rule
my factory is terribly optimized, if you could even consider it optimized at all.
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View original on lemmy.zipmy factory is terribly optimized, if you could even consider it optimized at all.
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A small amount of work and you would have Saddam's hiding spot.
Or Loss. I opened this fully expecting to find Loss buried somewhere in it.
Keep it burried with Saddam. That's where that meme belongs.
It has always fascinated me that people come home eager to play digital work simulations for recreation.
I don't know this game though. So maybe this is off topic.
It's factorio, a game where the goal is take raw materials from a planet you crash landed on and eventually process them into parts to build a rocket off the planet. There are a lot of intermediate steps to get there of course, and while it is possible to craft straight out of the inventory, automation is practically required in order to actually process everything required in your lifetime.
I'd like to add that this game feels very polished and accessible, thanks to its developers. There's also a free demo which got me absolutely hooked (and a very reasonable price for the full game)
It's also the only game I'm aware to have a "never goes on sale" stance from the developers. So if you like it, there's never a reason to wait for a sale.
I'm also fascinated. I think a big part of it is coming home to tasks that are low stakes, guaranteed solvable and made fun to solve.
Gives some much needed stimulation of your job is to solve complex tasks which are high stakes, not guaranteed solvable and which require lots of effort for little reward.
not to mention that the tools at your disposal for stuff like this makes the job easier instead of harder. it's like only the fun parts of the job.
i have an acquaintance who's a farmer and plays faming sim on his off hours.
Autonomy coupled with genuine interest in the subject.
For me, it's like how people played with train sets in the 40s.
You're just watching the system go. You fix some things here and there. There's no reward, besides intrinsic dopamine boosts. And little to no failure. Except from outsiders who mock it.
It's Factorio, and it's pretty good at giving you little dopamine hits as you complete smaller automation goals and expand.
As for people who play "work" games in their free time, the joy is often that they're doing it on their own terms. It's like how some car mechanics have a restoration/project car at home, or professional programmers make their own things.
With factorio, you get a feeling that "the factory must grow". You start off really simple by placing a miner, that spews out raw ore onto a belt, that gets smelted into plates, which then make some product. 5 small buildings that "do stuff". You watch how the little machines feed the ore into a smelter, the plates coming out, then it turn into a cog or something.
You're happy, but you notice that there is some inefficiency. The smelter doesn't keep up with the smelting, the cogs eat all the material, the raw material keeps piling up. It isn't "nice" to look at anymore. So now you have a problem to solve. You just add like 15 smelters right?
But now, there isn't enough raw material production, and 10 smelters sit unused because the belt that the raw material sits on is too slow, and the mines don't work because they can't output fast enough (they get clogged by the pileup). So you make the mines output go into two belts that face one or the other. But if you make more of them, you get the same issue again. So what you do is you make a system that balances the output - distributes the material equally among the smelters.
But then you make too many plates and everything stops, so you need more consumers on the other side, more "factory" that eats all of that up.
Factorio does all of that seamlessly and makes you want to build more and more. It's incredibly addictive, makes you face new problems over and over again and solving them is incredibly satisfying.
The greatest feeling is starting the game, doing stuff for a couple of hours, learning (or remembering) the game, comming back to a section of the factory you started at the very beginning, which now looks like a total mess, deleting it and redoing it to a "perfect" standard.
Except there is no such thing as perfect, so you come back to that part again after a few hours, and redo that into "perfection" again. And again, and again.
I never delete the old parts, I just build around them. It's like a Factorio Nuzlocke challenge.
Try using two lanes for every route, it makes it easier for the trains to find the fastest route
Two lanes everywhere is the simplest and most conventional solution for this. But I might be tempted to just make the big loop one-way and turn it into a massive roundabout
Following my comment, I usually use a modular design with blocks connected using two lanes and a roundabout to connect the lanes:
Yup, the image isn’t loading for me, but this is the way. Establish blocks with uniform size, so you can simply stamp them down. The nice part about this is that you can easily create loops without needing to worry about whether or not the ends will meet up; Since they’re all the same size, it’s just making a big grid.
And yeah, 100% use two lanes. Train path finding is odd, and having two separate lanes for bidirectional travel is extremely important as your factory gets larger.
I usually incorporate power lines and logistic bot ports in the designs too, so that I don’t need to worry about running those separately. Space the grid out so it coincides with your logistics bot coverage. You just blueprint it out, and then your logistics automatically expands to cover it and build it out as soon as the roboports and power lines get placed.
Lastly, establishing a standardized train size will help with being able to stamp down train depots. If all of your trains are 2 engines and 8 cars, you can design your depots to account for that standard size. Then just include a spot for inputs or outputs (and a few places for waiting trains) and you’ll be golden.
For instance, I usually had four balanced blue conveyor belts of input for my pickup depot. Two train stations with the same name (so trains can pick whichever one is available) and two more spaces for waiting trains. So a single station can have up to four trains loading/waiting for pickup, and they’ll load as fast as the four blue belts will carry inputs. I simply tie my inputs into those balanced belts, and the blueprint handles the rest. Something like this, except I normally use two single-sided pickup stations instead of a single double-sided station:
Sorry for the image not loading, it seems like catbox stopped working for a while, these images should work.
This image shows my current setup for making yellow and purple science, it is not yet optimized because I'm still at gleba. My idea is just using rare or higher tier elements for making science,
I already use different blocks for different purposes, this image shows my science block right next to the station block,
Finally, the design limits my current maximum train size to two wagons, for my copper mine I use one line to load chests that then load into the train for maximum throughput as long as there is a sufficient delay between trains,
Definitely needs more train signals to increase throughput over the straight sections. Otherwise, the network design is far more creative than the city blocks I use as a crutch!
I'd caveat this by saying more signals is best done with two lanes. For two-way single-lane track you need everything in one signalling block to avoid gridlocks
I was trying to find the Loss pattern.
I need help.
I thought this was a Valetudo map for a long while and was confused as to why it was posted.
this likely happened because the train saw that the fastest path was occupied at the time so it rerouted to a longer but unoccupied path