Factorio - a factory building game - now with Space Age expansion

[Blaine]

You want another signal where the blue is to split the red section into two, since trains at either yellow circle will block the other side. No banana stickers today.

Aw nuts, you're right.

Well, the bulge was basically an afterthought, so I missed that little detail. It's understandable really GIVE BANANA STICKER NOW REEEEEEEEEEEEEE

 

[Destroid]

Honestly, I wish there was a gamemode in Factorio where you just had to route millions of trains around.

 

[thesheeep]

Honestly, I wish there was a gamemode in Factorio where you just had to route millions of trains around.

At that point, why not play one of the railway simulators?

 

[Zarniwoop]

it's really not all that taxing or time-consuming to build the big complicated-looking shit.

I've got over 500 hours in this game over the course of various different playthroughs, one of which was in multiplayer, and only just now am I reaching the point of being comfortable enough with signals and chain signals to relatively easily freestyle just about anything.

I knew it. You autistes are all the same. Not time consuming. Just over 500 hours. No biggie. Ain't no thang.

 

[Blaine]

I've played for that long because I wanted to, not because I had to. It's no different than, say, SMAC in that regard.

 

[Zarniwoop]

I've played for that long because I wanted to, not because I had to. It's no different than, say, SMAC in that regard.

And you admit it took that long to learn shit.

It does not take 500 hours to master SMAC.

 

[Blaine]

And you admit it took that long to learn shit.

It's not necessary to build super-elaborate or highly advanced complex structures in order to enjoy or win the game. That's optional, as several other posters have already indicated to you. How interesting that you somehow missed those comments while latching onto my comment about mastering complicated rail signaling.

Think of these optional challenges as table puzzles, like jump-the-peg puzzles you might find in an informal restaurant or a doctor's office. You can choose to pick them up and solve them, or you can read a magazine instead.

If you think that this game is too complicated, difficult, involved, or time-consuming for you, then feel free to move on. You seem to have enough free time to repeat the same uninformed supposition over and over again, though.

It does not take 500 hours to master SMAC.

You've never played SMAC multiplayer, have you?

 

[Mustawd]

Prosper's mod

 

[Blaine]

"Spare the trees," I said. "I'm sure the perimeter wall will be enough of a firewall," I said.

Interesting feature: Deconstruction planners have configurable whitelist/blacklist filters now with an easy checkbox for removing trees and rocks only.

 

[Mustawd]

 

[Jaedar]

"Spare the trees," I said. "I'm sure the perimeter wall will be enough of a firewall," I said.

Interesting feature: Deconstruction planners have configurable whitelist/blacklist filters now with an easy checkbox for removing trees and rocks only.

Why in the name of all sanity would you run a belt parallel to a train track like that? That's what the train is supposed to replace.

 

[Blaine]

Got my new rail system set up. It's too fucking huge to show without using the map. It's going to be a roboport, partly because there isn't room for belt spaghetti, but also because I just can't be bothered with belt spaghetti in the first place.

All four stations in each queue have identical names, meaning that incoming trains assigned to that name will head for the nearest active station of the same name. By default, only the stations nearest the egress are active (names in white). The rest are inactive (names in red). A signal at the end of each three-car, one-engine station bloc is wired to next station in line, like so:

When the signal turns red (meaning there's a train present and/or unloading in the station it's bookending), the next available station becomes active. In this way, up to four trains can unload consecutively on the same rail, always going to the furthest open station first when possible, and more can wait in a waiting queue further back near ingress if necessary.

I tested this extensively before doing the full-scale build with multiple trains, and it works like a charm.

 

[Blaine]

Why in the name of all sanity would you run a belt parallel to a train track like that? That's what the train is supposed to replace.

Each of my Dank Bank™ turret emplacements contains eight laser turrets, two gun turrets, and two flamethrower turrets. Flamethrower turrets thin the ranks of approaching shitters, lasers pull most of the weight, and the gun turrets with depleted uranium ammo are for melting behemoth shitters (or anything else) that make it near the wall very quickly.

The gun turrets need ammo, hence a belt that spans the entire perimeter fed by a buffer chest and a pair of standard inserters (so there's regular ammo on the belt, and a reserve in the chest, but the belt isn't stuffed totally full).

In total, there are 880 laser turrets, 220 flamethrower turrets, and 220 gun turrets along my perimeter wall.

 

[Blaine]

Shitters aren't big fans of artillery.

 

[Blaine]

Blasted a gigantic mega-nest at about .94 evolution.

Dank Banks: completely unscathed
Shitters: rekt

Verdict: DANK

 

[Norfleet]

Protip: You'll get better results if you build sigrunen in front of the walls: Two-tile-wide lightning-bolt-shaped bent passages. Biters attempting to traverse those obstacles will try to run through them, but having to make turns fucks with their pathing and causes them to mill and get stuck, while FIRE is raining down on them. It significant improves the toughness of your defenses.

And why did you build a turret emplacement in the middle of an iron field, preventing it from being stripmined?

Also, needs more FLAMMENWERFER.

 

[Blaine]

Protip: You'll get better results if you build sigrunen in front of the walls: Two-tile-wide lightning-bolt-shaped bent passages. Biters attempting to traverse those obstacles will try to run through them, but having to make turns fucks with their pathing and causes them to mill and get stuck, while FIRE is raining down on them. It significant improves the toughness of your defenses.

Better results than what? They already all get roasted before they can reach the wall, even when attacking en masse with tons of behemoths in response to a shelling. I'm aware of techniques like mini-mazes/biter baffles or laying out strips of express belts, but there's no sense wasting such tremendous quantities of resources on a gigantic perimeter fence when the Dank Banks do the job all by themselves. Also, I'm not one to go out of my way to exploit quirks of the game mechanics, including biter AI. Note that they've been tweaking it lately too, so I'm not sure biters won't just chew through any baffling you've erected, requiring constant replacement.

If the defenses do need any toughening, repair roboports should be more than sufficient and require far less resources to cover the perimeter.

And why did you build a turret emplacement in the middle of an iron field, preventing it from being stripmined?

I didn't. The one you can see outside the fence is surrounded by its own perimeter and is now (since the screenshot was taken) functioning as a mine, and the one inside the fence has mining machines on it, not turrets. That said, if a patch is crappy I'll build right over it because I can't be bothered with it.

 

[Norfleet]

Better results than what? They already all get roasted before they can reach the wall, even when attacking en masse with tons of behemoths in response to a shelling.

That's definitely not the experience I have with mere single-lines of lazor. I've found that even double lines are inadequate for really heavy attacks, and I tend to need double-lines with a third line of flammenwerfer and the aforementioned obstacles. The screenshots I've seen don't seem to look very "en masse". I see only a few scattered bases, I'm accustomed to seeing giant masses of red creep beyond the walls.

I'm aware of techniques like mini-mazes/biter baffles or laying out strips of express belts, but there's no sense wasting such tremendous quantities of resources on a gigantic perimeter fence when the Dank Banks do the job all by themselves.

It's a pity we can't make anything out of all those biter corpses, like, say, a wall. Then we could build a wall, and make them pay for the wall.

Also, I'm not one to go out of my way to exploit quirks of the game mechanics, including biter AI. Note that they've been tweaking it lately too, so I'm not sure biters won't just chew through any baffling you've erected

They could try, but if they get hung up trying to gnaw through a random chunk of stone that isn't even in their way, that works, too.

 

[Blaine]

The screenshots I've seen don't seem to look very "en masse".

There are something like 150-200 corpses in that one screenshot. The only way to provoke biter attacks anywhere near that huge outside of artillery shelling is by filling a dense mine full of productivity mods and speed beacons. I call this "going ultrapink" since the final pollution indicator color after nasty deep red is a dense reddish-pink.

If I ever get Shadowplay working again, I'll record a video of a massive assault.

I see only a few scattered bases, I'm accustomed to seeing giant masses of red creep beyond the walls.

That's what artillery is for. I'm playing on the default map generation settings, so mine is no different than any other typical game.

 

[Blaine]

Lazing Dirk Norfleet

 

[Lazing Dirk]

You really know how to moisten me up

 

[Norfleet]

Yeah, I see why you're doing okay without the baffles now. You've left the trees in place which effectively serve the same role. Trees aggravate my dendrophobia, though. And that's not nearly as extreme as what Iwas facing. By late-game I'm used to seeing just giant biter carpets. You see that big red base? My map looks like that. Not the bases. The entire map. Once you get outside the Wall, it's just a MILE WIDE MASS OF ZERGS. If I had artillery cannons back in those days, I wouldn't hve had to actually AIM them, I could have just fired in any direction at random and it would hit SOMETHING.

 

[Blaine]

I knew you'd mention the trees. Of course I'm going to leave them in place. However, in stretches that are bare of trees where shitters can get up to full speed, they still can't touch my turret banks. Maybe occasionally a behemoth spitter will get one shot in on one turret, but that's extremely rare. The thing is, the bigger an attack, the more damage flamethrower turrets are able to deal to the horde, so increasing the amount of shitters past a large wave doesn't help them or tax the defenses any further.

Anyway, I'm sure you can crank biter nests way up in the map generation settings if you so desire. As I've mentioned, I used the default generation settings. Personally, I'm not a big fan of spending all my time and resources beating back biters. They're annoying enough in the end game as-is, what with trains stopping dead if they hit behemoths (unless you add multiple engines, which is a logistical headache in itself), flamethrowers destroying your own rail signals and electrical poles during constant biter attacks unless you design your infrastructure very carefully, etc.

I'm fairly sure the developers toned down biter density significantly while decreasing the maximum distance they can build from your structures (it's almost literally spitting distance now) and vastly increasing the distance between resource patches. I have my save file from our .15 game, and resource patches in this new game of mine using the new mapgen are much, much, much further apart than they used to be. Resources and biters now also increase in richness the further you move from spawn without needing a mod for that purpose.

If I actually had to deal with massive carpets of biters with these new generation settings, I'd just build an astronomically huge wall instead of a merely titanic wall, and that would ultimately be much easier to deal with after the initial tedium of setup than leaving nests alive interspersed between outposts. When pollution is far enough away from nests, as is usually the case if you build an ultrawall, they barely attack at all except to try to found new nests.

 

[Norfleet]

The main thing I find continually disappointing is that we still have no way to make the biters pay for the wall.

Anyway, I'm sure you can crank biter nests way up in the map generation settings if you so desire.

I didn't, but since they expand and found new nests on their own, eventually all settings converge on this behavior.

 

[Damned Registrations]

The main thing I find continually disappointing is that we still have no way to make the biters pay for the wall.

Use a mod so they drop bones. Build wall of bones.