For factorio gurus out there: how do you guys approach quality? I am trying to understand good ways to do legendary items for my base but can't quite figure out if I'm getting something wrong or legendary output is just slow.

Is upcycling dense items a generally good solution? I feel like my quality builds get quite massive trying to upcycle stuff but legendary quality output is still not high enough

I don't have a lot of time in Factorio but I made this little setup to research Green and Red stuff

the seed:
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This seed features an island in the center surrounded by water, with two narrow entry points that are easy to defend against biters. All essential resources can be found right on the island.
"The only thing missing is uranium :<" and there’s just one small biter nest nearby. I hope you enjoy it for your playthrough!

Or if you know where I can find a bunch to choose from, that would be great too. Looking for vanilla, no mods

Using only rail signals, would chain signals be better somewhere and why? Slowly learning train signals.

Why is the rail signal always red there
(This is my first play through and I tied looking at the tutorials but it doesn’t work :(

The filter is off but the collector is still set to collect oxide asteroid chunk.

works for the insterters though

"set filters" is on.

I've also checked to make sure the input and outputs of the decider combinators are not crossed.

EDIT: Solved I just needed to toggle the "G" off.

Even better when it's like perfectly ratio'd too ahhh

I am really bad at making these. Now to organize and make it more space efficient so that I can actually move shit around.

Been playing since last year, sunk enough hours of my life to be on my 9th long-running save. Initially it was painfully fun to end up in an unrecoverable mess with my base or be swarmed by the bugs, and I got to restart and spend the next 3 months with better planning from the get-go

5th save game, explored the Vulcanus gameplay but got it so wrong I just restarted instead of changing everything. Next game I got so much done on Vulcanus, was shipping so much orange science back home that I had an overflow issue, massive MASSIVE chip and petrochemical factory on Vulcanus. Got the artillery turrets but Nauvis was already thoroughly conquered so it didn't give me the same kick as unlocking lasers does.

And for the last 5 saves I've been going for Deathworld Marathons with Lakes, and a mod for ships and airplanes. Either the game becomes too easy after a point that it's just management 101, or its too difficult that I'm scrambling for heavy ammo supplies while my copper mines run dry and all new copper mines need me to defeat 3 large nests to even unlock the Tank.

It's a bit disappointing either way when I find myself stagnating from success or failure, but it honestly feels fun to restart and grind through a very different map and resource allocation, going for different prioritisations of various aspects of the game.

And I'm realising I'm unhealthily addicted to the early to mid game where the constraints are extreme (I do that to myself with the Deathworld Marathon), and the time I went back to an easier game I just got bored after hitting purple science.

What flavor of unhealthy fixations does your Factorio gameplay take?

First question: is it good?

I've played vanilla (~60 hours) and space age (~200 hours), absolutely loved them both and really want something to sink my teeth into: cue space exploration.

Second question: is there any cross over between SA and SE, ie do any SA planets appear in SE?

Third question: I like the idea of using AI agents, so have 2 or 3 AI players and give them instructions like "mine X" or "build XYZ" or place a blueprint and instruct them to build. Is there a program or something out there that allows you to do this?

Would be interested to hear other players' experiences. I have done some research and have a general idea but want to hear straight from the horses' (or fellow engineers') mouth.

TIA.

In Factorio, when playing in the editor, are enemy biters the only ones that expand and grow their bases?

I've tried testing with the Player and Natural forces, but they don't seem to do anything similar. Does anyone know if other forces can also expand or grow their bases, or is this behavior exclusive to enemy biters?

I still need to improve to get good at spaghettification, but it’s a good start, right? It’s time to tear everything down and improve it all.

I don't think I've ever done Fulgora completely without bots, but this proved to be way more fun than I thought!

I've still got some quality items sorted away in provider chests so I can drop in and make a few nice quality items early/mid game, but otherwise the base runs completely without bots! Belt stacking and turbo belts made this a dream to run. Things got a little jank in some parts, but overall this base both runs pretty well and looks pretty good IMO!

I'll leave a pic of the base at night too in the comments - I went pretty ham with the lamps, so the night view is kinda nice

New to this, really like it, just that i don't seem to have any tools to plan ahead of time, so things i make get messy until it gets too hard to optimize and i just give up

is there anything that could help me?

I’ve often seen in videos—including guides from Factorio itself—that gameplay takes place in a completely empty world where there’s nothing else around. My question is: how do you create such a world, or how can you get into one during a regular playthrough?

Hi!

I was trying to design a clock using belts, stones and circuit logic, but I think I'm missing something.

I planned to use the known speed of the belts to have an estimate of the time elapsed. For example, the wiki says that turbo belts have a speed of 7.5 tiles/s. This means that 30 tiles are travelled in 4s.

I tried to design a clock that has the precision of 4 seconds (the blueprint is at the end of the post) but it seems to be a bit faster than expected. Am I missing something?

I guess that the speed is only an averge/estimate speed, and it can change based on pc specs. Is that the case? Also, do you know if there is a reliable way to check the time elapsed in-game?

EDIT:

Problem solved. The main take-aways are:

- You can design a clock by looping an arithmetic combinator into itself (see Sethbreloom94 answer)

- Belt speed is correct only for straight belts. When belt curve, the speed of the two sides changes.

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It's that time again! I'm giving away another copy of Factorio.

Ever wanted to turn a peaceful alien planet into a sprawling industrial nightmare of conveyor belts, pollution, and questionable engineering decisions?

Well, here's your chance to lose 500 hours of your life while convincing yourself you'll just fix one more thing before bed.

Enter here: https://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/e4pmd/

I made a mini factory that takes raw material (iron, copper, coal, crude and water) and turns it into both bots at a speed of 0.24 for both bots. I know its not exaclty the fastest by any means, but its meant to be a starter, for that early game slump before you gets bots really going. Roboport not included, but i may fix that in the future Edit: theres a single mod requirement (bobs adjustable insterters)

https://reddit.com/link/1x89eyg/video/8vxn6exip0wh1/player

Basically, i was experimenting with fulgora shenanigans, and realize that, since there is no pollution on fulgora, bitters probably won´t atack any player building..., except for vehicles and turrets. Sooo.... i was right.

If you put two cars close to each other, so the bitter doesnt have to move to atack both, once one of them is destroyed, the bitter inmediatly changes objective to the other, and as long as you space this voiding modules enough, you can have as many as you want.

To have a reference, with 180 bitters my unit time is about 0.2 miliseconds. its so low beacuse the ai doesnt need to make calculations if the bitter is atacking a current objective, and as it finds it´s next one inmediatly, this calculations only happen for a tick.

I am using a rare bitter, beacuse with this train to recicler config, and direct inserction to chemical plants, it is just fast enough so the car doesnt fill up, but it reaches higher fullnes before being destroyed, so keep in mind you will have to use another quality bitter if you want to run this on other configuration.

Also behemooth bitters dont work because of their atack speed, its so low they always target the same car, so overall output is reduced.

This is great for setups where you want to first void everything, and then get whatever you need out.

In my case im getting the holmium, stone and batteries, from 18 modules, and from some of them, lds, pu and ice. Then i use molten metals to produce what i need for about 105k science/min with only 18 bitters, from one single scrap patch, though i need to import molten iron, copper, plastic and cars, but it is up to you, you can make it fully independent

This is my blueprint for the 105K island. To place the bitter in, you put an egg between the cars close to the cargo wagon, and super important, once the bitter hatch,

NEVER GET CLOSE TO THEM!

https://factorioprints.com/view/-P48rJ418GiKhPmAcOj-

Robot speed is at lvl 30 and scrap recicling and rocket fuel prodcutivity at +300%. Mining prod is trough the roof.

Have fun enslaving nauvis natives in fulgora.

I'm at the point where my mining productivity has reached level 11 and I have big miners with level two productivity modules

I have access to fields of resources that exceed 12 to 15 million

Is there a certain point where it does feel like resources are unlimited because of the exponential point of productivity

I've always heard that late game that resources are practically infinite because of the use of productivity, but I feel like I have been running out of resource patches and I'm wondering if I have not hit that point yet or if I am not using modules and strategies correctly

(Another mall for logistic stuff & assemblers is on 2nd pic)

Took some inspiration from this one regarding the pattern of gaps and assemblers, but decided to do my own thing anyway. Maybe a 4th column of assemblers would be better for my needs too, but it needs more planning to be useful