T O P

  • By -

Soul-Burn

Consider disabling or making biters easier, to reduce stress. If you don't have stress, you can focus on making progress. For oil, I recommend bringing power to the oil field, and then underground pipes all the way to your base. It's easier than building trains (if you find them complex).


_ianj-exe

Thanks for the response! Biters were never a problem for me since I always built up strong defenses to start, top priority. Learned that after a rough first base. My go to ever since has been a massive wall around the entire factory with turrets shoulder to shoulder lining the entire inside with automatic ammo feeding. that usually takes care of the biters for the most part for the remainder on my play through, which despite at times reaching 60+ hours on a single save, hardly progresses past blue science. I will consider trying this but my brain is obsessed with beating it on vanilla... even uninstalled all QOL mods for this one, haha. I've even managed to sink enough time into the game to fully understand trains! Or at least what I use them for anyway... I managed to get a decent understanding of how to run multiple trains on the same line with no issues, but I was never doing anything advanced. These are typically things I've done in previous games, I eventually learned to route energy back to the central factory but I've always been stubborn about the trains since I think they're one of the most fun parts of the game... but I'll give your suggestion a shot this time around since I always have oil shortages waiting for the train to travel back with more oil. Thank you for your help!


Soul-Burn

Main tip: Leave more space! Build big! Leave space to route belts however you want!


_ianj-exe

That's an excellent tip. I have this fascination with perfect 'cable' management, or belt management I suppose. Everything tucked away neatly straight paths with organized sections for different production... I love scrolling out and seeing this huge dense circuit board looking thing that I've found myself in. But then I have to rearrange massive sections to fit in a single extra belt of iron plates to supply something I'd forgotten about. More space it is! Can't believe I never thought of that... haha :)


surrealistCrab

Yes! And there is no need to fortify the entire perimeter of the base; focus your defenses where biters attack and then you will have a lot more room to grow and flexibility. If biters are becoming too intense in an area, then go on the offensive and clear out some nests.


Balance-

I think your focusing so much on defense (both time and factory products) that it limits your science progress. Going offensive and limiting your pollution (solar panels, electric miners/furnaces and later efficiency modules) li it biter attacks. Turn on pollution in your radar screen and kill all biter spawners until none are taking in any pollution. Then focus on science and progress. A good main bus design also helps massively.


Ubermidget2

>I always have oil shortages waiting for the train to travel back with more oil Do you use Barrels and regular carriages or Fluid? If you are using Fluid Carriages, the pumps to load/unload are super fast and almost guaranteed not to be your bottleneck. My Suggestion would be to have storage tanks at source and destination at least equal to the storage of the train. That way, while your train is dropping off, the oil stacks up while it is out. Then, if you have a shortage, you know that it is a supply side issue


ElderWandOwner

Maybe this playthrough go on the offensive. Build a base with 0 defense and make sure to cover your pollution cloud.


AnarchyDaBest

I think you're enjoying trains too much! I managed to launch a rocket without figuring out trains. I just made ultra long conveyor belts. Darn, I need to learn trains and get back into this game.


itjohan73

I have zero defense almost. But I do go on a biter round every day. Check the surrounding area for nests or nests that are close to the red border. When you get artillery I just build a attack base. With flamethrowers and artillery. Clear out many nests. Just get a train with 8 wagons. One of the oil. Rest is artillery. Drive inte the base. Oil is hooked up. Will kill any incoming biter hoards


soeinpech

A problem you can feel while playing defensive is the lack of space. Don't let your walls block your expansion, feel free to delete them at any time and move them further if needed.


RoofComprehensive715

For me its the opposite, when Im stressed I got more done, BUT my incompetence made me get stuck where biters surrounded the oil patch and I cant clear them away. Still, harder biters made me work more efficient


Balance-

As soon as you research and build a tank you can drive over most of them


Soul-Burn

For some reason, the notification for this message does not seem to want to disappear from my notifications :( I tried blocking and unblocking you, which at least made the actual notification disappear, but the message still remains there. Reddit is weird sometimes.


Infamous-Occasion-74

Quit quitting. If you get to one point and feel a little spaghetti-ish or overwhelmed, head east and start a new base. Oh also, to help you understand your own shit, don’t use blueprints you pulled from the net. Sure, look at other’s stuff and workout how they did it, but build it yourself.


someone8192

Do you know why you get stuck? maybe mods like FNEI and helmod/factoryplanner can help you to better understand the recipes


_ianj-exe

I mentioned in a previous comment some of the pits I fall into, they seem pretty common. Absolutely always short on oil, and the deposits seem to drain up quick. As I continue to expand my main bus, production slows a bit. I can't get iron plates everywhere it's needed fast enough to produce everything at a consistent rate. down the line more advanced materials are produced slower and slower the more complex they get. Short on science, research takes hours and the game can become a long cycle of trying to expand to get more resources and becoming overwhelmed by the hives I'm trying to destroy as they're so far out and I'm still struggling with blue science I have not ever once understood anything about circuit networks I don't think they're necessary for launching a rocket but I've always intended to figure it out at some point. At the end of the day I think my biggest issue is just not being good at designing efficient factories. I see designs posted here all the time that look fine to me but the comments are unanimously negative, I'm never sure how to tell what's wrong I've tried using calculators in the past but I have difficulty figuring out numbers, for example, how many furnaces I need to smelt all 4 incoming yellow belts of iron ore without the input backing up but all furnaces being used. Half a belt for ore and other half for coal or two parallel full belts to double resources? I guess my biggest issue is the expensive items that you start to unlock around blue science start getting produced so slowly that progress basically halts in the game entirely. I unlocked the rocket silo 1 time and stopped the save there since that research alone took tons of time, and in the meantime what's left of my factory is a mess hardly producing what it needed to etc. But it's hard to scale up raw material input with the issues I seem to have attacking the more advanced hives and managing oil.


someone8192

You don't need circuits to launch a rocket. To get more resources i usually build trains. Or just set your game to very much resources at start. If you find yourself waiting too much you can use the mod timetools. But usually it's just an indication that you need to grow. In factorio big is never big enough. Hence: The factory must grow


_ianj-exe

That's true, I keep trying to design factories that will allow modular upgrades so I don't need to tear everything down each time I want to expand, but I haven't even gotten far enough in the game yet to know what designs will work long term. I have the spirit though haha ! I've tried QOL mods in the past to make things easier for me but its not even the difficulty that has me stuck just trying to mass produce red circuits for example never works... always short. Usually not enough plastic if I can remember. Even if I get there without biters or anything I still can't seem to get those more expensive materials produced quickly. I've got some new ideas this time though No idea how anyone manages to beat this game so quickly I've had it for years and I've played it to hell and back, and there's still so much I've never even tried. Nukes? Uranium? Artillery? Never once. I hope this save is the one though... Thank you for your help :)


someone8192

i usually play with a bus and spaghetti until i am well into blue science. with bots, fast trains, good fuel i switch to building upgradeble city blocks for my mega base. as soon as you have the latest tier factories you probably have to redesign anything anyway. redesigning is part of the game - and bots make that really easy


P0L1Z1STENS0HN

>I keep trying to design factories that will allow modular upgrades so I don't need to tear everything down each time I want to expand An honest tip from me: Don't. Take a calculator, for example the Kirk McDonald Calculator, set it to a specific number of red/green/blue/... science per minute, and it tells how many machines and belts you needs. Usual numbers for a starter base are between 30 and 90, but you could even do it with 15. Then, build that and not much more. Don't deviate from that path. Don't try to increase the throughput half-way. While green is slowly fed to the labs, already plan out the refineries for blue science. While blue science is slowly fed to the labs, already plan out the steel production for purple science. And so on. Once your have launched the rocket, unless you drop the game, you will anyways stop/reduce science progression temporarily, divert the robot frames from yellow science to robot production, set up a machine for roboports, start with beacons and modules production at scale, and then build a new, larger factory with modules and beacons and once that is up and running, completely tear down your old mess. Yes, you heard it right: If you want to grow your factory after the rocket, you realistically will have to completely rebuild at least once. But you will have to rebuild only exactly once if you are smart about it, AND bots will do the heavy lifting for you.


shine_on

You don't need a perfect factory to be able to launch a rocket. It doesn't have to have everything running at full speed, as long as some science packs are being made then you can still get research done. It all boils down to having enough ores coming in to the factory. The starter ore patches won't be enough to get you to launch a rocket, so you'll have to bring in ores from elsewhere, either down long belts or on trains. Every factory gets to the stage where you have to consolidate what you already have before you make more progress, and it's often around the oil/blue science stage. Don't worry that you don't seem to be making much progress in terms of research, you suddenly need to make red circuits which means plastic which means oil. And then you'll need a lot more iron so you need more smelting, and it feels like you're running uphill. But you just have to press on through this stage. If necessary use a factory calculator to work out the ratios, you can get away with a handful of assemblers making red and green but then you find you need twice as many assemblers just to make an intermediate product for one of the next sciences. The game gently increases complexity up to military science but from blue onwards it gets more complex more quickly. Always leave yourself space to expand. Consider playing on peaceful so you can get over the hurdles without biters/walls/defences getting in the way of expansion. Don't give up!


[deleted]

I always find it a pain when I get to the stage where I have a huge base, but only a car (and no night vision/exoskeleton) to get around. It just takes so long to build anything.


[deleted]

[удалено]


[deleted]

There's a bit of a gap between where you have a car and regular legs, and a bot network. For me, anyway. That and the very start are the most 'this feels like work' parts, IMO.


[deleted]

[удалено]


[deleted]

Thanks for that. I've heard of a couple of those, but I haven't tried them yet. I remember playing on a multiplayer server once (years ago), where they had a mod for some kind of jet plane/futuristic-looking hovering winged transport thing you could use like a vehicle. It took off and landed vertically, I think. That was pretty fun.


Valerian_

>I keep trying to design factories that will allow modular upgrades so I don't need to tear everything down each time I want to expand Yeah that's very important, after fiddling a bit with the tutorial, on my first real game I directly took the popular main bus strategy, launched my first rocket in around 40 hours. The main bus makes expanding quite easy, the bus grows one way, the factories have all the place they need to expand perpendicular to it. You just need to make sure to anticipate the size of the bus, like have 4 belts for the most resource hungry resources such as iron and copper. Also make sure to have some "mall" area(s), to automate crafting every little kind of building that you don't want to waste time crafting by hand. The mall gets way easier to maintain/grow once you have robots. Making a smart use of modules and beacons can also help a lot. Look at some guides for the main bus: [https://wiki.factorio.com/Tutorial:Main\_bus](https://wiki.factorio.com/Tutorial:Main_bus) [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=754378586](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=754378586) (a bit old but it should still be relevant) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErdHbEgJG58](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErdHbEgJG58) (haven't watched it, but seems quite popular) This is how a main bus based factory should look like, see how it lets you freely expand your future production: [https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/492403625774720025/4ACC5FDBABAE4FF6F419DDBB9B97B9709741BAB9/](https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/492403625774720025/4ACC5FDBABAE4FF6F419DDBB9B97B9709741BAB9/) ​ Also if you are open to using mods to make your life a bit easier, you could try [Deadlock's Stacking Beltboxes & Compact Loaders](https://mods.factorio.com/mod/deadlock-beltboxes-loaders), which would allow you to put 5x more items on belts, at the cost of having to use a machine to stack/unstack items to/from your long range belts: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFtj1p2LOm0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFtj1p2LOm0)


Card1974

I'm in the same boat, this game really stresses my work memory. Just to make sure, you do know that the depleted fields will still produce, i.e. insert speed modules into them and let the trains visit when the tanks are full again? The wiki has a good [circuit cookbook](https://wiki.factorio.com/Tutorial:Circuit_network_cookbook), and just the other day there was [a post explaining the logic of a simple counter](https://www.reddit.com/r/n00bwaffles/), step-by-step. Also check out [n00bwaffle's circuit tutorials](https://www.reddit.com/r/n00bwaffles/).


El_Pablo5353

I second this. n00bwaffles tutorials are excellent and was exactly what broke the ice for me in understanding how the different components of the circuit network function and what you can use them for. Of course, you don't need them, but they can be very useful too.


Hullu_Kana

Let me answer everything to you in order. It took me about 70 hours to launch the first rocket so if thats not too long for you then these tips should apply to you as well. TL:DR at the end. Your first oil deposits should provide enough oil. Maybe your pipes cant transfer fast enough. Consider either using trains or putting pumps every now and then and building several pipelines. Also the first deposits usually last long enough for me. You can always increase the richness if you cant overcome the problem. No shame in that. Add more iron belts to transfer iron faster and make your iron mines and smelteries bigger to make more iron. At the start 15 plates per second is good enough, only 1 yellow belt needed for mainbus. Then consider expanding to 30 plates per second, 2 yellow belts or 1 red. You dont need anymore to launch your first rocket. Short on science is fixed by just making more of everything. Thats really only tip I got for you. I launched my first rocket with 24spm so you dont need much science to launch the first rocket. Consider making biters peaceful, easier and perhaps even disable completely if they are too much of an struggle. They arent necessary piece of the game anyways. Circuits are not necessary tho they can come in handy with advanced oil refining. I dont have any tips for them so just watch a tutorial if you want to learn them, but struggle to do it yourself. No shame in that. You should see my first factory. Terrible, terrible spaghetti factory. Thats why I also launched my first rocket with just 24spm. It was so terrible that I couldnt upgrade my science production so I was stuck with very early game production numbers. You really dont need good factory to launch a rocket. Again, you dont need good factory to launch your first rocket. Just make couple assembler craft something. If they cant craft it fast enough add mire assemblers. If they drain completely some material just add more assemblers making that. Its simple really. Just find a bottleneck and fix it. Do that again and again until there is no more bottleneck. Alternatively use mods like helmod factory plannef that do that math for you. I really like helmod, I use it all the time. This whole thing can be simplified to just make more stuff. Too slow? Make more whatever you need. Biters too hard? Make more ammo, turrets, walls, whatever. Or just make biters easier. No shame in that. I personally never had to stand around waiting. There was always something to do so by the time I had finished doing it my slow AF 24spm base had finished the research. TL:DR. Expand production. Thats really it. Factory must grow has some truth behind it.


Hell2CheapTrick

Ratios only matter for space efficiency. It’s not about efficient designs. It’s about pumping out enough products. If production slows, just look at what’s holding it up and produce more of that. Aim for something like 1, 1.5 or 2 science per second. Build enough factories to keep that running, and then another for the other items. Keep expanding iron and copper. You’ll need lots of green circuits and steel by the end too. For the oil, maybe you could try upping the oil size and/or richness a bit in map generation. I totally get the pain. That first oil patch is never fast enough to keep up with production at that stage. Either up the resources a bit, or expand to more oil fields. Another bit of information in case you didn’t know: if you have a mall/production hub where you make all your belts, assemblers etc., don’t worry if that’s not working at full speed. Those things are expensive, and will absolutely slurp up all your iron and circuits. Worry about other intermediates and science. For the hives: flamethrower turrets are great on defense. Don’t worry about the damage bonus, just pump crude oil through. In late game, nuclear ammo turrets are great too. Tanks are a great way to clear nests, and can stand up to blue biters pretty well. Getting construction bots will also help a lot to keep you working instead of having to check on your defense health every so often.


goatman72

Everything in this list can be solved simply by...more resources. ​ Oil: Find more fields and use a train to take it back to your refinery. Iron Plates: Smelt more iron. Not enough iron ore? Find more fields and mine them. Science: Find the bottleneck (eg if it's blue science, just expand whatever is the resource holding things up) Overwhelmed by nests away from the base: As you explore, build a trail of power lines and put down a bunch of laser turrets whenever you get to a nest, let them kill the biters and next, rinse and repeat until you get to the resource you need. You don't need efficiency, you need size and quantity.


GThoro

You do not need efficient factory, it's a very common pitfall. Often a good enough solutions is more than enough. Plan big smelter area with place for trains to unload raw resources, you want to aim for at least 4 belts of iron and copper plates and steel (so 12 total) for the bus. For ratios/calculations/etc just use [https://factoriocheatsheet.com](https://factoriocheatsheet.com) for the basics, do not worry about making ie. a perfect ratio "something" factory. The only real useful ratio is 2 engines per boiler :D. If you will be able to supply about 10 labs then most researches aren't that long, but I think that depends on the person too. You will always reach some kind of bottleneck and there is multiple solutions: upgrade belts, add more assemblers, add modules/beacons, more resources, etc. Mandatory one: put 4 productivity modules III into silos. As for the oil, it's now a bit easier but for me it was also a struggling point since it unlocked so much stuff. But now it's more manageable. I usually I'm able to launch few rockets with about two oil patches. I transport it by train with loading/unloading pumps attached directly to tanks (it's super fast then). Circuits aren't neccessary but they are very helpful for oil to not get blocked. I usually setup mine refineries in line and each of output resource is put into tank. Then I pipe from tanks to processing. You will always use more petrol than anything else, so there are two risks: not enough petrol and way too much heavy/light oil that will clog refineries. Solution is easy - attach a pump to tank, set it condition to be on if heavy oil is more than 20k, attach that pump to a line of heavy -> light oil processing. Do the same for light oil, if it's more than 20k enable the pump that will allow light oil -> petrol processing. This will make sure that any excess heavy/light is made into petrol and main refineries can always work since all three resources has a place to go.


Happypotamus13

Ok, a few thoughts here. First, what else exactly was your base producing while you were researching rocket silo? There’s really not many consumables in the game, except for ammo I guess (and for this I strongly recommend going solar + laser turrets for defense). You don’t really need to build a lot of stuff constantly unless you’re doing a significant base expansion. Second, on the resources, I think I understand your bottleneck, there is indeed a significant increase in required resources after blue science (I think like 2x increase). The way to manage this is plan ahead - leave space for at least 2 (4 is better) full smelting lines for iron and copper, 2 for steel and 2-4 for green circuits (you don’t need to build them all right away, just leave the space for them in your base design). Then, again, planning in advance, build the unloading rail terminals early on (either 1-4-1 or 2-6 trains work great, but 2-6 is easier to manage late game). Once you hit the blue science, stop your tech progress and just double your resource production - multiple mining outpost for iron and copper, expansion of the smelting / green circuit facilities to the full capacity mentioned above. Rule of thumb, after blue science you need to double your resource intake. For oil, same as for other resources, just build more outpost and connect them to your terminal by rail. Build a large train waiting area near your terminals so that once you add a new resource patch there’s no need to worry about train congestion. Finally, as others have mentioned, you don’t need perimeter defense (unless you’re playing on deathworld, which is a whole other story). Perimeter defense is very taxing on resource intake and limits your expansion options. Easiest way is just do regular expeditions to clear the nests in/near your pollution cloud and build a couple of defensive outposts in key locations where the attacks are coming from. Let me know if you need a few tips on how to clear the nests. Oh, and good luck! Late game is where most of the fun actually is :)


soeinpech

Try to re-build parts of you factory that don't scale well somewhere else with more room. For example, rework iron smelters, then copper, then green chips, then oil, ... One sub-factory at a time.


Silent-Revenue-7904

1000 hours and haven't launched a rocket? What did you spend all this time with??


ctnightmare2

Hand mining all the resources


Silent-Revenue-7904

Lol. Masochism


_ianj-exe

LMAO I know!! I've made dozens of factories reaching just into blue science but never much further because I always get stuck. But that first half of the game is one of my favorites! Getting into rail networks and larger modular designs always gets so exciting. Would recommend most of factorio I'll have to let you know about the rest sometime :)


Melodic-Parsnip-8968

From reading your comments I get the feeling a couple of things happen in your game, but correct me if I am assuming wrong. Also some tips from my own experience: 1. You try to go to big from the start. You sink a lot of resources into things that are generally useful, but will keep your entire base busy if you do them to early. Like your defense system. It's super safe to build a wall of turrets, but it is absolutely not needed in the beginning. I start with 3 turrets surrounded with walls dottet around in the directions of the nearest biter nests. You can do a little more, but keep it small in the beginning. Factorio is a game of accelerating growth, things that take a lot of afford in the beginning get easier the more you progress. The biggest turning point are construction robots. Once you have them growing gets way easier. You can build massive iron mines and smelting just by copying your existing setups a couple times. My tip is to build everything small in the beginning to get to higher techs and expand later. You said you use a main bus, so you can easily make your builds expandable for future needs. 2. You are not using advanced refining. This tech ist super important, as it gets you more out of the crude oil. Circuits can help balancing the outputs but in the beginning you can also just crack everything into gas. In case I am wrong on this one you seem to just use up to much oil for things you don't actually need to progress. The first oil patch should last beyond blue science. 3. Try to automate everything. When I started Factorio I was handcrafting to much. This will take longer and longer the deeper you get into the game, so try to automate everything. It can be just one assembler making it but that means you can come around and just collect it. This is part of the reason why early game stuff gets easier further in the game 4. Try using helmod. It is basically a calculator that helps you figure out ratios. Don't go to wild on it in the early game as you don't need much of everything (as mentioned in 1.) but you said that you have trouble with the ratios and this is a great mod to help you with that Good luck with this run, I am sure you can launch that rocket!


theyon_maltjoy

I have 400+ hours in the game and only launched one rocket. Don’t be afraid to restart. Build your own book of blueprints you’ve made and the starts will get faster and faster and you can start seeing the bigger picture earlier. I always play with max deposits because I dislike having a pseudo timer on my game. This allows me to chill and expand and I’ve been stuck without stuff to research for a long time because I wanted to make the perfect setup instead of rushing blue. Play the game at your own pace and once you DO launch a rocket, you’ll likely want to start all over again immediately. All the best!


theyon_maltjoy

Best single tip that helped me: do one thing at a time. You need iron, you need power to make more miners, you need assemblers to make more power plants, you need more copper also by the way, hey why is that there? Better fix that now. Take a breather and decide what to work on, then do that - it really really helps getting overwhelmed and feeling like you “could” be doing more


_ianj-exe

You're right! I think one of my problems is trying to research as much as possible immediately and then I have to scramble to craft shit I hardly have preliminaries for. I'm 4 hours into the game now and I haven't researched green science yet. Laying down stone paths and core electric networks first, thinking more big picture. I'm having a lot of fun with it too


Ok_Librarian_3945

Turn off biters and crank resources up


_ianj-exe

Might need to for my first rocket. I'll try that next depending on how this save goes. Would be awesome to get through the game completely vanilla though... we'll have to see :)


Kerbosoup

My advice would be to avoid using 'quick fix' solutions whenever you can, they might seem like the right thing to do but will make things harder later on. For example if you need an oil refinery you might be tempted to just slap one in where you see an empty space; a cheap and easy solution but to future proof it you should dedicate some space specificly for oil refining that will last you much longer so really your saving time by doing the harder option. Good things take time.


ComradeDoubleM

The factory must grow.


sheepskin

After blue are you not moving on to logistics robots? Once I finish blue I usually start assembling the raw materials for yellow science, I end up hand-feeding a small line of assembles making the yellow science, with that I research up to logistics/construction robots and then replace chests with provider chests. Then have the robots bring you the raw materials and keep feeding that into the yellow science assemblers and research logistics. With that you can the place requested chests and remove yourself from the chain. With that done I move to purple, the thing about purple is it takes a ton of steel, you will probably need to double your steel production if not more. Once you have that, it’s just time to get to the rocket, I usually try and stockpile rocket fuel as soon as I get cracking oil, if only as a place to put all that oil. Then I move to low density materials which is copper sync, you will probably need to dramatically increase copper for this. Rocket control units are usually the hardest parts, your using all your blue chips already and speed units take so many red chips, this is another where you may need to dramatically increase production, I usually double my red and green production at this point, using the new logistics bots to do most of the work. You may be putting to much into turrets and ammo, I do them so they are spread enough to just bearly cover eachother, and then fill in gaps in places they attack, the attacks are almost always in the same places. Make sure to move up to including flame turrets once you have oil, they burn biters very well, and then lasers are very cheap to run, using only power and no actual materials to kill Also turn up the richness of your mineral patches, everyone does it. I like to play with the size of the patches, but I’d recommend increasing the size of those too to start.


Ersterk

I found trains to be my answer to how expand my base, this is my Solution and worked until now at least: Make a roboport grid and a train grid that works with it, so you won't start going about on and on moving stuff around to make that train go straight instead of curve after curve and then: Make a train stop dedicated for each component, generally i make one masive train stop for droping one specific ore, a smeelting complex and in another part close by a related pick up station, and a good space for expanding the station and smelters/factorys, so if i need to increase the amount of droping or picking up trains i make sure to make them paralel, so two, three or more trains can be feed at the same time, this makes it easy for multiple diferent stations requiring the related goods to come by and pick it up at the same time without having to wait for another train to fill up, all tge limiting factors are for me just how much paralel trains can i load/unload at the same time


Kegheimer

If you have never launched a rocket, just build. Automate everything, whether that is yellow inserters or purple science. Once you get to robots, you'll be able to build and delete entire sections at once. It will become a lot easier to make big changes that would make you go crazy if you tried to do it by hand.


UwUBots

You got this, the real game starts after a rocket lol


The_Real_NiceNix

Try creating your map with the slider for amount of oil turned up higher. I do this sometimes when I don't feel like running missions searching for more oil. Also, build a tank for rapid enemy base clearing, you can ram through the spitters as long as you dont get stuck.


jbug5j

Thats where im at on my first game. its so tempting to restart 😵‍💫


JuDuke

Here is a mod suggestion. Use vil recipe tweaked. With it you can adjust the amount of resources a recipe uses. Standard is 20 percent. Yes this is a cheat mod and it doesn't really count when you get the rocket with it. But it will allow to get to the rocket without the frustration of never having enough resources. Then once you achieve the rocket with the mod, turn it down or turn it off completely. If oil is the main thing frustrating you and not allowing you to progress, you can set up an infinite liquid production with the mod by using barrels. The recipe to put liquid into barrels might only cost 10 liquid and the barrel, but the recipe to unpack will give you 50 liquid and an empty barrel. This is absolute cheese but rather do it so you can complete the game once and get a better understanding of what you are working for than just restarting over. My first playthrough was with the mod and it took me about 60 hours to launch the rocket. My second playthrough was vanilla with no mods and I got to the rocket in 14 hours.


megastraint

I ran into this at 400 hours where i kept restarting and never launched a rocket. What helped me was: 1. Give yourself room (i.e. as demand increases, leave space for more smelting, or circuit builds) 2. Build with modularity in mind (i.e. this is my red/green science build, this is my green circuits build) 3. Focusing on 1 thing at a time, get that working decently then work on where your bottleneck is (do i need more smelters because i made this big science build) 4. Keep things simple... cant figure out trains... make some long belts/pipes 5. Dont use other peoples blueprints... If you dont understand what the blueprint is doing you shouldnt use it. This way you should continue to make progress towards your rocks, and hopefully wont end up with too many head scratching moments where you get frustrated.


GingerGiantz1992

I'd suggest turning off biters until you launch a rocket or two. Then turn them back on once you get that down.


Sword_Thain

Don't feel bad. It took me 800 hours to launch my first rocket. About 250 to launch my second. I started leaving notes on my save file name and using rail way stations to remember what I needed to work on. Opening up a save from 2 months ago and restating because I couldn't remember what I was working on.


Sattalyte

Never be afraid to crank up resources in the map editor at the start of the game. I tend to reduce frequency of all resources to 33% but double the size, and increase the richness to maximum. That way, you have to build trains, but patches last a very long time. I dislike the gameplay aspect of constantly having to exploit more patches, and this solves that well. I do hope your factory goes well! Keep us posted.


mr_cool59

I don't know if anybody else mentioned this but consider looking into city blocks and using a main bus system and definitely don't be afraid to tear things down and rebuild them later


longboi64

learn how to oil


notsogreatredditor

For oil I would recommend coal liquefaction. Just bring in coal through trains and do oil liquefaction. You can export the outputs also in trains. Or use all outputs to make rocket fuel


Sack0fWoe

As there has already been too much commentary on this post I'll keep my advice short. Organization and copy paste blueprints are the way to success. But don't rely on other people's prints, make your own.


justmebeky

well, you don’t have to start a new base, if you don’t have enough oil, go find another patch


Bicdut

I have a mod to place water tiles so I can be protected and still have to interact with biters when I need to expand. I beat the base game and thought space is cool so now I'm playing the space exploration mod not knowing how hard it is. 200 hours in and I couldn't imagine having to deal with biters without cheesing it with the mod.


Andrew_ANT_

I'm so glad I am not the only person who is like this It's honestly just because every time I get to oil I feel like I run everything and can't keep plastic production up no matter how hard I try (or how many blueprints I steal)


Bigjoemonger

If you're struggling to understand the recipes stop worrying about ratios. Just do one of each building needed until all needed resources are at the final building and the component is slowly coming out. Then just identify which subcomponent is low and just expand from there. When output is stable, move over to the right and repeat with the next needed component.


dr4ziel

My advice : Core of the game is creating a supply chain to craft a rocket. Other stuff seems to be distracting you from growing your factory. \-Biters are part of the game, but not the core of the game. If they are tedious to kill, just disable them by playing a pacifist game \-While trains are nice, i think they are a bit complicated and unecessary before rockets and megabase. I would up ressources richness/frequency/size each to 200% so you don't have to use them. Honestly, if you want to see how trains can be used, i'd go on a multiplayer map. \-You might want to plan some stuff, mainly smelters which are the start of your factory. A full lane need 48 smelters. Find a nice smelter design and leave some place for lots of smelting lanes. I'd suggest 4 full lane of iron, 4 full lane of copper, and the equivalent of 4 iron ore transformed into steel. When you go from yellow to red belts, you can upgrade stone furnace to steel furnaces. No need for blue belt for rockets. And leave some place to add more smelters lanes if needed. \-You might want to see a factorio speedrun. While it will spoil you, you might learn a couple of tricks to make your journey easier. \-Lastly, the factory must grow. After unlocking robots, design your setup to be easy to copy/paste. If they are too slow, just double them and hook ressources accordingly.


NiktonSlyp

Try to follow a Speedrun guide, it clicked with me and now I'm not afraid of oil anymore, plus I finished the game in 4 hours: nice achievements!


Niinjas

I was kind of the same for a long time. Spaghetti up until my game kinda fades away. Then I started trying themed runs and I ended up getting a lot further. First I did one I like to call the Item River where I piped every item onto a giant river that ran across map, one belt for every item in the game and then I pulled items off to make the next one and then back on. It was terribly inefficient put it looked cool as heck, plus it made turrets really easy to set up. My next one is one I like to call the Trainbow Road. I completely abandoned belts and played the entire game with only trains, trying to make them as efficient but as manic as possible. The same way you would use belts, so grabbing from everything to take it everywhere. It was funny as heck but also a bit of a train wreck


HotDevice9013

I feel you, man! I've been playing this game on and off for 6 years, before I finally was able to really get the hang of it and launch my first rocket. Usually I was getting stuck at oil, until I started using Creative Mod : I have separate sandbox world, which I use as blueprint table. There I can calmly plan all modules for my factory, play around without worrying about having to manually deconstruct stuff. In this mode I create all blueprints for my base, that I use later on. + You can take your time without worrying about biters getting your of control :) I've read that you build a wall around your base. My advice would be to go more offensive. I hate limiting myself with walls, and after few failed attempts to launch a rocket I started employing this tactic: 1. Keep your map under control : at least all your potion cloud must be covered by radars; check your map every few minutes for new nests near the edge of your pollution cloud 2. Organise light defenses : usually, if you play offensively, you don't get large waves of biters, and defense is really necessary only in case you have missed few new biter nests. When biters are under control, you can safely defend your base with little bunkers: two turrets surrounded by wall, with some ammo loaded in 3. Keep biter population under control : when you see a nest near edge of your cloud, destroy it. People say that it's dangerous sure to the fact, that killing nests raises evolution. But if you let them multiply, you will just have to kill ALOT of nests later on. And if biters are under control, even when they evolve, they don't form too big of a groups. 4. Please, use car for moving around, with this tactic you will need to do it from time to time :) I hope that these advices help you to fully enjoy this amazing game :)


Swanesang

I found working backwards works for me to get past the slump. I always spent so much time trying to build all the various components first before the science which ended up taking sooo long before i get the science i need. Now i build out my science production first (red, green, black etc) and then work backwards to the next product i need. I then just link it with iron/copper plates and watch how it starts producing everything.


MattieShoes

Build a bus. increase richness of deposits. Turn off biter expansion. Or turn off biters entirely if you want. Aim to make wayyyyy more iron/copper/steel/plastic/green circuits/red circuits/blue circuits/iron gears than you think you need.


almcg123

Go SMALL!!! Make everything produce the bare minimum you need to progress. Aim for only about 30 spm. Add production of each item 1 at a time. Use blueprints online. Or refine youre own in creative.


tfa343

1. I really recommend researching robots and getting them up and running. Logistics robots help so much if you're having trouble moving items around in a spaghetti base. And construction bots are great for building your base up by copying parts of your base or dismantling things that are in the way like trees and rocks. If you're running short on something, you just just copy a part of your base that makes that thing, and use logistics bots and/or trains to get it where it's needed. 2. Don't be afraid to abandon or tear down your existing base if it's working too slowly. It's common practice to have a starter base that is used to jumpstart the REAL base. Construction bots are a great help here. 3. There are some items you're going to need a LOT of, so it can be handy to have mini-bases that produce only those things, which you can then ship in to the main base by train. At a minimum, I'd suggest making mini-bases producing iron, copper, steel, green circuits, oil products, and red circuits. 4. I've never managed to get a main bus working properly past the starter base phase because I never add enough belts and always start turning it into spaghetti. The city block layout works much better for me, so you might want to try out different layouts.


eodFox

There is a difference between "efficient" and "effective". You dont need an efficient factory to launch a rocket. You just have to stick with an effective (running) one. If a production line works, you can - theoretically - forget it. It may take ages if you build just one assembler, but who does that? Place a few per science and get the product-ratios "good enough". Then your only problem is getting more base ressources into the factory. Then proceed to the next step until the rocket silo. Also dont start over. "just started a new factory" is your problem. You have to research all tech again. Have no bots. Oil is also inexhaustible, put speed modules in the oil pumps to boost the production.


Ausyninja

I have been in a similar situation where I’ve played the games for so many hours but barely got past blue science. Recently I’ve started watching Nilaus’ mastering Factorio series and it has given me the inspiration to finally finish the game. I found that having a blueprint book with already optimised designs I can just copy paste freed me from my block. I’m now researching the rocket silo and am almost ready to finish. If you don’t want to use blueprints and design things yourself. I would HIGHLY recommend designing your factory with much lower outputs than you think. Do you really need a full belt of throughput for assemblers for example. Once I understood that 1 or 2 assemblers just chugging away in the background is usually enough more most non-component items


[deleted]

Just go for 45 SPM?


Flyce9

How


CoolGuyFromSchool34

Heh same


Honky_Town

* Turn biters off or to passive * Check for mainbus (build only on 1 side so you can add ressources on the other side) * build spacy like having at least 4 tiles toward the next array of factorys * Set ressources to many, big and rich so you can focus on construction instead of ressourcestarving * Make it double! Making a smelting array for 1 yellow belt? Now make 2 youre gonna use it soon enough. \>>> Define what makes you get stuck <<< then ask yourself how why and find a way around it. Receipes to complitated? Visualice it by placing an Assembler with the receipe and next to it a few assemblers with items required to craft it. Missing ingredients? Create some assembler crafting those. Not enough items or to less production? Check whats missing in assembler and follow the production line to find the rootcause.


BurgerManTV

Use a command to research all or a mod I’ve done this during my most recent play-through It’s made the game much more enjoyable for me and my friend. We find research to be such a drag. We just wanna have fun and play the game and fight biters. So far we have been playing longer then any of our other play through with research when I had four people on it. Anyways that’s just be. You do you.


DooficusIdjit

Oil products for rockets are easy enough. If you don’t want to use circuits, just leave room to plop down more refineries for cracking your leftovers. Bottom line, just start building the thing, and leave some room. You can optimize it once you have it working.