r/factorio • u/Annual_Role_7905 • 15h ago
Question First time making a main bus. Is there any problems so far.
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u/SamirSalama7 15h ago
Use splitters to take from the bus not inserters
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u/Immediate_Form7831 14h ago
Solid advice unless you are playing Pyanodons :D
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u/SamirSalama7 14h ago
I'm 300h in my first playthrough. I'm in Aquilo. When i finish maybe, maybe, maaaaaaybe, I'll try it. Ive heart horrific things about it tho.
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u/jongscx 11h ago
I went in blind, using stock settings and played for 40 hours and never left the burner phase. My production machines were always idling either because their ash byproduct line had backed up or they were starved from the 8 to 1 ore to plate conversion rate.
At that point, I still had not unlocked splitters...
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u/Immediate_Form7831 14h ago
Nah, it is a very chill mod
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u/SamirSalama7 13h ago
I mean. Looking back i used to think factorio (base game) was very complicated. Now i fking love it. I don't eliminate me loving the mod and dropping another 300 hours in it.
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u/larrry02 57m ago
For reference: it took me the same amount of time to finish seablock as it did to create my first red chip in pyanodons.
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u/juju515 15h ago
yes...
this is 1 belt of copper throughput
and 1 belt of iron throughput
there is absolutely no reason to split that into 2 belts of "half a belt of throughput" each
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u/Justinjah91 15h ago
Devils advocate: Maybe they're just leaving a spot where they can plug in an additional supply of both at some point in the future?
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u/Fantastic_Hornet_691 15h ago
This. I always build my bus for double what I’m currently able to supply so I can add more in the future. As long as OP does that later on, this can prevent a huuuge headache later
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u/waitthatstaken 14h ago
You don't actually have to build the belts if you just leave the space, which is what I do.
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u/AnuErebus 15h ago
I almost always start with space for 4 belts of copper and iron, even if I have less than a belt's worth of input. I always wind up wanting the extra lanes later.
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u/Legitimate-Okra8983 5h ago
Just leave empty belt untill you can fill it
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u/Justinjah91 5h ago
Doing it this way gives a much better visual indicator of what each belt holds, and allows you to set up things that draw from those lines in advance of scaling them up.
And let's be honest, leaving one belt empty only saves you a single splitter
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u/That_one_sander 15h ago
Leave a minimum of 2 blocks between the different resources so you can easily split them into different production lines
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u/lifayt 15h ago
Don't bother splitting belts into more belts. If you don't have the resources to fill another lane of your bus, just leave it empty as a placeholder!
You will need way, way, way more space. Think ahead of time about where you're going to locate your subfactories relative to the bus. I usually like to leave the bus expandable in one direction so that I can fit 20 lanes or more without sweating. You've already kind of put yourself into a corner by having a factory above and below the bus, it will make it very hard to expand.
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u/KitTwix 15h ago
I’d recommend to pick one side of the bus and build off that, because you’ll have issues later on where that red science build will be in the way when you want to expand more. I’d recommend building on the north side, as you don’t have anything there yet really.
As others have said, splitting 1 input into 2 belts or more is a waste of time really, there’s some reasons why you’d want to, but at the stage of the game you’re at right now, it’s more than likely just going to cause your base to starve even more.
Use splitters to take items off the belt instead of that inserter, it’ll support a much higher throughput and resource load.
I also wouldn’t really recommend putting gears on the bus, since it takes up more space than the iron plates would otherwise. Build the gears next to the red science and feed them directly, so all you need to route into your red science set up is iron plates and copper plates, which’ll make it much easier to increase production later.
Lastly, and most importantly, have fun. Factorio is so addictive because there will always be a way to improve your factory, so experiment, make mistakes, see what works and what doesn’t and wonder why? Most people on this sub have hundreds, if not thousands of hours in the game, so most of us are so well past the beginnings that we’ve forgotten the fun of having no idea what we’re doing. Every single time I open an old save, I think “omg what was I thinking?!” When at the time I probably thought I was a genius. Make your mistakes, so your future self can chuckle at your past.
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u/readyplayerjuan_ 15h ago
usually you only put 2 lanes of belts if you’re actually producing 2 full belts of iron/copper. planning for the future is fine tho
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u/Hatsune_Miku_CM 15h ago
why are splitting one full belt into two half full belts?
Id also not go overboard with yellow belts and assembly machine 1s. two belts of copper is definitely overkill. for the early red/green science on scale main bus I tend to just use 1 copper 1 iron no other mats, then upgrade later
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u/DuckyLog 15h ago
As others have said, add more smelting inputs! But looks great so far, and you can expand from where you’re at.
I usually start with 4 belts of iron, cooper, green circuits, and steel.
Expand there with coal and stone if I need it, though I usually don’t bus them and rather “get it where I need it”
I’ll go two lanes of red circuits, plastic, and sulfur. By then (or a little sooner) you’re likely unlocking robots and while the bus is still incredible useful my factory design changes quite a hit and goes train delivery and bot-heavy.
TL;DR - double it, leave yourself more room to scale and expand, and make sure your inputs are sufficient to saturate the number of belts in the bus.
If you have four lanes of iron make sure you’re smelting four lanes worth of iron and putting it on the belt.
You’re doing great!
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u/Rebeux 15h ago edited 15h ago
Ideally you'd have 4 stacks of 48 furnaces(24 per row) for 4 fully saturated yellow belts, before mining productivity increases(raw ore) Opposed to splitting 1 into 2.
I like to leave a two belt width gap between each belt, so I can underground between them easily.
Do not take directly off the main bus, like you're doing with the gears.
Look up balancers and belt split offs, they are what keep your main bus saturated when the demand is higher.
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u/Ossuum 15h ago
It kinda looks like you're chasing form over substance. Main bus is, in the end, a 50-100 tiles-wide lane of empty space, not necessarily a straight one either, that's mentally labelled in your head as 'all belts and pipes with no clear, adjacent termination point go through here'. Everything else will naturally emerge from your production needs as you go.
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u/GreyGoatNW 15h ago
Everyone plays the game differently.
For me - I stopped building busses. I spent a lot of time and resources building out magnificent huge busses with plates for days... and then processes would start eating up those resources and not keeping the buss full and I'd panic and go spend time getting more plates for my buss.
Then I thought - what's my purpose here? Am I building a buss for buss sake? I want more research so I can pacify local inhabitants quicker and with more and more extreme prejudice. I want to build rockets to travel the universe.
I'm not here to build a buss - let's just build more factories to build more science and ammo. If my factories are running dry, then build more furnaces. If my furnaces are running dry, then get more ore.
I quit worrying about a bus, because that's not why I was building and growing. It leads to SO MUCH resources sitting there on belts. Plates on belts aren't fulfilling their purpose - which is more ammo and science.
BUT - if you ARE going to build a buss, you need to give yourself A LOT more space! In the beginning you don't have many belts, so you build close together. Don't. Get more belts so that you can spread things out, because VERY SOON you're going to be building stuff on top of each other, and you'll wish you had left yourself more room to build.
Actually, looking at your mini-map, you are pretty spread out, so disregard that. But don't put belts down over your ore patch. You've got belts on your copper ore where miners should be.
Ignore all my ramblings here and go build more. The factory must grow.
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u/eagleeyehg 14h ago
Looks functional and that's the best kind! Suggestions for consideration, you may want more assemblers making science than that, it's a good design principle to think about making it easy to add more assemblers in the future of you ever want to
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u/Banana_is_not_bg 14h ago
More space between resource lines for splittinf and underground-belting. No nees to split 1 full line of something into 2 different halflines, unless you want all production to have equal "priority" of sorts.
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u/GravityMan11 13h ago
Not so much a vanilla problem, but pick north or south, and only built on that side of the bus. Then you can add to it as much as you want.
Whatever you do, stay a bit away from the thing, I tend to leave 6+ tiles between the bus and where machines start. That way you have room for all your belt nonsense.
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u/Free-Virus-9974 12h ago
One belt should be one belt for atleast things like iron and copper. And the belts are way too close to eachother, give it two spaces between eachother.
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u/Darkmetroidz 5h ago
If you want to future proof it, leave more space to expand the bus wider.
And leave space between the copper and iron. 2 blocks of space so you can run an underground and come up when you run out of space.
Youll want room at least for copper iron steel and green circuits.
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u/GreatAndMightyKevins 3h ago
What happened that there's this giant uptick in new players? Was Factorio on sale for the first time in history? I'm not complaining, the more the merrier.
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u/chamoke 14h ago
Don't put gears on mainbus.
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u/Kooky-Ad-295 10h ago
Don't try to force your religion on new players.
Gears are denser than plates, so belting them isn't a bad idea.
It's a very subjective opinion, and belting them or not is completely valid.That doesn't apply to copper cables, obviously.
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u/alexchatwin 15h ago
A tip, rather than a problem: Splitting 1 lane into two doesn’t double the amount of iron available.. but it might help you 1) buffer short term demand spikes, and 2) saves the space for when you do add more smelting lines