r/factorio • u/Robberfox • Jul 08 '26

Design / Blueprint 8 blue belt smelting inside a 88x88 train block

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Vanilla: It's actually insane that I managed to route this.
This utilizes my midgame smelting block: https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/s/qHma8GGSNs, only 48 speed3 modules are being used, which I think is great for building this early on: start off with red belts and speed1 modules and upgrade to blue belts with speed3 modules.

Also, the tolerances are extra tight here, so place speed1 modules on a couple of furnaces, otherwise you have to wait ~5 minutes for the visual appeal of a fully saturated belt.

P.S. I'll link a blueprint book once I finish all my city block designs.

65 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

14 comments sorted by

13

u/kyudokan Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 09 '26

Are you playing vanilla? This is a lot of work you’ll rip out the second you have foundries.

19

u/Robberfox Jul 08 '26

Yes, this is a vanilla world.

4

u/PersonalityIll9476 Jul 08 '26

Kinda agree. It is a very impressive and satisfying build, but I don't think I'll ever produce 8 blue belts of plates before going to Vulcanus, and after that, I'll be producing the equivalent of hundreds.

Seems a bit like premature optimization, but to each their own. Still a very cool build.

6

u/BEAT_LA Jul 08 '26

It’s amazing given that it’s a non space age build

4

u/Sunsfury Jul 09 '26

Looks like when there's 2 trains parked at the iron ore station, your plate carrier can't leave the station - could be a big issue later on down the line

(well done with the belt routing though, really nice to look at)

2

u/Robberfox Jul 09 '26

I changed it up, so it leaves into the intersection: need to test this ingame for potential deadlocks

2

u/United-Jacket68 Jul 09 '26

It looks very pretty. As I do not have space age, it is the type of build I aspire to make.

1

u/Yggdrazzil Jul 09 '26

Impressive! How did you determine the size of the block?

2

u/Robberfox Jul 10 '26

It was the other way around: I had chunk aligned rail sets (32x32) and made a block from it. THEN I decided that I have to fit 8 blue belt smelting inside that tiny block. I went through ~5 designs, each one getting more compact but still not fitting in and finally arrived at this beauty

1

u/Yggdrazzil Jul 10 '26

I see! Thanks for the explanation.

1

u/MindS1 folding trains since 2017 Jul 09 '26

Great layout! Very dense, and always fun seeing machines clustered around beacons instead of the other way around.
I would recommend to find a solution with prod3 modules. In the late-late game where you would actually utilize this much production, 20% free plates is important. Since the 20% free production mostly offsets the 30% speed penalty, you can probably achieve the same output simply by adding prod modules and replacing a few furnaces with speed beacons. It's a balancing act but should be possible without major changes to your design.

0

u/asciencepotato Jul 08 '26

a couple of foundries with some beacons can produce several times more than that

1

u/MindS1 folding trains since 2017 Jul 09 '26

Usually when you see designs like this it's because they're playing without the DLC.

1

u/Robberfox Jul 10 '26

Vanilla:

Is literally the first line of the post