Efficient factory system

[Presi]

Ok currently, my factory looks like a spaggeti factory, any suggestions on making the factory more efficient or easy to understand?

[piccolo255]

Here's the canonical answer :)
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=754378586

[Purpleganja]

yeah, the main bus helps a lot to straighten the pasta.
Personally, I prefer a reduced bus that carries only the first steps in material transformation like plates, coal, stone, bricks and fluids. From that bus, I make sections that produce everything up to the science pack each with their dedicated assembly of gears, circuits, plastic, batteries etc.
I make sure that each step can produce a bit more than needed to feed the next and I skim a little bit of each materials for personal use from each of the steps to delay the need for a mall.

It works a bit differently than a full bus with almost all the items where you can just add more modules of a particular type of item when you see that you don't make enough of them.
A reduced bus with sections making everything from plates to a science pack requires slightly better ratio calculations in smaller doses, but the bus is much smaller and there's much less stockpiling (less upfront pollution if that matters)

[THE kilroy]

Place icons on the map. Its an easy thing thatnis sooooo valuable. If you are considering a rebuild then i say leave space for changes even if you dont use a mainbus

[knighttemplar1960]

There are lots of different ways. A main bus is a good way to organize your factory. A series of belts with your most commonly used resources running through the middle of your base. My latest attempt had 4 belts of steel, 4 belts of Iron plate, 4 belts of copper plate, 4 belts of green circuits, 2 belts of red circuits, 2 belts of blue circuits, and 4 belts of plastics. Make sure that you separate them by at least 2 spaces so that you can use splittters to take products off the bus and use underground belts to go under the bus (I separate by 4 spaces to make sure I can curl back the other direction if needed.)

Trains are helpful for organizing far flung resources and logistic bot systems are also very useful organizational tools.

[Presi]

https://imgur.com/a/c9CWRp5

[Premu]

Well, that looks like a factory which has grown "naturally". That might somehow work for red and green science, but apparently it failed once you tried to add blue to the mix.

One obvious problem - it looks like you use a "sushi belt" without any control what ends up in which numbers on which side - you mix red, green and blue science as they end up on it to feed you labs. Apparently you already had problems with it which you seemed to have migated by simply lengthening the belts by doing some unnecessary "snaking". But that will help you only for some time until this extra space is filled up.

In this case I fear a complete rebuild of the whole factory is unavoidable. And you should definetly avoid such an uncontrolled sushi belt. Make sure that each science pack gets its own dedicated lane on a belt.

[Presi]

Originally posted by Premu:

Well, that looks like a factory which has grown "naturally". That might somehow work for red and green science, but apparently it failed once you tried to add blue to the mix.

One obvious problem - it looks like you use a "sushi belt" without any control what ends up in which numbers on which side - you mix red, green and blue science as they end up on it to feed you labs. Apparently you already had problems with it which you seemed to have migated by simply lengthening the belts by doing some unnecessary "snaking". But that will help you only for some time until this extra space is filled up.

In this case I fear a complete rebuild of the whole factory is unavoidable. And you should definetly avoid such an uncontrolled sushi belt. Make sure that each science pack gets its own dedicated lane on a belt.

Thanks for the help, i am just a beginner, i expect much critism or help at the start of the game

[brian_va]

Originally posted by Premu:

In this case I fear a complete rebuild of the whole factory is unavoidable.

@OP, consider leaving this one going to build you the components needed for the new factory as well as keeping research going. maybe go wall off an area close buy and near your rail line and start there. perhaps once you get the new one running, stop delivering resources to the old one and once you have logistic bots, deconstruct it and let it be recycled at the new base. of course, you'll probably be on the 2nd or 3rd rebuild by then.

[knighttemplar1960]

You could mitigate your sushi belt problem with steel chests and filter inserters. Labs are 3x3 so you could buffer the belts with a filter inserter --> chest ---> regular inserter --> Lab. Use 3 of those set ups with the filter inserter set to only allow one type of science pack into each of the chests

That may give you enough time to get to construction robots so that you don't have to manually dismantle and rebuild your base. If you put an inserter at the edge of the first lab that feeds into a 2nd lab you can chain transfer science packs to a long string of labs so that you don't get a massive surplus build up of not yet used science packs in the steel chests you would use as your buffers.

You could also chain Filter inserter --> chest --> (regular inserter --> chest --> regular inserter)* --> Lab and repeat the star portion of the chain a few times if you have a tremendous surplus of science packs. A single chest with an inserter on each end holds LOTS more in the 3 squares taken up than 3 sections of belt does.

[Premu]

No worries - My first bases were also a pretty mess. ;)

By the way - the complete rebuild after the red and green phase is something I do, too - at the beginning you simply lack the items and the production to directly start out "big" to be already perfectly aligned for the stuff which will follow, even if you know what to expect. So having a small working starting factory and then rebuilding that from scratch to cover blue and grey, and later yellow and puprle science is pretty common.

Furthermore - as you might have already have experienced, building a small factory is not that hard. And if something doesn't work out you often can rebuild it or just add a quick fix, even if that doesn't look perfect. You just can't scale that up to a large factory - you can't just make a quick fix on that scale.

So a general solution for that is instead of building a large factory is too build several specialized small ones - like for electronics, oil products, stone works, or dedicated science packs. You should also add sub-factories for things you need to build your factory - belts, insterters, power poles, etc - this will keep you sane and prevent you from handcrafting massive amounts. Now all you need to do is to connect your small factories together so that they get their input and provide their output. The most common way to do this is the already mentioned bus. The advantage here is - should something not work as planned in one of your subfactories (which will happen for sure) you now can easily fix it without tearing down you whole base.

Of course, you could alternatively just search for the perfect blueprints for everything instead - but where's the fun in that? The working things out part is the actual important part, at least for me. :)

[ThreeTreeCheese]

Factorio calculator is a good start for figuring out formulas, if said factory is vanilla.
Try to make things organized, with lots of space; even if it takes extra belts to transport thing it will be worth it.
Check the guides about main buses/base designs.

Good luck!

[ccomley]

The biggest thing you need is to know at the start which items you're going to want a lot of. Sadly, you only find out when you play through, that you should've allowed for a LOT more production of, say, green circuits.

[Presi]

Originally posted by knighttemplar1960:

You could mitigate your sushi belt problem with steel chests and filter inserters. Labs are 3x3 so you could buffer the belts with a filter inserter --> chest ---> regular inserter --> Lab. Use 3 of those set ups with the filter inserter set to only allow one type of science pack into each of the chests

That may give you enough time to get to construction robots so that you don't have to manually dismantle and rebuild your base. If you put an inserter at the edge of the first lab that feeds into a 2nd lab you can chain transfer science packs to a long string of labs so that you don't get a massive surplus build up of not yet used science packs in the steel chests you would use as your buffers.

You could also chain Filter inserter --> chest --> (regular inserter --> chest --> regular inserter)* --> Lab and repeat the star portion of the chain a few times if you have a tremendous surplus of science packs. A single chest with an inserter on each end holds LOTS more in the 3 squares taken up than 3 sections of belt does.

I already researched robots, im now trying to create the body for the robots, i just cant seemed to get some parts,only the main red engine part only...

[Presi]

Btw guys,how do i use robots, roboports, what does the orange area and green area means, how do i use logistic chest, ok basically the whole logistics system. Also circuits, how do u use the circuits,i do not know what 90% of it do

[ShutEye_DK]

With that many questions, maybe visit the wiki?
https://wiki.factorio.com/