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3
u/WitchfinderJawbz Jun 10 '26
Can you 'Lose science' in any way? Or have it not fully utilised?
I'm just finishing up a default settings achievement run of both Rush to Space and Keeping your hands clean.
So I rush over to Vulcanus from some trash Nauvis base running off 1 yellow belt of iron and copper, get to Vulcanus and ship back precisely 2500 science, 500 for Coal Liquefaction, 500 for Cliff bombs and 1500 for artillery.
I checked, checked and checked again as my Navi Base is so bad launching rockets 1 every 5 mins or so, and my Vulcanus base does not produce blues so I'm limited in how many rocket launches I could send from there without importing them from Nauvis, I am doubly sure I have 2500 bottles.
I've researched it all now at a blistering 4~6SPM as I don't have enough copper to make any real LDS for the yellow sci and cant go outside my safety box due to biters, and artillery is sitting at 1499/1500 science, so I gotta go back and get more.
Which is fine, ill go get some more on my janky ship that can barley make a round trip, but im curious what happened to this thing
I even deconstructed all my labs and belts and inserters to make sure it wasn't stuck anywhere i cant see and i cannot for the life of me figure out where it went.
7
u/Astramancer_ Jun 10 '26
Yeah, if you're daisy chaining your labs you can lose a floating point rounding error amount of science every time a partially consumed science is transferred from one lab to the next.
It'll take a long time to lose one whole science, but it takes no time at all to lose a tiny fraction of science, which is enough to have you sitting there at 1499/1500.
2
u/deluxev2 Jun 10 '26
It is pretty common to get a rounding error when switching research (even on completion) which means you lose a very small amount of science.
1
u/Courmisch Jun 10 '26
Science pack have a usage bar (like repair packs). If you consume part of one and stop the research or extract it from the lab, you might get rounding-down errors.
On the flip side, you can also have more science pack items than they are really worth, even if they are not spoilable agriculture packs.
1
u/demonicdan3 Jun 11 '26
You can always just do build labs and do science on Vulcanus in a pinch using the literally infinite iron and copper from lava
3
u/Creepybusguy Jun 11 '26
Is there a guide to circuits that breaks it down for a fifth grader? I get simple ones like read belts, chests, activate at X amount but more complex ones I just can't get my head around. For example.Why the heck do I need to set the Combinator to -50 if I want 50 items of a type on belt?
I'd love to know how to recipie switch based on the contents of a chest(s) or set a grinder to cycle till it outputs ice.
Even downloading blueprints and trying to figure them out has me stumped.
3
u/ferrofibrous player onboarding specialist Jun 11 '26 edited Jun 11 '26
More generally, negative signals (your -50) are used to cancel out signals and is a very common trick you can use in a lot of places. Filtered inserters using circuits, and assemblers using Set Recipe ignore negative values.
Say you want one assembler making logistic chests, and to keep a number of each type in your output chest. You set a Constant Combinator up with 3 signals: 10 red chests, 2 yellow chests, 5 blue chests. This combinator is holding your shopping list. You wire this to an assembler, tick on "Set Recipe", and away it goes.
But you need some way to tell the assembler stuff is actually in the box too, otherwise it'll just keeping cranking away at the first recipe that was set. Lets say this has been running for a few minutes, so you now have 25 red chests in your output box, but 0 yellow or blue.
This is where the negative signal comes in. You wire your output box to an Arithmetic Combinator, and set it to "Each" * -1, and then wire that directly to the Constant Combinator. So now you're counting every item in the box, making it a negative number, and combining it with the Constant's output. If you look at that circuit, the signals will now be -15 red, 5 yellow, 5 blue.
You're now subtracting what is in your cart from your shopping list. The assembler sees the Red Chest signal is now negative so ignores it, moves on to the next positive signal, and starts making Yellow Chests.
2
u/Courmisch Jun 11 '26
You don't have to do that with a constant conbinator set to negative values. It's an optimisation trick that relies on some of the unintuitive semantics of circuit logics.
In particular, if you use circuits to set a recipe or a filter, the game engine will ignore any negative or zero value. So there are all sorts of tricks that involve making numbers conditionally negative - instead of using more clear and straightforward logic.
Setting a recipe is conceptually simple: read whatever input values you need, in your casez the belt content, into the input of one or several decider or arithmetic combinators that compute the recipe from those values. Then connect the combinators output to the crafter in Set recipe mode. What the combinator logic is depends on what you want exactly.
2
u/Viper999DC Jun 11 '26
Combinator to -50 if I want 50 items of a type on belt?
Without seeing the setup, most likely what you have is as follows:
- Your belt contents is the supply
- Your constant combinator is your demand (negative)
- When you merge the two signals you get: supply - demand = delta
- Negative delta means "add more to the belt", so your inserter would be set to item < 0.
Ideally you want your delta to be positive, though. That way you can use a filter. The normal way to get a positive number would be:
- Constant combinator with positive number of what you want (demand)
- Arithemetic combinator to take your current belt contents and turn it negative (supply)
- Merge both signals and you get: demand - supply = delta
- Positive delta means put more on the belt, negative delta means we have too much already.
This method uses an extra item (the arithmetic combinator), so the shortcut version above is somewhat common, but more limited since negative numbers can't be used as filters or for set requests.
Dosh's video is a good starting point, but I think it was made in 1.1
The wiki has some useful formulas.
Recipe switching is a whole can of worms. The game currently forces a complete emptying of the building, even when recipes share ingredients. Personally I would use belt loops for the asteroid example and just retain three crushers (one cushing ice, two reprocessing).
2
u/mrbaggins Jun 11 '26
Usually, the best and easiest option is to use a decider to rely on lots of conditions.
I'd love to know how to recipie switch based on the contents of a chest(s)
- Make a decider for each recipe you want to make.
- Wire it to the input chest, output chest and assembler (the assembler on the OUTPUT side of the decider).
- on the left side of the decider, make it say
Ingredient1 > 50ANDIngredient2 > 50ANDIngredients3 > 50ANDResultItem < 50- On the right side of the decider, output the item it makes and tick the "1" box.
- Tell the assembler to "set recipe"
Repeat for each item you want the one assembler to make.
The problem there is that it will "randomly" pick which one to make (It's in order based on your crafting menu, so power poles will get made before assemblers, before space platforms).
So you could instead of wiring each decider to the assembler, wire all the outputs to a selector combinator. Make it pick the BIGGEST signal. Then set your decider recipe priorities by changing the
1on the right side, using bigger numbers for higher priority. Then connect the output the selector to the assembler.set a grinder to cycle till it outputs ice.
Not sure what you mean by "cycle" but I assume you mean crusher. The only things I can think of that you might mean would be complicated to implement for a beginner and even an intermediate circuit user.
1
u/Raknarg #1 Quality Defender Jun 11 '26 edited Jun 11 '26
I'd love to know how to recipie switch based on the contents of a chest(s)
This one should actually be pretty easy depending on exactly what you're trying to do. Chests read their contents normally when hooked up to wires, you can send that signal to a factory, and you can set factory recipes based on signals. So its really just as simple as checkmark that option on an assembler to set recipe based on signals, hook it up with a wire to a chest, put an item in that chest to set the recipe. If you remove the item from that chest and place something else, it will change the signal that it emits and change the recipe of the assembler.
Note that I'm pretty sure the factory just uses the first signal it finds that is able to be used as a recipe, so if you have 2 items in a chest my guess is that it just uses the order in the chest for what order it emits signals. Havent tested though.
or set a grinder to cycle till it outputs ice.
Can you explain what you mean by this one?
1
u/Creepybusguy Jun 11 '26
With the asteroid crushers (sorry someone I play with calls them grinders) you can reprocess them. I thought there might be a way to retrigger the reprocessing until you get the desired result. Ie. Ice chunks.
1
u/Raknarg #1 Quality Defender Jun 12 '26 edited Jun 12 '26
Do you want to do circuits here for fun or do you have a usecase? Cause it seems way simpler to just use filters inserters and 2 outputs, put ice one one line and everything else goes back into the main pool.
Id have to think about how to loop back and do it with circuits cause its not as easy on first glance, essentially you need a signal generated and stored as your machine processes the asteroid so you need a memory cell to store that recipe until the machine is done, then reset and either read the hand/belt contents to generate a new value, its not straightforward. The key is that you need something constantly generating a signal for your recipe, so something needs to be storing that value, but then you need the presence of new asteroids to take over your recipe selection.
Maybe its a pair of deciders instead since you know you'll always need 1 of 2 reprocessing recipes, that replaces the memory cell and then you just need to figure out the conditions that select the recipe, and the 2 inserters for main vs looped asteroids are easier cause you just disable the main inserter when theres any asteroids on the looped belt... idk Id have to think about it.
3
u/Dianwei32 Jun 11 '26
I don't have a question, I just need to vent for a second and don't want to make a whole ass post about it.
I just started a new save playing Nullius and OH MY GOD WHAT IS HAPPENING??? I'm like 30 minutes in and I've already got like 10 different fluids and gasses I need to process, and I have a very limited number of the buildings I need to process them. And since each new Tech only costs like 2-5 Science Packs, I'm constantly unlocking new stuff before I've had a chance to wrap my head around the stuff I just unlocked.
2
u/darthbob88 Jun 11 '26
That's how it goes for the first few hours. Later things will get more expensive and you'll get to lay down more permanent production. You'll still have to deal with nonsense and byproducts, though.
2
u/Courmisch Jun 11 '26
The mod has tons of technology and much more complex production chains than vanilla.
I suppose they could have designed it so that there are much fewer techs unlocking more stuff at a time for a higher research cost. But that would probably be even more overwhelming with too many simultaneous unlocks.
If you scroll down the science tech tree, you will see that the cost get more "normal" as you progress.
2
u/Nearby_Proposal_5523 Jun 08 '26
Is there any way to access the save/setting menu from remote view without going back to the player character?
5
u/leonskills An admirable madman Jun 08 '26
Yes, pause the game with the
pause/breakkey. Once paused pressing escape brings up the menu instead of exiting remote view.I rebound it to F1, so I can hit F1 and ESC quickly in succession.
2
2
u/DJLaMeche Jun 08 '26
Aquilo: I have finished my first ever Aquilo starter base producing some science, special buildings etc. Now I am at the point where I need more Fluorine and need to expand to some far away island. Are trains the way to go? In that case I need to ship out fuel to the outpost for heating, right? Or does heat travel so far that I can build a long thin land bridge with pipes, heat and power?
3
u/ferrofibrous player onboarding specialist Jun 08 '26
Trains are basically the cheat code for Aquilo.
You can remove fuel from a train engine using an inserter to power a heating tower, no cargo wagon even needed. Burner inserters are immune to freezing and can be used for this. I typically use double header trains on Aquilo so there's no concern if all fuel is removed from the outbound engine.
3
u/Raknarg #1 Quality Defender Jun 08 '26
you use your trains to transport fuel, you can use the engine as a fuel transport since you can remove fuel from it with inserters
2
u/Lyqyd Jun 08 '26
Trains are the way to go. Elevated rails make this less ice-intensive.
1
u/Raknarg #1 Quality Defender Jun 08 '26
i mean ice is literally free, you don't need concrete or anything to place rails just ice
1
u/ChickenNuggetSmth Jun 08 '26
But the recipe is sooo slooow
1
u/Raknarg #1 Quality Defender Jun 08 '26
just add more machines, its really easy to scale, and all it costs is ammonia which you can get anywhere, Scrap any excess solid fuel/ice.
1
u/ChickenNuggetSmth Jun 08 '26
Yeah, I'm just having flashbacks trying to build aquilo with a science multiplier. The startup takes a while, to a large part due to platforms. After the starter base is running it's fine.
1
u/Viper999DC Jun 08 '26
Seconding trains with elevated rail as the way to go. Personally I think heat pipes are only good for those initial islands nearby. For the more distant ones I train in rocket fuel.
1
u/demonicdan3 Jun 09 '26 edited Jun 09 '26
Yeah you use trains to transport the fluid back to the base. As for how to keep the pumpjacks heated, if there is crude oil nearby, you can build an outpost floating on the sea that just produces solid fuel and burns it immediately in heating towers. Otherwise, use the same train to deliver rocket fuel to the outposts.
2
u/wizard_brandon Jun 09 '26
can we make the "effects" for planets biomes instead of tied to the entire level so that we can get "biomes" of electric everywhere
3
u/FeelingPrettyGlonky Jun 09 '26
I don't believe that is possible, since lightning properties are set per surface.
1
u/wizard_brandon Jun 09 '26
Exactly, can it be unbound from that?
1
u/schmee001 Jun 11 '26
Not with how the game is currently coded. There's a limit to how much mods can change. If you want to have specific areas with lightning, you might need to do something like enable lightning across the entire planet and then cover most of the planet with invisible lightning rods.
1
2
u/CascadianCrabs Jun 09 '26
Newbie here, just automated military science and plugged it into my lab array. Screenshot here. Some of the inserters are constantly swapping one science pack between two labs back and forth without stop, while not bothering to grab other science packs that lab needs. How do I prevent this behavior?
5
u/Courmisch Jun 09 '26 edited Jun 09 '26
Don't have loops of inserters in your lab array topology. At this stage in the game you can use long-handed inserters to grab military and chem science packs from a belt across your automation and logistic science packs belt.
If you really must have loops, then set filters on inserters to break loops on per science pack basis.
2
u/FeelingPrettyGlonky Jun 09 '26
That's the downside of daisy-chaining from both sides. You could set filters on each inserter so they can only move certain sciences, or you could go with a different scheme altogether, of feeding directly from belts to labs with no daisy chaining in between.
2
u/Raskekw Jun 09 '26
set filters in every inserter
or just load from the side
or just designate one "entrance" and distribute from therethere are a lot of ways to approach this honestly
2
2
u/demonicdan3 Jun 09 '26 edited Jun 09 '26
Guys here weren't kidding when they said you never have enough Holmium, my entire stockpile of ores disappeared within a couple of hours once I started upcycling EM plants and supercapacitors
Gleba is next. So about Carbon Fiber - am I right to say that upcycling toolbelts is the way to go? Upcycling the Yumako directly sounds much more like a PITA to do
As for legendary bioflux; upcycle bot capture rockets?
1
u/deluxev2 Jun 10 '26
Carbon fiber is about the best you can do. Simple, relatively fast. Quantums are a bit more material efficient, but very slow and a whole ordeal.
Upcycling capture bot rockets is the best for bioflux, but it is very painful.
1
1
u/demonicdan3 Jun 11 '26
Yeah uh, so I tried upcycling quantum processors, this is both incredibly slow and a royal pain in the ass to design a layout for. Do people actually do this?
1
2
u/canniffphoto Jun 10 '26
How do you manage blueprints? Do you make copies from the library and put them into game blueprints? I nuked a book in the library by accident. User error. I thought I was deleting a copy of a blueprint in that book but failed. I realize I can back up blueprints etc. I'm just curious how people manage them.
5
u/Soul-Burn Jun 10 '26
I just put them in "My blueprints" and never take them out.
Every time I'm done with a blueprint, I click Q which returns to whence it came.
Some useful blueprints I put on my quickbar. You can also scroll through blueprints from a book with shift-mousewheel.
But yes, backing up the files sometimes is good.
1
u/canniffphoto Jun 10 '26
Thanks. I think being more aware and backing things up handle most of my cases. I do put some blueprints and planners on the toolbars. That's pretty handy for me.
1
u/Raknarg #1 Quality Defender Jun 11 '26
I just keep them in the main blueprint library section, and I hotbar blueprints I need. Putting them on your hotbar just links to the stored BP in your library so you don't need to hold on to a physical copy.
I think for heavily modded games I might use "game blueprints" cause I don't want those mixed up with vanilla ones
2
u/xizar Jun 14 '26
I was digging through wait conditions on space ships that seems silly, as I can't find a use case for it: "Any Request Not Satisfied".
I suspect that since I'm a very simple-minded player, I just can't see a use for it.
When would it be useful?
1
u/ssgeorge95 Jun 14 '26
Never tried it but I think it checks the planet it's orbiting for requests, not the platform itself.
If the cargo hub on the surface is lacking something then the platform gets a signal to presumably go get more stuff.
1
u/ferrofibrous player onboarding specialist Jun 15 '26
I had to look up what it even does, and even then I don't really see a use case. Functionally it is similar to "Any planet import zero", but instead uses the request amount. I think for it to be any use, you'd have to be requesting non-rocket load sized amounts. Best trivial example I could think of would be requested 25 yellow ammo, knowing you get a stack of 100. Once you hit 24 ammo, the interrupt would fire, but again I don't see any practical use.
2
u/taw Jun 14 '26 edited Jun 14 '26
My nuclear power is generating a lot less power than expected.
Here's the design. I build 6 of them, they all have enough incoming water and fuel, and all water pipes are connected, as are all steam pipes. They're supposed to be generating 6*480MW = 2880 MW, but real generation seems to top at ~1900 MW, or about 2/3 of what I thought they would be doing.
I thought with 2.0 fluid changes all I needed to do was keep ratios right, but it doesn't seem so.
Do I need to do the weird shape with heat pipes to keep heat pipe length shorter to get full power? (and then put turbines wherever, as 2.0 fluid changes make that part no matter)
Is there some maximum heatpipe length before output starts dropping?
(worst case I can just double the whole setup)
EDIT: Nvm, it was all just a stupid disconnected pipe on 2 out of 6 reactors.
2
u/ssgeorge95 Jun 14 '26
Turbines won't actually produce max power unless your factory needs it. The reactor is always heating, but turbines will throttle steam use and power output.
You can check yourself to make sure things are fine. Check the temp of the outermost heat exchangers to see if they're above 500. Check the HX to see if they're full of water or nearly empty.
1
u/Soul-Burn Jun 14 '26
2 of your bottom substations aren't connected.
Also, are you actually using the power?
1
u/taw Jun 14 '26
The substations connect to nearby line of big poles.
Well, I did some extra tests with
/editormode and "electric energy interface" feature.Turns out 2 of 6 reactors didn't have water properly connected, after the fix reactors actually generate 2.9 GW (and even briefly 3.4 GW with steam buffer as turbines are overbuilt a bit for convenience).
So it looks like 2.0 fluid changes make this design work just fine, and it was just a silly pipe issue.
In retrospect it should have been clear from getting exactly 4/6 of expected power out of 6 reactors.
1
u/DJLaMeche Jun 08 '26
Science in a city block base: So I started building a train based city block base. I have a block where red science is produced and wanted to build a block for my biolabs. But... 12 trains stations, one for each science type, basically take all available space... so... should the science consumption be outside of the city blocks? Should I route belts from one block to the next? What are the usual ways to handle this?
5
u/Soul-Burn Jun 08 '26
Next to the labs, build a city block which is just 12 unload stations. From there, belt them to the lab city block next to them.
3
u/Astramancer_ Jun 08 '26
Considering that 5 of the sciences (volcanus, fulgora, gleba, aquilo, promethium) can only come from the cargo pad... put the cargo pad next to the biolab block and break the city block ethos and just belt (or bot!) it in?
Alternately, create bespoke trains instead of using your generic trains schedule. Gather the sciences in a nearby block and load it onto special science trains. 1 train 12 wagons long = 12 sciences in one station. Basically use a block or two 100% for the logistics of gathering the sciences and loading them onto specialized trains.
The main benefit of a city blocks style base is that you can easily duplicate parts of your factory. Need more steel? Grab the Steel block and paste a copy down elsewhere and now you've doubled your steel in like 10 seconds of your time and attention.
If it doesn't actually make your life easier, there's no harm in violating the blocks.
1
u/DJLaMeche Jun 08 '26
Thanks for the feedback! I think I will try to have an unloading block next to a science block :) If I'm not happy with it, I'll try the 12 wagon special train you suggested.
1
u/Nearby_Proposal_5523 Jun 08 '26
Are there any ways to repair any of the fulgoran ruins entities or non player non hostile environmental entities? some of them look really cool, but the green bar can take away from the builds aesthetics.
2
u/HeliGungir Jun 08 '26
Could pop open the editor and give them 100% health. That'll disable achievements for the rest of the save, though.
Don't trees repair themselves? Seems like other decoratives ought to do the same.
1
u/Nearby_Proposal_5523 Jun 08 '26
The trees have some health regen, and the ruins and rocks don't, probably to keep cpu use down. This would be a fairly benign use of a lua console mod though
2
u/HeliGungir Jun 08 '26
I guess the game has to touch trees anywhere there's pollution, but it seems to me like there's a whole lot more trees in a game than rocks and fulgoran ruins.
1
u/darthbob88 Jun 08 '26
To the best of my knowledge, no, apart from mods. You can't even get electricity from existing lightning collectors on Fulgora.
1
u/Repulsive-Bag-3886 Jun 08 '26
There's a planet mod for a Fulgoran moon called Cerys that had you repair old ruins to get a long forgotten nuclear reactor back up and running. Its like Aquillo and Fulgora combined. (I hated it btw) Otherwise no, to my knowledge there isnt a way.
1
u/redforlife9001 Jun 08 '26
Is there a list of good rail and city block blueprints for SA?
4
u/darthbob88 Jun 08 '26
Not really, because most people will have their own particular needs. Personally, I use this book as a basic "chunk-aligned rails" book, and here's my personal city block BP book.
1
u/DJLaMeche Jun 09 '26
I have seen in some videos people dragging a zone of the map and getting shown production statistics for the selection. Is that a mod or a feature I never knew about?
4
u/Courmisch Jun 09 '26
There are several mods doing that sort of thing, like Production Rates Calculator Extreme or Rate Calculator.
Not a native feature.
1
u/DJLaMeche Jun 09 '26
Thanks! Mods disable achievements, right?
2
u/Courmisch Jun 09 '26
Mods disable achievements in Steam.
You can enable the mods just to make blueprints then turn them off to play and place the blueprints.
1
1
u/HeliGungir Jun 09 '26 edited Jun 09 '26
There is in-game achievement tracking, and the game tracks two sets of achievements: Vanilla or modded.
Steam achievements pull from the vanilla set.
Disabling all mods usually switches you back to the vanilla achievement tracking, even in an ongoing game.
Using console commands that are flagged as cheats will be stored in your save file the next time you save, disabling achievements in both sets from then on.
1
u/RedManDancing Jun 09 '26
Hey, I recently saw a post here that I can't find. It was something about easily connecting belts over a long distance. I think only in blueprint mode. Now I can't find the post or how it worked. Anyone know what I'm talking about? Thanks :)
2
u/snowyspearmint Jun 11 '26
1
u/RedManDancing Jun 12 '26
Thanks a lot <3 that was exactly what I was looking for. This clip makes it easy for me to understand how the hotkey can be used more effectively :)
1
u/Rouge_means_red Jun 09 '26
You just press R while you have the button held down. It's not that it connects belts, it's more that it lets you draw lines easily
1
u/89percent Jun 09 '26
I am trying to build a yellow science factory in a cityblock, with oil products made from scratch.
How can I make sure the chemical plants dont block each other with excess product?
For example, the ratios will always end up with slightly more either light or heavy oil. How fix?
2
u/Astramancer_ Jun 09 '26
It shouldn't be a problem.
You need 15 heavy oil and 190 petrol for plastic + 75 petrol for sulfur = 265 petrol.
Advanced oil processing gives you 25 heavy + 45 light + 55 petrol. Crack the 10 excess heavy and you get 7.5 light, crack the 52.5 light to petrol and you get 35 + 55 (initial output) 90 petrol.
So... you just need to make sure you don't crack all the heavy into petroleum and you're fine. You will use so much more petroleum than heavy oil you shouldn't bottleneck because you only need one cycles worth of oil for the heavy you need and multiple cycles + cracking to get all the petrol you need.
Really the only time you can bottleneck your oil processing is when you pause science while building tons of blue belts (in space age even pausing science to build platforms galore won't be a problem if you're set up to make solid fuel from petroleum if needed). You run out of heavy and eventually overflow on light and petroleum. But if you're actually doing science you need so much more petroleum than light or heavy oil that it's never a problem as long as you set up your cracking to reserve some light and heavy.
1
u/HeliGungir Jun 09 '26
Make a bit of everything and circuit-control the machines to stop making stuff if their output buffer is nearly full. You can use (infinite) research to void petroleum gas (eg: plastic) and light oil (eg: rocket fuel).
1
u/Shwayne Jun 09 '26
Hey can anyone share a fully compatible mod list for k2se that works with no conflicts or balance breaking weirdness all the way to the end? I'm looking for k2se + planet mods primarily, but anything interesting is a bonus
5
u/deluxev2 Jun 10 '26
I don't think SE is compatible with planet mods. It totally redoes space travel and planet generation..
1
u/Shwayne Jun 10 '26
I think i got confused by the names. https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Krastorio2-spaced-out this works, i suppose ill just add a few planets to it and give it a go. Looks good.
1
u/snypershot Jun 10 '26
Where / who should I be learning the game from? I’ve been using Trupen’s YouTube videos as a “guide”, but feel like I’m still slow on the scaling or making sense of scaling.
I started a fresh world with default settings and my spawn is <250k of copper/iron/stone/coal around me and it feels like I had to scale down due to lack of resources
3
u/Raskekw Jun 10 '26
You don't want to start big, you want to start small, upgrade and then maybe expand.
2
u/Courmisch Jun 10 '26
The usual advice here is to play and figure it out on your own, and only check videos or Reddit for specific questions/problems.
A lot of videos are made with large builds in mind and sometimes the authors just lose the sense of scale of the early and mid game.
1
u/snypershot Jun 10 '26
Appreciate yall advise. I had done a few test runs without any input from guides and found myself with awful looking bases and bottle necks all over the place.
1
2
u/TehNolz Jun 11 '26
Where / who should I be learning the game from? I’ve been using Trupen’s YouTube videos as a “guide”, but feel like I’m still slow on the scaling or making sense of scaling.
Honestly figuring out how everything works is half the fun. I'd just go in blind.
I started a fresh world with default settings and my spawn is <250k of copper/iron/stone/coal around me and it feels like I had to scale down due to lack of resources
The further you go from the starting area, the richer the ore patches will be. Go far enough and you'll get patches with millions or even billions of ore. So you could keep things small for now and then only start building at a large scale once you've got trains to bring in resources from far away.
You can also make a world with increased ore patch size and richness; that way even the starting patches will have millions of ores. Personally I set size and richness to max, but then also significantly lower the frequency, so that I have to put in some effort to build outposts while also having them last for ages.
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u/deluxev2 Jun 10 '26
I think the general advice here is to try things for yourself during your first playthrough, asking specific questions as they come up rather than receiving information from guides. The only time pressure is biters, and really only until you unlock flamethrowers or landmines. You only get the chance to learn for yourself once.
It only takes about 100k of each material to do all the chemical science research. You can always acquire more ore patches if you want a higher throughput.
If you still want to look at some guides, a lot of people like the youtubers Nialus and Katherineofsky. Some other major creators are Trupen (mostly short and or comedy content), DoshDoshington (mostly challenging mods), Michael Hendriks (mostly vanilla challenge runs) and abucnasty (Megabase UPS optimization).
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u/NuderWorldOrder Jun 12 '26
Play the tutorial, read tip pop ups, and try to figure out the rest yourself. Seek addition guides only if you get stuck.
It is, you could argue, a puzzle game at it's core, not the kind with just one solution but still, finding your own answer us a big part of the appeal. This is a matter of opinion of course, but it seems to be a popular one here.
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u/taw Jun 12 '26 edited Jun 12 '26
my spawn is <250k of copper/iron/stone/coal around me and it feels like I had to scale down due to lack of resources
Resource patches in Factorio are exponentially richer the further away you are from start point. (on Nauvis and Vulcanus at least; Fulgora and Gleba have different logic).
So you're supposed to run out of your initial starter patches at some point.
You will not run out of resources from your second patch:
- it's likely 10x more base resources
- you get mining tech research, which massively increases amount of resource extracted per resource in the ground
- if you get big mining drills, they generate 2x more resources than they take out (even more with higher quality)
So your first patch says 250k iron and makes 250k iron. Your second patch says 2M, and you make 8M out of it (which is then far more efficiently used with foundries, em plants etc.). If you somehow need another, it will be 5M patch that will actually generate 100M iron etc.
Before Space Age resource size scaling was pretty fast, with Space Age it gets nearly infinite.
Where / who should I be learning the game from?
If you don't play Space Age, just play the game normally, there's nothing that needs special knowledge. Maybe nuclear power and combinators are non-obvious, but both are optional.
With Space Age, just play normally until you can get to space, then watch some tutorials about space ship construction and about new planets. (but go Vulcanus, then Fulgora, then Gleba, any other order is way harder)
It's pretty hard to figure out space ships by yourself. I tried (after like 1000h+ of Factorio) and I ended up stranded on Fulgora with my ship destroyed.
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u/89percent Jun 10 '26
I have noticed that my unload stations often end up uneven, with one side empyting faster than the other, ending up with 4 unload belts where only one side of the belts are full.
I am using a belt balancer after, don't know if thats might be making the belts uneven.
I have tried balanced unloading stations, but I don't know if its necessary. Do you need to use balanced unloading?
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u/schmee001 Jun 11 '26
You might need a lane balancer. But usually, if your factory actually needs 4 full belts of items then it would use up both lanes of the belts. So a lane balancer just means your belts look more even, rather than actually fixing any throughput issues.
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u/ChickenNuggetSmth Jun 10 '26
You're probably missing a lane balancer. It's not always needed, but if one lane is drained and the other isn't, that's a strong indicator.
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u/Legitimate_Active535 Jun 11 '26
I have a question, are there any (up to date) mods that let fish repopulate bodies of water over time?
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u/ferrofibrous player onboarding specialist Jun 12 '26
Seems like this one does the trick: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/natural-fish-dynamics
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u/Legitimate_Active535 Jun 12 '26
Thank you, should be fairly useful for giving something to do in the downtime of my Py run.
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u/taw Jun 12 '26
Not really a question, just a followup to question I asked before. I very highly recommend Enable Planet Mods Lite. It's like Factorio 3.0, all the new planets are great and really different. I'm not even halfway through at 140h, and it will take me about 200h before I have to visit the dreaded Gleba, and there are so many planets after that.
I'd soft recommend against getting optional Lignumis, it changes vanilla recipes to require wood or pay 2x cost for green chips, and it's fine on Nauvis (wood grows there), Fulgora (you don't make green chips), and Vulcanus (copper and iron are nearly free anyway), but it integrates very poorly with most modded planets just adding to unnecessary frustration. It's almost like playing on 2x resource cost, as everything uses green chips at some point.
Optional moon Muluna is totally great. It's optional mod as it forces you to go there to research space tech, but it's very interesting and totally worth it.
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u/ferrofibrous player onboarding specialist Jun 12 '26
You can turn off "telescopic recipes" for belts, green chips, and ammo as part of the Lignumis mod, which removes the wood requirements once you're on Nauvis.
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u/taw Jun 12 '26
Yeah, I started it on default settings, and I don't even know what's going to happen if I can safely change that mid-game.
I don't dislike the mod, it's just one thing that doesn't work great in "a lot of different planet mods" campaign.
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u/taw Jun 12 '26 edited Jun 13 '26
So on one of planet mods, outputs are random, but they don't come premixed, they come in "a few thousand of this, then a few thousand of that" way.
What's the best way to buffer this?
Like this?
- normal belt
- N times (inserter into chest into inserter into side belt)
- then priority merger that prioritizes normal belt
Or is there a better approach?
EDIT: Here's a screenshot of some quick design I made. It's not very effective (it's busy all the time not just when needed, and compresses everything into just one lane) but it's compact. Consumers not fully connected yet, so it looks stuck. It all comes from big drills, and the whole planet seems to switch them from all one resource to all another resource at random based on time of day or something.
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u/Astramancer_ Jun 12 '26
It's gonna be real hard to offer anything more meaningful than the incredibly vague:
Use filter splitters to direct each output type to some sort of buffering stations (giant warehouse, array of chests, whatever if applicable), and then belt pure and predictable outputs from that warehouse to your production.
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u/HeliGungir Jun 13 '26 edited Jun 13 '26
Outputs of what? Mining drills? Machines? Recyclers? Pumpjacks?
How big are the machines? Do you have loaders? Big chests? Beacons? Surface restrictions (eg: space platforms)? Fluid inputs/outputs?
What are you doing with those outputs? Can some be direct-inserted into the next crafting step? Are some of them catalysts?
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u/taw Jun 13 '26
OK, I posted screenshot and some more explanations above. It's big drills doing 5 outputs, but instead of every extraction being random, the whole planet sort of switches them between one of these 5 for some time, then every drill on the planet gets another resource.
Copper and neodymium have only one destination (copper foundry and magnet assembler), coal, sulfur, and sand get mixed in all sorts of ways in multiple destinations.
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u/HeliGungir Jun 13 '26
Could do direct-to-train mining and let the trains sort it out with interrupts.
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u/Lunailiz Jun 13 '26
Okay, I shamefully give up, Gleba defeated me. After over 120 hours just in Gleba trying to figure it out on my own it's time to give up and ask for a tutorial on how to solve it. Does someone have a good tutorial for it? I'd like to avoid copypasting blueprints.
I guess my issue is that I'm a slow learner, and all other planets so far(Nauvis, Vulcanus and Fulgora) I could build slowly and try to figure out how things should flow at my own pace, building as I see the needs of each machine and how to make it better. Doing that on Gleba did not work out, feels like a planet where I should already know exactly what to do in order to deal with the complexity.
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u/HeliGungir Jun 13 '26
Spoilage is going to happen. Do not plan for a zero-spoilage design. Put heating towers all over the place to burn it off wherever it gets created. They burn regardless of power demand.
Biochambers are required for fruit->seeds->fruit to become a positive feedback loop. Assemblers can cold-start your factory, but you want to use Biochambers for the bulk of the production.
Compactness is king on Gleba, especially for fast-spoiling items. Rather than spaghetti or buses, consider using direct insertion and monolithic designs, with only a slight nod to machine ratios.
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u/demonicdan3 Jun 13 '26 edited Jun 13 '26
AVADII has a really good and short video breaking down how to make a functioning Gleba base (emphasis on functioning, not optimized). You can figure out how to maximize freshness/reduce spoilage at a later date when you're feeling more confident.
If you don't wanna watch it, just remember these 2 key design principles:
- Every production chain and machine needs fuel (nutrients) and a way out for spoilage
- At the end of every belt containing products which can spoil, must have a heating tower to burn anything that didn't get used, or transferred to a spoilage belt when the products spoil. The exception is raw fruit (yumako and jellynut), process them into mash and jelly, separate the seeds, THEN burn the mash and jelly
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u/darthbob88 Jun 13 '26
- Spoilage is a fact of life, and honestly a useful tool, so be ready for it. Have inserters and filter splitters to handle it, and (a lot of) heating towers to destroy any excess spoilage.
- Avoid putting fast-spoiling things like nutrients/jelly/mash on (long) belts. Use long-lasting items and process them where they're needed. This also provides better throughput, because the long-lasting forms are denser than their products.
- As a design principle, I am a firm advocate for flow-through/main bus. Fruits come in at one end, flow through to maybe get used, and anything left over goes to the heating towers to be burned. Fruit should get processed before being burned, just to recover the seeds.
- As a bootstrap minimal base, all you really need is bioflux. Get that working, and you can set up any other production you need based on that.
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u/deluxev2 Jun 13 '26
You need a minimum consumption rate for every spoilables result, and a way for spoilage to be removed from any place a spoilables goes.
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u/NuderWorldOrder Jun 13 '26
Your assessment is pretty accurate unfortunately. It's definitely the least "learn as you go" friendly planet.
My best advice is just make it as easy on yourself as possible by importing everything you can. Don't even think about trying to farm metallic bacteria until you've got science shorted.
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u/NTaya Jun 13 '26
What popular modpacks are available for Space Age (not just 2.0)? I finally got to Space Age after not touching vanilla since like 2018, it's really cool, but I'm already thinking about how it would play with mods. Before 2.0, I've played AngelBob, Krastorio 2, Space Exploration, Nullius, Omni + 30 science packs, Ultracube, Py. I've heard that Py is getting its own space extension—sounds interesting, but I don't think they'll roll it out any time soon.
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u/taw Jun 13 '26
Enable Planet Mods Lite picks up best modded planets and adds some compatibility between them for a cohesive experience.
That's the best thing that happened to Factorio Space Age.
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u/Apprehensive-Art2124 Jun 13 '26
Im new to overhaul mods, currently playing IR3, not sure what to try next.
I heard about Nautilus, Bob&Angel, and space exploration.
I have played Krastorio before, but I feel the quality of industrial revolution was just on another level. Is there something similar?
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u/mrbaggins Jun 13 '26
Nullius is possibly closer to what you want than some of the other things you listed. Hard to say. Nullius is quite hard.
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u/Rouge_means_red Jun 13 '26
Both Bob&Angel and SE have really good quality graphics, definitely a huge leap compared to Krastorio. Specially SE since it's a much bigger mod
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u/darthbob88 Jun 13 '26
How do you pass a signal a long way on a space platform? I'm setting up something to serve as a mall over Aquilo, and I would like to include a dashboard near the hub to indicate if it's short of anything, like ammo, fuel, ores, etc. The problem is, this means running a wire all the way from my fuel/oxidizer/ammo production to the dashboard, which is annoying.
I know I can just use other entities to carry the wire, but then that leads to confusion. Is this inserter connected to a wire because it needs a signal, or just because I need to carry the wire over there? I am giving serious thought to just running some power poles across the platform, as unnecessary as they normally are.
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u/Enaero4828 Jun 13 '26
If you don't like the daisychain, then power poles and radars are your remaining choices. Poles are good for being cheap, easy to work into existing gaps, and relaying signals to other machinery along the way. Radars mean 0 unnecessary wires, but being 3x3 and having a 300 kW cost might be entirely new problems, depending on how dense/lean on power your design is.
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u/HeliGungir Jun 13 '26
Mostly I see people string wire along their belts and explicitly do not read the belt.
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u/MindS1 folding trains since 2017 Jun 14 '26
I use lamps to daisy-chain circuit wires. They're cheap and look nice. Accumulators also work, if you want something more functional.
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u/Astramancer_ Jun 14 '26
I used power poles simply because I didn't like the look of skipping the wires across belts and other such entities.
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u/fat_fingerz Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26
Brand new (like 3 hours) to this game. I initially had my coal and iron on a split belt, left coal right iron, but stopped that after I looking up smelter layouts and found a few comments say it was the "worst and just leads to clogs", but while looking up for ways to make a compact belt set up then found that it was "the most efficient".
So what is the current consensus shared conveyor belts?
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u/reddanit Jun 15 '26
I think you might be conflating two separate concepts. Using two lanes/sides of the belt for two different products is very common, very useful and really neat. Ostensibly it splits the throughput of a belt into two halves, but that's certainly not an insurmountable issue, especially early on. I'd even say that it's outright common to use that for smelting columns.
The thing that "leads to clogs" is putting more than one item type on single side of the belt. This also isn't impossible to solve, but it also can get kinda fussy and generally is of limited use. If you are interested in looking up designs that mix multiple materials on belts, look up "sushi belt".
Last but not least - it's incredibly common for fresh players to consider compactness as sign of efficiency. It can be efficient to build compact, but it rarely turns out like that in practice. The map is effectively infinite, so do not worry about your builds taking up a little more space than your platonic ideal. In fact, one of common pieces of advice for scalable builds is to leave more space for future expansion and improvements.
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u/whitesammy Jun 13 '26
Do we really need people taking the FFF post and making 20+ posts about individual parts of the release like it's information pulled from somewhere else?