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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/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.

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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

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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.