Casual player here, should a bus be used for the 8 hour speedrun?

[Falesz]

Hey all,
I'm in an achievement hunting frenzy to complete my chievo catalog before the expansion comes out. I know it's still way off, but you never know how long one or two achievement will take to unlock, so there's no point in putting it off. The only stuff remaining for me are the 15 hour and the 8 hour speedruns. Can't wait for the expansion so I can play with all the new goodies :D
I started up a world and I think I made fairly good pace for a casual factory, setting up red and green science in about 1 hour, but I can't imagine how I could launch a rocket in the remaining 7 hours from here. So far it's kind of a spaghetti factory because I just placed all the production lines as close to the smelters as possible to avoid lots of running back and forth while building.
Question is, did you take the time to build a bus when you did the 8 hour chievo? Does it pay off by the end? How hard is it really to launch a rocket in 8 hours? I know the world records are like 80-90 minute long runs, but I don't intend to get into speedrunning that much.

[Hurkyl]

Take the time to build a bus

I am getting a vibe that you have a very different idea what the word "bus" means than what I do.


Personally, when I did the speedrun achievements, I wound up not really doing anything special. My process was

• I did a first run on default map settings just to get an idea which technologies I needed and get a vague idea what I would need to build in what order
  
• I did a second run on default map settings taking a stab at being somewhat focused on that outline, and wound up taking about 10 hours.
  
• I gave in and adjusted the map settings to make a super nice map wound up running in around six hours.

However, this could just be that my own playstyle might have been not too different to begin with from what one needs to be mildly efficient.

If you need more involved planning to get your times down, one idea might be to plan out an efficient factory you can efficiently build at various points of the game, and make a blueprint of it or parts of it. So when you're trying for real, you can use the blueprint as a guide for what you need to build and around where.

[Falesz]

What is your idea of a bus?

[schnappkatze]

I did it with a bus, but I kept it rather small. But it does help with organisation to have your main resources on a few belts that go straight into one direction, so whenever you tackle the next science you just need to go to the end of your bus and branch off. Just don't overbuild your bus, that is a waste of time, keep thinking realistically how many resources you will actually need. You can get the achievement with 3 red belts of iron and 3 red belts of copper.

For the achievement I recommend to just keep the thinking to a minimum. Whenever you are not sure how to tackle e.g. the next science, save your game, then take all the time you need to figure out how to build it, and then load your former save again. That way you keep the wasted time due to thinking to a minimum.

If it doesn't feel too cheaty to you, you can also save, slowly design what you want to build, create a blueprint and import that blueprint into your former savegame. Saves a ton of "what resource did this building take again? On which belt will the resource be?" - time.

I actually just rushed to robots and then just let the robots build the rest of my base from the blueprint I created when I played the map slowly.

[Fel]

If you are good at planning your factory, you don't need to rely on the bus but for the rest of us the main bus is a good way to be able to continue to scale up and not waste too much time deciding what goes where.

Since scaling up is a key factor in getting the rocket launched under 8 hours it isn't a bad idea to use it.


If you know the basics well enough, under 8 hours shouldn't be too hard to get.
People that really struggle with it tend do be scared of scaling up early for some reason.
By early, I mean even before electricity, having 10-20 burner mining drills and their individual furnace might seem like a waste at first but it ends up greatly speeding up the begining of the electric phase (electric mining drills, boilers and steam engines cost a whole lot of iron plates after all).

[knighttemplar1960]

I can't speak to speed runs as I can't accomplish them but what I have seen is mostly spaghetti for them.

I build mega bases. I start out with a main bus (this is a bus for a mega base)
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3026741849

I keep liquids off the bus so I can use the bus as a highway for my car. I start out with 1 belt of coal, stone, bricks, and walls, 2 belts of steel, 4 belts of iron, 4 belts of copper, and 1 of green circuits, when I start making red circuits I expand green circuit production to 2 belts and 1 belt of red circuits, when I add blue circuits I expand to 2 belts of red circuits and 1 belt of blue and when I start making modules I expand to 2 belts of blue circuits.

One side of the bus makes nothing but circuits, the other side of the bus makes every thing else. I add off bus smelting and use trains to bring in another 4 belts of iron plate and another 4 belts of copper plate. When the start patch runs out I add more trains and off bus smelters to keep the material flow going and upgrade the bus belts as I go. I bring extra materials and liquids in with trains from the sides as I expand and then move chip manufacturing off bus and bring them in by train. Then I dismantle the chip side of the bus and make it the research hub. When I have all the materials I need coming in from the sides I dismantle the bus.

I leave strips of 4 tiles between banks of machines so I can add roboports to the manufacturing side and make that a logistic supply area.

This is what the base looks like as I'm starting to expand you can still see the bus on the minimap. Here its in the center north.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2946462803

and at this stage in the expansion I'm producing about 2k science per minute and you can still see the bus on the minimap in the center south.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2708334099

[knighttemplar1960]

By the way, when you are starting on speed runs most people no longer consider themselves to be casual.

[Shurenai]

Originally posted by knighttemplar1960:

By the way, when you are starting on speed runs most people no longer consider themselves to be casual.

Well, You can still be pretty casual and go for the 8hr 'speedrun' achievement. :P Many casuals just want to finish their achievement list.

To OP, generally speaking, as others have said a bus helps with planning the flow of your factory, but no it's not 'required' to accomplish the speed achievements. General planning, and a good set of blueprints geared towards going fast would be better. Any blueprint that lets you just plop down your build and then build it out without having to think about what goes where is a win for speed.

[malogoss]

The 15h is easy. Anyone can achieve it. If you know the game well enough, if you pick a decent map (with good settings) then maybe you'll fail once if you blunder real hard, else it should be a first try thing.

The 8h looks much tougher, but when you start trying, you'll realise it's easier than you thought. You need a general plan, but there's no need to plan a base down to every tile, like speedrunners do. For example, how many oil refineries do you need? Sure, 25 would be enough, but you don't need that many, the goal is 8h, not a new WR. By not overbuilding, you move to the next thing quicker, which is very important. So 7-10 refineries is well enough, build them early, store products in tanks.

1) Pick a good map. Huge starting area, lots of resources. Use that map seed for all attempts. Knowing the map saves time.
2) Use buffers. You don't need 500 furnaces making steel. The important thing is that those you build are always producing. Same for all other items, iron plates, green chips, red chips, solid fuel, etc... Store them until needed.
3) Prod modules tier 1 are your friends. In labs. For yellow/purple science. For blue chips.
4) Prod modules tier 3 in the rocket silo. They are expensive, but they'll save you more than their cost, even for a single rocket.
5) Research the strict minimum required. With good map setting, you should never see a single biter. So no need for military science, for example.
6) If the beginning feels too slow, watch the first 6-7 minutes of a speedrun. You don't need to be as fast as they are, but you'll pick 2-3 simple ideas that will save you a lot of time, and it snowballs for the remaining of your run.

I remember when I went for those achievements.
My first try was around 11 hours. I learned the importance of buffers and that I needed a little more steel than I thought.
Second try was 8h30. It was very encouraging. I saw a lot of things I could improve and I missed it by only 30 minutes.
Third try was 6h50.
Then I decided to try again, not really to improve that time, but I wanted to see what would happen If I built only 2 lanes of iron and 2 of copper, plus dedicated steel. So never more than 30/s for iron plates, same for copper plates. Improvising my base, the final time was 4h50.

Overbuilding really is your enemy, that's my point. Even your mall should be kept to a minimum: belts, yellow inserters, pipes, green chips and gears to handcraft the rest.

Oh and in all those attempts, I never used robots. They are expensive. And they will only save you time if you have a solid plan, much like speedrunners. But again, the goal is sub 8h, not sub 2h. No need for bots. I also never used a bus. They make the base larger for no good reason, they make the whole process slower. A bus is, by definition, overbuilding. But 8h is possible even if you decide to build a bus, of course.

I learned so much about the game by doing the sub 8h achievement, it was really fun.

Have fun! You'll get there.

[Falesz]

Hey all,
I just did it on the first try with 1 minute and 10 seconds left on the clock :D
Thank you for all the suggestions and tips!
It was exhilirating to see the clock tick down on the final minutes while the rocket was above 90% done, wondering if I'll get it and frantically trying everything to speed up production just a little bit more :D I was building new assembling machines for rocket control units and putting speed modules in them until the last minute to help the process speed up just a little to get the time.

I think my biggest blunder in this factory that caused me to finish in just the nick of time was underestimating just how much red circuits I would be needing, and so I was dealing with a red circuit shortage pretty much all the way through. I was building copper mines even in the last 10-15 minutes just to speed up circuit production as much as possible.
I also did have some energy blackouts, I think maybe 2 times throughout the run when the coal was too divided among the power plants and it all just died down so I had to build more plants, more coal mining drills and jumpstart the whole system manually with coal.

I used some tips you guys suggested. As soon as I finished researcing the rocket silo, I cut all blue circuit and low density structure to the science labs and diverted them to rocket part and rocket control unit production. One of my major problems that derived from a lack of red circuits was how to get enough blue circuits for the yellow science production while also starting to stockpile rocket control units as soon as possible. I decided this was impossible, so I just finished researching without any rocket control unit production and then just shifted all production over. I did stockpile loads of rocket fuel and low density structures for the rocket parts though, so there was no problem. I even made sure to get all the resources to craft the rocket silo before I finished researching that.

I also made sure to have four tier 3 production modules ready so I can supply the rocket silo with maximum production as early as possible.

What I couldn't have achieved besides all of this is beacon usage and assembling machine 3 usage. I thought about both of them, but it was way too late to keep researching stuff. Huh, now that I think about it while writing this, it's possible neither would have required yellow science, meaning they wouldn't have required blue circuits to research, so I could have done them while building the rocket. Huh, no matter now. I was already panicking and decided to just shift EVERYTHING over to immediate rocket production :D

It was really exciting to see the rocket start preparing to launch with less than 2 minutes remaining. Thanks again for the tips everyone! :D

[ElBarto56]

lol casual yeah right....

[Chindraba]

Super congrats on the No spoon goal.

I am working on gathering my skills enough to attempt the same thing, with the extra kicker of making it an All Achievement run. I already know I won't get it on my first run, since that's already been used. I can't even get the Getting on track like a pro yet. I keep missing it by a minute or two.

I'm pretty sure that my difficulties lie mostly with being too precise and building too large too soon. I think that if I can reach GOTLAP that I will have broken the bad habits and developed a couple good ones and ought to be good for the full thing. As long as I keep the pattern going.

The latest round of hype from the expansion has probably helped some as well. For a couple reasons. I would often try something that was different than I'd done it before and think it was better, and then I'd go back to my old saves to rework all the affected prints I'd made in my library. None of which mattered for the current goal. Even when there aren't any rails in a print, almost all my designs are built around using rails. The changes to rails in the big release will require changing a bunch of stuff and require checking nearly everything. It's now a complete waste of time to update the prints until the new rails are available.

The second factor is motivation. I want to be able to say I got all the achievements under the old rules. The smarter bots alone can make a difference in ease of building, and maybe in the timing, so the "old rules" are also "doing it the hard way." Doing the All Achievement run has the double incentive of a) doing it the hard way by doing it the real hard way, and b) as slow as I am I might not have time to get all the achievements if I don't do them in one round. I've already reset my Steam achievements for the attempt so there's no record of the earlier ones that I just need to "fill in." It's crunch time and all or nothing.

Again, major congrats.

What hints, tricks, or advice does your new experience have to offer to an ancient slow poke like me?

[Falesz]

Thanks a lot! :D
Well besides what I have written, I could mention not reworking the oil setups like in casual factories. Usually as soon as I research advanced oil refinery, I replace all my basic refineries with advanced setups since keeping the old recipes is a net loss on petroleum gas. There is no reason to do that in the speedrun. The basic oil refinery is perfectly sufficient for making an abundance of plastic, so you can keep about 6-10 refineries making just petroleum gas for plastic, and then build just a few advanced refineries for making heavy oil for lubricant and light oil and petroleum gas for rocket fuel.

If you don't have much experience with how much coal and electricity the factory needs for it's energy requirements, it's worth frequently checking on the power supply and overshooting the steam engine power plants just a little bit so blackouts don't happen.

I also used tier 1 productivity modules everywhere where circuits would be used as input, since there will never be an abundance of circuits. Making the most of the supply that you have is worth it in my opinion.

In the beginning of rocket control production I used tier 1 productivity modules for that as well, but as I got closer to the final time I switched all of it for tier 1 speed modules. I didn't have abundance of speed modules and blue circuits, but I did have just a tiny bit of them backing up on the belts, so I figured it's more important to speed the production up rather than conserve the inputs.

I really didn't have any experience with speedrunning before this except for doing the locomotive speedrun myself. I feel like combining the two speedruns is an extra hard challenge since you have to go out of your way to rush something that isn't really gaining you much for the other thing :D Setting up an engine production early is nice, but that's pretty much it, otherwise it's just extra resources and planning for something that isn't helping the rocket rush.

I absolutely agree on the motivation part. I have no idea how the expansion will affect existing achievements. Maybe they will become easier, maybe they will get outright rewritten. So I didn't want to risk that. These achievements were designed for this version of the game, so I wanted to do them with this version. I know the expansion is still way off in the future, but you never know what life brings. Maybe if I didn't do this speedrun now, I wouldn't have been able to get around to it in the rest of the time until the expansion launch.

Good luck on the all achievements run! :D Have fun!

[Chindraba]

Getting the 90-min train is only half the "extra" work involved. Lazy bastard is it's own crippling requirement. Don't know how many times I've almost hand-crafted something to "speed things up". When I did get that achievement before it was without LB, and even then it was a near thing, 90 sec or so to spare.

The tip on the oil is a good one. I'd have switch almost as soon as it was available, and designed the "old" plant with the conversion in mind. Not switching means less space dedicated to it, including none for cracking. God only knows how many pipes that will save, and iron I can use for other things.

Have you done an all-in-one achievement run yet? I know that once the No Spoon is earned the rest is just building and waiting, probably mostly for the gold-level green chips. That's a crap-ton of chips to make. But getting Minions will also require a few launches to get the follower count high enough to even be able to get there.

This is going to be "fun".

Thanks for the tips.

[Falesz]

Oh God I can't even imagine these speedruns without handcrafting a ton of stuff. I don't think I'll ever get to an all achievements run, from this point on I think I'll just enjoy making super nice, elaborate, giant blueprints for all sorts of stuff, like filling trains with tens of thousands of blue chips, etc.
Until the expansion releases anyway, at which point I'll take all the new goodies and build a whole new blueprint book from scratch.
I think I like the megabase building aspect of the game more than the speedrunning aspect, but this was an exciting achievement to do nonetheless.

[Fel]

All achievements is definitely a whole different beast from just the no spoon one.