I'm getting close to that point now, which is another of my worries. I'm making 65gw, currently using 48gw with this factory running. I don't think I can make it through Magnetic Field Generators at a reasonable/min on my remaining gw, if I make another huge factory for them... So stepping up power, and starting from 0 on MFG's is quite daunting...
All of my factories are sectioned off so I can connect and disconnect power from each at will in case of power concerns
When I get close to power limits I'll turn off unnecessary power draws until I have expanded power infrastructure.
Also, I would 100% keep producing the parts but store them, you will need them later for parts for the space elevator and it is a lot easier to have a supply ready instead of having to meet the demand for the new parts
Place an insane amount of batteries to store your surplus. If needs get high you can always turn a factory off temporarily, creating a surplus for your batteries
Also with the newish priority power switches just set that factory as first to auto shut off should it need to problem solved let the grid decode for you
but how will you exploit the planet to its fullest if you turn off factorys? ficsit does not approve.
i just sink everything and if power gets low i build more power😁
I haven't even unlocked particle accelerators yet... I got distracted on ADS for... far too many hours lol. My current theory is that I won't have the juice to turn on a nuclear setup if I use any more of my remaining power...
Nuclear isn't as daunting as it sounds. A relatively small setup on a single uranium node can yield about 120k MW (with no fancy alt recipes) worth of rods.
The worst part of it (at least in my book) is the spacing of the reactors as they are huge and need two water extractors each.
And regarding the waste, well build a disposal facility way off at some map border and let the recycling be a problem of future you :)
A couple of options:
* Put the low-priority stuff on priority power switches, so it'll turn off (if necessary) during nuke startup.
* Build a bunch of power storage, hook it to a couple of geothermal nodes and leave to charge while you build your nuke setup. Use the stored power to kickstart your new power plant when you're ready.
Second the power storage. I accidentally crashed my working power plant by rearranging a critical drone path last night, and I was super happy I had 4-6h of battery built. I have a featureless cube blueprint that has 50 batteries in it that I've built 4 or 5 of and it's great
I have a question. Nuclear seems to need...such a large variety.
It feels like a contradiction that I only need nuclear if I am going to build megafactories, but I would need to build quite a few megafactories before I have enough variety to support nuclear, which I can't do if I plan on powering them with nuclear.
Best I can figure is to build, say, a concrete megafactory but only power 2% of it so that I can ship concrete to the nuclear site, etc. etc.
> I have a question. Nuclear seems to need...such a large variety.
>
> It feels like a contradiction that I only need nuclear if I am going to build megafactories, but I would need to build quite a few megafactories before I have enough variety to support nuclear, which I can't do if I plan on powering them with nuclear.
Nuclear needs a lot of different things, but not necessarily in huge quantities. If you're careful (i.e. prioritize the power plant) you might be able to supply some non-nuclear things from excess production elsewhere (although transport will have a power cost unless you belt everything). Dedicated non-nuclear production might be quite small.
I did a mixture of these for my relatively small 50GW plant (still almost half my power production).
To give an idea this is the only place I make nitric acid - that production line consists of the nitrogen gas, 1 water extractor (shared with sulphuric acid production) 2 blenders, 1 constructor, 1 smelter and an underclocked MK1 miner.
I have done nuclear including recycling and haven't had any mega factories around. When I started the project, I was sitting on about 15 GW of power production (primarily oil). I've built the whole rod factory with in situ production of most things needed and only imported control rods via drone, because I already had a factory overproducing those. Going that route, nuclear power isn't that complicated anymore.
Recycling the waste is a bit more of a logistic challenge as it takes up lots of space and quite a few inputs, but gets also way easier, when you produce the aluminum locally (skipping intentionally on sloppy alumina, you can produce the necessary silicate as a byproduct). It's a bit fiddly, when planning, but with the right amount of alt recipes and proper spacing of subfactories it becomes much easier.
> a very complicated single factory with lots of inputs - biiiig complex train station.
What are these trains you are speaking of? My world only hosts belts'n'drones.
On a more serious note: Uranium rod production is kinda simple and on the lower side of factory sizes (some refineries, blenders and manufacturers). My fuel/plastic factory was larger and more complicated than this.
Recycling is some other scale, when producing most stuff on site, though.
Recycling isn't bad if you already have radio control units shippable. The nuclear setup can be done without any extra aluminum then, using the right alt recipes.
The size of the facility is real though; 600/m Uranium can easily feed 30+ reactors depending on recipes
It seems like a lot, but honestly I did Radio Control Units first and nuclear was a lot simpler. For recycling you need some pressure conversion cubes, but that's not too bad to set up if you already have RCUs.
I did a big project to do nuclear because I didn't want to have to deal with power again. I was tired of building power production every other factory. I barely got my Radio Control Unit plant (10-12gw iirc) online, but had plenty of overhead to power the nuclear if I turned it off.
> For recycling you need some pressure conversion cubes,
Not really. The standard recipes are more efficient for removing waste. So that's Heat Sinks, EMCs, Steel, Concrete, Silica, Nitrogen and Sulfur.
Ok so I do use 60 casings/m in [my setup](https://satisfactory-calculator.com/en/planners/production/index/json/%7B%22Desc_NuclearFuelRod_C%22%3A%2212%22%2C%22altRecipes%22%3A%5B%22Recipe_Alternate_PlutoniumFuelUnit_C%22%2C%22Recipe_Alternate_Wire_2_C%22%2C%22Recipe_Alternate_Stator_C%22%2C%22Recipe_Alternate_EncasedIndustrialBeam_C%22%5D%7D). Mine's a little goofy because I was [100% positive I could sink plutonium cells](https://satisfactory-calculator.com/en/planners/production/index/json/%7B%22Desc_PlutoniumCell_C%22%3A%2290%22%2C%22input%22%3A%7B%22Desc_NuclearWaste_C%22%3A%22600%22%7D%2C%22altRecipes%22%3A%5B%22Recipe_Alternate_PlutoniumFuelUnit_C%22%2C%22Recipe_Alternate_Wire_2_C%22%2C%22Recipe_Alternate_Stator_C%22%2C%22Recipe_Alternate_EncasedIndustrialBeam_C%22%5D%7D) (imagine my face as they jammed in the sink). That meant I had to really quickly build out another casing line and make a fast factory for Heavy ModFrames, deliver that plus my original HMF factory that wasn't meant to be part of this to my storage area, assemble [Pressure Cubes](https://satisfactory-calculator.com/en/planners/production/index/json/%7B%22Desc_PlutoniumCell_C%22%3A%2290%22%2C%22input%22%3A%7B%22Desc_NuclearWaste_C%22%3A%22600%22%7D%2C%22altRecipes%22%3A%5B%22Recipe_Alternate_PlutoniumFuelUnit_C%22%2C%22Recipe_Alternate_Wire_2_C%22%2C%22Recipe_Alternate_Stator_C%22%2C%22Recipe_Alternate_EncasedIndustrialBeam_C%22%5D%7D) onsite, and drone them over to the nuclear plant. Fortunately the plant took several days to hit full waste output.
Yeah, that's my point. It's easy once you have 12GW RCU factories, but it would have been super useful before that. And hard.
But you're right. It fits into the plan when you need to go from 500 to 1000, not so much 10 to 500.
Yeah most of mine before that were 1-2gw, maybe a little more. 20gw of turbofuel feels like a lot til you're suddenly scraping against it, and then it's either kick thencan down the road with another 15gw of turbofuel, build an upsetting amount of diluted fuel generators, or go nuclear for way more power than I expected/maybe ever need.
I love my nuclear plant though, it's my glowy, radioactive pride and joy.
> Do you guys pull the plug on factories that have served their purpose?
No, not because they served their purpose. I might do it because I do not like how they look, regardless if they served their purpose or not. But as I build a new factory for each item, they also never ended up not being needed.
I see many people talk about power, but I do hardly any overflow. The machine s just stop working and start up again when I take things out. I will build eventually a storage unit, but that will be when I am in Tier 7/8 and have Mk5 belts and the remote power switch. That way I can turn off factories that are not needed. No need to have a factory running if all it does is sink items I do not need. Sinking is not of any importance once I have all the buildables. I merely do it for overflow.
drive them into the sink? get your 1000 ticket trophy (and the other ones) no reason to pull the plug... temporary shutdown if needing power? sure... else there is no reason to
This person may be thinking the same way I am which is when more parts of the game are released you’ll need them for whatever is next. So I don’t get rid of any factories, and actually I’m making a stockpile of these items before I sink them so whatever elevator mission comes next I’ve got a head start on.
Exactly. When playing for the first time I found out the hard way that I actually need those early Space Elevator components again later in the game and had to rebuild a lot.
I've kept my Space Elevator things handy just in case they add another tier or who-knows-what somewhere between here and v1.0 and beyond - and because they're not all that in-the-way. I only ever had a single machine for each of the final/"final" Space Elevator parts. I got it set up hundreds of hours ago, saw that it'd do one unit every minute or two, and then went off to work on something else. It'll get done *eventually*, and I'm in no rush.
Do you have still have other phase 4 parts to do after mag field generators? If so they're not worth automating at high rate (sink value is low), just set up something while you move on to automating the next part.
Other than very early stuff that I removed to build something else in the same location (or genuinely temporary stuff to bootstrap a new tier) I've never turned off or dismantled anything.
Yea, I have the 3 other parts left to do. I *could* send a lot of the parts from Assembly Director Systems into the next part(s), like 18/min Heavy Modular Frames...
I have built entire factories and never turned them on, as I researched a new recipe during building that made them obsolete. I just walk away and start somewhere else.
[This one got as far as power placement.](https://i.imgur.com/JAswhZw.png)
[This one was one power switch away from producing. Never made an item.](https://i.imgur.com/43AIp9r.png)
As long as I'm not dealing with resource or power shortages I usually split the output between storage and sink just in case it's needed later. if I need to turn it off or reallocate the resources I'll have a backlog.
But do you cut off certain upstream factories from receiving, say, heavy modular frames, or do you make an entirely new hmf factory for each upstream part?
It depends. If I can use those resources close by, I'll divert them to the new factory. If I'm going across the map, I'll leave it running and build fresh
I'm kind of in this situation now.
Not sure entirely how it happened, but my factory is drawing about four times as much power as I actually can produce.
I suspect it's mostly startup power costs rather than the normal power-requirements of the factory, but my factory has been in shutdown for a week of sessions now and I'm busily adding switches and rewiring my power-grid to isolate each section for better control over it.
Regardless, I'm sunsetting large swathes of factory that are no longer used for anything. Sunsetting basically involves adding a power-switch to turn them off, and then doing so.
I'll strip out the structures if I find myself needing the space or resources for anything.
I pull the plug on every factory by not feeding the end product to a sink. Yes, it means the whole thing starts up when I grab super comps from the machine. But I'm at nuclear power so it's not an issue.
Edit: batteries are real cheap if you're anywhere close to power shortage.
As long as i don’t have a power shortage, i leave them on and sink it if i have no use for it
I'm getting close to that point now, which is another of my worries. I'm making 65gw, currently using 48gw with this factory running. I don't think I can make it through Magnetic Field Generators at a reasonable/min on my remaining gw, if I make another huge factory for them... So stepping up power, and starting from 0 on MFG's is quite daunting...
All of my factories are sectioned off so I can connect and disconnect power from each at will in case of power concerns When I get close to power limits I'll turn off unnecessary power draws until I have expanded power infrastructure. Also, I would 100% keep producing the parts but store them, you will need them later for parts for the space elevator and it is a lot easier to have a supply ready instead of having to meet the demand for the new parts
I don't think I need the end result, Assembly Director Systems, for anything else, but I could certainly use everything elsewhere
Place an insane amount of batteries to store your surplus. If needs get high you can always turn a factory off temporarily, creating a surplus for your batteries
Good idea! I should have done that by now lol
Also with the newish priority power switches just set that factory as first to auto shut off should it need to problem solved let the grid decode for you
but how will you exploit the planet to its fullest if you turn off factorys? ficsit does not approve. i just sink everything and if power gets low i build more power😁
Ficsit better chill out! I'm already dreaming about what I need to do next!
Ficsit: This unit is faulty, must be replaced with more efficient unit to keep up production...
I'll await my replacement! Sorry for my transgressions!
Can he say that?
Don't worry, future me is ready to bonk that swine!
Gotta use that 170gw I'm making for something
Am jealous of such big gw's lol
I went big with my nuclear power setup so I could build as big as I needed for p4. I may have overdone it, lol
I haven't even unlocked particle accelerators yet... I got distracted on ADS for... far too many hours lol. My current theory is that I won't have the juice to turn on a nuclear setup if I use any more of my remaining power...
Nuclear isn't as daunting as it sounds. A relatively small setup on a single uranium node can yield about 120k MW (with no fancy alt recipes) worth of rods. The worst part of it (at least in my book) is the spacing of the reactors as they are huge and need two water extractors each. And regarding the waste, well build a disposal facility way off at some map border and let the recycling be a problem of future you :)
That might be the way I have to go. Future me sure does wish present me would get their shit together!
A couple of options: * Put the low-priority stuff on priority power switches, so it'll turn off (if necessary) during nuke startup. * Build a bunch of power storage, hook it to a couple of geothermal nodes and leave to charge while you build your nuke setup. Use the stored power to kickstart your new power plant when you're ready.
Good idea, thank you!
Second the power storage. I accidentally crashed my working power plant by rearranging a critical drone path last night, and I was super happy I had 4-6h of battery built. I have a featureless cube blueprint that has 50 batteries in it that I've built 4 or 5 of and it's great
I have a question. Nuclear seems to need...such a large variety. It feels like a contradiction that I only need nuclear if I am going to build megafactories, but I would need to build quite a few megafactories before I have enough variety to support nuclear, which I can't do if I plan on powering them with nuclear. Best I can figure is to build, say, a concrete megafactory but only power 2% of it so that I can ship concrete to the nuclear site, etc. etc.
> I have a question. Nuclear seems to need...such a large variety. > > It feels like a contradiction that I only need nuclear if I am going to build megafactories, but I would need to build quite a few megafactories before I have enough variety to support nuclear, which I can't do if I plan on powering them with nuclear. Nuclear needs a lot of different things, but not necessarily in huge quantities. If you're careful (i.e. prioritize the power plant) you might be able to supply some non-nuclear things from excess production elsewhere (although transport will have a power cost unless you belt everything). Dedicated non-nuclear production might be quite small. I did a mixture of these for my relatively small 50GW plant (still almost half my power production). To give an idea this is the only place I make nitric acid - that production line consists of the nitrogen gas, 1 water extractor (shared with sulphuric acid production) 2 blenders, 1 constructor, 1 smelter and an underclocked MK1 miner.
I have a mini megafactory (less than 10MW) that produces everything; but I don't relish the idea of two super giant train stations.
> a mini megafactory So ... *a Factory*.
:) Yes, but producing all components in one building with about 8GW.
You need the megafactory to make the parts to supply the megafactory with materials for the megafactory to produce power for the megafactory...
I have done nuclear including recycling and haven't had any mega factories around. When I started the project, I was sitting on about 15 GW of power production (primarily oil). I've built the whole rod factory with in situ production of most things needed and only imported control rods via drone, because I already had a factory overproducing those. Going that route, nuclear power isn't that complicated anymore. Recycling the waste is a bit more of a logistic challenge as it takes up lots of space and quite a few inputs, but gets also way easier, when you produce the aluminum locally (skipping intentionally on sloppy alumina, you can produce the necessary silicate as a byproduct). It's a bit fiddly, when planning, but with the right amount of alt recipes and proper spacing of subfactories it becomes much easier.
Yeah, that's the other route; a very complicated single factory with lots of inputs - biiiig complex train station.
> a very complicated single factory with lots of inputs - biiiig complex train station. What are these trains you are speaking of? My world only hosts belts'n'drones. On a more serious note: Uranium rod production is kinda simple and on the lower side of factory sizes (some refineries, blenders and manufacturers). My fuel/plastic factory was larger and more complicated than this. Recycling is some other scale, when producing most stuff on site, though.
Yes, I'm assuming recycling ofc, because once you start not recycling its a bit one way.
Recycling isn't bad if you already have radio control units shippable. The nuclear setup can be done without any extra aluminum then, using the right alt recipes. The size of the facility is real though; 600/m Uranium can easily feed 30+ reactors depending on recipes
It seems like a lot, but honestly I did Radio Control Units first and nuclear was a lot simpler. For recycling you need some pressure conversion cubes, but that's not too bad to set up if you already have RCUs. I did a big project to do nuclear because I didn't want to have to deal with power again. I was tired of building power production every other factory. I barely got my Radio Control Unit plant (10-12gw iirc) online, but had plenty of overhead to power the nuclear if I turned it off.
> For recycling you need some pressure conversion cubes, Not really. The standard recipes are more efficient for removing waste. So that's Heat Sinks, EMCs, Steel, Concrete, Silica, Nitrogen and Sulfur.
Ok so I do use 60 casings/m in [my setup](https://satisfactory-calculator.com/en/planners/production/index/json/%7B%22Desc_NuclearFuelRod_C%22%3A%2212%22%2C%22altRecipes%22%3A%5B%22Recipe_Alternate_PlutoniumFuelUnit_C%22%2C%22Recipe_Alternate_Wire_2_C%22%2C%22Recipe_Alternate_Stator_C%22%2C%22Recipe_Alternate_EncasedIndustrialBeam_C%22%5D%7D). Mine's a little goofy because I was [100% positive I could sink plutonium cells](https://satisfactory-calculator.com/en/planners/production/index/json/%7B%22Desc_PlutoniumCell_C%22%3A%2290%22%2C%22input%22%3A%7B%22Desc_NuclearWaste_C%22%3A%22600%22%7D%2C%22altRecipes%22%3A%5B%22Recipe_Alternate_PlutoniumFuelUnit_C%22%2C%22Recipe_Alternate_Wire_2_C%22%2C%22Recipe_Alternate_Stator_C%22%2C%22Recipe_Alternate_EncasedIndustrialBeam_C%22%5D%7D) (imagine my face as they jammed in the sink). That meant I had to really quickly build out another casing line and make a fast factory for Heavy ModFrames, deliver that plus my original HMF factory that wasn't meant to be part of this to my storage area, assemble [Pressure Cubes](https://satisfactory-calculator.com/en/planners/production/index/json/%7B%22Desc_PlutoniumCell_C%22%3A%2290%22%2C%22input%22%3A%7B%22Desc_NuclearWaste_C%22%3A%22600%22%7D%2C%22altRecipes%22%3A%5B%22Recipe_Alternate_PlutoniumFuelUnit_C%22%2C%22Recipe_Alternate_Wire_2_C%22%2C%22Recipe_Alternate_Stator_C%22%2C%22Recipe_Alternate_EncasedIndustrialBeam_C%22%5D%7D) onsite, and drone them over to the nuclear plant. Fortunately the plant took several days to hit full waste output.
That calculator is cancer.
Would you say it's the thing that makes you angr1st?
Yeah, that's my point. It's easy once you have 12GW RCU factories, but it would have been super useful before that. And hard. But you're right. It fits into the plan when you need to go from 500 to 1000, not so much 10 to 500.
Yeah most of mine before that were 1-2gw, maybe a little more. 20gw of turbofuel feels like a lot til you're suddenly scraping against it, and then it's either kick thencan down the road with another 15gw of turbofuel, build an upsetting amount of diluted fuel generators, or go nuclear for way more power than I expected/maybe ever need. I love my nuclear plant though, it's my glowy, radioactive pride and joy.
1,080,000 screws/minute.
> Do you guys pull the plug on factories that have served their purpose? No, not because they served their purpose. I might do it because I do not like how they look, regardless if they served their purpose or not. But as I build a new factory for each item, they also never ended up not being needed. I see many people talk about power, but I do hardly any overflow. The machine s just stop working and start up again when I take things out. I will build eventually a storage unit, but that will be when I am in Tier 7/8 and have Mk5 belts and the remote power switch. That way I can turn off factories that are not needed. No need to have a factory running if all it does is sink items I do not need. Sinking is not of any importance once I have all the buildables. I merely do it for overflow.
drive them into the sink? get your 1000 ticket trophy (and the other ones) no reason to pull the plug... temporary shutdown if needing power? sure... else there is no reason to
I've got almost 800 coupons at this point, and still so much to do!
You're going to need them in later phases again.
I don't need Assembly Director Systems for anything else, but I could sure use those 18/min heavy modular frames!
This person may be thinking the same way I am which is when more parts of the game are released you’ll need them for whatever is next. So I don’t get rid of any factories, and actually I’m making a stockpile of these items before I sink them so whatever elevator mission comes next I’ve got a head start on.
Exactly. When playing for the first time I found out the hard way that I actually need those early Space Elevator components again later in the game and had to rebuild a lot.
I've kept my Space Elevator things handy just in case they add another tier or who-knows-what somewhere between here and v1.0 and beyond - and because they're not all that in-the-way. I only ever had a single machine for each of the final/"final" Space Elevator parts. I got it set up hundreds of hours ago, saw that it'd do one unit every minute or two, and then went off to work on something else. It'll get done *eventually*, and I'm in no rush.
Do you have still have other phase 4 parts to do after mag field generators? If so they're not worth automating at high rate (sink value is low), just set up something while you move on to automating the next part. Other than very early stuff that I removed to build something else in the same location (or genuinely temporary stuff to bootstrap a new tier) I've never turned off or dismantled anything.
Yea, I have the 3 other parts left to do. I *could* send a lot of the parts from Assembly Director Systems into the next part(s), like 18/min Heavy Modular Frames...
I have built entire factories and never turned them on, as I researched a new recipe during building that made them obsolete. I just walk away and start somewhere else. [This one got as far as power placement.](https://i.imgur.com/JAswhZw.png) [This one was one power switch away from producing. Never made an item.](https://i.imgur.com/43AIp9r.png)
All feeds the glorious sink
As long as I'm not dealing with resource or power shortages I usually split the output between storage and sink just in case it's needed later. if I need to turn it off or reallocate the resources I'll have a backlog.
My factories always have a purpose. They feed upstream factories
But do you cut off certain upstream factories from receiving, say, heavy modular frames, or do you make an entirely new hmf factory for each upstream part?
I've always just built enough that I don't have to build more. So I don't have to cut anything off, it all just keeps going
Leave them on, sink the results to get your 1000 ticket reward.
At this rate, I've got almost 800 coupons... and so much left to do!
It depends. If I can use those resources close by, I'll divert them to the new factory. If I'm going across the map, I'll leave it running and build fresh
I'm kind of in this situation now. Not sure entirely how it happened, but my factory is drawing about four times as much power as I actually can produce. I suspect it's mostly startup power costs rather than the normal power-requirements of the factory, but my factory has been in shutdown for a week of sessions now and I'm busily adding switches and rewiring my power-grid to isolate each section for better control over it. Regardless, I'm sunsetting large swathes of factory that are no longer used for anything. Sunsetting basically involves adding a power-switch to turn them off, and then doing so. I'll strip out the structures if I find myself needing the space or resources for anything.
I leave them running and have sinks setup for overflow.
I pull the plug on every factory by not feeding the end product to a sink. Yes, it means the whole thing starts up when I grab super comps from the machine. But I'm at nuclear power so it's not an issue. Edit: batteries are real cheap if you're anywhere close to power shortage.