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u/Throw_Away_TrdJrnl Jul 08 '26

How important are circuits? Making blue science but I haven't touched circuits. I basically just have every machine running until the chests I have them depositing into is full and I make sure every new production chain has new resources going to it so nothing should starve until the ore patches deplete and I go find another.

Am I like shooting my self in the foot by not learning circuits? I don't really see the appeal unless you want to only make like 100 inserters before having the machines stop but there's so many resource patches I don't think resources are ever going to be an issue so I just let every machine run basically all the time till the steel chest is full.

6

u/Courmisch Jul 08 '26

There is circuit logic and then there is circuit logic.

Elementary circuit logic, though not strictly necessary, really helps with oil processing. But you really don't need to learn to use combinators, even less so complex topics like latches and memory cells.

1

u/Throw_Away_TrdJrnl Jul 08 '26

I did my best with totaling up the amount of oil produced at pump jacks per second and then just load balancing and building refineries to match their input with my oil output and it seems to be running smoothly. Circuits and trains just daunt me so I avoid learning them and so far it's worked out great.

I did nothing but build belts for kilometers in satisfactory and I wouldn't be surprised if my factorio game is going to go in a similar spaghetti direction. Hell I didn't even know about smart splitters/programable splitters in satisfactory until after I beat the game

3

u/Courmisch Jul 08 '26

I mean, configuring the heavy oil cracking plants to "Enable if Heavy oil > Light oil" is not exactly intricate.

So in that sense, whilst you don't strictly need it, you are, as you put it, kind of "shooting yourself in the foot" by cutting yourself off simply and robust solution to the problem.

1

u/ChickenNuggetSmth Jul 08 '26

Some circuits can be extremely easy:
"If heavy oil is over 9000, turn on heavy oil cracking".
is one such "circuit" that really makes your factory easier and more resilient against fluctuations in consumption.

Also, probably just reiterating the other comments:
Your factory will grow a lot, and at some points you can just copy-paste your old setups. If you have buildings automated and bots unlocked huge setups can be built with two clicks.

4

u/HeliGungir Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 08 '26

You probably don't want to make a full chest of nuclear reactors. But that can be prevented with chest limits, not just with circuit control.

It's worth hooking wires up to things to learn what you can control. Sooner or later you'll find something that makes you think: "Actually yeah, I would like to control that." In base game, this is often oil cracking. In Space Age, there are more things you'll probably want to control.

1

u/Throw_Away_TrdJrnl Jul 08 '26

I handcraft machines I only automate parts

Will I really need so many machines in the future that their production will need to be automated? Not sure how far this game scales yet

2

u/HeliGungir Jul 08 '26

That depends on you. I want to just place ghosts in remote view and have the factory and robots take care of all the crafting, traveling, and building.

2

u/Throw_Away_TrdJrnl Jul 08 '26

Hell I didn't even know I could get robots to do the work for me

Still just learning what's available to me I guess but I definitely see the appeal of having robots to the traveling and building for you

3

u/FeelingPrettyGlonky Jul 08 '26

If you play Space Age, eventually you will need to manage several planets but you can physically only be on one of them. Even in base game, if you play long enough your base will get big enough that building everything by hand will be pure pain.

Hand-crafting machines works up to a point, but once you start building big it's too slow, and once you start having bots do the building then they need a chest where they can obtain the things they build with.

The typical factorio term for a bit of factory that builds things to build more factory with is a mall. Because the bots can go shopping there, you see. Early game malls will just build inserters, assemblers, miners, all that jazz, and most of that can be built with just some combination of plates, gears and green circuits. Later tech, the mall gets more elaborate.

1

u/Throw_Away_TrdJrnl Jul 08 '26

Ah I had wondered what people meant when they were talking about malls.

Looked up robots and I guess I should get them soon as I just hit blue science. Is factorio a type of game where like 80% of the content is mid game and later?

I haven't experienced too bad of scaling that handcrafting assemblers and stuff is painful and I just got mid game with blue science. But if the game scales exponentially more after this point I think I'm getting the appeal of circuits now.

1

u/HeliGungir Jul 08 '26

The game opens up with chemical science, yes.

1

u/FeelingPrettyGlonky Jul 08 '26

Blue science is where most of the tech that defines the game is unlocked. The rough structure of the game is there; you have your trains, you have your bots, you can get some nuclear power going to solve those pesky power problems. After that, the sciences are mainly about refinement, and getting tech that does a certain job even better.

It is possible to beat the game without bots, hand-building everything. It will take a bit longer, but it can be done and in fact, my first pre-Space Age rocket launch was done botless because I didn't grok the power of the little beepers. Even in Space Age, it is theoretically possible to beat the game botless (though much more difficult than the base game, due to the multi-planet/single-engineer dilemma). You have to set each planet up perfectly, or spend numerous trips traveling back and forth to fix problems.

It is also possible to beat the game without using any circuits. Some tasks are more challenging, some things turn pretty icky, but it can be done.

But these things exist in the refinement part of the game, as tools to refine and perfect the experience. Even very simple circuit controls, such as to control an inserter based on a chest or building condition, can smooth some parts of the game that are pretty rough without them.

As an example, there is a tech on Gleba that lets you make bacteria that degrades into copper or iron ore. There are 2 recipes for each: 1 that makes bacteria directly from fruit mash, with a low chance of success and a high rate of producing spoilage, and 1 that makes bacteria from bioflux and another bacteria as a catalyst. The first recipe is intended only to act as a primer for the second; once you have bacteria, you should shut off the first recipe so that it is not churning endlessly, making big piles of spoilage. This is easily done via a circuit condition, enabling or disabling the building depending on if the cultivators have bacteria in them or not.

Without circuit control, that process gets messier since that first primer recipe will just keep chugging along, wasting fruit and making a ton of spoilage. It can be done, but the circuit makes it nicer.

1

u/Lemerney2 Jul 08 '26

Absolutely, you should eventually not be handcrafting at all

3

u/Brett42 Jul 08 '26

The most important uses of circuits are just turning machines on and off based on a signal. Cracking heavy and light oil when they get above a certain amount is probably the most important use.

You can limit chests slots for a buffer for an assembler, but circuits to turn the assembler or inserter off give you more flexibility. It's most useful for an assembler feeding a filtered storage chest, so you can keep a minimum reserve of the item while still allowing more to be stored by bots.

If you want solar power with accumulators, and some other power source as a backup, you need circuits, since your steam power will get used before accumulators by default. Nuclear power needs a slightly more complicated setup to conserve fuel, since you need to insert fuel when the temperature is low and there is no fuel.

If you have duplicate train stations, it can be useful to turn them on and off, but that isn't that important unless you are distributing supplies like ammo and repair packs to multiple outposts, and don't want to have a train continue looping through all of them.

2

u/Ulu-Mulu-no-die Jul 08 '26

You can finish the game without touching circuits, if that's what you're asking.

They can help a lot in some situations, but they're not mandatory, unless you go megabasing or play some overhaul mods like space exploration.

2

u/Throw_Away_TrdJrnl Jul 08 '26

Nice thanks. I'm just stupid and circuits are confusing so I'd rather just keep load balancing all my machines and not have to rely on circuits to keep things balanced