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    Home Unlabelled Factorio So came by this in Public Lobby.

    Factorio So came by this in Public Lobby.

    November 18, 2020

    Factorio So came by this in Public Lobby.

    So came by this in Public Lobby.

    Posted: 18 Nov 2020 01:57 AM PST

    Now presenting, Overcomplicated Triangles, for producing things in small scale

    Posted: 17 Nov 2020 12:40 PM PST

    Convenient pickup sushi mall design

    Posted: 18 Nov 2020 01:43 AM PST

    The UPS cost of belt balancing, explored

    Posted: 17 Nov 2020 11:25 PM PST

    I've seen somewhat common advice given about avoiding belt balancing due to UPS cost, but I've never really seen specifics on what the actual cost is, or how to decide how much is ok based on my SPM goals. As a software developer, I was curious if belt balancing is a micro-optimization, or something that's meaningfully impacting my game's UPS. I decided to do some experimentation to try to get an answer, and thought I'd share the results here.

    As a basis for comparison, when performing continuous work moving items between chests, 100 fast inserters use 0.02 milliseconds per update on my hardware. The time-per-update cost of belt balancers is given in millisecond cost per update and equivalent # of working fast inserters cost. My computer is a few years old and has an i7-8700 @ 3.2GHz. Remember that the goal is to stay under 16ms for the total update cost to run at 60 UPS.

    All balancer blueprints are taken from raynquist's belt balancer book.

    Balancer costs:

    2x2, 1 splitter: 0.001ms ~ 5 inserters 4x4 (tu), 6 splitters: 0.004ms ~ 20 inserters 8x8, 12 splitters: 0.006ms ~ 30 inserters 8x8 (tu), 20 splitters: 0.010ms ~ 50 inserters 8x8 lane, 20 splitters: 0.013ms ~ 65 inserters 16x16 lane, 32 splitters: 0.019ms ~ 95 inserters

    Bus cost:

    Split a lane off 8 belt bus w/ priority splitters: 0.003ms ~ 15 inserters (like this: https://wiki.factorio.com/images/4-split-priority.png)

    These costs honestly aren't as high as I expected. Being able to handle 100 8x8 throughput unlimited balancers in 1ms per update on my good, but not amazing, hardware is pretty decent.

    The cost of balancing scales roughly linearly (https://imgur.com/a/153rQq6), so you can expect the cost to roughly double as the number of lanes doubles.

    Impact on potential SPM

    My 500 SPM outpost base design uses 0.52ms for transport lines and 0.6ms for entity updates on each update, for roughly 1.12ms total. I tried an experiment where I replaced four 8x8 throughput unlimited balancers, one 5x5 balancer, two 5x6 balancers, and two 4x5 balancers that were used in the outpost with much simpler splitter configurations that don't balance quite as perfectly. The outpost still runs ok, and saves 0.1ms per update for transport lines. Assuming I built only this outpost, I would be able to achieve 7,500 SPM at 60 UPS instead of 7,000 SPM by avoiding the balancers.

    Conclusion

    Given these numbers, I don't think balancers are worth working too hard to avoid unless aiming for a very high SPM target. Of course this doesn't mean balancers should be spread around wildly, but if used within reason, balancers are not going to be a limiting factor in growth for all but the largest of factories (or, perhaps, weaker hardware).

    One area I like to use balancers is on belts coming out of resource patches, so I don't have to go and manually re-balance the belts when patches dry up. I still think this is worth the cost, but I will probably use less costly designs in some other areas where I was just trying to distribute X resources across Y assemblers. And of course I've never heard anyone disagree with using balancers around trains to ensure even loading/unloading.

    Some other things I noticed while testing

    • Full belts (and empty belts) that aren't moving any product don't consume UPS
    • Belts use the most UPS when freshly loading them with product. Once loaded and in a steady state, they consume far less UPS
    • Long stretches of belt, even very wide busses, uses negligible UPS once it reaches the steady state
    • Inserters use about 65% of their active UPS cost when idle, even if not powered (this surprised me the most of anything I saw when testing!)
    submitted by /u/Ringitorio
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    I take organization very seriously in my base

    Posted: 17 Nov 2020 04:16 PM PST

    24 to 12 belt compression through weaving and a massive mess

    Posted: 17 Nov 2020 03:26 PM PST

    10k construction robots in the air

    Posted: 17 Nov 2020 09:20 AM PST

    After 350h of play, i finally achieve a long time dream. 15 advanceds circuits/s

    Posted: 17 Nov 2020 01:10 PM PST

    No bus, no trains, only bots.

    Posted: 18 Nov 2020 05:43 AM PST

    Well ladies and gents...its finally happened, i got hit face first by some steel, engine units, and some green circuits going at about 250kmh, oh well, 'tis the first, but most certainty not the last, the factory must grow, and there's infinite engineers and time, happy building!

    Posted: 17 Nov 2020 06:30 PM PST

    While I'm apparently posting everything I've ever made, here's 1.9k blue circuits/minute

    Posted: 17 Nov 2020 05:14 PM PST

    The undo function is a menace. There needs to be some kind of way to see what we just undid.

    Posted: 17 Nov 2020 02:51 PM PST

    I cannot be the only person who is incredibly frustrated any time I go to undo something, or even accidently hit ctrl+z, and seemingly nothing happens... We all know that something did, in fact, happen. We just don't know where the hell it happened. How is that an acceptable solution? What am I supposed to do just wander around my base trying to figure out what just disappeared off the map forever, with no clue what or where that thing was?

    A simple map notification icon and maybe some kind of temporary fading ghost of what was removed would help immensely. Let's be honest though, having an undo without a redo is stupid. Can we please just get a redo function? Please?

    submitted by /u/thestonedbandit
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    first mega base

    Posted: 17 Nov 2020 10:36 PM PST

    This was supposed to be a temporary 200 science per minute setup until I got module production up and running. It never is temporary. You'd think I would've learned by now. I duplicated it four times to achieve 1000 SPM. Maybe next time I'll finally achieve the aesthetic megabase of my dreams.

    Posted: 18 Nov 2020 06:30 AM PST

    Does Factorio work on the new Macbooks?

    Posted: 18 Nov 2020 05:39 AM PST

    Has anyone had a chance yet to try Factorio on the new M1 Apple Macbooks? If so, how did you get on?

    submitted by /u/lutefisk73
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    Lowest value in circuit network

    Posted: 18 Nov 2020 05:26 AM PST

    Is it possible to show the lowest value of one item in a circuit network? So if I would have 4 chests with iron plates connected, I would only like to see the value of the emptiest chest.

    submitted by /u/philipp_th
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    Bobs Angel Ore refinery.

    Posted: 18 Nov 2020 08:06 AM PST

    Any tips tricks and info I can get regarding the ore processing with bobs angels. Since I've ran into the issue of literal piles of slag, filling up on either copper or iron completely locking down both. And other issues.

    submitted by /u/Luke_vale_1234
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    Is there a mod that lets you build in the fog of war?

    Posted: 18 Nov 2020 07:39 AM PST

    I'm expanding my logistics network and radar coverage, and it's very annoying to have to go back and build one radar at a time at the edges of my world - is there any mod that lets you just slap down what you actually want and leave it to build? I don't want it to actually build in the fog of war, just que it up so when the blueprinted radars get built it will already have the next step lined up, as you can do expanding your logistics network in radar coverage.

    submitted by /u/sevaiper
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    Finished our wall with my friend. That's A Solid Wall of Death

    Posted: 18 Nov 2020 07:27 AM PST

    November Community Map Beehive Kilobase. Over 50 hours of buzzing.

    Posted: 17 Nov 2020 02:20 PM PST

    November Community Map Beehive Kilobase. Over 50 hours of buzzing.

    I'd like to present my hexagon beehive kilobase created on the November Community Map.

    I added the Bumble Bots mod to change the appearance of bots to bees, roboports to beehives, and logistics chests to flower bushes. And the bots buzz now.

    I really went with the bees theme, so I built the map in a hexagon grid with a factorissimo building in the center. The hexagons of course had to be built in black-and-yellow striped concrete ;). I used the max spacing of substations to determine the size of a hexagon.

    https://preview.redd.it/ec3ngqpz8vz51.jpg?width=3440&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=835812ab16d9128d253bbc3df0493488dbdbdd6b

    To add to the challenge, each factory is only allowed to manufacture one type of item. Transportation has to be done by bees.

    https://preview.redd.it/9big9wbz9vz51.jpg?width=3440&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=75feb0512cd32483843f6b8399aef69f6f8cd1d0

    The only exception I allowed myself was for iron and copper plates, because the mod pack included Extended Vanilla: Ore Refining which adds refining steps that will turn your 2 red belts of ore into almost 4 blue belts of plates by adding water. These intermediates were created in sub buildings. From the outside you'd still only see ore coming in and plates going out. (Each of these lanes required a full belt of water barrels, so the bots have been carrying a huge amount of water. I had 8 water outposts each creating a full belt of water barrels from 4 water pumps input.)

    8 crates with copper ore in, 16 crates with copper plate out

    The Deadlock's Crating Machine really helped out. It puts 10 items in one wooden chest, which reduces the traffic of items like copper cables by a factor 10. This allowed me to run a kilobase with only 6000 active logistics bees.

    Bah, one rocket short at the end

    Whenever the amount of bots started to become a bottleneck, I crated the most carried resource. But this required a TON of wooden chests! I needed all the wood in my territory and trees were cranked up to eleven in this map to start with. (I really wish there was a way to see how much wooden chests I produced. I also used an enourmous amount of barrels.w)

    For solid fuel, I decided to use coal liquefaction for the first time, because I didn't think I'd get enough light oil from the oil refineries. I'm really proud of this beaconed design that fits inside a medium factory. 😊

    Heey, some are idling! That explains the missed rocket launch...

    To move around this irregular map, the spidertron was perfect. Only at the end I started to have too many of the biggest factories, which it can't cross fully.

    Finally two map view images with and without bots displayed on map. Biters were never a threat. Expansion was off, so I cleared the close nests as soon as I had piercing ammo and once I had a spidertron I cleared out the nests in the wider area.

    So you can see all the factories. 11 nuclear power plants were required to power it all.

    What I looked at all game

    submitted by /u/winkbrace
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    Me and my friend doing some cleaning in our death world

    Posted: 17 Nov 2020 02:33 PM PST

    How's this for a starter base??

    Posted: 17 Nov 2020 03:15 PM PST

    Some early game semetry for copper ore, and might be a bit over resourced for early game. Its a nice balance between allowing electric poles, condensing the drills, and balancing the belt.

    Posted: 17 Nov 2020 10:56 PM PST
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