Repeatable production blocks

[imajor]

Sorry if something similar was already posted. So during the last maps, I've decided to come up with small compact production blocks based on the following principles:
- Produce something common (like circuits) and only uses raw materials, or other common items produced by similar blocks
- Repeatable: this is the key thing. The block should be repeatable either horizontally or vertically, so if I need more production, I could just stamp the blueprint at the end of the row (or start another one, if there is no more space, or the previous row is getting too long). See example below.
- The facilities in the block should work close to 100% if there are enough resources
- It should be as compact as possible. This is not really a requirement, since in most cases there is enough space, so it doesn't matter if the block is one tile taller. But I think it adds a lot of fun to the designing process. This is the kind of challenge I was expecting from the space platforms, so I'm really sad it is not going to happen (soon)

Here is an example, an advanced circuit producing block with the marathon mod:



This block is 11 tiles high, and 11 tiles wide (well actually it is 12 tiles wide, but if you repeat it, then one block will take only 11 columns, because there are overlapping parts)

The facilities in this block:
- The four furnaces produce 1.58*4=6.32 copper plates in a second (when running on 100%)
- The assembly machine in the center consumes 6.25 copper plates in second, so it matches the furnaces pretty well. It produces 1.25 wires in a second
- The two assembly machines at the top consumes 0.46875+0.78125=1.25 wires per second, matches the wire production
- Basic circuit and plastic consumption is the same: 0.625 per second. Basic circuit comes from another part of the factory and produced by other similar blocks.

The plastic production of a chemical plant is 2.5 plastic per second, which is too much for this block (the chemical plant would only work 25% of the time). So I decided to make another block, which contains four instances of the first block, and a chemical plant for plastic production. This block is also repeatable, but instead of horizontally, it is vertical:



Currently I have three rows of this:



If there are enough resources, this produces 0.125*12=1.5 advanced circuits in a second. And if there are more resources, and more demand, it is very easy to extend this with more rows.

One more example at the end, a block producing petroleum from crude oil and water:



Thanks for reading.

[dee-]

Yup. Everyone loves modular, extensible factory layouts Well - at least I do ^^

MeduSalem and I have posted some of our "design rules" over here.

Sadly, the pictues have somehow fallen off the web but maybe it's still a nice read. I'll consider redesigning my layout with a more compact bus, perhaps how MeduSalem did it as I noticed bandwidth problems on the iron plate belt when much is going on.
Currently I'm in the region of quad-blue-belt consumption and then I have to parallelize several main buses to get everything fed. So if you're in for the long run, keep bandwidth extensability in mind, too (I did not enough )

[Graiver]

Using bots-only based design you can really compress things a lot. My last game I decided not to use any belts at all, wich led to suuuper easy and almost infinitely expandable production. 140 hours in and still going

[imajor]

Using bots-only based design you can really compress things a lot. My last game I decided not to use any belts at all, wich led to suuuper easy and almost infinitely expandable production. 140 hours in and still going

I know. Here I didn't go for easy things, moreover, I tried making it a bit more challenging than normal, by making everything as compact as possible.

Drawback is that once I started using a blueprint manager, which let me export/import blueprints, it ruined my next game somewhat. But I guess this is the point where I should start looking for mods which offer new recipes.

[Lehanius]

Really nice, I've just come back playing Factorio after a few months and this kind of thing is what I've been trying to do, though I don't care so much about matching production/consumption so strictly. Instead, I prioritize the ease to build the modules at earlier stages in the game so that I can launch a rocket faster. After I improve some of my designs, I'd come back and share them.

Yup. Everyone loves modular, extensible factory layouts Well - at least I do ^^

MeduSalem and I have posted some of our "design rules" over here.

Sadly, the pictues have somehow fallen off the web but maybe it's still a nice read. I'll consider redesigning my layout with a more compact bus, perhaps how MeduSalem did it as I noticed bandwidth problems on the iron plate belt when much is going on.
Currently I'm in the region of quad-blue-belt consumption and then I have to parallelize several main buses to get everything fed. So if you're in for the long run, keep bandwidth extensability in mind, too (I did not enough )

dee, It's a nice read indeed, but I really would like to see the images =)
I could only see MeduSalem's design (which looks kinda cool despite what he had appointed as non-optimal).

[imajor]

dee, It's a nice read indeed, but I really would like to see the images =)

Same here. Seems like the images were shared from dropbox. Any chance you still have the images in your dropbox? Maybe you could just reshare them?

[TuckJohn]

I really like that oil setup. Ingenious. How nicely do the proportional work out?

[imajor]

Actually the oil block is pretty bad. The chemical plant which processes the light oil coming from heavy oil is barely working.

Here is another example: a basic circuit block with vanilla. A single assembling machine in the center, feed by two (lvl2 and lvl3 to match the needs) machines producing wires. Four furnaces producing iron plate, and six producing copper plates. This is a mess, really hard to see how items are going, but I wanted to minimize the space, and squeeze it into the smallest possible space.

[imajor]

Actually the oil block is pretty bad. The chemical plant which processes the light oil coming from heavy oil is barely working.

Here is another example: a basic circuit block with vanilla. A single assembling machine in the center, feed by two (lvl2 and lvl3 to match the needs) machines producing wires. Four furnaces producing iron plate, and six producing copper plates. This is a mess, really hard to see how items are going, but I wanted to minimize the space, and squeeze it into the smallest possible space.

I posted this too early, it is wrong. The output of one of the copper furnaces is delivered to the wrong location:



I think this is good:



However there is quite a lot of empty space here and there, so maybe it is possible to reduce the block size further.

[dee-]

Really nice, I've just come back playing Factorio after a few months and this kind of thing is what I've been trying to do, though I don't care so much about matching production/consumption so strictly. Instead, I prioritize the ease to build the modules at earlier stages in the game so that I can launch a rocket faster. After I improve some of my designs, I'd come back and share them.

Yup. Everyone loves modular, extensible factory layouts Well - at least I do ^^

MeduSalem and I have posted some of our "design rules" over here.

Sadly, the pictues have somehow fallen off the web but maybe it's still a nice read. I'll consider redesigning my layout with a more compact bus, perhaps how MeduSalem did it as I noticed bandwidth problems on the iron plate belt when much is going on.
Currently I'm in the region of quad-blue-belt consumption and then I have to parallelize several main buses to get everything fed. So if you're in for the long run, keep bandwidth extensability in mind, too (I did not enough )

dee, It's a nice read indeed, but I really would like to see the images =)
I could only see MeduSalem's design (which looks kinda cool despite what he had appointed as non-optimal).

Thanks I'll see what I can do

[dee-]

Really nice, I've just come back playing Factorio after a few months and this kind of thing is what I've been trying to do, though I don't care so much about matching production/consumption so strictly. Instead, I prioritize the ease to build the modules at earlier stages in the game so that I can launch a rocket faster. After I improve some of my designs, I'd come back and share them.

Yup. Everyone loves modular, extensible factory layouts Well - at least I do ^^

MeduSalem and I have posted some of our "design rules" over here.

Sadly, the pictues have somehow fallen off the web but maybe it's still a nice read. I'll consider redesigning my layout with a more compact bus, perhaps how MeduSalem did it as I noticed bandwidth problems on the iron plate belt when much is going on.
Currently I'm in the region of quad-blue-belt consumption and then I have to parallelize several main buses to get everything fed. So if you're in for the long run, keep bandwidth extensability in mind, too (I did not enough )

dee, It's a nice read indeed, but I really would like to see the images =)
I could only see MeduSalem's design (which looks kinda cool despite what he had appointed as non-optimal).

Thanks I'll see what I can do

I recreated the pictures of the OP as the previous ones have got lost somewhere. Have fun

Edit: also redid the blueprint examples and added a peek at the base and its the unloading stations as a bonus