I just used long belts until I got the hover pack (which is the only thing I used the awesome shop to research / make before the factory made aluminum). That said, I have also made it a point to do most of my exploration by expanding my power tower network on the ground so I always have power relatively nearby.
Satisfactory: 1.2 Release Is Live!
- Thread starter Tegid
- Start date
Okay, my plastic and rubber factory are virtually set up now... and by virtually, I mean I haven't laid out a single foundation, but I think I've got them all figured out.
I'm working on the aluminum casing and heatsink plant now. there are lots of ways to set this up. Another site which doesn't work to minimize the resource usage did it without any recycled rubber or fuel blenders, but they used more than twice as much crude oil. Any crude oil not used will become time crystals for me, so I sort of want to minimize the crude oil I use. I thought it would add a lot of overhead doing it the more conservation friendly way, but it's just about the same, so I might as well do it the complicated, but miserly way, which leaves me a lot of leftover oil for later.
But now for the purpose of this post. I want to try out different methods of managing the water loop for the aluminum. I KIND OF have the concept of the headlift reset (though I can't find an example of it, I can probably find the youtube video again when I get home). I'd also like to see if the VIP junction works. In the video I watched, the guy couldn't get the VIP junction to work, but maybe he just missed something.
So rather than trying to build an aluminum refinery and then trying the different junctions and seeing which one works if I back up the aluminum scrap and then release it... I thought it would be easier if I set up a little test circuit. Here is the layout: Two water pumps, one set for 60 and the other for 120. The 60 represents the byproduct water, the 120 represents the fresh input water. Then I run them through the VIP junction that I'm testing, and the output is hooked up to a valve set to 120 (which is representing the amount that the machine is using), and then an industrial tank that represents the machine using the water. it will be regularly flushed, it is just there to catch the water so that it doesn't backup after the 120 valve.
Now, of course, this ISN'T a balanced water network. If it was balanced, then there wouldn't be any test of the VIP junction. We need there to be an excess of water to represent when the fresh input water is more than the system needs. Ideally, a working VIP junction would have the pump making 60 water a min at 100% efficiency (indicating that there was NO backup on the byproduct line which would stop the production of scrap) and the 120 pump would be working at 50% efficiency (indicating that it was only producing 60 water a minute that the network needed). If the 60 pump drops below 100% efficiency, then the VIP build has failed. That is the main point of this set up, to make sure that the fresh water pump will be turned off if the network doesn't need additional water. So for example, if I turned the valve down to 90, then the fresh water pump should drop to 25% efficiency while the 60 pump stays at 100%. If I drop the valve to 60, then the fresh water input pump should stay off, while the 60 pump continues. If I turn the valve to 0, both will shut off, and when I open the valve to 180, they should both turn back on again.
Supposedly, the VIP valve in the manual should work like that, but in the video it failed, so I'll have to test it myself. If I can't get it to work like that, then I'll see about finding the headlift-reset set-up.
I'm working on the aluminum casing and heatsink plant now. there are lots of ways to set this up. Another site which doesn't work to minimize the resource usage did it without any recycled rubber or fuel blenders, but they used more than twice as much crude oil. Any crude oil not used will become time crystals for me, so I sort of want to minimize the crude oil I use. I thought it would add a lot of overhead doing it the more conservation friendly way, but it's just about the same, so I might as well do it the complicated, but miserly way, which leaves me a lot of leftover oil for later.
But now for the purpose of this post. I want to try out different methods of managing the water loop for the aluminum. I KIND OF have the concept of the headlift reset (though I can't find an example of it, I can probably find the youtube video again when I get home). I'd also like to see if the VIP junction works. In the video I watched, the guy couldn't get the VIP junction to work, but maybe he just missed something.
So rather than trying to build an aluminum refinery and then trying the different junctions and seeing which one works if I back up the aluminum scrap and then release it... I thought it would be easier if I set up a little test circuit. Here is the layout: Two water pumps, one set for 60 and the other for 120. The 60 represents the byproduct water, the 120 represents the fresh input water. Then I run them through the VIP junction that I'm testing, and the output is hooked up to a valve set to 120 (which is representing the amount that the machine is using), and then an industrial tank that represents the machine using the water. it will be regularly flushed, it is just there to catch the water so that it doesn't backup after the 120 valve.
Now, of course, this ISN'T a balanced water network. If it was balanced, then there wouldn't be any test of the VIP junction. We need there to be an excess of water to represent when the fresh input water is more than the system needs. Ideally, a working VIP junction would have the pump making 60 water a min at 100% efficiency (indicating that there was NO backup on the byproduct line which would stop the production of scrap) and the 120 pump would be working at 50% efficiency (indicating that it was only producing 60 water a minute that the network needed). If the 60 pump drops below 100% efficiency, then the VIP build has failed. That is the main point of this set up, to make sure that the fresh water pump will be turned off if the network doesn't need additional water. So for example, if I turned the valve down to 90, then the fresh water pump should drop to 25% efficiency while the 60 pump stays at 100%. If I drop the valve to 60, then the fresh water input pump should stay off, while the 60 pump continues. If I turn the valve to 0, both will shut off, and when I open the valve to 180, they should both turn back on again.
Supposedly, the VIP valve in the manual should work like that, but in the video it failed, so I'll have to test it myself. If I can't get it to work like that, then I'll see about finding the headlift-reset set-up.
If you have plenty of storage between the byproduct production and the VIP valve, I might expect it to work. If you don't, then it won't.
Ideally, I'd have no storage at all. I just want a setup where the freshwater input gets backed up if it isn't needed.
I also want to test some other things, like what is the headlift if a source with 20m headlift is combined with a source that has 0 headlift? If you go up 15m, does it send all the water up? Or do you only get the water from the source with headlift? Does it average it, so you only get a headlift of 10m? Inquiring minds want to know.
Not everything in their fluid simulation makes sense (or at least, not to me). Take the "water tower" for example. It is transferring headlift through a shut valve. 0 flow, but somehow headlift gets through it? In real world, the shut valve would be like a deadend pipe, but somehow it is imparting water pressure. My question in the first paragraph is similar, so it makes it sounds like the 0 source water would inherit the headlift, but we'll see.
Eventually, I'll find something that works. I know there are solutions. I've seen them, I just don't remember what they are. With being able to manipulate headlift, I'll find something I like...
This depends on how it is connected. Basically, there are one of two possible situations, either there is no loop, in which case a source can only add to a pipe if the head is less than the headlift the source generates (which is why the head lift reset works), or there is a loop, and all sources share the maximum headlift (this is why you only need one water tower with pumps to get all the water to the generators even though you have connected a few dozen water extractors and are shipping more water up than a single pipe can hold).
The input of the VIP valve has two mk.1 powered pumps to set the headlift of both sides the same. Per Temporal_Illusion it works because when both sides have the same headlift, the lower pipe has priority. If it doesn't work (as what happened in the video) then I can try headlift reset.
You are talking about an example I don't know about. I don't know anything about loops and the water tower example I have is literally just a fluid buffer, a valve, and a pipe. There were no pumps in the example (on any explanation on how they filled the fluid buffer in the first place).
Honestly, I've just been using a mk.2 pump on ever pipe going up.
The problem is one of timing. Basically, there is a whole lot of lag between when the alumina solution needs water and the aluminum scrap refinery produces it, time during which the water extractors will fill the alumina solution machines and then, when the aluminum scrap refineries produce water, there will be nowhere for it to go and things break. So, no, this will not work reliably. Because of this lag, the system will break even when the valve works the way Temporal_Illusion says it does.
To fix this, you need a buffer for the aluminum scrap refineries to properly empty out that cannot be filled by the water extractors or you need the headlift reset.
So, you build loop of pipe which goes higher than you need the fluid to go and maybe put a tank up there, and then pump it to the top of the loop and let it flow back down. Now all the water in that pipe has a headlift of however high you made it go and you don't need pumps on the other pipes going up. It just works.
Okay, I see what you are talking about. On my first aluminum factory I have a fluid buffer, and I've been using them a lot before, but because of the way gas works in a buffer, when I got to my rocket fuel factory, I only used it to hold some excess nitrogen in case the nitrogen supply was erratic. Since then, i've been trying to cut them out all together, but I see what you mean about needing to hold it for a bit.
I've also been looking into discussions on how things work, and other solutions people have found, but imgur is blocked by the firewall, so i'm having to guess what the pictures are in the posts...
For the nitrogen, I'm using more than two pipes can deliver in my rocket fuel plant, so I put it in canisters and then ship those by train. End result is that, again, you wind up with large buffers full of nitrogen canisters so that you can ensure everything works right.
So uh, I just have my main Al refineries hooked up to a water supply. Then a couple more at the end that are only hooked up to waste water from the first set. The refiners eating waste water are sending their waste water back to their inputs. Not gonna have perfectly stable outputs but works well enough for me. I think the ratio was like 4 refineries + 2 waste consumers is stable?
Well, all that is to play with when I get home. Also, someone on reddit, Plastic_Altruistic, has been saying that the VIP junctions aren't needed and that pipes work on a priority system, and has a set up which they say proves their point. I can't see any of the pics, so I can't tell, but I'm not sure if they are right or wrong. Again, I'm probably going to just use that VIP junction or the headlift reset. Mostly I just want to play with them until I get it clear in my head how it works. Some of the stuff in that unofficial manual wither doesn't make sense, or just outright doesn't match what I've seen in my own factories. this makes me want to take it with a grain of salt.
Either way, I still was messing around with my aluminum casing and heatsink factory and the problem I was running into is that I wanted to overclock the resource well to 250%, but that meant that I had to use either 75 or 150 crude oil. I didn't really want to split off part of what was feeding this factory in order to make time crystals later (once that tier is unlocked). But the lowest I could get it to go was 110 oil, so the 75 node was out (unless I dropped how much I was making and I didn't want to do that).
So I played with the numbers and got it to a great balance. There was probably better ways of doing it, but I just kept increasing the numbers until it used all the resources I wanted to give it, and used mostly whole sets of buildings. Well, the recycled plastic and rubber are on a feedback loop, so they have weird percentages, but most of the others are either whole numbers (no underclocking needed) or just to the tenths place (no floating point needed). So 250 al casings, 50 heatsinks, 70 rubber, 70 plastic, and it uses 150 crude oil, 600 bauxite, and 520 water. No byproducts.
It will be the most complicated factory I've ever built, so I'll probably need to play with the design in some program before I try to make it. I can use excel, but it really isn't made for this. I can also probably use GIMP. There is probably a good drafting program that would be perfect. I know steam has something, but from the pictures it isn't doing what I need. I'm looking for assistance in laying out the locations of each building so I can manage the outputs without spaghetti, and so that it will be pretty to look at. *I mean, for a factory with no walls or roof, it will be elegantly laid out...
Either way, I still was messing around with my aluminum casing and heatsink factory and the problem I was running into is that I wanted to overclock the resource well to 250%, but that meant that I had to use either 75 or 150 crude oil. I didn't really want to split off part of what was feeding this factory in order to make time crystals later (once that tier is unlocked). But the lowest I could get it to go was 110 oil, so the 75 node was out (unless I dropped how much I was making and I didn't want to do that).
So I played with the numbers and got it to a great balance. There was probably better ways of doing it, but I just kept increasing the numbers until it used all the resources I wanted to give it, and used mostly whole sets of buildings. Well, the recycled plastic and rubber are on a feedback loop, so they have weird percentages, but most of the others are either whole numbers (no underclocking needed) or just to the tenths place (no floating point needed). So 250 al casings, 50 heatsinks, 70 rubber, 70 plastic, and it uses 150 crude oil, 600 bauxite, and 520 water. No byproducts.
It will be the most complicated factory I've ever built, so I'll probably need to play with the design in some program before I try to make it. I can use excel, but it really isn't made for this. I can also probably use GIMP. There is probably a good drafting program that would be perfect. I know steam has something, but from the pictures it isn't doing what I need. I'm looking for assistance in laying out the locations of each building so I can manage the outputs without spaghetti, and so that it will be pretty to look at. *I mean, for a factory with no walls or roof, it will be elegantly laid out...
I've always started the production with the full demand met with Extractors and then once the Scrap machines come online I throttle them down and give the system a flush. Pipes set up in a loop so that there's no sloshing and they can accommodate the full flow of 1200/min. Make shit sure that you're sinking excess Ingots so that the Scrap machines never stop flowing.
Backup has literally never been a problem.
Backup has literally never been a problem.
This setup should just work. No needing to send the water to a sink, no valves, no VIP nonsense, just works. Adjust the ratios for the amount of Bauxite you're processing.
That is how I have my first set up, minus the loop (and I'm only taking 600 at this point). And everything is sunk, however, it got a bit dicey when I retooled the spare ingot line to make empty fluid canisters. So what I'm looking to do is set something up where even if the ingots or scrap get backed up, it doesn't make a cataclysmic failure. I'm about to redo my first aluminum factory (I mean, after I finish with the myriad of other builds I really need to start), and so I was looking for a fool-proof solution.
Also, I understand you people have had good luck with loops, but I've had really bad luck with them. I've also seen where the manual says to never do what I do, and for me it works great, flawlessly. I see them saying I should have flow limiting valves on my intakes and lock it down so it only takes in as much as it uses... then they also say you should keep your machines internal liquid buffer full. They warn that having a full pipe going to a machine with a full fluid buffer causes back flow that limits throughput. And all this conflicting info just doesn't happen in my world.
I used a ton of valves, but only as one way flow. I haven't turned any of them from max throughput. I don't put any of them on my intakes, I put them in between my junctions. I don't use any loops, I try and make one path (sometimes, I have to split it, but then it is still two one-way paths). Sometimes, at startup, I tweak it to make sure everyone is full, but after that I just let it run and it tends to work. The only touchy one was that aluminum factory, and I haven't had any problems with it, but probably because I've been very careful with setting it up perfectly balanced. If something went out of whack and messed with the balance, it is possible it might spiral into trouble. I'm just looking to minimize any trouble that could happen.
Either way, I'm going to get a chance to test those VIP valves sooner or later and will pass on what I find, even if none of you are using them at this point. You may find a situation where there are just what the doctor ordered.
Edit:
Oaky, the VIP junction functioned flawlessly. It worked as described in my 'ideal situation'. When I have the "byproduct" at 60, the fresh water at 120, and the valve set to 120, the byproduct was working at 100% and had NO backup into the extractors buffer. BTW- we were talking about if it had "plenty of storage" but each machine has a 200 fluid buffer built into it, and I think that will be more than enough. So as part of the testing, after verifying that the "fresh water" was running at 50% (making up the 60 units that the "byproduct" couldn't) I then dropped the valve (the consumption) to 60 and verified that the "fresh water" pump shut off completely. In addition, the buffer in the "byproduct" pump never had any backup into it's buffer.
Then to simulate a catastrophic failure, I shut off the valve. It took a while, but the "byproduct" pump began to backup. Eventually, it reached 200 fluid (or 199.1) and shut down, representing the backup eventually shutting down the line.
Next, I reopened the valve to 120 and kept an eye on the freshwater pump. It didn't start back up until the "byproduct" pump completely emptied it's entire buffer, and only then did it resume back to it's 50% duty cycle.
As such, I think that this system would work fine, even without an external buffer since it has a buffer on each refinery hooked up to the line, and the VIP junction will completely empty these before it even turns back on the "fresh water" pump.
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Sure, so long as it never backs up, which the sink should prevent, but I have left those unpowered often enough to want something that doesn't care if there is a backup.
Bunch of event-specific recipes (ornaments, gift trees, snowball-nobelisks), daily unlocks, etc. Previously it was also the only way to get Quantum Computers and Superposition Oscillators to open the wrecks, so I'm curious what they do with that now.
I was able to get my rubber/plastic factory built today. I mean, it isn't hooked up, but the buildings are built. Ran out of computers halfway through. Forgot that I don't have a factory set up for those yet so no DD direct deposit. Had to fly back to the main base (I love my turbocharged hypertube) and drop more in the DD and throw some in my backpack. No worries, my computers+ a bunch of other things factory is third in line as soon as I finish rubber/plastic and casings/heatsinks.
As a heads up, something that you might be able to do, if you have stuff that you use too fast for the DD to keep up (like quickwire or concrete, is to set up you factory to feed into TWO DD's at the same time. Once you've upgraded them enough, you can just deconstruct one of them, so you aren't losing anything, just temporarily assigning it to a needed position.
I'm concerned because there are a lot of buildings coming up that use up a lot of materials that are only made very slowly. That is why I'm considering slooping them.
It won't be much longer before the world is my oyster. I'll have access to the fastest of belts, and I'll be making the raw materials for them at such speeds that I won't have to worry about whether to use them or not. I also want to be able to place down mk.3 miners with reckless abandon. Right now I've only used them in a location where I NEEDED more iron than the impure nodes could possibly produce, so I have to use mk.3, but it seriously cut into my reserves since I can't make that stuff yet. Soon...
As a heads up, something that you might be able to do, if you have stuff that you use too fast for the DD to keep up (like quickwire or concrete, is to set up you factory to feed into TWO DD's at the same time. Once you've upgraded them enough, you can just deconstruct one of them, so you aren't losing anything, just temporarily assigning it to a needed position.
I'm concerned because there are a lot of buildings coming up that use up a lot of materials that are only made very slowly. That is why I'm considering slooping them.
It won't be much longer before the world is my oyster. I'll have access to the fastest of belts, and I'll be making the raw materials for them at such speeds that I won't have to worry about whether to use them or not. I also want to be able to place down mk.3 miners with reckless abandon. Right now I've only used them in a location where I NEEDED more iron than the impure nodes could possibly produce, so I have to use mk.3, but it seriously cut into my reserves since I can't make that stuff yet. Soon...
Finished the rubber/plastic factory! I know that took me a long time, but I really didn't get much of a chance to play. The best thing about this is that it is self balancing. Once I went through my startup procedure, everything just eventually filled out. What I did was set everything to 50% except the machines processing the polymer resin, since they just had to make sure it didn't back up and would provide the seed rubber needed for the feedback loop. At 50%, it doesn't take long for the liquids to fill up. And once they hit the input buffer limit, I turn it to 100%. Then go to the next batch and see how far along they are to reach saturation. Once they get 50% in their input buffer, turn them to 100%. And that was only for the liquids, so oil, then HOR, then fuel. Once the fuel is saturated and everything has been turned up to 100% (except for the handful of machines that needed to be underclocked) you just wait as the rubber from the resin becomes plastic, then rubber again. It keeps passing back and forth until it exceeds the limits of the input buffers and the smart splitters send it to storage. And my idea of putting all the rubber on the high level, and all the plastic one level down worked flawlessly! No trouble where I had to rout around things. I guess after a certain complexity it helps to plan your factory out ahead of time rather than just wing it.
I laid the foundation for my next to train stations, with will be Coal Lake and Crystal cave. I just made one track that pulled out from the nearest main line of track, then ran west, then north. It's just the foundations, and a small section of double track every 10 foundations. I can make the intersections and then just connect the rails. But before I put any trains on it, I WILL have to put the signals all along the path, as I haven't used this part of the main line before. If I set everything up correctly, it shouldn't be difficult to just add onto it when I need to. Also, the Crystal Cave needs power. I've just been using occasional biogens there from time to time. And since there is water there, I'll probably also need the alt recipes to refine the quartz faster and better.
I heard someone call the extra layer I'm looking to make a Transit Layer. It isn't really a logistics layer, as I put those underneath and they are for moving stuff within a factory. The transit layer will be for moving things between nearby factories.I've been trying to think of a decent standard for it, and I thought maybe 10 x 4m foundations high? Like, I could just vertical zoop a 4m foundation as high as it goes, then build a 2m on top of that. Then delete the 4m foundations. And I'm not really planning on this being an entire floor, just paths for conveyor belts. They will also transport materials to the vertical lifts to load my skytrains.
So my first complex logistic chain was going to be taking packaged turbo fuel from my turbo fuel/circuit board factory to my main base, put it in a storage buffer there, then take another train that goes to Coal Lake into another storage buffer, which then feeds a drone platform (which will be the first drone platform I ever build). That platform will be responsible for picking up HMF and bringing them back to Coal Lake for processing into Fused Frames. I'll have to see how it works doing it that way.
I'm also planning another train station at the nitrogen well, and set up a packaging plant there for the fused frames, cooling systems, and whatever else I need. Probably for some packaged nitric acid or something.
So I have plans for far into the future. And I'm finally starting to make things in bulk.
If anyone wants to see the plastic/rubber factory (300 crude oil in / 450 rubber, 450 plastic out) let me know. I took pics from above and from below.
I laid the foundation for my next to train stations, with will be Coal Lake and Crystal cave. I just made one track that pulled out from the nearest main line of track, then ran west, then north. It's just the foundations, and a small section of double track every 10 foundations. I can make the intersections and then just connect the rails. But before I put any trains on it, I WILL have to put the signals all along the path, as I haven't used this part of the main line before. If I set everything up correctly, it shouldn't be difficult to just add onto it when I need to. Also, the Crystal Cave needs power. I've just been using occasional biogens there from time to time. And since there is water there, I'll probably also need the alt recipes to refine the quartz faster and better.
I heard someone call the extra layer I'm looking to make a Transit Layer. It isn't really a logistics layer, as I put those underneath and they are for moving stuff within a factory. The transit layer will be for moving things between nearby factories.I've been trying to think of a decent standard for it, and I thought maybe 10 x 4m foundations high? Like, I could just vertical zoop a 4m foundation as high as it goes, then build a 2m on top of that. Then delete the 4m foundations. And I'm not really planning on this being an entire floor, just paths for conveyor belts. They will also transport materials to the vertical lifts to load my skytrains.
So my first complex logistic chain was going to be taking packaged turbo fuel from my turbo fuel/circuit board factory to my main base, put it in a storage buffer there, then take another train that goes to Coal Lake into another storage buffer, which then feeds a drone platform (which will be the first drone platform I ever build). That platform will be responsible for picking up HMF and bringing them back to Coal Lake for processing into Fused Frames. I'll have to see how it works doing it that way.
I'm also planning another train station at the nitrogen well, and set up a packaging plant there for the fused frames, cooling systems, and whatever else I need. Probably for some packaged nitric acid or something.
So I have plans for far into the future. And I'm finally starting to make things in bulk.
If anyone wants to see the plastic/rubber factory (300 crude oil in / 450 rubber, 450 plastic out) let me know. I took pics from above and from below.
I'm currently in the process of relocating my main factory and building a rail network in my game. Getting frustrated with higher tier goods (manufacturer recipes) where I don't have all the inputs in one location. So I'm working on building a mega factory in the desert and going to only do first stage (ingots basically) at the resource nodes and everything else will be handled at the main factory.
I modified a train blueprint to use for the tracks (that also has a hypertube). I'm going to have to figure out intersections still but I think I know how they should work just need to put in the work to make them.
I modified a train blueprint to use for the tracks (that also has a hypertube). I'm going to have to figure out intersections still but I think I know how they should work just need to put in the work to make them.
Ugggh, finally broke through to the last tier. We’re re set up production wise for it, but we need A LOT more power. Currently we are pushing 43000MW, we probably need something in the neighborhood of 80000MW.
One thing I saw, but never actually built, was a cool way to have hypertube junctions where you can press one way or the other to go different directions. That way, you could have a hypertube running along the tracks and just exit at the stop you press at. I think they called it a hypertube network, or you build a hypertube network with it. Dunno. I tend to prefer to get around with the hypertube cannon, but I do have one (my first) hypertube between my two main factories. Plastic Beach used to be just for my fuel generators and making a little plastic and rubber from the byproduct. But now it has become a very large series of factories, and once I finish this one more factory making casings and heatsinks (and a bit more rubber and plastic that I am planning on tying back into my rubber/plastic line) the next factory made here will be assembling things out of stuff I'm already making. I think. I can't quite recall, but I'll have a better idea once I check my notes.
I have to scope out the area and find a spot that is large enough for my to build this next factory ( I think it may wind up going completely over the water), and I have just the idea of where the next factory is going.
And in between working on those, I need to expand my train track out, and actually set up my line to start moving stuff. The first train really isn't doing much. I was going to task it with carrying materials over to my main base, but now I'm mostly using a lot of the materials on-site. Still, the lines are big enough that I should be able to do both. I haven't done much in the game, but the plastic and rubber are both in overflow into the sink, so there really isn't any reason NOT to send some over to my main base on a regular basis. I figure since I'm using three industrial containers, I can use that like a priority system. highest priority takes them form the lowest industrial container, second priority form the middle, and lowest priority form the top.
My plan is to have a raised hypertube transfer station above any large train junction so you can switch which track you are following along.
Last night I connected my "new base" in the desert to the oil fields on the west coast that I had previously tapped for power. Tonight plan on continuing down the coast towards my old base and then probably keep going around the border of the world. That way I can eventually just tap into my train network as needed.
I wanted to make a template I could use for planning out my factories. I was making it in GIMP with a grid size of 32 to represent foundations. I though about using the actual photos of mt blueprints from above, but the problem is that the game is naturally in a perspective view rather than orthographic. Lots of the defining characteristics of buildings, like the refinery smokestack, would be cut off when I crop it to the foundations.
So I stripped it back to just rectangles with a letter in them to represent what building is in it. It isn't ideal, but it should work well enough, and probably better than trying to use excel. At least this way I can work on where pipes and conveyors go. The Satisfactory tools layout for this one is wild. I'm pretty sure I was only using 300 bauxite out of my last mine, because I think I was doing it with just two refineries, one for solution, and the other for scrap. This time I've got three refineries for solution and four for scrap (it's a different recipe, using coke instead of coal). Also, this takes 20 smelters to keep up with them. All in all, I have 11 steps, or islands of machines, but most are pretty small. I have a layout that should work, but the issue is that it is compact enough that there isn't any room for the storage and sinks. So I'd have to add on foundations at the end for those. I feel that is a bit of a waste, so I'll probably try moving things around so that I can wedge them in there organically.
I've already set up my rubber and plastic inputs to be able to accommodate a merger so the 70 extra it makes there can be piped in and use the preexisting sinks. I'm going to try out that 40m transit layer and see if that gives me enough room to move stuff around. It will bump into any factories that expand upwards, but since the majority of my factories are arranged on a single layer, that isn't too much trouble.
If I get all the layout ironed out outside of the game, I can probably build it pretty fast in game. When I can play. Which isn't often. And I have a dentist appt on Thursday. And have to take the wife to the DR on Friday. Maybe I'll be able to build it this weekend. That is what i'll aim for, to have my casing factory running this weekend.
So I stripped it back to just rectangles with a letter in them to represent what building is in it. It isn't ideal, but it should work well enough, and probably better than trying to use excel. At least this way I can work on where pipes and conveyors go. The Satisfactory tools layout for this one is wild. I'm pretty sure I was only using 300 bauxite out of my last mine, because I think I was doing it with just two refineries, one for solution, and the other for scrap. This time I've got three refineries for solution and four for scrap (it's a different recipe, using coke instead of coal). Also, this takes 20 smelters to keep up with them. All in all, I have 11 steps, or islands of machines, but most are pretty small. I have a layout that should work, but the issue is that it is compact enough that there isn't any room for the storage and sinks. So I'd have to add on foundations at the end for those. I feel that is a bit of a waste, so I'll probably try moving things around so that I can wedge them in there organically.
I've already set up my rubber and plastic inputs to be able to accommodate a merger so the 70 extra it makes there can be piped in and use the preexisting sinks. I'm going to try out that 40m transit layer and see if that gives me enough room to move stuff around. It will bump into any factories that expand upwards, but since the majority of my factories are arranged on a single layer, that isn't too much trouble.
If I get all the layout ironed out outside of the game, I can probably build it pretty fast in game. When I can play. Which isn't often. And I have a dentist appt on Thursday. And have to take the wife to the DR on Friday. Maybe I'll be able to build it this weekend. That is what i'll aim for, to have my casing factory running this weekend.
Short post: I had been worried (I mentioned it a few times) that I hadn't been getting any more talking from ADA when picking up alien tech. Well, someone just mentioned what the last message was, and it was the last one I heard, so that is why it stopped. I guess I got all the messages, and there are a lot fewer messages than there are things to pick up.
Kind of a shame, I would have liked that to go on for another couple hundred more messages. I enjoyed them a lot.
Kind of a shame, I would have liked that to go on for another couple hundred more messages. I enjoyed them a lot.
https://autumnfallstudios.itch.io/salt
That should help somewhat with layout. Like you said it doesn't account for height through.
That isn't bad, but it is missing most of the features I'm looking for. One is something like 'blue prints'. Basically, I'm laying down my factory as if I'm doing blueprints, so I'm dropping things in blocks rather than placing buildings. The other thing is being able to pick up an island of buildings (like five refineries making HOR) and move or rotate them. That is what I'm using GIMP for now, in order to try and move things around to make a spot that I can wedge in my storage and sinks where it fits into the space without having to create a part that sticks out. There is room there, I just need to move things around a bit.
Now, after I have my layout, that tool could probably help with planning the belts and pipes. (I typed this at home, got to work and found I forgot to hit post again.) I played around by the main sticking point is trying to line up the blenders, residual rubber, recycled rubber, and recycled plastic islands. Either I have to piped halfway down the factory with the fuel, or i run belts halfway down the factory with polymer. I've been twisting things and trying to stack it. I mean, it is easy enough to do, and I'd probably do the polymer over the pipes, but I was just looking for a more elegant solution. One thing that would work, and be efficient, would just be adding a second floor like I did with the turbo fuel/circuit board factory. But when I looked at it, I didn't really have as good a case for doing that.
When I design my factories, I tend to like materials to flow left to right, top to bottom, just like reading a page. Sometimes things move against the flow a bit, like your eyes moving back to the left after finishing a line, but in general you can trace the flow and be able to troubleshoot things easily.
However, each of my factories has gotten more complicated, though not necessarily bigger. I think the HMF is still one of my biggest factories (maybe), but I had a lot of room there because there wasn't anything else around. The turbo fuel was complicated, but not bad. The Rubber/plastic dealt with higher throughput then I ever had before, but once I went right twix/left twix with it, that was easily solved. The Rocket fuel plant is the largest structure I've ever built, and it had flow problems, but after I went in with valves it cleared up all of the flow problems and it is running at peak efficiency (I've seen a lot of people having trouble running pipes at max capacity, but I do it all the time... valves to the rescue!).
This one will be fine as well. I need to come to term with some of these factories where stuff is going all over the place. If I need to, I can drop down more than three levels with my belts. something I've been doing lately is a 'floorless logistics floor". Basically, rather then making a floor and running the first layer on it, I count the ceiling as the first layer and work down form there. It also reduces the amount of foundations I use (permanent ones at least). I just lay a 1m foundation where I need to place stuff, then delete it after. By only using 1m foundations for temp, it is easy to delete them all with a filter later.
I'm not at the level of the people making all of these awesome looking buildings, but by have a set of principles I design my factories with, I have avoided the spaghetti in any of my factories.
Yeah I'm at the point where the spaghetti is starting to bother me to the point where I'm planning how to redo my factory, also getting to the point where I need inputs that aren't near each other to make the final items I want at this point.
The two methods I can think of doing (well 3 but 2 are similar enough)
1. Train ores into a central location and then produce everything in bulk there and then branch items off as needed to make more advanced items.
2. Same as 1 but train in first stage items (ingots) instead of ores
3. Build "Item" factories that produce X (probably 10) of a certain item a min including everything needed to get that. (IE a RIP factory would take in ores and make screws/plates (or whatever recipe) but only output the 10 RIPs and then trained to a central location.
4. Same as 3 but any manufacture item would be made in a central location.
I'm also very close to unlocking drones which may tip me towards a combination of 3/4 depending on how well those work. I also have half a train system set up (6 "bases" currently set up)
The two methods I can think of doing (well 3 but 2 are similar enough)
1. Train ores into a central location and then produce everything in bulk there and then branch items off as needed to make more advanced items.
2. Same as 1 but train in first stage items (ingots) instead of ores
3. Build "Item" factories that produce X (probably 10) of a certain item a min including everything needed to get that. (IE a RIP factory would take in ores and make screws/plates (or whatever recipe) but only output the 10 RIPs and then trained to a central location.
4. Same as 3 but any manufacture item would be made in a central location.
I'm also very close to unlocking drones which may tip me towards a combination of 3/4 depending on how well those work. I also have half a train system set up (6 "bases" currently set up)
I setup my HUB by four iron nodes, two copper nodes and a limestone node. I made most of my starting stuff there. I started my steel foundry near the nearby coal nodes, which is where my initial "real" power plant was. I ended up using that area to also do quartz and SAM processing, as there's a cave entrance right nearby. Then I went to the oil coast for plastic and rubber, and much further away to another set of oil nodes where I brought in more iron and also N2 for my rocket fuel plant (and coal, and also copper I think?).
Basically, I had a few nodes where I made somewhat intermediate pieces "locally" then dragged loooong belts between the nodes for other stuff I felt I needed in bulk. My rocket fuel plant was a disconnected set of belts, with power poles and tubes linking back to the interconnected set of other nodes. Which node was the source and which the sink was based on my mood at the time. My elevator was at the top of a local hill, so I just built the final two tiers of elevator stuff sequentially on the other side of the hill from my "primary" node, with the small storage buildings holding enough of the penultimate tier to be able to build the minimum of the final tiers to Save The Day!
Basically, I had a few nodes where I made somewhat intermediate pieces "locally" then dragged loooong belts between the nodes for other stuff I felt I needed in bulk. My rocket fuel plant was a disconnected set of belts, with power poles and tubes linking back to the interconnected set of other nodes. Which node was the source and which the sink was based on my mood at the time. My elevator was at the top of a local hill, so I just built the final two tiers of elevator stuff sequentially on the other side of the hill from my "primary" node, with the small storage buildings holding enough of the penultimate tier to be able to build the minimum of the final tiers to Save The Day!
Twice now I've done a big site for manufacturer productions. That site has a sushi belt that imports finished goods along with a sorter that puts all the items into their own storage units and overflows the excess. In general I'm playing through the whole tech tree, not trying to max things out. So usually I only end up with a couple manufacturers for each good. Frequently having to work backwards to avoid starvation in the supply chain.
I have a main fab site that's where my hub lives that makes basic stuff up to about motors.
Then I have sattelites that make resource specific goods (steel, oil products, alum). The sattelites move their outputs around via truck / train / drone to the places I need them.
I juuuust got up to working on nuclear pasta and so I'll set up a brand new facility just for pasta, next to a pure copper node.
I also just got nuclear up and running, I'll probably be expanding that soon.
The early game is just learning how to build stuff up the tech tree and figuring out some basic strategies. After that a huge part is logistics moving finished goods where they need to go in some kind of orderly way. In general this playthrough I've avoided long belt runs, but sometimes I just give up and belt it in the boonies that no one see's anyway. Alt recipies can be huge for giving your factory more options and trading increased complexity for increased output (steel screws <3 )
I have a main fab site that's where my hub lives that makes basic stuff up to about motors.
Then I have sattelites that make resource specific goods (steel, oil products, alum). The sattelites move their outputs around via truck / train / drone to the places I need them.
I juuuust got up to working on nuclear pasta and so I'll set up a brand new facility just for pasta, next to a pure copper node.
I also just got nuclear up and running, I'll probably be expanding that soon.
The early game is just learning how to build stuff up the tech tree and figuring out some basic strategies. After that a huge part is logistics moving finished goods where they need to go in some kind of orderly way. In general this playthrough I've avoided long belt runs, but sometimes I just give up and belt it in the boonies that no one see's anyway. Alt recipies can be huge for giving your factory more options and trading increased complexity for increased output (steel screws <3 )
Had a little spare time today, so I finished my track that was going to Coal Lake and Crystal Cave. Then, because Crystal Cave has only been intermittently running off of biomass every once in a while, I built a station above it and ran power down to it. There are two pure quartz nodes, but I only need one of them. I thought I'd do something silly with the other, so I built a 540 quartz to 900 silica a minute factory, just to run it directly into the sink. Well, two sinks because I only have mk.5 belts right now. I'm going to redo the other pure node to use cheap silica and pure quartz recipes, then have them make the materials for going onto the train. The train will take the materials over to my technology factory, where I will be using them for things like oscillators, computers, and super computers. Anyway, it's just a way to turn 140MW into more coupons. And the coupons will be useful for getting more HDD... later. I still need to go find some more for the pure quartz and cheap silica recipes, because (you guessed it) I don't have them yet. And I've already torn down my old factory (I mean, it was four constructors and a miner running at 50% powered by a single biomass burner... not much of a factory. The NEW one will be five or six refiners and assemblers two water pumps, two miners, etc...
Later, I have to work on the second part of this, the caterium miner which will also be sending things to the new tech factory. However, when I decided to set that up, I hadn't planned on using silica, so I was using a LOT more caterium. By changing my train setup to carry silica as well, I cut the caterium requirements in half... provided (again) I can find the right alt recipes.
Eh, I guess I'll have to go out and do some exploring this weekend.
Later, I have to work on the second part of this, the caterium miner which will also be sending things to the new tech factory. However, when I decided to set that up, I hadn't planned on using silica, so I was using a LOT more caterium. By changing my train setup to carry silica as well, I cut the caterium requirements in half... provided (again) I can find the right alt recipes.
Eh, I guess I'll have to go out and do some exploring this weekend.
Not sure if other people are having similar problems, but a number of the things that were supposed to be patched are still buggy. I still occasionally get bad pipes. I don't mean the short pipes stuck somethere. I mean I'll have a pipe going from something to a floor hole, and it will not pass liquid, and I can delete it and readd it, and stuff would flow again. The blueprint screen still can't be closed with the esc key unless you click in a blank spot on the interface first. But at least they got the loud clanging to stop the whole time I'm running around. An additional bug is a number of pipes that REPORT they are broken with a 0 flow, but they are definitely flowing. Like, they are the ONLY path, and the pipe before them has flow and the pipe after them. In most of those cases, deleting and readding does not fix it. Not sure what is up, but if there is a single path for flow, and it is flowing, then it really CAN'T have 0 flow.
I did go exploring again, found a bunch of sloops and mercs, and even some HDD. They are getting harder to find, but from the sheer number of options I have in the MAM, I know I can't be anywhere near the end. After all, for every one I have showing with two options in the MAM, there is at least one additional HDD in the wild. And if the recipes I want aren't showing up, then they all have HDD in the wild as well. I'm sure I have a lot left, but I'm starting to run out of places to look. I may have to resort to the map eventually, but I'd prefer not to.
If I play over again, what I'd like is to start with all the HDD marked on the map, and I can just delete markers as I find them. Either that, or a mod that puts the HDD in the ore scanner and you can ping them.
Edit: about half the HDD, so there are plenty left, I just have to find them. Once my tech factory is online (which is still three factories out) it will be time to start flooding the map with radar towers.
Edit2: Hit another load of HDD. Scanning them... crossing my fingers, though I could just savescum. I also finally said "enough is enough" and hooked up DD's to my turbo ammo and nobelisk storage. So now I have infinite ammo (kind of, I don't have a factory set up, just make them individually, but I have a bunch of them, more than I can conveniently use).
Edit3: Heh... I miscalculated when making a batch of nobelisks. Probably because I forgot they only stack to 50. I grabbed a bunch of steel pipes and a bunch of black powder and jsut dropped them in one of my 250% OC slooped up temp lines. Well, once I had enough to completely fill my industrial storage and DD... I found I still had a ton of raw materials still going through the machine. So I dropped a temp conveyor over to another temp line and threw in some smokeless powder and it is now making a ton of cluster nobelisks. Once I had a bunch of those, I figured I might as well give them their own industrial container and DD. So now I have effectively infinite cluster nobelisks as well. They take a LOT longer to make, and I was getting tired of running back and forth, so I dropped another temp conveyor to take them from my temp lines to the storage. It's my first foray into spaghetti belts, but they are just temporary while this limited run is going on.
Now, I just figured out a neat trick everyone else has probably already figured out, but it JUST occurred to me. The metal beam is built in meters, so you can use it as a measuring rod, or when you want to drop down seven meters to build another floor, or up 40m (maximum length for a single section). Previously, I had been using 1m foundations for anything between 1 and 10, and 2m for anything between 2 and 20, and 4m for between 4 to 40, with resolution getting worse as I went. Now I have 1 to 40 at perfect 1m resolution, and you can build foundations on them as well.
I did go exploring again, found a bunch of sloops and mercs, and even some HDD. They are getting harder to find, but from the sheer number of options I have in the MAM, I know I can't be anywhere near the end. After all, for every one I have showing with two options in the MAM, there is at least one additional HDD in the wild. And if the recipes I want aren't showing up, then they all have HDD in the wild as well. I'm sure I have a lot left, but I'm starting to run out of places to look. I may have to resort to the map eventually, but I'd prefer not to.
If I play over again, what I'd like is to start with all the HDD marked on the map, and I can just delete markers as I find them. Either that, or a mod that puts the HDD in the ore scanner and you can ping them.
Edit: about half the HDD, so there are plenty left, I just have to find them. Once my tech factory is online (which is still three factories out) it will be time to start flooding the map with radar towers.
Edit2: Hit another load of HDD. Scanning them... crossing my fingers, though I could just savescum. I also finally said "enough is enough" and hooked up DD's to my turbo ammo and nobelisk storage. So now I have infinite ammo (kind of, I don't have a factory set up, just make them individually, but I have a bunch of them, more than I can conveniently use).
Edit3: Heh... I miscalculated when making a batch of nobelisks. Probably because I forgot they only stack to 50. I grabbed a bunch of steel pipes and a bunch of black powder and jsut dropped them in one of my 250% OC slooped up temp lines. Well, once I had enough to completely fill my industrial storage and DD... I found I still had a ton of raw materials still going through the machine. So I dropped a temp conveyor over to another temp line and threw in some smokeless powder and it is now making a ton of cluster nobelisks. Once I had a bunch of those, I figured I might as well give them their own industrial container and DD. So now I have effectively infinite cluster nobelisks as well. They take a LOT longer to make, and I was getting tired of running back and forth, so I dropped another temp conveyor to take them from my temp lines to the storage. It's my first foray into spaghetti belts, but they are just temporary while this limited run is going on.
Now, I just figured out a neat trick everyone else has probably already figured out, but it JUST occurred to me. The metal beam is built in meters, so you can use it as a measuring rod, or when you want to drop down seven meters to build another floor, or up 40m (maximum length for a single section). Previously, I had been using 1m foundations for anything between 1 and 10, and 2m for anything between 2 and 20, and 4m for between 4 to 40, with resolution getting worse as I went. Now I have 1 to 40 at perfect 1m resolution, and you can build foundations on them as well.
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I finally unlocked the final DD speed upgrade. And since I had enough mercs left over, I upgraded the stacks to 4... Then suddenly everything turned back on for a bit... 
But either way, it also alerted me to the things I'm storing in there that don't have a line, like the Portable Miners.
In one of the recent expeditions, I dropped down a radar tower and tracked down every HDD, merc, and sloop in the area. I did wind up dying to some spider BS where it hit me before I could get my inhaler to activate. Getting back there wasn't fun, but I suppose corpse runs aren't supposed to be. WTB Spirit of the Wolf, 5g!
Out of all the HDD I scanned, I only found one of the recipes I needed. I have to double check that I DON'T already have them (I don't THINK I do, but...). I think I'll probably be setting up the mini-factories this weekend, like the caterium ingot and silica/quartz lines.
So are the mounds of uranium around the world supposed to be useful, or only serve as obstacles? I was forced to mine some just to get to the thing I was searching for, and I realized that in order to unlock nukes (other than the ones I get from my doggos) I need to make some uranium cells. But if I load up on a bunch of stacks of uranium, I'll be burning through filters trying to get them back home in time. I realize that the normal way to do it is to set up a factory at one of the mining nodes, but that is a lot of trouble. I could just grab several stacks of filters, build my U cell factory, and just grab a whole bunch and haul ass...
Facepalm... Or I just load it in a DD.
I just looked it up, because I wasn't thinking ahead, I'm going to need a cell factory in order to make nuke nobelisks anyway. Are they worth it? They do 150 damage, but I'm just as likely to blow myself up. They do three times the damage for much more than five times the price. I should have a couple just for blowing up the parts of the terrain that only go down for nukes (unless that's a bug, and they fix it later) but I can get those form the doggos. Other than that, the regular sticky nobelisks and large area cluster nobelisks kind of have me covered. If I start making gas ones, I had fun with them in update 8. I'm skipping pulse, as they are mostly for moving things rather than blowing things up, but maybe they would be good for the beans that get stuck in my factories.
Hmmm... reading through the wiki, it looks like I've been sleeping on the explosive rebar, I've never used it. Might be better than the nobelisk! Next time I log in I'm going to craft up some. If it is good, I'll set up another temporary mini-factory and set up a DD for infinite ammo. It would be funny if I finally et up a ton of nobelisks, just to stop using them the next day...
Edit:
Okay, so out of 600 caterium ore a minute, you can get 200 ingots for 53MW, or 300 ingots a minute for 750MW. I have plenty of electricity, but with the redesign, I'm only using 181.5 caterium ingots/min. Future proofing would say to just make as much as I can, but there is already another pure caterium node closer to the factory, I'm using this one because it has preexisting infrastructure (my hypertube and pylons go right over it, so it has power and a foundation trail right to my factory). I mean, later on, if I need more ingots, I could try switching one of the mk.2 miners I have on a sulfur node to a mk.3 and run it through a splitter to get some sulfur on the side for leached ingots... but that just seems to be going to extremes.
For right now, my choices are 14 smelters or 25 refineries. I really think the recipe for pure caterium ingots should be rebalanced a bit. For iron, a pure recipe doesn't just double the efficiency, it also doubles the speed. Compared to the pure caterium recipe where it only boosts the efficiency by 33%, and actually LOWERS the speed. Then it multiplies the power needed by 1500%. If I was using the old design I had where I needed 256 ingots, that would just be the price I had to pay, but I think if I don't "need" then, I would be a fool to pull from them. I'm already going to be having 18 ingots a minute too many. Maybe I can spin them into cables or something I'm not making a lot of... wow, okay they can make a LOT of cables. I think I'm only making 20/min right now from some copper nodes near my main base.
But either way, it also alerted me to the things I'm storing in there that don't have a line, like the Portable Miners.
In one of the recent expeditions, I dropped down a radar tower and tracked down every HDD, merc, and sloop in the area. I did wind up dying to some spider BS where it hit me before I could get my inhaler to activate. Getting back there wasn't fun, but I suppose corpse runs aren't supposed to be. WTB Spirit of the Wolf, 5g!
Out of all the HDD I scanned, I only found one of the recipes I needed. I have to double check that I DON'T already have them (I don't THINK I do, but...). I think I'll probably be setting up the mini-factories this weekend, like the caterium ingot and silica/quartz lines.
So are the mounds of uranium around the world supposed to be useful, or only serve as obstacles? I was forced to mine some just to get to the thing I was searching for, and I realized that in order to unlock nukes (other than the ones I get from my doggos) I need to make some uranium cells. But if I load up on a bunch of stacks of uranium, I'll be burning through filters trying to get them back home in time. I realize that the normal way to do it is to set up a factory at one of the mining nodes, but that is a lot of trouble. I could just grab several stacks of filters, build my U cell factory, and just grab a whole bunch and haul ass...
Facepalm... Or I just load it in a DD.
I just looked it up, because I wasn't thinking ahead, I'm going to need a cell factory in order to make nuke nobelisks anyway. Are they worth it? They do 150 damage, but I'm just as likely to blow myself up. They do three times the damage for much more than five times the price. I should have a couple just for blowing up the parts of the terrain that only go down for nukes (unless that's a bug, and they fix it later) but I can get those form the doggos. Other than that, the regular sticky nobelisks and large area cluster nobelisks kind of have me covered. If I start making gas ones, I had fun with them in update 8. I'm skipping pulse, as they are mostly for moving things rather than blowing things up, but maybe they would be good for the beans that get stuck in my factories.
Hmmm... reading through the wiki, it looks like I've been sleeping on the explosive rebar, I've never used it. Might be better than the nobelisk! Next time I log in I'm going to craft up some. If it is good, I'll set up another temporary mini-factory and set up a DD for infinite ammo. It would be funny if I finally et up a ton of nobelisks, just to stop using them the next day...
Edit:
Okay, so out of 600 caterium ore a minute, you can get 200 ingots for 53MW, or 300 ingots a minute for 750MW. I have plenty of electricity, but with the redesign, I'm only using 181.5 caterium ingots/min. Future proofing would say to just make as much as I can, but there is already another pure caterium node closer to the factory, I'm using this one because it has preexisting infrastructure (my hypertube and pylons go right over it, so it has power and a foundation trail right to my factory). I mean, later on, if I need more ingots, I could try switching one of the mk.2 miners I have on a sulfur node to a mk.3 and run it through a splitter to get some sulfur on the side for leached ingots... but that just seems to be going to extremes.
For right now, my choices are 14 smelters or 25 refineries. I really think the recipe for pure caterium ingots should be rebalanced a bit. For iron, a pure recipe doesn't just double the efficiency, it also doubles the speed. Compared to the pure caterium recipe where it only boosts the efficiency by 33%, and actually LOWERS the speed. Then it multiplies the power needed by 1500%. If I was using the old design I had where I needed 256 ingots, that would just be the price I had to pay, but I think if I don't "need" then, I would be a fool to pull from them. I'm already going to be having 18 ingots a minute too many. Maybe I can spin them into cables or something I'm not making a lot of... wow, okay they can make a LOT of cables. I think I'm only making 20/min right now from some copper nodes near my main base.
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People... if you haven't been using explosive rebar, you NEED to try it out! Now I wish I hadn't wasted as much time making all those nobelisks. So much easier taking down poison pillars... but that isn't the main thing.
See, the worst fight I've been in in this game was in Update 8 against two Elite Gas Stingers and one or two regular Alpha Stingers. I spent forever running around, hitting them when I could, dodging the attacks, dying, coming back, aggroing them while getting the death crate, and finally finishing them off after WAY too long of a fight. I was chugging my inhalers. Well, I accidentally wound up in the same area while following my tracking device looking for sloops, mercs, and HDDs. Only THIS time, I had explosive rebar. One or two hits will take out an alpha stinger, and two or three hits will take out a elite gas stinger. I did have to use one inhaler, but that isn't nearly as bad as it was last time. Also, the incidental splash damage is enough to often take out baby spiders that are nearby. I think I'm ready to go back to the swamp again. Not to mention, they stack to 100, rather than 50 like the nobelisks, so I have twice as many of them.
In the meantime, I have been checking out the HDD I got, since I didn't want to save scum, and I got a number of recipes I wanted. I can re-setup my crystal cave mini-factory again since I got cheap silica and pure quartz. I've just been running on the leftovers from weeks ago when I last put fuel in the bioburner in the cave. Even then, I've only dented the silica and used maybe half the quartz, since none of them are in use in any automated factories.
I THINK I have my exploring materials set up. I have turbo ammo, nobelisks, cluster nobelisks, explosive rebar, packaged liquid biofuel, gas filters, and iodine-infused filters, I have at LEAST 53 stacks of each one feeding into the DD. I have gone from timidly hiding in my home base, and only occasionally heading out to the easier locations for HDD to being a Boba Fett type character, using my jet pack to get around more than my feet, and firing off rocket launchers.
Ooo! Also, one of the recipes I found lets me make the uranium cells easier than the original. I don't have a packaged sulfuric acid factory yet (I'm going to change my black powder/compacted coal factory to make packaged sulfuric acid later). This means I can finally unlock nukes, though I probably won't use them much. The, uh... fun part is figuring out where I'm going to store the uranium cells. I'm not doing nuclear power, so I only need a few to make nukes, and even then, I'm not using nukes offensively (probably) since I'd likely just kill myself with them. But I'm going to need to unlock them to complete the tree anyway. I figure I can probably just have the output sent out on a long pier with a industrial container hooked up to a DD. That way, I only have to handle the uranium when I'm loading it into the machine, and when I pull it out of storage to unlock it in the MAM. By tomorrow, I should have nukes.
See, the worst fight I've been in in this game was in Update 8 against two Elite Gas Stingers and one or two regular Alpha Stingers. I spent forever running around, hitting them when I could, dodging the attacks, dying, coming back, aggroing them while getting the death crate, and finally finishing them off after WAY too long of a fight. I was chugging my inhalers. Well, I accidentally wound up in the same area while following my tracking device looking for sloops, mercs, and HDDs. Only THIS time, I had explosive rebar. One or two hits will take out an alpha stinger, and two or three hits will take out a elite gas stinger. I did have to use one inhaler, but that isn't nearly as bad as it was last time. Also, the incidental splash damage is enough to often take out baby spiders that are nearby. I think I'm ready to go back to the swamp again. Not to mention, they stack to 100, rather than 50 like the nobelisks, so I have twice as many of them.
In the meantime, I have been checking out the HDD I got, since I didn't want to save scum, and I got a number of recipes I wanted. I can re-setup my crystal cave mini-factory again since I got cheap silica and pure quartz. I've just been running on the leftovers from weeks ago when I last put fuel in the bioburner in the cave. Even then, I've only dented the silica and used maybe half the quartz, since none of them are in use in any automated factories.
I THINK I have my exploring materials set up. I have turbo ammo, nobelisks, cluster nobelisks, explosive rebar, packaged liquid biofuel, gas filters, and iodine-infused filters, I have at LEAST 53 stacks of each one feeding into the DD. I have gone from timidly hiding in my home base, and only occasionally heading out to the easier locations for HDD to being a Boba Fett type character, using my jet pack to get around more than my feet, and firing off rocket launchers.
Ooo! Also, one of the recipes I found lets me make the uranium cells easier than the original. I don't have a packaged sulfuric acid factory yet (I'm going to change my black powder/compacted coal factory to make packaged sulfuric acid later). This means I can finally unlock nukes, though I probably won't use them much. The, uh... fun part is figuring out where I'm going to store the uranium cells. I'm not doing nuclear power, so I only need a few to make nukes, and even then, I'm not using nukes offensively (probably) since I'd likely just kill myself with them. But I'm going to need to unlock them to complete the tree anyway. I figure I can probably just have the output sent out on a long pier with a industrial container hooked up to a DD. That way, I only have to handle the uranium when I'm loading it into the machine, and when I pull it out of storage to unlock it in the MAM. By tomorrow, I should have nukes.
Was it the Dortamur's Hobbies video on junctions? That's where I learned to make them. And then I got obsessed with cleaning up my whole hypertube network with junctions and better entrances and exits. Previously I just had a 1 foundation blueprint with like 6 entrances squeezed in for a booster and enough space between it and the actual tube line to exit from. Replaced it with an actual station building.
(This video I made last weekend of how I have my hypertubes set up. Well at the large level, I don't show the internals, but the junctions are basically as described in the linked video. The towers are mine. The video is just me zipping around the network.)
View: https://youtu.be/N6nzhma6wNg?si=3MoJchgVg57sljvv
I finally picked up the game a little after 1.0 so most everything else is still a bunch of spaghetti and tech debt factories that work well enough for my first time through.
Also I haven't built a single train yet which I think is strarting to become a real problem.
Pure Ingots (with the exception of Pure Aluminum, but it also doesn't follow the model) are specifically designed for the people who only care about raw resource efficiency, and don't give any fucks about Power, Space, or Effort. If you're not aiming for a gigantic megafactory that utilizes everything on the map, I strongly recommend you avoid them and just...find an extra node to tap when need more of a single resource.
For Caterium, the Tempered recipe wins out over both Pure and Leached. It has the same 2-to-1 ratio as Pure (which yes is lower than the 3-to-2 of Leached), but Foundries are much easier to manage than Refineries, Tempered is faster than Pure, and you only need 1 Refinery making Coke to support every 8 Foundries making Ingots.
Well, I did use the pure recipe for quartz crystal and the cheap silica for making silica for export (separate from my 900/min straight to sink coupon factory, that is using the regular recipe).
I have everything feeding a big storage and DD, then going up to my train station and another industrial container as a buffer. I'll have to put in the signals on the new route and build another train station at Plastic Beach to unload those. That will actually be the first things I'm transporting by train. Eventually.
Before I build my next two LARGE factories, and since I've already finished my last two mini-factories, I need to do something else next week, when I have the time. I still have the ion fuel recipe that needs unlocked. I've been holding a HDD for it, but the problem was the packaged rocket fuel you need to unlock it. I burn my rocket fuel for power, so I didn't have any packaged. I figure I'll work out how much one floor of my plant is using, then set a packager to run off that, hook up a packager through a valve (turned off initially). Then I'll turn off every generator on that floor and let the rocket fuel flow into the packager. I can supply the empty canisters and remove the packaged rocket fuel by hand. And when I'm done, turn the valve off, turn the generators back on, and then delete the packager. I should be able to do it in half an hour or so, when I get the chance.
Future plans are:
1) to set up that casing/heatsink/spare plastic/rubber factory
2) set up the technology factory that will take advantage of the stuff I'm making there, plus the caterium ingots, silica, and quartz crystal I'll be piping in. (Note, just noticed I had forgotten Radio Control Units which I'm going to need. So I need to wrap them into my technology factory and determine the best alt recipe for them considering what I have available.)
3 ) revamp my first aluminum factory to stop making casings (since they will be taken care of) and make more alclad sheets.
4) build a mini-factory at the nitrogen well, which will have its own train station, carrying packaged nitrogen to Coal Lake and empty canisters from Coal Lake back.
5) design an build (cause I haven't looked into it much) a factory at coal lake for fused frames and cooling systems using the packaged nitrogen.
That is as far as my plans have gotten. Eventually, I'll need to use the fused frames to make parts for the nuclear spaghetti.
(I'm mostly putting this up here so I don't lose track and forget.)
I have everything feeding a big storage and DD, then going up to my train station and another industrial container as a buffer. I'll have to put in the signals on the new route and build another train station at Plastic Beach to unload those. That will actually be the first things I'm transporting by train. Eventually.
Before I build my next two LARGE factories, and since I've already finished my last two mini-factories, I need to do something else next week, when I have the time. I still have the ion fuel recipe that needs unlocked. I've been holding a HDD for it, but the problem was the packaged rocket fuel you need to unlock it. I burn my rocket fuel for power, so I didn't have any packaged. I figure I'll work out how much one floor of my plant is using, then set a packager to run off that, hook up a packager through a valve (turned off initially). Then I'll turn off every generator on that floor and let the rocket fuel flow into the packager. I can supply the empty canisters and remove the packaged rocket fuel by hand. And when I'm done, turn the valve off, turn the generators back on, and then delete the packager. I should be able to do it in half an hour or so, when I get the chance.
Future plans are:
1) to set up that casing/heatsink/spare plastic/rubber factory
2) set up the technology factory that will take advantage of the stuff I'm making there, plus the caterium ingots, silica, and quartz crystal I'll be piping in. (Note, just noticed I had forgotten Radio Control Units which I'm going to need. So I need to wrap them into my technology factory and determine the best alt recipe for them considering what I have available.)
3 ) revamp my first aluminum factory to stop making casings (since they will be taken care of) and make more alclad sheets.
4) build a mini-factory at the nitrogen well, which will have its own train station, carrying packaged nitrogen to Coal Lake and empty canisters from Coal Lake back.
5) design an build (cause I haven't looked into it much) a factory at coal lake for fused frames and cooling systems using the packaged nitrogen.
That is as far as my plans have gotten. Eventually, I'll need to use the fused frames to make parts for the nuclear spaghetti.
(I'm mostly putting this up here so I don't lose track and forget.)
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