Factorio starter base – still looking for a favorite

At the moment, I’m trying ElderAxe’s Quick Start Base (v8.1.1)

I remember trying something else from ElderAxe and being pretty happy with it. I like the idea of adding different pieces as I go along: maybe I want Military Science early on, before other blueprint pieces. This modular system looks like it lets me do this.

Factorio blueprints – Kitch’s Totally Practical Strip Mall

On the one hand, I really like this mall. The layout makes sense to me, and the way it intersperses feeder bus and production columns is straightforward and clean.

One the other hand, it doesn’t have accumulators or solar. It does have nuclear power pieces, but I haven’t gotten into nuclear power. Yet another resource to mine, which also means setting up transport in and subsequent refining. I’d rather do solar.

I did find these two blueprints by Diana. One is for accumulators and the other for solar.

I’m still really happy with NRC’s Mining.

Factorio map generator seed

Copy to clipboard enabled: 4010922000

I like this one because there is oil near (enough) and the biters are far enough away that I get some time to build defenses before they go full on constant attack mode.

  1. Start a new game
  2. Next to the Map generator screen
  3. Paste in the new seed
  4. Adjust Resources, terrain, enemy, and Advanced.
    • I change Research queue availability to Always
  5. Preview

Here’s a jumpstart iron miner and smelter:

My favorite coal jumpstart rig Early Coal Mining Rig:

Factorio blueprint Extended Starter Base

Extended Starter Base (45 SPM / RGMB Science / Mall)

Features:

• Inputs: 1.5 belts of Iron Ore, 0.5 belts of Copper Ore, 1 belt of Stone and Coal (one belt of Coal is enough to power the base*, smelters and produce all coal-required items); Petroleum Gas and Water (on either right or top side);

• 45 of Red, Green, Grey (Military) and Blue Sciences per minute (with circuit conditions countering the distance from the labs to insure no expensive science packs excess production);

• A (sorta spread-out) mall with all items you need early to pre-mid game including a big military wing with multiple Flamethrower Turrets/Explosive Cannon Shells factories and one Cliff Explosives factory;

• 15 Labs to fit the Lab Research Speed 2 research speed requirement;

• Only four Red Underground Belts needed at the very later stage of base building (Blue Science and Explosive Cannon Shells factories), no Red Belts needed up to that point;

• An empty 4×4 zone in the middle of the base for a Roboport to be placed later, covering up most of the chests with produced materials;

Factorio notes, several hours in

I recently found a new mall blueprint that I like reasonably well. illHam’s Starter Base. It was in the Factorio School’s most recent list instead of the most popular list; but there were things I liked about it. Mostly, I liked that it did all three: red, green, and black science, and, it includes solar panels.

The only thing I don’t really like about illHam’s Starter Base is that the chests are limited by inventory slots and not by inserters controlled by circuits. In other words, each chest has a maximum number of slots enabled, so what limits the count of items produced is the inventory capacity getting full. The problem with this is that sometimes I have too many items in my personal inventory, and stuffing them back into the production chest is denied when the maximum-number-of-slots scheme is in place. So now there are 58 chests that need to be retrofited with red wire to the inserter, and the condition set on the inserter to stop when the count of items in the chest hits the limit. If I have too many items in personal inventory, I can shove them all into the chest with a trivial ctrl-click.

For me, solar panels are too much work / take too long to be done without robots. The quest for robots lead me to Nilaus’ YouTube video Robo Rush; because Robot abuse should not be delayed. This then lead me to the pastebin of the blueprint to start construction bots. Wonderful.

Next, have the robots build red circuits, so I can build roboports. 😉

Lastly, I fight biters really poorly. I’m old, so my brain does not go as fast as young people’s brains. I’m sure doing combat with biters and eliminating their nests is much easier for brains that think quickly. For me, I just die a lot. It is frustrating. But with illHam’s Starter Base and the production of piercing rounds magazines, I can put a perimeter of turrets up and not have to worry so much about biters.

Another favorite Factorio blueprint – Automated Artillery Expansion

I did edit it and create a smaller version of my own:

The original is here: Automated Artillery Expansion – Factorio Master Class by Nilaus

It does have the snap-to-grid option enabled, which means it would have been nice to have done those on the first city blocks. But still, it works fine.

This came from a Youtube series Factorio Master Class by Nilaus.

More Factorio notes

I tried one belt each, of what I need to get to purple science. But I goofed, and didn’t extend the Stone belt where the Stone Bricks belt went, so I had to squeeze it in. D’oh!

So, at this stage of the game, I have (from left to right):

  • Low Density Structures
  • Blue Circuits
  • Batteries
  • Sulfur
  • Iron Plates (this belt should probably be four belts wide)
  • Copper Plates (this belt should probably be four belts wide, or perhaps two)
  • Green Circuits
  • Steel Plates (this belt should probably be two belts wide)
  • Stone Bricks
  • Stone Ore
  • Coal
  • Plastic
  • Red Circuits

So, in order of appearance, they went like this:

I should note that as I laid down my template of which resources would be in which belt lane, (when the research let let) I created Constant Combinators with the item to go on the belt. Factorio did not display which item, until I went to Settings –> Interface –> Show Combinator Settings in alt-mode

  1. Iron Plates
    1. Feeds green circuits
    2. Feeds red and green science
  2. Copper Plates
    1. Feeds green circuits
    2. Feeds red and green science
  3. Green Circuits
    1. Feeds red and green science
  4. Steel Plates
    1. Feeds Big Mall by SwaggoFlamingo – although I think I would like a more complete mall
  5. Coal
    1. Turns out Big Mall by SwaggoFlamingo needs stone bricks, so I built a smelter nearby, which needed coal
    2. Next up was black science, which needed coal and stone bricks, too
    3. Later, Plastic will need coal
  6. Stone Bricks
    1. Feeds black science
  7. Plastic
    1. Feeds red circuits
  8. Red Circuits
    1. Feeds blue science
  9. Sulfur
    1. Feeds sulfuric acid, which is needed for batteries
  10. Batteries
    1. Feeds yellow science
  11. Blue Circuits
    1. Feeds yellow science
  12. Low Density Structures
    1. Feeds yellow science
  13. Stone Ore
    1. Feeds purple science

Build order

  1. starter Iron mining and smelting
  2. starter Copper mining and smelting
  3. starter Stone drilling
  4. Starter base with red science, yellow belts and green circuits
  5. Electricity generation
    1. Boiler
    2. Offshore pump
    3. Steam engines
    4. Burner inserter
    5. Wooden box to store coal in, until a belt of coal can be delivered
    6. Small electric poles
  6. Iron mining (electric miners)
  7. Copper mining (electric miners)
  8. Coal mining (electric miners)
  9. Iron smelting
  10. Copper smelting
  11. Steel smelting
  12. Lay out main bus
  13. Green circuits
  14. Red and Green science
    1. Research Electric Energy distribution 1 to get steel towers
    2. Science labs
  15. Bolster electric mining and attach output to main bus
  16. Black Science
  17. Do not us Mike’s Mall – Yellow – I started with this, only to find that the factory that builds Medium Electric Pole and Big Electric Pole was missing the iron stick ingredient, and there was not a good space to add a factory which reached the iron plates belt line.
    1. Now I’m going to try Kitch’s Totally Practical Strip Mall – 3.0 (0.17 Update)

The other thing I did was combine the Unload 4 red train station by Nilaus with a medium buffer by Shaderon (which I doubled to do four lanes). The blueprint is here:

Factorio to-do list (WIP)

On my next game, I think I am going to try these as my next set of blueprints, in order:

  1. Factorio Master Class (by Nilaus) (MSTR) – Jump Start 0.18 – Initial Assemblers
    1. This gets me red science, which lets me research:
      1. Automation
      2. Logistics
      3. Steel Processing
      4. Electronics
      5. Fast Inserter
      6. Green Science
      7. Military
      8. Gun Turret
  2. Early coal mining rig
  3. Early game smelting
    1. Well, this time I used the (MSTR) – Early Game Smelting – Copper and Iron blueprint, one each.
      1. Should have done three (or six)
  4. NRC’s Mining
  5. (MSTR) – Early Game Smelting – One more small one, but smelting Iron plates to Steel this time
  6. (MSTR) – Green/Red/Blue Circuits – Green [1]
    1. This task has a bootstrap problem; the blueprint calls for Medium Electric Poles, but those come from Electric Energy Distribution 1 below. 120 green science needed
      1. Medium Electric Poles require Steel ….
  7. (MSTR) – Science 1.5 – Automation
    1. This gets me green science, which lets me research:
      1. Electric Energy Distribution 1
        1. Steel power poles; which are needed for the 0.17 Big Mall below
      1. Automation 2
      2. Engine
      3. Advanced Material Processing
      4. Fluid Handling
      5. Oil Processing
      6. Plastics
      7. Sulfur Processing
      8. Battery
      9. Advanced Electronics
      10. Blue Science
  8. 0.17 Big Mall by SwaggoFlamingo
  9. (MSTR) – Science 1.5 – Military Science
    1. Not because I want it, but I’m probably going to need it.
  10. Now it gets a little difficult. The number one goal is to get to robots. That requires all of (MSTR) – Science 1.5 – Chemical Science – but Chemical Science has prerequisites. Namely:
    1. Oil (pre-req to plastic)
      1. I’m using Oil Processing which says This blueprint is part of the “Base-in-a-Book” Tutorial series by Nilaus
    2. Plastic (pre-req to red circuits)
      1. (MSTR) – Chemicals – Plastic with red belts
    3. Red Circuits
      1. (MSTR) – Green/Red/Blue Circuit Designs – Red Circuits 1
    4. (Although I did Blue Science first, I probably should have done Sulfur production first).
  11. The other thing blocking me from my number 1 goal (robots) is that I am running out of resources.
    1. To that end, I had to build rail, a station, a locomotive, ore cars, and I used Autotorio to build a smelting setup for an iron patch.
    2. Now I’m running out of coal.
  12. Nilaus suggests that I should have built Utility Science (Yellow) before building Chemical Science (Blue)
  13. (MSTR) – Science 1.5 – Chemical Science
    1. This gets me blue science, which lets me research:
      1. Advanced Oil Processing
      2. Advanced Electronics 2
      3. Lubricant
      4. Electric Engine
      5. Low Density Structure
      6. Robotics
      7. Logistic Robotics
      8. Yellow Science
  14. (MSTR) – Science 1.5 – Utility Science
    1. A prerequisite is Blue Circuits
    1. This gets me yellow science, which lets me research:
      1. Logistic System
  15. I really like Autotorio, but that means researching Brick Walls is high priority.

Factorio blueprints

Don’t you just hate getting run over by a train and respawning without your blueprints?

Four belts for a 4 lane bus:

Underground belts spaced across, to tunnel under a 4 lane bus:

Split off the left most lane (let’s call it Lane 1) to the right:

Split off Lane 2 to the right:

Split off Lane 3 to the right:

TDB

Split off Lane 4 to the right:

TDB

The Factorio community is amazing, and the guys at Wube should be applauded for an amazing job. One of the particularly insightful things they did was to build an import/export function into the game (not surprising) but then make that available to the community. Perhaps that comes from it’s Minecraft beginnings. Either way, it was a fundamentally wise choice. In the spirit of open source, the community can share their ideas with each other.

Which lead to Factorio Prints (later re-written and hosted at Factorio School). And then someone came up with FBE: Factorio Blueprint Editor.

Particularly, I like Square Mall (see it here: FBE Square Mall) and Early Game Smelting (FBE: Early Game Smelting)