Some Dry Stuff

[Dry Hairy Tree]

I'm starting to think all the time I use 'pre-emptively clearing' biters might be better spent just throwing up walls and turrets. The map reveals my main power supply and building store (centre pollution), and the new 1K green factory (bottom pollution and minimap). The red factory (left of centre) has shut down as all the chests are full.

The plan is to build blue, and with it lasers, then to hook red/green/blue up to shiny new lab facilities and wall off all the existing factories.

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As these factories get spread out and randomly placed according to map resources, the larger factory should become a massive sprawling complex as production of 'all the other things' - not science, gets placed. All new production lines etc will be within the 'perimeter' of the 9 main factories (building store, 7 x science, labs and silos - and possibly a big nuke plant) so there will be wierd and wonderful spaghetti and madness while science ticks over 1KPM no problem at all (plugged into infinite patches, and only a few trains to carry the whole lot to labs).

I'm after that organic look, while being respectably large.

Green Factory:

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[Dry Hairy Tree]

When I was coming up with designs for high throughput some time back, I thought of an afferent-efferent rail system, based on neurons, and how they never intersect, rather they transfer information across synapses.

You can build a robot synapse, or a belt based synapse. These are transfer stations, to replace intersections where you just have to get something across some lines.

Obviously stack inserters and blue belts would be better, but I didn't have any on me so the example is what it is... A two way main line has the large power poles. The two stations make up the one transfer station.

There's a lot of ways you could do these better. The aim is to allow high throughput of main rail lines without interruptions intersections.

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[Dry Hairy Tree]

The sprawl is starting to occur and only three science packs covered so far. Turning the blue factory on was a bit nerve racking but the pollution held within the cleared zones. Each science pack winds up with ~ 40K buffer. 3200 x 12 = 38600 plus the belt storage.

It'll be a while yet but have thought of some fun end game activity...

Get a bunch of exoskeletons and shields on, go running through the alien badlands revealing the map while nearby artillery destroy bases as you reveal them. Will I die from friendly fire? Gonna be fun.

The blue factory is massive. I got lucky with two huge iron patches, both made up the 30ish red belts of iron required. Making a large 6, 6, 2 belt clearing through a forest reminded me of motorway projects. Clearfell and a couple six laners appear alongside the original 2 laner...

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Some of the spaghetti got a little crazy. I had to reroute belts after they were used in order to make sure each part of the factory got it's share. Making a 25 belt wide iron bus seemed a stupid waste of space, so redirecting it is!

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[Dry Hairy Tree]

Military got to be a bit of a drag. I needed to tap seven iron patches to get enough to feed the beast. Also, as I'm running belts for all but science, that was a lot of belts to lay out, forests to drop...

The base is getting huge. Only running 200 labs currently (need to build out lots of power before I turn it up) but all (available) research got blown through anyway. Need very little defense to the north and west most of it is covered by a few small choke points.

Thought of a team game idea. Well, expanding on earlier idea. Make a map with a flag you got to get to x distance away. Have extreme artillery range upgrades but no radar. Have a boatload of artillery that can reach all the way to the flag. Have a ton of aliens between you and the flag. Now run. First to capture the flag (chest, whatever) wins. What should happen is as you reveal the aliens before you the artillery fire at them you want to go forward the aliens are coming for you the artillery is heavy... Make sure you get the artillery speed balanced just so so it's ranging all around you. Go heavy on the cliffs in the map editor force the run to angle around a bit not just a direct line.

Another thing I think would be a fun team effort is drift car racing. Lay out a ton of belts and drive on them - see! You get different effects for different directions and you drift a lot. So you lay out a massive track with all kinds of obstacles, walls, rocks, trees, aliens... stuff that can ding the car. Cover it in belts that make you drive drift crazy, you lose points for car damage and going over a specific time, and gain points for going under that time.

Anyways, map editor types that want to make scenarios, I think those might work.

1K per minute Military base in the Northwest. New 0.5 per second Laser Turret Factory below blue.

The map be mine now.

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[Dry Hairy Tree]

The bones of the production science facility. Phew... Still got to refine oil to make plastic and lube.

Used up so much iron, and ranged so far for it, for 4 4/5 red belts of steel... there's > 40 000 belt sections running it into this factory.

Haven't got enough iron visible in a massive area (like practically none left) for the rockets or high tech, gonna have to go on an exploratory killing spree. My defenses are still very low, lot of peninsulas around so after clearing large areas are safe. Just wish there was less copper and stone, and more iron.

This smelting area was fun to build but rather time consuming. Two hours clearing aliens to get to some of the iron. Probably three times that laying out belts.

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[Dry Hairy Tree]

The big sprawl...

This is the factories so far. I will run a two way train system around the perimeter of all this and ship in the goods (iron) for the rest of the factories: high tech; the three rocket parts as separate factories, satellites, artillery, nukes, etc... It should fill out fairly well. The science and science trains are set up to run forever without anything (bar power cut) intercepting or interrupting the process.

About 50 hours into this map. Reasonable progress. Still a ways to go.

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[Dry Hairy Tree]

That was quite major. I don't mind big jobs, but I certainly don't like it when the materials are faulty.

Liquid logistics sucks.

This only makes ~750 purple per minute as the electric engines are waiting for lube despite having theoretically more than enough. Extra pipes not helping it wasn't a volume thing it's just silly.

Not really interested in going further if it wont do what it says on the box. It's like building a solid timber house and getting grass for roofing materials.

[spraynard]

Interesting concept and some pretty nice factories. Will you attempt again with 0.17? The fluid mechanics should be better now, but as for continuing this playthrough I guess the changes to science recipes would cause too big a headache? Or maybe this single science factory design is well suited for such a flip?

[Dry Hairy Tree]

Not a lot of time for playing lately, but am having a go in 0.17.

My preliminary factory is taking forever. Death match settings.

The enemy are persistent, and many. They are also stupid.

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It takes this spitter five spits to destroy one box in the rocks health bar. It took this idiot between 55 and 60 spits to realise the rock is not the enemy.

[Dry Hairy Tree]

Death world is a slog. Starting with starting equipment is a double edged sword. The faster you build the faster and harder you get attacked. Slowly you go, getting the turrets, ammo, walls, resources. Using infinite ores mod is a godsend - no panic about running out or having to expand too fast. Find a good starting area, fight for and then defend it.

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[Dry Hairy Tree]

Laser turrets now, but power can be problematic. When the lasers fire up the inserters placing coal in the power (right when you need it most) slow right down. If a prolonged assault (or more likely, a series of assaults one after the other) occurs - it can shut the power down.

Death follows.

The solution, at least for steam power, is to have two separate power systems: One for the normal (entire base) power system, the other a small set up (top left) powering only the inserters that insert fuel into boilers.

I forget where I learned this, it's certainly useful in this scenario.

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I'm just hooking up the resources at the top of my base (post above) for high-tech then I have artillery. Then.. finally, some respite from attacks.

[Dry Hairy Tree]

I don't know if it was the intention, but the biters absorbing pollution is a negative feedback on the system. As the pollution is absorbed the spread is slowed down so only the aliens ringing the base are attacking - as the pollution is being significantly slowed by their bases.

Observe...

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Almost a self-controlling system except it is feeding biter evolution as well as slowing pollution.

[theolderbeholder]

Laser turrets now, but power can be problematic. When the lasers fire up the inserters placing coal in the power (right when you need it most) slow right down. If a prolonged assault (or more likely, a series of assaults one after the other) occurs - it can shut the power down.

Death follows.

The solution, at least for steam power, is to

use burner inserters.

[Dry Hairy Tree]

Yes, you'd think that'd work. But experience tells me otherwise. Some people place electric and burner inserters.

Perhaps I'm placing them backwards?

I can't tell in game what's naff about them except taking about 7 times the power (in coal form) to run.

Burner inserters have proven to be a letdown on many occasions but I can't say why, just, you know, blackouts put me off them.

[Dry Hairy Tree]

That was annoying not remembering why I've written off burner inserters... It's to do with belt upgrades. Once you go red - if the belt is not full the inserters can't pick up off it. So I don't use burner inserters because I wind up in blackout when I have them.

It's been a while since I fell for that.

In this scenario (so far) it's all yellow belt, I typically go straight for red. Death settings and more persistent 0.17 biters slowed me down a lot.

If only I could find the Biter King, a well placed Valyrian steel artillery shot, all my problems be over.

[Dry Hairy Tree]

So I was 'just going to' add high tech science...

More mining, more power, more oil stuff, more lasers, more smelting, more landfill, rail, move wall a bit to accommodate ores...

Still haven't built the high tech stuff. But I'm nearly prepared

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[Amarula]

That was annoying not remembering why I've written off burner inserters...

The other problem I ran into with burner inserters: with any type of belt, If the coal belt isn't full enough for any reason, like exhausting an ore patch, the burner inserters run out of fuel, and even when you fill the belt again, the inserters don't start working until you manually fuel them. And it isn't obvious when most of them are fine, so power picks up again, and I don't notice that a few of them aren't working...

That said, there are specific circumstances where burner inserters are good enough, like a spoon run where you know you won't be using anything but yellow belts, and it will all be over in a few hours long before any ore patches will run out...

[Dry Hairy Tree]

Yeah. Manually refueling inserters doesn't work for me either. Will bots do it?

The locals are no longer the dominant species on the map.

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Note in my wall arrangement I have a line of crenelations - there are gaps behind the short wall sections in the front of these, biters can get in but can't hit the main wall in a straight run. This wall arrangement has an obvious gap in it (bottom center) - that is because there is tree cover in front of it. I wanted to know if trees were as good as crenelations to dampen attacks via forcing critters to twist and turn in front of lasers. The answer is - yes, they are. But only to a point, as robots can't repair or replace trees.

[wobbycarly]

*snip*

The map shot above reveals an unusual T-Junction design in the rail system. Maybe others have used this design too I've not seen it.

Factories10T-JunctionUTurn.jpg

Going into the T-junction allows for a U-turn.
*snip*

I love this intersection. It's going to be my new go-to. When using short trains (eg, 1-2 or maybe even 1-4) the eastbound loop part could break off early enough to fit a whole train, and let trains turn left (southbound) and right (northbound) at the same time. I can imagine a northbound train on the north-south line blocking the right turn, and potentially holding up another train wanting to turn left and go southbound. Putting the additional spur (is that what it's called?) would allow the southbound train to turn left. This wouldn't necessarily be useful in all situations, but could help with throughput in high-traffic intersections. Thanks for sharing.

[Dry Hairy Tree]

Picked up the game after a bit of a break. Trying to see if I can get off the planet without engaging the enemy OR turtling forever. My settings here: Alien Expansion = Off; Starting Area = Max. The initial idea was to go solar power ASAP without dawdling too much and see how that alters things. I did, and it makes a significant difference.

See the following pics:

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Clean Green 02.jpg (45.52 KiB) Viewed 7739 times

Although the pollution looks almost the exact same, the factory is running > twice the power in the second pic. From 10 MW to 24ish MW. This is still on coal smelters too - so more significant savings in pollution can be made switching to electric. That is the next plan. Also, mining productivity is another way to save pollution, as you get more product while pollution doesn't rise.

I'm running some mods but nothing that changes the pollution dynamic. I'll know if the experiment fails as I'll be attacked with no defenses up.