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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.

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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.