Marathon: Large distances to ore - empty furnaces

[NineNine]

I'm playing Marathon (everything is much more expensive to build). I'm megabasing and I'm at the point where the distances to ore are getting very large. I'm doing a large grid of cells. For iron and copper plates, each cell has 96 furnaces. The problem is that I'm putting red 1 mods in the plate furnaces (again, because this is Marathon, and I need to save ore), so building a cell of furnaces isn't cheap. But because of the distances that my trains have to go to get ore, these cells are usually about 1/3 empty, just waiting for trains (that are on their way). Right now, I have about 60 cells and 59 trains delivering ore to them.

1. I could make a lot more trains, but then I have the problem that if demand for either one or both dip, then I'm in a deadlock situation, which I'd rather avoid.
2. I have my whole factory running 1:3 trains on a standardized cell size. I would rather keep it all that way, but does it make sense to begin to think about warehouses and long trains? And, how do those live in a grid situation with roundabouts build for 1:3 trains?
3. Just live with the empty cells, and maybe not do red 1 mods into the furnaces?
4. Is this why people do those train waiting area things? If this is what I'd have to do to continue growing, I'd have to re-design my entire factory from scratch to accommodate them. Not so sure I'm ready to do that yet.
5. Some other thing I haven't thought of yet?

[Panzerknacker]

Can only comment about the prod mods, I wouldn't use them in furnaces. It just massively increases your energy demand. Use efficiency instead if you can.

[astroshak]

Prod mods (without compensating speed beacons) reduce a machine’s output. It takes more Electric Furnaces with PM1’s in them to turn a belt of ore into a belt of plate than it takes without those PM1’s.

That aside … 60 smelting outposts with 59 trains feeding them, and they are all waiting on the next train to arrive, suggests you do need more trains. I’d look to see how well you can install some small stacker at each smelting outpost, and increasing the number of trains servicing each outpost from 1 to 2. Note that you may need to also add more mines.

Alternatively … set up mines for much longer trains, that can deliver a lot more ore, to a relay outpost. This relay outpost would take the ore from the longer trains and transfer it to the shorter trains for delivery to the smelters.

[Tertius]

If you're unable to fill your smelters, you need more ore.
To get more ore, you need more trains and probably more mining outposts. If you're unable to get more trains, because more trains will result in train congestion, you need longer trains to get more throughput with the same amount of trains.

If your issue is just some unsteady flow of trains (some trains just need too long to arrive, so station chest buffers get empty), a stacker/depot in front of the smelting area might help. However, if even the stacker isn't filled, because the smelters consume faster than the trains are able to deliver, you need more trains or more ore per train.

If not enough trains arrive, investigate thoroughly why they don't arrive. I once thought I had not enough trains in general, but actually all the trains were slowed by congestion, so they didn't arrive in time. I increased the amount of trains but I only increased congestion, not throughput. The solution was to disentangle train paths to get less intersections and employ longer trains.

Depending on what you call megabase, I found 2-8 trains appropriate to feed ore to a huge factory blob for 2.5 kspm, going from 1-4, which wasn't able to handle this for me. This was for normal mode, not expensive, so I guess you have even more demand for higher ore throughput via trains. I had static train limits of 4 in the smelters and 3 in the ore outposts and stackers in front of them to buffer all incoming trains, and this was more than enough. May be still a good value for longer distances in expensive mode - my distances got not as long as I planned, since mining productivity rose so fast even my nearest mines simply didn't exhaust. Everything was full productivity modules in production machines and speed modules in 8-beacon setups.

[Serenity]

With productivity mods you should start at the top of the chain. Science labs, rocket silo, hier tier sciences, blue circuits, green circuits. Then the saving also get multiplied as you move down. Furnaces are actually one of the worst places for them.

This chart is a good indicator:
https://factoriocheatsheet.com/#product ... le-payoffs

[Khagan]

With productivity mods you should start at the top of the chain. Science labs, rocket silo, hier tier sciences, blue circuits, green circuits. Then the saving also get multiplied as you move down. Furnaces are actually one of the worst places for them.

True, but irrelevant. Tier 1 modules are so cost-effective that even though furnaces are indeed 'one of the worst places for them', it's still well worth doing. Basically, everywhere that can have a productivity module should have at least tier 1s.

[Panzerknacker]

On Marathon, that's gonna skyrocket your power usage and polution output to uncontrollable levels.

[fwyrl]

As far as deadlock when demand dips; Stackers are my go-to; just double, triple, or even quadruple your train count, update the train limit on the stations accordingly, and then add waiting areas for that many trains (-1 for the one in the station) on the furnace and mine sides. Rails are really cheap, and it doesn't use a lot of signals, so that's probably your best bet if you want to bump your train count.

[mmmPI]

4. Is this why people do those train waiting area things? If this is what I'd have to do to continue growing, I'd have to re-design my entire factory from scratch to accommodate them. Not so sure I'm ready to do that yet.

Yes !

This is also to avoid deadlock when demand dips, you need to have enough room for all trains in the waiting area, so that they can all stop nicely at the same time.

Using the limits to make sure each station doesn't have "too many" trains incoming for their waiting area.

You don't have to redesign the whole factory necessarily, you could just incorporate the modification in newer cell, not sure how hard it is. You can also make a cell for waiting area, like a depot , with the "high limit count", next to your exisisting cells facing shortages, this way instead of coming from far away, the train would come for the nearby waiting area.

It's easier to have them built'in with the loading/unloading, but it's possible to retrofit a city block to accomodate depot cell later on too !