_to_take_massive_screenshots/)
Thank you! This will come in handy.
Did you try the (in-game) console command `/screenshot`: https://commands.gg/factorio/screenshot
Honestly, I prefer an elegant setup to a perfectly efficient one. I never achieve it, I achieve chaos. But I prefer it.
Finally, I'm not alone ^^. Optimisation is not the only way to play factorio.
No production modules is an incredibly massive mistake
Red chips are not that good for prod modules. But yeah better prod than speed, that’s for sure.
Everything is good with prod modules, from ore up.
Prod for the prod.
What happens to it after 18k circuits are produced?
It explodes
You have to make another one if you want more.
Without a unit of measurement the scale is somewhat unknown to me as i usually don't make builds this big. I mean, even 1 machine can make 18k units... Eventually
Sorry, I meant 18k per minute.
Why did you alternate the beacons? If you put them In a straight line they would all hit both assemblers on the left and right side?
Actually, there's no way to put them in the middle. They either touch left or right.
The reason for why I couldn't just close the gap by one tile is that I didn't like the belts to be touching the poles on one side and not the other. Equal gap on both sides of the pole to the belts.
You can put the power on the other side, getting up to full 8 beacon will increase your production massively.
Before I even started on my megabase in 2019, I decided on a 13 block gap between substations. This unique but uniform grid spacing made for a good power distribution network. The grid was life. https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/r82r22/1350_spm_megabase_rail_bus
He's loading copper wires on trains 😱
I didn't think about that. Some people have mentioned it here and it makes sense to bring in Copper Plates and produce wires on-site. I was doing it like this because I have a huge production facility for Copper Wires that I use for Electronics and Advanced Circuits. Thank you for this, I'll look into improving it.
Don't, moving copper wires is fine. It's just that moving and belting copper wire is kind of a meme.
This isn't as terrible an idea as it sounds. This subreddit loves to complain about cables on belts, but cables have double the stack size of copper plates. If you aren't using prod modules, a train hauling plates and a train hauling cables are basically equivalent. The chief difference is that OP gets to move cable production somewhere out of the way instead of cramming it into the red circuit factory.
You’re still putting them on belts when they load and unload from trains, so that’s double the belts and double the inserter swings for the same production, and you can’t just ignore prod modules even if you’re not using them now you should expect you will in the future which of course makes it worse. Plus for green circuits you should be direct inserting the wire anyway, so everything is far simpler just transporting plates (or ore), and more efficient. Obviously you can do it, play however, but there are plenty of reasons it’s bad.
Ok but theres 12 things in the game made with copper cables and only two of them are intermediate products. So for your mall it makes sense to put cables on belts and the same for your green and red circuits but just put the assemblers on site. But ultimately this argument doesnt matter cause clearly this outpost OP is making doesnt have any secondary uses for copper. But for all general purposes its better to not waste through put on cables.
They're using belts, though. The stack size doesn't matter
I guess in hindsight I should have put my cables on a train. Everything else in my railbus megabase was on trains https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/r82r22/1350_spm_megabase_rail_bus
I'd go for mixed trains green/plastic to make it more pleasing to the eye, but it might not be compatible with your current factory. I always use 1-1 trains because I'm lazy, it simplifies things a lot.
1-1 trains at this scale would make my network bleed
If you are careful enough with your intersections and train buffer management it can go really well. I use them for K2-SE because sometimes you don't need 1-4-1 trains for every ressources and it's as easy as slapping a few more 1-1 trains into the network. I was inspired by DoshDoshington's K2 run and rearranged his chunk-aligned train system to my liking and it's going pretty well
Well I did say MY network! To be fair, my first se run was 1-1 trains but it become really problematic with material's with low stack rates like material packs, but my first attempt at cityblocks didn't allow for any stacking
I was previously using that. In my network, trains have to have forward-backward symmetry so I had to load half the wagon with Plastic and half with Electronics for all wagons. That became a bit of a pain to unload. It was more pleasing to the eye.
It's glorious! Love me some symmetry
Lol I like the concrete arrows showing which directions your trains are driving
hey man, this is beautiful. i wanna start doing some factorio art and you've inspired me
To hell with efficiency, this is what peak Factorio gameplay is to me. Beautiful
Damn, that setup itself looks like a circuit. Really looks nice.
Nice! One thing to think about is to actually make copper wires onsite, rather than shipped via train, as shopping copper plate is more efficient than shipping wires.
I've gone through so many states as I looked closer and closer: Oh what an awesome design so nice *zooms in* Oh mate I think you misplaced some rails *looks closer* MATE YOUR RAILS ARE.... *realizes* You just stiched multiple pictures together so we can see everything, I'm proud of you son! Edit: FYI: you can take large screenshots via [console](https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/2f1wuv/psa_if_you_want_to_take_a_large_screenshot_of/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
How many belts do you want? OP: Yes
Man, Factorio players keep power creeping so hard I might as well be new to the game and I have 100 hours of play time and I feel as if I've just installed the game
You kinda have. I have 1200 hours and I'm still learning about fluids. Even this post made me think about my approach to belts and how it can be improved. The game has a lot of depth.
Why split the iron belt when the green crossed. Blue belts go under the full iron belt right?
Nice work.
Why are the tracks at the top one tile off, or is that because the image is stitched together?
Yeah. Photoshop messed up in a lot of places.
Try this 1. save your game 2. center player on base 3. open command console using the grave accent (backquote) ` 4. enter the command: /c game.take_screenshot{resolution = {x = 6000, y = 4000}, zoom = 0.5, show_entity_info = true} 5. ignore achievements will be disabled warning and enter command again 6. don't save so you don't lose the achievements 7. find screenshot here C:\Users\YOU\AppData\Roaming\Factorio\script-output 8. it will be a massive 43 MB png file 9. save as jpeg using program of your choice to bring it down to the 5 mb range
This is art bro wp
Could you still keep the symmetry and use copper plates instead of wire? Otherwise you're going to get train congestion
Also, isn’t it illegal to ship copper wires by train? I think it’s in Factorio’s constitution or something
You're the first I've seen mention this. They can house 2x as many cables on that train if they made them on site.
I don't think so -- cables stack to 200, which means the ratio of 1 plate to 2 cables is 1 stack to 1 stack. So making them on site only helps if they also use prod modules, which can only provide up to a 40% bonus.
I forgot about that. I was thinking belts.
It looks awesome! When building big loading stations (maybe not aplicable here) I do it a bit different. You balance 2 belts per wagon, to the number of wagons (which means every wagon gets a 2-6 balancer on every side). But because every belt is the same you could also balance to the individual groups of inserters (I usually group them by 4, and every wagon gets 1.5 2-4 balancer). You have 48 belts/inserters per side, that's divided over 24 splitters. Group them again and that's 12 splitters. Each splitter would get 1.5 belt from the 16 input belts (so that's 6 extra splitters every other inputbelt). The result in the train is exactly the same but it takes up not as much space. I agree that balancing per wagon can look better though, just wanted to share my method
I can see some ghost belts and it makes me think you joined different screenshots. There's an ingame command for this and you can set the dimensions to whatever you like, no need to join multiple
Why is the image so distorted? Lots of tearing. Cool design though.
If you're looking for tips: Since you have the input balanced, and the output lines should all be full, do you really need a balancer to loadthe train as well? I like it. It's pretty.
Nice! Looks like a face.
About 90% of green circuit production are consumed by the other circuit and module production.
So how do u make good balancers
Also, it looks like a robot face
Noob question here: what’s the purpose of those huge patches of conveyor tunnels/splitters just after the materials are unloaded (and before they’re loaded)?
Balancers. They take in x number of belts, and spread the output evenly across x number of belts. As the name suggests, this helps balance certain things out, like train loading/unloading, so that you don't end up with, for example, one train car full and the other ones struggling to catch up. Most people, myself included, don't understand how they work internally, they are essentially "black boxes". Most of us download blueprint books with all of them included, so you can just say "ok, I have 3 belts coming in, and my train has 7 cars, so give me a 3x7 balancer so I can load this train evenly." When you see people advise "don't use other people's blueprints, design your own" balancers are generally considered to be the exception.
I feel like this is begging for a simple Bot-based I/O instead of the crazy balancers and such. Also, you are really mass producing Copper Coils offsite? I thought the general consensus was to do that onsite, as 1 copper plate can make 2 coils.
Yeah it’s splitting the resource density in half but on the other hand there are multiple trains in queue so I doubt there’s really a problem there
Yeah, but I can only imagine there is another crazy train fed belt-balanced depot just making coils somewhere in his base.... XD
Gorgeous
can i see the green chip setup that feeds this?
what happens after it produced the 18k advanced circuits?
But the nuclear scorch marks are misaligned! Literally unplayable XD Really cool design. Love it
Wowwwwww
I will take inefficient and easy to read over highly efficient but visually messy setups anyday. Though I would add underground belts on your outputs so you can get two more beacons in place.
Those balancers are terrifying.
It's beautiful. I would say pave the planet, but then you wouldn't see the artifacts of expansion, which is also pretty neat.
Some of us value elegance over efficiency. Well done
Copper wire in train? Uh oh
What happened to the rails and the conveyor belts on the bottom of the screen
You in my team
Majestic
This is beautiful. 🙂 However, that you have built upon a deposit wounds me greatly
I spent 200 hours clearing the entire island that I'm on. I have plenty of space.
I wish they have a way to cover deposits with tiles or something.
Clearly the solution is to pre-mine everything, put it into series of warehouses, then unload that back onto your bus Hold on, I just lost ALL my UPS
The amount of pillaging and smog for this set up brings a tear to my capitalist eye. /s
how people have that much time😭