Questions about the Factory.

[funewchie]

For a factory, I'm struggling to understand how the system works.
I'm still rather confused about how the system handles.

For instance: is it better to have an Industrial Furnace and Cutter, or would a Comprehensive Cutter be better?

If I use both methods (i.e. all 3 machines), does that mess up anything when I set it to make something?
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I'm trying especially to figure out the more efficient methods, as it can make a difference between having 5 bearings made in 5 hours, or 5 bearings made in 2 days.

[JVC]

Factories are pretty simple. Each crafting station you add, adds points to one of more of the crafting types listed on the left part of the screen. It really depends on how you equip the factory. E.g. if you add a large number of crafting stations with points in a given category, you'll be able to craft a lot of goods using those points simulatenously.

So if you want to be able to craft a lot of bearing simulatenously, you need to stock the factory with stations suited for that task.

Remember that if you want to produce simulatenous stacks of similar items, you need to "order" a number of those stacks. It is not enough to e.g. order 10 bearings if you want five of them to be made simultaenously. You'd have to order 5 stacks of 2 each to get that result.

[milkygirl]

Each machine in your factory gives a certain number of queues (items that can be worked on at the same time).

In your given example:

Industrial Furnace gives 10 smelting queues.
Industrial Cutter gives 10 cutting queues.
Comprehensive Cutter gives 4 cutting queues and 6 smelting queues.

So an Industrial Furnace means you can smelt 10 bars at a time.
Comprehensive Cutter allows you to smelt 6 bars at a time.

You can use all 3 machines for a total of 16 smelting queues (smelt 16 bars at a time) and 14 cutting queues (cut 14 planks at a time).

But to do it that way, you need to use the "multiple" button.

For example, I tend to smelt my stone into bricks before selling because that makes the best profit. I do 500 bricks at a time. So for that, I click "Multiple". Then the first screen asks how many you want in the queue. I put 25. Which means each smelting "slot" will have a line of 25 bricks to make. Then the second screen, I put 20, meaning I want to take up 20 smelting slots. That gives me a total of 500 bricks once all the queues are complete.

If you want your Factory to, say, smelt 20 copper bars at once, click "Multiple", leave the first screen at "1", then type "20" in the second screen.

I keep my Comprehensive Cutters and Grinders outside the Factory since the Industrial versions give specific slots.

Hope that helps make things clearer!

[funewchie]

Originally posted by milkygirl:

Each machine in your factory gives a certain number of queues (items that can be worked on at the same time).

In your given example:

Industrial Furnace gives 10 smelting queues.
Industrial Cutter gives 10 cutting queues.
Comprehensive Cutter gives 4 cutting queues and 6 smelting queues.

So an Industrial Furnace means you can smelt 10 bars at a time.
Comprehensive Cutter allows you to smelt 6 bars at a time.

You can use all 3 machines for a total of 16 smelting queues (smelt 16 bars at a time) and 14 cutting queues (cut 14 planks at a time).

But to do it that way, you need to use the "multiple" button.

For example, I tend to smelt my stone into bricks before selling because that makes the best profit. I do 500 bricks at a time. So for that, I click "Multiple". Then the first screen asks how many you want in the queue. I put 25. Which means each smelting "slot" will have a line of 25 bricks to make. Then the second screen, I put 20, meaning I want to take up 20 smelting slots. That gives me a total of 500 bricks once all the queues are complete.

If you want your Factory to, say, smelt 20 copper bars at once, click "Multiple", leave the first screen at "1", then type "20" in the second screen.

I keep my Comprehensive Cutters and Grinders outside the Factory since the Industrial versions give specific slots.

Hope that helps make things clearer!

Actually, that helped quite a bit.
(I didn't know about the "multiple" option)

I had a feeling I'd be better off putting the Comprehensive machines outside, and using more specialized machines in the factory, but I wasn't sure.
( And since I only just recently found out how awesome generators are (like the Fire Generator), that'll still be good.)

I also wasn't sure if the factory could understand transferring items from one machine to the next.
(such as smelting Carbon Steel, then turning those into Steel Frames, then into Steel Shells)

Thanks for the info.

[Guh~hey~hey~♫]

Tried both.

Best result definitely comes from having comprehensive version of cutter and grinder. You will most of the time need way more furnaces than anything else.
just fill each lines in the factory wiht the same machine, so 5 of each type for level 1 and 6 for the level 2, and you should be good to go. Use the last 2 lines to put 4 blenders, 2/3 electric furnaces and 4 advanced skivers.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1757239498

Another thing is to only leave raw material inside the factory's material container and store bars somewhere else in chest. That way the factory only offers the recipes using raw material which are more effective and saves your bars in case you need them for something else.

There's another interesting option in the factory, the "view" button.
If like me you store only raw material inside the factory and put all other stuff like relics, bars, plates, loots, ect separately in chests to be able to use them at the work table.
When you need to craft something that require a specific part that isnt in your factory container but in your chest intead, just click on "view", it will show you a crafting tree of all etapes needed to craft the item with all material availables in the factory container.
At that screen just click on the part you need and the factory will ask you how many you want to send from your chest to the factory container. That way you wont need to manually go fetch these parts in your chest.
So basically you just store raw ores and all type of woods in your factory and put everything else, all that might be needed to craft things from the workshop table in chests.

A bit tricky to get your head around at first, it's really practical once you understand how it work.

[funewchie]

Originally posted by Sakamoto:

Tried both.

Best result definitely comes from having comprehensive version of cutter and grinder. You will most of the time need way more furnaces than anything else.
just fill each lines in the factory wiht the same machine, so 5 of each type for level 1 and 6 for the level 2, and you should be good to go. Use the last 2 lines to put 4 blenders, 2/3 electric furnaces and 4 advanced skivers.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1757239498

Another thing is to only leave raw material inside the factory's material container and store bars somewhere else in chest. That way the factory only offers the recipes using raw material which are more effective and saves your bars in case you need them for something else.

There's another interesting option in the factory, the "view" button.
If like me you store only raw material inside the factory and put all other stuff like relics, bars, plates, loots, ect separately in chests to be able to use them at the work table.
When you need to craft something that require a specific part that isnt in your factory container but in your chest intead, just click on "view", it will show you a crafting tree of all etapes needed to craft the item with all material availables in the factory container.
At that screen just click on the part you need and the factory will ask you how many you want to send from your chest to the factory container. That way you wont need to manually go fetch these parts in your chest.
So basically you just store raw ores and all type of woods in your factory and put everything else, all that might be needed to craft things from the workshop table in chests.

A bit tricky to get your head around at first, it's really practical once you understand how it work.

Goodness, your pictured factory has a lot more stuff than mine does.

(My basic factory only has 4 Industrial Furnaces, 3 Industrial Cutters, 2 Basic Grinders, 3 Blenders, 1 Electric Furnace, and 1 Advanced Skivver)
(I guess there's no Industrial Grinder in this game...)

I didn't know about that view trick. That would be handy, as I still have a ton of Metal Storage chests strewn around my yard.
I'm not quite willing to go all-in and use the factory's storage exclusively.
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Since this thread is about me using better machinery and improvements, and to avoid having to start another thread, I'll ask here:
Is it better to use the mini-drill when mining for ores (or quarrying), or the pickaxe?

(Especially, I'm wondering if my Mining bonus skills (24% chance for double ores) apply to both tools.
When mining for ores, I'm obviously favoring quantity. Especially if I'm trying to find Blood Stone.)

[Guh~hey~hey~♫]

For the mini-drill, it depends.
Myself before I definitely switched to the mini drill and the chain saw I first made sure to have a reliable source of stamina restoration consummable (dried apple slice mainly) since those machine are way faster but also have a less efficient stamina consumption (but in the end, the speed is more imprtant).
Then I did an acunpuncture with Phyllis and removed all skills related to axe and pickaxe usage (those that reduce stamina consumption), since I wont be using them anymore.
Last I maxed the skill increasing damage of the mini-drill and the chain-saw.
The result is that I break anything, trees or rocks, in only 1-2 hits, making lumbering and quarrying insanely fast and trivial.

At that point, you can consider those stamina restoration items as "fuel" for the machines :3


And yes, for the factory container, it's better to put only raw ore and woods, and keep other stuffs into chests so you can access them from your normal work table.
Then use the view button if you need to craft from the factory with an item that isnt stored in the factory container. It also allow you to decid if you want to use raw material or already crafted parts if you have them in store.

It's also pretty easy to sort stuff.
Left click on the factory console outside, click on the sort button of the factory container, and it will store all items from you inventory that are similar to what's already in the factory container.
Then open a chest that you've conveniently put next to that factory console, and click on your inventory "sort all" button, and it will do the same thing but for your chests this time.

So from a single spot, you only need 4 clicks to sort and store all the stuff in your inventory.