Conveyor belts, coal power and centralization

[Dio Aloke]

New player here. I have a couple of questions if someone could help me.

1) Should I upgrade my conveyor belts or is Mk I enough for most part?

2) I unlocked coal power and am trying to setup a network of generator to substitute my myriad biofuel ones, but... how to go about it? My coal generator still need a biofuel reactor to start them (the pump and coal mines that feed them actually).

3) I have my main factory, which is a giant mess as I kept adding to it and a couple secondary sites... Should I built huge networks of conveyor belts to centralize everything or build specialized hubs? Apart from my main factory most places don't seem to have enough resources close by to justify a hub

4) Are trucks worth it?

[Veeshan]

1) upgrade everything, what order is very circumstantial.

2) yep, bootstrapping power is an issue to work out, I recommend isolating you generators that pull coal out of ground from everything else at least until power switches. Keep a stockpile of coal, enough to run generators AND miners.

3) hub vs node is a huge decision, and totally subjective except for performance issues. I think in the end you end up creating hubs no matter what you want, because as you point out resources are so scattered and later combining them becomes relevant. Like the issue of shipping raw ore versus processed.

4) technically transportation is completely optional. But truck look really cool and have really good throughput. Probably not relevant at this point in your game.

[Maehlice]

1) You'll eventually need higher speed belts, yes. Do you need them everywhere? No. If your machine/factory/whatever is only using or producing 60 units of whatever, then Mk1 is fine. You only need to upgrade if that belt needs higher throughput.

2) Once the Coal Generator(s), Water Extractor(s), & Miner(s) are up and running, you will no longer need the burners. In fact, they'll go idle and stop burning fuel while the Coal provides enough power.

There are guides to setting up coal. The short story is that each Coal Generator needs 15 Coal per minute and 45 water per minute. Give them that, and they'll give you power. The most common setup is 8 Generators (120 Coal) and 3 Extractors (360 water).

Keep in mind a Mk.1 pipe is limited to 300 m^3 per minute of flow, so an 8-pack needs to be fed from two pipes (typically each end)

3) Whatever fancies your tickle. You do you. There is no right answer. Whatever you think makes more sense is what you should do. (I prefer modular sites and general centralization.)

4) Yes and no. Belts are more straightforward to set up. By the time you get Trucks, there's Trains, which are arguably better. Trucks are best utilized like drones -- low to medium throughput of higher-tier items between distant factories.

[LazerRay]

1. Upgrade your belts when possible, it will improve production speeds

2. For coal plants use three water extractor per eight generators
Example layouts: https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/satisfactory_gamepedia_en/images/1/1b/Coal_Generator_Schematic.png/revision/latest?cb=20210729150625

3. When you can, try to organize the mess as best you can (build to suit your style)

4. Trucks are very useful for remote areas that are too long for belts and too short for trains and drones, plus they carry more items than tractors

[Stellar Remnant]

1) I only upgrade conveyor belts if I need the extra speed.

2) For coal, put the water pumps and coal miner(s) on a separate power loop with their own dedicated generator(s), so that even if your main factory trips the breaker, the water and coal supply is uninterrupted.

[Veeshan]

On the centralization issue, at least until unlocking tiers seven and eight, I've chosen a three-base paradigm.

First base processes all the raw ore into ingots and then into base materials. Plates, rods, Sheetz, Etc.

Second base processes all the base materials into secondary components. Frames, encased beams, Etc.

Third base takes the secondary components and makes tertiary components, although this gets quite complicated and still can't feed the products I need into the space elevator without extreme complexity. But it looks really nice though... in my imagination.

[Veeshan]

On the power generation isolation issue, the point is to have the ability to restart A power supply when the breaker goes out.

You don't want to be stuck having to harvest leaves just to run a Constructor.

Basically you want to be able to have a little bit of power while you figure out why your base consumed too much power.

Before power switches are available, just construct your power lines so that the power coming out of your generators passes through one single line before going to all the rest of your bases.

Behind that single line will be your coal generators, the Coal Miner's, the water extractors, and a little bit extra for whatever temporary constructions you need to fix your Bass.

For example I once needed to set up a rotor production line in order to restore power to my base.

[Dio Aloke]

Originally posted by Veeshan:

On the centralization issue, at least until unlocking tiers seven and eight, I've chosen a three-base paradigm.

First base processes all the raw ore into ingots and then into base materials. Plates, rods, Sheetz, Etc.

Second base processes all the base materials into secondary components. Frames, encased beams, Etc.

Third base takes the secondary components and makes tertiary components, although this gets quite complicated and still can't feed the products I need into the space elevator without extreme complexity. But it looks really nice though... in my imagination.

I decided to rebuild my main factory from scratch. Not sure if I can make a multistory one like I've seen, but I'll separate floors for smelting, base parts and so on. I also need to figure out my coal power hub and a secondary biofuel one, and make an energy network so I don't have to go all over the map seeing was has no power or not

[H. Guderian]

Don't worry about making Coal power too efficient. At most I maybe had 14 generators up? Maybe 15? I forget. They're still running. But pretty soon Fuel burning Generators are going to come online and I liked using those a lot more since I didn't have to fudge with water. If you don't build on the ocean, you'll find water is scarce. Especially once its Nuclear power time.

[Tenebris]

My recommendation for a combination of 2 and 3 is to always build power plants on-site.

Most of the coal in the game exists near a large body of water, basically telling you "build coal power here". It's extremely simple to connect it to your main grid, all you have to do is make power poles that stretch to the outpost location, plus this saves on logistics. Much easier to build a few dozen power poles than thousands of meters of belts or set up a truck station.

As for 4, Trucks absolutely are worth. It's much easier, and less expensive to set them up. Not to mention easier to upgrade them as you get better belts, all you have to do when you get better belts is upgrade the input and output belts, rather than thousands of belts stretching across the map. Plus they are just aesthetically neat and look cool.
The only real downside is that tractors use 10 coal/minute to run each, which could potentially hurt your steel production early tier 3/4, but if you get the Solid Steel Alt recipe, and once you get Mk3 belts and mk2 miners at the end of tier 4, you should be swimming in steel and still have lots of surplus coal to run tractors

[Tenzek]

Upgrading belts is critical, especially the second tier. They limit the maximum you can extract from a node, and so everything depends on their rate of transportation. With tier 1 belts, you can't even fully make use of a pure iron or copper node.

Tenebris said what I wanted to say on power, except I suggest keeping all the power inputs to your grid separated so they can be disconnected if you need to troubleshoot a problem. I just build a big room near my main factory, connect all of the different power plant locations to it directly, and then connect to the main grid from there. It means stringing a bit of extra power cables across the map, but if you have an outage, it will make your life so much easier.

The basic scale of the transport methods are:
Belts at a location
Trucks across a biome.
Trains between biomes.

Trucks have some issues that can make them a bit cumbersome to use very early, but by the time you need them you should have the resources to handle it. If you try to use belts to cover their scale of transport, you will need a whole bowl of spaghetti worth of belts to match them. If you try to use trains, the trains will be stopping so much they will be even slower than belts.

They're great for harvesting a biome efficiently by centralizing all of the stuff to one collection point for transport by train to other biomes where you have factories that need them. When you're at that stage, that's when you need them. They do tend to glitch out if you spend a lot of time near them, so I avoid building them too close to where I spend a lot of time. Perhaps it has improved with update 5, but I don't trust them!

[Edit: Why does keeping your distance prevent them from glitching? Because if you are distant enough, their motion is simulated and not acted out in the game.]

[Dio Aloke]

Thanks for all the replies! I've finished remaking my factory (not optimal for sure, but much better organized now) and now I'll go watch some videos on coal power before setting up my main energy hub (fortunately all my machinery is already linked to a single energy pole, so it's just building and connecting the power now)

[MerfIQ ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥]

Nice thanks