How to create an outpost base?

[Slayrix]

The base I aspire to build is one that is easily and infinitely expandable and that utilizes outposts. For example have outposts for mining, smelting, production, and whatever else I may need. I want to avoid using a main bus and want to instead use trains. My entire thing with trains tho is they are unpredictable and I feel as though they are not infinitely expandable. I mean you can only put so many trains on one track before there is no space for a train to move. So how can you assure you always have enough space for more trains?

Then there is the issue of how the trains should move. Should I create a grid like pattern for the tracks? That would seem like the most easily expandable way to do it, but then it could create longer travel times since it isn't just a direct path to the destination therefor reducing efficiency. Also with a train track grid that will also limit factory sizes as well because all factories will have to be contained inside whatever the size the track grid is and I am not so good with creating small factories.

Another problem is resources, once the resources near my base run out then I need to go further out to get more resources, and this pattern will continue indefinitely and as it does the factory becomes less efficient because trains now have to travel further distances.

Another issue is idk what to produce and how, like should I make all things that take iron be made at one outpost or should I have an outpost for every single component. Like if I wanted to automate explosive rockets, I need explosives, well for explosives you need other things, so should the other things for the explosives be delivered to the explosive rockets factory, or should the explosives be built elsewhere and then exported into the explosive rockets factory? What should I do for the best results?

There are probably many more issues my brain could find but these are the ones I have off the top of my head.

Edit: thought of another issue, since rails will likely not be guarded they are vulnerable to attacks. A bot network could be utilized for automated repairing but then if the rail network becomes too big then so will the bot network. I say this because it seems as though big bot networks don't work very well, I tried to make one logistic network cover my entire factory once and it was the slowest pos I had ever created.

[Khagan]

Originally posted by Slayrix:

I want to avoid using a main bus and want to instead use trains.

Thats a good thing to want. A main bus is OK for a small to medium size base, but does not scale up well.

you can only put so many trains on one track before there is no space for a train to move. So how can you assure you always have enough space for more trains?

One train carries a lot of stuff, so you don't need as many of them as you might think. If your tracks do start to get crowded, don't fall into the common trap of trying to create a generic 'multi-lane highway'; that's not how real trains work. Instead, add tracks specialised for particular destinations.

Should I create a grid like pattern for the tracks?

Many people do. It makes life harder for the pathfinder. I prefer to follow the shape of the natural terrain.

Also with a train track grid that will also limit factory sizes as well because all factories will have to be contained inside whatever the size the track grid is and I am not so good with creating small factories.

Even if you do use a grid, you can omit individual segments of track to give double or even larger cells.

Another problem is resources, once the resources near my base run out then I need to go further out to get more resources, and this pattern will continue indefinitely and as it does the factory becomes less efficient because trains now have to travel further distances.

It's true that you need more trains as your mines get further away, but that's a comparatively small cost, and the extra trains are not clogging up the crowded inner section of the rail network, they are out on the sparsely populated lines running to the remote mining outposts.

should I make all things that take iron be made at one outpost or should I have an outpost for every single component.

Those are two extremes. Choose whatever point between them suits your taste. It doesn't have to be always the same choice: it's quite reasonable to have a dedicated factory for a large volume item, but to have a shared factory for a bunch of smaller volume items with common ingredients.

Like if I wanted to automate explosive rockets, I need explosives, well for explosives you need other things, so should the other things for the explosives be delivered to the explosive rockets factory, or should the explosives be built elsewhere and then exported into the explosive rockets factory?

Because of the complications of balancing supply and demand for the various petroleum products by cracking and so on, I think a centralised refinery complex is clearly better than a distributed one. But that still leaves a free choice of exporting explosives from the refinery, or exporting sulphur and making explosives in your munitions factory.

since rails will likely not be guarded they are vulnerable to attacks.

At some point it just becomes easier to have a border wall, and then you know everything inside is safe.

[Slayrix]

Originally posted by Khagan:

Originally posted by Slayrix:

I want to avoid using a main bus and want to instead use trains.

Thats a good thing to want. A main bus is OK for a small to medium size base, but does not scale up well.

you can only put so many trains on one track before there is no space for a train to move. So how can you assure you always have enough space for more trains?

One train carries a lot of stuff, so you don't need as many of them as you might think. If your tracks do start to get crowded, don't fall into the common trap of trying to create a generic 'multi-lane highway'; that's not how real trains work. Instead, add tracks specialised for particular destinations.

Should I create a grid like pattern for the tracks?

Many people do. It makes life harder for the pathfinder. I prefer to follow the shape of the natural terrain.

Also with a train track grid that will also limit factory sizes as well because all factories will have to be contained inside whatever the size the track grid is and I am not so good with creating small factories.

Even if you do use a grid, you can omit individual segments of track to give double or even larger cells.

Another problem is resources, once the resources near my base run out then I need to go further out to get more resources, and this pattern will continue indefinitely and as it does the factory becomes less efficient because trains now have to travel further distances.

It's true that you need more trains as your mines get further away, but that's a comparatively small cost, and the extra trains are not clogging up the crowded inner section of the rail network, they are out on the sparsely populated lines running to the remote mining outposts.

should I make all things that take iron be made at one outpost or should I have an outpost for every single component.

Those are two extremes. Choose whatever point between them suits your taste. It doesn't have to be always the same choice: it's quite reasonable to have a dedicated factory for a large volume item, but to have a shared factory for a bunch of smaller volume items with common ingredients.

Like if I wanted to automate explosive rockets, I need explosives, well for explosives you need other things, so should the other things for the explosives be delivered to the explosive rockets factory, or should the explosives be built elsewhere and then exported into the explosive rockets factory?

Because of the complications of balancing supply and demand for the various petroleum products by cracking and so on, I think a centralised refinery complex is clearly better than a distributed one. But that still leaves a free choice of exporting explosives from the refinery, or exporting sulphur and making explosives in your munitions factory.

since rails will likely not be guarded they are vulnerable to attacks.

At some point it just becomes easier to have a border wall, and then you know everything inside is safe.

Thanks for the advice, I really appreciate it

[brian_va]

Originally posted by Slayrix:

So how can you assure you always have enough space for more trains?

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2915724425
build a parking lot where they might stack up. north is dropoff, south is pickup. you can do similar pretty much everywhere you need a train station.

Originally posted by Slayrix:

Another problem is resources, once the resources near my base run out then I need to go further out to get more resources, and this pattern will continue indefinitely and as it does the factory becomes less efficient because trains now have to travel further distances.

more trains. stackers help here. and its not necessarily indefinitely; go out a decent distance and ore patches start hitting 100 million. add in a fair few mining productivity researches and that adds up.

[Slayrix]

Originally posted by brian_va:

Originally posted by Slayrix:

So how can you assure you always have enough space for more trains?

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2915724425
build a parking lot where they might stack up. north is dropoff, south is pickup. you can do similar pretty much everywhere you need a train station.

Originally posted by Slayrix:

Another problem is resources, once the resources near my base run out then I need to go further out to get more resources, and this pattern will continue indefinitely and as it does the factory becomes less efficient because trains now have to travel further distances.

more trains. stackers help here. and its not necessarily indefinitely; go out a decent distance and ore patches start hitting 100 million. add in a fair few mining productivity researches and that adds up.

I was not aware that resource deposits got bigger the further out they get. Thanks for the tips.

[knighttemplar1960]

I'll give you some more ideas to consider.

An outpost base is pretty much infinitely expandable by definition.

Trains are mostly predictable but they will path to the destination available to them that takes the shortest amount of time to reach which is usually the closest destination available. This results in a brownian motion that results in them mostly going to and from the same stations all the time which mostly sorts itself out.

To keep train traffic low you can add a line in each direction. (I've never found that I need more than 4 lines total for my main line.) You can keep train traffic low in areas that could be potentially high traffic areas by using spur lines and by setting up lines that go from subfactory to subfactory with out travelling on the main lines.

The other way to keep train traffic down is to compress materials on the outside edges and bring them inside your main base. Have a copper and iron smelter set up in each of the cardinal directions. The iron and copper ore in those locals should end up being routed to those smelters. 2 ore trains compress into 1 plate train so ore lines that don't run on the main line will cut down traffic on the main line and make plans to make things that don't compress (or don't compress much) on site. Instead of hauling pipes, gears, copper wire, and low density structures around with extra trains haul the materials you need to those locations and make them there and use direct insertion where possible to cut down on belts and inserters need to make products.

Making a grid for rails tends to take the trains more time to move product because of the rigid design involved. The trains have to travel to where the grid is and then from the grid to the destination and vice versa. I prefer organic tracks that follow terrain especially around lakes where I want the shore for water.

Resource problems will sort themselves out in one way or another. The resource patches become larger and richer the farther from your base center you expand AND you will be launching multiple rockets, getting space science packs, and engaging in infinite researches. One of the infinite researches that you can concentrate on is mining productivity. The higher your mining productivity is the more free resources your miners produce which makes the resource patches last longer. Wen the routes get longer you just add more trains each train pretty much acts like a buffer and they are either stored in a stacker or "stored" by being enroute.

As to what to produce and how/where that depends on what your demand is and where it is located and how much you desire to limit train traffic. You can make dedicated refineries that produce only plastic or sulfur but doing so means that you have to transport the end products elsewhere increasing train traffic. Since you have to bring coal in to make both plastic AND explosives you will probably be better off making both at one refinery and productivity modules aside every 1 train of coal going in will produce 2 trains of plastic coming out so make sure you have sufficient trains to export all products that come in. Going one step further with this try to build your refineries on a lake edge that way you don't have to transport water you can just pump directly from the source into the machines and a refinery uses a lot of water that will save quite a bit of train traffic. The only place that raw sulfur is used that isn't related to other refinery products is blue research packs so any place that you make sulfur you are going to be best off making all other sulfur based products there too. Since coal is all ready coming in to make plastic you can make your sulfur and explosives there and since you are making sulfur there you can also import the iron plate you need to make sulfuric acid and if you are going to import iron plate for that you just as well import copper plate to make batteries since you are all ready importing iron plate.

The above idea also applies to coal liquefaction. You can make dedicated coal liquefaction plants for sulfur or plastic since you all ready have the coal coming in for the liquefaction process. (Don't worry about "wasting" coal. If you use standard resources settings you will always have more stone, coal, and uranium patches than you can use.) Its possible to set up a coal liquefaction plant directly adjacent to, or even inside, your munitions plant and just bring loads of coal and convert everything into munitions on site and just haul the resulting products to the edges of the subfactories where they are needed. A munitions plant set up that way should be set up on a lake edge so that you don't have to transport water and you can bring in iron plate and green circuits to make every thing else you need for artillery shells, rockets, and explosive rockets.

To defend your outpost factories and the rails that serve them you can make defense bunkers along the tracks and bring in oil for flame throwers, ammo for gun turrets, repair packs, replacement walls, and artillery shells. You can power them and laser turrets by running large power poles between the rail lines or taking sufficient space to lay out all the solar panels and accumulators required to run the subfactory without an electrical connection to your power plant(s). You can route your main rails through the bunkers and use sidings to delivery military supplies. You can space those bunkers double artillery range apart and the coverage circles will just touch. Artillery range increase research is an infinite research so you can continue to expand artillery range and build these bunkers farther apart both defending your tracks automatically and clearing territory when a new artillery range increase is researched as you grow in this way your coverage can increase to a point where subfactories that are close together can be merged into a defensive area and the bunkers that were defending them that are no longer needed (because they are inside the perimeter of the merged subfactories) can be recycled to the outer edges of the expanding factory

[Slayrix]

Originally posted by knighttemplar1960:

I'll give you some more ideas to consider.

An outpost base is pretty much infinitely expandable by definition.

Trains are mostly predictable but they will path to the destination available to them that takes the shortest amount of time to reach which is usually the closest destination available. This results in a brownian motion that results in them mostly going to and from the same stations all the time which mostly sorts itself out.

To keep train traffic low you can add a line in each direction. (I've never found that I need more than 4 lines total for my main line.) You can keep train traffic low in areas that could be potentially high traffic areas by using spur lines and by setting up lines that go from subfactory to subfactory with out travelling on the main lines.

The other way to keep train traffic down is to compress materials on the outside edges and bring them inside your main base. Have a copper and iron smelter set up in each of the cardinal directions. The iron and copper ore in those locals should end up being routed to those smelters. 2 ore trains compress into 1 plate train so ore lines that don't run on the main line will cut down traffic on the main line and make plans to make things that don't compress (or don't compress much) on site. Instead of hauling pipes, gears, copper wire, and low density structures around with extra trains haul the materials you need to those locations and make them there and use direct insertion where possible to cut down on belts and inserters need to make products.

Making a grid for rails tends to take the trains more time to move product because of the rigid design involved. The trains have to travel to where the grid is and then from the grid to the destination and vice versa. I prefer organic tracks that follow terrain especially around lakes where I want the shore for water.

Resource problems will sort themselves out in one way or another. The resource patches become larger and richer the farther from your base center you expand AND you will be launching multiple rockets, getting space science packs, and engaging in infinite researches. One of the infinite researches that you can concentrate on is mining productivity. The higher your mining productivity is the more free resources your miners produce which makes the resource patches last longer. Wen the routes get longer you just add more trains each train pretty much acts like a buffer and they are either stored in a stacker or "stored" by being enroute.

As to what to produce and how/where that depends on what your demand is and where it is located and how much you desire to limit train traffic. You can make dedicated refineries that produce only plastic or sulfur but doing so means that you have to transport the end products elsewhere increasing train traffic. Since you have to bring coal in to make both plastic AND explosives you will probably be better off making both at one refinery and productivity modules aside every 1 train of coal going in will produce 2 trains of plastic coming out so make sure you have sufficient trains to export all products that come in. Going one step further with this try to build your refineries on a lake edge that way you don't have to transport water you can just pump directly from the source into the machines and a refinery uses a lot of water that will save quite a bit of train traffic. The only place that raw sulfur is used that isn't related to other refinery products is blue research packs so any place that you make sulfur you are going to be best off making all other sulfur based products there too. Since coal is all ready coming in to make plastic you can make your sulfur and explosives there and since you are making sulfur there you can also import the iron plate you need to make sulfuric acid and if you are going to import iron plate for that you just as well import copper plate to make batteries since you are all ready importing iron plate.

The above idea also applies to coal liquefaction. You can make dedicated coal liquefaction plants for sulfur or plastic since you all ready have the coal coming in for the liquefaction process. (Don't worry about "wasting" coal. If you use standard resources settings you will always have more stone, coal, and uranium patches than you can use.) Its possible to set up a coal liquefaction plant directly adjacent to, or even inside, your munitions plant and just bring loads of coal and convert everything into munitions on site and just haul the resulting products to the edges of the subfactories where they are needed. A munitions plant set up that way should be set up on a lake edge so that you don't have to transport water and you can bring in iron plate and green circuits to make every thing else you need for artillery shells, rockets, and explosive rockets.

To defend your outpost factories and the rails that serve them you can make defense bunkers along the tracks and bring in oil for flame throwers, ammo for gun turrets, repair packs, replacement walls, and artillery shells. You can power them and laser turrets by running large power poles between the rail lines or taking sufficient space to lay out all the solar panels and accumulators required to run the subfactory without an electrical connection to your power plant(s). You can route your main rails through the bunkers and use sidings to delivery military supplies. You can space those bunkers double artillery range apart and the coverage circles will just touch. Artillery range increase research is an infinite research so you can continue to expand artillery range and build these bunkers farther apart both defending your tracks automatically and clearing territory when a new artillery range increase is researched as you grow in this way your coverage can increase to a point where subfactories that are close together can be merged into a defensive area and the bunkers that were defending them that are no longer needed (because they are inside the perimeter of the merged subfactories) can be recycled to the outer edges of the expanding factory

Thank you for the very detailed response, didn't expect this but I really appreciate you took the time to type this behemoth out to help me out. Thank you!

[brian_va]

To touch again on train traffic, initially I built the various production outposts somewhat close to each other, mainly thinking shorter travel time would be the way to go. And it was fine for a good while, but somewhere around 4-5k science a minute there were serious issues with rail traffic slowing production. The main problem was traffic in and out of the smelting areas, which I figured would be best placed centrally, but all that traffic became an issue. Moving the smelting areas farther away from the central area gave a substantial reduction in train traffic. So now the science pack production and rocket part production are fairly close to the silo and labs area, with stuff like circuits and plastics farther out, with oil refining and smelting farther still. Seems to work best for how I'm playing, maybe there's some info in there you can use.

[Slayrix]

Originally posted by brian_va:

To touch again on train traffic, initially I built the various production outposts somewhat close to each other, mainly thinking shorter travel time would be the way to go. And it was fine for a good while, but somewhere around 4-5k science a minute there were serious issues with rail traffic slowing production. The main problem was traffic in and out of the smelting areas, which I figured would be best placed centrally, but all that traffic became an issue. Moving the smelting areas farther away from the central area gave a substantial reduction in train traffic. So now the science pack production and rocket part production are fairly close to the silo and labs area, with stuff like circuits and plastics farther out, with oil refining and smelting farther still. Seems to work best for how I'm playing, maybe there's some info in there you can use.

I wonder if also adding another smelting outpost for trains to go to would also help with traffic maybe? Instead of just having one huge hub where all your mining trains have to go to.

[brian_va]

im sure adding another smelting setup and sharing the load would help. my issue when doing that is trying to keep a somewhat even draw on them instead of sending 80% of the trains to one and forgetting to adjust as needed. this is probably also a solvable problem using train limits on the stations so they just figure it out on their own, but i'm not real familiar with using them, and plates aren't a current bottleneck.

i initially started this map with sending all the mining trains to an exchange station, and the smelters were fed from that with more trains. that also was a significant load on the rail network as well, as it ended up not being placed well. i think i pulled 50 trains off the tracks when i finally gave up on that idea, of course most ended up back in service when i pushed for more ore, but with things farther out, its less of an issue when the mining trains are held up as there is an army of them.

i was also wanting to use the bulk rail load/unload mod with miniloaders shoving the ore from the unloaders into warehouses then into the bulk rail loaders but only using 4 slots on a single side was way too slow to load/unload, even with modded miniloaders running at double blue belt speed. i'm thinking i can make a bot based plate exchange station work, but i'm only fooling myself at the volumes i need. that said, im expanding a circuit exchange station as green circuits are the current problem, as i know i need another green circuit production area, but the balancing problem comes back and an exchange station sounds like a solution.