Examples of CIRCUIT NETWORK in Action | Factorio Tutorial/Guide/How-to

[@Nilaus]

All Master Class Blueprints are available on FactorioBin Overview and direct links to all Blueprints: nilaus.atlassian.net/l/cp/HBEUm524 (Pastebin links no longer work)

[@sixstringninja666]

I know you probably never use them, but the POWER SWITCH item is actually very useful for managing steam engines because when they are disconnected, they stop producing just like during the day when they are not needed. Weirdly enough, they are perfectly efficient and do not continue to burn or use steam when not under load

[@dakon2154]

+1 for a fellow Power Switch lover xD After the "outcry" last video, I was curious if Nilaus would deliberately refuse to show a use for it, just to troll us. But there is still hope, maybe it will get a mention during the RS latch part in the next video! Jokes aside, I understand why controlling the pumps directly can be better if you don't use a RS latch. No need for an instant reaction. The delay might even help to prevent flickering on and off, that would occur without a RS latch. Also, if you want to go for full efficiency, don't forget to use Burner inserters instead of normal ones to make sure that there are no power consumers in the network when the steam engine part is cut from the main network with the power switch.

[@E-102_Gamma]

@@dakon2154 While it's true that Burner Inserters don't have a minimum consumption and therefore wouldn't continuously drain power just by being hooked up to the network, basic Inserters are so much more energy-efficient (~7.23 times more) that it's probably still worth it to use them rather than the Burners. If I've done the math right, Burner Inserters are only more energy-efficient than regular Inserters if they operate on intervals of more than 202.5 seconds on average.

[@blubbber]

power switches, used multiple times in a factory are a horrible thing for UPS. Each machine checks each tick if they can get now electricity .

[@JohnathanGross]

@@blubbber If you're using steam backup in your base, you're not concerned with UPS.

[@kierano8390]

@@E-102_Gamma power the inserters with your main power network. so they're always powered by the solar panels. and only have the output from the engines going into its own network attached with a power switch

[@sixstringninja666]

Circuits are one of the last things that I'm learning how to use in this game, so I'm really excited to see some of your tips and tricks that you've learned over the years

[@JesterAzazel]

Same, I have alternative solutions for most of these problems that are much easier, (remove speed modules around the rocket silo) but I use circuits for my oil stuff. His global network is what I'm mainly interested in. That looks very useful.

[@MiguelAbd]

This is the video I was most eagerly waiting for. Applications of circuit networks is a series I'd easily watch.

[@keksomg]

thanks for all your tutorials. They have sort of "structured" my Factorio experience. My megabases keep getting more organized and efficient! Thanks for your help with that ^^

[@HonsikP]

Hi Nilaus, nice introduction of the circuits. It is nice to see real usecases of them. Maybe one possible improvement for the coal monitoring - when you monitor the last belt, it is often too late to fix the problem, electricity production stops and it is hard to restart if you use electric miners as well. Therefore I usually set the monitoring at the start of the steam engine column, before your first splitter. You can monitor multiple adjacent belts to have the monitoring more stable. Also would probably leave the sound on, because electricity is one of the things that can really cripple a base. Then I usually have a full box nearby if I need to restart the electricity after I fix the coal inflow.

[@Nilaus]

Good point. Monitoring at the start only checks for input flow, while monitoring at the end also checks if the steam engines are consuming the full belt at the beginning. The added information comes at the cost of shorter time to react

[@gman1515]

​@@Nilausmonitor both. Set the first as a silent "we might need more coal" type alarm, and have the end monitor give a big loud "dis bitch empty" alarm

[@textexadecimal9340]

I think your steam engine prioritization would be a good chance to make use of the power switch. I tried cutting off water pumps at a lower power percentage, and it usually takes too long for the steam to build back up. If you use an SR latch and power switch to isolate the steam engines from the rest of the system, you can wait until the last second ( 5% accumulator charge, in my case ) to activate them, since there's seemingly no wait time.

[@KvaNTyTroiden]

A dedicated video on Icons in names and general use of Rich Text would be amazing! Even a short one with just a few examples, just to show people that game actually has such useful features.

[@Coderjo.]

With the example of putting robots into the roboport, I added a logistics storage chest with the appropriate filter between the assemblers and the roboport. This also allows for if I remove a roboport with bots in it, the logistics bots can bring their siblings back to the chest to be added back into the network. I also had the port outputting the total bot counts on their respective item channels, so the inserters pulling from the assemblers could be set to stop if the total between the chest and the network reaches the desired level.

[@DanielvomDorf]

ps. thanks for all these beautiful, professional made master class tutorials =) even after 1500h in game there is allways something i didnt know.

[@Godfather_of_the_Oath]

I am in the same boat. And I feel like I just finished the tutorial! I wondered why the "end" of the game was.just one rocket..... It's to motivate the news like us!!! LMFAO

[@VladTheImploded]

I feel like this is a more basic thing, but maybe a note about it for the final circuit network video: you can have a bunch of the things you use circuits for (monitoring chests etc) go off of the logistics network too. I know you know that, but I feel like it's an important side-note when talking about circuit networks because they work pretty much the same way.

[@VladTheImploded]

also, yes, of course, i love this whole series and try to share it with everyone i convince to try the game after they've done their first rocket launch.

[@brinkshows2720]

The power thing is way easier. Just use a disconnect switch and it wil isolate the steam power from the rest of your base. Yes it wil stil run but use close to 0 coal but it wil act instantatiously to your circuit conditions. This way they also don't charge the accumulators.

[@vishennaidoo4344]

I used the circuit breaker to disconnect the steam engines from the rest of the base, so that the base is only running on accumulator charge at night.

[@ritinfek]

Thank you for your dedication @Nilaus!

[@NotPoodle]

Super helpful, thanks!

[@ThatGSguy]

"There's nothing wrong with it but it looks awful on the graph here" Nilaus, never change, lol Btw, if the graph looks awful, you know and I know that there's something wrong.

[@NaoyaYami]

For power priority you can also just make sure electric poles from steam engines connect to the rest of the grid only via power switches. Then program power switch itself to just stop power flow generated by steam engines and not a single unit of steam or coal or whatever will be used (unless you place lights near the engines or something). You can of course connect more power switches if you get cold sweat when thinking about powering your base at night via one single wire :D

[@torbjornbackstrom1969]

Hi I look forward to your future courses. I use circuis to train and other things you show in this video. I hope to learn more

[@yancheopera7081]

Thank you very much; was just the push I needed.

[@harryloo8544]

can you make a guide on how to load an iron train with supply of repair packs, laser, walls and mines to an iron mining outpost?

[@joshburger2217]

train circuits are what i'm starting to play with now. Im wondering if you use the send signal to train option / include circuit conditions on train schedules

[@coastlund]

As always, a delicious morsel. Tyvm Nilaus

[@williamhorn4290]

greatly miss my daily dose of deathworld

[@arnoeagleeyes]

Thank you again for another masterclass video. Personally i was curious about the train station part. And my question is, are you going to explain what you do with the train scheduling ? I noticed that when they sit at the loading station when no unloading stations are open, the schedule screen flickers insanely, and i wonder if it affects the performance of the game, since it looks like every tick it tries to check and calculate the schedule.

[@SocialNomad]

When is the third part coming out?

[@Nilaus]

The fact that there are so few views on this tells me that Circuit Networks are not particularly interesting to viewers. So maybe never...

[@SocialNomad]

@@Nilaus :(

[@ukaszmarkowski5232]

@@Nilaus I scrolled down a lot to find this answer :,) It's a bummer.

[@StephenDuMont100]

I like making heavy oil cracking the result of light oil>heavy oil, and so on for the other types

[@Nilaus]

Good idea

[@fissionphoenix4995]

I was trying to remember how to do an SR latch and spent like 30 minutes in my game trying to figure it out on my own but I couldn't. So I decided to check your master class on it and now I've already sort of wasted my time with the previous video and 13 minutes of this video ahahaha

[@cezarykalis6185]

Actually you want to do it on power switches instead of waterpunps, there will be much less reaction time, and all of the boilers will be filled up immidiately.

[@cardboardhed1967]

did he ever make the part 3 for this series?

[@creativeanarchy1]

Can you do one on the LTN demo files? I have no clue what I going on in those files and I'd really like to set up a universal requester.

[@doktorcool3740]

How do you put icons into station names?? ;-)

[@AnnihilatingAce]

[item=iron-ore]

[@kennethstuart5708]

@@AnnihilatingAce How about the arrows that change color when the station is open?

[@Chris_The_Sam_Man]

Did the third video in this series ever come out? I can't seem to find it.

[@sonalita_]

Nilaus mentioned in a previous reply that this video didn't get enough views to justify making the third one :(

[@Chris_The_Sam_Man]

@@sonalita_ Dang, that's a bummer. Thanks for pointing that out though.

[@Tyrasth]

So I found it interesting, on your previous video you list that you're not sure of a use for the power switch, but here you're doing more work than is necessary if you'd just use the power switch. Ensure that your solar farm is on an isolated grid (you can remove power line connections manually if they try to connect), make sure your coal is on an isolated grid, and then connect both to a power switch that monitors accumulator charge. When your accumulators are at 0%, the coal power switch turns on, connecting it to your bases power grid, so they start producing, and you flip off your solar grid, meaning the accumulators can't charge off the coal power because they're isolated from the main grid.

[@kesleta7697]

Dealing with separate grids isannoying, and the available power on the power screen would no longer be accurate.

[@1986debu]

Just out of curiosity, wouldn't it be simpler to have a power switch between the steam generators and the grid that's controlled by the accumulator signal? Or would that also have a lower response time?

[@Nilaus]

theoretically yes, but I hate managing power lines and making sure they don't accidentally connect anyways. You risk connecting an outpost to the part of the network you are disabling

[@1986debu]

@@Nilaus Ah, I see your point. Thanks for the clarification.

[@zombiefairy4786]

this great video needs some more comments about power switch

[@ggoco155]

Am I missing something I can't find the 3rd video

[@sonalita_]

Nilaus mentioned in a previous reply that this video didn't get enough views to justify making the third one :(

[@raiden000]

I used a power switch to automate my rockets by cutting power to the silo when i have enough of the packs.

[@shredthecable8883]

Cant you just hook up a pump between the boilers and the steam engines (or heat converters and turbines) and switch those off by controlled behavior? That would eliminate the firing up time.

[@DanielvomDorf]

@Nilaus i have a big problem for you to solve(hopefully) you showed how solar and steam interacts. this works perfect because solar has a higher priority. BUT, what is with the interaction between nuclear and steam. there is no difference in priority, they always share the powerproduction. --> now the question: how can i force the coalpower(steamengines) to run always at 100% and nuclear covers just ontop of this? i tryed even with s/r latch but hopeless. at the moment the nuclear kicks in, the steamengines reduce there output. you probably ask yourself, why i would like to do this. at the fist point to have a full belt consumtion as planed and second, in the most mods you have a infinit recource(trough processing) which feels stupid to not run at full power when its actually can.

[@Nilaus]

You want it the other way around. Nuclear is always running anyway, so you should only have Steam Engines as backup. This is exactly the same as for solar, but you need to monitor an Accumulator for the monitoring

[@DanielvomDorf]

@@Nilaus thanks for your answer, i know your time is rare but this did not solve the problem. no matter which methode, when tey both active, the nuclear is loosing efficiency. the solution is easy, not having both at the same the on the same powernetwork...but HOW

[@maltardraco9555]

Can I repurpose your Prioritising Solar over Steam Power setup to prevent wastage of nuclear fuel?

[@asaskald]

Yes. You can set up a tank to measure steam levels. A memory cell to prevent over feeding, and pumps that are tied to an accumulator. My nuclear only feeds when steam is low and only 1 fuel cell at a time. The turbines only get switched on when necessary.

[@maltardraco9555]

@@asaskald Wish you would of told me that three days ago right before I set up my reactors.

[@rudejehlici5425]

You could have used a switch for the backup steam engine setup

[@Loctorak]

*uses combinator to change the colour of a light* "😎 yep... guess you could say im a bit of a circuit genius"

[@coletraintechgames2932]

I don't understand why you need the combinator for the train. Why don't you just turn the station off from the values of the chest. Why do you need to go to star just to go back to the iron in the combinator.

[@Mantis_Toboggan_TrashMan]

I'm new to circuit networks while playing space exploration. I have a ton stuff on my cargo rocket but I'm trying to setup a signal to launch the rocket without full cargo. How do you segment a network when connected to the cargo rocket? I'm trying to read the items within the cargo rocket only but it's picking up everything in the network that's connected to it. Can I setup something like a stop gap so not everything connected to one building views everything? I'm sure this is easy but I just can't figure it out.

[@Smokyquartz98]

you could use a different color cable

[@Warshadows]

wheres part 3 to this

[@ОлегПолканов-д1н]

Why don't have power switch to steem power plant? And on same % of accumulators turn it on. But more beautiful would be not charging accumulators during night time and only from solar panels. On other words using steem power plant only to feed factory and not accumulators. How to do that? Assuming you don't have dedicated block only for accumulators to switch it on and off.

[@garrettkajmowicz]

Where is part 3?

[@moviewatcher7524]

Why manipulate the water pumps? Why not just disconnect the steam engine from the network, and it will swich off automatically and instantly?

[@JohnathanGross]

In the last video, you said there was no use for power switches. But here, you were complaining that the steam power would take too long to stop if you used circuits for the belt or inserters. You settled on the water pumps, but you could have immediately turned off the steam power production if you isolated the steam electric grid from the rest of your base. Instead of turning a pump on and off, you turn a switch on and off to connect the steam electric grid to the rest of your electric grid.

[@kesleta7697]

Then the available power in the power graph would be inaccurate

[@JohnathanGross]

@@kesleta7697 If there is no water in the boiler (or steam in the engines), isn't the available power inaccurate, just in a different way? This way, it's only the power available to the system right now. When the power switch is enabled, the engines are still connected and will be added to the available power.

[@kesleta7697]

@@JohnathanGross where it shows power production, it shows the power being produced as well as the total power available if all the generators were running. I was referring to the total power available, which just looks at the max capacity for power production in the network.

[@JohnathanGross]

@@kesleta7697 I understood that. But if there is no steam in those engines, then they can't produce that theoretical maximum. If you want steam as a backup, the idea is that you shouldn't rely on it as a power source. The max power of your primary power source should be what you care about.

[@sanjikaneki6226]

Nilaus , say you have 1 large production block that is using logistic bots , you use a static value . why not use a dynamic value for bots based of free bots? lets say 10% of the logistical bots in the net need to be free and if now insert more bots(i did that with 3-4 combinators). Why? since it is impossible to know how many bots are needed in a net

[@Nilaus]

you can do that and I mention it, but you end up with way too many robots. If you use Logistics Robots to empty trains then 10000+ commands are suddenly coming into the network and therefore always depleting all robots. If you mass produce Solar with Construction bots then you will also get 10000+ commands and all robots will fly out. In both cases it creates too many robots (in my opinion)

[@honordevs]

Can you connect circuits to big power lines and if so, how? So that they monitor how many power lines there are, then allow you to create more robots per big power line. Essentially scaling your base as you do.

[@captainbube1217]

nielaus. this scenario with the switching of the different reaktors is the scenario to use the power switch.

[@dawerrr9906]

360p max?

[@aguywithoutaname9236]

Well i could do all of that but i like big numbers

[@adambyte256]

Two notes: 1) I don't think the accumulator synchronization thing is true anymore. When I tried it, the one accumulator that I built next to my offshore pumps to pull the signal from kept dropping to low power before all of my other accumulators did. I've resorted to pulling the signal from ALL of my accumulators, and using some combinators to make it so that I don't need to manually increase the thresholds on the pumps when I add more solar panels and accumulators. The circuit remembers the highest (total) "A" signal that's ever been seen, and outputs a value from 0 to 100 representing the percentage of the current total compared to that maximum. Then I set the condition on the pumps based on THAT signal. (The circuit is, of course, far too complicated for this video. It uses 6 combinators, of which 3 are the "positives and negatives cell" from the combinator tutorial page on the wiki. I couldn't figure out how to make a memory cell on my own so I looked it up.) 2) A more dynamic/scalable strategy for oil processing is to read the value from just one tank of each liquid, regardless of how many tanks you have. Then, for each pair of liquids X and Y for which there's a machine that converts X into Y, have a pump on the pipe feeding X into those machines, enabled when the X signal is greater than the Y signal. That way, your storage for all of these liquids will always be the same percentage full as each other, even as you add more tanks to individual liquids.

[@mobius1qwe]

These are very nice basic concepts of circuitry even tho the examples are flawed, but overall it helps the new players to learn about the concepts.

[@Nilaus]

flawed? Which ones would you call flawed?

[@mobius1qwe]

@@Nilaus The electric engine one where you control the water input to disable the power, takes a while to work, if you controlled the inserters it would be faster but still would take a while. Using a power switch instead you wouldn't need to worry about controlling the pumps or the belt or the inserters, the power would be cut instantly. The robot input you are considering the total ammount you want to have on your whole network but not considering if you have room to input them into the roboport. Instead of total robots, its better to input when available = 0, which means you have more jobs than you can supply and when available bots is 0, that means the roboport is empty, also input construction robots and logistic robots into separated roboports. The Oil part you are considering the contents of the stacked tanks, tank-to-tank flow is terrible, its better if you consider the content of 1 tank only, preferrably the one connected to the pump so you have a better accurate reading. While you're doing like this, you have the reading as in the average of all tanks not the total ammount. So instead of 20k light oil read from 2 tanks, you would want to check 10k for 1 tank. If you have a bigger buffer, like petroleum where you have 4 tanks, asssume you keep the ratio of 40%, you would check 40k contents, where you would have supply issues because the tank that is receiving input would have more fluid than the tank that is exporting the fluid to the network because tank-to-tank transfer is slow, so your pump would be flickering, that's why your oil loading train station had issues working, the flickering of the reading values. The train station part you have unloading issues on some stations so even the reading is accurate, the result is not going to work out the way you want. With uneven unload you should consider average ammount in the chests and balance the output. The logic you applied is based on an even unload of the chests, in which you sum their content because you know they all will be unload evenly. But like I said, the basics was covered, when players begin to play around and test out these setups they will eventually face those issues if they wanna build big. But if they just want to launch their first rocket and be done with the game, they won't see any of those issues.

[@trippinballs101]

I wont bother with learning circuts just need to copy examples and maybe gleam a bit of knowledge from said examples

[@rafliadam9079]

I have a better solution for the night time battery usuage. No solar no problem

[@sixstringninja666]

First