[UTILITY] Some tips for factory building

[DEVOLVE MINHA CACHAÇA!]

Well, I just tried out a small fully automated factory design, that produces 5.56 ammo and bottlecap mines out of raw materials, and it helped me find out some buried details that are not so evident by the moment you start toying with machines and conveyor belts.

Here it is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzDgp0C-CX8

It is divided into two separate sections:
- A simpler one, where the ammo is manufactured, based on vacuum hoppers that pull materials from chests next to them containing the materials required;
- A more complex one, where the bottlecap mines are manufactured, that employs two machinery types: the builder, which creates lunchboxes, used in the recipe for bottlecap mines, and the explosives mill, which mixes everything to make the mines themselves.

It took me some hours to figure out how would I do everything, changed its overall design twice to make it practical enough and not ugly, so, I found out some things that might be useful to whoever wants to try and build their own factories, so here are some tips:

Vacuum hopper and lifters logic

Both gather whatever gets in, add it to their inventory, and output them through the opposite side, but if multiple objects or materials are supplied to them, they tend to try and deplete each item stack separately and not one from each stack at each output, so if the item supply rhythm is constant and it includes more than one object or material, it might never deplete past the first stack formed on its inventory.

If you decide to supply them with different materials, try using sorters to treat each one separately, each with a dedicated belt path.

Vacuum hoppers work by pulling items from the closest container, which may be a box, chest or anything capable of storing items, or also the workshop itself (the red work table that marks the center of the settlement) on which case it will pull all junk items from the settlement inventory into its own inventory.

* Sorters and manufacturers inventory logic is different, so they do not apply here.

Sorter logic

There are two types: one that sorts different objects, and other that sorts objects based on their components.

The one I tested is the object sorter. It outputs objects in two directions, and will do nothing (and simply output everything it is supplied with) if you do not tell it what it must separate, neither it can be configured through the terminal. To properly make it sort items, you must place, out of the multiple objects you need it to process, one or more objects you want it to separate from the main flow inside its inventory.

When it works, it will emit a sound similar to the desk bell found in some places in the world map, and it will then direct sorted items to the side output belt instead of the straight one.

Power grid logic

Similarly to other workshop objects, all factory parts of the same type connected to the same single power grid will have the same configuration when accessed through a terminal. e.g. if you have two or more ammo manufacturers, you'll only be able to set one ammo type to all of them, and all vacuum hoppers will be configured with the same pull force and timing, regardless of how many of them you have added to your factory.

Manufacturer machines logic

All manufacturers work the same way: they will start producing whatever the player configures them to through the terminal, provided their inventory contains the needed materials or junk items containing required components, and will continue to do it until it depletes its inventory.

Like shown in the video, it is possible to automatically supply them with all materials at once, by building your conveyor belt line in such a way all of them are able to drop items to the belt that leads directly to the manufacturer.

Mixing different materials in the same belt

The best way to do it is using gravity. This might require some previous planning, but it is usually simple: regardless of how you decide to supply your factory with materials, the material source must be in the highest possible point, so you do not need to rely on conveyor lifts to send them up again.

Whenever you need to mix materials, try to place conveyor belts below, in such a way that they can simply fall and keep going in a different line, like shown in the video.

A plain hopper can be used as well, it gives better control but takes a lot of space.

Same materials, different constructs

You might find a situation where you need to supply two different lines with the same material, but to build different stuff with each of them. The separator arm, along with the bifurcated belt piece (which is shown in the video, separating steel between two different conveyor belt lines, one to provide it to the builder machine, and other to supply the explosives mill) helps doing that. It can be easily done with an interval pole, which can be configured to be turned on (so the arm blocks the default path, forcing the side path) and off (the arm unblocks the default path, letting materials go through).

This can be done with single material source, making it practical.

Storing manufactured products

There are basically two ways to do it: the conveyor storage unit, which will add to its inventory whatever comes in, or an open container, like a bath tube, which has greater visual appeal.

Conveyor belts vs rollers

Conveyor belts will move objects in a constant and slow-paced pattern, but as long as there is nothing to interrupt their movement and everything is correctly powered, objects will not stop moving.

Rollers are best used if you need items to be at a certain speed when reaching a given point in your assembly line, e.g. to reach a hopper which is far below, and, because of this, items will move through it if they have enough momentum. For example, the momentum provided by conveyor belts is not enough to let items through a curved roller piece, and are likely to become stuck on its corner, but if you have a sequence of down-pitched roller pieces, items will slide through it and make it past the curved piece without difficulties (depending on the speed, items might fall off the assembly line, so plan it well).

I didn't find any practical uses for rollers aside from the speed-up items idea, but it might be just me not being creative enough.

Conveyor belt pieces that change the flow direction might cause problems too, as they tend to send items too close to the edge of the new belt, and might easily fall off of it, so it is important to properly align your belts if you plan to use the techniques I described above.
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If you have any more useful tips, please, leave them here. Bethesda has the bad habit of not providing us with proper tutorials and guides when new mechanics are introduced, so I think it is important to share this type of knowledge, so the new comers can have something to refer to in order to start creating.

[DEVOLVE MINHA CACHAÇA!]

Well, it seems factory building is not of great interest in the community, was hoping to see other factory designs and more tricks you could use to create better designs.

In any case, I just hope this thread helps anyone who wants to tinker with machinery.

[Casper]

Yeah this is a great guide man, I'm keeping it for reference. Kudos to the effort you went too.. although you're right in that the community here won't appreciate it. I did a comprehensive character build with lore, and faction endings and I think it only got about the same amount of attention

[Casper]

I'd suggest posting this on reddit, they seem to discuss game content more than bugs/glitches/review wars..

[AlexMBrennan]

Well, it seems factory building is not of great interest in the community

Sorry I guess? The reality of the situation is that Fallout 4 is not really suitable for building contraptions due to the settlement size cap, so I'd imagine that people interested in factory building will be doing that in a different game.

[DecrepitDragon]

Originally posted by Mr. Dawn with Keys hat:

Well, it seems factory building is not of great interest in the community, was hoping to see other factory designs and more tricks you could use to create better designs.

In any case, I just hope this thread helps anyone who wants to tinker with machinery.

I'm interested bud - it's early days yet for a lot of people though.

For what it's worth, I'll be referencing this little guide when I get around to doing my own ammo factory. Good shotty combined with an old man's aiming, and I need all the ammo I can get. :)

Thanks for this bud.

[lPaladinl]

I'm very interested in the factory DLC parts, but there's many inherent issues with the DLC.

1.) The initial cost to build a factory can be incredible depending on the size of the factory you plan to build. Every builder machine is certainly not cheap, nor is the power needed to run them all.

2.) You can only build them in Settlements, and Settlements have a limited Size cap on how many parts can be built in them. This means that you either have to pick an empty lot with no population and sacrifice a settlement to turn it into a factory, or you'll have to work around having a settlement meeting their conditions with minimal parts and consequently limit your factory.

3.) Not only is the initial cost of the Factory high, but the resources needed to run it are even harder to come by. Once you have your nice factory up and running, I struggle to collect the resources to run one for more than a moment at a time as I dump materials into it. This is made harder as the resource shipments cannot be used to feed factories, as your shipments do not turn into physical items until you try to build something using the settlement build menus and you lack the resources required to build them. This means that you have to hand pick out junk items for the materials you need or purposefully control your stock in order to take advantage of shipments.

I absolutely love running my own little ammo press, but I'll be damned if I will ever have more than a handful of require materials at any given time without tons of tedious effort and time wasted hounding traders for materials.

Unless of course I was going to just cheat in materials, at which point I would honestly just go play other games that are designed for this sort of gameplay (like Factorio or Minecraft with Tekkit or other similar Factorization mods).

[chris.boney]

weapon and ammo crafting mods have been around for a Long Time.
just not so,, "pretty lookin",, some would call it "faff arsing", others would call it "immersive".

me? i use a combo of all the above to come up with all kinds of my own "nonsense".
yay for my conveyor belt all the way from sanctuary to diamond city.. lol.

the manufacturing exentended mod makes things a lot more interesting but so far ive only just built an auto butcher machine which fits the scene perfect for a farm with caged livestock ect.

but yeah,, good guide and nice little vid.
i'll be trying to develop an alternate worldspace and i plan to turn each little town into thier own factory/item/scene specific districts.
(with enough world space to drive or fly between towns).
*cue ctd*.

cheers for the guide man. im always watching little yt vids for fo4, so nice 1.

[DEVOLVE MINHA CACHAÇA!]

Glad you guys found it useful.

But yeah, what @AlexMBrennan and @lPaladinl say is true, though I feel glad to be able to get the better of both worlds, even when the game is not exactly suited to create machines.

[=EGC= kansasterry]

Good information though it seems to me the vacuum hopper seems to turn off when I leave the settlement as the count in the receiving bin remained the same when I returned as it was when I left even though I left it running while the manufacturing section appears to continue to run as long as it has supplies of material..

As for getting the massive resources I found that if you drop a shipment on the ground and SCRAP the shipment while in workshop mode it will become the resources it represents the same as when I scrap a car or tree just be sure its on a surface that the shipment that is represented as a paper does not sink underneath.

[garyp156]

I like the DLC, but I'm playing on a PC so I got around the Settlement limited Size bogus issue.
Has anyone found a way to cut power to parts of the conveyor?
I'd like to turn on and off some parts. I think I missed something...

[きつね]

Nice :) Thanks for the advice

[Flippy]

Can the factories make Nuka World ammo? My favourite gun is of course from Nuka World, the hand made rifle.

[Flippy]

Originally posted by =EGC= kansasterry:

Good information though it seems to me the vacuum hopper seems to turn off when I leave the settlement as the count in the receiving bin remained the same when I returned as it was when I left even though I left it running while the manufacturing section appears to continue to run as long as it has supplies of material..

As for getting the massive resources I found that if you drop a shipment on the ground and SCRAP the shipment while in workshop mode it will become the resources it represents the same as when I scrap a car or tree just be sure its on a surface that the shipment that is represented as a paper does not sink underneath.

Seriously scrapping shipments works like that? I will try it, thanks.

[DEVOLVE MINHA CACHAÇA!]

Originally posted by Flippy:

Can the factories make Nuka World ammo? My favourite gun is of course from Nuka World, the hand made rifle.

Since the hand made rifle uses 7.62, no, unfortunately not, unless you use mods. This is true to 45-70, only obtainable in Far Harbor, as well.

[きつね]

Originally posted by Flippy:

Originally posted by =EGC= kansasterry:

Good information though it seems to me the vacuum hopper seems to turn off when I leave the settlement as the count in the receiving bin remained the same when I returned as it was when I left even though I left it running while the manufacturing section appears to continue to run as long as it has supplies of material..

As for getting the massive resources I found that if you drop a shipment on the ground and SCRAP the shipment while in workshop mode it will become the resources it represents the same as when I scrap a car or tree just be sure its on a surface that the shipment that is represented as a paper does not sink underneath.

Seriously scrapping shipments works like that? I will try it, thanks.

Does works really well :),