math-and-meta

[keen flame]

new base plan is coming together

And numbers, for the major exports:

[lament jolt]

So I looked at that spreadsheet cowtung linked... someone reaaaaaaalllllllllllllly likes Google Sheets...

[keen flame]

I should export my sheet to show it off lol

[topaz hedge]

wow, 400 ads, a min

217 million points at the sink.. amelie sure knows how to keep that thing fed.

[wheat nymph]

I got oil in abundance: what's more efficient in terms of (power put in)/(power out): Making Petroleum Coke and burning that in coal plants or making fuel and burning that in fuel generators?

[deep root]

Go turbo!

[bleak coral]

Are you just trying to get rid of some byproduct HOR or are you making power from scratch?

[wheat nymph]

well first I was trying to get rid of some byproduct but now I actually need power

so I started with petroleum coke and fed that into some coal generators but now I got advanced power unlocked so I'm wondering if I should switch to that

I actually got power problems, my batteries drained to 15% and I'm barely making enough power now 😅

[topaz hedge]

fuel generators, combined with diluted fuel, and turbofuel is an endgame power solution to many a factorie builders

[wheat nymph]

I see

[bleak coral]

And for a quick solution, yes fuel generators do better than coke in any situation. But residual is only marginally better than coke.

For oil power it goes coke > residual fuel > fuel > diluted fuel > diluted fuel with the HOR alt > turbo fuel stuff

[wheat nymph]

hmm

I did the math and I get a different result, actually

It's still early and I haven't had coffee, however

apparently I can't even properly screenshot right now

that's better

[bleak coral]

Don't forget to take into account the stuff needed to make the fuel/coke, net power favors fuel

[wheat nymph]

you can turn 40 heavy oil residue into 120 petroleum coke per minute which in turn makes you 360 MW, which means you can turn 1m^3 of heavy oil residue per minute into 9MW

does it? Interesting

[topaz hedge]

net power favors fuel. as you spend more power on refineries to make coke vs fuel

[bleak coral]

Yeah I've done the math before because it used to be the opposite so I ran the numbers again when they buffed it

[wheat nymph]

okay

hm yeah each refinery eats 30 MW

that adds up

[topaz hedge]

We've had quite the discussion about what's better, coke or residual fuel xD both get rid of hor, quickly, but residual nets you a little extra power

[bleak coral]

But still, per m^3 of oil, just making straight fuel is better, unless you've got the HOR alt

[wheat nymph]

alright

I was hoping someone had done this math before so I wouldn't have to do it 🙂

[bleak coral]

Plus coke needs water extractors, that's what pushes it over

[wheat nymph]

ah good point, I would have forgotten about those

do water extractors require power only when spinning up or also when sitting idle?

[bleak coral]

Whenever they're pumping water, they won't be idle if you're feeding generators though

Idle it's the same as everything: 0.1MW

[wheat nymph]

ok thanks

[glacial hemlock]

All extractor and miners will spend 10 seconds spinning up, consuming full power while output nothing. For idle power, all building consumes 0.1MW each

[wheat nymph]

good to know!

I wish trains would feed back into the power grid when decelerating

seems like a wasted opportunity (pun intended :P)

[glacial hemlock]

Lol, energy conservation?

[wheat nymph]

just a little bit

also it would make the power grid fluctuate even more

I think that would be fun

[glacial hemlock]

Usually eddy current will be generated during braking, but it is difficult to extract useful electricity out of it

[loud heron]

The trains are extremely inefficient because they do not use maglev

they use electric motors to replace an otherwise diesel engine

I wouldnt mind a Tier 8 train that is maglev, uses more power but travels alot faster

[wheat nymph]

I want to launch items over the map via jump pads

[loud heron]

Falcon 9 reusable rockets

[wheat nymph]

have a conveyor belt end above a jump pad and then a big net somewhere else that catches them and funnels them into your factory 😄

[oblique isle]

Just use a truck that falls onto a series of jump pads.

[glacial hemlock]

I would like to launch a few large stingers across the map to clear out some rocks

[bleak coral]

It'd have to accelerate really fast to go much faster. We already have issues with too short of tracks not reaching full speed.

[charred holly]

Should I overclock the fuel generator?

If it fully overclock it, it will use 24.28 fuel/min and give 375 Mw

[upbeat granite]

and at 100% ?

[charred holly]

100% use 12/min and give 150 Mw

[wind spade]

unless you REALLY want to save space, don't overclock it

[upbeat granite]

the you have

24.28 / 375 MWmin
12 / 150 Mwmin

[charred holly]

That extra 0.28 give 75 MW

[wind spade]

wrong, it'll use 24.28 fuel but provide only 303.52814 MW

[charred holly]

oh ok, Thank

[wind spade]

you won't increase fuel's efficiency, you get the same amount of power per fuel burned

[charred holly]

Maybe I'm misread something

[wind spade]

overclocking a gen just makes it burn fuel faster (therefore producing more power)

but the numbers get weird, so it's easier to just leave it at 100%

[bleak coral]

The overclocking UI is wrong for power generators, you have to look at the part of the UI that has fuel info. That'll show you the correct power number.

[rigid moss]

where can i find models of factories to make one in my game

?

[muted crypt]

I'm not sure I understand the question

You want something to reference for visuals or for logistics?

[fierce ruin]

#screenshots

[bleak coral]

Are you looking for actual assets to use in your game?

[oblique hollow]

you mean blueprints of factories to build?

[rigid moss]

yes

sry i wa in-game xd

[oblique hollow]

yes xd

[rigid moss]

nope

[muted crypt]

so visual references

my friend, have you heard of the small search engine known as google images

[rigid moss]

i dont say visual

i say liketo make an eficient modular factory

[muted crypt]

I asked visuals or logistics and you said yes

[rigid moss]

u need 3 constructor 2 foundation....

logistic

[muted crypt]

but then said no to what McGalleon said, which was logistics

[rigid moss]

😦

[muted crypt]

Okay, now we can work from there

If you want to plan out resources but build your own design to it, the tool posted in the pins here known as satisfactorytools is definitely a good starting point

[oblique hollow]

with blueprint i meant "design plans for efficient factories"

[rigid moss]

ahh

[muted crypt]

obviously this is a much more complex example but this is max nobelisks

[fierce ruin]

blueprints reeeeeeee

[rigid moss]

i have several blueprints

[fierce ruin]

draw io helps

[oblique hollow]

its so high quality i cant even read it

[rigid moss]

x2

[fierce ruin]

its so high quality i cant even play it

[muted crypt]

https://u4.satisfactorytools.com/production?share=IeMukaSoboGYB8Sor49c

how's that lol

[fierce ruin]

you didn't set it to x/min

[rigid moss]

thanks for the app

[fierce ruin]

https://u4.satisfactorytools.com/production?share=ttUtw4mwnfQlch3NIr49

[muted crypt]

🤔

how does that make any sense, the same amounts of nobelisks but yours uses like 40% less oil

[fierce ruin]

||noob||

x/min accounts for cost

[muted crypt]

ooh

I see

[fierce ruin]

maxismise only maximises, it can't tell two equally good x/min apart

[dusty crow]

how many water extractors for coal power again? 3? 4?

[muted crypt]

3 extractors for 8 generators

[fierce ruin]

45 water/min per gen

[oblique hollow]

Btw Im thinking of making a new QA post:
"Reduce the internal volume of pipes"

Less internal volume reduces the amount of time we need to wait for them to fill up, which imporves pressure and such

also decreases delays

and possibly even some manifold issues

[fierce ruin]

is it 1m^3 for 1.1m length like a belt?

[oblique hollow]

im unsure

[loud heron]

Very awkward.

[fierce ruin]

radius needed to match belts

so just over half of the diameter of the current aprox 2m pipe

that will increase pressure

[oblique hollow]

since pipes have thickness, well just say "internal diameter is less than outside one"

for obvious reasons

[fierce ruin]

thicken the skin

[oblique hollow]

thicc pipe

[fierce ruin]

roughly vizualized

thicccccc

[fierce ruin]

raidus given paremeters

[oblique hollow]

Funny

[fierce ruin]

I've been shaped a lot by geometry

[oblique hollow]

I can see that

[fierce ruin]

jk I'm terrible at math

[merry geode]

do fluid trains have their own pocket dimension?

[muted crypt]

nah they seem to actually have the storage space to hold everything, or at least kinda do

[loud heron]

I hope we get some pocket dimension tech soon

[wicked tinsel]

fluid wagons are 2500 m3 arent they

[loud heron]

1600m no?

[wicked tinsel]

hm

oh right

1600m3

tho they are 16 meters long, so it needs to be a ~100m2 circle ?

they would need to be about 5 meters high, seem to match i guess

[fierce ruin]

don't forget about thickness

[wicked tinsel]

train tanks probably arent too thick

[solemn oxide]

theres an optimum between pressure and volume

even in case of just really simple (numerical, scalar) flow model in the game

[wicked tinsel]

the problem with pipes is that they got copied from factorio

so they really just model open air trenches

wish we had proper flow network without all that waving bullshit

[solemn oxide]

mindustry modding community

[oblique hollow]

except that when full, they model normal full flow pipe stuff

[solemn oxide]

but is 2D

[wicked tinsel]

they usually arent full tho

[solemn oxide]

doesnt matter

if the max flow rate is achieved it doesnt really matter

[oblique hollow]

thats why: reduce the volume

[solemn oxide]

no but then you reduce the flow rate?

[oblique hollow]

you dont

[wicked tinsel]

the problem with pipes is that back pressure can occur and degrade overall performance of system

[solemn oxide]

lol what?

[wicked tinsel]

it wouldnt happen with flow network

[solemn oxide]

flow is mass per unit volume

[oblique hollow]

pipes dont have to care about internal volume

[solemn oxide]

per second

[oblique hollow]

this isnt irl

they could just as well have NO internal volume

[solemn oxide]

but they do

[oblique hollow]

yes, and the current one is still too big

[solemn oxide]

i see the point

[wicked tinsel]

@oblique hollow if they had no volume it would be a flow network

which is good

[fierce ruin]

pipe off

[oblique hollow]

it basically boils down to latency: flow network would mean no delays and latency

[wicked tinsel]

yeah

[oblique hollow]

the internal volumes add delays

[solemn oxide]

well

it also adds dynamics a bit

otherwise all your factories will be instantly filled once you hook the pipeline

[oblique hollow]

yeah but it messes up so many things here

[wicked tinsel]

but its ok

there is no point in manifolds loading for hours

you provide enough input to fill outputs and you are good

[solemn oxide]

just keep your lines below the max flow rate

[oblique hollow]

until you try a large fluid manifold and then boom
"my my gens not work i provide exactly whats needed :c"

[solemn oxide]

or exactly on it by using power shards man

[oblique hollow]

i keep seeing the same thing over and over:
large manifold, last 3 machines starve

no matter if max flow or not

[solemn oxide]

hmm

[wicked tinsel]

yeah, im aware how this stuff behaves

need to keep flow well bellow maximum on all segments

so that backpressure doesnt mess the input

[oblique hollow]

and im now actually blaming that pipe volume for some of this

[wicked tinsel]

it is pipe's volume fault indeed

[keen flame]

I've been seeing some chatter recently that splitters/pipe junctions are causing loss in throughput

[fierce ruin]

clearly it's viscosity /s

[keen flame]

very minor losses, but noticeable by that point

[oblique hollow]

if only

[oblique hollow]

good luck avoiding pipes

[solemn oxide]

the fluids have viscosities?

sorry i am a total noob to the community lol

[fierce ruin]

just make kit sized segments

[oblique hollow]

yea. though its a complicated topic

[keen flame]

more that it's a bug and not something to avoid

[wicked tinsel]

basically, this is what i think happens right now

the temporary loss of input pulling cannot be made up later so machines eventually starve

[oblique hollow]

but that would make the input back up

[keen flame]

hmmmmm that's an interesting problem

[oblique hollow]

and it never does

[solemn oxide]

use a buffer

[oblique hollow]

doesnt help

[wicked tinsel]

buffer doesnt help with anything

[solemn oxide]

add hydrostatic pressure to the buffers lol

[wicked tinsel]

its just pipe with larger volume

[oblique hollow]

they have that lol

the fuller a buffer, the greater the outgoing head lift

[solemn oxide]

yeah i guess the capacity of that network to the machine actually exceeds 30 units

[oblique hollow]

nnnnnope

we've tested exact numbers

[solemn oxide]

😮 ok i need to sharpen my knives here lol

[oblique hollow]

even 10 machines would starve

well... the last 1 or 3

its always the dead end pipe manifolds

[solemn oxide]

is there a fluid diode

[oblique hollow]

always

[solemn oxide]

does the valve act as a diode?

[oblique hollow]

valve or pump

[solemn oxide]

then can you try connecting the machine part to the bottom

[keen flame]

I had the same issue in my U3 world, actually, now that I think about it

[oblique hollow]

aaaaand that doesnt help either.....

[solemn oxide]

with a splitter

[keen flame]

I had to come up with a creative solution

[fierce ruin]

nerds

[keen flame]

let me log in and see if I can see it. It was a creative use of pumps as valves and backflow control (this was pre-fluid update)

[oblique hollow]

Ive been testing every possible configuratiuon of pipes and pumps and buffers and valves under the night sky of Massage-2(AB)b

[solemn oxide]

lol

[oblique hollow]

and the only thing that seemed to help was closed loop pipelines

[keen flame]

let me grab some screencaps @oblique hollow

[solemn oxide]

ok but McGalleon

[oblique hollow]

i like how everyone is now going with "Name | Title"

[solemn oxide]

i dont understand why the valve wouldnt work

if x = 0

[keen flame]

I figured it would be fun

[oblique hollow]

whats X here?

[solemn oxide]

the diagram

of Amelek

[wicked tinsel]

the valve does nothing since you cant attach it to splitter

there will be always a pipe segment between valve and splitter

[oblique hollow]

well, because theres still a pipe before the valve maybe, if Amelek's assumption is true

so you just shifted the problem to the left

machines are basically valves too

they accept flow but dont give it back out

[solemn oxide]

ok then the solution is to make water consuming machines (or liquid for that matter) have a flush valve

[keen flame]

however the pipe itself connected to the machine can flow both directions

[oblique hollow]

you can flush everything already

or what do you mean

[solemn oxide]

i mean a throughput valve

[keen flame]

but that can't be sovled with a valce because there will always stil be a portion on that end of the junction

[oblique hollow]

valves have a limit slider

[solemn oxide]

just a line out

man but that doesnt work either lol

[wicked tinsel]

the easiest solution to backing up would be to remove the internal storage of machines

and make them pull water constantly at rate matching consumption

then there is no backing

to because whole satisfactory is badly written and a lot of logic (most of it?) is tied to FPS, it will never work properly ultimately

your system will glitch when game saves or lags for a moment

[solemn oxide]

or just have a flow thoruhg the machine

[oblique hollow]

you still havent answerd my assumption:
if the backflow really reduced the input, then the input machines should back up

[keen flame]

isn't engine update supposed to decouple logic from FPS?

[solemn oxide]

so turning machines into pipes basically

[wicked tinsel]

but they should back up, dont they

[solemn oxide]

and then let them produce if the flow rate is equal or larger than machine consumption rate

[wicked tinsel]

otherwise you will eventually run out of fluid completely

[oblique hollow]

they dont

they never do

[wicked tinsel]

so where the water comes from

[solemn oxide]

you are still sending 30 m^3/s to the pipe system

or whatever the number is for the machine in quesitno

[bleak coral]

btw I finished fixing up one of my turbofuel systems, getting rid of the pumps between machines seems to have fixed it

[solemn oxide]

the only question for that approach is: how do you get rid of the water flowing thoruhg the machine

[wicked tinsel]

if the input is always constant

then it all needs to be consumed by all machines

[bleak coral]

some of the pipes didn't stay full but it's been running for 1hr+ without losing any generators

[wicked tinsel]

otherwise you are losing fluid somewhere

note that its completely possible that for example packagers are bugged and actually consume at different rate

cant rule that out

[keen flame]

it's also completely possible that junctions are "eating" fluid

[wicked tinsel]

but then you will eventually run out of it

since nothing is creating fluid on the other side

[keen flame]

^ that's what the machines starving is

[oblique hollow]

well..... heres another possibility

all machines consume more than they should and pipes are perfectly fine xd

[bleak coral]

I think that would be more noticeable, and cause problems in all setups, not just large ones

[keen flame]

you should do some underclock testing to identify where the drop in fluid is and how severe it is @oblique hollow

[wicked tinsel]

the setup is like that for test

we know that packagers at bottom starve, but then, you cant have maxed fluid at top pipe

[oblique hollow]

thats what vencam built for me

[wicked tinsel]

its not possible

[oblique hollow]

i have exactly that en masse on a QA post

[wicked tinsel]

but it is possible that packagers simply lie

and pack / unpack faster

might be due to simulation being tied to FPS

[oblique hollow]

want the link to the savefile?

[wicked tinsel]

i think i had seen it before

[oblique hollow]

oh wait

yea, i remember

you did

[wicked tinsel]

the problem is, in that setup

[oblique hollow]

btw i need to update that since U4 changed some things

[wicked tinsel]

what was done is

a pipe was added like that

and suddenly it works 100%

[solemn oxide]

does it make you fly faster

[bleak coral]

?

[solemn oxide]

turbofuel

[oblique hollow]

i dont remember a pipe being anywhere like that on that save

[bleak coral]

no, can't be used for jetpack

[wicked tinsel]

there was second setup next to it

[keen flame]

One solution I had: with a multi-pipe system, create flow equalizers along the entire system

[wicked tinsel]

well, the whole thing was more complicated

but it boiled down to it

[solemn oxide]

Amelek

[oblique hollow]

yeah thats pretty much a loop

[solemn oxide]

if you put the pipe between the last two packagers

it will not work anymore? then it is indeed just a matter of closing loops

[keen flame]

the major bit was here:

[wicked tinsel]

no idea, cant test it right now

[keen flame]

Just before the start of the manifold, a set of valves preventing backflow. That immediately solved my issue at the time

[oblique hollow]

ill be honest, im too tired of this stuff.
I wont do any further tests until CSS throws out that magic pipe bug fix ™️ they talked about

[wicked tinsel]

with how badly broken the simulation is, its probably a combo of various bugs

might be packagers, might be pipes, might be both

[oblique hollow]

dont get me started on all seperate issues i know of

that are not directly tied to flow

but still cause issues

[wicked tinsel]

even such basic stuff like belts is tied to FPS and fail randomly

overflow splitters throwing items to wrong lanes =.=

mk5 not keeping up with the flow

[oblique hollow]

well. overflow is defined as anything that doesnt fit somewhere

[wicked tinsel]

nah, its bugged

make a loop on container

put a prio splitter on it and overflow outside

it will slowly drain the container

you lose 2-3 items each time game autosaves

and sometimes when it simply lags

[oblique hollow]

well, autosaves cause a lot of troubles

with belt throughput being tied to fps, wouldnt surprise me if thats the problem

game autosaves
smart splitter: "hrmmm.... this belt be slow.... time for overflow"

[wicked tinsel]

yeah

[oblique hollow]

oh also theres that fun bug where loading the game empties pipes and tanks on some saves

and apparently sometimes belts too

[wicked tinsel]

heard about it

tho hadnt noticed it myself

[oblique hollow]

me neither

[wicked tinsel]

various stuff is bugged like train stations with fluids are completeyl broken

always show some random fill

unrelated to anything

[oblique hollow]

now the EA part of satis makes more sense

all this wouldnt fly in a "finished" game

[wicked tinsel]

factorio was EA for years, it never had such bugs

its a crap excuse really

[oblique hollow]

factorio also was like what, a decade prior?

[keen flame]

factorio is also 2d

[oblique hollow]

oh look, 2016

[bleak coral]

yeah a lot of these bugs are tied to 3D rendering, something factorio never dealt with

[keen flame]

3d games are notoriously worlds more complex to code and debug

[oblique hollow]

also didnt factorio run on a different engine

[wicked tinsel]

the problem is

[oblique hollow]

not freakin Unreal

[wicked tinsel]

the 101 of game development is to not tie your simulation to FPS

[bleak coral]

And I'm sure it had it's share of hard to squash bugs, people just don't remember this stuff once it's fixed

[sand garnet]

Thats not very epic

[oblique hollow]

well, time to ask the devs why simulation is tied to fps

[bleak coral]

I don't like making judgments on projects I've never seen the code for, we can backseat code all day and we're still just guessing how it works

[oblique hollow]

Unity be like:
physics( stuff * time.deltaTime)

[bleak coral]

so staying stuff like "it shouldn't be tied to FPS" is useless because we don't know why it is

it could be a bad reason, it could be a complicated one

we just don't know

[oblique hollow]

i dont know about unreal and how it handles stuff

[wicked tinsel]

im salty about this whole thing due to how little attention multiplayer gets compated to how broken it is

i guess it makes noticing other bugs easier

[oblique hollow]

nearly every patch contains multiplayer stuff

[wicked tinsel]

we arent even approaching u3 level yet :<

and virtually no bugs present in u3 got fixed in fact

beyond some useless visual garbage like train's "no power"text

[oblique hollow]

i guess base game > multiplayer

[wicked tinsel]

yeah

[oblique hollow]

and i dont blame them for that decision

[wicked tinsel]

unlike games like valhem, this is clearly not made with love, they are simply executing generic early access game business scheme basing on tried and known game mechanic 🤷‍♂️

they need to crunch stuff that sells using streamers and new upgrades that they can hype, you cant hype bugfixes

[sand garnet]

It doesnt get little attention

Theh tell us every week on stream

[wicked tinsel]

tell that to belts losing items halway through

tell that to building breaking and leaving bugged holos that you need to restart both server and client to fix

[sand garnet]

Dedicated servers arent out yet because they are working on all the mp related issues

They are literally working on fixing mp so they can release dedicated servers

Watch a stream sometime

[muted crypt]

ah yes the closed minded individual who thinks they know how to make a game, classic scenario

[wicked tinsel]

you dont need to be a 3 star chef to tell that food is tasting bad

[oblique hollow]

amelek is a dev of some sort.... if i remember right

[wicked tinsel]

i am

[oblique hollow]

also coffee stain seems more like they crunch nothing at all

[sand garnet]

So at what point do you accept they are working on stuff?

How many times do you need to hear it for you to accept it

[wicked tinsel]

i will accept it once i see some results, its not rocket science

[sand garnet]

...

[wicked tinsel]

right now i see massive degradation, and that is a problem

like stuff is actively getting worse

[sand garnet]

If all you believe in is hindsight, you can never be happy

Thats intentional ignorance

[oblique hollow]

too bad background stuff isnt as visible

[sand garnet]

Pointless to even discuss with

[wicked tinsel]

honestly, at this point, i cant even tell if something is a multi or single player bug anymore 😦

like, i noticed that disassembly holograms randomly disappear during the progress bar phase

[oblique hollow]

also i still think coffee stain tries it like this:
Keep game in playable state
Fix things that are too broken
Add new stuff
Fix all the performance stuff once mechanics are finalized

[wicked tinsel]

is this a known issue? is this single player bug too?

[sand garnet]

Well the easy way to find out is to play singleplayer

[oblique hollow]

if it dont happen in SP, it must be MP

[muted crypt]

if it isn't game breaking, it's not as high of a priority, because things can change down the line that could change it anyway... so they leave it alone.

[oblique hollow]

it might seem horrible to some but i literally would touch optimization of my own things until im done with the mechanics. sure, id implement things in a way that leaves some upward mobility, but i wouldnt focus on ironing out all bugs until i am done adding content

[muted crypt]

precisely what I mean by what I said.

[wicked tinsel]

it depends on the workflow principle imho

like, its fine to keep bugged state until you are done if you are working on it

[sand garnet]

Their workflow differing from yours doesnt make theirs worse

[wicked tinsel]

bu if you are releasing iterative progress to client, then having issues pile up makes for sour experience

[oblique hollow]

and i literally wouldnt care

i wouldnt care at all because im not focused on nitpick optimizations until im done

[muted crypt]

We know they record player statistics... I'm curious how much of TOTAL play time, across all people and both platforms, is multiplayer vs how much of it is singleplayer.

[sand garnet]

@knotty venture this would be interesting to know ^^^

[muted crypt]

Because if multiplayer hour count is significantly small compared to the whole, that might be why these commonly-occurring, long-lasting MP bugs still exist.

It's because they're not showing anywhere near as much priority for it because it affects only a small portion, so they can get it on their final polish sweeps at the end of production.

[sand garnet]

Id also like to know playercount on steam and epic after this time

[wicked tinsel]

you would need a specific stats to tell this to be honest

like how much players played multi only to switch to single and dont do multi again

for example

[muted crypt]

Well I meant just like

[wicked tinsel]

or how many people stopped playing after playing multi

[muted crypt]

"okay out of every single MINUTE of gameplay the game has ever had when they were collecting data, how much of that is done with two or more people connected to the same play session at once?"

[wicked tinsel]

those would be relevant stats

[sand garnet]

Im just curious about people with more thsn 5h of MP

[wicked tinsel]

right now you got chicken and egg issue where multi is broken -> less people play it -> it gets less attention -> repeat

[oblique hollow]

im honestly wondering how many people play multi even

[sand garnet]

Less visible development is not the same as less attention though

[oblique hollow]

we would need to see statistics to make judgements

[sand garnet]

Yup

And until then, trust the devs to speak the truth

[solemn oxide]

are there any griefers on multiplayer

or is that nerfed

[wicked tinsel]

multi is mostly player to player so no

[bleak coral]

I haven't really been following this conversation 100%, but my 2 cents on multiplayer is this: it does still need a lot of work, and I really hope it's much better by 1.0 and they focus on it at some point. Like they have a fluid-update style medium patch just for multiplayer stuff. It is bad enough I had one friend who wanted to play satisfactory with a bunch of people but shied away from it when I explained what multiplayer was like

[sand garnet]

Wait for dedicated server release

Should be a lot better then

[sturdy loom]

Are there though?

[sand garnet]

Ive only heard of 2 experiences in my time on this discord

[sturdy loom]

I'm surprised there arent greifers

[wicked tinsel]

there are probably some in #looking-for-group-old but its probably not very popular

[sand garnet]

People are usually chill here

Itsa good community

[sturdy loom]

What do you mean

[wicked tinsel]

i mean i wouldnt be surprised if there was someone griefing people who advertise in that channel

but as tom said, its pretty chill community so it doesnt seem to happen (often?)

[bleak coral]

I don't see a lot of people talk about playing with strangers or people they met through #looking-for-group-old . That means it's not actually a very popular thing to do or they're not very vocal. Hard to know which it is.

[sand garnet]

Just realized we are in #math-and-meta lol

[wicked tinsel]

oh right

but well, it was meta talk so i guess it fits 😄

[bleak coral]

haha this channel gets off topic sometimes lol

talking about meta > somethings not working right > complain > off topic

[wicked tinsel]

part that probably prevents griefing is that a lot of those people are looking to start new game

you cant really grief in cooperative game when you start

[bleak coral]

true

[wicked tinsel]

like, you would be griefing yourself

[bleak coral]

I will admit whenever I've had random people join just to show off stuff or to explain something or test something or whatever, I just revert to a save before they joined. It's a singleplayer world and I don't want to risk they did something I didn't notice.

I've never felt like that might've happened, but like you said it's better just to start a new game together.

[wicked tinsel]

yeah

[bleak coral]

@oblique hollow I think I fixed my other turbofuel setup. Did roughly the same thing as I did to fix the other one: redid the pumps/piping so that all pumping happens before the manifold and made it loop. so I'm pretty convinced that pumps in the middle of a manifold = trouble. don't know if it's a bug or just because they act as a one-way gate and that behaves weird with manifolds, but that's my conclusion.

[wicked tinsel]

well to be honest, i'd probably like stuff like priority mergers or priority power switches for now

bugs can stay where they are as long as they dont start accumulating even faster 😦

[oblique hollow]

they are thankfully mostly limited to large things

build small factory and all is fine

[bleak coral]

honestly I think that's where CSS got in trouble "we'll make our casual factory game, no one is gonna go nuts with this right?"

[oblique hollow]

and then the former factorio players came along and had to complain

[wicked tinsel]

assumptions like this is what happens when you clone the game without playing it properly

[oblique hollow]

its unfair to call 3D a clone of 2D

[wicked tinsel]

the core gameplay loop is same in both games, visuals dont really affect this

[oblique hollow]

then every FPS is just a COD clone

[wicked tinsel]

people will want to make large factories, expand and so on, play this with friends

reach that perfect 100%

just look what they did in factorio 😄

[muted crypt]

the core gameplay loop is "haha factory go brr"
but factorio is procedurally generated and has only one way to make things from point A to point B, just a matter of how big you go with it
satisfactory is prebuilt and provides numerous paths from point A to point B

[oblique hollow]

satis seems to be more exploration actually

[mossy pike]

They were legitimately called Doom clones back in the day though before it became a genre

[oblique hollow]

and terrain management

[muted crypt]

factorio puts more emphasis on tower defense where satisfactory is exploration

[bleak coral]

I've still got a 75MW dip happening though, some rogue coal generator is getting lazy

[oblique hollow]

satis is that game where you either do factories or just build a maze of suffering and jump'n'run to torture the comnity managers

is there anything else you can do in core factorio thats not factory building?

[wicked tinsel]

just use a mod to squash whole spagetthi into a ball

well, there is massive multiplayer in factorio

scripted community games and so on

but the core gameplay is to expand the factory / make it run better

[oblique hollow]

like what even do they do there? build battles?

[wicked tinsel]

there are many sorts

build battles, pvp battles, escort games etc

eg there is a kind of game where you build factory inside mobile train and push it north while mobs attack from south

[oblique hollow]

tbh Dyson Sphere is much closer to "3D Factorio Clone" than Satis

[muted crypt]

^I'd agree, after having played all three

[wicked tinsel]

hadnt bothered playing it so dunno

[oblique hollow]

go watch some gameplay of it

[muted crypt]

Kibitz has gameplay of factorio, satisfactory and dyson sphere program

[oblique hollow]

and i guess the core message here is: if you wanna play Factorio, then go actually play Factorio

[mossy pike]

For sure. But beyond stacking buildings, and going to space, can you build with any other verticallity?

[oblique hollow]

wdym

[mossy pike]

In satis. you can layer your factory with many floors. As far as I've seen in dyson sphere you place buildings on the ground, or stack them (of same type)

[oblique hollow]

you can stack in Dyson?

[mossy pike]

Research buildings at least, and containers

[sand garnet]

DSP is pretty limited vertically

[mossy pike]

it does help that you can route belts in z-axis, Factorio seems a bit clunky in that aspect.

[oblique hollow]

if you wanna simplify the existance of the 3rd dimension that much, then yes, 3D is just 2D but stacked. Thus 3D is just 2D

[sand garnet]

it really is more of a 3d factorio than satisfactory + factorio blend

[oblique hollow]

the fps exploration aspect of satis makes it much more atmospherically immersive

and adds many other limitations

sure, it may not be much, but it does affect things a lot

[mossy pike]

How I miss the days when I didn't know the map and every corner was a promise of new findings, and spiders. Now it's just spiders.

still beautiful though

[wicked tinsel]

its always spiders

[oblique hollow]

people may complain about hand crafted maps because after a while you simply cant explore anymore..... but ive yet to ever see this be a major downside of any game

[wicked tinsel]

i do enjoy to explore the map tho

gas pillars need to be removed :<

they are definition of anti-fun

[oblique hollow]

soon ™️

[dusty crow]

I come with my first hard drive on my new save file, what do I pick fellas?

[oblique hollow]

at your stage id say the frames

[wicked tinsel]

probably frame

[oblique hollow]

cuz i doubt you have refineries yet

[wicked tinsel]

ingots are nice but later

[dusty crow]

i dont have refineries

[wicked tinsel]

biocoal is pointless so dont bother

[oblique hollow]

then the frames are more practical for you

[dusty crow]

biocoal is fucking useless LOL

[oblique hollow]

Glad we could collectively agree on that

[dusty crow]

this is a moment

also zipline is fun but

[sand garnet]

biocoal best coal

[dusty crow]

Man I had to literally consume BACON AGARICS just to heal and I hate wasting them

[oblique hollow]

Liquid Biofuel best fuel.....

But Color Cartridge still king imo

[mossy pike]

biocoal OP with lawnmower tractor, soon ™️

[dusty crow]

what do you mean color cartridge

[sand garnet]

unpopular opinion: inhalers are a waste of bacon, paleberries and nuts

[dusty crow]

is there a joke i'm missing

[oblique hollow]

you can use them as vehicle fuel

[sand garnet]

no plans for that stuff

[oblique hollow]

no kidding

[dusty crow]

but wouldnt it be terrible

[oblique hollow]

and they are more efficient than fuel

[bleak coral]

yeah make 'em out of organs, frames, and mycelia

[dusty crow]

its paint... how can paint fuel- WHAT

[bleak coral]

or the one that does the healing items + mycelia

[oblique hollow]

Flower Power

[bleak coral]

the one that's just healing items is crap

[oblique hollow]

Massage's Flowers are freakin RIPPED

[dusty crow]

the planet is called massage. i was promised a massage

[oblique hollow]

brain massage

with the good numbers ™️

[bleak coral]

your backup clone is getting the massage

so they're ready to work when you die

[oblique hollow]

and your corpse is getting massaged by the biomass burner's grinders

[dusty crow]

I present to you the monstrocity that is a 5 reinforced and 5 rotor factory

per min

[oblique hollow]

cute

[dusty crow]

its so messy I should really fix it when I get better yknow

walls and stuff so I can make stairwells to elevate

[sand garnet]

aww look at that widdle baby factory

[oblique hollow]

oh i almost forgot the biggest difference between satis and factorio:

House building simulator

[dusty crow]

trUE

[wicked tinsel]

nah, thats valheim 😄

[dusty crow]

i rushed 8h to get coal power going anyways, i feel good

[mossy pike]

Strategy for improving factory: Move to different place and make new factory

[dusty crow]

previously: like 20 hours

[mossy pike]

then you have 2 factory 🧠

[oblique hollow]

Strategy when all factories fail: build a giant foundation over it all to cover your shameful mistakes

[dusty crow]

I'll consider steel later I just want to get some foundation done for my copper/iron factory

and actually yknow

work on it some more. maybe I can get the AWESOME Shop so i can organize all this bullshit.

i'll probably clear my current factory once I have enough rotors. I think 400 is enough for now?

[wicked tinsel]

you always need more

[oblique hollow]

m o a r

[dusty crow]

for now anyways

[wicked tinsel]

refineries eat them in massive quantities

[dusty crow]

Use the rotors to make rotors

while i wait for more I may as well hand make the blade runners

time to abuse the fact that holding E and pressing TAB alows you to hand mine without holding E

then again that's kinda common in general with games.. you cant fix it

[mossy pike]

or craft multiple portable miners, I had 12 of them on caterium node that I occasionally visited in the early game

[dusty crow]

portable miners
they're small little robots so I like them

[mossy pike]

I really like the little "eye" animation when it starts digging

[dusty crow]

Is it weird to say the robot looks cute?

[mossy pike]

speaking of #math-and-meta , are the alts for Radio Control Unit a bit meh? Seems like it's a trade-off between eating more caterium, quartz, aluminium or oil? Or maybe I am missing something?

[wicked tinsel]

no clue to be honest

[lament chasm]

so i need help calculating how much i can overclock my refinery to use exactly 300 alumina solution can any1 help?

nevermind

[sand garnet]

glad I could help, you're welcome.

[lament chasm]

its 125

lol my brain is quite dead im going on 18 hours of straight play with very few breaks

[fierce ruin]

🤏 🧠

[abstract thorn]

has it been determined if super-state computers is more or less efficient than OC Supercomputer?

[versed violet]

More efficient, according to my mystical calculations:
Cost is total MW per piece including raw resources, excluding transport.

[loud heron]

Is MW really a problem?

Figured complexity is the concern

since power is so plentiful

[mystic moon]

Power is the scarcest resource in this game.

[versed violet]

There are multiple facets to optimize - power, raw resource usage (transport), or factory size. This one is power, optimizing for resource usage probably favors other recipes.

[loud heron]

Why is power scarce

Im still not using all 1800 turbofuel

probably closer to like...300

[versed violet]

he means "Scariest"

[mossy pike]

oil is a trade-off between usage for power or production. Would be fun to have Uranium used as e.g a neutron source so you also need to the same balancing act for it.

[mystic moon]

Maybe

It's the thing that I deal with the most

[wind spade]

not really. If you max power, you won't be able to use it all

[fierce ruin]

you can also view power as the added wieghted cost of its parts and then remove those raw resources from the input limits

[loud heron]

Watch as uranium is used with another gas

or SAM.
They'll have to seed more uranium

[mossy pike]

gooood, goood

[loud heron]

Lemme get depleted uranium rocket launchers for our next combat item

past Rifle

[graceful ice]

if I use all of the sulfur in the world how many nuclear reactors can I supply? (I need the max so if you use alternate recipes to get the max that's fine)

by the way consider that you're using MK3 miners with 3 overe clocks in all of them

[deep root]

you are limited by uranium not sulfur

[keen flame]

You'll run out of Uranium first

[deep root]

@graceful icehttps://u4.satisfactorytools.com/production?share=N1TTC97vxZQ3RY1swsPd

[graceful ice]

oh ok

ty

[cedar mica]

Is instant scrap good? Satisfactory tools seems to want to use it, but is it really worth the sulfur?

I unselect Instant Scrap from the list and the Bauxite usage goes down...

Sloppy Alumina - Electrode Aluminium Scrap - Pure Aluminium Ingot, gives 2972.83 Bauxite and 2726.66 Sulfur```

Is Instant Scrap, really worth the extra 500 Bauxite and 1600 Sulfur?

With the nuclear setup I'm messing with, even Coal and Oil usage drops, when removing Instant Scrap from the list...

I know it sees the whole and does a balance check on resources, but using more of 4 resources, without any apparent savings, seems weird.

[loud heron]

I personally do not use it cause it increases complexity

it increases your aluminum by a good margin, but Ive never managed to use all my aluminum

so...

[gilded maple]

How are you using sulfur on sloppy alumina?

[cedar mica]

Nuclear setup, so remaining sulfur is for that

[gilded maple]

Ahh, ya I just do the sloppy-electrode-pure bc it’s super simple and easy, you can process 600 ingots/min in like 30 minutes

[loud heron]

Yep

At first I didnt like the idea of using precious oil for products

But now that I have resource extractors, its actually quite nice that I dont have to snake miles of coal into an alumina refinery

[cedar mica]

I know that, what I want to know is why Satisfactory tools, recommends that recipe, when you select all alt recipes

[loud heron]

Because its technically the most efficient recipe

for bauxite to aluminum

Public opinion is "Fuck the efficiency, I aint setting up a blender and 2 more belt lines for a bit more aluminum"

Sulfur is also rare and would be better off used elsewhere

[cedar mica]

Its uses more Bauxite, Sulfur, Coal and Oil, in that setup... How is that efficent? Unless you count skipping a step as more efficent...

[loud heron]

Oh, ah my bad

[gilded maple]

If you want like max turbo motors or something then you’ve gotta use that, other than that there’s no reason, I thought it was the most bauxite efficient?

[loud heron]

Relooking at the recipe, its purpose is to eliminate a second refinery line

Technically it saves space at the cost of effiiciency

[loud heron]

It would actually be more efficient to use the electrode recipe it seems

Ah no my bad again

I suck at reading this.
Aluminum is a mess of a layout

base recipe is 240 baux to 360 scrap

and roughly judging the electrode its not much better

so yes, the Instant scrap recipe is actually efficient

since it only uses 150 for 300

[cedar mica]

23 refinerys + 23 blenders for instant or 15 refinerys + 20 refinerys for sloppy... So not even saving on machines or effort, in this use case

[gilded maple]

I didn’t think you had to use refineries for instant?

[loud heron]

I believe the idea is you can process the sulfur elsewhere and pipe the sulfuric acid in

[loud heron]

it needs sulfuric acid

a liquid product

[gilded maple]

Ohhh

At a certain point power becomes a non issue

[cedar mica]

Plus given the saving in oil, somewhere, even less effort going the sloppy route

Oh well, its a tool, so needs to be checked

[loud heron]

The tool is accurate

[cedar mica]

It is, but it dont take all use case into account. In this case, its not recommending the most resource saving option

[loud heron]

its most efficient for bauxite

its main ingredient

[gilded maple]

I need to set up nuclear, but I’m trying to clean up everything before I do. I don’t even have an assembly line for quick wire or computers still, I redirected the resources for those

[cedar mica]

I unselected Instant Scrap and saved 600 Bauxite...

[loud heron]

Odd. I guess Ill have to double check

[gilded maple]

I think the tool might be off, I selected it in game and it looked like it would save quite a bit at the that cost of more precious resources

I also refuse to set up nuclear until I have the stuff to sink the plutonium rods

[loud heron]

or dm greeny

[cedar mica]

40 Uranium Fuel Rods + Maximize Plutonium Fuel Rods with 2000 waste, is what I put in. Then just selected all alt recipes.

[gilded maple]

Running out of inventory is an issue anymore with how much I have to carry everywhere. I was going to move my hub, but I’m not sure where to since I my central base doesn’t have a good place for it

[cedar mica]

If you have drones, set them up for air drop. Requires some prep, but you can do it anywhere you have access to 100MW

[gilded maple]

I would rather get the +6 inventory alt than some of the alts I’ve been having to select lately😂

I have 44 drones set up for 44 industrial storages at my storage center, only one I might* change is concrete since it’s the only one I could see having a through put issue with only one belt

[cedar mica]

About 6 min to restock the 9 stacks of concrete

[gilded maple]

If I’m using 2,000 concrete/min placing foundations it may become a problem, especially when I’m setting up nuclear bc I’ll be using a lot of foundations for that

[cedar mica]

2000/m is 5-6 foundation a sec...

[gilded maple]

Oh

If I set up auto click on my mouse then maybe

Didn’t realize it was that many, it feels so much faster when I’m placing them in rows of 12

[cedar mica]

If thats really the case, its not hard to setup 4-5 drone platforms to send over concrete. Should suffice, unless you are very far away, as they can drop as low as 150/m throughput

[gilded maple]

This one is at 1096/min, I can just hyper-tube back and forth

[cedar mica]

If thats the case, its probably faster and easier, to find a local limestone node and tap it

[gilded maple]

Also is anyone else having issues with drone ports not giving all the info? Some show the stack/min, some show the item/min, some show the battery/min, and some show the batter/trip but none of them show all the above

[cedar mica]

Only the port where the drone "lives", should have all the info?

[gusty nexus]

how does making screws from the steel rod alt compare to the steel screw alt?

[cedar mica]

If we base it on 60 steel, you end up with 780 screws from Steel Screw. From Steel Iron Rod, you end up with 960 screws. So Steel Screw is better for number of machines, but Steel Iron Rod method, gives more screws for materials spent.

[glacial hemlock]

Spend more power, but use ores more efficiently

[mossy pike]

Did a spreadsheet for the Radio Control Unit alternate recipes to analyze resource usage. I did some assumptions about using Ins.Cry.Osc and Silicon Boards because imo they are just better, and makes comparison easier. I also chose to compare Caterium Ore instead of Quickwire because the QW numbers push the chart range.
Copy of the spreadsheet here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1FSFC_k4fD2B1mEgNAZjAxidSgKO21QQd5ABWrwJwvRo/edit?usp=sharing

[sand garnet]

why do you think those 2 items are 'better'

like, what is your definition of better

and have you compared your results to one of the online calculators?

for example: https://u4.satisfactorytools.com/production

[mossy pike]

I've tried to compare but I can't get it to use the alts, it uses the base recipe of the radio control unit regardless. (which is also why I did the spreadsheet, wouldn't have bothered otherwise)

I prefer the insulated crystal oscillator because of lower quartz usage. In this case, the Caterium and Rubber is already needed (for Radio Control System alt and crystal computer, caterium could be excluded by using the base recipe for higher iron and copper usage)

and for circuit board the other alt to consider is the Caterium Circuit Board, and would be worth considering. I prefer the Silicon one for the low usage of rare material (quartz) and simple items.
For the the spreadsheet though, it adds another dimension that makes it harder to compare (and make)

Oh, and I completely disregard power usage or factory size, I don't find those a problem (at least for this comparison)

[sand garnet]

If it prefers the base recipe, it means that recipe is better optimized in regards to weighted resources

[mossy pike]

exactly, and I don't blame that. But I may have other priorities. E.g lower caterium usage that is needed elsewhere.

[wind spade]

You can disable the base recipe if you want to force alt recipe usage

[mossy pike]

ah, selective vision strikes again

[frosty owl]

Bruh, connection unit takes so much Quartz it's unreal

[mossy pike]

Excellent, then I shall compare numbers 😄

[wind spade]

Yeah, but the tool has to decide somehow. I think it's decent solution, especially since you can enable/disable any recipe

[frosty owl]

Honestly, base + crystal/caterium computer seem the best to me. Although I do prefer the higher speed usually offered by alt, resource usage is pretty clear: you only lose out on copper or caterium compared to the others
Sure, "connection unit" has the lowest allu usage, but it's not worth its quartz (you'd be better off making that quartz into silica and pushing that into allu production)

Very nice spreadsheet though 👌

[mossy pike]

Exactly, it's not a criticism, I think the tool is awesome. It's hard enough to make a decision between these things with context, doing it programmatically means you need to put in some way to decide one or the other.

[frosty owl]

@wind spade Do you have any plans to add a tab that shows raw and intermediate items usage of production plans?
Kinda like the "input ore" tab, but with only what you need to use to produce the specified output (for intermediate products different toggable tabs could do, but let's stick to the basic form for semplicity xD)
Reason: I find it quite annoying having to reorganize the graph to get all the resource input together, then take a screen and repeat to compare the inputs of 2 different recipes, having a dedicated tab would be hella convenient

[wind spade]

I'm planning to do tons of improvements

[frosty owl]

This on the list? ^^

[wind spade]

Currently I'm working on merging the two versions back to one

After that I'll see how close is v2 to be finished and either work on that or start working on new features

[frosty owl]

So would this be between the possible "new features" you're mentioning? ^^

[wind spade]

Indeed

Not sure about order of priority tho

[mossy pike]

master: git reset --hard u4-dev? 😄 /jk

[wind spade]

The issue is localstorage

[mossy pike]

ah, client-side storage, the worst 🙂

[wind spade]

I need a way to migrate u4 setups to main tool

Since it's on different domain

[mossy pike]

Yay, numbers match, links below if anyone wants to see as well.
Radio+CatComp: https://u4.satisfactorytools.com/production?share=5STnOjqWA4ps3vKb3VVr
Radio+CryComp: https://u4.satisfactorytools.com/production?share=5cjkesDmHJ7kdQPdFxJe
ConnectionUnit: https://u4.satisfactorytools.com/production?share=QIdwv3hjQTyNXR6KpXlR
ControlSystem: https://u4.satisfactorytools.com/production?share=VcYY3ujTBFs7uYz6I1Hp

[mossy pike]

That was the biggest surprise to me, since it's using crystals directly I almost assumed it was the cheapest option. If you can sacrifice the bauxite, the Radio Control System is also quite nice.

[frosty owl]

Ohh, I just noticed: no wonder it takes so much quartz, you're using the silica alt recipe for HSC!

While convenient, the silica alt is a silica sink

[mossy pike]

Indeed, I've mostly disregarded the base because of the high QW usage but since QW can be "cheap", maybe it's worth it

[frosty owl]

You got much more quickwire than silica, so on large scale it is worth it

[mossy pike]

heh, switched out HSC to base, and copper ore input jumped to 1000/min, which does not include ore for copper sheets 😄
needs some pure or alloy ingots

[glacial hemlock]

HSC alts aren't really impressive

[oblique hollow]

HSC?

oh, highspeed connector

[glacial hemlock]

Haha

!wikisearch acronyms

[shadow prairie]

https://satisfactory.fandom.com/wiki/Special:Search?query=acronyms

[glacial hemlock]

Oh wait...

[fierce ruin]

TF

!wikisearch Coal Generator

[shadow prairie]

https://satisfactory.fandom.com/wiki/Special:Search?query=Coal Generator

[fierce ruin]

now just remove embeds

[sand garnet]

the embeds are helpful

example:

!wikisearch manifold

[shadow prairie]

https://satisfactory.fandom.com/wiki/Special:Search?query=manifold

[fierce ruin]

ig

but the spam threat is unnerving

[sand garnet]

all the other commands can theoretically be spammed too

and just like with everything else here, this discord is pretty good at managing itself regarding asshole-behavior lol

[glacial hemlock]

the wiki preview takes the first image of the gallery instead of the infobox image, perhaps due to some short-hand issue. (the infobox of every entity uses many shortcuts right now)

[sand garnet]

in this case, it's very helpful

[bleak coral]

!wikisearch turbofuel

[shadow prairie]

https://satisfactory.fandom.com/wiki/Special:Search?query=turbofuel

[fierce ruin]

that debunks one theory

[keen flame]

Hot take: I like the silica HSC alt. Mixing the base and alt is the best way to manage large-scale production

[lucid pine]

hey, i have a question. I'm pretty early in the game (Barely automated iron, concrete and copper) I have a caterium ore pretty far away. What would be the best way of automating it (power wise)

i currently have 2 options

1. Massive conveyor from the node (1100+m)
2. trucks

but both options have me baffled as i have no idea how to automate the miners so i dont have to keep walking there to put fuel in the generators

is making a very long power line a viable option? seems like an ugly solution, i feel like i am missing something

[fierce ruin]

build on site

to reduce the needed through put if possible

belt, but I'm biased on that

[keen flame]

Get a little further into the game until you unlock better power options. Don't worry about automating biomass burners

[lucid pine]

i do hjave the coal ones too

im just wondering if very long power lines are the way to go

does the game have some sort of solar arrays?>

[keen flame]

Use coal and just run a power line

Yep, long power lines. You can make it relatively clean if you run them alongside the conveyer belt

No solar arrays

There's a mod that adds them in, but I prefer to play unmodded

[lucid pine]

i'd like to automate everything on vanilla before i play with mods

thanks for answering my questions and have a good evening c:

i'll be back if im ever stuck

[keen flame]

👍 good luck

[gusty nexus]

yeah, you just wind up daisy-chaining power poles everywhere

it's just part of how you play the game tbh

[mystic moon]

@keen flame Could you send me the link to your spreadsheet?
I lost it again lol

[keen flame]

Sure 👍 remind me in about ten minutes, gotta get to my computer and get booted for the day

[mystic moon]

Kk, thanks

[keen flame]

You're in luck because I also just made some updates recently xD

[primal raptor]

About to move to make 60 High Speed Connectors / Minute (Don't ask why) all survival, vanilla, etc.
Just finalizing the numbers, but I don't know if the ore nodes on the map make this fundamentally possible or not, is there simply enough Caterium?
Numbers rounded up for sake of easier math, excess products are going to be split off line for different production circuts:

The important/relevant detail being:

1450 Iron Ore
2900 Copper Ore
3264 Caterium Ore
3714 Water
1080 Crude

Can that Caterium Ore rate even be achieved, do enough nodes exist to do it

[fierce ruin]

did you not refer to SFtools?

[primal raptor]

Enlighten me

[wind spade]

60 HSCs can be made from these resources

[keen flame]

sorry about the wait! https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jGUXDD5jmpozKs5YRKYCA0N0E71vEr0GayePjiblbxc/edit?usp=sharing

I'll be posting this on reddit eventually after a few more revisions

[wind spade]

see my above screenshot, it was done in the tool - https://u4.satisfactorytools.com/production?share=kXoGjl1Qr15h2oi5Htg9

[keen flame]

I'm also working with a certain somebody to allow exporting to and from a popular tool

[fierce ruin]

Hammer?

[primal raptor]

Ok, cleaned up with all of my alternate recipies. Is there, fundamentally, enough Caterium to support this load

[wind spade]

there's way more caterium than what you have here

if you go to Items, Input section, you'll find map limits in there

[unborn ermine]

They could also be mentioning a personal limit.
I know I sometimes mixup tenses in convos and messes people up 😛

[daring island]

https://www.reddit.com/r/SatisfactoryGame/comments/n2pksd/18min_uranium_fuel_rod_setup_225_000_mw_power/

[gusty prism]

can someone explain underclocking and why you would need to do it? I'm not really sure I understand it in, let's say, a basic modular frame production line.... is the only purpose to avoid overproduction?

[fierce ruin]

to avoid troubleshooting errors

[gusty prism]

what does that mean?

[fierce ruin]

if you overproduce you can incidently overconsume and cause starving belts/machines

this is even more problematic with fluids that slosh when your #s dont match

[granite jasper]

One example is Aluminum Production. The process both creates and consumes water. Too much water and the factories lock down because they are full of water. Too little water and they don't function. So one might underclock/overclock various refineries and water extractors so everything runs smoothly.

[gusty prism]

I'm just barely past setting up my first coal power, seems like I have a lot to study lol

[fierce ruin]

you have no idea

[granite jasper]

As you go the numbers won't line up as nicely.

[gusty prism]

oh I have an idea, which is part of the reason I keep going away after a few days, only to come back later and try again lol

[fierce ruin]

pulls out matrices

[frosty owl]

Silica is for allu reee

[granite jasper]

I often go for Caterium early game. The Smelters use 45 Caterium Ore each. Often a Caterium Miner will produce 60 or 120 or whatever. Your choices are to have fewer smelters and let the miner stop working at times. Or have too many smelters and have them waiting for ore. Or you can overclock/underclock things and maximize which stat you want: Ore, Power, production etc.

[sand garnet]

early caterium is good in general, sink points until you actually need the caterium for stuff

[swift portal]

IS there a good rule of thumb for how many batteries to use with each geothermal genny?

[fierce ruin]

batteries only get used if cons>production

[swift portal]

Ah okay.

[gusty nexus]

coal generators are not nearly as complicated as aluminum, don't worry about that

[swift portal]

I just put down the first geothermal generator

[gusty nexus]

even after the changes i still love them

plop it down, hook it up, that's it

no need to do math or make an entire factory plant to get what you really want

[swift portal]

Yeah, I was just curious to see if there was a ratio of power storage

[gusty nexus]

nah, you should just treat it as a cool bonus

and only consider the minimum amount of energy it contributes when doing your power grid math

[granite jasper]

Virtually all the time you will either have too much power or not enough Power. Batteries only help long-term when you have power that fluctuates between the two -- which is super rare and should be avoided anyway. Otherwise, Batteries just buy you a tiny bit of time to build more power.

[swift portal]

Yeah, right now it doesn't seem like they're very useful

they work in Factorio because solar provided a long term swap

[gusty nexus]

batteries are basically only useful if you're pushing hard at the limit of your power generation and have buildings that cause power instability (geothermal generators, particle accelerators)

power instability can also occasionally happen as a result of generator supply issues (which can happen occasionally if you don't design correctly)

[swift portal]

They should really think about doing solar

[fierce ruin]

they have they don't want it

[swift portal]

they didn't want to do pipes either

[loud heron]

Solar is primarily an issue because its free power

Why bother running nuclear when you can just make a 200 solar panel array

or 2000

Now that we have batteries, they'd be even more broken

[gilded maple]

I filled up a storage with caterium wire as early as I could and I think I still grabbed caterium out of it sometime after 200 hours in game well after I had moved on from it

[cinder prism]

where can I start with nuclear?

[fierce ruin]

Check pins

[versed violet]

IF you have all geotermal generators connected together, they will smooth each other out.
As minimal setup, look at your power production graph and calculate the difference between lowest and highest point. Then build a battery per each 100MW difference (as batteries can charge at max rate of 100MW, so you don't loose power)
For a total peace of mind, build 2 batteries per geyser (double that if pure), and you will be set for all the power differences. .

[hardy kettle]

unless you have a stupid amount and it provides a lot of time

[keen flame]

I'm planning out my megabase layout...turns out I accidentally made the individual facilities look like constellations 😄

Props if anyone can guess which facility is which

[supple mural]

the discordant colors of their arrows seem to suggest that this diagram has nothing to do with the overall arrangement/connections between these constellations. also, if each 'star' is symbolizing a recipe/assembling line, i am nowhere near familiar enough with satis' recipes except to say i dont think there are that many loops

and i dont see any meaning in your color choice

[oblique hollow]

im currently going through the analysis of a lot of alt routes to make cable and im fucking drowning in alternative paths

[thorn canyon]

I have 3 MK2 Miners for limestone (each 120 per minute no overclocking) which will make 8 constructors for concrete run at 100%, how can I distribute 3 into 8 evenly

[oblique hollow]

just let it overflow

[thorn canyon]

so true bestie...

[oblique hollow]

otherwise you would have to build a 3 to 8 balancer aaaaaand lets say its not very practical

[thorn canyon]

yeah

[supple mural]

balancers? not practical? whaaaaa????

[thorn canyon]

i coudnt even wrap my head around that

but i mean

it would be very nice...

[supple mural]

thats just a 3:4 with 4 1:2's on the end, so not that bad

[oblique hollow]

if you had mk 3 belts you could do the balancer

[thorn canyon]

I have mk3 belts

i just dont have mk3 miners

[oblique hollow]

well.... time to draw

[supple mural]

underclock the constructors to get perfect ratios for your input belts then

[thorn canyon]

underclocking

no

[oblique hollow]

have fun

[oblique hollow]

wdym inderclocking is great

[supple mural]

"inderclocking"

[oblique hollow]

enderclocking

[supple mural]

andorclocking

[oblique hollow]

ondarclocking

[supple mural]

doorclocking

[thorn canyon]

fantastic

[oblique hollow]

doorlocking

[supple mural]

also interestingly, i also drew a balancer, and mine mixes two inputs when you dont, it seems

but i guess its never necessary to mix those lanes, soooo it doesnt matter that much

[oblique hollow]

heres a really fun way to make cables using the least amount of copper, caterium and oil

[keen flame]

each "star" is generally a single recipe or distribution center (with a few small exceptions). Purple is all oil products (for HOR), Yellow/Orange is electronics (caterium and copper), green is nuclear (waste), red is steel (steel/pipes/beams have red tips), teal is Iron (don't ask me about that color), and the center multicolor hub is processing for various major categories (dark orange - copper, dark green - iron, yellow - caterium, tan - limestone, everything else is folded into one of the bigger 4). Cyan is the destination/storage hub (and contains aluminum/nitrogen stuff)

[supple mural]

oh, interesting

maybe i could have gotten that with a few more hours of sleep and/or experience in decoding meanings

[keen flame]

My current challenge is actually figuring out where to place each facility on the map and interconnect them. they're generally organized so that they don't ahve to feed across the map...but that puts the major processing in the center...which is the worst spot for water XD

(I need 122k cubic m of water/min for that)

[supple mural]

there's a few pools in the red forrest

might need some generous overlcocking of extractors though

[keen flame]

With overclocking, I think I might be able to do it. there's a pretty substantially sized lake there

but that's also a huge power requirement for it. Can supplement it with resource wells but that only accounts for about 50 extractor's worth of water

[languid depot]

help please

[keen flame]

the main lake can fit about half of the necessary extractors if it's packed to the gills

[keen flame]

try #old-questions-and-help

[languid depot]

okey

[oblique hollow]

help theres too many cable alts xd

[fierce ruin]

why not just make a tech tree with ratios that update values based on paremeters given?

[oblique hollow]

as if i would program anything

thats reserved for my job and other hobbies

[fierce ruin]

spreadsheets and draw io bro

[oblique hollow]

nah thanks

also i have no idea how that would work with ALL alts for one recipe

[cold light]

I have the feeling that, after unlocking most alternate recipes

you barely need Plastic anymore

[loud heron]

Actually

Its more like you wanna substitute everything with oil as much as possible

because you need very little oil vs alot of raw metal/solids

[glacial hemlock]

@wind spade interesting.... hmm😆 rounding error?

[loud heron]

Probably the awkward ratios of your inputs

doesnt exactly equal 6000

The machines also dont go past 2 decimal points for under/overclocking

so also probably contributes to the rounding

[naive ingot]

Is my perception wrong, or is the Turbo Pressure Motor recepie a bad choice?

[loud heron]

Its alot more complicated imo lol

[naive ingot]

But from an economic perspective, it seems like it's using more Bauxite than the base recipe.

[loud heron]

You might be right?

[naive ingot]

I'm fine with a more complex recipe if it uses less of the bottleneck resources overall.

[loud heron]

Its alot more radio control units, but its also removing cooling systems as an aluminum use

Someone would have to do the math plz

Its 11:42 and I cannot calculate the total alu usage half asleep

[naive ingot]

Point, it's 2:42 here, I ought to get sleep and do math on a fresh brain.

[loud heron]

according to the wiki

"Turbo Pressure Motor: Uses a lot of Nitrogen Gas, as well as increasing the requirement for most raw resources, especially Bauxite and Coal. More complex than the default recipe or Turbo Electric Motor, giving no reason to use it over either recipe"

So yeah I guess its a pretty bad recipe overall

[naive ingot]

Okay, so definitely not just my imagination then.

[worthy copper]

@wind spade I'm taking a crack at some awesome point-optimized factories using your calculator and well, i'm making it do some big calculations.
But that's not why I'm pinging you. I found some trends that I think shouldn't be happening when doing this optimization, coming back to the infamous 'maximize' function.
It looks like the maximize function, when placed in a factory constrained by several other production requirements, won't actually find the global maximum .
example using uranium+plutonium fuel rod production (nuclear waste is incorporated as an input) + thermal propulsion rockets at 88.9/min https://u4.satisfactorytools.com/production?share=mcMD9nJ1Jyw117Ux4LTR
It produces 84.47 assembly director systems/min via the 'maximize' function. What's interesting is if you bump the thermal propulsion rockets to either 90/min or 88.8/min, the assembly director systems produced goes down for both changes, which shouldn't be happening. Lowering the rockets to 88.8/min should allow increased production of the systems instead.
Second example: Putting assembly director systems in as an items/min entry instead of maximize, which lets them get to 86/min (possibly higher)
https://u4.satisfactorytools.com/production?share=2FCeN5TK6ZwDiY2pk2HH
This is notably greater than anything the maximize function has given for the same constraints which suggests something to be... off.
If this has been reported already I'm sorry but I figure there's a chance this is a new find. (or i'm missing something about the maximize function again)

The graph render getting screwy is... acceptable.I understand if it's getting angry at me for making it render >50 boxes
a more extreme example where I set thermal propulsion rockets to 69, maximize gives me 153.20 director systems/min while using items/min lets me get up to 203

[naive ingot]

I've got the Turbo Electric Motor recepie and have been using that.

[loud heron]

Ive been using the basic recipe

if only because I dont have any existing ECR factories

[naive ingot]

Turbo Electric Motor goes nicely with the Electric Motor alt.

[loud heron]

Im inclined to agree

if only because it eliminates the entire chain for steel

oh no wait

Just uses LESS steel

[naive ingot]

You can get it to use a lot less steel, depending on your rotor and stator recipes.

[loud heron]

Id wager greenys tool would tell

Apparently it prefers Rigour motors

[worthy copper]

greeny's tool is very good. The maximize function has had some issues (and still does, if I'm not missing anything major with what I just saw), but using it in items/min mode it pretty much always picks the best recipes possible for what you want

[loud heron]

according to this the most efficient motor factory basically uses every metal possible lol

including quartz and water and oil

All that for the best motor

[worthy copper]

I believe it weights the 'importance' of raw materials by availability on the map, which makes it like coated steel plates because the fractions of oil/coal use are so small that its uses a smaller % of the total maps resources (accounting for rarity) than the base iron plate recipe

it also handles getting constrained by resource maximums, and can shift around and even mix/match alt recipes to handle that

[loud heron]

So yeah Electric motors are not the most efficient

but just most convenient

I do wish there was a setting on this tool for most convenient and most efficient, with a slider lol

I suppose just eliminating oil makes it use ECRs

[worthy copper]

would need a way to quantify 'convenience' but it'd probably be minimizing the number of processing steps/buildings to be built

[loud heron]

Least amount of machines

or least amount of resource TYPES

[worthy copper]

if there's a resource you just dont want to deal with you can set its quantity in the raw resources to 0

so the functionality is... sort of there

[loud heron]

Yep

[topaz hedge]

hm... apparently this is all the plastic I can make from 1200 resin/min... that seems a little low D: .. I've been kind of burnt out a bit.. I'm looking for ways to produce something new in my world.. and the limiting factors I have to work out are aluminum and rubber :/

[loud heron]

It is residual plastic

[worthy copper]

makign rubber/plastic efficiently relies on abuse of the recycling recipes with diluted fuel pretty much

[loud heron]

definition of residual

[bleak coral]

maximum turbomotors gets weird, cause it has to start balancing a bunch of different rare resources

I think max uses a mix of electric and something else

[frigid cloud]

What am I supposed to do when I definitely stored my game last night and they disappeared today.

[topaz hedge]

Yeah, That's how much plastic I'd have if I switched my whole plant to produce rubber. :/

Although I'm not using plastic for anything but steel coated plates.. still xD

[loud heron]

Im still not used to getting oil around places

Im not sure how to use trains to their full efficiency for a macroscale SF economy

[worthy copper]

I'm trying to use the calculator to maximize awesome points for 0.4 cause i dont have access to the linear program that one dude on reddit made. Currently working my way along the balance of thermal propulsion rockets and assembly director systems. until i hit a local maximum there

[loud heron]

Im still stuck in the dunes and havent touched like a good 2/3s of its nodes

[frigid cloud]

What am I supposed to do when I definitely stored my game last night and they disappeared today.

[bleak coral]

btw wolfgrim I fixed my turbofuel tower, it had a number of issues lol

[frigid cloud]

guys help me pls

[worthy copper]

currently working on the assumption assembly director systems is an overall more efficient use of resources for points than nuclear pasta

[keen flame]

so I figured out how to use walkways to do some really neat foundation shenanigans 😄

[bleak coral]

@frigid cloud #old-questions-and-help

[loud heron]

The fuck

[frigid cloud]

ok

[topaz hedge]

Yay!

I dunno though. I was looking at making turbomotors and thermal rockets, mostly using defaults, or making assembly directors, using the OC supercomputer alt. both require quite a bit of rubber and aluminum, although I could probably make some changes, switch setups to make rubber than plastic, and boost the production quite a bit.

What was wrong with it lund?

[bleak coral]

problems in order of badness:

1. max 300 TF line using mk1 needed to be upgraded to mk2
2. pumps in the middle of the manifold, this apparently just doesn't work, don't understand why but switching to a waterfall system fixed that
3. max 300 mk1 oil line feeding my rubber/HOR refineries needed to be upgraded to mk2 (I just upgraded everything at this point to be safe)
4. some old rounded-up clockspeeds that were overconsuming things cause back then I figured with it scaling it'd never come up, so made them accurate with decimals

[topaz hedge]

That'll do it.. nothing too major then

[bleak coral]

oh and problems 3 & 4 took like 4 - 6hours to show up too, so I thought I was done and had to go back lol

[topaz hedge]

Yeah, come to think of it I had a few issues like that with my setup when u4 hit... it took a week and like 30 hours of playtime for it to show that it even had a problem (Sometimes I don't have a life, or just leave the game running >.>)

[bleak coral]

biggest lesson for both TF plants: don't put pumps in the middle of manifolds

[topaz hedge]

Speaking of fluid issues, how about this? lol

[bleak coral]

it fucks it up somehow, probably something to do with "pushing" the fluids or being one way doors or something

[topaz hedge]

Yeah, I dunno tbh. the best way I think, and this prevented me from having most issues I think, is my setup is uh.. well,

[bleak coral]

what's weird about this?

[topaz hedge]

I pretty much pump the fluid up +300m and then drop it down another 250 meters into my fuel gen platform

Well, the werid thing is.. those pipes arn't full

Maybe this is the bug people have been talking about where fluids dissappear in pipes/machines when the save is loaded? I dunno.. they used to be full.

[bleak coral]

oh huh, yeah that's a weird one

I try not to think too hard about it if it's working though

[topaz hedge]

That's my setup.. the turbofuel setup is in northern forest at the oil nodes there... and I pump the turbofuel up the waterfall, across red forest and then it drops way down into grasslands lol