need help with finding blueprints

[Raiden - In Flames 🎵]

there are so many blueprints to choose from the site https://factorioprints.com/top
as a beginner i have no idea which ones i should get. could someone help me out here.

maybe give me a few early to mid to late game blueprints. i have no idea what i'm looking for here >.<

[Hedning]

As a beginner, or even an experienced player you should not get any blueprints other than belt balancers. Blueprints are spoilers and many blueprints found on the internet are bad or doesn't work like advertised anyway. You should make your own blueprints. That's much more fun too.

[PunCrathod]

I'll offer my point of view as an experienced factorio player and as an experienced gamer of varying genres.

Looking up blueprints online is practically almost the same as looking up a walkthrough. I'm not against it as I do use walkthroughs when playing long jrpgs so I don't miss the fun scenes. Just know that that is what it basically is and make your own decision if you want to look up blueprints online.

[KatherineOfSky]

I HIGHLY recommend you do not use anyone's blueprints but your own. It basically removes all fun in the game, since creating assembly lines is the whole point of the game.

[Hedning]

A walktrough teaches you about the game. Like you say you do it so you don't miss something. That would be more like a guide or tutorial in factorio. A blueprint is more like downloading a save file. You are skipping and missing part of the game if you do that.

[KatherineOfSky]

^^ agreed completely, Hedning! One might as well not even play the game.

[McDeath]

sorry im going to have to disagree if you use your blueprints from nihlas or sky to understand how something works some people are just visual learners and have to see it to figure out a problem to find the problem to fix here are bus belt splitting https://factorioprints.com/view/-KolvieQDa6BwdyXVNB8 here is base in a box https://factorioprints.com/view/-LI0gc-a-2_VLWR-tx1d hope this helps newbies out to not be afraid just trust me it makes it easier if you cant figure it out you will get these as part of mussel memory and it will make starts faster as you go try to memorize the layouts to scale down or up it should put ideas in your head to build build build this is a cheat if you dont want to wait for the shortcutbar enter /unlock-shortcut-bar in the console shame on you people sky your a YT that i thought helped people get off your high horse what gives you the right to say whats fun and whats not let people play their games their way but if they ask for help we should help them to spread this glorius game as most people will be overwhelmed and have no clue some have no ideas how to build and these simple blueprints should get them to be masterful if they practice this games hard enough for someone with no logistics experience to dive into as a guide or trying on my uncles own he couldnt learn but a blue print or 2 made him way better to figure things out because he had to see it to build it now he can almost not need a blueprint and make it to trains not trying to offend you in any way shape or form just saying lets help people

[Hedning]

Being a visual learner has nothing to do with using someone else's design. This is also not a game that has a "correct" solution that you need to learn by muscle memory. Memorizing a pattern is not learning the game. The way you speak about it you have turned from a painter into a printing press. Bob Ross always made a point that the canvas is your world, you can do anything you want. If you didn't like the tree he just put in you should leave it out. It's the same with factorio. It's your world. The goal isn't actually to launch a rocket. The goal is to create a factory.

Nilaus "base in a book" is not the best way of doing it. It's his way of doing it. Each production line in there is not the solution, it's a solution. If a new player asking for help is instructed by someone like you to play like Nilaus then maybe they will, and then they might not like the game as much because if left to develop naturally they would go with a different style that fits them better.

Also you talk about being overwhelmed, well, downloading something complete you have no idea how it works and trying to first figure it out, that's overwhelming. Playing the game like it was meant you take one step at a time. If that is still overwhelming at least it is less so.

[PunCrathod]

Originally posted by Hedning:

A walktrough teaches you about the game. Like you say you do it so you don't miss something. That would be more like a guide or tutorial in factorio. A blueprint is more like downloading a save file. You are skipping and missing part of the game if you do that.

A walkthrough is much more involved than a quide or a tutorial. It gives you the solutions to all the puzzles and the locations of all the secrets. Basically it removes all the critical thinking from the gameplay. It even spoils all the plot twists right before they happen. Which is fine if that is what you want. Tough in my case it's because the tales of series games are 50+ hours long even when you know where to go and what to do there. We play them with my brother and a couple of friends and only one of us is reading the walkthrough of a particular game so the rest are spoiled as little as possible on the story. Basically one of us sacrifices some of their enjoyment so that we don't have to spend triple the time walking back and forth between places looking for events and secrets making the game much more enjoyable for the rest.

Tough in Factorios case there is not much story there other than what you make yourself. It is all about the gameplay. Figuring out the logistic puzzles and the like. I would never use walkthroughs on a game like that. But that is my personal choice. If someone wants to use ready made blueprints that is their choice. Just letting them know that using someone elses blueprints might spoil the game for them is enough. Maybe they don't care about solving the puzzle. They just want to look at the picture that puzzle makes. In that case I would say its completely fine to use other peoples blueprints.

[Frost]

I have to agree: it's more fun to come up with your own designs and then seek to improve on them. You'll want to look up ideas about how to balance belts to help with ideas how to pull that off.

Even when I look at an entire base and how amazing well done and balanced it is, it takes all the fun out of it and makes me consider not playing if you try to match it in some degree. It's just far more fun to do your own designs and see where it takes you, improving only from the things you learn in your own games.

Just a thought.

[astrosha]

Don't go looking for Blueprints (except maybe for Belt Balancers). Instead, look at what you need, and build *something* to create what you need.

Need to make Assembly Machines? Well, you need Iron Plate, Gears (which also need Iron Plate), and "Green Circuits" (people refer to the three different colored circuit board like things by color, rather than by name, Electronic Circuit in this case) which requires Copper Wire (needing Copper Plate) and more Iron Plate.

How do you make the Iron Plate and Copper Plate needed for these Assembly Machines? By mining Iron and Copper Ores and smelting them in a Stone Furnace of course! So, build *something* that mines the two ores, sends them each to their own smelting areas. Have those smelters output onto belts that go somewhere, anywhere. Build *something* that takes some of those Iron Plates and turns them into Gears. Build *something* that takes some of the Copper Plate and builds Copper Wire, and that takes those Copper Wires and some Iron Plate to make the "green circuits". Then use those Iron Plates, Gears, and "green circuits" to make the Assembly Machine 1's.

Expand the mining and smelting areas as you need to, in order to automate the construction of pretty much everything in the game, as you need to. It helps to automate Assembly Machines, Inserters (maybe not the Burner Inserter, but the rest definitely), Belts, Splitters, Undergrounds, Pipes, Pipe-to-Grounds, and Miners, just to name a few basic things.

While you *can* look up some kind of initial base blueprint, the game is a lot more fun when you know you are using your own creations. After a while, you'll realize just how much you can put onto a belt, and start to make things to the various ratios. But for just starting out, the best thing you can do is just let it grow organically.

Here's a couple tips for just starting out ... TURN ON ALT-MODE!!! It lets you see some very important things. Electricity is one of the first things you need to set up to really get your factory going. But, to get that up and running, you need to either spend way too much time mining yourself, or use Burner stage equipment. If you set up a Burner Miner that outputs directly to a Stone Furnace, the ore it mines will be turned into plate without your direct intervention, so long as there is fuel in both pieces of machinery, and there is less than one full stack of plate in the furnace. This lets you go do other things while it creates the plate you need; set up several for iron and one or two for copper and you'll have the Plates you need to start building everything else. Find a Coal patch, put a couple of Burner Miners outputting to each other, and then put one piece of Wood or Coal into one of them, and they will start mining Coal for you for you. Take the Coal out to use in other Burner equipment.

But above all, HAVE FUN!

[KatherineOfSky]

Originally posted by McDeath:

shame on you people sky your a YT that i thought helped people get off your high horse what gives you the right to say whats fun and whats not let people play their games their way but if they ask for help we should help them to spread this glorius game as most people will be overwhelmed and have no clue some have no ideas how to build and these simple blueprints should get them to be masterful if they practice this games hard enough for someone with no logistics experience to dive into as a guide or trying on my uncles own he couldnt learn but a blue print or 2 made him way better to figure things out because he had to see it to build it now he can almost not need a blueprint and make it to trains not trying to offend you in any way shape or form just saying lets help people

There is NO shame on me, and I am not sitting on a horse, high or otherwise. I feel VERY strongly that copying others' blueprints will actually ruin the game for a new player. You might disagree, but I will not back down from that position.

There NO need for speed AT ALL. TBH, I don't understand the trend for trying to cheat one's way through the game. There is soooooo much pleasure to be had by figuring things out, learning on your own, trying, failing, learning, experimenting. That's what Factorio is all about.

"Spreading love of the game" is exactly what I am doing. Your advocating copying others' BPs will give a person one game and then they are DONE. They will have no idea how things work, how to build for themselves, and they'll give up in frustration. That is NOT helping people AT ALL.

If people desire more instruction than the game gives, the best help would be to play with a friend, to figure things out together, or MAYBE watch a Let's Play where they DON'T use blueprints, and explain exactly what they are doing. Plop, plop, plop LPs are terrible for instruction.

And instead of saying "no offence", you should make your statement NOT offensive instead. Cultivate some diplomacy... and for goodness' sake, use Capitalization and Punctuation. I would not even have read your post because it's so awful to to look at. Only replied because you took a dig at me.

[Premu]

Using existing blueprints for something very specifc can be very helpful. It might be a part of the game which you can't get a grasp right now, or it is simply too fiddly for your taste to set up. But in general it should be something pretty specific.

You can't set up a whole factory by simply combining tons of different blueprints - that won't simply work. Especially blueprints for advanced production lines tend to be based on specific assertions and are often adapted to a specific play style and an overall building strategy of the whole factory.

And before using a blueprint it's essential to understand how it works and on which assumptions it was created. Do you really need to provide a full belt of input materials for all incoming lines? Did the blueprint creator thought that this specific production line is fed by a central bus, or by a train station? Is it feasible to use early game or do you need so many resources to feed it that it is only useful in the late game or even in a mega base?

Taking blueprints to learn from them and to extend your perspectives can be really useful. But they are not the solution to simply solve every problem you might run into.

[Semi Green]

i love the reactor blueprints and its fun seeing how they lay them out and it gives me ideas on how to improve them/ make them work better

which is pretty much the only blueprint i really use everything else is worked out as i go

[Diranux]

I never would've spent 83 hours on my first play through if it wasn't for Nilaus and copying his builds from his YouTube videos. I imagine everyone enjoys playing a game a little differently.
I doubt I'll ever look up exact ratios to make sure my belts are full or that i'm 100 efficient. I mean it took me 83 hours to launch a rocket :)
I tried to find Belt Balancers book/blueprints but still have no idea where to look.

[KatherineOfSky]

Originally posted by Diranux:

I never would've spent 83 hours on my first play through if it wasn't for Nilaus and copying his builds from his YouTube videos. I imagine everyone enjoys playing a game a little differently.
I doubt I'll ever look up exact ratios to make sure my belts are full or that i'm 100 efficient. I mean it took me 83 hours to launch a rocket :)
I tried to find Belt Balancers book/blueprints but still have no idea where to look.

Sounds like blueprints have been quite a detriment to you. On my first full playthrough, I launched a rocket in around 20 hours, never having gone on the forums, seeing any video, playthroughs, blueprints, etc. I just built glorious spaghetti, and got to that rocket :-) I refined my builds over time, and only looked at media after around 600 hours. That time allowed me to explore my own creativity instead of copying others. That is still the fun I go after in the game.