Help a Future Factorio Professional

[cristonz]

I really didn't know if there was any Beginner or Welcome Newb thread in this forum. For that reason I posted it in here and maybe a moderator will move it to a more appropriate place. I bought Factorio a few months ago and the first day played it non-stop and I really like the game but situations came up but I really want to become a master at this game. I don't want to write a huge paragraph just wanted to know if anybody that is a Factorio Professional a Veteran wants to help me out and show me around the game so I can also enjoy it as much or maybe even better if there is any teamspeak sever( similitaries to such) that I can join that will be willing to help.

[Acarin]

Welcome, Cristonz! There may well be (although it's not me, I'm afraid - I'm still a newbie myself with only 650 hours played), but there are lots and lots of YouTube videos and tutorials, along with reams of Steam forum, Factorio forum and Reddit threads, and a wiki By all means ask questions or ask for a mentor, but I personally feel that part of the fun is learning and building stuff yourself? I can't help but feel that if you get someone to show it all to you, you would miss out on the challenge of designing your own factory and making those very mistakes which make you go "Argh, NEXT time, I need to do that instead..."

All the very best, however, and welcome to a wonderful, vibrant and unique game and community

[cristonz]

Yeah I know what you mean, I just want to improve at a faster rate since i know i can dig thousands of hours in to this game but I don't want to be doing the regular small mistakes that go unnoticed (that can become a habit and be inefficient). I felt like if I could just have some concept of how to be efficient and what to look out for with basic demonstrations like in multiplayer I can still have the fun of discovery just at a faster pace so then I can get to the part of the game I really like which is the neat and grind of how to automate everything and the challenge of surviving different settings and trials. In a short way, I am just looking for shove in the right direction.

[Acarin]

Sounds like an admirable plan, sir! . While you wait to see if someone volunteers, however, there are many guides to Factorio out there, but one of the best that I have read is on Steam and written by KatherineOfSkye. It is clear, recent (and thus accurate for the latest version of the game), and very well worth taking the time to study. I'm on my iPad, so can't link it, but it should show up if you look in the Steam Guides for Factorio

[cristonz]

Thanks you for the support and the Guide was of much help! Maybe we can play one day?

[Deadly-Bagel]

There isn't really a "true" way to play Factorio. Most players are happy building the rocket and achievement hunting, then imposing difficulties on themselves (spread out or scarce resources, don't clear trees wherever possible, etc), more hardcore players go for things like launching a rocket every minute.

With a few games under my belt here are some newbie mistakes:

• Not planning for expansion - Sure you only need 2 Electronic Circuit assemblers now. Just wait till later. Learn from your games how much of each component you need and plan accordingly.
• Ignoring ratios - For anything with a nonstop production you need to pay attention to ratios. Ideally nothing is ever idle, for example you need 3 copper wire assemblers per 2 electronic circuit assemblers. Keep in mind craft times too.
• Looking up blueprints for everything - Okay solar farms are an exception, but come up with your own ideas! How do you produce belts? How do you lay out your circuit production? Look stuff up after a few games to see how you did. I regret doing this but will get a second chance when I install Bob's Mods.
• Being inflexible - After a few games you end up in a rut, building the same base over and over. It helps here to impose challenges such as refusing to use belts for the entire game or doing a Factorio Towns (YouTube it) style game to force you into something different.

[cristonz]

Thanks with those tips, with them in mind ill be sure that if I do such mistake i know what i did wrong. If anyone has more newbie mistakes i could make Please Share!

[Jupiter]

• Not planning for expansion - Sure you only need 2 Electronic Circuit assemblers now. Just wait till later. Learn from your games how much of each component you need and plan accordingly.

I want to expand upon this point a bit. Making a base expandable means to me:

• Design your production lines or blocks in a tilable fashion such that you can easily stamp down a few more tiles - some things can even be designed to be tileable in all directions (I've done it with refineries)!
• Make sure you actually have the space to expand into. This means choosing the right spot for your base. I see a lot of people building their base right next to the starting area which always has water in it which gets inevitably in the way.
• Use space efficiently: make your builds compact, using beacons wherever possible, but still leave enough room between all the parts of your base for extra small things you did not for see you would need so you don't need to hack them in (extra belts, a slightly bigger belt balancer, roboports, powerpoles, pipes, lights, etc etc). This is how snake bases or spaghetti bases come to be.
• If you go for a main bus design: build only on one side of your bus so you can always add more belts on the other side.
• Do not be afraid to take out big portions out of your base to rebuild them if they don't live up to your standards. In my game I completely redesigned my entire smelting area 3 times.

[cristonz]

Thank you so much, I will add those to my arsenal of knowledge too. Im still open to as many suggestion, I'm taking notes. This really is a very helpful and kind community

[Deadly-Bagel]

• If you go for a main bus design: build only on one side of your bus so you can always add more belts on the other side.

Actually I like putting component manufacturing on one side and everything else on the other. This ensures that when I go to add red circuits I'm not adding them at the bottom of my factory, but when tying into overhaul mods or even just building big factories, this is still a good way to work as each component you add will just pump out to a new belt column below it and you end up with a sort of tiered component production slowly growing out to one side.

[cristonz]

I still don't feel like I prepare enough of what im planning to do since my belts are all messy,all over the place and sometimes even blocking. Also when I try some ratios some glitches in my factory happen thst at the beggining all is working fine and then 5-10 min later like 2 ir 3 inceptors can't grab fast enough and my machines stop producing. Any help?
(Just realized that tight curves won't let inceptors grab).

[Acarin]

Standard inserters have problems with fast belts. Upgrade to fast inserters

And bear in mind that it is quite normal to "outgrow" a base and need to tear it down and rebuild it bigger and better - I'm currently building my 3rd main bus in preparation for making rocket parts. There is no real 'win' or 'lose' in Factorio, but if you don't like what you have, either start a new game and use what you have learned, or simply rebuild your existing base from the ground up.

From experience, however, I recommend not tearing down your current base and _then_ rebuilding - you always run out of parts. Use the current version to make (furnaces, belts, inserters, miners, etc) what you will need and then rebuild. Only tear down the original once your upgrade is fully up and running.

If you are really stuck for ideas, I can recommend this thread for building small-to-medium bases:
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=8377&p=146142#p146142

There is also a blueprint book of many of the modules available from www.factorioblueprints.com

Good luck, and by all means keep asking questions!

[Deadly-Bagel]

Inserters only have problems with the inside of curves because of the short travel distance and time it's on the tile. Also burner inserters have trouble on red belts, and I guess normal inserters have problems on blue belts (I've usually upgraded everything to fast inserters by that point). I remember someone saying somewhere that fast inserters are actually more energy efficient than regular inserters, because while they use more power it finishes a rotation much faster so uses less overall.

[Jupiter]

And bear in mind that it is quite normal to "outgrow" a base and need to tear it down and rebuild it bigger and better - I'm currently building my 3rd main bus in preparation for making rocket parts.

I don't want to say you are doing it wrong but the point of a main bus is that it is extensible. There are only 2 reasons I could think of to redo it entirely. One is if you did not put in enough belts to have sufficient throughput capacity in the first place (or did not leave enough room to add them). The second is when you decide that you want to do more with your base then you initially intended and you don't want 2 bases on one map. But if I want to do rockets and not have 2 bases on the map I will just plan for launching rockets from the beginning (which means as much as having at least 4 belts of copper plates, iron plates and green circuits among others) so this doesn't happen.
To ensure the former doesn't happen I always build on just 1 side of the bus so I can add belts on the other. And I build it in a large area free from water so I actually have the space to expand.

[Acarin]

It was the former, lol.

I planned for 4 belts each of iron and copper, then realised that I was going to need 8. And, stupidly, I had built on both sides of the bus.

Plus, I am completely redesigning my smelting and moving over from a bot-based array (240 furnaces) to a belt-based 384-furnace array (via a 768-furnace array which didn't do what I wanted it to...)

Doubling the size of my smelting area is impractical for my mid-game area without completely rebuilding the core of my rail hub, and I figured that I can leave that factory in place for infrastructure building and concentrate the new build purely on rocket parts So there is method in my madness!