Any tips on maintaining a reliable iron and copper plates supply?

[Lampglow]

As the belt divide and divide to feed the numerous machines they gradually get depleted which slows down the production chain. Any tips on countering this? Just scaling up mining/smelting? Semi-early game on this save though I have reached the rocket stage before (I haven't bought the DLC).

[☬SҽɳισɾZ☬]

.

[End of history]

You will need to scale up the copper and iron smelting most likely, but it's also a matter of throughput. A belt only moves so many items per second and there are a few ways to cope with this. The most common is probably a bus. Put several belts in parallel and use splitters to fork off the material. I typically have a few lanes of copper, iron, steel, green and red circuits, plastics, the list goes on. A bus will get you to the end game but starts becoming impractical once you reach mega-base territory.

If you run out of materials then you basically have three options, add more lanes to the bus, upgrade the belts on the bus, or refill the bus mid-way. All can work.

[BossOfCats]

Build more production then you think you need, like 2-3 times more, and if you get close to having a equal consumption, production, expand.

[GunRunner89X]

YOU CAN NEVER HAVE ENOUGH IRON OR COPPER! Always build with the intent to over-saturate the supply of both!

Also, this:

Originally posted by BossOfCats:

Build more production then you think you need, like 2-3 times more, and if you get close to having a equal consumption, production, expand.

[Aestrea]

Just have a few lanes of belt next to each other and draw from the next lane with splitters with output priority to the lane you are pulling from if you are doing a long belt of anything.

[POWER WITHIN USER]

https://kirkmcdonald.github.io/calc.html
https://factoriocheatsheet.com/

Use the calculator and set up a very high but reachable production/minute target (usually all sciences, ranging from a hundred to several thousands per minute) to know how many belts of stuff you'll need. Then make a new factory with as many lanes for that production quota.

[knighttemplar1960]

When the belts begin to run out set up a train station there perpendicular to your bus and bring in material from another mine/smelter to refill the belt(s).
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3291805840

[oyssoyss]

if you use trains. don't transport raw materials. iron and copper ores are 50 per stack. and metal plates are 100. if you plan to use iron ore to make steel then it is 10 times in transport efficiency. and spreading metal processing factories also save you a lot space in main base.

[Quillithe]

Originally posted by oyssoyss:

if you use trains. don't transport raw materials. iron and copper ores are 50 per stack. and metal plates are 100. if you plan to use iron ore to make steel then it is 10 times in transport efficiency. and spreading metal processing factories also save you a lot space in main base.

The tradeoff is that mines run out.

If you transport ore it's easy to just mine a new patch without needing to rebuild your furnaces/foundries.

[Serendipitous]

Originally posted by Quillithe:

Originally posted by oyssoyss:

if you use trains. don't transport raw materials. iron and copper ores are 50 per stack. and metal plates are 100. if you plan to use iron ore to make steel then it is 10 times in transport efficiency. and spreading metal processing factories also save you a lot space in main base.

The tradeoff is that mines run out.

If you transport ore it's easy to just mine a new patch without needing to rebuild your furnaces/foundries.

Building furnaces near the ore is not that much harder than building miners over the patch. At this point you probably using blueprints and bots to help you with that

Originally posted by oyssoyss:

if you use trains. don't transport raw materials. iron and copper ores are 50 per stack. and metal plates are 100. if you plan to use iron ore to make steel then it is 10 times in transport efficiency. and spreading metal processing factories also save you a lot space in main base.

Don't use trains, use pipes. A single pump transfer 1200/units per second which is 120 iron plates per second (without accounting for foundry's increased productivity both actual and in terms of recipes). Or at least fluid wagons, they contain 5000 plates in liquid form as opposed to 4000 thousand in cargo wagon.

The only problem is delivering calcite to the miner area, but you don't actually need much of it and one or two supply trains running with that purpose are sufficient.

[Serendipitous]

With new stuff from Space Age i am completely redoing my approaches to factory building.

[RiO]

Originally posted by Serendipitous:

Don't use trains, use pipes. A single pump transfer 1200/units per second which is 120 iron plates per second (without accounting for foundry's increased productivity both actual and in terms of recipes).

OP hasn't bought the DLC.
Says so at the bottom of their post.

[GreatPalm]

how can you transport plates through pipes? Plates are not liquid, are they?

[PsyBlade]

Originally posted by GreatPalm:

how can you transport plates through pipes? Plates are not liquid, are they?

Vulkanus research

[Serendipitous]

Originally posted by GreatPalm:

how can you transport plates through pipes? Plates are not liquid, are they?

Foundries on Vulcanus. Aside from making ore into liquid they are also incredibly efficient in their production. But yeah, the OP doesn't have Space Age, missed that.