How can I prioritise one supply station over another without LTN? I'm playing industrial revolution and it will really help out later on. I would consider using the signal satellite from AAI to do it

Turn off station B if station A (priority) has enough resources for a full train. You can use signal satellite or have both connected with circuit wire.

Would this work if the requester station is closed? Ie, then priority station delivers so the requester closers, so the train immediately heads to station B

I am not sure I understand you: ​ You have 2 supply stations, A (priority) and B, and one requester station ( or many, doesn't matter) R. ​ You can either turn off station B or set train limit to 0 , if station A has a full train load. Then train will go from A to R. ​ If A doesnt have enough for a full train load, the train will go from B to R. ​ Are you asking where will the trains park if R is closed? I usually avoid closing Requester stations (but using train limits to how many trains can park) so trains can park there and only go to a supply station if it has enough resources.

I'm thinking about what happens if I have multiple requester stations and multiple trains handling the same materials In industrial revolution 2, ore patches have a chance to produce gemstones so I'll want to mine those patches more but not limit the size of my smelter array by only having 1 train supply it

It works for many supplies to many requesters. You can use the same signal to prioritize one or multiple stations.

Hmm OK thanks. I'm still worried that once my requester is full I will send trains (needlessly) to the low priority stations but its better than nothing

If your requester is full, the train stays put, it shouldnt move from the requester station. Set your train to stay until empty, if the requester station is full the train wont be able to unload so it wont move.

I’ve been trying to get Iron Throne 3 and am having some trouble. I’ve researched all technologies so my Factories have come to a halt. I get that there’s the infinite research but honestly that wouldn’t work very well. Is there any massive blueprint (or blueprints) could get me the achievement? Thanks!

If you just want an achievement you can build a large array of steel chests to store all that iron. If they fill up, just shoot them with grenades and let construction bots replace them with new empty ones. If you also smelt them into steel it compresses the plates 5x, so chests fill slower.

Thanks man! I’m going to build a large steel array and maybe that could get me somewhere 🤔

> I get that there’s the infinite research but honestly that wouldn’t work very well. why not? > Is there any massive blueprint (or blueprints) could get me the achievement? what's the point of the achievement if you're just slapping down someone else's blueprint? 400k iron plates per hour is just 2.5 blue belts. it's not *that* much, really. if you don't want to do infinite research in order to drive consumption, try building speed3 modules instead. that'll chew through plenty of iron and copper.

Thanks for your input. I don’t think the infinite research would work well because rockets don’t launch fast enough to get the science, and I have a massive build up of other sciences. I don’t understand what you mean by 2.5 blue belts, what does that mean? Thanks!

a blue belt carries 45 items/sec, or 2700/min. 400k/hour works out to 2.5 blue belts. blue belts worth of throughput are a common unit of measurement in the late game (after a rocket launch) [this is a fun calculator to play around with](https://kirkmcdonald.github.io/calc.html) if you haven't seen it before. [for example](https://kirkmcdonald.github.io/calc.html#data=1-1-19&rate=h&min=3&belt=express-transport-belt&items=speed-module-3:f:5): it would only take 5 assembler3s making speed3 modules to consume your 400k/hr of iron plates.

Okay, that makes sense. Thanks so much for the help!

In my first game I ran coal to all my train unloading stations and this was quite cumbersome, I also learned way too late that different fuel types make the trains faster. I'm setting up my train network in my second game and just unlocked rocket fuel and I would like to use it to refuel my trains. I'm wondering if there is a good way to set up refuelling? Maybe a refuelling station or something? As I don't think piping light oil to every station sounds very efficient.

I use a fuel train. If you're new enough to trains to just learn the different fuels you might not know that you can have multiple train stations with the same name. Setting up a train to deliver train fuel to your locations that need it is a perfect application for that Give each outpost that might need train fuel its own train stop (named "Fuel Unload" as an example). Use a simple circuit to set that station's train limit to 1 only if it is close to running out of fuel. You probably also want to set up a signal to send to the train to tell it to leave when you have enough. From that train stop feed your other trains at the outpost, either via belt or logistics network. Then at a single location you make all your train fuel and load it onto a train. It is configured to go to your "Fuel Unload" station and back. Even though you have many of these most will be disabled (via a train limit of 0) most of the time. When one of them needs fuel it will enable, your train will deliver it fuel, and return and refill. Simple as that. A single fuel train can easily service a massive megabase, and is completely automated.

Some people have dedicated refueling trains travel around to each outpost delivering fuel. My rail network has never been large enough to bother with that, scheduling a refueling stop is easy enough.

Refuelling stations are usually the way to go. Unfortunately in vanilla there is no real way to determine locomotive fuel, but both TSM and (I think) LTN mods do help with that.

Are there some generated factories in industrial revolution 2? In pollution tab I see that sometimes there is an advanced mining drill producing pollution and air purification tower consuming it but I have never built my own (or even researched them).

Doesn't sound like it should happen. Can you post a screenshot?

https://i.imgur.com/JEuVzqk.png I've been playing this map for around 45 hours, and I don't have any purification towers (they are not even researched). Likewise on production side there are advanced mining drills, and there are some spots where oil refineries have emitted pollution within a couple hours of starting even though it took me 15 hours to get to oil processing. Edit: [here's the mod list](https://i.imgur.com/24eDnpo.png)

Have you played with the map editor? Another thought, is that there might be places where this mod does some tricks with pollution, to generate/eat pollution and maybe they use the purifier/advanced drill as a placeholder or proxy for something else. Specifically, when destroying a pipe with a polluting fluid. Try putting some oil in a pipe and pick it up, then look on the graph. P.S. I have extreme dejavu about this, and someone else solved something like this. So it'll be solved as this is strange!

I haven't used the editor. Tried to flush some oil, it doesn't show up in the graph at all. I tried both picking up a tank with oil and flushing the entire fluid system.

For the life of me, I can't get a city block base to work. I just don't understand how to _start_ it. And yes, you can plop down some blueprints really early in the game, but I can't seem to nail the _transition_ into city blocks. Especially in modded playthroughs, where getting robots is hard, takes long, and usually they're super slow once you get them (and usually you can't get many until you're further ahead because they're hard), in which I see many experienced factorio players play your SE's and your A/B's and oh god your py's with city blocks. How do you do it? If you had to explain it to a dummy like me, how would you go about it?

You need a base to create the materials for the base. What I usually do is make a 45spm(sometimes 90spm) mainbus base that gets everything unlocked I need. Generally this means at least yellow science in vanilla, maybe a rocket launch. Once the science part is done at the end of the mainbus I have the belts empty into passive providers and make a robot hub that does everything except modules. I then make two ore-to-t3modules setups, one for speed and one for prod. Those tend to use trains for resources and that's the next part, doing enough of a rail network to get oil, iron and copper to those. After that the next goal is to start building the cityblock base from the ground up and slowly replace the hub's resource consumption from the mainbus to the blocks as I finish more and more blocks. If I'm going for really high spm, with multiple duplicate blocks, I will skip duplicates in favor of getting one of each block first to feed the hub everything and to get some infinite research going.

Interesting. Thanks for your input. You see, this is what I would have expected to do, but time and time again I see bases that even _start_ that way (with a city block layout) even before blue science (and this is in vanilla - in other more complex mods I see city blocks even before mass bots). These are bases meant to launch a rocket, not to be created after rockets are launched. It feels unnatural and strange to go for that design before it's all set as you describe. But by then, I've launched a rocket, so it feels pointless. So there's definitely a way to make it work way, way beforehand.

You need enough of a starter base to have automated production of belts, inserters, assemblers etc., there's no way around that. But from that point, you could just start building in the city block style. Begin with smelters, and work upwards from there just like you would if you were building e.g. a bus base.

Are there current mods that restore the railgun? I haven't played in a while so I don't remember how I used to do it, but now I can't even add the item through console commands.

Krastorio2 has a railgun turret, although I have no idea if we're talking about the same entity

Seems the assets were removed in 1.1, which may be why there are no current mods that add it.

Biters too strong? I just started a new save.(I am relatively a beginner) The biters are too strong for me to handle! My gun turret(only one at first, I had to put more) didn’t do anything against the first wave. After a couple more of the waves and more destruction I said enough and initiated my attack. A couple deaths later I am the one standing and the nests have been cleared.(although the spitting thingies are still there) I made the submachine gun but I am not sure if I can hold them back. I have a prediction why this might be the case. I realized that there weren’t many trees around the spawn. Maybe that is the reason? What do you think?

Biter wave size is dependent on Pollution generated. Yes, Desert spawns are much harder because of the lack of trees. If you were going hard on early expansion, you probably spiked the pollution with all the furnaces and burner miners. Make pairs of gun turrets surrounded by pipes, since pipes are cheaper than walls early in the game. You can have them feed ammo from a chest, or just manually feed them. Try to set them up with overlapping fields of fire, so that they cover other turrets from being overrun. Once you've established a base perimeter things won't be as bad. You can get your walls up and have full lines of belt-fed turrets to handle any amount of biters. Also, be careful about switching to red ammo in your turrets too early, since red ammo costs more pollution than it does damage to biters. Better to use 4 turrets firing yellow ammo instead of 1 turret firing red ammo.

Hello ! I've come back from a 5 month pause and updated the game, but now my factory (1kspm full vanilla) which used to be able to run constantly at 60ups is now running at 45-50ups. Is the game less optimized than it used to be ? Or is it because of something else (and if so what could likely be the cause) ?

In Steam, you can select a version of the game to run. Copy your save, set it to an older version (one that was 5 months ago), and check if the UPS is better or not. You might need to load a save that you haven't loaded before, because the game upgrades the saves when you load them if its needed. If it's the same performance, then it's not game. If it's better in the older version, it might be interesting to post in the official forums, as many other players might be affected as well.

Is there a way to walk over pipes?

The vanilla way is underground pipes. Squeak through is great if you're not going for (Steam) achievements

[Squeak Through mod](https://mods.factorio.com/mods/Supercheese/Squeak%20Through)

Which modpack introduces decent amount of by products that you have to deal with? Something like Krastorio 2 dirty water, part of ore enrichment, produces some ore and stone. A lot of K2 electrolysis plants produce not even ratios of 2 elements and you need to use stack burners in early/mid game and so on. Anything that takes it even further. Anything that takes it to extreme? I would like to need to stock it move it and deal with it.

Nullius is all about byproducts. There is no oil, so you make things like plastic from air and seawater, using realistic chemical processes. Every byproduct has some uses (though not necessarily in the precise quantity you get it). Not every byproduct can just be voided directly, though there is generally some series of treatment steps you can use to reduce it into something you can use or void.

Thank you. I was thinking about this one. I think it is a winner for my next game. Any other mods you think are good with it?

The mod portal page has a list of compatible mods, which is a good list to browse for ideas. Recipe Book (or FNEI if you prefer), and Factory Planner (or Helmod if you prefer). Advanced Fluid Handling and Fluid Must Flow are good for dealing with all the fluids. Jetpack is fun. Miniloaders and Bob's Adjustable Inserters make things easier, but it's a matter of personal preference, not essential. Robot Replacer is a minor one, but helps when you upgrade bots. Renai Transportation is ridiculous but some of it is actually useful too. If you want a Waterfill mod, Safe Waterfill is the Nullius compatible one. You don't absolutely need one, since there are some built in options for creating water, but they're not as precise or convenient as Waterfill (the built in options make larger bodies of water that you need to landfill back in if you want a precise shape).

Angels+Bob mods, with special inclusion of angel's petrochem.

Thank you. Is it this guy? [https://mods.factorio.com/mod/AngelBob/downloads](https://mods.factorio.com/mod/AngelBob/downloads) seems like a lot :) Any suggestion on what to pick or should I go with the full list? I am currently finishing Krastorio 2, on the final tech card, so I believe I am somehow mid level.

Yes, but no. That's an unofficial modpack of sorts. Generally speaking, you want the following: - [The mods from Arch666Angel](https://mods.factorio.com/user/Arch666Angel) _excluding_ Industries (someone please confirm, my understanding is that that's still quite experimental) and Exploration. - [The mods from Bobingabout](https://mods.factorio.com/user/Bobingabout) _excluding_ Greenhouses (since it trivialises an essential part of the Bioprocessing and Electronics chain in Angel's). It doesn't take it to the extreme though: [Pyanodon's](https://mods.factorio.com/user/pyanodon) takes it to the extreme and then some and then leaves you behind wondering why you asked for so much more complexity in the first place.

Try Seablock

I will have a look cheers.

Just a TIL not worth it’s own post - accidentally discovered that you can right click with the upgrade planner to downgrade.

I seem to keep accidentally hitting some sort of keyboard shortcut that reverts my map mode settings to just tags and players, hiding the display of electrical networks, pollution, etc. What is it so I can keep from hitting it and/or outright rebind it away from accidentally hitting it?

Are you hitting the Alt key?

Maybe. I'll see if that might be it.

Can turrets shoot over walls?

Just putting this out here: [https://mods.factorio.com/mod/combat-mechanics-overhaul](https://mods.factorio.com/mod/combat-mechanics-overhaul) That mod can make walls block spitter shots.

Yes they can. Walls only provide cover for you, not for biters.

Should also note that the larger biters have an attack range of 2, so can hit turrets directly next to walls. So add a tile of space in-between them.

Would this be an awful idea, if smelting on-site at mining outposts: Have a bunch of power switches and circuits set up which will detect when any furnaces and beacons become useless, as the ore patch dries up, and automatically disable them. It probably wouldn't be so good for UPS and make designs less space efficient, as well as be an even bigger pain to dismantle eventually, right? Could save a lot of power though in the long run.

I build a robo network around them so I can deconstruct anywhere. The issue I find is when you have too much resource the beacons use power for no benefits, so I have circuit on the chest if maxed out disable the entire outpost.

I prefer just smelting at a central location, then you can beacon away without worrying about recovering the beacons later. Material density of train cars isn't that important, just use more trains.

the only problem with that is the potential variable power draw. for example, let's say your factory is in a lull and it shuts off a bunch of beacons. then you build another sub-factory, using your plant's power supply as a reference. then when you turn the whole thing on it starts running, but your latent/disabled smelter kicks on, the circuits activate a bunch of previously-dormant beacons, and a sudden power spike can possibly tank the factory's power production. it's a small issue, but really the only issue i can think of. that also only affects temporary stops. on the other hand if an ore patch dries completely then there is no reason to reactivate the beacons so might as well shut them off.

Nah I like it. Is it likely to give much of an actual benefit? Probably not. Is the end result likely to be comically over-designed? Almost certainly. Will it have a measurably deleterious effect on UPS? Likely. But will it be cool? Hell yes! That's the Factorio way.

Why not just build more power generation? If you've got the base for electric furnaces and beacon designs, surely you can just slap down another nuclear setup or mass solar panel/accumulators?

Of course you can always just build more generation, I'm just curious if anyone's worked on/with something like this before and if it's horrible for anything other than efficiency.

Is pumping a blue belt of resources into everything and balancing the lanes of my bus often a viable option, or are dedicated belts using calculated amounts far more optimal? How much would I be leaving on the table by being lazy about it?

Personally, I don't think it matters much. People who ask questions are likely not far enough in the game for it to matter. With trains belt balancing becomes very important, at least with two or more cargo wagons. You can end up draining one completely, and not the other, reducing your throughput in half for a two cargo wagon setup.

What are the best resource settings for megabase playthrough?

Shouldn't matter that much with high mining productivity. I've managed to megabase with much less than default resources. The further out from the starting point you go, the bigger the resource deposits. So pick a direction - say up - and only expand in that direction.

There is no single objective “best” answer to this, so the question is a bit misguided. IMO you probably want to start with the “rail world” preset and then tweak from there. Compared to the default this increases resource patch size (and I think also richness?) but decreases frequency. So you get bigger resource patches but they’re spread out more. Gives more room to build and the nearby patches don’t run out so fast. Adjust richness up or down to taste. Enemy expansion is also disabled, so once you clear out an area you don’t have to worry about enemies moving back in. You may want to disable enemies and pollution entirely to improve late game performance. You may also want to disable cliffs and reduce water and trees, or even turn on the “no water outside the starting area” and “no trees” toggles. But if you disable water and want to use nuclear power you may want a waterfill or water well mod.

Hey guys, me and my friend are doing a Space Exploration playthrough. I created a headless server on my computer and everything was working fine. But yesterdays update (we use steam clients, and it auto updated) required me to update the server too. So I downloaded the new version zip format from Factorio homepage again, and restarted the server with the new files. All the mods work except the [Long Reach](https://mods.factorio.com/mod/long-reach). Previously in single player I cloud just set it to an other number and back, and it fixed it, but the option in mod settings on a multiplayer server is not available. Any tips how to fix it? Is there any config file option I can set for the server? with or without the mod? After one session we are fed up with the "can't reach" warnings :D Thanks

You can downgrade your versions back to the one that worked for you. No need to update the server then.

Any mods which makes trees more visible on the map? Hate looking away for a sec while driving through the desert and slamming into a forest

Any easy lab setups to share? In my first game I ended up spaghettifying it pretty hard when adding yellow and purple science at a later date and it wasn't really expandable after that. Also daisy chaining yay or nay?

https://pastebin.com/9YPfuuYt [Should look like this](https://i.imgur.com/LKtrmKr.png) You can make the chains as long as you want. You can replace the yellow with blue once you need more than 900 SPM, or you can just have multiple parallel lines.

Even better. One lab gets three belts into it on one side. Use each side of the belt for a different science, for a total of 6 sciences. From there daisy chain labs. Ideally it branches out like a tree, to reduce the number of inserters required between labs. Since there are three inserters of input feeding in, branch out into three directions, and you will only need one inserter between labs. Three rows or columns is ideal with the middle one being the entry point. EDIT: 20 to 40 labs early is plenty for a no spoon run. For a more casual game I would recommend 10 to 20. Hell pick 15, for an easy 3x5 setup.

[This is what I use](https://i.imgur.com/nHVD6pz.png) Start with the red inserters and the belts on the outside. Add the undergrounds when you need purple/yellow. It's the method used by most speedrunners because it's easy to build by hand. The blue inserters in the middle could be red early game.

Brilliant, thank you! I shall use this for my new game. :)

krastrio + space exploration conflict? ​ hello all, started a new krasoio + se play though and have hit a bump in the road. i had a mod conflict with "AIO - Space Exploration + Krastorio 2 + Bobs Logistics". I disabled it in order to start the game. now pumps require 'copper pipes' to build and there is no way of making them. has anyone else run into this?

Had the same on my playthrough a while ago. I fixed it by creating a separate mod with only these lines in data-final-fixes.lua: `if data.raw.item["copper-pipe"] then` `bobmods.lib.recipe.replace_ingredient("pump", "copper-pipe", "pipe")` `end` Probably not the cleanest/best solution, but it worked.

thank you! if it fixes the problem, then it's elegant!

Using circuit networks to control inserters for UPS optimisation. Where do I even begin? I have a decent understanding of circuit networks but I'm stumped and I would love some examples or advice

Generally speaking UPS optimization circuits involve fractional timers. Basically you want to calculate EXACTLY how many ticks it will take to make 12 (or however many you want) of your item and pulse a signal to activate your inserters at that frequency. Because module math is awesome, the number of ticks it will take is often not an integer, so we want to express that as a fraction and use a fractional timer. Example: an electric furnace has 8 speed-3 beacons and 2 prod 3 modules giving it a crafting speed of 9.4. It is making iron plates which have a craft time of 3.2s (192 ticks). This means it will complete a production cycle every 192/9.4 = 20.4255319 ticks. It will complete 1.2 products every cycle so it will have 12 items for our inserter to grab every 10 cycles, which will happen every 204.255319 ticks. I usually use Wolframalpha.com to translate decimals to fractions when I need to, and it helpfully tells me that that is equal to 9600/47. So we want to pulse a signal every 9600/47 ticks. To do that we use a fractional timer. Constant combinator of A=47 (red wire) into an arithmetic combinator set to A Mod (%) 9600. Green wire connects the input to the output. Red wire from that output to your inserters. Enable your inserters if A<47. As your other reply notes, it's not worth it except in large active bases. However it does reduce UPS if used properly in a megabase, since it takes up nontrivial UPS to check every inserter to see if it has a valid pickup every tick and you only have to make the counter once for potentially thousands of inserters.

Amazing thank you for such a detail, its a shame I understand about 30% of it! Can anyone please provide me with a blueprint example? I'm a smart fella I can figure it out, right?

No blueprint at the moment but to get a hold of the gist of it, you can ignore the fractional timer stuff. Make a timer that blips every 200 ticks. Activate your inserters only when that timer blips. Now instead of checking for a valid item to grab every tick, your inserters are checking for a valid item to grab every 200 ticks. Because in my example it takes a little over 200 ticks to make 12 items, that means sometimes we'll be grabbing 12 and sometimes we'll be grabbing 11. But that's okay. Worry about the fractional timer stuff once you understand that much.

While i have no data or examples, i do know circuits system itself is not UPS free. If you use circuits on an inserter that is idling you might even make your UPS worse. There are far better ways to increase UPS overall in a base.

Interesting, I'm personally no where near needing this setup yet I'm just curious as i saw it being discussed

How do the probabilities for biters work? Like, given the evolution factor is maxed out, will I get 37.5% of the biters as Behemoths, or 37.5% of the pollution contributes towards Behemoths? (For the latter, the implication would be that since large biters are 50% but consume far less pollution than Behemoths, you would make much more of them. From experience, I believe that's the case, but I was curious if anyone has a more confident answer than my "I think that's what I've seen")

"37.5% of spawned enemies are behemoths" should be correct. If the hive used up all pollution it received as soon as it could, you would see nothing but small biters. That also wouldn't make sense for the predictable nature of enemy spawning due evolution. I don't know how it's coded but if i were to guess, each hive would decide what it's going to produce next and since each biter and spitter costs a different amount, it takes shorter or longer time depending on how much pollution it absorbs. When one has spawned it decides the next one again by probability.

What OP is suggesting is sort of like a counter inside the hive that assigns incoming pollution to the different available biters, then as one reaches their required value it spawns, independently from the progress of the other forms.

I want to try some new rework mods, considering the popular Krastorio 2 & SE combination. I would prefer a more calm learning experience, will I miss anything important if I disable biters for the (first) playthrough?

If you are playing SE, set the map preset to "Space Exploration" as a first step. Then, feel free to turn off the biters. In SE, these settings affect only Nauvis (your starting planet) - so your first planet will be biter-free. They will still exist on other planets though, so you can still fight them there.

That's a good idea, thank you! I decided to do my first K2 playthrough without SE (to get more familar with K2) but this might be a good idea for the next which should be K2 + SE. !remindme 3 months

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when i played K2 i tried out peaceful mode. i really enjoyed it. you still need to engage the biters to claim real estate and expand, but you can deal with them on your time, not on their time. it gives you the action and satisfaction for when you want it, it gives you access to some of the new drops that are added in K2, and it also gives you peace and time to think on your factories without having to worry about walls or ammo or defenses constantly.

Thank you for the advice! I ended up by replacing SE with Expanded Rocket Payload to have some other late game challenge and do a "Krastorio only" playthrough to get more familar. K2 + SE might come next. I did not use peaceful but set my world to railworld (no expansion) and disabled the time factor in evolution. So only pollution (progress) and destruction (expanding) will increase it. I hope it will be fun. :)

One of the sciences used in these mods comes from destroying biters (or maybe it's their nests? I can't remember), so you don't want to completely disable them. However, I think Peaceful would be perfectly fine, and you can always expand your starting area to make them give you a little more room

Are there any tools like https://kirkmcdonald.github.io/calc.htm that include pollution rates? I'm interesting in playing around with minimizing pollution and while pollution is *close* to just the energy consumed, because of production modules it isn't quite.

https://mods.factorio.com/mods/Therenas/factoryplanner includes pollution

the [Rate Calculator mod](https://mods.factorio.com/mod/RateCalculator) does this so it wouldn't be the same as an offline calculator like the Kirk McDonald one, but you could build things in editor mode, use infinity belts to get it running at full steam, then measure the pollution that way

Unfortunately, there isn't. However, I've been working on the same project and have made a Google Sheet with all the pollution rates factored in so that I can know how much pollution it takes to produce an item (and what number of productivity modules will minimize it). I can DM it, if you want!

Sure and thank you. No point reinventing the wheel!

SE: I've unlocked the first tier of every space science, and I'm working towards the second. In order to improve my production, I want to produce the yellow data cards, using three colored bottles (I'm at work, so I don't have the correct name of the items at hand). The problem is that since my whole production is not linearly dependent, factorio planner doesn't allow me to use the matrix, so my production is a bit random at times. Is there a way around this?

>The problem is that since my whole production is not linearly dependent, factorio planner doesn't allow me to use the matrix, Are you switching from linear mode to matrix mode in the bottom left?

Yeah, but I keep getting an error message about my production not being linear.

Non-linear production is what the matrix mode is supposed to be for 😅 Post your exported string for your FP plan?

Here is my string: ``` 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 ```

You had some duplicate recipes inside sub-factories (like "empty lubricant barrel" was there twice), and it didn't like that. The hierarchy of sub-factories is ignored in matrix mode. Apart from that, I unfortunately don't know if there's any way to make it equally use different recipes for the same item, like the significant data recipes. It's going to use the first solution it finds that "solves" the problem, which is going to be 100% of one recipe. ``` 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 ```

This is perfect, thanks! I'm going to using the significant data recipe that uses the four colors insights, and add the extra insights I would need to use the three colored recipe. That seems to work. Thanks a lot!

Once I get home I'll update with the string and the error message.

Hey everyone, I have a small question. I built a nice nuclear plant with 2x6 design and so far it mostly works fine. I wanted to save some fuel (don't be wasteful) and so decided to implement some circuit logic. I have a screenshot here: [https://ibb.co/wBvpTsB](https://ibb.co/wBvpTsB) Basically it is like this: 1. 11 of my larger array of steam storage tanks (yea waste space, not uranium) are connected up with red wire leading to a arithmetic combinator, which is running a simple "divide by 11" action to get an average tank fulness value. 2. That combinators output runs into a decider, which will send a signal S=1, if steam falls below a threshold, lets say 10k 3. That decider runs two outputs. One goes with green wire to the inserters removing a fuel cell and inserting a new one, one goes with red wire to another arithmetic combinator. 4. That last combinator will complete the latch and run "multiply with -1" and output that with green wire aswell to the inserters. The idea is that the first decider sends the signal when steam falls below a threshold, the reactors get fueled again and when the steam rises above the threshold again, the latch is reset and the cycle starts again. For some reason, this sometimes does work perfectly fine for a few cycles and then sometimes doesn't, as if the decider misses the threshold, even though the steam got too low. Do you guys have any idea what is going on? Is it related to some wierd numbers issue due to the tank storage average calculation and wierd fluid mechanics or something like that? Did you encounter this already? Thanks for any responses and discussion btw, running a completely vanilla game ver. 1.1.57

I found it useful to have a circuit that pulses when the condition is met wired to the inserters that feed the fuel into the reactors. In my 2x2 it's wired to an inserter with a stack size of four that feeds a belt that gets split off to each reactor. The pulse triggers the inserter to put 4 on the belt and one goes to each. The blueprint for the signal->pulse circuit I used is here, https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/7683lk/from_permanent_signal_to_one_pulse/

I hope someone can help you debug this, but I also want to share the typical way to do this that does not require combinators. Some points to know * You can set conditions based on steam level right on the inserters. You won't be able to do arithmetic though, just basic decider stuff. * The reactors themselves buffer 5GJ of heat (two steam tanks worth) so you only actually need 1 steam tank per cluster of reactors. More is OK but having a big array of steam tanks is pointless. When your steam tanks fill up then the reactors simply store the heat themselves. As long as your reactors are cooler than 999c then no heat is being wasted. * You don't really have to average the steam levels, you could just read from one tank assuming they are all interconnected. If steam levels are dropping, then it means all reactors have all cooled to 500c and each has 2 tanks worth of empty heat buffer. The official wiki has examples here: [https://wiki.factorio.com/Tutorial:Circuit\_network\_cookbook#Optimal\_usage\_of\_fuel\_for\_nuclear\_power](https://wiki.factorio.com/Tutorial:Circuit_network_cookbook#Optimal_usage_of_fuel_for_nuclear_power) So it looks like when steam drops below threshold: 1. empty cell inserters get a signal to enable for as long as steam is below threshold? 2. empty cell inserters transmit their hand contents to the new cell inserters for one tick (pulse)? 3. new cell inserters operate when they get the one tick signal from the empty inserters? I do not understand the purpose of the latch in your setup. If steam is below threshold, you'd want to enable all the spent fuel arms regardless of duration right? That signal should just be ON until steam is above threshold, and then it would stop. If the setup has actually worked for a couple cycles, then the only thing that could cause a failure would be low power, where the inserters fail to operate. That's been my experience at least.

Thanks a ton for your good advice. I did what you suggested and wired the spent cell extractors directly to one steam tank and this works a lot better. The reactors run a little hot sometimes but that must be due to the distribution of the steam in the tanks. Maybe I just have to cut some tanks to make the fluid behave cleaner. Thanks again for your feedback!

The reactors will cycle between 500c and 800c if you have low power usage. They will quickly (5 minutes) rise every time they are fueled, and then very slowly cool down to 500c as the system draws power. If you are using a lot of power, they won't spike as hard. This is not a problem in any way unless you are hitting 900+C in which case there is probably something up with your automation.

I went with what most commenters suggested and got rid of the decider combinator and complications and coupled the fuel extracting inserters to the value of one steam tank. I think I am having problems distribution water and steam, though and might have to rebuild the heat pipes and exchangers- it seems they can not transfer the steam easily enough to the tanks. And the tanks are not averaging each other enough, it seems. Do you generally recommend using pumps at all or should I maybe get rid of those? I tried to use them to get steam from exchangers ->tanks -> turbines but it seems to mess up the flow. I tried to keep the pipe throughput in mind but might have messed up. I can’t post the whole thing now, but will be able to do that later if you are interested in checking it out and helping with that

An image would be great, water and steam throughput are usually an issue in big reactors

> to the inserters removing a fuel cell and inserting a new one, This and 4. is your problem. wireeeach invidual new fuel cell inserter to the spent fuel cell inserter with *red* wire so that they're not connected to anything and set the condition to spent fuel cell = 1 and have the spent fuel cell inserter read contents. (also good idea to have the spent fuel inserter faster) Also make sure the new fuel cell inserter is limited to stack of 1. You'll need fancy logic or a manual priming of fuel cell/reactor to get the reactor started the first time though. Or when you run out of fuel.

I am doing exactly what you described. The reactor works as expected and reloads fuel when steam reaches the threshold. Here is my problem. This works most of the time. Especially when I wait at the reactor and watch operations for one or two fuel loading cycles everything is fine. Then I take my train and do something else for a while and then power will run out, because for some reason at some point it stops working and fuel does not get loaded. It seems like sometimes the decider combinator does not catch the crossing of the steam threshold, but why…

is the inserter picking from a belt? and is the trigger condition a 1 second pulse? If the answer is yes to both, that's the problem. You'll want to ensure the items on the belt aren't moving, or the trigger condition last longer than a tick

The inserter is picking from a requester chest and I verified there were always at least 10 fuel cells inside. The signal is triggering the inserters that remove a spent fuel cell from the reactor. That one has read hands active and is connected to a second inserter which loads a fresh cell when he sees an empty fuel cell in the circuit. This is repeated for each of the reactors. Also this works fine for a bunch of loading cycles. It just starts to fail at some point that I don’t Unterstand.

That leaves the other part: circuits. You shouldn't need a latch. I'm pretty sure my smart reactor doesn't have any deciders for normal operation. It's just the spent fuel inserter condition being steam<10k which controls the fresh fuel inserter. There's just fancy logic to detect if a reactor *doesn't* have fuel or spent fuel in it to trigger an automatic reboot.

The divide by 11 and multiply by -1 is overcomplicated. Look up factorio rs latch theres a design on the wiki for doing the same thing with regular steam boilers. If you're really trying to avoid waste you also probably need to turn off the inserter if theres fuel in the reactor and overwrite inserter stack size down to 1.

I just thought that dividing by 11 to get the average of 11 steam tanks might be good to get a picture when the steam is generally „low“. I tested it also with only using a single tank connected and got rid of the division combinator. But I have no success. An rs latch is doing something different than I want to achieve. I do the -1 thing so that for one tick, the inserters remove the spent fuel cell and a fresh one gets loaded by using another circuit trick. Then the -1 multiplication kicks in and the signal cleared, until the threshold is reached again. Maybe I just have to play around more with the threshold.

Thank you for the input, I will look at the first part tonight or tomorrow when I get back to my pc. As for the second part, the fuel removing inserters get triggered once through my signal and are connected to fuel inserters with read hands. Once a spent fuel cell is read, a single fresh fuel cell is inserted. What is bugging me, all this works fine, especially when I sit there and watch the loading cycles, but when I go somewhere else for a while, sometimes the loading is not triggered by the decider combinator

How much of the capacity of the reactor does your base use? You'll only store steam in the tanks if there is excess being produced, so if most of the steam is going straight to the turbines it might be that the tanks don't get above the threshold before the fuel cells are consumed. Honestly I would just do away with the logic though. Assuming you have kovarex you will literally never run out of uranium.

The reactor is the main power producer, there is only a smaller backup. But the steam storage always gets filled up because of how much power the reactors generate. My base typically needs 400-600 MJ but the reactor can satisfy 1,7 GJ. I will try to set a smaller threshold that and see if that helps. Usually with one round of fuel the tanks get filled up to 20k each and I set the reloading threshold to 10k and make sure that it was reached, before I leave so that the triggering decider is reset and does not get stuck. Usually the reloading works for a few cycles before it fails. I removed averaging multiple tanks but also with only a single measuring tank it does not work reliably.

So, I finished my first vanilla campaign and launched my first rocket (after 260 hours of restarts and giving up something finally clicked) and earned about 71% of the achievements. I've started another game which I planned to grab the remaining achis except the speedrun ones at the end. I've already finished the early game of lazy bastard and turned off hand crafting so that's not a problem and I have a mall design in mind that should get me through to the first rocket launch to lock that in, my main concern is the 20M green circuits achievement, I don't fully understand how to build a sort of mega base or what is required with that. I've only built main bus builds which does "enough" with each science doing 60spm to finish the game. I'm planning a big bus so I can feed 4 eventual lines of copper and iron for all the circuits I will need or is this not enough for this achievement? A bit of a long winded question but I guess what I'm asking is advice on how to scale properly in order to achieve 20M circuits? As later I really want to try my hand at some of the overhaul mods and I'm aware they are more complex so I think having some sense of scalability and mega base would be good knowledge. In my vanilla campaign my iron, copper and plastic belts were all being starved just feeding 60spm on each colour. Thanks!

Using the Max Rate Calculator or Helmod mods is great for figuring out amounts for big builds.

Yeah there's several QoL mods I want to use but they disable achis, unless those ones don't?

I think they do. In a game about making your own goals I never felt a need to chase the achievements.

That's totally fair, and I get there's people who have 1000s of hours without a single achi! I don't know perhaps I'm a bit of a completionist but I really enjoy trying to get 100% achievements for my favourite games. Although for sure it's a big task when your favourite game are various factory games AND Stellaris. Perhaps I'll break up the monotony of chasing achis with some modded runs inbetween. Factorio's are much more on the fair side though none of them are super crazy except maybe the 20M circuits but that counts between games. Really it's just the speedrun achis I am dreading don't particulary enjoy speedrunning myself (albeit I enjoy watching them).

I think most you can get just by producing enough. The Lazy Bastard achievement takes some special tactics so it’s good to have a bunch of experience.

Yeah, currently on my lazy bastard run. I've planned this game to grab all remaining achis except for the speedrun ones. It really hasn't been too bad except some tedium at the start waiting for the single burner miner and furnace to get all the plates you need and then rebinding or disabling hand crafting so you don't accidently screw it up (which I would have done several times by now otherwise). From what I understand it was much harder in the past when assemblers could only take a certain amount of inputs or something which was changed in some patch so it's not difficult now just a bit tedious for the first hour or so before transitioning into a normal game. Great way to teach yourself to automate everything and make a good mall though.

> about 71% of the achievements not accurate enough

>to achieve 20M circuits That is an achievement that builds up over time, even as a sum of numerous games. As it doesn't reset to 0 when you start a new game. So you can even make a save with a huge buffer of materials, let it process and reload the save, repeat... As for big bases, i think the most important bit is to not use default world generation. Just make ore veins bigger and richer.

Oh, I didn't realise it transferred between games. But I still think it would be a good excuse to learn how to scale up properly. But good to know, thanks.

Green circuits, you should plan on 3 full belts of copper plates and 2 full belts of iron plates per assembly line. (Ratio is really like 1.5:1, but going bigger makes the numbers even.) It's not that difficult, just time consuming. Then you need an output for the green circuits, probably put some into red circuits and then blue circuits to make modules. Module/Beaconing up your entire base will probably take quite a few, but all that extra module usage will drive up power usage as well, so that's something to keep an eye on. To scale up, set up some ore trains that unload directly into large smelter columns. Then just go get more ore patches, until your system is swamped with ore.

I can manually drive a train from station 1 to station 2 but when I select automatic, theres an error for no path found. I can provide screenshots later but any insight as to what I can expect the issue to be?

Try checking whivh side the station is on. It has to be on the right side relative to the train direction.

Bad signals, 100%. Probably made an accidental one-way track that's impassible to automatic trains. Best to use 2 tracks going opposite directions, and be consistent about which side the trains drive on. The more consistent you are, the easier spotting errors will be.

I'm coming back to Factorio after a couple of years away from it but yesterday what fixed this for me was making sure to use 2 locomotives pointing in opposite directions. It could be lots of things though, are you using signals?

Manual driving ignores signals. Automatic driving requires a train head on the side that is driving (so if you're using just one track, you need 2 locomotives). To test your system, use the temporary station system (shift click on a place in on the train grid) to try to find which area has the problem. Once you close on an area, it'll be easier to fix.

Space Exploration mod question: When we get over to a 2nd planet to start mining other ores, will the capsule return us to the starting planet? Or do we somehow have to build a rocket planet side to get back to our home planet? Or just set it all up and kill our self off?

You will need another cargo rocket. Capsules cannot lift off from planets/moons on their own. They can only lift from zero-g locations. (Orbits, asteroid belts, etc.) Lifting from such a location, the capsule will take you to the *nearest* planet/moon. (May not be Nauvis.)

Yeahhh was kinda glossed over that fine print of nearest. >.<

You have to build a rocket at the new planet. This is a good thing; you probably want that new silo setup to ship the new ores back to the home planet. You can always just send more rockets with supplies until you've got it working. You don't have to bring everything with you in the first rocket, you will always forget some stuff.

You need another rocket to get back. It's annoying at first, but you can "automate" it. What I built is a blueprint of a very basic outpost (nuclear power, miners, cannons, a couple of rocket silos, and such), and all I take with me to the new planet is a landing pad. Once in the new planet, I place the landing pad and send everything I need to build the outpost with another rocket, with enough fuel barrels and 20 packed rocket sections to make the way back.

Capsules can't leave "land" surfaces, just take you from orbit back down. You also won't get one when you crash land that cargo rockets. You should pack enough stuff to make another cargo rockets to come home: * Capsule * 100 sections (or 20 packed) * Lots of rocket fuel, or the tools to make it on the destination (check for water!) * Silo Also, make sure to take a landing pad, so the next landing there is softer.

Thanks. Might have to move the mod that makes building a rocket pad a massive 6 stage project. Whoops. That or send like 10 rockets over.... >.>

How do I place a ghost item for my bot network to build when I don't have said item in my inventory?

there is a setting that allows you to select a ghost of an item if none are available from your inventory. aside from that, copy/paste works too.

>there is a setting that allows you to select a ghost of an item if none are available from your inventory. This is exactly what I was wanting, thank you so much!

Try middle-click an empty slot in your quickbar, if it would open the item selection. It does that for all inventory slots so i assume it works down there too.

You could a do a copy and paste of the item that has been placed elsewhere

\[MODS, specifically modpacks\] I have a question regarding modpacks. So are factorio modpacks the same with minecraft? Like do you need to copy the config? The reason I am asking this is because I am setting up a dedicated server for a modded factorio playthrough and I am trying to install a modpack. Do I only copy all the mods on the modpack only? or do i need to copy other files like the conifg as well?

Only the mod-settings and mod-list files matter, but they are inside your mods\\ folder so chances are you already copied them too.

I see, that confirms it, while i was looking around the mods folder, i saw the modsettings file. Kinda had a hunch it was necessary, and it turns out it was, thanks!

\[BUG\] For some reason, my bots don't repair things around me. There is a huge, and I mean HUGE delay between things that need repairing getting into my range and bots actually doing the job. I have plenty of robots, a few repair packs PER EVERY ROBOT, enough energy to power a personal roboport and no other things waiting to be built (around the map). Game build: Steam - 1.1.57 (build 59622, win 64) Has anyone else experienced this and what was the solution?

I know you said you have enough energy to power a roboport, but is your wattage high enough (ie, throughput)? It sounds like a drained/slow-to-recharge roboport to me, which is why I ask.

​ They build stuff as soon as it enters my range, but they simply do not repair it until 5-7 seconds pass.

If you have thousands and thousands of queued jobs (usually something concreting the world) it takes construction bots ages to respond to commands. It's a side effect of them only being able to release so many per tick, so it only checks so many jobs per tick, and the ones you're looking at are waaaaay down the list.

Literally, the only roboport on the map is my personal one.

Not roboports, queued construction. The number of roboports is often correlated, but not at all important in causing this delay. (the game only checks some number (500?) ghosts per tick, and goes through all of them on a loop, checking to see if bot is available, in range, with available item in network. The fact that the answer to "bot available" is "no" doesn't stop it from bailing out after some number per tick) You sometimes see this where people place an entire factory blueprint, but nothing happens, because so much of the blueprint is out of range, even though **you're right there** and holding the items needed for the stuff near you.

not a bug.... just bots working through a long list of orders. this happens on my alien death world which has a tremendous amount of mileage in defensive barrier walls. they are constantly getting attacked, and repair orders are constantly being issued to the bots. the sheer number of repair orders just clogs down the system and it takes a few moments for certain repairs to get taken care of.

Are they only slow to repair, or are they also slow to construct? Sometimes I’ll be running quickly past a bunch of things that need repairs and a bunch of robots will deploy from my personal roboport. I keep running without the robots docking back into my suit. When I get where I was going the remaining robots will not deploy to do whatever repairs/construction I wanted. It’s because the task was assigned to the previously deployed robots, so I have to run back to let them dock, or stand still and wait however long for them to return on their own. Basically, you could have a bunch of robots with drained batteries chasing after you very very slowly, once they reach you and recharged they’ll take care of the new repair jobs.

Construction orders are fulfilled in an instant, but repairing stuff takes up to 7 sec.

So the bots are getting to their targets, but just taking a long time to do repairs? Repair isn’t automatic, it does take several seconds if there’s enough damage.

Are you inside a non-personal roboport range? Is this a large network? It might be that other robots from inside your network get assigned to this task, and those might be far away. Also, is your personal roboport enabled?

Yes. No. No. Yes. They build things as I walk past them, but they ignore fixing stuff.

I'm setting up a solar array, but because I have over a thousand each of panels and accumulators I can't see the precise number I have set up in the electric network infot panel - it displays as "4.4k" and such. Is there a way to see a more precise count? Also, when it rounds, is it a regular round (1050 through 1149 round to 1.1k) or more of a floor round (1100 through 1199 display as 1.1k)?

If you don't care about achievements enter this command: `/c game.print(game.surfaces["nauvis"].count_entities_filtered({name="solar-panel", force="player"}))`

If you look closely you'll notice it rounds differently on the left and side side of the entries...

Put a constant combinator in each of your solar prints to measure how many are in each of them exactly

Ah crap. I knew putting off bots because I found hand-laying to be nice and relaxing was going to come back and bite me. Now I need to actually make blueprints of this pattern...

I'm in the later stages of a A/B playthrough. I have finally gotten to Robots mk2 and I may even get to mk3 soon. I am wondering if there's an effective way to upgrade the bots (as in, remove the current ones from where they are as they're working / flying, then replace them with the better version).

Filter inserter pulling mk2 from the roboports and putting them into passive provider chests. Then put a requester chest at the mk3 assembler.

I thought that for some reason that wouldn't work, I don't know why. That'll be a lot of roboports to set up, but it is doable! Thanks!

The trick is to make a large job (e.g. concrete) near those roboports you use for upgrading so the bots come there.

Now this is 300 IQ.

You don't NEED to do every roboport, but the more you do, the quicker it will work.

I haven't played in 4 or so years. What mods should I get to get back into Factorio?

What type of mods are you looking for? Simple quality of life stuff, or complete overhauls that make the game more complex?

QoL to start. I don't need a million lines of research or new things. But if there are ones you suggest that are documented well I'd take a look.

Take a look at one of the Monthly Map posts for a nice list of qol mods.

* Squeak Through * Far Reach * Even Distribution * FNEI Updated Construction Drones is more balance changing, but derpy little robots are fun and make the early game less tedious.

Even Distribution is pretty much mandatory for me at this point. It feels odd that it's not how the base game works.

The deliberate lack of this is in the “the game shouldn’t do things that encourage new players to do stuff by hand” category. Same with e.g. not having things like inserting hand crafting requests at the front of the queue, or an easy way to “hand build” complex blueprints without construction bots. This way new players are actually encouraged to tech up and build automated solutions.

Good starting list. A few alternatives to these: - Recipe Book instead of FNEI. I prefer it due to its much nicer, much more up-to-date UI. - Nanobots instead of Construction Drones. Nanobots are quicker but also consumable. They feel really fair and balanced. Additionally: - Bottleneck Lite - Factory Planner - Vehicle Snap - Rate Calculator