Hear me out, I've been trying to understand how trains work for 2 months straight. This shit is giving me PTSD from my college calculus days. I fix one deadlock and then there's another in the same spot but trains positioned differently. Trains get deadlocked from a junction that's half the map away.

I'm starting to hate this game.

Here is an example of one I can't seem to fix at the moment. These are the only 2 trains on the entire system. I have moved around the signals plenty and I can get the trains to work but then they'll end up stuck again, except positioned differently.

Yes, I've watched COUNTLESS OF VIDEOS. UGGH!

https://preview.redd.it/ghjhlh2e0upd1.png?width=902&format=png&auto=webp&s=2cdd1c12a87e692e634e9abf872633a4946f6bd7

I want to start a new run for Space Age but would like to get some of the early game out of the way before release. Getting through red/green science etc. Im a slower player normally and want to start launching rockets ASAP to fully understand experience the update. Anyone else doing something similar?

I have been playing K2 lately and started to transition to a megabase using only matter as it's input when I realized that the matter blocks allow insanely efficient transport of materials. So much, that trains are kind of pointless for bringing in raw materials.

I started to build out blocks of factories that only did one thing - produce a single end game product. Tier 3 modules, etc.

One example: By bringing in materials via matter blocks, I only consume 1 bot delivery of material every few minutes and output 5 T3 modules per minute.

Now - is this more efficient than a full train network moving raw materials? I have no idea (yet). But what it does that I love is bring back the spaghetti. Now I'm trying to crunch and pack a fully self contained little factory into as small of a block as I can so that I can paste 20 of them all over to scale up production. It's a really interesting play style and makes me feel like it's my first week again, figuring out a million different little puzzles and interactions instead of just using a huge main bus and then going into city blocks which is fun in it's own right but really obscures any complexity.

I'm curious if others have tried this approach and what you think of it. Will UPS hold once you get to high production numbers? I'm thinking that trains will still be necessary to move science to research blocks, but I believe everything else can be done with bots.

Another side bonus is that with K2 you can create infinite loops to generate matter and power so you don't have to setup mining outposts which is always something I've found annoying anyways.

Hey All, was trying to come up with a nice base design up to blue science so I could B-line for bots easily. I tried to make it sort of compact so it could easily be defended and cliffs had a lower chance of being an issue. Let me know what you think! I have no idea how to paste the blueprint string. Let me know how if you want it,

https://preview.redd.it/pdeephnlotpd1.png?width=1368&format=png&auto=webp&s=a593ded81c2c1fdd9e6c148ed8150ea0175d48da

The SE delivery cannon is a great concept and was wondering if there is anyway to add just these or similar into the base game, I thought it would be fun to use cannons in place of trains and was wondering if there were any mods already available for this.

There are biters attacking my solar panels but there are literally zero nests inside my pollution (expansion is off)

https://preview.redd.it/suwjpm7actpd1.png?width=1169&format=png&auto=webp&s=8c1cda46a14de4a610993dac2b7e71fb1fb06b31

After reading the Friday facts about quality, I started theorycrafting on what was the best way to go when the expansion will be out. However, because the system was full of feedback loop, it was difficult to do calculation by head. So I decided to code (in Python) the mechanic so that I could get meaningful numbers to analyse. Here is some data that I manage to get, and some of my thoughts on what will be the best strategies.

Source: I based my code on the Friday facts 375 on quality and the Friday facts 399 and 387 for the bonus of the Electromagnetic plant and the Foundry. I also assumed that production module cannot be placed into the recycler (not written explicitly anywhere but would create positive feedback loops otherwise).

I started by testing the set-up presented in FF 375 where you have Normal quality ingredients as input (like normal copper plates) and try to obtain high quality items as output (for example Epic/Legendary copper wires). For that you use assembler/Electromagnetic plant/foundry to produce the copper wire and recycle any output which is not of the wanted quality. You then re-obtain copper plates that you can re-insert in the assembler until you obtain the wanted quality or have nothing less as recycler only give 25% back.

The question is then the following:
Let say you have 1000 ingredients at the start, how many final products with Epic/Legendary quality do you obtain at the end?

Figure 1

There are several parameters that you can vary. You can change the wanted quality of the end product. You can change the type of assembling machine (Assembler/EM plant/Foundry). You can change the quality of the modules inside the assembling machine/recycler. You change the ratio of quality vs productions modules in the assembling machine (But as said before, I supposed than you cannot put production modules in assemblers).

The graph at the beginning of this post shows, depending of the assembling machine, the maximum amount of Epic (resp Legendary) outputs you get if you put Epic (resp Legendary) T3 modules inside the assembling machine and recycler. This corresponds to the time you arrive on Fulgora and you unlock the recycler, T3 quality modules and the Epic quality and the time you arrive on the last planet and you unlock Legendary quality. There is also more detailed data in the second image showing yield depending on the ratio of quality/production module in the assembling machines.

Figure 2: Number of given quality output obtained from 1k inputs depending on the ratio of quality/production T3 module (of same quality) used in assembling machine. Reference is the number of basic quality outpout producable from max production modules set ups.

First remarks:

• The Electromagnetic plant is overpowered being ~4-6 times stronger than assembler and 1.5-2 times stronger than the Foundry. This is due to its +50% native productivity module (compared with regular assembler) and the fact that it can host 5 modules instead of 4 (compared to the foundry. this really snowball as you reprocess the item multiple time when you want higher quality so the bonus is applied multiple times.
• With EM plant, obtaining Legendary quality using Legendary modules is more or less as difficult as to obtain Epic quality using Epic modules.
• Using the EM plant, obtaining Epic/Legendary items is 13 (resp ~35) times more costly than obtaining Normal quality items using an assembler with no module inside (resp a EM plant with max prod modules inside). This is way worse with assemblers (~100-150 times).
• I never managed to obtain yield close to the “56 times more costly” for legendary items claimed in FF 375 (maybe we don’t measure efficiency in the same way, maybe their info is outdated, maybe the hypothesis of my code are wrong).

The general conclusion is that you always want to upgrade the quality using an EM plant. It is to the point that if you want a high quality end product that can only be produced in assembler (like beacon), it is better to move back in the production chain to see what ingredient is uses that can produced by the EM plant (green/red circuit, copper cable), and then upgrade them in the EM plant to high end quality and then use the high quality version to produce the end product in the assembler.

Using recipes “in reversed”

A useful trick is that you can also use the EM plant backward. For example, copper plates cannot be produced by EM plant but they can be used to produce copper wire in EM plant. So you use this receipt in a recycling loop to obtain higher quality of copper plates/wires and you recycle everything at the end to just keep copper plate. Using the EM plant in reversed gives different yield but which are more or less equivalent. (Note that input items are one steps before in the production chain, so to meaningfully compared yield of high-quality inputs with yield of high-quality outputs in figure 1, you need to correct input number of figure 2 by the relevant production bonus, 2.45 for epic, 2.75 for legendary.)

From what receipt was confirmed by the devs to be available in the EM plant, you can obtain copper using the copper wire recipe, iron using the green circuit one, steel using the electric power pole plastic using the red circuit one. So in the end you can access to most basic resources with this trick. The quantities are however not even and we will have to much copper as almost all recipe announced for the EM plant use it. It might be useful to complement high quality iron production using the reversed iron gear recipe in the Foundry which have less yield but have the advantage to only produce iron without copper as side product.

Something that I have not discussed yet is the optimal ratio of Quality vs productivity module inside the machine. For assembler with epic or legendary modules, it is 3 quality for 1 production modules which is the best. For EM plant, it is 3 Quality for 2 production module in epic settings and 1 quality for 4 productions modules in Legendary setting. However when throughout matter, it is probably better to have 5 productions and 0 quality modules in EM plant (and let recycler up the quality), it as a lower yields (30% less in epic setting, <10% less in legendary) but allow the use of speed module (which would otherwise destroy the quality buff) which will reduce greatly the number of machine (and hence modules) necessary for the same throughput. This is my personal take, I let you decide.

Producing epic/legendary T3 modules

I want to finish with this as for me it is the biggest use of the quality mechanics as high-quality production module are a huge deal for reducing resource consumption of the whole factory.

To measure design efficiency, I will use green circuits. So I suppose a budget of 1 million green circuits (and unlimited copper wire/plastic/sulfuric acid as secondary ingredients for red/blue circuits), and then see which design maximises the number of Epic/Legendary T3 modules with this budget.

Figure 3

Before starting, I want to recall for reference that with this budget, using normal quality prod module in red/blue recipe, you would be able to produce 1289 normal quality T3 module pre-expansion.

The simplest design to obtain epic/legendary module is to keep normal quality until T3 modules and just then upscale the quality. With this strategy, using Epic (resp Legendary) prod module in red/blue recipe, you would obtain 145 Epic (resp 81 Legendary) T3 modules.

Another design is too upscale the quality at green/red/blue circuit level, and then use the high quality circuit to produce directly high quality module, with this approach, you would obtain 133 Epic (res 152 Legendary) modules. So much better in the Legendary case. You need for that to put the ratio of 3 production for 2 quality module (resp 4 prod 1 quality) in circuit recipes.

The best strategy I found is however a mixed one. You instore rising quality feedback loops for both circuits and T3 modules. You produce T1 modules only from common (resp Rare) green/red circuit and then produce/recycle everything depending on what is missing. In pseudo-code this can be written up as:

X: represent either green/red/blue circuit or T1/T2/T3 module
Y: quality of X

If X is not T1 module, and if the number of X of quality Y is below a threshold and there is enough ingredient. Produce X at quality Y.
If Y is below the epic (resp Legendary) quality, If X is a circuit or a T3 module, and If the number of ingredient of X of quality Y+1 is below a threshold, recycle X at quality Y.
If X is T1 module, and if Y is the common (resp Rare) quality. Produce X at quality Y.
In EM plant producing green/red/blue circuits, put 1 production/4 Quality epic module (resp 4 Prod/1quality Legendary modules). In recycler and EM plant producing modules, just put quality modules.

(note: the value of the treshold is not really important)

This may seem complex at first but it is relatively simple condition to implement using circuit conditions. The reward is that, with this strategy, you can obtain 243 Epic (resp 220 Legendary) T3 modules which around 2 or 3 times more than the previous strategies! So it might be worth it to try it.

Using this strategy, producing Epic/Legendary is only around 5 times more expansive than producing T3 module pre-expansion. This is not so expansive considering the fact that they are 2x-2.5 times more efficient and that with all the buffs of the expansion (EM plant and foundry in previous productions steps), green circuits will be way easier to obtain than pre-extension. So for me, as long as you have efficient set-ups, Legendary quality seems not so difficult to obtain.

This is my thoughts on how to implement quality after viewing the data. Do you agree with it? Or have remarks/questions?

How can I improve this! I feel like I messed up badly lol

https://preview.redd.it/mzcq65nm2tpd1.jpg?width=983&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ccb87136f61780da0f89d9ab0a5d121e4845176d

Hi all, I just finished up a 12k spm modular rail megabase (hopefully will be posting kinda soon) and I’m now planning for a monolithic belt based base which hopefully will be in the 30k spm range IF I can keep it at 60ups. I am of course maximizing direct insertion.

My question is: for creating intermediates like plastic in the chemical plant, is it worth using direct insertion? Direct inserting plastic means more overall chemical plants since most assemblers/recipes won’t consume a whole plants’s production (for example blue circuits would be about 0.7). This would lead to more overall fluid boxes and I’m also still not actually sure if chemical plants will sleep like assemblers if their output is full.

I’m sure this has been tested at some point but am I better off minimizing inserters/transport by direct inserting plastic or am I better maximizing up-time of chemical plants to minimize the overall number?

I'm naming mine "The SBSS Starskipper", or maybe just "The Star Skipper" for short.

https://preview.redd.it/cmdcr38phspd1.png?width=796&format=png&auto=webp&s=df05721fe3d72d2fff0aa6b72fb91288dcefab01

Hey everyone :D

I started playing Factorio a few weeks ago, and it is as addictive as everyone makes it out to be.

i would like to get some feedback on a modular reactor design i made, i am pretty happy with it, but feel like it could be improved and im a little out of my depth, any suggestion or criticism is welcome => im posting to improve and get new ideas!

Dimensions:

[417] tall / [22] wide / [20] pasting grid

Specs:

[8] reactors / [112] heat exchangers / [192] Turbines / [112] steam tanks / [12] offshore pumps / [~7000] Landfill] / [9] roboports / self assembling if connected to a robot network

Output:

Runs consistently with a power output of ~1.08 GW

Circuit:

I copied the circuit from Janosch Gräf (here) and modified it a bit

The reactor will insert fuel via the signal [F] based on a clock [T] once every 200 seconds IF Steam level is below a variable threshold [A]. The clock will stop at the value 1 once steam is above a variable threshold [B]. The fuel is inserted every time the clock [T] hits the value 2, so when the reactor is off and is being turned on [D], a fuel cell will be inserted instantaneously. im still unsure what the best values of [A] and [B] are to save the most amount of fuel while also running the reactor on close to- maximum output.

Conditions:

needs to be placed on water / can only be pasted to the right / roboports from the top and bottom half don't connect. an extra roboport needs to be placed on the left of the first placed reactor blueprint to connect them, subsequently placed blueprints to the right don't need an added roboport /

Blueprint reactor: here

Blueprint Fuel: here

Simply connect container from which inserter takes items to as many decider combinators as needed with setting X>0=1X and connect outputs to inserter.

We've seen confirmation in FFF #425 that there are new types of pollution that replace the conventional pollution type on Nauvis. I wanted to hear your theories and speculations as well as list my own thoughts on the matter and how it interacts with the new enemy/threat types.

Nauvis - Normal CO2 pollution + biters. We all know how this works.

Gleba - Confirmed in FFF #424 and FFF #425 to be replaced with a spore cloud created by the processing of agricultural products. The Pentapods will focus their attack on these few buildings and largely ignore other structures, rather than destroy anything in their path like Biters.

Now we get into things that are hinted or unconfirmed.

Vulcanus - Hinted to be related to mining vibrations and/or tremors. Vulcanus is where we unlock large miners and foundries. Screenshots released have shown turrets, which implies some kind of enemy.

I suspect that pollution will be replaced with noise. Loud machines like foundries and miners will attract enemies which live underground.

Aquilo - Hinted to be heat related. There are still a lot of question marks surrounding this planet, but we know that it is cold and icy. We also know that fusion reactors are unlocked on Aquilo. Many have also noted the improvements to heat/temperature controls from FFF #428 could mean that heat could be an expanded mechanic.

I suspect that pollution will be replaced by a heat cloud that melts surrounding ice freeing enemies from encasement. We have yet to see the floating brain creature from way back in FFF #367.

Finally, nothing has been stated or hinted about Fulgora but here are my ideas.

Fulgora - Pollution will be replaced with some kind of charged particle cloud that increases lightning severity. Fulgora has been stated to be "lifeless" planet (FFF #398) so I doubt there are any new creature factions to find. I believe that the "enemy" on Fulgora will indeed be the lightning storms. The use of certain machinery will release charged particles into the atmosphere which slowly dissipate, or in high enough concentrations cause lightning strikes that can damage or penetrate lightning rod coverage.

Spreading out your machinery can reduce the concentration of charged particles and mitigating lightning damage. This incentivizes you to build on multiple plateaus across Fulgora's surface. The lightning may also have interactions with bots, possibly slowing them down or even disabling them entirely in highly concentrated particle clouds.

What are your thoughts? Are there any hints I haven't considered or problems with my theories? I am tactically posting this on a Thursday so that if the FFF tomorrow confirms any of this I can be called a genius or whatever

videos, posts, etc idc id just like some references

Is it ok to lfg here? Ideally I wanna start 2.0 and the expansion with a friendly group of players. I’ll have a lot of time on hand in October, I’m playing from eu timezone, am a moderately experienced player, but don’t wanna rush anything and take my time. I don’t have a dedicated server but could get one up. Dm or comment if you’d be up! I will also try on the discord.

Cheers

Hi all,

FiJust downloaded LTN this morning and trying to set-up a basic test, but I've run into some trouble. I set-up and configured my provider, requester and depot stations and sent my train to the deport station, but it's not receiving instructions. Any idea what the issue is?

Provider

Requester

Depot

https://preview.redd.it/pw545hb9jrpd1.png?width=884&format=png&auto=webp&s=338ceb429d08f956264bd03cbfe14e628eeba8be

I guess it is highly inefficient ratios-wise, but is very pleasant to watch at. Tips??

So, some of you may have seen my previous post about swarms ruining my life. So I decided to restart entirely with a better map with gigantic resources deposits, less enemies spawns, and more water to get better chances of choke points. This is what I got. A peninsula (I think) with massive resource desposits and several choke points.

The defenses aren't done yet, nor is the main ammo belt. But I am hoping this will hold them off better than before. I did follow some advices some of you gave me. Like trying to project where the following machinery should be built and using dragon teeth and choke points.

The factory will be rebuilt from the ground up by the way. For now, this is purely to develop myself until I get better equipment.

My objective is the oil well at the bottom of the map, next to to big nests.

My idea would be to have the extraction area in the center, along with a refining and manufacturing plant right under and maybe a chemical plant near the oil well. The north would be purely a weapon manufacturing plant and defensive position until I can see what is up there.

I also built the main ammo belt around the map to decrease the chances of it annoying me in the future.

What do you think of that so far? Any advice or something I could do better or improve, by the way?

https://preview.redd.it/zlf6qr5wgrpd1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=f279dc60e055732677ab4ff9371c991084af72c0

https://preview.redd.it/g95f6t5wgrpd1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=b4996e18705004878a79dbb81056f0987bc2e61f

https://preview.redd.it/r07gqt5wgrpd1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=3bed727a1157a5e29693352f6d3a0416e289ac0a

https://preview.redd.it/j4p3mt5wgrpd1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=f016709d89414a3ef8a9aadd6cb904d2b04030ce

https://preview.redd.it/1vmhqt5wgrpd1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=2966b681f9b43cc3d4104f75760c07621fb1efe2

https://preview.redd.it/74fs2t5wgrpd1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=12d0f59eb1d8911fedf8b1df36dce497778bb518

https://preview.redd.it/lq3w0t5wgrpd1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=b7145852bc090ca044e4cb53375fbe5f867e119c

https://preview.redd.it/y9uo5t5wgrpd1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=6bf8f721f8fca0d76e512d91b1d4edc340b2785a

https://preview.redd.it/ym3uit5wgrpd1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=3a40c3d2c4f979b3fd477c766e10ba09b3ea2f04

https://preview.redd.it/8qcu5u5wgrpd1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=9ae03cf691671bda95492ad9f5d5134f7323daf4

https://preview.redd.it/ni6vcu5wgrpd1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=51f31199bf47149289620dc8fa0ba8ee42606d14

Friday Facts# 367, Wube teased this lil xeno concept. But we haven't yet heard anything about the jellyfish alien. Maybe they're hiding away on the final planet?

I am trying to build a megabase for the first time, but I am a bit stuck on how to proceed. Are there any tips you have? I am now moving some things on a train network instead of a main bus. Though I have a bit of a problem with understanding train stackers. If anyone would like the map, I will have to figure out how to share it still.

View Poll

Anybody else deep into a playthrough of K2SE and struggling with accepting that you probably don't have time left now to complete the run before the expansion when you'll surely want to start over and will have to say goodbye to your run?

I played this game for like 80 hr and I'm really enjoying it. Another aspect of the game I really like is the community, every playstyle is well accepted there is no hate toward anybody, you can play with biters off, with bigger ore patch, with every possible mod or/and build the worst spaghetti nightmare and I've never seen an hatefull comment. Coming form lol and gt7 I must say this is what I was searching for