Post 1 - Originally published on Google+ on 2015-01-31 02:07:57 UTC
So I tried to setup #factorio mods for trains game. Unfortunately half of the mods don't work with 0.11.x (experimental) versions. I'm not sure what I'd be losing by sticking to 0.10.x (stable) versions.
Resource Spawner Overhaul which people recommended for trains game runs, but I really don't like aesthetically how it spawns resources.
What I'm most interested in is some mod that makes liquid handling viable with trains, either, with either of:
• barrels for all liquid types
• rail tanker wagos which can carry liquids (as long as it deals with all of them, not just crude)
And just look at this mod, which completely removes aliens from the game, replacing them with just another minable resource (with somewhat complex processing chain)!
Anyway, the plan is not to play right away, I just prefer to check it in advance that game works with all the mods etc. It really sucks if I try to play something and I'm totally derailed and spend a day debugging modding issues instead.
Post 2 - Originally published on Google+ on 2015-01-31 02:36:07 UTC
Here's #factorio settings I want to try (might get tweaked a bit):
• Peace mod (no aliens whatsoever, alien ore instead)
• Rail tanker mod (tanker wagons for trains, can carry any liquid)
• Always day (mostly because factorio looks so ugly at night, early autonomous solar power supply for every base / train station is just a bonus)
• Very low terrain segmentation, starting desert (because it looks better, also fewer trees)
• All resources at very low frequency, medium size, good richness - that looks like a good combination for trains.
Apparently Steam can run non-Steam games and make screenshots for them. I used a different third party screenshotting program in my old factorio campaign, but I don't remember which one was it, and I apparently deleted it in some pre-holidays cleanup.
Anyway, the goal is to run as much as possible on trains, so no massive belt/pipe networks connecting multiple factories, just some very short belts within each factory, and each factory having its own train stop or two. Probably smart inserters, robots only for my convenience (personal logistics, blueprints etc.), not as part of factory internal logistics. I'm not sure how viable that would be, so no absolute rules here.
If I even end up with trains carrying water to chemical plants, I'll call it a win.
(as I have ongoing Skyrim campaign and some non-gaming stuff to do, no idea when I want to do this, maybe tomorrow, maybe next weekend, maybe much later)
Post 3 - Originally published on Google+ on 2015-02-01 01:50:06 UTC
New #factorio campaign. So far temporary setup with zero belts, so everything is horribly unbalanced (relevant ratios are nowhere close to 1:1), uses loads of boxes, and manual hauling.
I'll tear it all apart for proper train stations eventually. It will end up with electric furnaces and solar power (it's in always day setting), but for now first stations will probably be:
• coal mine
• iron mine (not the one in starting position)
• iron smeltery
• steam engine station
I haven't thought all that much how big factories I'm going to make. It's probably just silly to make factory for a single product (not that silly is necessarily a bad thing), but "basic stuff into all 4 science packs" is way too big for this.
I'll definitely add belts for balancing between stages of production, and obviously from and to train platforms, but there won't be anything resembling a bus.
Post 4 - Originally published on Google+ on 2015-02-01 03:26:18 UTC
#factorio , first 3 train stations. Coal mine and iron mine are obvious (except for question of how many wagons to use - might scale it up from 2 to 3 maybe), smeltery is not really setup properly.
Current idea:
• for now all trains with 2 locomotives to avoid loops on both sides
• I'll setup separate coal train (can visit multiply smelteries and power plant), iron train, and later copper train, sharing same main rail for now, with stations branching off it - that's not necessarily long term solution, just something simple for now
• steel furnaces only in new smelteries
• iron smeltery will produce both iron and steel, maybe gears as well
• power plant station, copper smeltery, and copper mine (no idea where, I only have very tiny copper patch in starting location) as first expansion once that's setup
Or I could make it one big iron/copper smeltery, and put ICs directly there as well. 3 inputs (iron ore, copper ore, coal) and 5 outputs (iron, copper, steel, gears, green ICs) is not particularly crazy.
Of course big smeltery doesn't mean one train stop, in fact I'd probably use multiple stops. Iron ore is so close to smeltery I could just belt it, there's no real reason to use a train other than trains being fun.
All that just for raw materials. I sort of want main loop of 5 wagons which various industries would connect to, but that's not a reasonable thing to start with. For now I'll probably dismantle ad hoc mining and smelting, but increase size of an ad hoc industrial area.
Post 5 - Originally published on Google+ on 2015-02-01 22:23:21 UTC
#factorio - now with 4 train stations. I completely dismantled the ad hoc base except for 2 stone and 3 copper extractors plus some copper smelters.
One train goes 5 stops (well, 4 stops, one of them twice):
• coal mine
• power plant (where output is very limited so it has priority but won't take much)
• smeltery (where it outputs coal to the bottom, by smart inserters)
• iron mine
• smeltery (where it outputs iron to the top, by smart inserters)
I didn't see any copper ore (the red field far north is alien goo not copper), so I wandered around until I found it, sadly it's a bit far and really forested, and clearing forests is massive pain before robots.
I think I'll separate trains into 3 lines, each with separate non-crossing rails (I don't even have rail signalling researched, so it's not like I have much choice):
• copper mine / copper smeltery
• copper smeltery / coal mine / power plant / iron smeltery (it can afford to be slow)
• iron mine / iron smeltery (transporting ore is currently limiting factor, but dedicated train with all fast inserters and 3 wagons should be more than enough)
Not sure how to handle refueling. Since every train stops at some smeltery, and every smeltery has coal, I could create a small diversion from coal line on each smeltery.
Power and coal are currently oversupplied. Iron ore is pretty decent, so transport is bottleneck. I could setup some temporary science area until I get science done properly - right now iron and steel go to chests. I want rail signals, robots, oil processing etc. fairly soon.
Still no idea whatsoever how I'm going to organize my industry. I think gears will go into iron smeltery, so it will have 3 outputs - 1/4 gears, 1/4 steel, 2/4 iron. The easy way would be to transport all that plus copper to some place and setup a small bus there, but this game is not about buses.
I really like how elegant my power plant is (features below). Other stations are a bit messy.
Post 6 - Originally published on Google+ on 2015-02-02 00:39:03 UTC
So now I have 3 separate train lines - coal, iron ore, copper ore, and 2 smelteries with separate platforms for ore and coal each.
Well, not quite as copper mine and smeltery are both works in progress, and I had a lot of WTFing when I put train stop on the wrong side of the track.
The plan with wagon per product, or shared multiproduct wagons with smart inserters to separate them on delivery... Yeah, eventually I'll do that, but that lowers throughput too much to do that for smelting.
It's crazy that I already have 8 train stops and the only things I produce are iron plates, copper plates, and steel. I'm not even making gears yet, and I dismantled my science packs factory.
I think I should avoid making this too ridiculous and just make one factory for gears, ICs, and first two science packs. (or put gears in iron smeltery). Even that means 2 more train lines with 4 more stops, keeping train stop to product ratio pretty ridiculous.
I really like how train stops and labels look on the map. I could start putting fake train stops to serve as just labels maybe.
Throughput per train trip is currently low, but once I research inserter stack bonus and bigger electric poles (so more inserters fit per wagon), it will drastically increase even with same platform size.
#factorio
Post 7 - Originally published on Google+ on 2015-02-02 04:34:48 UTC
#factorio trains.
Featured pic below shows two things - a much better smeltery design (with coal being merged with underground belts), and temporary science area.
I really needed science because without inserter stack bonuses loading/unloading wagons was the bottleneck. Now belts in iron smeltery are the bottleneck - there's tons of iron ore in chests at the platform, and tons of unused furnaces, but they don't get them fast enough, even with partial upgrade to red belts. I might have to take down iron smeltery completely and rebuild it more like copper smeltery (except on larger scale of course). It would feature 4 iron ore/coal lines, and all outputs on one side, so a convenient platform can be placed there.
Pics:
• copper smeltery / temporary science area
• load balancing trick in copper mine, otherwise first chests took all the ore and only one of the wagons got loaded
• current inefficient iron smeltery
I really wish I had deconstruction robots, rebuilding stuff and cutting forests for space take forever without them. The next step is probably oil extraction, even if proper processing will wait.
I'm not sure yet how I'm going to organize my industry.
Post 8 - Originally published on Google+ on 2015-02-03 00:32:55 UTC
#factorio - iron smeltery rebuilt to support 2k/minute of iron, 1/4 of it going into steel production. I really like this design.
Coal is routed really neatly, with both locomotives getting some, so that's totally covered - and I might extend coal line to output platform once it's built so it can power another train too (and same with whichever train will carry copper).
There's also temporary ad hoc fast belts and engines production setup nearby.
The main problem with all this setup are inserters loading iron ore from chests onto belts. All fast splitters are an attempt to balance each platform's inserters between two lines, but not really effective enough. North side unloading has space for something fancy, South side unloading would currently run into coal, but I can move coal unloaders to the other side as well, so that's totally fine.
If I wanted to make even more output, I could increase number of lines from 4 to 6 or 8, without even extra platforms, just some clever routing.
It's probably good enough for now anyway, 2k/minute is more than sufficient at this point, it's much more important to do the same setup for copper, and finally setup some real industry. I also really want robots for forest clearance and that requires oil processing etc.
Post 9 - Originally published on Google+ on 2015-02-03 03:20:06 UTC
So I rebuilt iron ore unloading after all, and it's very efficient now.
I built industrial line with 3 stations:
• copper loading (really hacky, the whole thing is getting taken down and rebuilt at some point)
• iron/steel/gears loading (with refueling station)
• unloading everything
I wanted to make it one product per wagon, but the way I built it wagons might end up reversed if I manually drive the train. Oh yeah, it's really practical way to move around, jumping onto any train and telling it to go somewhere, except it would screw things here.
There's also the problem that I'll need a lot of copper and one wagon every 4 stops is probably not going to be enough. So I should probably shorten the train from 4 to 3 wagons and build a separate 2-wagon train line for just copper.
Anyway, I also built oil extraction and refining center, currently completely disconnected from everything else, but with enough space for a train station or two. This multi-wagon setup for transporting basic industrial inputs was a trial run for multi-tanker trains, but right now it's not looking too good.
I'm going to build temporary chemical center next to refinery, just to get enough plastic and batteries to research advanced oil processing. I'll think how to connect it all later.
Another small thing, there's a ton of small ore patches all over the place - they're not worth setting a train station or anything, so I'm just putting a few miners and steel chests there.
And I really, really want to get some robots for deconstructing stuff - it's way too much work manually.
#factorio
Post 10 - Originally published on Google+ on 2015-02-03 05:33:54 UTC
So I got to robots with improvised robot factory, and I'm using them for forest clearance (especially to make my copper field accessible) and deconstruction. I don't plan to use logistics robots for anything, but I might want a few extra roboports to speedup deconstruction, as it's still fairly slow and I need to move roboport halfway through to get everything covered.
Copper smeltery - one I really liked initially - is gone, as is all science production. I'll rebuild copper smeltery along the lines of iron smeltery. Then I'll apply advanced oil processing to my refinery complex. Then I'll build new science complex, as well as small production of all the fun stuff like electric poles, fast inserters etc. - I've been running out of them pretty frequently. Normally at this stage of technology I'd have a lot more fully automated. Now that I deconstructed science and copper smelting I'm literally down to iron plates, gears, steel, and assorted liquids (plus a bunch of semi-automated products working from chests).
I built the first parts of my basic industry - gears (located in iron smeltery) and green ICs (located in industrial complex, on their own for now). Basic industry is also now using two platforms - separate for iron/gears/steel and copper.
I'm not totally sure how much I want to locate there - I might end up bringing petroleum gas and lubricant by train from refinery complex, and doing everything else with buses within industrial complex. I can't think of any good way to divide it into two parts, and for that matter I'll need to move coal there (or something else) to make plastics.
#factorio
Post 11 - Originally published on Google+ on 2015-02-04 01:02:28 UTC
#factorio copper smeltery done, almost identical to iron smeltery, except for somewhat neater output routing. (and train refueling still not connected)
It's all quite silly - copper smeltery output is 4 lines of copper, then it gets put onto 2 wagons, then all 4 (by intention) copper lines get unpacked and routed into green IC generation - but they're so damn close to each other just making belts go there directly would be a lot easier, and it would also avoid a lot of problems with bends, temporarily single lines etc.
And there are problems with IC generation - sharing iron input between 2 lines of assemblers does not seem like it's enough. Now moving things by one time is one thing bots are pretty good at, so maybe I'll do that.
Post 12 - Originally published on Google+ on 2015-02-04 03:50:27 UTC
#factorio - I upgraded oil refinery to advanced oil processing, so now it generates petroleum gas and lubricant and doesn't bother me with anything else.
I also built basic industrial base which generates green and red science packs, smart inserters (for future blue science packs) as well as basic structural elements of the base (fast belts, fast inserters, long inserters, blue assemblers, medium/big electric poles, solar panels).
I'm undersupplying electricity so I'm going to start some solar array somewhere. I wish I had substations, as that would make them a bit neater, but thanks to always day mode I don't need lamps or accumulators, so solar energy will have drastically higher output per area anyway.
The most interesting point of the campaign approaches - setting up advanced industry center, which gets:
• iron, copper, steel (not sure if gears are needed for anything)
• coal (for plastic)
• petroleum gas (via tanker wagons)
• water (hopefully local)
• lubricant (via tanker wagons)
And generates blue science packs, red circuits, blue circuits, and other late game goodies.
I had reasonable level of clarity up to this point (except originally I thought I'd make a lot more trains, I scaled it down a lot), but this is the point where things get much vaguer.
Another small thing I might want is some kind of logistic robots to give me belts etc. Not sure if I'll bother.
Post 13 - Originally published on Google+ on 2015-02-04 07:00:43 UTC
So I mostly spent this time fixing things. Coal deposits got mined out, and I didn't notice this for very long time, until my power plant got shut down. It didn't even help that I fixed coal by mining the other half of it, as inserters on platform wouldn't take it etc.
I also had issues with my coal mine - apparently one side of the platform was off by one, so inserters didn't reach the train... Yeah, embarrassing.
I setup solar array of 1920 panels. I thought about using substations, and I even setup hacky blue science generation to research substations, but they takes red circuits, and I didn't feel like waiting for that, so I did classic medium pole + 8 a panels array (20x12 of them). I did initial 448 panels manually, then got robots to do the rest - but it was still a lot of robot babysitting to get that finished.
I have half of blue science setup - it only need to get red circuits and batteries from somewhere, right now I'm just moving them manually.
I was looking for a good place to setup advanced industrial area, but that needs water, and there's no water anywhere on the map except near refineries and power plant. I guess I could screw tanker trains, and just haul output of basic industry to refinery instead. (I could still have a very short tanker rail line between refinery and advanced industrial processing center, but that would be more of a statement than a practicality - it's literally on the other side of a small lake.)
If I completely dismantled coal line (and then switch to electric furnaces and solar power), ignoring the issue of train fuel, that could even be arranged to avoid rail crossings.
One nice thing about robots was that I could use them to clear a lot of forests, and now I can drive my car really fast - while using car trunk to triple my backpack size.
So now there are two possible plans, either:
• make sulfuric acid in refinery
• pipe lubricant, sulfuric acid, and petroleum gas to advanced industry
• trains from coal mine, copper smeltery, iron smeltery, and basic industry to advanced industry
• track in basic industry takes materials for blue science packs back (with smart inserters for filtering)
• rail signaling to avoid crashes
• either second coal mine or go all electric furnaces (and use coal only for plastic), otherwise it will end too fast
Or:
• setup chemical industry base
• pipe output from refinery
• route iron and coal there by train (no copper, ICs etc.)
• send plastic, sulfuric acid, and optionally lubricant out (lubricant is only used for express belts and electric engines which are both low volume products, so I could make them ad hoc)
• have advanced industry do everything near my current industrial base
Or I could do something weird, like send petroleum gas to coal mine, where plastic processing would be located, and separately send sulfur and water from refinery to industry, with nothing coming back into refinery.
So many choices. All objectively worse than just using damn belts and pipes ;-)
#factorio
Post 14 - Originally published on Google+ on 2015-02-05 03:43:11 UTC
I decided to try liquid output only refinery, with 3-tanker trains of water, lubricant, and petroleum gas. I'm not sure if throughput will be sufficient, since that's all modded stuff.
So far one station is built, but not destination.
As my coal mine 1 got almost depleted, I built coal mine 2 as extension of the same line. This is the first time in the campaign where trains are arguably useful, and not just a silly gimmick.
Another two pics is alien ore patch mining in progress. It's very large but with very little ore per tile, so whole mine had roboports to dismantle it as it went - then I'd manually put miners on new tiles. One pic is alien ore patch about 2/3 depleted (didn't think about making pics earlier), another is end result - a bit under 5 steel chests ore alien ore. Robots are way better at deconstruction and forest clearance than anything.
A minor thing I've done this time was some more forest clearance to have space to setup chemical industry.
Relatively to hours of gameplay my tech is fairly low. Retrospectively this is fairly silly - ore should be smelted at the mine (coal transport by rail is totally legit, but even that goes away with electric furnaces), and then already smelted materials could be transported to main industrial center by trains - but this is a massive train overkill, even if it's much less than what I imagined originally.
#factorio
Post 15 - Originally published on Google+ on 2015-02-05 04:57:50 UTC
Fuck :-D
I tried to do something fancy in #factorio with trains with dual tracks, end loops, signals, multiple trains on a track etc.
It's a total unmitigated disaster. Train can't even find obvious paths. I just reloaded previous save from an hour ago. I tried to fix that by robots dismantling tracks, but somehow trains they became irreversibly broken.
Not even sure if it's a pile of bugs or overly restrictive design, fancy things simply don't work.
Post 16 - Originally published on Google+ on 2015-02-05 06:34:04 UTC
This is not going terribly well. #factorio trains are not tile-aligned (which is something they really should damn fix at some point, for aesthetic reasons if nothing else).
This is not a huge practical deal for normal trains as that means 5 or 6 inserters per side, which is not a massive difference, but tankers from this mode can only be loaded/unloaded from the center tile, so depending on how train aligns on the platform you can use either 1 or 2 pumps per side. The whole setup is just ridiculously inefficient, and pumps don't even have any upgrades or module slots :-/
So I've built this chemical processing plant, and it just doesn't work all that well due to supply issues, but It could probably work well enough if I upgraded the train to more wagons for water and petroleum (I doubt I'll ever have issues with lubricant.
Alternatively I could move sulfur production from here to refinery - sulfur takes 3 water and 3 petroleum gas per 2 sulfur per second, so it's a 3:1 compression, and solids transport a lot better.
By the way it's not currently setup correctly, it should be 10 sulfur to 4 sulfuric acid, not 10 : 5, that extra one is temporary to deal with some excess sulfur I had. This time I started counting ratios instead of just building stuff based on what seemed like a bottleneck.
Total inputs per second (without that extra sulfuric acid unit):
• 70 water
• 60 petroleum gas
• 10 coal
• 4 iron
Outputs per second:
• 20 sulfuric acid
• 20 plastic bars
Assuming 100% of plastic goes into red ICs, and 100% of sulfuric acid goes into batteries (some will need to be diverted into blue ICs, but that's relatively low volume), inputs per second will be:
• 70 water
• 60 petroleum gas
• 10 coal
• 14 iron
• 30 copper
• 20 green ICs
And output per second:
• 10 batteries
• 10 red ICs
The fanciest train network thing I've done so far is this crossing signaling. Not really that much.
Post 17 - Originally published on Google+ on 2015-02-05 08:19:13 UTC
If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing. Now that I checked production ratios (it's funny how many times I've played before without doing that...) it's obvious that things like red ICs and blue ICs require massive number of assemblers. This setup is capable of producing 12.5 batteries and 7.5 red ICs per second, if inputs are sufficient (which they are currently not), and if something was willing to use them that fast (which is also not true). It will go to 12.5/s once I upgrade assemblers to final type.
Next step is similar setup for blue ICs, and making trains a bit longer. It was probably silly to make them only 2 wagons - if something is worth setting up train for, it's worth setting up 4 wagon train for.
This is the first time ever factory was really worth using blueprints for, previous things I used them for were fairly borderline.
I'd like to build exoskeleton this time, my base is huge and I keep forgetting where I parked my car. This game really needs backpack upgrade, using car as backpack extension sort of works, but it's not terribly convenient. (OK, logistic robots are sort of backpack extension, but I'm not a huge fan of them)
#factorio
Post 18 - Originally published on Google+ on 2015-02-06 05:27:01 UTC
The train business is not going well. I extended my IC factory to blue ICs and all level 1 modules (not yet on screenshot).
In theory peak production of modules is 0.5/s of each, so it would build enough to get rocket defense in about 14 minutes (assuming enough inputs and level 2/3 module processing), but it's mostly idle.
The primary problem is lack of sufficient petroleum gas. Water is kinda tolerable, but most recipes need both, so fixing petroleum gas would increase demand on water too.
I extended train to 5 wagons - 2 water, 2 petroleum gas, 1 lubricant - and it doesn't seem to be making enough difference. For water it does, somehow trains align the way I can pump them with 2 pumps each side, but petroleum gas doesn't, and train seems to be slower with more wagons, so it's not as much extra capacity as it should be.
The next obvious solution is to make it double track and have multiple trains run between refinery and my chemical industry, but that's all fairly painful to build, even if this time I avoid all the train path not found issues.
My coal mine 1 is completely gone now, what's left is a few chests with coal. I'll murderize it completely once these are gone.
I'm not sure what's the best next step. Abandoning the idea of transporting basic liquids by rail is obvious, but I've built the whole chemical industry around this idea.
A halfway solution would be moving sulfur and plastic back, maybe to where coal mine 1 was so chemical industry would be getting sulfur, plastic, and water - all from coal mine 1, and make sulfuric acid locally. Coal mine 1 is so close to refinery and lakes that it can have everything piped.
The alternative is to find some mods that add viable rail tanker options. Trains with solid productn work reasonably well, so presumably using barrels for that would be fine.
And seriously, factorio trains should get fucking tile aligned. It's absolutely ridiculous. Tile size per train wagons is allegedly 8/7/7 8/7/7 8/7/7 7/8/7 for horizontal trains, and different for veritcal trains. WTF?
#factorio
Post 19 - Originally published on Google+ on 2015-02-06 06:19:20 UTC
OK, so since I started playing someone released liquid barrel mods updated for #factorio 0.11.
Here's liquid packaging factory next to previous rail tanker platform, now being dismantled by robots. I could probably have made it a lot more compact, but it's nice to play with loads of free space.
The only complex part of it is empty barrels return - I want barrels to get cycled in a closed loop, with smart inserters on output side of the platform on both ends of the track.
I'll dismantle current receiving platform and setup a new one with analogous unpacking system, and route that into my existing refinery.
That's the minimum viable way to fix rail tankers.
It's nice that factorio makes it so easy to add mods mid-campaign, I wouldn't bother starting a new one just for that.
Post 20 - Originally published on Google+ on 2015-02-06 21:25:10 UTC
Unpackaging station is a bit neater than packaging station. Using one return line is indeed causing problems, as lubricant keeps hogging empty barrels - problem which can hopefully be solved by overwhelming the system in massive excess of empty barrels.
I thought about using one belt with all kinds of barrels, without even smart inserters (if output goes directly to factory, regular fast inserter can do this kind of filtering just fine), but that would cause even higher risk of things getting stuck.
I started covering the base in roboports, since they're so cheap by this point. For now it's only (de)construction robots, but I'll probably add provider chests and logistic robots at some point.
I had iron ore train not working for I have no idea how long - apparently I can't insert coal into first tile of a locomotive, so it didn't matter that I had refueling system setup.
For fuck's sake game, tile align the fucking trains!!! This lack of tile alignment has been causing me more problems than anything else in the game since the time deconstructing a chest spilled its contents all over the floor in earlier alphas (a problem thankfully fixed these days).
Other nice to have things would be:
• electric trains (with batteries, changed with wires reaching locomotive or even platform charging station)
• faster trains
• warning on the map whenever train is standing in the field out of fuel
• larger backpacks for the player
• depleted miner
They could all require some tech, mods etc.
The barrel train is still not as good as I'd want it to be, but that might be solvable with more barrels. If that works, I'll gather alien goo I acquired so far, and setup last science packs.
I might setup express belts, splitters, and underground belts as well. And level 3 assemblers, level 2 modules and so on. There's still a bunch of things to automate.
#factorio
Post 21 - Originally published on Google+ on 2015-02-06 22:40:31 UTC
#factorio campaign heading towards the end - alien artifact factory setup (it was actually super simple, I expected something more complicated), as well as 4-way science, and level 2 module factory.
There's awkward problem that half of inputs are in basic industry (steel, gears), half are in chemical industry (red ICs, lubricant, speed modules), with only iron, copper, and green ICs being routed to both.
So I don't have easy way to automate express belts, robots, assemblers 3 etc. I could probably come up with something if I really had to, but I've only been really automating high volume products, and these aren't it.
It seems that the bottleneck is green ICs now, which is not exactly surprising as they're used for absolutely everything late game.
I had quite frequent production stoppages in my large base, but extensive use of buffer chests between stages prevented cascade failures for time necessary to deal with them.
Post 22 - Originally published on Google+ on 2015-02-07 01:14:42 UTC
Nothing terribly interesting happened. I built level 3 modules assembly, which is the last major factory I'll build this campaign, researched rocket defense and going through last few remaining techs.
I burned through all alien ore already, so I mined various small alien mines (7 total so far if I recall correctly, 3 shown on screenshots) - transporting it all by car to refinery.
I got myself 10x10 power armor with 2x reactor, 5x exoskeleton and 2x level 2 shield - it turns out I die in direct contact with speeding train all the same (I had to test that), making the shields fairly pointless. Well, I guess I have space for a few more shields, but that's silly, it's damn end game tech.
I extended copper and iron smelting by about a third each, and rerouted some belts to speed things up. Not even sure if that was worth it, as I managed to screw routing a few times, probably costing me just as much as I gained from higher efficiency.
I got a few logistic robots, way too late to matter, and express belt factory, just in case I'll need to speed up some belts, but so far I usually just doubled belts that were too slow instead. Platform unloading looks like bottleneck for a lot of things, and sadly that doesn't have any upgrades that don't take massive amount of extra space.
I could probably just leave the game running on its own for an hour or two, then press I win button, unless I managed to screw something on my way.
Overall, trains are not really worth it (at least not to massive degree I've been using them), but peace mod and always day mode are both amazing.
#factorio
Post 23 - Originally published on Google+ on 2015-02-07 03:01:29 UTC
Not much interesting happened in the final part. I upgraded oil extraction, as my first batch of oil wells was down to 0.1/s, but I had so much crude stored it didn't even matter (and I doubled refining capacity while I was at it).
Green ICs were the late game bottleneck - not manufacturing them, just transporting iron and copper from train platform to assembly, especially since I had to route them to other places as well.
I could achieve >3k/min if I manually moved iron and copper, but that was pretty boring, so I left it at a bit over 1k/min.
I might be able to come up with something creative about unloading if I left more space there, but I didn't, so I just left the game running a bit longer.
I got everything researched, and even increased my shield could from 2 to 5, but I forgot to jump under a train. Maybe some other time.
Time to play something else. I had a modded Skyrim campaign ongoing which I suspended for this one, I think I'll go kill some dragons now.
#factorio
