Building Thought Process - Factorio Tutorial

[@kevinpacker7805]

You had me at "D I R E C T I N S E R T I O N"

[@crashedgaming5071]

Great Tutorial, I just found this game and can't stop planning. A friend of mine uses tutorials to get the best possible setup, but videos like these are more interesting in my opinion, by teaching how to work with processes. I want to find my own solution for the games problems, even if they are not the most efficient. Thank you for those kind of videos! :) -Tim

[@rahumor7556]

Wait... I am supposed to plan my base out before building? I thought I was supposed to make it up as I went... Time to change up my battle plan :D

[@Xterminator]

Jonathon Lundin Haha well either way works honestly. Depends on your preference and play style. :)

[@Voeluspa45]

I love those videos. I just discovered this game and just cannot stop playing even if my factories suck. This game is very friendly, you can replace buildings anytime, it is not game over if I ran out of electricty or resources at some point and there is not really a limit to the worldmap. Most importantly you can set goals for yourself which, like you said, requires lots of practice to reach. And this videos help a lot in the learning-process.

[@Xterminator]

Thank you, I'm always thrilled to hear when people enjoy the videos. :) I completely agree, that's what I love about the game too, you can build however you want and still have fun and it can be pretty forgiving most the time. The fact you can also set your own goals and actually work towards them in a meaningful way is great too! Glad the video helped you with that!

[@chith6512]

Perfect timing for this video. I just got to the point of trying to make robots. I managed to learn how to get blue science set up on my own. My only real issue being my main bus wasn't strong enough to get enough available resources to make the engines because most of it was being used for science and I had to rework it. Keeping my belts full of copper and steel seems to be the only thing I struggle with anymore.

[@homebrewinstrumentals7700]

This is arguably the most valuable tutorial I have watched yet. Thank you!

[@Xterminator]

You're welcome! I'm happy it helped so much!

[@homebrewinstrumentals7700]

@@Xterminator yeah you're good at teaching man. earned a subscriber for sure. I will be watching the rest of your tutorials at work tonight. Just watched the nuclear power one, keep em coming its well appreciated 😎

[@gemstonegynoid7475]

oh definitely so. ive seen many tutorials that talk about the ratios and timing, but this is the only one that truly explains how to think about them. and the actual process of building a factory.

[@homebrewinstrumentals7700]

@@gemstonegynoid7475 for sure, i think with some of the tutorials from other people i end up in this unintentional daydream where i aint taking much of what they are saying in even if its really sound advice. I think its not just about how lessons are structured but a good rhythm and tone to the voice factor greatly.

[@RandallStephens397]

Factorio Tutorio

[@codesymphony]

Factorial Tutorial

[@DudeTheMighty]

This was very helpful! My bases seem to always end up really messy because I just throw them together as I go... Also, having guides about broader principles is nice (partially since tutorial for specific builds sometimes end up obsolete due to updates; for example, the blue science build since the recipe for it changed).

[@Xterminator]

Glad it was helpful! And yeah I definitely agree on doing ones on broader principles. If you have any ideas for more definitely let me know

[@cragnamorra]

Lol, never occurred to me to try a long inserter to cross piping. That alone made the vid worthwhile.

[@Xterminator]

Robert Gordon Haha, glad to hear it! Took me a long time to figure that out as well.

[@karjedav]

You, sir, are a master of your craft. This was very enjoyable to watch.

[@samuelblacke]

This is going to help a lot in streamlining my base. This week was the first time I had the patience to get in to blue science and although it isn't as bad as my earlier factories, it is still a mess. I don't know what it is in my own thought process that leads in to mess and chaos even if I make the conscious attempt to keep things simple.

[@Xterminator]

Glad it will help! I totally understand the thing with blue sicence though. It is definitely one of the hardest things to make in the game currently and extremely difficult to make it neat. Even after doing it probably 50+ times I still struggle to make a really nice looking set up for it. The more you do it though the better you will get at it. :)

[@NegatorUK]

Nice video, definitely the sort of thing we need more of, and I'm going to be doing a few things differently in the future ;-) Some comments :- 1. Intermediate buffers can be useful for niche builds. I don#t think I've ever built a robot legs plant, I just steal the electric engines from my robot production plant and craft them in my backpack. Its easier to do this with a buffer. Of course you could just put a chest off to the side of the build you did and wait a few minutes, so its all personal preference at the end of the day. 2. Intermediate belts can be useful, as a small intermediate store, or to feed downstream plant that is not a 1-to-1 production ratio (like modules) ratio. 3. I've always meant to try a "counter-current" build for filter inserters. Basically the end product (the filter inserter) gets "first dibs" at the green circuits and only after the filter inserter assembly unit gets what it needs does the flow move on to fast inserters, and so on. This creates a self balancing system. Of course this is only an advantage if you chronically undersupply your plant with green circuits in the first place like I do ;-)

[@Xterminator]

Thanks, really glad you liked! :) Thanks for the thoughts, they make a lot of sense and kind of help me get a different view on things. Having intermediate buffers for things like the Electric Engines is totally fine and probably a good thing. I'm not super keen on intermediate belts for storage but still not horrible. Your "counter-current" build idea actually makes a ton of sense because the filter inserters need the most circuits anyway out of the build chain and are the actual end product you need so you want to make sure they get supplied. I will definitely keep this idea in mind for future builds and will be interested to test it out!

[@jessep6643]

Very good explanation. This is perfect thanks. It seems a lot simpler when you're able to fully hear what goes through someone's mind as they set up a built. If I could like it twice I would👍🏻👍🏻

[@Xterminator]

Thank you, and you're very welcome. :) Definitely, it seems to always help when you can see what someone's thought process is while they are doing something, and get a better understanding of all the things that are considered.

[@mennoltvanalten7260]

For the gear thing: you have double that issue with iron, since 2 iron makes 1 gear. So if it is an issue, you should simply upscale the gear production because otherwise you are going to have similar issues with iron

[@ColonelWillGaming]

kinda feel u just rubbing it in that u out smarted me with the long handed and pipe. grumples. i will make a better build lol

[@Xterminator]

Lol nah I just thought it was a good example cause a lot of player struggle with that type of stuff in general. You were just having a derp moment I think. :P

[@havek23]

at 15:20 why even mass produce/automate the creation of inserters (other than basic inserters for green science)? I guess in a megabase where you're going to need dozens or hundreds at a time? If you're just trying to launch a rocket I think you can handcraft inserters as you're building the base, no?

[@gemstonegynoid7475]

the supplementary goal of factorio is that you dont want to be handcrafting anything! or at least nothing that you dont need to be handcrafted. if youre out approaching biters you may want to make more ammo. but in the middle of designing a factory you wouldnt really want to have to keep making more inserters or belts or what have you. when you get logistics robots that really shows the benefit of automating everything. by that point youre not even needing to have an inventory. just put down blueprints and every item will be ready to be placed.

[@1Maklak]

With things like inserters and belts, you might want to put a box in between the factories, rather than direct insert, then limit the size to 1-3 stacks. That way you still don't need so many belts, but will have readymade inserters and belts of various levels in boxes.

[@Xterminator]

That's a good idea!

[@1Maklak]

I took it from Katherine of sky. She even uses requester chests in between different tiers of belt factories to help recycle old belts into better ones. kzbin.info/www/bejne/hoTJh6R_oLt4pKs

[@anisnej10]

I have a sort of hybrid mixture of the two. so I go emptyhanded into a map and THEN i plan. I try to stay one step ahead when I finish a new section of my base

[@TrollsWatchingYouRay]

Nice, more rebuilding and improving thanks for the vid

[@havek23]

You kept saying to use shared belts like it's easy to have split resources on a belt, but before splitter preferences how did you merge so many things to share belts and then recombine them? Or do you just allow it to back up to the bus and never recombine them farther down the line if there are unused resources on the belt?

[@antanis]

I don't know if you ever got a proper answer but if you lead a belt into the side of an underground belt it will only take one side of it. Some builds used filter inserters and others just bring the intermediates down and combine them closer to the build instead of backing up to the bus.

[@sarahts21]

Since they changed smart inserters am I the only one who's not used a filter inserter beyond feeding blue science? Filtered Stack's sure, use them as part of my oil stations and obviously tons of Fast & Stack but no filtered inserters.

[@Xterminator]

You're definitely not the only one. I pretty much never use normal filter inserters now that we have the option to use Stack Filter inserters. Only time I would see them being useful is if you don't want the huge stack size bonus of the stack filters.

[@sarahts21]

Xterminator True, although I'm hard pushed to think of a situation when I wouldn't want the largest stack size possible or need to filter multiple objects (which filtered stacks can't do).

[@sorcdk2880]

The problem with high stack type inserters is that they take long time to go through their cycle if they are not moving things between containers. If you are concerned with the uptime of their grapping potential (such as filtering from one belt to another), then you will get more redundancy (the good kind) with non-stack inserters, under the assumption you put in the equivalent amount of throughput. That said, it isnt really needed to do that kind of thing in the base game, as you can get away with not having mixed lines at all, and designs with them have a lot of complications that are easily avoided by not having such mixed lines. If you start to use mods, then the picture becomes different, as they may included sources that naturally have a mixed output, so you do end up having to do some kind of filtering.

[@sarahts21]

True enough although when it comes to modded games you inevitably hit the same point you do in vanilla: the bots go faster and your back to stack filtered inserters and box-to-box shuffling. I do agree that doing a specific type of play through (belt only) their might be a place for filter inserters but in day-to-day vanilla... they're kind of redundant, pretty much like iron chests bar the whole needed for blue science thing obviously. Hopefully the changed recipes for science in 0.15 fix this or some other tweaks are taking place that make filtered inserters a bit more useful than emptying FARL (and wondering if you'd be better off with 3 filtered stack inserters instead).

[@sorcdk2880]

There is also the point about how much more energy they use. You need quite a lot of stack bonuses before they become compariable in powerconsumption, and that is under the assumption that you actually want them to run close to fulltime, which might not be the case. That said, you only need any kind of filtering if your source is mixed. The problem is that the only place in vanilla that has inheirent mixed source is oil processing, and even then it is resolved by different pipe outputs. This means you only need to filter something if you have mixed it up yourself. But mixing materials yourself have the problem of material overflow of one type, which would block the use of the rest. This is a serious problem, and while there are some solutions for some of the special cases where it is generated, most of those special cases are only "small conviniences" situations (such as unloading from a requester chest, or shuffling through chests with logic systems), which we can generally live fine without. Since those problems can be such a headache to deal with reliable, and the approximate solutions are ticking timebombs, then it is generally a better design not to need to do this kind of thing. This means that we can go through vanilla without using filters at all, so when we need to discuss when to use a special filter variant, we already know that we are not in the classical day-to-day vanilla, because the cases where you use filter inserters wouldnt really be there in the first case. Personally I mainly use filter inserters to sort output from modded recipies that have more than 1 type of output. If those recipies have a really fast production time, then stack filters might not help very much, and not be worse the extra energy cost.

[@AJ213Probably]

I need this for making blue science... But for Bobs mod lol

[@Xterminator]

You and me both. lol Bob's Mods just gives me a headache in general. Haha

[@berenscott8999]

Look, honestly, you could literally spend all damn day trying to get all the mathematics done in your head. The correct answer is, who cares, as long as everything in the base is on green or yellow. If stuff is on red, need to fix stuff. I'm now starting to beacon and build my module production in bob's mod. I'm just below 2 days total time. My pollution cloud is epic, and I'm spending too much time pushing back the biters. Solar power production is at 300+. I started with Factorissimo, but kind of slowly abandoning it in favour of mass beacons. I definitely think warehouses and loaders are the key to a well function base. Consider my train unloading stations, 6 wagons empting directly into 6 warehouses which store 160k and are passive providers. My base currently has 5k oil barrels which I actually had to cap. I think you and the other guys should do a Bob's mod megabase. I actually think this is too much work for one person, I have no idea how anyone would do this without turret creep with long reach.

[@Xterminator]

Perhaps for you, but getting the math right will almost always provide more efficient builds than just going with "whatever". Not saying it's required by any means and everyone has their own build style but saying that the math doesn't matter is not true for everyone. It all depends on your play style and how you want your base to run. I will definitely agree that Bob's is a ton of work, perhaps too much for one person to reasonable do. Especially on a mega base scale. However I doubt that myself and/or any of the other guys I play with will do a Bobs playthrough because honestly we all dislike it for multiple reasons. It is by no means a bad mod, in fact I think it's extremely impressive and well thought out, but just not my cup of tea.

[@berenscott8999]

Xterminator Yeah, like, the bigger it gets, the more work there is. The micro management is getting crazy.

[@berenscott8999]

heavenly mecholy You know why you need to stockpile material? Because if you imagine having 160k x6 worth of coal, then at an outpost, you have another 160k worth of coal there in another warehouse. Guess what, the fields have stopped running, the ore is no longer in the ore field, it's in the warehouse instead. Guess what, zero pollution caused by the damn warehouse and loaders. It's like this, I'm one person doing a huge bob's mod mega base, and no way I have enough time to kill all the biters and set up outposts, on top of building my mega bot network with beacons. Holy shit, I swear I haven't had a single iron coal or copper train move from the station in a great deal of hours. Yes, why not? I get it, all that electricity could have been spent on something else, but the thing is, if you are working like a dog running around and you ain't got time for anything else, then a warehouse full of ore is absolutely awesome. Since the warehouse capacity is 160k per wagon unload, who cares? Shit I had like 5k worth of oil barrels with only 2 oil outposts. When it comes to work, what you want to do is fix one problem so over the top you never need to fix it again for many hours, so you can on to fixing something else. I went massive pollution, kill all the biters as soon as they come onto the radar. I literally push the fuckers back, ring and ring of power poles and radars, push em back, kill em. That's how I role. No micromanagement, everything to excess, over the top. When I was originally designing my main bus, I decided to aim for everything produced at 1 per 0.5 seconds. Then just ramp it up if that isn't enough. This is me checking up on my base: No time for the in and out love, just come to check the meter.

[@yebboshwamuel]

direct insertion gachiGASM

[@codesymphony]

even more insertion

[@noodian3268]

For planning out builds I recently discovered this really useful website that calculates how many items per second you're going to need in a perfect ratio build: kirkmcdonald.github.io/calc.html#items=advanced-circuit:f:1 that one's useful too: doomeer.com/factorio

[@rockshankar]

when i was a beginner, i didn't know all these.. i didn't even know the concept of direct insertion,i use belt all the time, the game tutorial doesn't even say which side inserters put the materials... now i have lotta hours in it, this doesn't feel useful at all :D.. good for beginners.

[@soccerboy2259]

First

[@soccerboy2259]

Yay I was