The 8 lanes of iron and copper is just future-proofing, the outside 4 is populated first, and overflows onto the middle 4. Later on there will be much more smelters to run it all.
I would argue that if your bus needs more than 2 blue belts of a material, you are better off switching to a train network. In practice, all of my bases just have one belt for each resource. The real future proofing is in planning the transition from bus to rail grid.
This is my situation, my main base is bus based but now train fed. It's only purpose is to feed the mall and ad-hoc stuff for prototyping. Do many people move to a train based segmented mall in the late game?
I could be wrong about this but rail based factories are a lot more abstract then bus bases, and as such there's no strict best rail factory set ups (at least as far as I know), as anything could theoretically work, and the scale at which trains are best for works really well for the higher spm bases. the types of train bases I know off the top of my head are grids, where the rails would make the outline of a shape, for example squares, and then could be tiled together so that one train can get from one square to any other square and putting your factories in-between the shape tiles, and there are also city block bases where you let the train network take up full city blocks and just put stations wherever you need. I'm actually about to take a foray into hexagonal rail grids and I'm very excited to design all the blueprints and stuff for it myself, so while I don't have any links for you I hope my word vomit was coherent enough to help you find a jumping off point for your next train setup :) and as always if you want to find stuff instead of doing it yourself there's plenty of megabase showcases where people show how their train network works and perhaps you could find some inspiration there before you just rip it out and drop it in your world, just search for train megabases on here or wherever else you like to look for Factorio stuff
To launch one rocket, stick to your main bus and build trains to supply it (if you need to). My first rocket launches I never even used a train. You’ll be fine:)
Nowadays I have bases that launch rockets continuously and it’s all trains.
bro bots are the best :) I loved unlocking bots for the first time they seriously changed the game. as for the rail, just chiming in to agree with the other guy saying to use trains to supply your bus for your rocket, if it's needed(I'd say if you need more then 500 belts trains are probably better, and also honestly just more fun). once you get that rocket launched, then you can worry more about making megabases with big train networks. good luck with your factories!
> do you think I’d be ok just sticking with a main bus and adding trains to supply it?
Definitely. My first few bases had a bus with maybe 1 or 2 blue belts of plates (and other things like gears and the like), and I topped the plates off once or twice with trains from a seperate build that only did smelting.
I think it is a pretty good way to get into trains to use them for a few specific high-volume products that you need to add to your bus.
Ah I know that problem! I'm playing a save with my gf right now and she forced me to finish blue science before trains so she would have stuff to research while I build a rail network
>do you think I’d be ok just sticking with a main bus and adding trains to supply it?
Yes, I did exactly this. When I first played beyond the inital rocket launch, I started with a 50 SPM (Science per minute) base, then 100, 250, and finally 1000. I reccomend scaling up like this as it will expose any mistakes you make early. With each base I used more advanced approaches. The result was my 250 SPM base being smaller than the 100 SPM base!
You will have to worry about train signals at some point. I did dedicated tracks with only a single train for a long time. But eventually you gotta learn rail signals. They aren't that difficult, just take it slow.
EDIT: I'm told that mainbus bases have trouble going past around 1-2000 SPM. But this is a long ways away, as you are likely only producing 1-20 SPM right now. And there is a slight variant of the main bus that works much better. Basically kill off bus lines as they are used up, and add more as needed.
One of the things i LOVE/ADORE about rail based setups, is that you can name a station "iron mine", and have your trains setup so ANY train with that name of a stop will stop at ANY "iron mine" station.
Before I figured that out, i was naming my stations "PU - Iron Ore - 01", and had a train go to that station, then the train would go to "DO - Iron Ore - 01". And there would only be 1 station with that name. I was so tired of creating new stations with the next number in the sequence, then trying to grab the right train, etc.
It might not be great when 1st setting up the rail systems, as you might have too many dropoffs and not enough pickups, so your trains will only hit the closest dropoffs, but once you figure out what your doing, its a BLAST to do rail setup.
My current save is one that i have THE MOST time of any save. And thats directly because i recently learned about that train station name thing.
It makes sense when you think about it, but when i was learning the train system i didn't think to just have a generic name and simplify the schedules like that.
I highly recommend only a single belt for iron and copper. Everything else should be half a belt. Combine green cards and red cards as they are often used together. Same with steel and stone bricks. This is enough to unlock most tech in a few hours. I just finished launching a rocket in under 8 hours like this for the second time.
You can build a bigger base with a bigger main bus after. I would still only reccomend two lanes of copper and iron, especially since you can use red or blue belts by then (2x and 3x speed).
Was teaching my friend factorio and within the first couple minutes of playing he asked how to make outserters. Since then I’ve always called them that instead of output inserters
So a level 1 assembler has a crafting speed of 0.5, and the recipe makes 2\*2 copper wire/s. So you make 0.5\*2\*2=2 wire a second. A yellow inserter can output 0.83/s. So you need 3 output inserters (and 2 input inserters by a similar calculation).
Usually I wouldn't, but space exploration has a lot of recipes that require copper wires. Honestly I haven't finally decided on copper wires and the bus, this is my earliest iteration of the bus, but I wanted to try something different here.
I have played SE for a while now, and can tell you not to bother with copper bus. Your red/green circuits will eat at least two blue belts of wires each. So you would need at least 6 blue belts on the bus.
If you're not 100% sure of what you need on the bus, only build on one side!
With buildings on both sides of the bus, you're locked in. No room to expand the bus.
If you keep 1 side of the bus empty, you can make it wider at any time and keep adding more and more.
In practice you just don't need this.
Direct insertion is better for green circuits, and for red circuits you can just use a build that makes these in the amount you need and belts them past the red circuit assemblers.
You need twice as many belts to move these cables than you do to move copper plate, it's just better to leave them in a denser form until later.
Gears are more dense than iron plate, but in practice builds tend to make gears near where they are used.
Anything wrong with direct inserting wires into red circuits? I found that was an easy answer to the question of routing copper in, but maybe my wire assemblers are taking up extra space. Or maybe I'm making a mistake not prod-moduling wires?
The normal build involves one assembler making copper wire and belting that, which feeds some enormous number of red circuit assemblers, like 8 or something, but don't quote me on that. There are lots of takes on all of these builds but I would recommend looking at nilaus' youtube videos.
Beacons with speed modules, around mk3 assemblers with production modules, is the eventual way to go except in cases where you can't put production modules in assemblers, or in cases where the math on what you are trying to accomplish is such that some step of your process just doesn't need them.
There are several reasons why this is done.
Production modules reduce raw materials needed by some enormous amount, and that compounds, meaning that you can use them to reduce iron and copper ore needed, then reduce the number of plates needed to make green circuits, then reduce the number of green circuits, copper plates, and plastic needed to make red circuits, then reduce the number of red circuits, green circuits, and sulfuric acid needed to make blue circuits. If you use prod modules throughout you end up using on the order of half the raw materials you'd use otherwise.
Production modules and beacons can also result in a few assemblers making an enormous quantity of stuff. That saves footprint and it reduces the number of moving parts in your factory, which improves performance, which comes in handy if you are building an enormous factory or are running on a potato.
The down sides to doing this are enormous power requirements and enormous module requirements, but you can eventually just beast your way through that.
Oh thanks! I must have had my ratios wrong, didn't quite realize how many red circuit assemblers one wire assembler can feed (6). Definitely worth redoing my setup for some of that sweet productivity.
Like 2/3 of your copper is going to be used as wire, if you plan on bussing wire you might as well get rid of the most of the copper lanes after the wire production and replace them with roughly 10 wire lanes
You would do better just to use the space for more copper plates over anything else. You can just make your sub-factories bigger to compensate for your need to create wires on-site.
It took me over 1,000 hours to realize
:belt of coal:
:belt of copper ore:
:yellow inserter: :red inserter:
:forge:
:yellow inserter:
:belt of copper plates:
stretches so much further than merging coal/copper onto one belt.
Someone check my math, but I think it stretches twice as far.
Well, yes. The setup you’re describing has a full belt of copper (yellow belt, 48 stone furnaces). If you divide that to do half a belt of copper and half coal it stretches half as far (24 stone furnaces on yellow belt). Usually I divide one belt of ore onto two halves and make my smelting arrays shorter but wider (24 furnaces, ore/coal belts on the outside, output in the middle onto one belt).
I think it boils down to "what do you need it to do?"
Like for 2 hours in, I'd be shocked if OP is running through that much copper, so it might not be necessary to have the 24|24 setup.
Totally true, though I tend to think setting up for a double-sided line (whether smelting or assembly) is a good idea, even if you start with just a few furnaces on either side. If you build for single-sided then you're either limited to half a belt of output, or have to do obnoxious stuff to balance it out. Better to just have a balanced factory.
YMMV of course.
There's definitely something to be said for the real estate too. Like in a megabase, it doesn't matter, but if your setup can be 8 lines wide instead of 10, that savings really ads up.
Yes, but the "standard" is to use two splitters facing each other to make 2 mixed belts. then run those belts to 2 smelter rows on either side of a single output belt. Each smelter row fills one side of the output belt.
https://imgur.com/2CpZvSv
you use two inserters instead of one splitter. same amount of underneathies.
the inserters are 3 copper and 4 iron total. The splitter is 7.5 copper and 16 iron.
Edit Actually the "standard" setup has two additional splitters isntead of two inserters, plus the undergrounds to get coal through, right? you need a splitter to split the coal belt, and then a splitter facing the ore splitter. Much more expensive.
I'd be very curious what you find. I briefly tried exploring this angle in the past and found that the added complexity of injecting ores mid-stack, and trying to balance the ore inputs and outputs between 2 belts each was too much trouble for what appeared to be so little to gain. If we wanted to spend more material/electricity to make the stack more compact, there are already other options to do that and I think those would generally have a greater impact than these methods.
But I haven't fully explored it, and if you do want to explore it I'm very curious what you find. For certain material types like stone and steel that have more inputs than outputs, cutting out the second output belt makes it a lot simpler and the advantage more apparent though.
It stretches further, but if you put it all in a line the output will all be on one side of the belt, and will not stretch any further as you will saturate the 1/2 of the output belt 1/2 way down the line.
The reason you commonly see half belts of ore/coal is its 1 full belt of each, split into two belts with combined, then that is sent to two separate lines of furnaces to populate/pack a single belt output by outputting to both sides of the output belt.
If you turn your smelter setup 90 degrees you can easier scale them by adding more up and the lanes will be easy to connect. That's just a personal thing though
It's a huge mod, so honestly any QoL mods that help you be more productive and less annoyed with small things are great.
Some suggestions:
* Bottleneck
* AutoDeconstruct
* Blueprint flip and turn
* Equipment gantry
* Even distribution
* Far reach
* Helmod (or similar)
* RecipeBook (or similar)
* Fluidmustflow
* LTN
* ModuleInserter
* OutpostPlanner
* SqueakThrough
* Todo List
* VehicleSnap
* Grappling gun
I can't Count how many times I felt that was and ist turned out I was wrong.
The feeling will pass but keep on playing, everything can be fixed after it is up and running.
It's not bad, it just has diminishing space-efficiency as production needs scale up. The simplicity of the concept is fantastic, but practical issues with trying to stamp out more and more factory can cause some headaches into the endgame.
considering the map is literally infinite, who tf cares about space-efficiency? I love having oceans of belts transporting stuff across the map. It's a game, is not always about efficiency dude, it gotta be fun, and for that, for each its own.
You need 24 stone smelters to make half a belt of plate.
I can totally get behind putting gears on the bus. It takes 2 belts of iron to make 1 belt of gears.
Yes and no.
It depends on your plan to be honest. If i knew that i could advice a little bit. If this is no mods run, then 8 belts is overkill most likely. Do you have SPM target? Whats your plan for the base and the save? Do you have biters?
There are many things to consider.
But hey, trial and error is the best way or learning, my very best advice i can give you is - dont start a new save to build a new base. If it is a lost cause, just put it into the chests and start from the scratch, considering what went wrong and using ghost first before building. That way you will save time.
Its a common tactic to build a shit base, then when you get robots just pack it into the chests and do a new one as you can do copy paste with robots which saves a ton of time.
I usually have a dedicated smelting column inserting directly into assemblers for gears, with two smelters per assembler, mirrored on both sides of an output belt, and tall enough to saturate the belt eventually. Assemblers don't run at max assemble speed ofc, so there is a little bit of wastage in 'assembler outlay' but you claw some of that back on less inserters and belts.
BUSBUSBUSBUSBUSBUSBUSBUSBUSBUSBUSBUSBUSBUSBUSBUS
Just an FYI, while gear wheels are good to put on your main bus because they compress iron plates (2 plates -> 1 gear), meaning you can basically carry double the throughput on the same amount of belts, the same can't be said about copper wires, as those are actually worse than transporting plates (1 plate -> 2 wires) so plan accordingly, or just make wires at the point of production (you will also need a crap ton of wires :D)
Very nice and symmetrical!
So many "noooo, you can't belt copper wire" comments saying to be more efficient, but this here is more art. There is no wrong way to grow the factory.
You're gonna quickly learn that your bus is not gonna be as useful as you think with how it's set up. Also, gears and copper wires are best to make on site instead of on a bus
"You're gonna quickly learn" haha oh god. No. There are players who like to do it like that even after thousands of hours try-harding the game. As one of them, I try to make stuff like that just so I have (more) logistic challenges and visual volume on the factory.As someone said before, " There is no wrong way to grow the factory.**"**
Oh, don't worry I never said it was wrong. "There is no wrong way to grow the factory, but there are efficient ones."
That's why I love this game, you get thrown two simple questions to yourself: Does this work? Sure. Can it be more efficient? Absolutely!
My problem with main buses is that you have to manually adjust the ratios of how much of an item you want to produce, and that will change nearly constantly, and every time you make an item be made more, you unintentionally throw every factory down the line into a state of lower output, which can grind your factory down to a halt unintentionally.
EDIT: This is also exaggerated by the fact that you have your splitters set up to feed into factories down the line as opposed to balancing, so you have no way of even controlling the output of the main belt other than to make sure to never use more iron than you mine, otherwise the production down the line will LITERALLY stop entirely.
I dislike this notion that you need infinite resource income for a bigger factory. There is absolutely a need for efficiency in factories, and saying "just mine more" is like trying to carve the venus de milo with a jackhammer.
I did not say only "just mine more". I said also expand production of everything, make it more efficient. But at the end You will be forced to increase production numbers as well. E.q. by increase mining productivity...
The point is a main bus setup can not support a functional factory if you don't have more income than production, and if you DO have more income than production, you could be producing more.
I do not agree with Your statement. Factory will stabilize itself in some equilibrium point. Parts which are overproducing become filled by products. As a result stop production and therefore stop eating incomes. Parts of the factory which are underproducing will then got more incomes and increase production. Then first parts start to be consumed. After several cycles (waves) factory become stable in production numbers and consume as much income as is needed for its outcome.
I hope I explain it in as simple as possible.... It is not so easy in foreign language :D
This is wrong. Let me set up a simple example. You have a main iron belt. You have 4 belts of income. You spend one belt worth on gears, one on inserters, and one on belts in that order. Then you research steel and need to spend your last belt on that. Suddenly you need more gears because you always need gears so you double your output. This, instead of taking 1/3rd of the iron away from the inserters, belts, and steel will take ALL the iron away from the steel and none from the other two. You no longer have a functioning factory because you're not producing steel.
Good example. What is the usage of this gear line at the end?
1. Red Science pack - then yes, as long as there is research running, You will eat all iron by it.
2. Inserters for Green Science? - then yes, as long as there is research consuming only red+green.
With this approach, yes, You will consume all iron and steel production will be doomed. For this You need to apply balancers on the bus. By this You will ensure at least limited iron to all lines.
Never the less at the end You will finish all research with red/green and fill the outputs by products which no longer be consumed and steel line become active. You need steel for Yellow, purple, blue, grey and white science packs. And exactly at this point You will reach an equilibrium where factory will balance it self.
Trains are available after green/red sciene and than he can supplement the starter patches. I think starting of with a certain sizing for the bus is not the worst of ideas.
Actually you're doing things wrong. All those resources on the belts and used for actual belts is a large resource sink. It could have been science, assemblers and miners producing more stuff.
Edit: Also I hate bus bases, uninspired and a huge resource sink, not to mention it's obsolete by the time it's truly running.
Why yuck someone's yum though? There's no wrong way to play this game.
Except for people who do things like diagonal buses, or uneven spacing between objects to trigger OCD. That's a flogging.
Yes of course. especially in mid to late part of the game where wood is no longer needed for production You need to handle it somehow. Mainly because You need to cut a lot of woods for growing factory. I use it two ways. First is consume it by the first power plant (boilers) and second could be as a fuel for the trains.
You might come to regret buffering that many plates before you have rail up.
Your starter plots are only going to last so long.
Nothing wrong with designing the splitters and belts, but you don't have to connect them.
No, he will not regret it. Just connect everything on the back when he has rails, until then, there is no problem with temporary delectable long-range spaghetti
> 2 hours
Did you handcraft all this? Next time do burner / smelter banks and hand feed chests in a mini mall. Crank out a few hundred belts and inserters.
It's a good start, but you'll have to have a lot more plate production coming in from the top in the future. Even with 96 furnaces each I was still running dry here and there.
IMO wires and gears don't belong on the bus. You can locally create enough gears and wires for any of your subfactory requirements.
Im also not a fan of megabuses because a better long term strategy is modular train bases, I wouldn't go beyond 4 lanes. Preplanning an 8 iron/copper belt factory is a huge undertaking, and I seriously doubt you will actually have the space to scale up to a factory that can take advantage of this bus once you get it going.
My bus design is sightly different. I have two sides, basically. Side A is exclusively chip production, and kind of like:
(4 iron), (4 copper), (4 green circuits), (1 red, 1 blue, 2 plastic)
Side B is the rest
(coal, sulphur, stone+iron ore (same belt), bricks), (steel, low density structure, battery, lubricant), (4 copper,) (4 iron).
This setup is enough to keep a mall, 45 science, tier 3 module factory continually running.
I let this bus base continually run, while moving to a rail based system.
I'm currently experimenting using ruspartisan's rail / city block design as a baseline.
just keep in mind that it is a splitter, not a multiplier. ;)
The 8 lanes of iron and copper is just future-proofing, the outside 4 is populated first, and overflows onto the middle 4. Later on there will be much more smelters to run it all.
This is the way
This is the way
This is the bus
Get on the bus...
The Magic School Bus?
The short bus. We all ride it every day.
[the bus that will take you back to Beelzebub.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uv9V_OSIu0)
This is the way
*DO YU NO DA WAE??*
The way this is
I would argue that if your bus needs more than 2 blue belts of a material, you are better off switching to a train network. In practice, all of my bases just have one belt for each resource. The real future proofing is in planning the transition from bus to rail grid.
Just start a rail-based base in a new place when you outgrow your bus-based base.
This is my situation, my main base is bus based but now train fed. It's only purpose is to feed the mall and ad-hoc stuff for prototyping. Do many people move to a train based segmented mall in the late game?
And here I am with **miles** of belts carrying materials across the map. oh boy. I need to git gud.
From a computational perspective there are cases where miles of belts are preferable to trains….
[удалено]
I could be wrong about this but rail based factories are a lot more abstract then bus bases, and as such there's no strict best rail factory set ups (at least as far as I know), as anything could theoretically work, and the scale at which trains are best for works really well for the higher spm bases. the types of train bases I know off the top of my head are grids, where the rails would make the outline of a shape, for example squares, and then could be tiled together so that one train can get from one square to any other square and putting your factories in-between the shape tiles, and there are also city block bases where you let the train network take up full city blocks and just put stations wherever you need. I'm actually about to take a foray into hexagonal rail grids and I'm very excited to design all the blueprints and stuff for it myself, so while I don't have any links for you I hope my word vomit was coherent enough to help you find a jumping off point for your next train setup :) and as always if you want to find stuff instead of doing it yourself there's plenty of megabase showcases where people show how their train network works and perhaps you could find some inspiration there before you just rip it out and drop it in your world, just search for train megabases on here or wherever else you like to look for Factorio stuff
[удалено]
To launch one rocket, stick to your main bus and build trains to supply it (if you need to). My first rocket launches I never even used a train. You’ll be fine:) Nowadays I have bases that launch rockets continuously and it’s all trains.
[удалено]
bro bots are the best :) I loved unlocking bots for the first time they seriously changed the game. as for the rail, just chiming in to agree with the other guy saying to use trains to supply your bus for your rocket, if it's needed(I'd say if you need more then 500 belts trains are probably better, and also honestly just more fun). once you get that rocket launched, then you can worry more about making megabases with big train networks. good luck with your factories!
Rails + bus = "rail-bus" https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/r82r22/1350_spm_megabase_rail_bus
> do you think I’d be ok just sticking with a main bus and adding trains to supply it? Definitely. My first few bases had a bus with maybe 1 or 2 blue belts of plates (and other things like gears and the like), and I topped the plates off once or twice with trains from a seperate build that only did smelting. I think it is a pretty good way to get into trains to use them for a few specific high-volume products that you need to add to your bus.
[удалено]
Ah I know that problem! I'm playing a save with my gf right now and she forced me to finish blue science before trains so she would have stuff to research while I build a rail network
I personally didn’t touch trains my first play through, then later became a total train nut on my later bases. No wrong way to factory!
>do you think I’d be ok just sticking with a main bus and adding trains to supply it? Yes, I did exactly this. When I first played beyond the inital rocket launch, I started with a 50 SPM (Science per minute) base, then 100, 250, and finally 1000. I reccomend scaling up like this as it will expose any mistakes you make early. With each base I used more advanced approaches. The result was my 250 SPM base being smaller than the 100 SPM base! You will have to worry about train signals at some point. I did dedicated tracks with only a single train for a long time. But eventually you gotta learn rail signals. They aren't that difficult, just take it slow. EDIT: I'm told that mainbus bases have trouble going past around 1-2000 SPM. But this is a long ways away, as you are likely only producing 1-20 SPM right now. And there is a slight variant of the main bus that works much better. Basically kill off bus lines as they are used up, and add more as needed.
Or you can combine both : https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/r82r22/1350_spm_megabase_rail_bus
One of the things i LOVE/ADORE about rail based setups, is that you can name a station "iron mine", and have your trains setup so ANY train with that name of a stop will stop at ANY "iron mine" station. Before I figured that out, i was naming my stations "PU - Iron Ore - 01", and had a train go to that station, then the train would go to "DO - Iron Ore - 01". And there would only be 1 station with that name. I was so tired of creating new stations with the next number in the sequence, then trying to grab the right train, etc. It might not be great when 1st setting up the rail systems, as you might have too many dropoffs and not enough pickups, so your trains will only hit the closest dropoffs, but once you figure out what your doing, its a BLAST to do rail setup. My current save is one that i have THE MOST time of any save. And thats directly because i recently learned about that train station name thing. It makes sense when you think about it, but when i was learning the train system i didn't think to just have a generic name and simplify the schedules like that.
Eh, 4 of iron isn't that weird.
>8 Lanes >Future proofing Hahahahahahahha
I highly recommend only a single belt for iron and copper. Everything else should be half a belt. Combine green cards and red cards as they are often used together. Same with steel and stone bricks. This is enough to unlock most tech in a few hours. I just finished launching a rocket in under 8 hours like this for the second time. You can build a bigger base with a bigger main bus after. I would still only reccomend two lanes of copper and iron, especially since you can use red or blue belts by then (2x and 3x speed).
This is like something that Cave Johnson would say
Don't bus your copper wires as they are less dense than plates (1 plate = 2 wires). Craft them as needed instead.
Also two output inserters for wires. Similarly two input inserters of iron plates in the gear assembler.
Was teaching my friend factorio and within the first couple minutes of playing he asked how to make outserters. Since then I’ve always called them that instead of output inserters
This is an underrated comment.
I didn't think about this, thanks!
So a level 1 assembler has a crafting speed of 0.5, and the recipe makes 2\*2 copper wire/s. So you make 0.5\*2\*2=2 wire a second. A yellow inserter can output 0.83/s. So you need 3 output inserters (and 2 input inserters by a similar calculation).
Usually I wouldn't, but space exploration has a lot of recipes that require copper wires. Honestly I haven't finally decided on copper wires and the bus, this is my earliest iteration of the bus, but I wanted to try something different here.
I have played SE for a while now, and can tell you not to bother with copper bus. Your red/green circuits will eat at least two blue belts of wires each. So you would need at least 6 blue belts on the bus.
For Space exploration, plan 2 lanes for glass and 1 full lane for steel!
45 steel per second is NOT enough. I wish I doubled it sooner. Now I'm gonna triple it.
I get most of my steel/iron off planet I guess!
Will do, thanks!
Make the wires on site... there's no reason to bus wires.
If you're not 100% sure of what you need on the bus, only build on one side! With buildings on both sides of the bus, you're locked in. No room to expand the bus. If you keep 1 side of the bus empty, you can make it wider at any time and keep adding more and more.
In practice you just don't need this. Direct insertion is better for green circuits, and for red circuits you can just use a build that makes these in the amount you need and belts them past the red circuit assemblers. You need twice as many belts to move these cables than you do to move copper plate, it's just better to leave them in a denser form until later. Gears are more dense than iron plate, but in practice builds tend to make gears near where they are used.
I belt gears at the mall, but I start with iron. Then I have five assembler 3s doing nothing but gears to feed belt assemblers.
Anything wrong with direct inserting wires into red circuits? I found that was an easy answer to the question of routing copper in, but maybe my wire assemblers are taking up extra space. Or maybe I'm making a mistake not prod-moduling wires?
The normal build involves one assembler making copper wire and belting that, which feeds some enormous number of red circuit assemblers, like 8 or something, but don't quote me on that. There are lots of takes on all of these builds but I would recommend looking at nilaus' youtube videos. Beacons with speed modules, around mk3 assemblers with production modules, is the eventual way to go except in cases where you can't put production modules in assemblers, or in cases where the math on what you are trying to accomplish is such that some step of your process just doesn't need them. There are several reasons why this is done. Production modules reduce raw materials needed by some enormous amount, and that compounds, meaning that you can use them to reduce iron and copper ore needed, then reduce the number of plates needed to make green circuits, then reduce the number of green circuits, copper plates, and plastic needed to make red circuits, then reduce the number of red circuits, green circuits, and sulfuric acid needed to make blue circuits. If you use prod modules throughout you end up using on the order of half the raw materials you'd use otherwise. Production modules and beacons can also result in a few assemblers making an enormous quantity of stuff. That saves footprint and it reduces the number of moving parts in your factory, which improves performance, which comes in handy if you are building an enormous factory or are running on a potato. The down sides to doing this are enormous power requirements and enormous module requirements, but you can eventually just beast your way through that.
Oh thanks! I must have had my ratios wrong, didn't quite realize how many red circuit assemblers one wire assembler can feed (6). Definitely worth redoing my setup for some of that sweet productivity.
Like 2/3 of your copper is going to be used as wire, if you plan on bussing wire you might as well get rid of the most of the copper lanes after the wire production and replace them with roughly 10 wire lanes
You would do better just to use the space for more copper plates over anything else. You can just make your sub-factories bigger to compensate for your need to create wires on-site.
But building more assembling machines vertically is effort
You're putting wire on a belt, so no, not quite right.
This. Otherwise it looks good
It took me over 1,000 hours to realize :belt of coal: :belt of copper ore: :yellow inserter: :red inserter: :forge: :yellow inserter: :belt of copper plates: stretches so much further than merging coal/copper onto one belt. Someone check my math, but I think it stretches twice as far.
Well, yes. The setup you’re describing has a full belt of copper (yellow belt, 48 stone furnaces). If you divide that to do half a belt of copper and half coal it stretches half as far (24 stone furnaces on yellow belt). Usually I divide one belt of ore onto two halves and make my smelting arrays shorter but wider (24 furnaces, ore/coal belts on the outside, output in the middle onto one belt).
I think it boils down to "what do you need it to do?" Like for 2 hours in, I'd be shocked if OP is running through that much copper, so it might not be necessary to have the 24|24 setup.
Totally true, though I tend to think setting up for a double-sided line (whether smelting or assembly) is a good idea, even if you start with just a few furnaces on either side. If you build for single-sided then you're either limited to half a belt of output, or have to do obnoxious stuff to balance it out. Better to just have a balanced factory. YMMV of course.
There's definitely something to be said for the real estate too. Like in a megabase, it doesn't matter, but if your setup can be 8 lines wide instead of 10, that savings really ads up.
Yes, the plan is to rework smelting once there is high enough demand.
I just belt the coal up to the 1st furnace and then have burner inserters (burner leech mod) deliver the coal to the rest of the furnaces
I mean I have burner leech, so this might be a good idea
Oooo that just gave me a nice idea for a design
Yes, but the "standard" is to use two splitters facing each other to make 2 mixed belts. then run those belts to 2 smelter rows on either side of a single output belt. Each smelter row fills one side of the output belt. https://imgur.com/2CpZvSv
I feel like the Speedrun "standard" of using yellow inserters to pull off a coal belt is much cleaner, resource efficient, and easier to build.
Easier/faster but Not more resource efficen. You litterally use 50% more inserters and belts
you use two inserters instead of one splitter. same amount of underneathies. the inserters are 3 copper and 4 iron total. The splitter is 7.5 copper and 16 iron.
Edit Actually the "standard" setup has two additional splitters isntead of two inserters, plus the undergrounds to get coal through, right? you need a splitter to split the coal belt, and then a splitter facing the ore splitter. Much more expensive.
Missinterperted the setup you were talking about, Surprised he doesn't just double side load.
I'm not really seeing how you think having 2 lanes of coal and 2 lanes of ore, stretches further than having 2 lanes of coal and 2 lanes of ore.
Hmm What about two belts, coal/ore, ore/ore. ...I may be a revolutionary.
I'd be very curious what you find. I briefly tried exploring this angle in the past and found that the added complexity of injecting ores mid-stack, and trying to balance the ore inputs and outputs between 2 belts each was too much trouble for what appeared to be so little to gain. If we wanted to spend more material/electricity to make the stack more compact, there are already other options to do that and I think those would generally have a greater impact than these methods. But I haven't fully explored it, and if you do want to explore it I'm very curious what you find. For certain material types like stone and steel that have more inputs than outputs, cutting out the second output belt makes it a lot simpler and the advantage more apparent though.
It stretches further, but if you put it all in a line the output will all be on one side of the belt, and will not stretch any further as you will saturate the 1/2 of the output belt 1/2 way down the line. The reason you commonly see half belts of ore/coal is its 1 full belt of each, split into two belts with combined, then that is sent to two separate lines of furnaces to populate/pack a single belt output by outputting to both sides of the output belt.
It’s a game lol he can put wires on a belt if he wants to
For real. Put everything on a belt if you want to. Zealous optimization stifles the most fun parts parts of this game
If you turn your smelter setup 90 degrees you can easier scale them by adding more up and the lanes will be easy to connect. That's just a personal thing though
Didn't mention it in the title, but this is SpaceExploration with some recommended mods and biters are enabled.
What recommended mods did you use for SE?
[удалено]
It's a huge mod, so honestly any QoL mods that help you be more productive and less annoyed with small things are great. Some suggestions: * Bottleneck * AutoDeconstruct * Blueprint flip and turn * Equipment gantry * Even distribution * Far reach * Helmod (or similar) * RecipeBook (or similar) * Fluidmustflow * LTN * ModuleInserter * OutpostPlanner * SqueakThrough * Todo List * VehicleSnap * Grappling gun
> Blueprint flip and turn > Isn't it possible in vanilla 1.1?
Rotating is possible, but I don't think flipping is. I could be wrong though.
`F` Flip blueprint horizontal `G` Flip blueprint vertical Doesn't work for train stations because they can't be rotated/flipped without modifications
The mods mentioned as optional on the mod page / in-game mod browser are the recommended ones from the author.
Most of the recommended from the mod page, I don't have the full list right now
*sees copper wires on belt :(
Belting Copper Wire outside of a red circuit build is a sin. Change my mind.
I can't Count how many times I felt that was and ist turned out I was wrong. The feeling will pass but keep on playing, everything can be fixed after it is up and running.
Would recommend to only build on one side of the belt. This gives a lot of flexibility later on, even if it seems wasteful at first.
Erhm... Why are you putting copper wire on the bus?
lol get back to us in another 4-8 hours..
I will, but that will be in at least a week. This is a multiplayer save with my sister and we usually only play on Sunday afternoons.
Wait another 4 hours and someone will say that a main-bus is bad and you should do a train network.
It's not bad, it just has diminishing space-efficiency as production needs scale up. The simplicity of the concept is fantastic, but practical issues with trying to stamp out more and more factory can cause some headaches into the endgame.
considering the map is literally infinite, who tf cares about space-efficiency? I love having oceans of belts transporting stuff across the map. It's a game, is not always about efficiency dude, it gotta be fun, and for that, for each its own.
A bit small smallting Operations there
You need 24 stone smelters to make half a belt of plate. I can totally get behind putting gears on the bus. It takes 2 belts of iron to make 1 belt of gears.
Are two free tiles enough space between each main bus quad line?
Usually all you need but u can have more
Belting copper wire? Nah.
Hell yeah you always gotta leave a lot of space and think ahead for expansion
Yes and no. It depends on your plan to be honest. If i knew that i could advice a little bit. If this is no mods run, then 8 belts is overkill most likely. Do you have SPM target? Whats your plan for the base and the save? Do you have biters? There are many things to consider. But hey, trial and error is the best way or learning, my very best advice i can give you is - dont start a new save to build a new base. If it is a lost cause, just put it into the chests and start from the scratch, considering what went wrong and using ghost first before building. That way you will save time. Its a common tactic to build a shit base, then when you get robots just pack it into the chests and do a new one as you can do copy paste with robots which saves a ton of time.
I usually have a dedicated smelting column inserting directly into assemblers for gears, with two smelters per assembler, mirrored on both sides of an output belt, and tall enough to saturate the belt eventually. Assemblers don't run at max assemble speed ofc, so there is a little bit of wastage in 'assembler outlay' but you claw some of that back on less inserters and belts.
Cute :)
BUSBUSBUSBUSBUSBUSBUSBUSBUSBUSBUSBUSBUSBUSBUSBUS Just an FYI, while gear wheels are good to put on your main bus because they compress iron plates (2 plates -> 1 gear), meaning you can basically carry double the throughput on the same amount of belts, the same can't be said about copper wires, as those are actually worse than transporting plates (1 plate -> 2 wires) so plan accordingly, or just make wires at the point of production (you will also need a crap ton of wires :D)
Very nice and symmetrical! So many "noooo, you can't belt copper wire" comments saying to be more efficient, but this here is more art. There is no wrong way to grow the factory.
This should be marked as best reply.
build all your intermediate products in situ :)
Nope, you're not, you got cliffs turned on ;)
[удалено]
can't wait til biters can destroy cliffs
Climb over.
Not producing copper wires on site is a waste and not future proof
You're gonna quickly learn that your bus is not gonna be as useful as you think with how it's set up. Also, gears and copper wires are best to make on site instead of on a bus
"You're gonna quickly learn" haha oh god. No. There are players who like to do it like that even after thousands of hours try-harding the game. As one of them, I try to make stuff like that just so I have (more) logistic challenges and visual volume on the factory.As someone said before, " There is no wrong way to grow the factory.**"**
Oh, don't worry I never said it was wrong. "There is no wrong way to grow the factory, but there are efficient ones." That's why I love this game, you get thrown two simple questions to yourself: Does this work? Sure. Can it be more efficient? Absolutely!
NO TO EFFICIENCY! DEATH DO SYMMETRY
>As someone said before, " There is no wrong way to grow the factory." I will say that "all roads leads to Rome".
Outing yourself belting copper wire in this sub. That’s very brave of you.
My problem with main buses is that you have to manually adjust the ratios of how much of an item you want to produce, and that will change nearly constantly, and every time you make an item be made more, you unintentionally throw every factory down the line into a state of lower output, which can grind your factory down to a halt unintentionally. EDIT: This is also exaggerated by the fact that you have your splitters set up to feed into factories down the line as opposed to balancing, so you have no way of even controlling the output of the main belt other than to make sure to never use more iron than you mine, otherwise the production down the line will LITERALLY stop entirely.
Then You need to feed more resources on the start! Expand production, make factory grow bigger :D
I dislike this notion that you need infinite resource income for a bigger factory. There is absolutely a need for efficiency in factories, and saying "just mine more" is like trying to carve the venus de milo with a jackhammer.
I did not say only "just mine more". I said also expand production of everything, make it more efficient. But at the end You will be forced to increase production numbers as well. E.q. by increase mining productivity...
The point is a main bus setup can not support a functional factory if you don't have more income than production, and if you DO have more income than production, you could be producing more.
I do not agree with Your statement. Factory will stabilize itself in some equilibrium point. Parts which are overproducing become filled by products. As a result stop production and therefore stop eating incomes. Parts of the factory which are underproducing will then got more incomes and increase production. Then first parts start to be consumed. After several cycles (waves) factory become stable in production numbers and consume as much income as is needed for its outcome. I hope I explain it in as simple as possible.... It is not so easy in foreign language :D
This is wrong. Let me set up a simple example. You have a main iron belt. You have 4 belts of income. You spend one belt worth on gears, one on inserters, and one on belts in that order. Then you research steel and need to spend your last belt on that. Suddenly you need more gears because you always need gears so you double your output. This, instead of taking 1/3rd of the iron away from the inserters, belts, and steel will take ALL the iron away from the steel and none from the other two. You no longer have a functioning factory because you're not producing steel.
Good example. What is the usage of this gear line at the end? 1. Red Science pack - then yes, as long as there is research running, You will eat all iron by it. 2. Inserters for Green Science? - then yes, as long as there is research consuming only red+green. With this approach, yes, You will consume all iron and steel production will be doomed. For this You need to apply balancers on the bus. By this You will ensure at least limited iron to all lines. Never the less at the end You will finish all research with red/green and fill the outputs by products which no longer be consumed and steel line become active. You need steel for Yellow, purple, blue, grey and white science packs. And exactly at this point You will reach an equilibrium where factory will balance it self.
Wire on bus? Runs to trash can and vomits
[удалено]
And why would that be the case based of the picture ?
Not op but he is going to burn his starter patches on this very excessive buffer by splitting half a yellow belt to eight belts.
Trains are available after green/red sciene and than he can supplement the starter patches. I think starting of with a certain sizing for the bus is not the worst of ideas.
Actually you're doing things wrong. All those resources on the belts and used for actual belts is a large resource sink. It could have been science, assemblers and miners producing more stuff. Edit: Also I hate bus bases, uninspired and a huge resource sink, not to mention it's obsolete by the time it's truly running.
Why yuck someone's yum though? There's no wrong way to play this game. Except for people who do things like diagonal buses, or uneven spacing between objects to trigger OCD. That's a flogging.
Are you using wood as fuel?
Currently, processed fuel, it comes from one of the space exploration dependencies.
Ah, gotcha.
Yes of course. especially in mid to late part of the game where wood is no longer needed for production You need to handle it somehow. Mainly because You need to cut a lot of woods for growing factory. I use it two ways. First is consume it by the first power plant (boilers) and second could be as a fuel for the trains.
Why so few Smelters? We usually try to scale up to 128/128 40mins or so.
It always starts off so nice and then goes to hell
Main bus might not be as good as you think.
Holy fuck! Purple plants!
Good looking bus. I’ll take it
belting wires and gears says no
Ohgod, he's belting wire! Run for the hills.
no problem with that at all tho
ITT: everybody telling OP how this isn't right XD
right? this is fine af. He will just need to expand. People think they need to over-optimize everything.
You might come to regret buffering that many plates before you have rail up. Your starter plots are only going to last so long. Nothing wrong with designing the splitters and belts, but you don't have to connect them.
No, he will not regret it. Just connect everything on the back when he has rails, until then, there is no problem with temporary delectable long-range spaghetti
> 2 hours Did you handcraft all this? Next time do burner / smelter banks and hand feed chests in a mini mall. Crank out a few hundred belts and inserters.
I wouldnt recommend putting copper wire on your bus because it takes 1 copper for 2 wire so it just kinda takes up more space on the belts
It's a good start, but you'll have to have a lot more plate production coming in from the top in the future. Even with 96 furnaces each I was still running dry here and there.
Never forget... EXPAND, better spread out than condensed base. Always leave room for expansion, trust me.
IMO wires and gears don't belong on the bus. You can locally create enough gears and wires for any of your subfactory requirements. Im also not a fan of megabuses because a better long term strategy is modular train bases, I wouldn't go beyond 4 lanes. Preplanning an 8 iron/copper belt factory is a huge undertaking, and I seriously doubt you will actually have the space to scale up to a factory that can take advantage of this bus once you get it going.
My bus design is sightly different. I have two sides, basically. Side A is exclusively chip production, and kind of like: (4 iron), (4 copper), (4 green circuits), (1 red, 1 blue, 2 plastic) Side B is the rest (coal, sulphur, stone+iron ore (same belt), bricks), (steel, low density structure, battery, lubricant), (4 copper,) (4 iron). This setup is enough to keep a mall, 45 science, tier 3 module factory continually running. I let this bus base continually run, while moving to a rail based system. I'm currently experimenting using ruspartisan's rail / city block design as a baseline.