| But how?! Debugging my steel smelter yielded some interesting findings Posted: 26 Mar 2021 12:19 AM PDT |
| Time and space are infinite, so all factories are equivalent (or are they?) Posted: 26 Mar 2021 04:40 AM PDT Anytime there is a discussion about making something compact, somebody makes the argument that space is infinite in Factorio; it doesn't matter how much space something takes up. A counter argument to this is that time is also infinite; it doesn't matter how fast something is. If you want to make more science packs, you can either build bigger or wait longer. Consequently, this means all factories are equivalent. With infinite time and space, your factory always uses 0% of the available space and makes any amount of science packs in 0% of the available time. Does this mean there is no way to objectively measure and compare factories? The game Opus Magnum has an answer to this question. Opus Magnum is a puzzle game where you build a "factory" to assemble an end product. Your "factory" solution is given three scores: Speed, size, and cost. If you are competitive, and you want to be on all three leaderboards, you have to make three solutions. One which is as fast as possible, one which is as small as possible, and another which is as cheap as possible. Unfortunately, a factory that is a balance of all three is unlikely to make it onto any of the three leaderboards. The consolation is that any solution is enough to progress, similar to Factorio. If we apply this scoring system to Factorio, we easily have three ways of measuring and comparing factories. SPM is the obvious way to measure speed. UPS can effect real-time SPM, but it is not a constant factor for all hardware. Area can be measured in a few ways, most simply, the area of a bounding rectangle, but also in more complex ways, like a convex hull. Whether things like mines and trains are included can be debated. Finally, cost is possible to measure by assigning arbritrary value to resources. In conclusion, despite infinite time and space, we can still measure and compare factories based on time and space, just not both at the same time. submitted by /u/fofz1776 [link] [comments] |
| A new version of another boring mall Posted: 26 Mar 2021 07:02 AM PDT |
| No oil anywhere on my map? Posted: 26 Mar 2021 07:02 AM PDT I guess I didn't look at my map well enough before starting this game. I'm several hours in and I'm trying for steam achievements. The map is all defaults My map exhange string is below. Where's the OIL! Am I missing something? What should I do now? >>>eNpjZGBkkGaAAHsGhgP2HCzJ+Yk5q1etsmNgcHBgYGiw50rOLyhI LdLNL0pFFuZMLipNSdXNz0RVnJqXmlupm5RYnAriwjBHZlF+HroJrMU l+XmoIiVFqanFyBq5S4sS8zJLc9H1MjA+fHS5tKFFjgGE/9czKPz/D8 JA1gOgV0CYgbEBohIoBgOsyTmZaWkMDAqOQOwEkmZkZKwWWef+sGqKP SNEjZ4DlPEBKnIgCSbiCWP4OeCUUoExTJDMMQaDz0gMiKUlQCugqjgc EAyIZAtIkpGx9+3WBd+PHbBj/LPy4yXfpAR7RkNXkXcfjNbZAaXZQf5 kghOzZoLATphXGGBmPrCHSt20Zzx7BgTe2DOygnSIgAgHCyBxwJuZgV GAD8ha0AMkFGQYYE6zgxkj4sCYBgbfYD55DGNctkf3BzAgbECGy4GIE yACbCHcZYwQpkO/A6ODPExWEqEEqN+IAdkNKQgfnoRZexjJfjSHYEYE sj/QRFQcsEQDF8jCFDjxghnuGmB4XmCH8RzmOzAygxggVV+AYhAeSAZ mFIQWcAAHNzMDAgDTxk8//zgAU0qpfg==<<<
submitted by /u/Frontiersman_ [link] [comments] |
| Alt-F4 #29 - Beacons and Not Belts Posted: 26 Mar 2021 05:44 AM PDT |
| How is this (inserter fishing) possible without electricity? Posted: 25 Mar 2021 07:43 PM PDT |
| Is there a point in building walls around your base if you just destroy all the biter nests? Posted: 26 Mar 2021 06:16 AM PDT Can't you just destroy all the biter nests that are inside your pollution to prevent them from attacking? If so, than why build walls? submitted by /u/Rickk420 [link] [comments] |
| 1k SPM Creative mode base w/ unusual terrain settings Posted: 25 Mar 2021 07:30 PM PDT |
| Jumping back in from a few years ago and just got bots for the first time! Just got to purple science too Posted: 25 Mar 2021 07:26 PM PDT |
| I made a mod that shows how much raw resource you need for certain technology and it's parents Posted: 25 Mar 2021 10:07 PM PDT |
| Is there a LQ nuke mod? Posted: 26 Mar 2021 07:20 AM PDT Hello, for some reason nuclear explosions extremely lag the game for me. Is there an option or a mod to lessen it's performance impact while still keeping everything else vanilla? Thnx submitted by /u/webbugt [link] [comments] |
| Dolphin Rails explained (Renai Transportation, single rail going both ways) Posted: 26 Mar 2021 04:53 AM PDT  | TL;DR: This is how you can have a single rail going both ways with trains jumping over each other. You will have to avoid trains crashing into each other which isn't completely trivial. Just as a motivation to keep reading: Zippy little trains happily flying along! Hi there, I'm on a train (oh, the irony. This one hopefully stays on the ground though) with a laptop that can't run factorio (yes, I know, it's terrible that such a thing even exists), but I kind of don't NOT want to play factorio, so I thought I'd make a little ("""little""") explanatory post on the dolphin rails I've been repeatedly posting about lately, in case anybody wants to try making one themselves. It's definitely a bit of an advanced project but maybe I can convince you to try it. I'd absolutely love to see somebody else tackle this. There are definitely tons of things that could be done better than in my first (well, hundredth, to be honest) draft. This probably a long and slightly complicated read, not my usual, easy to consume "look, there's a train flying into an exploding nuclear plant" video stuff, sorry about that :D Dolphin Rail: Red stuff goes left, green stuff goes right. The general idea is: Half of the rail goes left (green) and half of the rail goes right (red). There are magnetic ramps (in case anyone hasn't seen flying trains yet, check out the Renai Transportation mod) that make trains jump over the other half of the rail. They have a set range of 95 tiles. There are small belts indicating landing spots. So far, so easy. One thing to make sure from the very beginning is that trains land in the beginning of a rail block that is large enough to hold the train. If the rail block is too short and the train has to wait there, train wagons will crash into the stopped locomotive. For left-facing trains that block would be between the green signal 2 and the red signal 3. - The first difficult part already begins when you have multiple trains going in the same direction. Signals aren't occupied by trains mid-air, so you have to find another way to prevent crashes. Also, the jump time depends on the travel speed, so if you have a fast train following a slower one there's a good chance they will land at the same time and crash into each other (or, even worse, land slightly after one another and connect, leading to a 1-2-1-2 train on a network which is built for 1-2 trains, which isn't going to go well.)
My solution to this problem is as follows: Signal 1 only turns red when there's a train about to jump. The combinator block (more details about that later) counts out 5 seconds (I think, I'm not actually sure whether I've changed it to 6 in the latest version) and causes signal 2 to close for that time. Signal 2 is also permanently closed as long as the landing spot (i.e. signal 3) is occupied. This is certainly not an optimal solution, as it slows the whole thing down quite a bit. But so far, I can confidently say that this is absolutely safe from crashes, as long as you don't have trains entering the rail at max speed. You can of course play around with the blocking time. The shorter it is, the faster speeds you will have, but the more likely crashes become. I could probably improve this a bit more with more excessive testing. - The second difficult part comes in when you have trains going both ways. The whole thing is completely symmetrical, so each direction by itself works exactly like the other one. However, trains aren't the smartest guys on Nauvis when it comes to ramps. They get surprised by them every time, which means if you have two ramps facing each other and two trains coming from both directions at about the same time (as I used to in the earlier version) they will brake heavily before jumping because they only see a two-way rail with a tiny rail block where they're both heading. This is why those little "eye-shaped" dummy segments are there. None of those will ever see a train but the trains don't know that, so they confidently rush towards the ramp without braking. I've made sure that the dummy rails are long enough for a train to wait and the signals at the end are always blocked, this way trains won't occupy rail blocks that belong to the other direction. Works great, although I might try adding a little extra loop on there to give trains even more room for braking. I don't think it makes a difference, though.
So far this is still guaranteed to be crash-free. It took a bit of time to get it right and I'm definitely more on the safe side than the fastest I could go, but it's working. (One crucial part was to have a bit of space between the designated waiting position in front of signal 2 and the ramp, so that trains could accelerate a bit before jumping. Otherwise you will have trains that take 10-15 seconds to do a slow motion jump, which renders the whole wsystem useless. So you never EVER want to have trains stopping between signals 1 and 2. - The third (and most) difficult part and the one I'm still not 100% sure that I've solved completely crash-free is feeding trains onto the rail from stations. I'm blocking signal 4 when there's a jump at the rail before that (in the case of the red signal 4 here, that would be off screen to the left), but for some reason timing this is a bit trickier than expected. I've had quite a few close calls and I'm not sure whether I accidentally timed it perfectly (unlikely) or just got lucky so far (more likely). Also, I have only tested this with 6 stations and 12 trains, so there are probably a few combinations of unfortunate timing that I just haven't encountered yet. This should definitely be solvable but might require a separate timer block which blocks the signals for a longer time. This will be on top of the agenda when I come back from holidays :)
My timer mess Last but not least, my absolute mess of a timer. I had never built one before (always liked to stay low-tech and use stuff like inserter chains or items on belts for timing) but there was no way around it. This could probably be done with half the amount of combinators, but I'm a bit proud that this thing works at all and don't mind the messiness at all :D The way this works: If combinator 1 detects a red signal, it outputs a check mark. Combinator 2 stores this check mark for after the initial input signal disappears. Combinator 3 turns the check mark into an A=1 (this is probably not strictly necessary but it turned out this way, sue me) and combinator 4 counts from A=1 to A=x (300 or whatever many ticks you'd like). Combinator 5 outputs a B=1 if A>= (x-1). I'm not sure why but I found it works better if the B is output at A=x and A=x-1. Combinator 6 outputs B*(check mark) as check mark, so it outputs only when B=1. Combinator 7 multiplies this by (-1) and sends it to combinator 2. This deletes the stored signal after x ticks. Well, I guess after x+2 ticks or something. Finally, combinator 8 outputs a red signal as long as A>4. The 4 is due to residual signals due to my weird combinator mess. The 'rest position' (after reset) of the A signal is 4 which probably could be done more cleanly but didn't bother me. I guess for anyone who is more used to signals than I am, this is probably the least impressive part. To me, this was probably the hardest to figure out. I had done a lot of train stuff but not so much circuit stuff before. Finally, there are a few ideas that I had and didn't implement yet, either because I couldn't get them to work or because I didn't have the time yet: - Measure train speed to adjust the signal blocking time. This would probably allow for much higher speeds, although I can already see a lot of problems with that. And it would probably require a LOT of combinators, especially the way I do these things :D But it might be easier than I think. I'll definitely give that a shot at some point.
- Another, absolutely awesome idea (originally by u/4xe1) was to have an underlying rhythm of signals opening and closing simultaneously across the whole rail, based on the max speed travel time between two ramps. If this worked, it would be the perfect solution because you'd always have trains traveling at max speed which both means the highest efficiency AND the highest security. But I tried for a few hours and decided I couldn't do it. Feeding trains onto the rail both and max speed and at a perfectly exact time would either need rail signaling/ train rerouting magic that's too hard for me or extremely long rails for them to accelerate, which wouldn't be satisfying to me. And still it would be difficult to achieve because the time they need to accelerate is probably enough for top speed trains to do 10 jumps or so, which means the whole thing would have to be absolutely perfectly orchestrated across basically the whole base. I'm not saying it's impossible but I probably won't be the one to build this, sadly. If anyone else did, I would love them forever, though.
I'd really suggest that if you know a bit of combinator magic and like flying trains (if you don't: What the hell is wrong with you?) to try building your own dolphin rail! It's an incredibly fun project and the result is very very satisfying and thrilling to watch. If you build one, please let me know, I'd love to see what other people come up with! Sorry for rambling. I'm done now :)
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| Crashed Ship Intact - Art Rendition? Posted: 25 Mar 2021 08:32 PM PDT Has anyone ever come across some sort of art rendition of the vanilla crashed ship if it was fixed/intact? Offical or unofficial? Just wondering what the full ship would look like. submitted by /u/DrArchibaldRoman1 [link] [comments] |
| How many green circuits assemblers should I start with? Posted: 26 Mar 2021 01:21 AM PDT I came back to Factorio after some years and found it quite changed, yet still the same. Quite weird. Anyway, I am now in my first game and about to transition from my starter base to my next belt-based base. Red belts. I have 5 belts of copper. 3 Iron, one steel, so far. And they can be supplied continuously. Now the question is about green circuits. I am aiming at four (red) belts. Should I set them up to also continuously keep them up? According to the Factorio Calculator that will equal 80 blue assemblers. THis will consume all of my copper. Is that excessive or actually what it means to have 4 belts full of green? submitted by /u/Zemekis2071 [link] [comments] |
| [Space Exploration] Can you remotely control spidertron's via satellite view? Posted: 26 Mar 2021 07:59 AM PDT The Space Exploration patch notes for 0.13, and the wiki section on Launching Rockets, say it's possible to launch a rocket with a spidertron to crash land and automatically deploy the spidertron. However from 'Satellite view' I cannot control the spidertron, (nor can I control artillery fire on Nauvis. Am I missing something? Should I be able to control these remotely? submitted by /u/timj11dude [link] [comments] |
| My first mod installed, recycling ♻️ why?? Posted: 26 Mar 2021 07:54 AM PDT I want to share this to see if someone else reached the same idea. My first mod, was one that allow me to recicle materials. Why? This happend in my first factory, I was very used to play many RTS games, which before factorio is the closest thing to me. In those games, resources are very limited. So I played under that premise, I need to do as much as possible with the little. Based on that, for me was totally a must be capable of reuse base materials from the excess of manufacturing. If I had too much cogs, then I'd convert some of them into iron plates again to create, IDK sulfuric acid. Also, because this resource limitation, the base must be small to be able to defend it with less turrets. So my spaghetti 🍝 was reaaaally a nightmare xD Did anyone of you tried to play like this? Did you also miss recycling? How did you solve the overproduction? submitted by /u/Nassiel [link] [comments] |
| Industrial Revolution 2 - Starting Ore Washing Posted: 25 Mar 2021 04:15 PM PDT |
| Save file conversion Posted: 26 Mar 2021 07:33 AM PDT i stopped playing factorio pre-pandemic. is there a function or application that converts save file from previous version to the latest one? submitted by /u/SechsWurfel [link] [comments] |
| Is there a way to find the original "map exchange string" from an already started game? Posted: 25 Mar 2021 08:18 PM PDT |
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