Well, first I have to wave a fond farewell to our first 'city blocks' attempt, we got up to mining productivity 300+, and 2,100+ rocket launches, everything purred on a mostly 2-lane rail system, due to stack compression (the BigBags mod). The Google Compute Platform server hit 98% utilization after our sixth Rocket Launch Pad factory was spun up, so we buried the map, and started afresh.
Who is this 'we' you speak of?
I'm a retired computer programmer, living in Canberra, and the other guy is a retired database expert living in Brisbane, Australia. The GCP server is located in Sydney, so we get 40-50ms ping (8-12 ticks normally).
The Map
The Base - zoomed out : all pictures are 'click to embiggen'(tm)
The blocks are train track based, Left Hand Drive (LHD) with four-way roundabouts and crosslinks, a pathing nightmare for Factorio to work out for us, and a veritable death-trap for any players crazy enough to be walking across the map (and no, we don't yet have helicopters, and we want them NOW).
This is our new City Block design, where we build modular outposts for product creation; green circuit builds, red circuit builds, science, research, blue processors, modules, steel production etc. Each block requests input from the depots, and sends output to either shared or single-item depots.
The mines all have on-site smelting (except the original starter-base ones)
In order to achieve all of this trickery, we're using a bunch of mods.
The Mods
A Depot cell explained
Our depots are a combination of stacker (aka parking for trains, on the left of the cell), unloaders and loaders for various products in the game (right side of the cell).
Our Copper depot, full of stuff.
This example is the copper depot, it has three pairs of Unloaders/Loaders, sharing station names baased on type (copper depot unload or copper depot load), and some circuit based glue logic to activate/deactivate stations based on loadeunloader contents, to direct trains to the most suitable station.
Inbuilt into each depot is a fuel reloading system, which is managed by a single solid fuel train, the unloader for that visible on the rightmost line of the left side stackers, with a belt full of solid fuel leading to the stations, where inserters pack the locomotives as full of solid fuel as they can. Since each area is sending trains to depots (green circuits, copper mines, etc), all trains get refueled (whether they like it or not!). The system has basic smarts, with the stations turning off when they have more than 1,000 solid fuel, and the refuel train dropping off 5,000 solid fuel to each station when it becomes active, giving each a depot a 4,000 allotment of fuel between reloads. This cuts down on solid fuel train activity (otherwise, it would constantly cycle, and 'fill' the depots with mountains of unneeded solid fuel, which is what happened on our old map).
The display counter at the bottom of the image is Nixie tubes, showing the count of all items in the three bulk unloaders and loaders (1,128,000) the two full copper plate trains are trying to unload even more stuff, and they will wait there until they are unloaded. If we get more than 8 active copper mines, we'll have a potential problem unless we intelligently schedule the trains (which is where LTN comes in, but we haven't yet implemented it).
Each bulk-unloader and bulk-loader has a (BigBags augmented) capacity of 320,000 plate, or 160,000 ore/coal, and 640,000 red/green circuits
Each of the depots is essentially the same design, we have one for plastic, green circuits, iron, copper, steel, and a mixed one for red circuits, stone brick and coal. We will have add blue processors to the Plastic depot when we get a round tuit.
Oil
Messy Oil Refining
Oil refining, lubricant, solid fuel, sulphuric acid and batteries, with loaders for most products, which production cells can request (lubricant for our Bots, for example, and Batteries). The train system to this area is a pig's breakfast, and will need to be adjusted as we get into the swing of things. This refinery is the only one on the map, sitting on a 1,850,000% oil deposit. We will use other oil deposits to supply crude to dedicated Plastics, as well as dedicated Rocket Launch Assemblers which process their own oil to service their rocket-fuel and plastics requirements.
Red Circuits creation cell
Here's an example production cell, three trains bringing in raw materials to dedicated unloaders, the trains stay to unload, and only womble off to reload at the relevant depot when the unloaders are down to a minimum number of items (eg 4,000 green circuits -- the train can drop 80,000 green circuits in one trip, so it can sit idle for ages.) The top station is the loader, which has only loaded about 20,000 red circuits out of the maximum 80,000 per wagon load. The nixie tube display was added later and is a running count of all circuits moving past the monitored belt section.
Please note that this base is all pre-modules, so no beacons, no speed or production modules, and all red-belt based builds. As we get science going (purple, yellow, white) we'll research better automation (blue belts) and Logistics (bots) get better bot based factories, probably in their own dedicated cells.
Research Park
Here's our basic science, Red, Green, Blue and Military. The research park will become dedicated, beaconed and moduled, and all sciences will be relegated to their own production cells once we get past launching a rocket.
The Mall
Based on the KoS design (99.9%) Has little warty addons, not well integrated, building bulk rail loaders/unloaders, normal and fast miniloaders, and a dedicated Solar->Advanced->Elite solar panel creation area. The mall was the first component we built after smelting and red/green temporary science. It is the basis for everything else that we have made on this map. Currently augmented with plastic, copper and iron plates from our depots, with local steel production on coal-fed steel furnaces.
Starter Base
This is what is left of our starter base. The ore patches here are about 6G of copper, 5G of iron, and off to the side, 4G of Stone and 8G of coal. :)
The horizontal train feeds iron ore to our iron/steel production, the vertical trains augment the pitiful smelting capacity with goods from the iron, copper and plastic depots.
Additional Info:
All of our mines are on-site smelter based, for copper, iron and stone-brick. Plates are put into bulk loaders, loaded onto trains and sent to the relevant depot(s).
Power is currently provided by 75 'Elite' Solar cells (6.0MW each). We're currently using 50% of this capacity (about 225-250MW). We went directly from Steam to Solar, and dismantled our 80 Steam engine setup immediately we had some Advanced solar (600KW) laid down. When we get Ultimate panels (60MW per cell) 100 of those will supply 6GW :) In our last map we did not get past 9GW used. Skandragons Advance Solar is Da Bomb!
The base is now 37hours old. We expect it to last to about 200 hours before the GCP server breaks our world due to overloading its inadequate-for-megabases cpu.
Yes, I know the cell design is mega-overkill on the rails. We're just heathens enjoying ourselves.
Our playstyle is "relaxed". We're not rushing anything, having halted our research at red/green science for a long while, and only recently have we completed all the relevant blue science research, we still haven't made purple or yellow science, instead focusing on making mines to produce the expected resource demand we're going to hit 'real soon now'.
Most of the infrastructure of the production cells is temporary. We will advance to bot-based builds, with 12-beaconed/moduled assemblers for everything. That requires a fuckton of circuits in order to make sufficient modules to make the entire beaconed environment function. We start slow, and gradually ramp up. Eventually on site smelting will be beaconed/bot based as well, to boost our rate of plate production.
Feel free to ask any reasonable questions, although I must state at the outset that Google is your Friend!
I hope you liked our incipient base, as well as hope to have given at least a few of you ideas for your next big Factorio adventure.
submitted by excessionoz to factorio [link] [comments] Who is this 'we' you speak of?
I'm a retired computer programmer, living in Canberra, and the other guy is a retired database expert living in Brisbane, Australia. The GCP server is located in Sydney, so we get 40-50ms ping (8-12 ticks normally).
The Map
- no biters, pollution, evolution
- no cliffs
- very rich density, normal ore distribution (no RSO mod)
- Starting area was deemed to be 950,000;950,000 via Teleport command:
/c game.player.teleport({950000,950000}) Ore patches are 2-20Gig each, since our last map only had 250M iron and 120M copper mined over ~160 hours, we don't need to move, we only need additional ore patches to increase yield to satisfy demand as our base grows.
The Base - zoomed out : all pictures are 'click to embiggen'(tm)
The blocks are train track based, Left Hand Drive (LHD) with four-way roundabouts and crosslinks, a pathing nightmare for Factorio to work out for us, and a veritable death-trap for any players crazy enough to be walking across the map (and no, we don't yet have helicopters, and we want them NOW).
This is our new City Block design, where we build modular outposts for product creation; green circuit builds, red circuit builds, science, research, blue processors, modules, steel production etc. Each block requests input from the depots, and sends output to either shared or single-item depots.
The mines all have on-site smelting (except the original starter-base ones)
In order to achieve all of this trickery, we're using a bunch of mods.
The Mods
PS C:\Users\...\AppData\Roaming\Factorio\mods> dir -N attach-notes_0.2.3.zip auto-research_4.2.0.zip BigBags_1.0.29.zip Big_Brother_0.4.6.zip bobinserters_0.16.8.zip Bottleneck_0.9.1.zip even-distribution_0.2.9.zip Explosive Termites_1.1.11.zip FactorIO_1.0.120.zip FARL_2.1.2.zip Helicopters_0.2.16.zip helmod_0.7.11.zip LogisticTrainNetwork_1.8.0.zip MaxRateCalculator_2.1.18.zip miniloader_1.5.23.zip Nanobots_2.0.7.zip nixie-tubes_0.16.4.zip PickerExtended_3.0.3.zip production-monitor_0.16.1.zip railloader_0.5.0.zip skan-advanced-solar_1.1.0.zip SpaceMod_0.3.12.zip Squeak Through_1.2.2.zip Todo-List_16.1.0.zip upgrade-planner_1.5.3.zipNew for us:
- Miniloaders -- have 'inbuilt' fast or stack inserters, single tile, can load/unload chests, trains, bulk loaders/unloaders, we currently have normal (yellow) and Fast miniloaders (Red).
- Bulk Rail Loader (Railloader), track-based entities which can receive a dump of items from a cargo wagon, or dump a bunch of items into a cargo wagon.
- Big Brother: a hyperextended (by research) Radar network
- LTN - Logistics Train Network, although we aren't actually using it, yet.
A Depot cell explained
Our depots are a combination of stacker (aka parking for trains, on the left of the cell), unloaders and loaders for various products in the game (right side of the cell).
Our Copper depot, full of stuff.
This example is the copper depot, it has three pairs of Unloaders/Loaders, sharing station names baased on type (copper depot unload or copper depot load), and some circuit based glue logic to activate/deactivate stations based on loadeunloader contents, to direct trains to the most suitable station.
Inbuilt into each depot is a fuel reloading system, which is managed by a single solid fuel train, the unloader for that visible on the rightmost line of the left side stackers, with a belt full of solid fuel leading to the stations, where inserters pack the locomotives as full of solid fuel as they can. Since each area is sending trains to depots (green circuits, copper mines, etc), all trains get refueled (whether they like it or not!). The system has basic smarts, with the stations turning off when they have more than 1,000 solid fuel, and the refuel train dropping off 5,000 solid fuel to each station when it becomes active, giving each a depot a 4,000 allotment of fuel between reloads. This cuts down on solid fuel train activity (otherwise, it would constantly cycle, and 'fill' the depots with mountains of unneeded solid fuel, which is what happened on our old map).
The display counter at the bottom of the image is Nixie tubes, showing the count of all items in the three bulk unloaders and loaders (1,128,000) the two full copper plate trains are trying to unload even more stuff, and they will wait there until they are unloaded. If we get more than 8 active copper mines, we'll have a potential problem unless we intelligently schedule the trains (which is where LTN comes in, but we haven't yet implemented it).
Each bulk-unloader and bulk-loader has a (BigBags augmented) capacity of 320,000 plate, or 160,000 ore/coal, and 640,000 red/green circuits
Each of the depots is essentially the same design, we have one for plastic, green circuits, iron, copper, steel, and a mixed one for red circuits, stone brick and coal. We will have add blue processors to the Plastic depot when we get a round tuit.
Oil
Messy Oil Refining
Oil refining, lubricant, solid fuel, sulphuric acid and batteries, with loaders for most products, which production cells can request (lubricant for our Bots, for example, and Batteries). The train system to this area is a pig's breakfast, and will need to be adjusted as we get into the swing of things. This refinery is the only one on the map, sitting on a 1,850,000% oil deposit. We will use other oil deposits to supply crude to dedicated Plastics, as well as dedicated Rocket Launch Assemblers which process their own oil to service their rocket-fuel and plastics requirements.
Red Circuits creation cell
Here's an example production cell, three trains bringing in raw materials to dedicated unloaders, the trains stay to unload, and only womble off to reload at the relevant depot when the unloaders are down to a minimum number of items (eg 4,000 green circuits -- the train can drop 80,000 green circuits in one trip, so it can sit idle for ages.) The top station is the loader, which has only loaded about 20,000 red circuits out of the maximum 80,000 per wagon load. The nixie tube display was added later and is a running count of all circuits moving past the monitored belt section.
Please note that this base is all pre-modules, so no beacons, no speed or production modules, and all red-belt based builds. As we get science going (purple, yellow, white) we'll research better automation (blue belts) and Logistics (bots) get better bot based factories, probably in their own dedicated cells.
Research Park
Here's our basic science, Red, Green, Blue and Military. The research park will become dedicated, beaconed and moduled, and all sciences will be relegated to their own production cells once we get past launching a rocket.
The Mall
Based on the KoS design (99.9%) Has little warty addons, not well integrated, building bulk rail loaders/unloaders, normal and fast miniloaders, and a dedicated Solar->Advanced->Elite solar panel creation area. The mall was the first component we built after smelting and red/green temporary science. It is the basis for everything else that we have made on this map. Currently augmented with plastic, copper and iron plates from our depots, with local steel production on coal-fed steel furnaces.
Starter Base
This is what is left of our starter base. The ore patches here are about 6G of copper, 5G of iron, and off to the side, 4G of Stone and 8G of coal. :)
The horizontal train feeds iron ore to our iron/steel production, the vertical trains augment the pitiful smelting capacity with goods from the iron, copper and plastic depots.
Additional Info:
All of our mines are on-site smelter based, for copper, iron and stone-brick. Plates are put into bulk loaders, loaded onto trains and sent to the relevant depot(s).
Power is currently provided by 75 'Elite' Solar cells (6.0MW each). We're currently using 50% of this capacity (about 225-250MW). We went directly from Steam to Solar, and dismantled our 80 Steam engine setup immediately we had some Advanced solar (600KW) laid down. When we get Ultimate panels (60MW per cell) 100 of those will supply 6GW :) In our last map we did not get past 9GW used. Skandragons Advance Solar is Da Bomb!
The base is now 37hours old. We expect it to last to about 200 hours before the GCP server breaks our world due to overloading its inadequate-for-megabases cpu.
Yes, I know the cell design is mega-overkill on the rails. We're just heathens enjoying ourselves.
Our playstyle is "relaxed". We're not rushing anything, having halted our research at red/green science for a long while, and only recently have we completed all the relevant blue science research, we still haven't made purple or yellow science, instead focusing on making mines to produce the expected resource demand we're going to hit 'real soon now'.
Most of the infrastructure of the production cells is temporary. We will advance to bot-based builds, with 12-beaconed/moduled assemblers for everything. That requires a fuckton of circuits in order to make sufficient modules to make the entire beaconed environment function. We start slow, and gradually ramp up. Eventually on site smelting will be beaconed/bot based as well, to boost our rate of plate production.
Feel free to ask any reasonable questions, although I must state at the outset that Google is your Friend!
I hope you liked our incipient base, as well as hope to have given at least a few of you ideas for your next big Factorio adventure.
