Question for those with main bus experience.

[Discipline Before Dishonor]

I have four different belts transporting iron plates to my main bus. My question is this: Do I need four (red coloured transport) belts doing it, or can I just have one belt doing it? Assume that I have a main bus built and that all iron plates I craft are constantly being moved down the line and consumed for production at a regular rate. Each belt has 11 furnaces and drills feeding it; Would I be just fine if I had one belt with 44 furnaces and drills feeding it, and only took iron plates from that belt? Would it clog, with that many furnaces depositing bars onto it, or would it flow just fine?

[Fel]

The reason why the "usual" main bus has 4 belts of copper and iron plates is because you need about that much thoughput if you want to keep expanding your production all the way to the rocket launch.

But that also relies on having enough production to sustain that, 11 furnaces is far from enough.
If we are talking about red belts then each red belt would need either 48 steel/electric or 96 stone furnaces to fully feed it at full throughput.
You would also need 60 electric mining drill per red belt of ore on top of the coal.


Of course, you don't need the full amount right away at the start but as you expand your production you will also need to increase the amount of plates being produced so that nothing is stalling because of a lack of resources.

[knighttemplar1960]

My main bus on my pre-mega base set ups have 8 blue belts of copper plate, 8 blue belts of iron plate and 2 blue belts of steel, green circuits, red circuits, and blue circuits. That still takes quite a long while to make enough stuff to expand from the intermediate base to the mega base. It takes A LOT of iron and copper plates to make all the circuits that you need.

[Jan]

You should aks yourself the question: Do I really need all the iron on the main bus? Most of the iron goes into steel and green chips. It is much more efficient to plan dedicated builds for the production of main intermediates and to use trains for mass transport.

I personally use the main bus layout only to unlock all basic techs. After this, I transition into a much bigger base layout without main bus.

[Discipline Before Dishonor]

Thanks for the help ^_^ My question is answered! I'm a budding factory designer but I've finally comprehended the main bus which took 130 hours of gameplay :p

I've got complete automation for copper, iron, coal, grenades, piercing ammo, gears, copper wire, red and green circuits, plastic, sulphur, sulphuric acid, red/green/grey/yellow science juices along with their requisite components, red belts and underground belts, and steel. I'm most proud of the oil refinery that I have set up, I can produce more petrolium than I can use even with two chemical plants making plastic, another making sulphur, I have light oil and heavy oil set up as well for lubricant or whatever else, rocket fuel etc. I needed literally 8-9 oil refineries just to be able to make enough petrolium to craft everything while also filling a storage vat. I have two oil fields being tapped perpetually, mega laser defenses etc. Found a good seed, try it out if you want, it's got a very large penninsula with good resources in and around it; If you can clear the penninsula you can wall it off as I did, I never have biters get into my walls because there's only one way in, and it's laser city over there. Here's the seed I generated, it's all vanilla, EXTREMELY lucky. Pure vanilla death world, not a single setting changed from vanilla:

>>>eNpjZGBkUAZiIGiwB2EOluT8xBwYD4S5kvMLClKLdPOLUpGFOZOL
SlNSdfMzURWn5qXmVuomJRYDFTM4QDDQ1Myi/Dx0E1iLS/LzUEVKilJ
Ti5FFuEuLEvMyS3PR9TIwul5T2NbQIscAwv/rGRT+/wdhIOsB0FIQZm
BsANoOVAkUgwHW5JzMtDQGBgVHIHYCGcTIyFgtss79YdUUe0aIGj0HK
OMBVORAEkzEE8bwc8AppQJjmCCZYwwGn5EYEEtLgFZAVXE4IBgQyRaQ
JCPjx4zHHVt/fLFj/LPy4yXfpAR7xrJm3i9fFbfYASXZQf5kghOzZoL
ATphXGJCcAJG6ac949gwIvLFnZAXpEAERDhZA4oA3MwOjAB+QtaAHSC
jIMMCcZgczRsSBMQ0MvsF88hjGuGyP7g9gQNiADJcDESdABNhCuMsYI
UyHfgdGB3mYrCRCCVC/EQOyG1IQPjwJs/Ywkv1oDsGMCGR/oImoOGCJ
Bi6QhSlw4gUz3DXA8LzADuM5zHdgZAYxQKq+AMUgPGj6BxsFoQUcwMH
NzIAAH+wZQ1/ETAAAhXugoA==<<<

[AlexMBrennan]

If you point your mouse at the belt then you will see relevant information like the fact that red belts move 30 items per second.

If your factory needs more than 30 items per second then you will need a 2nd belt. Etc.

[McSaucyNugget]

The answer to your question lies in how many items per second a red belt can carry, which is 30 per second. Assuming your using steel or electric furnaces, its going to take 48 (96 if your using basic stone) furnaces per red belt, so 192 to saturate all 4 iron plate red belts in your main belt. This is way too much iron if you plan just to launch just one rocket and then call it quits. Keep in mind that each time you get faster belts, the more and more items it takes to saturate it.

Like Jan said above, later on in the game it is more efficient and scalable to use a train network, although if this is your first time playing its fine if you stick with a main belt.

[MangoMan]

you don't need four belts. you can "inject" additional sources of iron into the middle of your bus onto the same belt to refresh it. even with 4 belts, the other three will tend to be used just to refresh the main belt.

[RiO]

Originally posted by MangoMan:

you don't need four belts. you can "inject" additional sources of iron into the middle of your bus onto the same belt to refresh it. even with 4 belts, the other three will tend to be used just to refresh the main belt.

Pulling only from one belt and then replenishing it via the others is one way of doing it. Pulling evenly from all four and then rebalancing is another. Both work. Both have their pros and cons.

The former requires more splitters, which is technically bad for UPS. The latter leads more often to non-compressed belts which is ... also bad for UPS. Though really; at the scale of base where a main bus can be an effective and sensible build pattern to employ, those concerns really don't matter.

There is one relevant point though: pulling from all four and then occasionally rebalancing with a basic 4:4 TU balancer after all 4 have been pulled from, tends to require less space along the bus - i.e. it becomes easier to squeeze in more branch-off points.

[Fel]

Pulling and not rebalancing is also a valid option when you know what you are doing, reducing the amount of belts when one is emptied by the factories that pull from it.

It's not like main bus is a static thing, it's an approach that helps those with poor planning more than anything else.

[impetus_maximus]

Originally posted by MangoMan:

you don't need four belts. you can "inject" additional sources of iron into the middle of your bus onto the same belt to refresh it. even with 4 belts, the other three will tend to be used just to refresh the main belt.

something far too few people do. so many just throw balancers at a supply problem. -_-

[RiO]

Originally posted by Fel:

Pulling and not rebalancing is also a valid option when you know what you are doing, reducing the amount of belts when one is emptied by the factories that pull from it.

True. Personally I combine both principles. For each bonding of 4 belts I put a 4:4 balancer at the start of the bus to spread resource intake equally over all 4 belts, independent of how many intake I have connected thus far. This means I can build everything to pull off of belts as if I was already working on the final implementation which aims to saturate all 4 belts in the bonding.

Then I rebalance after having pulled from all four to keep things equal, until I hit certain points of no return where I decide: "okay, X of these remaining belts is/are now going dedicated into this build" and then I pull those belts out of the bonding entirely and continue on with the remaining ones. Or I pull half off from each belt and then rather than continue on with 4 belts, I reduce and condense the remains to 2 or even 1.

Originally posted by Fel:

It's not like main bus is a static thing, it's an approach that helps those with poor planning more than anything else.

That's a bit harsh though. For instance: I perfectly know what I'm doing and when I do it. But I still find myself using a bus a lot, because I just find a main bus a convenient and - apart from a few snags - naturally progressing way of laying out my first tier of base.

[Fel]

It wasn't meant to sound harsh, I use it frequently as well, it's not like you are only allowed to use it if you are bad at planning.
I meant that it's the best approach for those that are bad at planning (if they don't want a messy spaghetti again of course) as it gives you a great guide line to progress and add the recipes you unlock without having to worry about future-proofing it much if at all.

[knighttemplar1960]

Originally posted by Fel:

It wasn't meant to sound harsh, I use it frequently as well, it's not like you are only allowed to use it if you are bad at planning.
I meant that it's the best approach for those that are bad at planning (if they don't want a messy spaghetti again of course) as it gives you a great guide line to progress and add the recipes you unlock without having to worry about future-proofing it much if at all.

I've always thought of it as an organizational tool. Its much more organized than spaghetti and you can start and stay organized this way as soon as you have researched the yellow splitters and undergrounds.

After that I just upgrade to red and increase saturation so I can continue to spread out. Once I get trains I bring in resources from other areas and create perpendicular lines coming into the newly established chains (for instance instead of putting sulfur on the main bus I bring it in by train on the science side of the production line and feed it directly to blue science. The same with plastic. It comes in on the circuit side of the production area and goes directly into red circuit production and the remaining plastic gets merged back into a single belt that leads to the other side of the bus for low density structures).

I try to group things that use the same type of materials into the same areas where possible at least until I am ready to take a bunch of territory and expand into a mega base that has specialized areas all connected by train. I manufacture some of every thing in the main bus area and let it continue to produce while I expand into a megabase.

My mega base is essentially a train hub with logistic robots. I bring in intermediate products from all over and assemble them into the end products there and they get distributed to any where that I'm expanding via supply trains.

That's the cool thing about Factorio. There are lots of different ways to do the same task and still be successful.

[Discipline Before Dishonor]

The replenishing idea is definitely something I'll try, it sounds like a cleaner build