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[n9103]

Bots are actually super inefficient as far as throughput goes.
Transporting between factories is best done by belts and trains, depending on the distances.

As for the spaghetti of belts, that's pretty much inevitable in the mid-game.
Two things that can help: 1) Don't try to optimize for space. There's tons of it, so feel free to have plenty of room between assemblers.
More spoilery if you haven't gotten the mechanics down yet:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

If things are just too packed and jumbled from having things be too out of position, just tear it all down. Biters mostly stop attacking when you stop polluting, and as long as you're not relying on only laser turrets, and the turrets are already stocked, then they don't produce any more pollution and thus no more biters, so you can just cut power and build it from the ground up. Kinda cathartic.

[EnigmaticHat]

Yeah... I started out trying to build with a lot of empty space but somehow it all got filled up.

I think the hardest thing for me in this game is how hard it can be to increase the productivity of a factory line after you've made it.  My instinct is to try to produce singular sources of a product, like pushing all my iron plates into a single circular conveyor and having new factories draw from that.  But if you don't know how many plates you'll need in advance its easy to run into a situation where you run out of space around the conveyor, or its moving too slow, or you can't load plates fast enough.  And then you need a source of copper wire, and gears, ect.

I think I would have enjoyed this run a lot more if I had gone for trains instead of logistics robots... I guess I was just dissapointed because I spent so much time getting them and they didn't do what I thought they would.  Trains on the other hand, I've had a lot of fun with those in Cities: Skylines and that's not a super train oriented game in the first place... I think I'll set up a spaghetti conveyorbelt system to do what I *thought* the logi bots would do, and then go make new factories somewhere else and plan in advance around what I've learned.

Edit: Do things become less efficient at low electrical power?

[Mini]

Edit: Do things become less efficient at low electrical power?

Efficiency stays the same but they work slower.

[MrRoboto75]

The typical strat most people go for is called a "bus".  Basically, its like having a central highway of commonly used materials, like iron, copper, and green circuits, that runs through your factory.  Then you branch off the bus belts to have sections dedicated to different materials.

So, my highway might start with two belts, one of just iron plates and one of just copper plates.  Later, I'll use splitters to split off some of those plates to the side to make green circuits (I'll make the copper wire there for just the circuits, too).  The output of that will become another lane on the highway, since a ton of shit needs green circuits or green circuit byproduct.  Steel is usually the fourth lane.

I don't make loops out of my belts, they just branch off and dead end wherever.  Its not a problem at all if materials pile up at the ends, but also every belt holds one specific kind of item (so JUST iron plates).  Sometimes I let two items on a single belt in its own side but that can be trouble.  Some assembly machines might "starve" but that just means I need to expand, make more.

An assembly line might look like this:

||>O>|
||>O>|
||>O>|
||>O>|

Imagine the O's smelters, the west |'s belts of coal and iron ore, the east | a belt of iron, and the >'s the various long/yellow inserters.  See how I can expand iron production by just repeating the pattern northward?  I can also mirror the smelters westward.  If some smelters lack fuel or ore, then I need more mining.  If the ore is always saturated, then I need more smelting.

[EnigmaticHat]

I already had something like that from the very beginning, but I only used it for a limited number of things rather than making it run the length of the factory...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

What I'm wondering is, at some point does the bus become too slow for all the things that need it?

(Also yes I'm not giving up on this game, last night's frustration was just temporary I guess)

[AlStar]

How are you supplying your labs? It looks like it's all coming out of that chest in the center - are you personally refilling that chest every so often?

What I'm wondering is, at some point does the bus become too slow for all the things that need it?

It can - upgrading to red then blue belts will stretch that out, but eventually you'll need a second/third/etc. belt of materials. This hit one of my factories badly - my 'bus', such as it was, was a belt 1/2 iron plate, 1/2 copper plate. At some point, the assemblers at the end of the line just couldn't get materials, no matter how much I improved supply. I eventually had to run new belts, which were a total mess, since I hadn't left enough space for them.

[LoSboccacc]

at around red circuit you need two red lanes for each raw material. for the final stretch of your first rocket three lanes of the raws are about enough.

if the bus doesn't have enough capacity you can also have train deposit resources halfway into it instead of having everything loaded at the beginning of the bus

consider also adding some more lanes for the common resource intensive materials, like steel, or items that you need buttloads, like green circuits; the first because it's more efficient in belt usage than moving iron around and produce steel locally (but it's less precise as method of steel distribution) the second because then you can extend production as much as you want sideway to the main bus and scale it better as demand increase, plus you can ship copper to them on train and avoid draining too much from the main bus.

[EnigmaticHat]

How are you supplying your labs? It looks like it's all coming out of that chest in the center - are you personally refilling that chest every so often?

Yeah, I was building my factory assuming I could have logistics bots take over the manual ferrying.  Hence the frustration when they couldn't.

I do have a train set up now that has 3 stops: one that picks up coal and wire, one that drops off coal+wire and picks up green circuits and ammo, and then circuits + ammo + coal get dropped off at my base.

This conversation has actually been pretty helpful.  What I think I'm going to do, is build a second train to the north of the labs, that can pick up some of the more advanced stuff I produce (science packs, red circuits, engines, plastic, solid fuel), and then have the first train pick up plates at the base stop, and then have both trains go somewhere else and make a new base with a more complete bus.  The bus will just be fed out of the trains to start out with, although I do have a concern there that the trains might not be able to go fast enough to feed it but that's a problem for another time.  The first base can just chug along, as obnoxious as it is to deal with its pretty independent and once I get rid of the labs (which can't be fed easily and take up a lot of space) I should be able to set up a conveyor web to make it self-supplying.  I'm upgrading stack inserters so that I'll be able to quickly load and unload at train stops using a small number of boxes.  Stack inserters + trains seem like what I should have been teching up to to begin with...

[IWishIWereSarah]

EnigmaticHat, one little question concerning your screenshot : you know about the "alt-view" ?
(I mean, hitting the Alt key will display what is inside the chests and the recipes of the assemblers)

Otherwise, as other have said, many players use a bus with multiple lines of each plates. It's one of the ways of playing, and even though it structures a bit your game, it makes each game look like the others, so that may not be the best way to play

[Retropunch]

One of the main pitfalls for newer players seems to be trying to build too compact - you get loads of space, so use it!!

It might look a bit messy and feel as though things are taking too long to get places, but it'll be loads easier than trying to jam everything into a tiny space. Just something to think about!

[AlStar]

I'm upgrading stack inserters so that I'll be able to quickly load and unload at train stops using a small number of boxes.  Stack inserters + trains seem like what I should have been teching up to to begin with...

Stack inserters are (IMO) overkill - 12 blue inserters (6 on each side of the tracks per car) unloads plenty fast.

That said, do research stack inserters, since that opens up researching stack size, and one of the early ones in there upgrade ALL inserters +1 size, which is a massive speed-up for your factory.

[da_nang]

I'm upgrading stack inserters so that I'll be able to quickly load and unload at train stops using a small number of boxes.  Stack inserters + trains seem like what I should have been teching up to to begin with...

Stack inserters are (IMO) overkill - 12 blue inserters (6 on each side of the tracks per car) unloads plenty fast.

That said, do research stack inserters, since that opens up researching stack size, and one of the early ones in there upgrade ALL inserters +1 size, which is a massive speed-up for your factory.

Depends on your consumption and belts per wagon. I typically use 1-4 trains at 2 belts per wagon. At blue belts, that's 90 items/s per wagon^[v.0.17]. Fast inserters will only get you about 83 items/s from train to chest, 77 items/s chest to belt, unless you do some weird diagonal unloading to get more inserters.

Early game, though, you'll be fine for a while.

[Finndibaenn]

One of the main pitfalls for newer players seems to be trying to build too compact - you get loads of space, so use it!!

It might look a bit messy and feel as though things are taking too long to get places, but it'll be loads easier than trying to jam everything into a tiny space. Just something to think about!

in any case , even if you're "experienced" you WILL end up too small

Just live with it, and you hit the limit, build a bigger base further away. You'll be able to boostrap it using the existing one to build hte 100s of smelters/factories and thousands of belts you'll need.
Also, the further away you get from the spawning point, the more abundant the minerals will be.

Last, an "easy" way to never run out of space (if you stick with it ...) is to build your bus, ferrying all the resources you need, and only build factories on ONE side of it, so that you can add new lanes to your bus as your requirements grow

[EnigmaticHat]

The plan to build trains to feed a bus in a new base have been successful thus far:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Now to actually manufacture new products!

[LoSboccacc]

you need more space between belts of different materials, at least two to allow for a splitter, a turn and the required underground entrance to cross the other bus lanes