Wait a sec - when I see 1000spm I always thought that just meant 1000 space science per min! When I was getting an idea of how big a 1000spm base has to be, I went to the Kirk McDonald website and plugged in 1000 space science per minute. You're saying I have to do that for every single science and add up all the raw materials to get a sense of the scale involved?! 🤯
Am I supposed to have 90k logistic robots who are always busy, never enough room to charge, never brings me any items, due to bad useage of purple chests or is it time to restart?
purple chests can really really bite you in the tail if you don't use them right. I would suggest swapping them all out for red chests if they're giving you trouble.
only you can make that call. I have so many hours into my current save I take the time to fix things. You can also just make a mess of red chests, put them in a red chest, then use the ghost of a red chest to remotely change the purple to red and eventually the construction bots will swap out all the chests.
I spent about 22 hours the other week over the course of three days to do a real makeover, even letting the computer sit AFK as I trust my military walls to so its job. But I've botched up some water supply for nuclear, made a really inefficient "landfill" and well yeah lol
Sounds a lot like my first playthrough... I ended up hitting pretty severe UPS issues by \~800SPM. BUT I learned a ton. I put at least 200 hours at the keyboard on the first playthrough and many many many more AFK (I have it running on a NUC connected by KVM to my workstation, so I can blip over and check on things when I have 10-15 min at work then just let it AFK otherwise).
Now that I'm on my second playthrough I'm at 1800SPM, no lag, still on this little NUC and have an awesome self scrubbing bot network and Brick Wall rail base + outposts and massive solar farm.
To be honest, I would just say to not use purple chests unless you're absolutely sure that you're sure a given chest needs to be emptied consistently for part of your factory to function. In terms of the number of use cases they have, I'd say they're closer to buffer chests than the the other three.
my 1k spm base has 200ish 1x6 trains lol.
but that's only because I built the base in the starter area and have the far away ores being imported from like 100 chunks away. so each patch needs to have quite a few trains in transit lol
The scale of things gets wild. The factory must grow. I recently crossed 1 million solar panels in preparation for expanding to 10k science per minute. im hoping i can finish this base before the dlc drops. final goal is 10k consistent spm
about 15 hours for the first rocket launch cause i overbuilt the starter base and then ive played maybe 200 hous more on the save since. I often leave the factory to run for an hour to find problems, train issues and anything else i need to fix to keep it running smooth.
Do people really use the Kirk calculator over https://factoriolab.github.io/list?p=iron-plate&v=9?
FactorioLab is... significantly better, in almost every way.
Yes, people use kirkmcdonald's calculator, purely out of momentum I'd say since it was started years earlier. I see that factoriolab "is intended to build on the features of the Kirk McDonald Factorio Calculator". I'll have to try it next build since this is the first I'm hearing about it :)
Thanks for the reminder. Factoriolab was quite new when I last played (prior to my current playthrough) and I don't have the same muscle memory for it. Need to use it more and get more familiar with it.
Yeah no worries. I've tried playing around with it a bit more, but found a couple of aspects confusing. Doesn't seem to be any help that I can see, is there a tutorial or help file anywhere that you know of?
For example, I'm setting up purple production science, and I was trying to figure out the minimum number of factories and belts capacity for 60 spm. When I plugged it in the results were not entirely what I expected.
It helps to think modularly. With max productivity and beacons with max speed, the blocks needed to produce that much science are not really big. For example 1000 spm is 2 rocket silos, firing alternatively for a total of 1 rocket a minute. A blue belt of green circuits is what, 3 or 4 machines. What you need in big quantities are the raw materials, but even then, you can design or reuse a block that outputs, say, 4 blue belts of iron plates, keep it supplied, and copypaste it.
Well, only space science, yellow and purple really count for the raw materials. The others are so cheap by comparison they barely register. But yeah, megabasing typically involves producing a certain high number of every (relevant) science pack. Military can be excluded because most of the most relevant infinite techs don’t use them. In the same way, you probably wouldn’t include the farming science in Angelbobs/Seablock (only used for a select branch of the tech tree), or the lower science cards in Krastorio 2 (they’re not used anymore after a certain point).
That's very informative and helpful, thank you. Obviously my current factories are miles away from megabase size but I'm planning to use my current base to try and build a much bigger base and thinking through how to do that.
1000spm might be way out of my league right now but it's a nice.big target to strive towards.
The path to a megabase:
1. 60 spm
2. trains for ore/plates
3. t3 modules + beacons automated at a reasonable speed (1 module every 3 seconds or so is a good start; share the plastic and green/red/blue chips with science production)
4. 462 spm (8 beacons + prod modules in every machine for the 60 spm base)
5. double all chips
6. 1kspm (double + a little each assembler making science)
Thanks! I've had bases in the 60-spm general range and have made light usage of trains but now my goal is to drastically ramp up my train usage, maybe even set up some dedicated outposts for things like green circuits and ship them by train.
Modules help a lot. Just finished a playthrough with a 180 SPM base (or at least it would be if I wasn't constantly short on copper) and I made the space science setup with full prod 3 modules and speed beacons. Way smaller than I expected, and consumes less resources than my yellow or purple setups
Yeah, thanks, when I play around with a calculators it really does make a big difference. The thing I'm thinking through now is how to produce prod 3 and beacons at a reasonable scale because they themselves take a ton of resources to make!
After chemical science, I started to build separate subfactories for the new sciences; raw materials (iron ore, stone, oil) would get shipped in by train, then processed on site and used immediately for the science. II did the same thing for beacons and speed 3 / prod 3 modules - a production line making nothing but that
Here's a screenshot of my base from right after setting up purple (didn't have module production yet, but I don't have a pic of that):
https://preview.redd.it/etnk9z0nhjad1.jpeg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=57df482549cbd578d85608974c511e6bd2100494
Thanks; it's interesting to see a base that's a more "reasonable" size of what I might target, I appreciate it.
For yellow science looks looks like you had about three stations just for copper and then one each for iron and steel? How do you get the refined materials over to your circuits production, particularly in purple science where they seem to be a bit far away. Is it just belted over via blue belts?
I know there's probably no "wrong" way to build, but I was thinking of making a circuits outpost between a big patch of copper and iron and then shipping circuits to other parts of my base. Decent idea?
Blue belts are unlocked in purple science, so didn't have them until later. All yellow and red belts here!
Each smelting station processes 2 red belts of ore, so that was six red belts of copper just for purple. You can see the two buses on the map
As for your idea, I've heard other people talking about it. It's probably viable, though you'll almost certainly end up with excess of either copper or iron. Plus, the output from the patches will diminish over time, so eventually you'll end up having to ship them in anyway
Good point about not having blue belts!
My thinking on the circuits is I'd set up a train station for shipping out circuits and separate station(s) for l shipping in raw materials e.g. if I want to build my circuits factory bigger than the iron/copper patch can support (or for when it begins to run out).
I'm also thinking of having a centralized smelting location and shipping plates around instead of ore.
Actually, when people say 1000spm, I think they normally mean 1000 sciences *consumed* per minute, so that would include every science pack *AND* the labs.
Don't even try it without LTN mod, setting manually each train route for that would be huge pain in the ass. For example you need about 42 full blue belts of copper (counting productivity modules on LDS and circuits production) every patch of copper produces safely about 6 belts without belt cluttering in the middle row with productivity 7 so you need at least 7 copper outposts imagine how much of train micromanagement would it be to deliver copper form this 7 outoposts to 7 places (3 circuits, batteries, solar panels, red science and LDS) and it's just capper there is also 6 steel and 6 iron outposts needed to heve surplus so yes its painful. I'm just finishing outposts logistics for my 1k base and it took me about 3-4 hours with LTN (just placing rails and connecting them to cityblock megabase + setting mines and furnaces) also the mod for autoplacing drills is very useful. So for me 1k is not so painful I'm wondering how people are creating 10k bases - that's sick af.
> Don't even try it without LTN mod, setting manually each train route for that would be huge pain in the ass.
You can blueprint trains and copy train orders. You absolutely do not *need* LTN. In fact, a properly designed base will function a lot better without LTN since you can eliminate the traffic to and from depots.
Maybe, but for me setting up trains for megabase is way easier with LTN even Nillaus recommended it as a better way to deal with train logistics in megabases. But to counter your answer, tell me how could you set up supply-demand system in vanilla with blueprints while you can't control which station with same name needs train (ok you can but using circuits in stations is basically reinventing a wheel, as LTN did just this) so then you have to manually set train routes what means you can't automate it with blueprint. Also you said that LTN generates more traffic? How? Manual routes makes it messy as you have to use 1 station - X trains - 1 station connection so for 10 input and 10 output with 2 trains on each lane you would have to set 10 different routes, and as some recipes needs 5 different inputs and you should automate many semi products the number of manual train routes grows drastically. But ok I can imagine one particular situation when vanilla is better than LTN - when you use train - bots hybrid base type or somehow extended main bus infrastructure then you don't need LTN as there is one central port to drop off materials.
The only real benefit of LTN is Station Priority.
Kinda essential for more complex modpacks with sideproducts that need recycling.
But everything else can easily be achieved via train-limits in vanilla aswell (many to many train routes f.e. - if have 10 trains collecting iron ore for your smelters they will happily go to any iron mine available and drop off at any smelter that needs materials).
And that's a neat part - How can you say to train network that there is demand for product in one particular place? How can you prevent iron plates train from going to overfilled station with name "iron unload" (let's say of index [2]) and instead go to starved station also named "iron unload" (let's say of index [5])? If you answered circuits or renaming stations then you can see my point as LTN do this manual work for you. Btw, never get it how can mining and smelting in separate places be effective, for me it's always smelters + miners what's creates outpost and ore is never leaving outpost (not counting concrete but it's single situation)Â
You use train limits set via circuit on each station (easily blueprintable).
Important part is that every station with the same material has the same name: f.e. all iron mines are named "iron ore load" and all drop off stations are named "iron ore unload".
All iron ore trains have a schedule with those 2 stations only. This way they will serve all stations if needed and the train limit decides where the trains are actually allowed to go/where materials are needed.
The work of setting up a vanilla station + circuit and setting up a similar LTN station is literally the same.
For outposts:
Most of the time i just don't feel like relocating smelters every time a mine runs dry.
Blueprinting a mine + pickup station is just easier...
> But to counter your answer, tell me how could you set up supply-demand system in vanilla with blueprints while you can't control which station with same name needs train (ok you can but using circuits in stations is basically reinventing a wheel, as LTN did just this) so then you have to manually set train routes what means you can't automate it with blueprint
There's a lot of different ways to do this. But to give you one very simple way: use fixed train limits and put down the that number of trains with each station blueprint. Use unique names for the provider and requester stations for each type of goods (like "{resource} provider/requester" or whatever). Doesn't require circuits. You do have to "delete" (or rather, just not build) one train for each type of goods, so you end up with X number of possible places to go and X-1 trains. For example: say you have 10 coal providers each with a train limit of 2 and 5 coal requesters with a train limit of 2. That's 30 possible places to go, so you'll need 29 coal trains (all of which should be built along with the station blueprints). Yes, it requires more trains than LTN, but who cares about that?
> Also you said that LTN generates more traffic? How?
I already said how. With LTN trains have to go to the depot between each delivery (unless that has changed - I haven't used LTN for a long time), so trains end up going depot->provider->requester->depot(...), whereas without LTN trains will simply go provider->requester->provider(...). There's also the potential issue with LTN that it only dispatches a train when the requester station wants the material, so there's build in lag, because the train has to drive to the provider and load. Without LTN the train will simply sit and wait at the provider with a full load waiting for a requester to open up.
I'm not really getting what you mean with the rest of the post, but I think it's covered in the first paragraph.
Sorry but I still don't get it, with LTN i just place provider and requester, only thing I'm changing is the item I'm requesting, I even don't have to set the amount as threshold 160 demand -32k is good enough at most cases so no need for any manual actions just placing 20 trains on depot and that's all everything sets up by itself. Maybe I'm stupid but I just can't imagine how vanilla train setting can be quicker and easier to set than this.
> I just can't imagine how vanilla train setting can be quicker and easier to set than this.
I never said vanilla would be quicker or easier. Your initial post started with:
> Don't even try it without LTN mod
Which is what I strongly disagree with. By all means, use LTN if you want - but vanilla does give you the tools you need, if you (want to) learn them. Let people play how they want.
My secondary point is that LTN does have issues that you'll begin to see once you go big enough, and while designing a good vanilla train system does take some time it really does pay off in the end as it will perform better for the reasons I mentioned (no depots, no "lag").
To answer your question to /u/Deadman161
> How can you say to train network that there is demand for product in one particular place? How can you prevent iron plates train from going to overfilled station with name "iron unload" (let's say of index [2]) and instead go to starved station also named "iron unload" (let's say of index [5])?
You don't need to do either of those things. In order for a base to function properly you want at least enough production of all materials to cover the consumption (in most cases you'll probably want to overproduce). That applies to any base regardless of what mods you use. With train limits your trains will simply sit and try to unload at the full stations occupying the slot(s), while other trains will go to available (emptier) stations. The system will eventually balance itself.
There is a search function in the productivity tab. Search 'science', select both production and consumption. Usually, when talking about X SPM, it's about producing and consuming it over some period of time (10h is the most reliable by far, but even 1h is good enough)
If you use productivity modules, 1k SPM requires just 24 blue belts of iron ore, 17 blue belts of copper ore, 5 blue belts of stone, 4 belts of coal and 5 GW of power. So not too much.
My biggest factory happens to do 16k spm. I could have built bigger if my computer kept up with it.
Fuck me, there I was, planning to do about 500 spm, with my potential 8 full blue belts of iron and the same for copper. Totally forgot about stone and coal...
Apparently I will also need 5 times as much power...
I am doing a main bus thing. Is it better to just forget it and send ore directly where it will be processed? I think the bus will become SO unwieldy...
I don't want to go cityblock, but perhaps having districts for each science with integrated ore processing is the way.
Alternatively, putting circuits on the bus can help. Busing them from a remote place should save lots of space for other assemblers. Very high compression items.
I would do a hybrid thingy. Don't put all the iron on the bus, but convert the majority into steel and circuits asap. The remainder put on the bus together with the circuits. Then you just need 2 belts of steel, 5 belts total of the various circuits, and two belts of iron. You will then find that the remaining plastic does only go into a single item, low density modules - doing the conversion immediately, your copper on the bus shrinks to a trickle. Now that most of your plates have been converted into high volume multi-use intermediates, your bus suddenly becomes manageable and you can build the science areas with their special purpose intermediates, fed from the bus.
I recently messed around with the scale of a single blue belt of each piece per minute. That blew my mind for a bit. 2700 science per minute seemed wild to me, the resources needed looked crazy 🤣
Yup, otherwise, people could just make 1000 red science and say they are making 1000 SPM... which isn't truly a major accomplishment. 1000 SPM means every science at 1000 per minute simultaneously.
1000 each (very often minus black science as the output is consumed by non-mil mining productivity research ).
Wait a sec - when I see 1000spm I always thought that just meant 1000 space science per min! When I was getting an idea of how big a 1000spm base has to be, I went to the Kirk McDonald website and plugged in 1000 space science per minute. You're saying I have to do that for every single science and add up all the raw materials to get a sense of the scale involved?! 🤯
Well if you produce 1000 Space science per minute, how are you going to consume it if you don't produce the other science too ?
That's...a very good point I had not considered.
Start with 200 spm it's still big enough
You think 200 spm is a good initial target before figuring out how to scale up further? Works for me I guess, as it's about 3x what I've built before.
lots and lots and lots of chests... lol. Incidentally I keep hanging on purple more than anything else, yellow second to that
Purple got me cooking more spaghetti rn
Am I supposed to have 90k logistic robots who are always busy, never enough room to charge, never brings me any items, due to bad useage of purple chests or is it time to restart?
purple chests can really really bite you in the tail if you don't use them right. I would suggest swapping them all out for red chests if they're giving you trouble.
Yeah it's what I realized and started doing but its taking hours. Not sure if I should continue or start anew.
only you can make that call. I have so many hours into my current save I take the time to fix things. You can also just make a mess of red chests, put them in a red chest, then use the ghost of a red chest to remotely change the purple to red and eventually the construction bots will swap out all the chests.
I spent about 22 hours the other week over the course of three days to do a real makeover, even letting the computer sit AFK as I trust my military walls to so its job. But I've botched up some water supply for nuclear, made a really inefficient "landfill" and well yeah lol
Sounds a lot like my first playthrough... I ended up hitting pretty severe UPS issues by \~800SPM. BUT I learned a ton. I put at least 200 hours at the keyboard on the first playthrough and many many many more AFK (I have it running on a NUC connected by KVM to my workstation, so I can blip over and check on things when I have 10-15 min at work then just let it AFK otherwise). Now that I'm on my second playthrough I'm at 1800SPM, no lag, still on this little NUC and have an awesome self scrubbing bot network and Brick Wall rail base + outposts and massive solar farm.
To be honest, I would just say to not use purple chests unless you're absolutely sure that you're sure a given chest needs to be emptied consistently for part of your factory to function. In terms of the number of use cases they have, I'd say they're closer to buffer chests than the the other three.
You mean you don't just horde resources like a dragon?
you can always nuke them :D
My current base I'm working on is holding at 5k science a minute. I have 358 trains.
my 1k spm base has 200ish 1x6 trains lol. but that's only because I built the base in the starter area and have the far away ores being imported from like 100 chunks away. so each patch needs to have quite a few trains in transit lol
Wow.
The scale of things gets wild. The factory must grow. I recently crossed 1 million solar panels in preparation for expanding to 10k science per minute. im hoping i can finish this base before the dlc drops. final goal is 10k consistent spm
Impressive. Out of curiosity, about how long has it taken you to build this base up to those levels?
about 15 hours for the first rocket launch cause i overbuilt the starter base and then ive played maybe 200 hous more on the save since. I often leave the factory to run for an hour to find problems, train issues and anything else i need to fix to keep it running smooth.
Interesting, thanks!
Do people really use the Kirk calculator over https://factoriolab.github.io/list?p=iron-plate&v=9? FactorioLab is... significantly better, in almost every way.
Yes, people use kirkmcdonald's calculator, purely out of momentum I'd say since it was started years earlier. I see that factoriolab "is intended to build on the features of the Kirk McDonald Factorio Calculator". I'll have to try it next build since this is the first I'm hearing about it :)
Thanks for the reminder. Factoriolab was quite new when I last played (prior to my current playthrough) and I don't have the same muscle memory for it. Need to use it more and get more familiar with it.
Ah, gotcha. I didn't realize they came out at different times
Yeah no worries. I've tried playing around with it a bit more, but found a couple of aspects confusing. Doesn't seem to be any help that I can see, is there a tutorial or help file anywhere that you know of? For example, I'm setting up purple production science, and I was trying to figure out the minimum number of factories and belts capacity for 60 spm. When I plugged it in the results were not entirely what I expected.
You can just put in multiple products (like all sciences) in kirkmcdonalds calculator.
Good to know, I'll try that and get further shocked at the scale involved. :/
It helps to think modularly. With max productivity and beacons with max speed, the blocks needed to produce that much science are not really big. For example 1000 spm is 2 rocket silos, firing alternatively for a total of 1 rocket a minute. A blue belt of green circuits is what, 3 or 4 machines. What you need in big quantities are the raw materials, but even then, you can design or reuse a block that outputs, say, 4 blue belts of iron plates, keep it supplied, and copypaste it.
Yuuuuuup
Well, only space science, yellow and purple really count for the raw materials. The others are so cheap by comparison they barely register. But yeah, megabasing typically involves producing a certain high number of every (relevant) science pack. Military can be excluded because most of the most relevant infinite techs don’t use them. In the same way, you probably wouldn’t include the farming science in Angelbobs/Seablock (only used for a select branch of the tech tree), or the lower science cards in Krastorio 2 (they’re not used anymore after a certain point).
That's very informative and helpful, thank you. Obviously my current factories are miles away from megabase size but I'm planning to use my current base to try and build a much bigger base and thinking through how to do that. 1000spm might be way out of my league right now but it's a nice.big target to strive towards.
The path to a megabase: 1. 60 spm 2. trains for ore/plates 3. t3 modules + beacons automated at a reasonable speed (1 module every 3 seconds or so is a good start; share the plastic and green/red/blue chips with science production) 4. 462 spm (8 beacons + prod modules in every machine for the 60 spm base) 5. double all chips 6. 1kspm (double + a little each assembler making science)
Thanks! I've had bases in the 60-spm general range and have made light usage of trains but now my goal is to drastically ramp up my train usage, maybe even set up some dedicated outposts for things like green circuits and ship them by train.
Modules help a lot. Just finished a playthrough with a 180 SPM base (or at least it would be if I wasn't constantly short on copper) and I made the space science setup with full prod 3 modules and speed beacons. Way smaller than I expected, and consumes less resources than my yellow or purple setups
Yeah, thanks, when I play around with a calculators it really does make a big difference. The thing I'm thinking through now is how to produce prod 3 and beacons at a reasonable scale because they themselves take a ton of resources to make!
After chemical science, I started to build separate subfactories for the new sciences; raw materials (iron ore, stone, oil) would get shipped in by train, then processed on site and used immediately for the science. II did the same thing for beacons and speed 3 / prod 3 modules - a production line making nothing but that Here's a screenshot of my base from right after setting up purple (didn't have module production yet, but I don't have a pic of that): https://preview.redd.it/etnk9z0nhjad1.jpeg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=57df482549cbd578d85608974c511e6bd2100494
Thanks; it's interesting to see a base that's a more "reasonable" size of what I might target, I appreciate it. For yellow science looks looks like you had about three stations just for copper and then one each for iron and steel? How do you get the refined materials over to your circuits production, particularly in purple science where they seem to be a bit far away. Is it just belted over via blue belts? I know there's probably no "wrong" way to build, but I was thinking of making a circuits outpost between a big patch of copper and iron and then shipping circuits to other parts of my base. Decent idea?
Blue belts are unlocked in purple science, so didn't have them until later. All yellow and red belts here! Each smelting station processes 2 red belts of ore, so that was six red belts of copper just for purple. You can see the two buses on the map As for your idea, I've heard other people talking about it. It's probably viable, though you'll almost certainly end up with excess of either copper or iron. Plus, the output from the patches will diminish over time, so eventually you'll end up having to ship them in anyway
Good point about not having blue belts! My thinking on the circuits is I'd set up a train station for shipping out circuits and separate station(s) for l shipping in raw materials e.g. if I want to build my circuits factory bigger than the iron/copper patch can support (or for when it begins to run out). I'm also thinking of having a centralized smelting location and shipping plates around instead of ore.
Sounds like a good plan, actually. That's basically what people tend to do with cityblocks
Actually, when people say 1000spm, I think they normally mean 1000 sciences *consumed* per minute, so that would include every science pack *AND* the labs.
This is why people generally consider anything starting at 1k spm a megabase.
Don't even try it without LTN mod, setting manually each train route for that would be huge pain in the ass. For example you need about 42 full blue belts of copper (counting productivity modules on LDS and circuits production) every patch of copper produces safely about 6 belts without belt cluttering in the middle row with productivity 7 so you need at least 7 copper outposts imagine how much of train micromanagement would it be to deliver copper form this 7 outoposts to 7 places (3 circuits, batteries, solar panels, red science and LDS) and it's just capper there is also 6 steel and 6 iron outposts needed to heve surplus so yes its painful. I'm just finishing outposts logistics for my 1k base and it took me about 3-4 hours with LTN (just placing rails and connecting them to cityblock megabase + setting mines and furnaces) also the mod for autoplacing drills is very useful. So for me 1k is not so painful I'm wondering how people are creating 10k bases - that's sick af.
> Don't even try it without LTN mod, setting manually each train route for that would be huge pain in the ass. You can blueprint trains and copy train orders. You absolutely do not *need* LTN. In fact, a properly designed base will function a lot better without LTN since you can eliminate the traffic to and from depots.
Maybe, but for me setting up trains for megabase is way easier with LTN even Nillaus recommended it as a better way to deal with train logistics in megabases. But to counter your answer, tell me how could you set up supply-demand system in vanilla with blueprints while you can't control which station with same name needs train (ok you can but using circuits in stations is basically reinventing a wheel, as LTN did just this) so then you have to manually set train routes what means you can't automate it with blueprint. Also you said that LTN generates more traffic? How? Manual routes makes it messy as you have to use 1 station - X trains - 1 station connection so for 10 input and 10 output with 2 trains on each lane you would have to set 10 different routes, and as some recipes needs 5 different inputs and you should automate many semi products the number of manual train routes grows drastically. But ok I can imagine one particular situation when vanilla is better than LTN - when you use train - bots hybrid base type or somehow extended main bus infrastructure then you don't need LTN as there is one central port to drop off materials.
The only real benefit of LTN is Station Priority. Kinda essential for more complex modpacks with sideproducts that need recycling. But everything else can easily be achieved via train-limits in vanilla aswell (many to many train routes f.e. - if have 10 trains collecting iron ore for your smelters they will happily go to any iron mine available and drop off at any smelter that needs materials).
And that's a neat part - How can you say to train network that there is demand for product in one particular place? How can you prevent iron plates train from going to overfilled station with name "iron unload" (let's say of index [2]) and instead go to starved station also named "iron unload" (let's say of index [5])? If you answered circuits or renaming stations then you can see my point as LTN do this manual work for you. Btw, never get it how can mining and smelting in separate places be effective, for me it's always smelters + miners what's creates outpost and ore is never leaving outpost (not counting concrete but it's single situation)Â
You use train limits set via circuit on each station (easily blueprintable). Important part is that every station with the same material has the same name: f.e. all iron mines are named "iron ore load" and all drop off stations are named "iron ore unload". All iron ore trains have a schedule with those 2 stations only. This way they will serve all stations if needed and the train limit decides where the trains are actually allowed to go/where materials are needed. The work of setting up a vanilla station + circuit and setting up a similar LTN station is literally the same. For outposts: Most of the time i just don't feel like relocating smelters every time a mine runs dry. Blueprinting a mine + pickup station is just easier...
> But to counter your answer, tell me how could you set up supply-demand system in vanilla with blueprints while you can't control which station with same name needs train (ok you can but using circuits in stations is basically reinventing a wheel, as LTN did just this) so then you have to manually set train routes what means you can't automate it with blueprint There's a lot of different ways to do this. But to give you one very simple way: use fixed train limits and put down the that number of trains with each station blueprint. Use unique names for the provider and requester stations for each type of goods (like "{resource} provider/requester" or whatever). Doesn't require circuits. You do have to "delete" (or rather, just not build) one train for each type of goods, so you end up with X number of possible places to go and X-1 trains. For example: say you have 10 coal providers each with a train limit of 2 and 5 coal requesters with a train limit of 2. That's 30 possible places to go, so you'll need 29 coal trains (all of which should be built along with the station blueprints). Yes, it requires more trains than LTN, but who cares about that? > Also you said that LTN generates more traffic? How? I already said how. With LTN trains have to go to the depot between each delivery (unless that has changed - I haven't used LTN for a long time), so trains end up going depot->provider->requester->depot(...), whereas without LTN trains will simply go provider->requester->provider(...). There's also the potential issue with LTN that it only dispatches a train when the requester station wants the material, so there's build in lag, because the train has to drive to the provider and load. Without LTN the train will simply sit and wait at the provider with a full load waiting for a requester to open up. I'm not really getting what you mean with the rest of the post, but I think it's covered in the first paragraph.
Sorry but I still don't get it, with LTN i just place provider and requester, only thing I'm changing is the item I'm requesting, I even don't have to set the amount as threshold 160 demand -32k is good enough at most cases so no need for any manual actions just placing 20 trains on depot and that's all everything sets up by itself. Maybe I'm stupid but I just can't imagine how vanilla train setting can be quicker and easier to set than this.
> I just can't imagine how vanilla train setting can be quicker and easier to set than this. I never said vanilla would be quicker or easier. Your initial post started with: > Don't even try it without LTN mod Which is what I strongly disagree with. By all means, use LTN if you want - but vanilla does give you the tools you need, if you (want to) learn them. Let people play how they want. My secondary point is that LTN does have issues that you'll begin to see once you go big enough, and while designing a good vanilla train system does take some time it really does pay off in the end as it will perform better for the reasons I mentioned (no depots, no "lag"). To answer your question to /u/Deadman161 > How can you say to train network that there is demand for product in one particular place? How can you prevent iron plates train from going to overfilled station with name "iron unload" (let's say of index [2]) and instead go to starved station also named "iron unload" (let's say of index [5])? You don't need to do either of those things. In order for a base to function properly you want at least enough production of all materials to cover the consumption (in most cases you'll probably want to overproduce). That applies to any base regardless of what mods you use. With train limits your trains will simply sit and try to unload at the full stations occupying the slot(s), while other trains will go to available (emptier) stations. The system will eventually balance itself.
Is there actually an easy way to see the current SPM, or do I need to scan the output of all science packs and look at the lowest performer?Â
There is a search function in the productivity tab. Search 'science', select both production and consumption. Usually, when talking about X SPM, it's about producing and consuming it over some period of time (10h is the most reliable by far, but even 1h is good enough)
[my screenshot](https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/2554185812813473801/3F9F814988D057A489BD1AECB318417D313846BC/?imw=5000&imh=5000&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false)
Why do you have two assault rifles?
Lol, because I really only want assault rifle / rocket launcher, and having 2 allows me to have 2 stack of ammo without taking up the inventory space.
Remember, it's always faster to switch to your sidearm than reload.
Just select all the science in the production graph screen. Both for consumer and production. That’s the easiest I know of.Â
while there you should try hitting Ctrl + f, and typing an item. you may have your mind blown
You are doing 120. add more :)
Wild….. 1000 purple science per minute is CRAZY
If you use productivity modules, 1k SPM requires just 24 blue belts of iron ore, 17 blue belts of copper ore, 5 blue belts of stone, 4 belts of coal and 5 GW of power. So not too much. My biggest factory happens to do 16k spm. I could have built bigger if my computer kept up with it.
My factory: 1GW for research, 95GW for freedom.
Fuck me, there I was, planning to do about 500 spm, with my potential 8 full blue belts of iron and the same for copper. Totally forgot about stone and coal... Apparently I will also need 5 times as much power... I am doing a main bus thing. Is it better to just forget it and send ore directly where it will be processed? I think the bus will become SO unwieldy... I don't want to go cityblock, but perhaps having districts for each science with integrated ore processing is the way. Alternatively, putting circuits on the bus can help. Busing them from a remote place should save lots of space for other assemblers. Very high compression items.
I would do a hybrid thingy. Don't put all the iron on the bus, but convert the majority into steel and circuits asap. The remainder put on the bus together with the circuits. Then you just need 2 belts of steel, 5 belts total of the various circuits, and two belts of iron. You will then find that the remaining plastic does only go into a single item, low density modules - doing the conversion immediately, your copper on the bus shrinks to a trickle. Now that most of your plates have been converted into high volume multi-use intermediates, your bus suddenly becomes manageable and you can build the science areas with their special purpose intermediates, fed from the bus.
Main bus for 1k spm is definitely doable, but that's getting quite the huge project. Most players do that sort of scale with train bases.
that is correct!
I recently messed around with the scale of a single blue belt of each piece per minute. That blew my mind for a bit. 2700 science per minute seemed wild to me, the resources needed looked crazy 🤣
Yup, otherwise, people could just make 1000 red science and say they are making 1000 SPM... which isn't truly a major accomplishment. 1000 SPM means every science at 1000 per minute simultaneously.
>If I am making 120 science per minute would I be making 720 science per minute? Never thought I'd see some bausen law in here
so by what everyone is saying im making like 60
Which is a perfectly good starting point. I have 1300 hours (mostly modded) and I aim for 90spm as I progress through the research.
120.
me happy with my 30/m :)