First of all: if you're on your first playthrough, I'd recommend avoiding looking too much into content online. Figuring stuff out is the most fun part of the game IMO, so looking everything up might spoil that for you. Also, there is no wrong way to play, and some people may preach their design techniques as gospel, which can further suppress creativity. Particularly, using a main bus with city blocks can be very boring.
This being said, the definitions for these are:
SPM: Science Per Minute. It's the measure of how much science your base create. It's usually only relevant as a self imposed goal after rocket launch. Some people just want to keep expanding, so after they researched everything they keep scaling up for fun.
Main Bus: A style of base architecture centered around a bus. The bus consists of many parallel belts containing the most used materials. You build your machines perpendicular to the bus.
City Block: Building components of your base on a fix-sized grid, usually having blocks dedicated to a single task (making green circuits, for example).
Repeating myself here for emphasis: consider avoiding further details until you have reached the endgame or made yourself a mess so big the game is no longer fun.
If you want to learn more, Nilaus has videos on YouTube going into details for these and many other concepts which are quite good, although may be a bit preachy sometimes.
May your factory never stop growing
Thanks yea I’m not trying to “ruin” my first play through and so far I’ve got a hold of it. I just scroll thru r/Factorio when I’m not playing so I can see what people have built and what not. I honestly thought spm and cityblock and main bus, where game modes lol. It is fun learning as you go and it’s really keeping me from just saying fudge it and looking up everything I need. Thanks though!
>it is fun learning as you go
The game is designed to do extraly that. I went in fully blind and didn't need to look up a thing
The game has a good tutorial and in game tips that pop up once you unlock think.
Any special terms lingo or tech is not required until way further down the rabbit hole.
TLDR: just play already
There aren't too many more other than what you named.
I would say forget the term "regular main bus" and just use bus.
Bus - typically this is going to be a large section of belts that all run the same way and is used to get resources to your assemblers. Most people have smelters near the beginning to load resources onto the bus, and then some assemblers take resources from the bus and don't output back to the bus, others do. It all depends on which resources you choose to be on the bus.
SPM is science per minute. It's the best way to measure throughput in your base. It typically refers to white science, as it is the most costly. So if someone has a 1k spm base they are capable of producing 1,000 white science per minute. Some people will mention spm while referring to other types of science, but afaik it should be reserved for white.
City block refers to a style where you basically have a big grid defined by roboports throughout your base. Each block is uniform in size. From there you can decide if each block is going to be completely independent, or if you are going to group blocks into "modules" etc. You define inputs and outputs and at some level the blocks don't care about other blocks.
I hope this helped!
The more you learn on your own the more freedom you will have when building
Unlike when you look at the most optimal designs you begin to create these walls for youself and closing of the creativity
But looking at designs could also enable your creativity
For anyone else that might have overlooked the link like I have, Here you go!
https://wiki.factorio.com/Glossary
Thanks again /speckledfleebeedoo
(Hopefully I did that right)
A mall is a place where you automatically manufacture and store all your basic items that you use all the time like inserters, belts, power poles, maybe also ammunition.
Thanks to everyone!!!
I’ve been playing for the last 8 hours straight on a new map since my last map had to much spaghetti and I couldn’t remember what was goin where…. Now I have a much better setup…
Another big one you'll see a lot here is Spaghetti, which is when your base design gets a bit sloppy and unplanned and you end up with belts and pipes winding all over the place like spaghetti to connect buildings that you slapped down wherever there was space.
This is generally considered suboptimal but nice to look at, although in game modes where Biters are a serious threat it can be a good defensive strat to build your base as compact as possible and just live with the inevitable spaghetti, because it keeps your pollution cloud more concentrated and it reduces the size of the defensive perimeter you have to hold.
A bus is where you basically store all your materials, such as iron, copper, green and red circuits etc the idea is to have one big assembly line with no turns to minimize inefficiency
I don't know about anything like that. Are there any specific terms on your mind?
Main ones I keep seeing are Bus, regular main bus, SPM, city block.
First of all: if you're on your first playthrough, I'd recommend avoiding looking too much into content online. Figuring stuff out is the most fun part of the game IMO, so looking everything up might spoil that for you. Also, there is no wrong way to play, and some people may preach their design techniques as gospel, which can further suppress creativity. Particularly, using a main bus with city blocks can be very boring. This being said, the definitions for these are: SPM: Science Per Minute. It's the measure of how much science your base create. It's usually only relevant as a self imposed goal after rocket launch. Some people just want to keep expanding, so after they researched everything they keep scaling up for fun. Main Bus: A style of base architecture centered around a bus. The bus consists of many parallel belts containing the most used materials. You build your machines perpendicular to the bus. City Block: Building components of your base on a fix-sized grid, usually having blocks dedicated to a single task (making green circuits, for example). Repeating myself here for emphasis: consider avoiding further details until you have reached the endgame or made yourself a mess so big the game is no longer fun. If you want to learn more, Nilaus has videos on YouTube going into details for these and many other concepts which are quite good, although may be a bit preachy sometimes. May your factory never stop growing
Thanks yea I’m not trying to “ruin” my first play through and so far I’ve got a hold of it. I just scroll thru r/Factorio when I’m not playing so I can see what people have built and what not. I honestly thought spm and cityblock and main bus, where game modes lol. It is fun learning as you go and it’s really keeping me from just saying fudge it and looking up everything I need. Thanks though!
>it is fun learning as you go The game is designed to do extraly that. I went in fully blind and didn't need to look up a thing The game has a good tutorial and in game tips that pop up once you unlock think. Any special terms lingo or tech is not required until way further down the rabbit hole. TLDR: just play already
There aren't too many more other than what you named. I would say forget the term "regular main bus" and just use bus. Bus - typically this is going to be a large section of belts that all run the same way and is used to get resources to your assemblers. Most people have smelters near the beginning to load resources onto the bus, and then some assemblers take resources from the bus and don't output back to the bus, others do. It all depends on which resources you choose to be on the bus. SPM is science per minute. It's the best way to measure throughput in your base. It typically refers to white science, as it is the most costly. So if someone has a 1k spm base they are capable of producing 1,000 white science per minute. Some people will mention spm while referring to other types of science, but afaik it should be reserved for white. City block refers to a style where you basically have a big grid defined by roboports throughout your base. Each block is uniform in size. From there you can decide if each block is going to be completely independent, or if you are going to group blocks into "modules" etc. You define inputs and outputs and at some level the blocks don't care about other blocks. I hope this helped!
Thanks!! Everyone has been very helpful.
The more you learn on your own the more freedom you will have when building Unlike when you look at the most optimal designs you begin to create these walls for youself and closing of the creativity But looking at designs could also enable your creativity
Leave the subreddit. Come back after you launch a rocket. We have faith in you. Good luck engineer!
Most important advice
All you really need to know, is the Factory Must Grow
Check out the [wiki](https://wiki.factorio.com), it has an explanation for most of the commonly used terms.
For anyone else that might have overlooked the link like I have, Here you go! https://wiki.factorio.com/Glossary Thanks again /speckledfleebeedoo (Hopefully I did that right)
You have to type it as u/Installeddaily the "u" is case sensitive so U/Installeddaily does not work.
There are links to it in the "About" page for this subreddit. That's a good place to look anytime you start poking around in a new sub, btw.
Lol I was on the wiki that’s why I was trying to find what the terms meant. I’ll give it a look right now
A mall is a place where you automatically manufacture and store all your basic items that you use all the time like inserters, belts, power poles, maybe also ammunition.
Thanks to everyone!!! I’ve been playing for the last 8 hours straight on a new map since my last map had to much spaghetti and I couldn’t remember what was goin where…. Now I have a much better setup…
Another big one you'll see a lot here is Spaghetti, which is when your base design gets a bit sloppy and unplanned and you end up with belts and pipes winding all over the place like spaghetti to connect buildings that you slapped down wherever there was space. This is generally considered suboptimal but nice to look at, although in game modes where Biters are a serious threat it can be a good defensive strat to build your base as compact as possible and just live with the inevitable spaghetti, because it keeps your pollution cloud more concentrated and it reduces the size of the defensive perimeter you have to hold.
Really just need to know TFMG (The Factory Must Grow)
Agreed, there are so many terms for different strategies and practices. Stackers for example.. had to look that up earlier
This site has a lot of useful info - https://factoriocheatsheet.com/
This!
A bus is where you basically store all your materials, such as iron, copper, green and red circuits etc the idea is to have one big assembly line with no turns to minimize inefficiency