Is there even a point to building trains and other stuff?

[Jacowboy]

So I just finished the game for the first time... took around 46 hours to launch the missile (first time, so it took me a while to set up a lot of the more complicated stuff like oil production and those damned blue chips)...

Anyways, the point is that I won without ever using solar, nuclear, trains, lasers, robots or logistics... basically only used the most basic yellow conveyor belts and a fukton of steam engines.

I'm guessing that if I continue to get some of the achievements I'll need to learn how to use and use some of those, but trains:

What's the point of trains? it's a legit question btw... I didn't even bother because it seems that building rails and all the infrastructure needed is WAY more expensive than just spamming yellow tracks to bring ressources back to the main base (I'm assuming trains are used to haul cargo)... do trains do anything special or different that I don't know?

There's quite a lot of stuff that might need some tweaking in this game tbh, too many ridiculously complex stuff with too little info for most of it, and in the end it seems a lot of it is completely skipable... =/

Edit: Oh btw, the tank is frickin amazeballs... loved it =P

Edit 2: If devs read this, you need to let players walk over pipes... it's already incredibly frustrating to set up oil production (I honestly don't know if I did it correctly, but worked well enough I suppose, even if I still don't fully understand that whole mess), but bumping, getting stuck and navigating a maze of pipes only makes the experience a 1000% more frustrating... so yeah, let people walk over those things...

[jagholin]

No, trains are not that important on standard maps if all that you will ever do is to build a rocket and get off the planet. The game is technically "won" by this point, but this win condition is kinda like killing an ender dragon in minecraft - yes the game will show you the win screen, but at this point there is still stuff to do - there are technologies still unresearched(keep in mind, the last science pack requires a sattelite launch), and you might only have a beginnings of a base.

Other stuff you mentioned also becomes more important in the late game - for instance, steam power is fine and all, but you will eventually run out of coal, and you will also need to continuously expand your base if only to get more resources - trains give you more throughput/distance/resources invested than anything else in the game.

[jagholin]

also i do find that on standard settings the resource nodes spawn too close to each other, therefore i mostly prefer playing railworld maps(more rich, but more distant resources)

[Jacowboy]

Well it was my first victory but my 2nd map, I abandoned the first, and before starting a new one I kept hitting the "refresh" (which I discovered on my second go-around) until I got one map that I liked with things close enough but not too close to each other (I don't like resources overlapping)... Turns out I still needed to do several far-away secondary mining posts anyways, but again, a long-ass line of conveyor belts seems to do the trick just fine. And sure, this is "standard" I guess...

But hey, I might continue later and try some of that stuff I didn't try, although I don't know if I have the will or energy to do it... not right now I suppose... I might as well restart with the knowledge I have, It'll save me a TON of headaches I guess... but yeah, not right now... u_u

[DCYW]

This means that you are playing for Steam achievement called "Steam all The Way" perhaps when play vanilla mode.

[jagholin]

solar is a very good perpetual power source. Simply place enough panels and you won't need to care about power anymore. Still not enough? Just place more panels, space in factorio is infinite, so you will never run out. Its only downside is its periodicity, so solar panels will need to be accompanied by battery packs.

nuclear is most compact form of power production, but is totally skippable, if you see letsplays people just go for solar for the most part. What its good for are byproducts - nukes and uranium bullets

lasers are must have for base defence at later game stages

construction robots are must have if you wnat to build anything bigger than your small starter base. Also construction bots from your power armor fast placing laser turrets around a power stick is a goto method to clear biter infested areas from midgame onward.

logistics bots is a ups friendlier method to deliver stuff than belts are(might not be true anymore). It also achieves better throughput. If you see megabases, they are mostly bot/train driven, you barely see belts anywhere.

[DCYW]

Originally posted by Jacowboy:

Edit 2: If devs read this, you need to let players walk over pipes... it's already incredibly frustrating to set up oil production (I honestly don't know if I did it correctly, but worked well enough I suppose, even if I still don't fully understand that whole mess), but bumping, getting stuck and navigating a maze of pipes only makes the experience a 1000% more frustrating... so yeah, let people walk over those things.

Mods can help this matter, called Squeak Through Mod

[jagholin]

and in vanilla you learn to love underground pipes... i place them everywhere even if they are not strictly speaking needed

[THE kilroy]

Well i launched a rocket using only burner inserters, t1 assemblers, stone furnaces, nonsolar ,no lasers. So... "Needed" is a per person perspective.
Btw i wouldnt recommend it, but i wanted to at first.

The thing to remember is that the game mode is called "freeplay" not "launh 1 rocket" so everyone will come up with different goals and therfore different "needs"

[Fel]

In theory you could even win without a single machine to mine, without a single inserter or belt.
You would be able to only use machines to smelt ores into plates and to craft things that can't be crafted by hand.


The point of trains is that they can transport a whole lot of items, at a much faster speed when the distances are a bit long.
They are also significantly cheaper than belts for those long distances and have a much easier time dealing with multiple outposts at once.

Of course you can use belts to get your ores/plates from outposts and pipes for your oil but it is going to cost you more resources and you will have to lay more and more of those long belts to sustain the throughput you need.


2 yellow belts cost you 3 iron plates, so 1.5 iron plates per belt.
2 rails cost 1 stone, 1 stick (0.5 iron plate) and 1 steel (5 iron plates), so 0.5 stone and 2.75 iron.
1 rail is 2 tiles in length so per tile it goes down to 0.25 stone and 1.375 iron plates.

Of course you still need locomotives, wagons, train stops, inserters and fuel but with a few hundred tiles in length you more or less pay for that with the iron saved from not using belts.

The biggest thing is that belts are very limited in the amount of items it can transport and the speed at which it can do so, meaning that unless your outpost is a very small one (at most 30 electric mining drills since that is the most a single yellow belt can handle when the drills don't have bonuses) you will need to be laying multiple lines of belts.

As your amount of outposts grow, you only need to double your rails and make them 1-way and they will be able to handle a fairly ridiculous amount of traffic (you might have to do a bit of work near the big stations to handle the growing amount of trains but it uses a mostly trivial amount of rails and a few signals for that and you need a large amount of trains to need it badly).
With belts on the other hand you need to lay new lines for each outpost and your costs grow significantly as a result.


Solar for example allows you to no longer fear getting a blackout or "brownout" as much on top of no longer consuming resources to produce the energy but at a higher base cost and requiring a lot of space.

Nuclear is quite complex but it allows you to get incredible amounts of power for a relatively low cost compared to steam or solar and it uses a resource as fuel that isn't vital for other recipes.

Construction robots can repair your walls and turrets as well as help you built and remove things in your factory.

Logistics robots are really good at transporting the items needed in lesser quantities over small distanced and help a lot in those cases since they fly so the designs can be a lot simpler.


As for your walk on pipes, that's the exact reason why there are underground pipes and why many people not hunting for steam achievements will go for a tiny mod called squeak through to let you walk between pipes and buildings:
https://mods.factorio.com/mods/Supercheese/Squeak%20Through




The great thing about factorio is that it won't force you, if you want to stay with yellow belts even for long distances, you can as you have seen and it's the same for most things.
You are also not technically required to use a lot of labs or to mass-produce things in large scale, it takes longer to get things done but it doesn't prevent you from advancing.

[Frost]

I'm making sure I use and make all the new things before I move on to research that unlocks more stuff. So I like using trains as a train simulator with stops and what not to (eventually) resupply my main resource. I'm not trying to get to the rocket as fast as possible - just enjoying each stage of new things unlocked before I move on.
I remember not even realizing there's a weaponized car and when I built one and started driving it, let alone shooting things with it, it was one of those "this is so cool" moments!
For this reason I avoid watching videos of future things as I'd rather first run into them myself.
Have fun!

[PunCrathod]

Is there a point in using computers when calculators exist or a phone when letters exist or a car when legs exist?

[Tomoko]

Having played this AGES ago, my opinion might be a little dated. But to get access to uranium, and a cheaper access to oil (without miles and miles of pipes) are trains. They're WONDERFUL for cross-map resource transportation. I should congratulate you on "beating the game" in 46 hours though. I have 57 hours, 5 separate play-throughs and I'm not even close to getting a rocket launch. I always just get bricked by a terrible design flaw.

[Jacowboy]

Originally posted by DCYW:

This means that you are playing for Steam achievement called "Steam all The Way" perhaps when play vanilla mode.

Well I wasn't doing it on purpose, but yeah that one popped up when I "won".

Originally posted by DCYW:

Mods can help this matter, called Squeak Through Mod

Oh no, I'm not getting into mods... game is already complicated as is... Also, nah, it should be a vanilla thing... there's absolutely no inherent value to pipes blocking a player, it's the sort of thing that's just annoying for annoyance's sake.

Originally posted by Jagh:

and in vanilla you learn to love underground pipes... i place them everywhere even if they are not strictly speaking needed

I did, but even those were a bit awkward. The problem is more the fact that you don't know what you'll need until it's too late, so you build a certain layout which then turns out inadequate and you need to patch it clumsily (or totally rebuild, but that's a bit too complicated).

Originally posted by Fel:

2 yellow belts cost you 3 iron plates, so 1.5 iron plates per belt.
2 rails cost 1 stone, 1 stick (0.5 iron plate) and 1 steel (5 iron plates), so 0.5 stone and 2.75 iron.
1 rail is 2 tiles in length so per tile it goes down to 0.25 stone and 1.375 iron plates.

Of course you still need locomotives, wagons, train stops, inserters and fuel but with a few hundred tiles in length you more or less pay for that with the iron saved from not using belts.

The biggest thing is that belts are very limited in the amount of items it can transport and the speed at which it can do so, meaning that unless your outpost is a very small one (at most 30 electric mining drills since that is the most a single yellow belt can handle when the drills don't have bonuses) you will need to be laying multiple lines of belts.

As your amount of outposts grow, you only need to double your rails and make them 1-way and they will be able to handle a fairly ridiculous amount of traffic (you might have to do a bit of work near the big stations to handle the growing amount of trains but it uses a mostly trivial amount of rails and a few signals for that and you need a large amount of trains to need it badly).
With belts on the other hand you need to lay new lines for each outpost and your costs grow significantly as a result.

Alright, this was more what I was looking for in terms of answers... I didn't know that rails were actually cheaper, cause I didn't know they covered 2 squares... But it does sound like something more geared to later game... which is why it's weird you can build trains so early, compared to other things... I get it it's because of the "technological progression" (steam before electrical before solar before nuclear) buuut they're too expensive in early game (still need to build all the trains, cars, fuel them, and probably automate them since you don't wanna waste time driving them).

Originally posted by PunCrathod:

Is there a point in using computers when calculators exist or a phone when letters exist or a car when legs exist?

You however, completely missed the point.

Originally posted by WannabeSceneKid:

Having played this AGES ago, my opinion might be a little dated. But to get access to uranium, and a cheaper access to oil (without miles and miles of pipes) are trains. They're WONDERFUL for cross-map resource transportation. I should congratulate you on "beating the game" in 46 hours though. I have 57 hours, 5 separate play-throughs and I'm not even close to getting a rocket launch. I always just get bricked by a terrible design flaw.

Well, 46 hrs for that playthrough... I do have 80 hours total cause of the tutorial, first play through and a lot of time spent in pause 'cause of life interfering and me thinking about stuff...

I've noticed that it's a ver "live and learn" kind of game, so yeah restarting and improving your layouts seem like a good option, hence why I restarted my playthrough at some point... honestly I would've restarted again, but I felt I was too near the launch to do it, so I brute forced it even if it took waaaay too long than it should've.

Next time, I already know I'm gonna need certain things and I'm gonna need a certain layout, for example... like ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ copper wire on a mass-scale... you need an obscene amount of green chips... u_u

Oh also, I noticed that you really need to pick a nice map, no point in making it harder on yourself.

[Grumpy Old Gamer]

Originally posted by Jacowboy:

What's the point of trains?

End game factories usualy go Railbus. When the local ore patches are depleted and you have to ship resources from several kilometers away, belts are slow and bots are just right out (yes its technically possible, no its not efficient). Trains are a great way to ship large quantities of material from multiple sources. AND you can easily add more consumers/producers to the system. Need more green circuits, just build a green circuit production facility and set up trains to go grab iron and copper plates

[Vyndicu]

Train is good for long-distance transport and I guessed you didn't tweak resource patches distance too far from default value.

For my last mega-base I had too little coal at the starting area to keep the entire base running on coal. I had to build a train because it was too far to lay down hundred of convey belt. The nice thing about train is that you can get one train or more and add on as many cargo wagons as you need to. Easier to scale up than replacing hundred of convey belts.

That is the whole point of building a large assembly line for train. In fact, the purple science pack requires you to build lot of railroad and blue science pack require you to build engine unit. At that point you have the infrastructure necessary to lay down track.

In fact convey/logistic robots can't keep up with train above a certain distance because you can build a super-long train. I seen picture of people using train that has 40 cargo wagons and 8 engine in the middle.

Train can also transport fluid (as in oil/water/whatever).


Speaking of keeping up. I am surprised you didn't bother with either red or blue convey belt. The only reason why you wouldn't use red or blue is that you plan to use yellow from beginning to end or for rushing the rocket silo/rocket launch itself.

I strongly recommend that you use at least red convey belt. Primarily because "two yellow belt" is the same thing as one red belt in terms of how many item it can carry from A to B. Then Blue convey belt is three time faster than yellow.

If you ever plan to do a mega-base you will absolutely need blue belt everywhere for high throughput. Otherwise it become harder to scale up your factory with just yellow belt.


Nuclear is powerful if used right and a single steam turbine can produce twice as much energy as a regular steam engine can provide. It depends on your nuclear layout but you can easily feed heat to multiple steam turbines in a compact layout instead of burning more and more coal for an ever growing number of steam engines.


In my last mega-base game I had to build not one but three nuclear complex to keep my mega-base from stalling during the night due to lack of power generation. That was after building a large solar power array along with about 120 steam engine for nights and it still wasn't enough.


The nice thing about solar power is that you don't have to burn/consume anything for a tiny bit of power. The only real downside is you need a large clearing to lay down enough solar panels to make a difference.


The great thing about laser is exactly that they use power instead of needing to plan ammo/convey/etc... to feed them. The only downside is that they can trigger a brownout. In which case, you may want to learn how to plan your powergrid in a way that lasers get first priority. There was a lot I didn't know about powergrid when I first start out.

For example, you can manually link towers together or disconnect without de-constructing them. Just put a copper wire in your hand and click the two towers as if you were building a circuit network.

Video demonstrating this in action: https://wiki.factorio.com/File:Disconnect_power_pole.gif

There are more tutorial out there for Factorio powergrid and I suggest looking them up.


Logistic/Construction robots are a powerful tool if done right. I used logistic and construction bots extensively in my last mega-base to take care of some tasks for me. Like moving low volume goods around and build my base for me etc...


You have easy access to underground pipe. You can use it to build a large oil production plant that you can walk through.

For example: Oil input -> Oil Refinery plant -> underground pipe -> next oil refinery plant -> underground pipe. Repeat the same thing for output pipe.

I will get a picture to demonstrate this in a moment.

Edit: Here it is.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1957713189

You can literally drive a tank/vehicle between the long underground section.