Factorio - building your own Foxconn

the_syco

Only doing the tutorial missions at the moment. Got bored grinding, so build an auto-grinder. And then started making it more efficient.

Bits to the middle make red, bit to the right make parts to make green, and then it all gets put into the research.



All the while telling myself; it's only the tutorial, progress will get wiped when I finish the level... :pac:

Pressing ALT so I see what building is making what helps ensure everything is doing something.

ShadowHearth

the_syco wrote: »

Only doing the tutorial missions at the moment. Got bored grinding, so build an auto-grinder. And then started making it more efficient.

Bits to the middle make red, bit to the right make parts to make green, and then it all gets put into the research.



All the while telling myself; it's only the tutorial, progress will get wiped when I finish the level... :pac:

Pressing ALT so I see what building is making what helps ensure everything is doing something.

Hehe, I see spaghetti is strong with you, my friend! Good job.
Do tutorials and then go for your own factory. You can skip the train one as even in reddit theu say its very badly done. You will be way better off learning it yourself in your own factory.

As long as you know basics like how inserters work and how to put stuff from one belt sode to other, you will be fine.
As I said before, try not to watch too many youtube guides. Theu suck all the fun of factorio. Thats what I am doing with modded one. Its very hard, but very satisfying to figure out stuff yourself.

I played a bit last night in bed after work and today while misses was at her mothers.
Finally made consteuction robots and working on iron collector train, which will collect bits of iron ore and deliver to main base.
My current issue is iron iron iron. I am processing 3 different ores in 3 separate locations to get iron. Thing is even what I am producing right now is not even near to meet my demand.

the_syco

ShadowHearth wrote: »

Do tutorials and then go for your own factory.

That's the plan

ShadowHearth wrote: »

As I said before, try not to watch too many youtube guides.

So far, the odd look at forums to see can I do "X". Shall be seeing if I can deconstruct buildings for their supplies, but I doubt it.

ShadowHearth wrote: »

You can skip the train one as even in reddit theu say its very badly done. You will be way better off learning it yourself in your own factory.

ShadowHearth wrote: »

My current issue is iron iron iron. I am processing 3 different ores in 3 separate locations to get iron. Thing is even what I am producing right now is not even near to meet my demand.

Yeah... about that. Got the iron ore process down to a tee, researched everything... but now the iron is running low, and the nearest iron place is near a pretty large enemy encampment to the north west. Fun times ahead! If it were easy, I'd have given up already :P

ShadowHearth

the_syco wrote: »

That's the plan


So far, the odd look at forums to see can I do "X". Shall be seeing if I can deconstruct buildings for their supplies, but I doubt it.



Yeah... about that. Got the iron ore process down to a tee, researched everything... but now the iron is running low, and the nearest iron place is near a pretty large enemy encampment to the north west. Fun times ahead! If it were easy, I'd have given up already :P

My rule of thumb with youtube was like this:

Find a play through, quills was great for it as he was half noob himself. Then play yourself up until some point and then watch him up to that progress point. Then I would play myself blindly up until next point and watch him.
That way I was still discovering stuff myself and seeing him do it. Best thing about his first proper series was that he was not one of the factorio gods who knew all perfect ratios and stuff, but he would give good food for though.

You will run in in shortages of iron first, then copper. The production shifts later game a lot.
That one thing I love about factorio. I now set new maps to generate frequency normal, but high yield. Part of the fun is making new outpost and train logistics. You can generate map with pretty much recourses everywhere, but it takes away part of fun.

Misses is working tomorrow, so I will be playing a lot. I will do some run around pf my factory and progress with screenshots.

ShadowHearth

I have a hangover day today so playing factorio in bed hehe.

Did a lot of stuff in my factory today. Got brass, nickel, aluminium and some other metal automated production.
Just to shot how my factory looks now from birds view.



I worked on that highway around my base for last two days. Now I got a fully running train system with 4 trains so far. As you can see I did a lot to make sure I can expand my train system and stations.



Here is my old setup for ore procesing. As you can see I left a lot of space for the future, but its not even near enough. I will show you next what I mean.



Now my new way of doing it is separating ore processing in different parts and then just ship out/in needed ores.

ShadowHearth

https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-187

**** yes!!!!! New patch out tuesday!!!! Look at all awesome stuff theu adding. I cant wait!!!!

Launching rockets is actually beneficial now! I read the whole thing and I cant wait for Tuesday! I am off tuesday too!!!

cruizer101

I just read it this morning and was reading through thinking that's amazing, oh wow that's cool too, that's a really good idea, there is no way this is going to be released next week then slipped in at the very end Boom its out Tuesday.

Really like the idea of the space science, first time I launched a rocket was bit excited, the next was not so much, so great to see a purpose for it.

Wish I hadn't got exams coming up, this looks very good

Wossack

Tuesday!?

ShadowHearth

cruizer101 wrote: »

I just read it this morning and was reading through thinking that's amazing, oh wow that's cool too, that's a really good idea, there is no way this is going to be released next week then slipped in at the very end Boom its out Tuesday.

Really like the idea of the space science, first time I launched a rocket was bit excited, the next was not so much, so great to see a purpose for it.

Wish I hadn't got exams coming up, this looks very good

I love idea behind rocket now. I got 180h in factorio and I did only one. I just completely ignore it as for it has no purpose. With new science objective its damn great. Very good idea.
There is nothing I dont like about new patch.

The only issue I have, it will be a bit sad to see my 40h modded factory just go to dust. On the other hand I love fresh starts in factorio.

I am off monday and tuesday. I wish it would be tuesday and wensday now.

ShadowHearth

Its out today!!!!!

I am already playing it! Misses walked in with my coffee and I was like: ahhhh, fresh start!!!
She terrified asked: what? Wat happened to your last thing, you spent so much hours on it?!?!
Me: about 45h on that one, I scrapped it for new update. Fresh start is awesome!!
Her: But, you spent so much hours on that?! How do you feel about it?
Me: Great, new patch new stuff!
Her: I just dont understand how... you are weirdo!!!

So here is my humble beggining: C ya all in about 2 weeks!

I bought this and enjoyed it but I realised when looking up how to do something, that I just don't have the time for this. I am stepping away, back to CIV 5 if I have an hour to kill.

ShadowHearth

Well, played it yesterday and today. Couldn't pull a long night as my misses has some kind of disorder where she cant sleep if I am not in bed... I can be in bed playing drums and she wont give a ****... Couldn't play on laptop as steam cloud sync was crashing it, it fixed since.

So I got up to red circuits and planing on blue sciense. Kind of debating if I scrap it and redo upper the bus as I dont want to waste to much recourses to have them travel far away. Science packs are expensive!!

So this is how my bus looks now. I actually got two now. One for mains stuff and a separate fork for liquids.

This is my current liquid procesing. Not much, but with mentioned bus it is making me plastic and batteries to send back to main bus.



Finally a map shot. I managed to wall off and I am already upgrading defences to laser turrets. Biters are way more nasty in new patch!
Started small solar plantation already too.

Wossack

really excellent update - very impressed by the changes. And I just noticed last night my game wasnt set to use the hi-def graphics, so Ive that to look forward to tonight too

man the 'eyedropper' q tool is bloody fantastic. Saves so much time rummaging through your inventory - want to quickly drop an inserter, just mouse over an already placed one, press q, and it'll put one in your hand

the mini ingame tutorials are great too - great to give you a primer on trains

and the boilers now making steam

'b' for blueprints (which are saved/transfer between games..!)

all the new science..!

its a cracking update

Wossack

under graphics -> sprites I think

ShadowHearth

Wossack wrote: »

really excellent update - very impressed by the changes. And I just noticed last night my game wasnt set to use the hi-def graphics, so Ive that to look forward to tonight too

man the 'eyedropper' q tool is bloody fantastic. Saves so much time rummaging through your inventory - want to quickly drop an inserter, just mouse over an already placed one, press q, and it'll put one in your hand

the mini ingame tutorials are great too - great to give you a primer on trains

and the boilers now making steam

'b' for blueprints (which are savwed/transfer between games..!)

all the new science..!

its a cracking update

Yup, this update is fantastic. So much quality pf life improvements and general content.
Saved blueprints is just fantastic. I finally got to low tech robotics and those little slow fellas will have a lot of work tonight and tomorrow. I didn't checked yet, but did it saved blueprints from old saves too? Or is it fresh start? I think you dont even need research for it anymore.

I played a bit last night after work and I did simple blue science and made a small robots logistic hub where I come in and get stacked up on usual common items like belts and inserters.
I work all day today again, I hope I wont be too tired to continue on laptop tonight.

I finally reached ability to learn nuclearn power. Thing is its very very expensive research! I will set myself up properly forst then tackle that.

Oh, one god sent little quality of life improvement: when you upgrade underground belts, it upgrades exit one too if you got some in inventory!

Wossack

Its a fresh start with the blueprints, but I think you can open up an older game, and create blueprints to transfer into your new game

You can also export and import as text string, so get ready to see a whole heap of player creations made available

ShadowHearth

Wossack wrote: »

Its a fresh start with the blueprints, but I think you can open up an older game, and create blueprints to transfer into your new game

You can also export and import as text string, so get ready to see a whole heap of player creations made available

Thats good then, I got modded saves and old learning saves with a lot of clutter. It would take ages to clean up.
True, there will be awesome stuff like in space enginners available to download. I doubt I use it, as I love my own home made spaghetti. The only thing I could see myself using it for, would be belt balancers.

ShadowHearth

Ahhhh, misses was at work from 11-7 and I was off. I am working all bank holiday, so wont have much time to play. I used my time wisely.


So sorted out my blue science and made new setup of reworked purple sciense. I am back in proper research.
Expanded my territory dramatically. Needed some more iron and space.
Started my trains too! Not running yet, but base is set.

Weapons got nice rebalance. Its early now, but tank does not suck ass yet! I actually using it to clear nests. Drive in and shoot a few shells at nests, then finish off biters with flamethrower! And yes, its mounted now on tank.
3 personal roboports and I am stacking up on all the blueprints. Even if I dont have proper drone logistic sorted yet, as its very high tech tree, I still use a lot of drones. New blueprint system is amazing.

Game feels very easy after bobs and angels, but changes to recepies are very welcome. I am putting on bus bricks and coal now!

Here is how my factory looks after today:


Compared to screenshot from last time.

ShadowHearth

I am back, and no, I did not got bored of it. Was working like a mule and even had to work on day off due to very busy bank holiday and communions. Had only today off and back again for whole weekend to zug zug.

I think factorio rubbing of on me extremely positively. My brain works like a factory and I even got complements from bosses on how organised I am and how well I work. Thing is I notice it myself too.

Anyway, back to actual factorio.

I managed to play today properly and did some great advances. My area increased again and I am at the stage where I really need to expand for raw matarials. Added more train infrastructure. Another iron patch and oil patch. Had a chance to finally use tanker wagons. They are so damn sweet.

Here is a new shot of whole factory.


Now more interesting stuff. I am doing a transition from main bus factory to drone factory.
I got to the point where I I dont need to bus any more new items. Everything that I need is being built. So I started stockpiling my metals, batteries, circuits etc at the end of bus. It was not easy and it did not happened in one go, but I do have 2xgreen circuit, 1+ red circuits and half of chest of blue circuits stacked. Thats all after a good lash of modules produced!
As you will see in a pic I did a production sections. I am already producing all main items I need here. Like belts, inserters, solar panels, destroyer bots, modules etc.
Everything set on rotation of request and provider chests. I just drive in to this area and my bots stack me up with stuff I need and I move on. Extremely handy.
One of the good things about this set up, I can mass manufacter one item and then send it out to all of the assemblers that need it. Gears for example. Instead of having like 20 gear assemblers spread all over the bus, I got 4 and they provide gears to everything!


Next will be to try and sort out new sciense setup. Make it with drones too. It will cut out a lot of wasted materials that just sit on belts. Might finally research rocket lol. I did not bothered as I am not doing infinite research yet and still have a lot of other stuff to research. So its a bit wasted.

Wossack

Hitting the factorio pipe pretty hard lately myself (sorry for picture sizes)

Heres an overview of my ~40hr map.
Note largely KatherineOfSky inspired (youtuber)



Only just starting out with trains really, as havent had too much need. The blocks are solar panels (overkill, about 4000 or so). Will be largely redundant once I get around to getting the nuclear power going - have a tonne of u235 (nearly a chest), and 2 chests full of fuel, just not gotten around to it.

Large amount of smelting areas, mostly steel furnaces, but building new furnace lines with electric smelters for when the modules are done. Speaking of which, looks like we've the same idea how to do that SH:


Module factory.
Currently starved for red circuits, which in turn is starved for plastic, which in turn is starved for coal (usual factorio problems)

New smelting lines. Left space for beacons. Getting fed from the train station


Electric furnaces.

Oh, and did you know you can pull science packs out of labs now? New feature of 0.15. Had a quick go with a tileable array, but my science is pretty much done lol - maybe grind out a few infinite upgrades if I can be arsed


Science labs

ShadowHearth

That is impressive m8. I am shocked you got that much further then me without even trains. I guess our map spawns are incompletely different. I got a lot less and smaller patches, so I need more logistics.
You got some amount of uranium! I had only one patch of 200k and its not even enough to start kovoneks procesing. I have another patch of 800k down south that I will be fighting for next time I play.

Yeah, we got similar ideas hehe. I was thinking of using belts, but went pure drone. Easier to setup when its up and running.
I have already stacked up 100 of tier 3 modules of speed and efficiency, third one is only at level 2. Have about 300 tier 1 speed modules. Those are used alot everyewhere.
Those modules eat up circuits like nothing. When I started tier 3 I got just completely wiped out my production and power lol.

Yeah, I sow that you can do science with inserters. Its great. I will do it like that too. Just feed one chest with drones and let them take ehat they need.

I will try to clean up main bus completely from it. Just only raw recourses and circuits will be made on it. The rest is drone world.

ShadowHearth

I am having my very first weekend off this year. By pure fluke! Misses had to work, so I just enjoyed myself with factorio.

So again, usual map shot. I expanded a lot in to west. Main reason was stone and exploration. Using a lot of landfill and brick, will need concrete soon. So I set up a small facility just to supply me with all of it.
Had to throw another copper mining location. I am chewing through it like a fat kid through a box of chocolates! All of it goes on green circuits and then on reds.

The next thing is pretty big!
I completely removed all science and left overs from main bus and there is only circuits on it.
Took me a while and took a ton of recoursesrecourse to set up my drone science pack factory.
Its modular and consists of 4 assemblers with productivity 3 modules, 4 beacons with power efficiency and in gaps between I got speed modules. I am not looking for speed but more of a recourse efficiency with my set up.
Right now I managed to make 800 of each type science packs. It took a lot of damn resources to set up this thing.... and jaysus... modules are expensive!

My drone factory looks like this. I added more stuff to be made in east and my whole science block is in north west.


Oh yeah, I am having serious power issues! At 4.5k solar panels and barely can hold it together. Uranium is just very damn rare on this map. Hopefully I will push down south and secure the only patch I got next time ill play. Or steam power all the way. I got good few nice coal patches.

ShadowHearth

Oh yeah, just heads up to everyone who dont check their blog. The underground belts have their length increased depending on its color.

Yellow - 4 ( same as before )
Red -6
Blue 8

That opens up a lot of new designs and most important one - Train unloading setups. There are very nice simple setups for that on reddit already.

Wossack

they changed some of the science recipes too - just in case you're like me wondering why my science hasnt budged..!

ShadowHearth

Wossack wrote: »

they changed some of the science recipes too - just in case you're like me wondering why my science hasnt budged..!

Aye, I had that lol. Why belts full of produce, but nothing happening. Now I got like 200 oil rigs and 600 of basic assembler machines, at least those are used in other science pack.

ShadowHearth

Played today. Did a goob bit:

Expanded my territory and added more trains! One of the most satisfying ones is the the one that brings acid for uranium mine. Finally started mining operation on that patch I was talking about. Still cant start nuclear power as I got only 19 of u235. Not enough to start enriching process.
Had discovered issues in my train drop off station. It gets clogged up by copper trains as I went mad with them. After 4xgreen, 2,5xred and 2xblue chests of circuits, my copper consuption decreased. 3 trains waiting to unload made a bottleneck for iron trains. Had to patch it up fastly, but it is only temporary solution. Just making extra stuff now just to keep ore going. I guess its a good bottleneck.

My factory looks more like a train sim now.




Just a bit fun now. Just a small snip of what happens in my drone factory when I come back after long trip and use out a lot of stuff. It becomes a swarm of bots try to deliver stuff to me and deliver stuff to replace items I took.

ShooterSF

I really want to come back and try it out again now but I'm actually falling down the rabbit hole that is dwarf fortress at the minute Fascinating reading your posts guys keep it up!

Wossack

not had a whole lot of time to play lately, and spent a good bit of time on a community game, which, while I learned loads, had a bit of a frustrating time with the netcode

own game - redone nuclear power (8x reactors instead of 4, so complete redesign). Happy with how it turned out - managed to do so with no power outage

Redoing my train network (I had only just begun it really) with the aim to train ore to remote smelters, and then train plates onto the bus. Changing to dual direction trains too, and have 2way lines in and out of train stations. Starting to get the hang of train signals hah

Just about maxed science, so have hastily thrown together a rocket launchpad, to start getting white(?) science for the infinite science upgrades

Good bit of room needed, so have expanded my area slightly.

Kinda wish I'd left biter expansion on (using the railworld map generation preset), and have too large ore patches set too. Bit too easy hah

Next game will be different!

ShadowHearth

had day off tuesday, so put a few hours in. Got to the point where I just expand my boarders more and more hehe. Need those recourses. Dont bother with anything that is bellow 2mil patch unless its on route for my trains.
Got 2 chest of each parts for rocket made. Still wont launch anything as I still have other reasearch to do before I will need space science.
Here how it looks now.


Then on to my experimentation and learning of nuclear power.
Got myself a little procesing plant for that patch I am mining. Then here is my ghetto setup for enrichment. Its very basic. Just wanted to see how it works.
Basically its a loop that I fed to kick start. One batch of u235 and a good lash of u238. Its takes what it needs, then throws out produce and all of it goes round again. I left it do its thing and eventually it saturated all 4 yolks and now excess is stored in chests. By now I have around 1k u235!

Then I did a small uranium fuel cell produce, which is supplied by bots. Then the plan is to feed reactors by drones.

On the left I made a basic 2 reactor setup just for testing. Works fine and I got surprised how little fuel it uses.

Right now its disconnected from main grid and not working. There are 6.5k solar panels that doing all the work lol. Plan is I will start my train modular bases soon and it will be all fed by nuclear power separated from main grid.

I love my ultrawide monitor for factorio. A lot of stuff fit in.

ShadowHearth

I am still here.
I finally managed to play a bit of other games, but I only manage 15min and go off it. Tried to play a bit of bf4 again.... that went well... so well, that I deleted it off my pc and said: I am too old for this ****. Then wemt back building my new green circuit plant. :pac:

Anyway, I almost completed all non infinity research, only the nuke left. Oursode of that I started working on my train bus factory outsode of my main factory. It even has its own power supply which is 90% nuclear and rest solar. Solar is mot even needed, but I just use it for defences when expanding or when I add one more mining outpost and cba rolling out poles.
So far I did iron smelting, copper smelting and green circuit plants. All connected by trains and storing produce in chests. I got like 60 full chests of iron and copper bars each filled to the brim waiting to be used.
Green circuit plant is very fresh, but holy crap it is popping out those suckers fast. Oh, and all plants are fully drone operated, no belts.

A snip of my iron smelting. Its a start off with space to expand.


A snip of my green circuit plant with a closer look of it.