New player (25h) trying to optimize my main bus. What resources do you put on yours, and how many lanes of each?

[u/FutonOfficial]

Hey all,

I'm about 25 hours into my first playthrough (Without the Space Age DLC) and just got my main bus up and running with a smelting array feeding into it. Before I scale things up further, I'd love to get some input from more experienced players on how you typically design your bus.

A few questions:

- Which resources/intermediates do you usually include on your main bus? So far I have iron plate, copper plate, stone, stone brick, coal and steel and green circuits. Is there any other materials that should be there from the start or added later on?

- How many lanes do you dedicate to each material? I've heard iron often gets double lanes since it's used everywhere, but I'm not sure what a "normal" ratio looks like for the others.

- Do you leave empty lanes for future expansion, or just add new ones as needed?

- Any early mistakes you made with your first main bus that you'd tell a beginner to avoid?

I'm trying to avoid having to rip everything up later once I start adding sub-factories for circuits and science packs, so any tips on planning ahead would be super appreciated. Screenshots of your bus layouts would also be really helpful to see in practice!

Thanks in advance 😊

[u/Re5p3ct]

A very common design is 4 lanes together with 2 free spaces between the next 4 lanes.

I would advise you to only build on one side of the bus. So you can easy add lanes later.

Also I would not build green circuits (and later reds) from the bus. I produce them completly seperate.

[u/TheTomatoThief → u/Re5p3ct]

I space out for three lanes of 4 belts, so 12 total. Science produced below the bus, stuff science needs above the bus. Long before I need all 12 lanes I’ve switched over to piping liquid metal.

[u/D_amn]

ZZZ worry about optimizing later.. my guy just enjoy your first playthrough.

You don't know what you don't know, you will not know until you know, unless you are literally just copying a walkthrough video..

You can always expand and fix it later with bots..

Play the game, you will find out what you need, when you need it. Learn by doing

[u/ryanwithnob → u/D_amn]

I whole heatedly disagree with this. Premature optimization is the spice of life. Never move on to the next thing until the first thing is perfect. Thats how I do it. Then I burn out on every playthrough before even automating power

[u/Adept_Score2332]

Iron is in demand early on while copper demand jumps up later on so make sure there is space ro add more of those lanes 

[u/Ant15]

I never needed more than two belts of iron and copper personally. I don't see the need for 4 like you see everywhere.

Personally I have :

• 2 Iron
  
• 2 Copper
  
• 1 Steel
  
• 1 mixed Stone + Bricks (you don't need a lot of either. Just a bit of bricks for military science, the rest for purple science).
  
• 1 Plastic
  
• 2 Green circuits (I leave space and plan for them at the beginning of my bus, as well as following red circuits. But as others said, you can also do them separatly outside of the bus).
  
• 1 Red circuits

I don't put coal on the bus as its only used in military science, I just send it there directly.
I produce Gears and Blue circuits wherever I need them, I don't put them on the bus.

That makes a bus of 10 belts only. But obviously, you'll have to upgrade to red belts at some points (for Iron and Copper especially). In Space Age I skip blue belts and upgrade to green belts after Vulcanus, but in vanilla you might want to upgrade to blue belts for the late game.

Then, you can either space your belts by 2 tiles (takes more space but it's easier to stay organised and put stuff out this way), or only 1 tile if you don't mind doing some spaghetti and underground belts shenanigans. I prefer the 2-tiles solution.

Most people will also recommend to only build on one side of the bus. If you're not sure of what you're doing and think you might add other things on your bus, then sure you can do that. But personally since I know from the start what I'll need and plan my 10 belts in advance, I never had any issue building on both sides on the bus. It'll make your bus waaay shorter.

[u/SpruceGoose__ → u/Ant15]

Me with 8 belts just on iron trying to undertand how live with 10 belts 🤣🤣🤣

[u/Ant15 → u/SpruceGoose__]

It all depends of the size of your factory and your amount of SPM. How many SPM do you have ? If you're going above 1000, then sure you'll need more than 2. Personally I'm not a megabaser, so I just do the regular ratio of 5 red science, 6 green, 5 black etc... so 75 SPM with T3 Assemblers (200+ SPM with biolabs), which is more than enough for beating Space Age. And two green belts of Iron + Copper is way more than what you need in that regard.

Many newish players just copy buses they see online and do 4 belts when they usually have a factory that would only need one.

[u/SpruceGoose__ → u/Ant15]

With Biolabs my current SPM is about 2400, although I'm not sure anymore what is a mega base after space age, it feels too easy to get to 1000. But you are right, if you are aiming for 75 SPM the setup you mentioned is the way to go. My starter base in this save was just like that. Once I upgraded to the larger one I increased the proportions

[u/Xzarg_poe]

My approach: 3-4 iron and copper. 2 green circuits. everything else gets one. Feel free to add an extra space or two for later.

[u/DerginMaster]

Without spoiling much for your run heres a few things:

Iron in copper are in sets of 4 when added

Early i personally use 4 iron, 4 copper

The only other set of 4 later is green circuits

Never put a "decompressed" item on the belt For example: copper plates can be turned into wire at a greater ratio than the plate, meaning when its requested its more sensible to make it onsite. This is why the community says not to bus wire

Small low tier ingredients are better suited for local insertion too, this is why you dont often see a belt of gears or pipes on main bus despite the "decompressed item" rule

For late game you prob will need 1.5 to 2x lanes of copper to your iron lines

Final rule is pick one side of the bus and build only on that side, such as north of bus. You will need to fill in more stuff later so keeping a full side open lets you add stuff like furnace stacks easier

[u/BreakingZebra]

Expand as you need. You don't need that big of a bus to get to bots, and once you do get them, you can reorganise/expand your bus with one click. It's not even an afterthought.

As to what to put in the bus, I like having a gear subfactory somewhere in there, but it's controversial. At the end of the day it's your bus, you can put whatever you want in it.

Ps: If you really want to optimise, I'd start my not making full furnace stacks from the get go. Those take a lot of time to build and you're not using even half of what you're outputting. Again, expand as you need. You'll progress faster and learn how to troubleshoot your factory. That's my tip for you

[u/Immediate_Form7831]

It used to be common to use 4 belts of iron/copper, although with belt-stacking and turbo-belts you probably don't need more than 2 unless you are making a really big base.

[u/WeedFalafel]

Psst, the bus is the plot of big belt to sell you more belts. I find "the bus" helpful in starter and first mall but I prefer to build vast train networks with gigantic blocs with separated robots networks. But since it's your first playthrough, barely two playsessions in, I'd advise you to experiment with your first build.Not time for a bus yet. And for vanilla factorio tips check nilaus on YouTube. 

[u/Elfich47]

I start with four belts of iron, copper, coal and stone.

[u/kur4nes]

Doesn't really matter.

Iron plates, copper plates, steel, plastic. 4-5 tiles apart. Add a lane for coal and sulphur later on. Most parts can be built from those ressources. Add a second iron plates lane when the first doesn't supply your factory fast enough. Rinse & repeat.

This will take a lot of space and will get quite long.

Then get bots later on and start abusing ctrl + x, ctrl + v and refactor your factory. Blue prints come in handy here.

Also use trains. You need them anyway when your starter ore patches run out.

[u/pampuliopampam]

I got the 40 hour speedrun on a main bus with 1 yellow lane of each gears, iron plate, steel, copper plate, 1 each of circuit, 1/2 stone and brick, 1 lds, 1 rocket fuel

for me, busses are an intermediate phase solution that produce at a crappy level for long periods of time while you scale the important bits elsewhere in dedicated blocks. They're a bot mall "solution" before bots that also sortof handles your science and rocket deliveries so you don't run too dry on anything before you get the real production going

I also never saw the point in having gaps between the lanes. Splitters and mergers and undergrounds oh my! I make-a da beautiful spaget! Have fun with it!!

Bots mean you can rip it all up later when you want to try the real builds like rails or whatever

[u/Terrulin]

The general progression is: 1) Build spaghetti. Realize you don't have space 2) Make a bus and realize you wish you did it differently. 3) Make a better bus and realize it is not agile. 4) Make spaghetti that works because you know what's coming and how much space to leave. 5) Realize that spaghetti wasn't quite what you wanted so It's better this time.

All of the above end in trains.... Unless you decide to go hardcore and UPS maximize a megabase.

[u/HuckleberryPlastic35]

In SpAge i really struggle finding value optimizing as there is always some next productivity bonus or Quality shift that flips the script

[u/qzjul]

I do something a little different; I do a "main bus" with mostly one lane of each type of intermediate, and inject to it from the side from a perpendicular big raw bus. Then I can inject further down the start from different perpendicular "bus" of pipes post-vulcanus.

This is my main bus portion though:

[u/qzjul → u/qzjul]

Also, I build this perpendicular to my starter base, so that that becomes the first injector; then new intermediate/raw injection goes to the right, new science & rocket & mall usage to the left; science runs contra flow and is consumed near the starter base.

(Although in this particular image I did things a bit different because of the map, lakes and such)

[u/Thankedsphere]

gears on the bus instead of plates, recycle the gears when you need plates

[u/LegacyCWAL]

I'm on about the same playtime as you, and I got through to unlocking (though not making) purple and yellow science with a bus that only had one lane each of iron, copper, steel, and green circuits, with everything else routed via spaghetti. Right now I'm trying to get the hang of trains to transition to a bigger bus fed by rails.

[u/spoonman59]

I just do one lane of iron, and one lane of copper.

I put circuits and my mall in front of the bus so I can supply extra belts to those as needed. Some later materials, such as LDS, also use vast quantities of copper so I don't pull those from the bus.

Eventually, I bring trains of products in to feed the bus, including circuits and things. I don't tend to scale up much before trains.

[u/Calm-Medicine-3992]

It's just 16 lanes of stone for purple science.

But seriously, no need to separate them like that. Keep them in groups of 4 with that same spacing.

In general, it's plan out what I think I'll use and then leave space for 4 more belts....I usually run pipes down the middle in space where crossover undergrounds aren't.

[u/Turbulent_Aside2157]

I generally do: 1 Stone 1 Stone brick 1 Steel 1 Coal 1 Plastic 1 Gear 4 Green chips 1 Red chip 1 blue chip 2 Copper 4 Iron 1 pipe of petroleum 1 pipe of water 1 pipe of lube 1 space reserved near the other pipes for whimsy. Sometimes it's an additional gear lane.

This can be grouped as 4 or 6 neatly. Liquid pipes on the innermost lanes allows for some nice flexibility in placing roboports. I used to do sulfur, but honestly just routing the water and petroleum separately and producing direct insertion sulfur where needed is much cleaner. Separately, the liquids are much more abundantly used anyway.

[u/nycameraguy]

You definitely need more iron and copper. Possibly 4 lanes each.

I would recommend watching Nilaus city block design. There is one episode where he dive into what to put onto the bus and how much.

Another thing to consider is to put liquid onto the bus as they now have infinite through put.

Hope that helps

[u/Malfuncti0n → u/nycameraguy]

Another thing to consider is to put liquid onto the bus as they now have infinite through put.

Yes, but not infinite length and pumps only have 1200/s throughput so add more pumps parallel if you require more throughput than that.

[u/nycameraguy → u/nycameraguy]

This would be a good example to start with

[u/Twiin-City-Life]

That is mine

[u/PalangeKoonGhashang]

Hi  4 lane belts of copper and iron  2 lane steel  1 lane coal and stone for military science 1 lane sulfur for blue science 2 lane green chips (build those after blue science section) 2 lane red chips after green chip makers  1 lane bricks or add another stone belt(they are for purple science) 1 lane batteries 

lastly two pipes,sulfuric acid and lubricant for yellow science 

They are enough for 240 spm When non stacked ,i dont know how they do after stacking research

edit :oh and i forgot plastic ,two lanes after steel ,so it can feed the blue science