Iron plates optimized production

[Emaulligu]

Hello again fellow factory-growers. Starting my 4th factory this time, planning to finally look at endgame, but not there yet. Currently somewhere between green science and burning all of my iron into ammo for my turrets because desert tileset.
Anyways, there's something that has been bothering me for quite a while now. It's more noticeable with iron than with the rest of the resources, though the problem happens everywhere. You have a ton of ore, throw it into a couple rows of furnaces and then... then what ? So far I've taken the habit of redirecting all furnace output lines on a single iron plate belt, for easier dispatchingthrough my factory. The obvious issue being that after the n'th splitter, there's hardly anything left on the belt, even if it was fully stacked at the start.
So how do I do this ? Do I need to split my factory in "disctricts", each depending from a separate furnace row ?What if it goes dry ? Is there some trick I don't know that would ensure that mid-game expansion isn't followed by iron drought due to having the whole factory pulling on a single iron belt ?

I'm at green science and my pollution cloud is already annoying a lot of biters, so most of my iron is going into ammo production right now, and there's nothing left for research.

[Fel]

Have a look at this:
https://factoriocheatsheet.com/

Specifically the material processing and the mining.

Basically, a specific amount of furnaces are needed to fully supply a belt.
If you have more ores to smelt and need more plates, you can have several sets.

To dispatch it between the various parts of the factory that need plates, you usually either run a belt there directly (if it needs a full belt worth) or use splitters to only send a part of it.
Splitters also have an option to prioritize one output if you want to make sure that a place gets plates even if there is not enough for everything.

[Emaulligu]

So that was my question : I can have different belts for different parts of the factories ? I'm not sure how all of that combines. Right now I have 1 iron mine outputting on 1 belt, and sooner or later I'll eventually fill the iron belt fully, so I should make a second one ? Same with trains later, I'll have 1 output of ore, so I should split that on different distinct lines of iron plates ?

[Fel]

I can have different belts for different parts of the factories ?

Of course you can.
How you do that is up to you, if you want to have a row of furnace sending only to a part of your factory, you can do that.
You can also first smelt your ores into plates before using splitters to have enough partially filled belts to send to the various parts that need them.

Trains don't realy change that either, you just bring additional ores or plates that you can then send where you need them.


(unrelated but for bitters, try to get some oil and set up some flamethrower turrets together with your gun turrets, they work very well in tendem and will save you tons of ammo)

[Emaulligu]

Yep, think I'll do that. I got a couple oil wells on my starting area, right now I'm trying to get a decent steel prod, but flamers should follow soon. I actually forgot about them, I filled the frontlines with gun turrets for now.

[Fel]

For steel, in case you didn't know you can have a single furnace making plates then an inserter putting those plates directly in a different furnace making steel, a 1:1 ratio is exactly what you need for that (given the time difference to smelt an iron plate and a steel plate).
That usually saves you quite a bit of trouble.

[Emaulligu]

Ooooh, didn't know that one, sure will come handy, thanks a lot !

[Phantom]

I've completed the game multiple times and have 100% achievements so I could answer your question in detail, but I warn you that the most fun I had in Factorio is experimenting myself with what works and what doesn't. Technical questions like how to use circuits or trains are one thing, but how to layout your factory is up all up to your play style. Let me know if you want my recommendation on your factory, otherwise I would say don't be afraid to try new setups or layouts cause you can just pick it back up later if it doesn't work.

[Emaulligu]

Precisely why I didn't go watch a masterclass on YT about "this-is-the-ultimate-most-optimal-way-to-do-everything" and I'm here on the forums instead. I do enjoy a bit of friendly idea sharing.

[Fel]

Thankfully there isn't a single best way to do things, especially since there are very different goals depending to the person, which is why many people put that many hours into it.

[knighttemplar1960]

You can always add another set of furnaces and run the row(s) of belts parallel to each other. Then you have twice as much material that you draw off the belt(s) to feed your machines.

Many people run sets of parallel belts down the length of their main assembly areas. This is what people call a main bus. Its really just a way to organize your resources so that you can use them efficiently. In the early game people use no more than 4 belts for one particular type of resource (though they might have 8 or even 12 total belts of that particular type of material) because that is the maximum distance a set of yellow underground belts can span. That allows you to take material off one side of a row of belts and run the split off resources under other belts of material to its destination. When you have 4 belts in parallel you wind up taking material off one of the outside edges but you can use a splitter to move material from one of the inside lanes to the outside lanes.

Later in the game you can use trains to move ore to dedicated smelting set ups and use other trains to haul to finished Iron plates, copper plates, steel, bricks, and walls from those smelting set ups to a main assembly area or a sub factory dedicated to making other product(s) that you then move by train to another location.

There are as many ways to achieve a goal in this game as there are players that play the game. The only difference is more or less efficient and whether you are OCD and have to have every thing perfect or, if not, then it needs to be just good enough to get the job you had in mind done.

[Emaulligu]

My Factorio OCD is dead lol. I think it took me about 2 hours on my first factory to say "Alright f*ck that, spaghetti time".
I'm just concerned with the needs of my factory and I'm after a way to bolster my mid/late-game iron production because using a single belt isn't enough to feed so many machines.
I know about main bus building, but it sounds boring honestly. You paste ad nauseam the same blueprints in a straight line and boom, your whole factory is done.

[knighttemplar1960]

That's true but you can use minibuses, sub factories, belts, trains, and bots or any combination of them to achieve your goal.

As a perfect example when you are making blue circuits it takes 20 green circuits, 2 red circuits, and some sulfuric acid. I run a double split belt down the middle of my blue circuit machines with the red circuits on the outside edge closest to the machines. The machines take the red circuits off the near side and put the blue circuits far side. At the end of the rows I have a splitter that is set to filter blue circuits so the output is only blue circuits at that point and the red circuits stay in the system to be used to make more blue circuits.

Since it takes 10 green circuits for every red circuit used each bank of blue circuit machines requires 2 belts of green circuits.

That gives me a set up of 2 belts of green circuits, a row of machines, A split belt of red and blue circuits, (beacons if you want to use them in the end game) another split red and blue circuit belt, another row of machines and 2 more belts of green circuits. All to produce blue circuits.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2758457979

[The Undead Watcher]

Originally posted by Emaulligu:

I know about main bus building, but it sounds boring honestly.

But it works and that is the main point.
With every belt system you just need to keep track of how much you take from a belt and how much is left.
You could also just restock the belt further into your factory with another smelting array that is located in your factory itself instead of the "beginning" with the others.

Also hang in there, took me 800 hrs with 10 retries (finally did it on the 11th try) and it was really satisfying.
Mid game (well into blue science) was the point that always broke me and i just wanted to redo my entire factory at that point. Constriction bots and basic Logistic Bots (personal Logistics only) were a godsend and i would recommend anyone to aim for those first. They make the game so much better, especially with rebuilding certain parts of your factory.