Always out of construction parts.

[garyp156]

I'm on my third game and I still can't make enough construction parts. What's the secret?
I gave up, and made like 2k bricks then moved on to parts then the iron runs out, what the heck?

[Silent_Shadow]

You should have enough material to immediately build a basic iron smelting set up that is fed with iron ore you mine soon after. Coal can be mined or you can convert wood into coal with the charcoal maker.

Make sure you put down the free research building and start researching the free research projects too, including the mining one.

You can watch JD Plays to see how to start a game:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7t6V07xxq8c

[Wanderer]

Slow and steady.

I won't say I'm not occasionally waiting, but you're trying to outrace the game. Not having seen you actually play all I can do is give you generic answers, though.

You need to let other things catch up before you keep building. The game is generally a cycle of build - stabilize - build cycles. If you don't, you can fall off the deep end. For example, while a 6, or even a 9, research facility build is actually feasible now, I would still stick with 3 so you don't outpace the system while you catch up on manpower, unity, and trucks/equipment in the earlier game.

In mid-late game, you need space for farms and terraforming the docks to get your island straightened out. This is a good time to bank your construction parts for larger builds... which, happily, you just got much larger storages to bank those parts in.

For example... how's that water supply doing? The one that you've hooked copper, the town, and the refinery to? Is it at 90% still... or at 30%? Have you gotten your Basic Water needs all dealt with before you started building more? No? ... Slow down.

Just an example. If that's stable, it might be something else. Hard to say for sure from 3 sentences of a question.

[garyp156]

My third try, I'm playing really slow. Letting the parts catch up but then adding the copper mine took most of them. I'm trying to keep up with the tutorial suggestions but I'm always waiting.
As you suggested, I'm taking my time. Playing with teraforming.

[Wanderer]

Oh, I'm understanding now. You're VERY early game.

I agree with Silent_Shadow above, check out that Let's Play episode one. It'll show you some very solid opening moves to help you get yourself off the ground and into the game.

[garyp156]

Originally posted by Wanderer:

Oh, I'm understanding now. You're VERY early game.

I agree with Silent_Shadow above, check out that Let's Play episode one. It'll show you some very solid opening moves to help you get yourself off the ground and into the game.

Yes, It's my 3rd start. I was almost into the third tier of research when my farm went south and all my settlers died because I spent more time chasing parts then people. lol

[Wanderer]

Originally posted by garyp156:

Originally posted by Wanderer:

Oh, I'm understanding now. You're VERY early game.

I agree with Silent_Shadow above, check out that Let's Play episode one. It'll show you some very solid opening moves to help you get yourself off the ground and into the game.

Yes, It's my 3rd start. I was almost into the third tier of research when my farm went south and all my settlers died because I spent more time chasing parts then people. lol

Well, I've had 15-20 starts in this game at this point, so my reference point is... challenged. :D

[garyp156]

Watching JD again (yes I did start watching him and for some reason watched a few others, prob. because he started on a hard island. :)
Anyway, I noticed that you can build multiple things in the same building. I was creating a building for each thing I was making. Also I used a lot of conveyors when I could have connected the storage to the buildings.
I'm wondering if I can mix product on the same belt and sort it out later when I build the main bus line.

[Wanderer]

Main Bus? You're a Factorio player then?

Don't go Main Bus. It generally doesn't work out. This game is more one thing to the next than Continuous Bus.

I build very differently than JD, but the concepts are the same. For example, here's a common opening build I use for early Construction parts:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2983421890

This is 10 years into my current playthrough:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2983421778

Notice there's still a lot of prep work going on. This is all that's REALLY happening:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2983421835

This is how far I got when I was done with the Tier 1 research after 18 years. I then spent almost 10 game years stabilizing before I started Tier 2 research:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2983794931

Don't know if that helps or not.

[Peter34]

You want a Belt-based setup that takes all required input to produce tier 1 and 2 Construction Parts:

Wood, Concrete, Bricks (as a backup in case Concrete fails), Iron, and Electronics.

The complex part is the tier-1 parts, so you might as well also include tier-3 part production. That just requires adding in Steel.

The BP I've made has lots of input buffers (especially for Wood), internal buffers in between steps, and huge output buffers. It starts out with 5 tier-1 Assembly buildings to make tier-1 parts, and another 5 to make tier-2 parts, but when fully upgraded it has 5 tier-3 buildings each making tier 1, 2 and 3 parts.

I've used bigger setups in previous games, much bigger, but the reason I'm going with 5-5-5 now is that that fits better with the throughput of tier-1 Belts.

If I use 1 Belt to feed the first 2 machines and 1 Belt to feed the last 2, and both Belts to feed the one in the middle, then once the machines are upgraded to tier-3, their needs can be fully satisfied with the 2x60 units per minute of 2 Belts.

That makes the system to actually make sure the stuff reaches the machines be much simpler to set up, and so I feel like I can splurge on huge internal buffers instead, so that for instance I internally stockpile 2x180 (later 3x360) tier-1 and tier-2 parts that are ready to go to the production of tier-2 and tier-3 parts as soon as the required upgrade material (Electronics or Steel) is available, plus another internal stockpile of probably 360 parts *before* the Belt Balancer, so that it go either to output buffers or to the production of the next tier, depending on what's needed.

The 5-5-5 setup also has a greater tendency to just work, continously, until all input, internal and output buffers are filled, because it's relatively easy to keep fed.

A couple of months ago, I had a 9-8-7 setup, and it stalled all the time. Of course when I was able to feed it, it made stuff for me super fast, but most of the time I wasn't able to feed it. A 5-5-5 works *much* better for the early and mid game, when your resources are very limited.

For the late game, I'd want something completely new, taking advantage of the x3.3 higher throughput of tier-2 Belts (more than tripling the throughput solves a heck of a lot of problems!), and maybe also the larger tier-3 Storages. They're inherently 50% more space efficient compared to tier-2, and you double that when upgrading them to tier-4.

[Blueberry Muffins!]

At a guess, you've overbuilt on storage and left yourself without the parts to build the production facilities that use whatever you're storing.

Whatever, you're spending construction parts on things that aren't urgent. Construction parts production is about as urgent as it gets in the early game. Work out what's stopping you producing them faster. Have enough bricks and wood and iron? Build another assembler. Don't have the parts to build it? Then whatever you spent them on instead, tear it down. Like that.

[Peter34]

In the early game, you get 75% of the materials back when you demolish something you've built. There are one or two Techs that improves this percentage.

[Reconjack85]

Common issue, try not to over build, or use the planning mode which pauses a building you snap down allowing you to plan around it and un-pause (build) it when you're ready. As soon as possible start mining coal and stop making charcoal which uses up wood that you really need for Construction Parts I. That is usually where I get caught.

[Peter34]

I don't really need Wood in the early game.

Rather, I need to *get* *rid* of Wood. It covers a lot of my island, preventing me from building the stuff I want to build. The tiny amount of Wood used to make Construction Parts and for trade is far too little to shave the areas I'm interested in quickly enough.

[Wanderer]

I agree. I typically run 2, or more, wood cutters and am dumping wood into bricks and concrete as fast as possible for a long time. Coal, then Iron Ore, are the first miners for me, in that order. Mostly because the charcoal maker just has horrible throughput, and getting rid of it lets me pump more wood into the trade dock.

[Vodor]

We all start over a few times when we first start playing, it's almost a given.

My current game I ended up clearing all the trees and building assemblers and storage around the middle of the island, with 4 small squares between them. That lets anything through. Then just with 1 storage per item (iron, steel, wood etc.) the trucks feed the assemblers fine.

Then I slowly expand outwards.

Originally posted by Peter34:

I don't really need Wood in the early game.

Rather, I need to *get* *rid* of Wood. It covers a lot of my island, preventing me from building the stuff I want to build. The tiny amount of Wood used to make Construction Parts and for trade is far too little to shave the areas I'm interested in quickly enough.

Trade it for bricks and concrete slabs, which is for construction 1 :)