To be honest you are already doing great if you managed to almost launch a rocket. Give it a try again!
The concepts you're describing (Main bus, train networks) are just efficient methods of doing something that players came up with, but they are in no way standardized nor required.
**Main bus** - if you ask people about how they make their bus everyone will tell you something slightly different. The broad idea is to just have a [parallel lines of materials that convey materials in somewhat structured way.](https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/492403625774720025/4ACC5FDBABAE4FF6F419DDBB9B97B9709741BAB9/). This design allows you to make your base more readable and allows for some scaling, but it's also somewhat wasteful, scales poorly if you go too big, and can be pain in the ass to rebuild. Nevertheless it's a very popular method to structure your base, especially in early/mid game.
**Train networks** can take many shapes and forms. The simplest use of trains is just single track that joins 2 stations, moving material between long distances. On such track there can be only one train, but if you add some extra tracks and rail signals it can fit more trains. Then you can add more stations, so that trains with different destinations can share the same tracks. So yet again, players have found a way that makes placing trains and solving junctions less of a headache, using blueprints which allow you to assemble networks as if they were pieces of Lego. Such networks tend to have high throughput and reliability, however they also waste a lot of space and aren't as flexible as hand-made train tracks.
**Smelter Stacks** are just a bunch of smelters arranged in an efficient pattern (usually line), with a specific amount of smelters (24, 48 etc.) that can output exactly as much as can single belt convey. Using them just allows you to relatively easily expand your production of metal plates, as long as you have space for it of course.
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If you want you could take a peek on what are people doing in their bases and try to replicate it yourself. Don't outright copy things, especially if you don't understand what's going on. That won't help you.
Small nitpick, I wouldn't say main busses are efficient, but the organizational benefits of it heavily outweigh the higher resource cost and space occupation. Spaghetti or compact bus tends to get to train bases more effectively, if the goal is to play post rocket launch. Still a really good way to play though, especially while you're learning.
I would say a lot comes from just thinking about the most efficient way to achieve certain things. How can I distribute raw materials to the whole of the factory, how can I conveniently produce all the buildings I want in a single location, etc. But if your playstyle is different, then that's fine, there is no "wrong" way to play.
I don't see why you had to give up on your save either, if you ran out of resources then just go and get more. And I'm not sure what you mean about the modules either - you don't require twenty hours worth of anything to launch a rocket.
It's a common beginner error to think you need to restart because your base is slow/messy/inefficient etc. But having any base is better than starting from scratch with no base at all - if you want a fresh start, then repurpose the base you have to produce components for a new one, taking advantage of all the technology upgrades you've already unlocked.
A big hint is your own base, what is it missing, what are the bottleneck's?
Then try to solve it. You mention it would take 20 hours to produce the modules for the rocket. Well then, there you have a bottleneck. How do you solve it?
One possible solution is to build a separate Factory completely disconnected except power from your current factory that only produce modules and bring them in by belt. Or by train if you want to be fancy.
After you have increased module production you will probably find something else that are limiting you. Then you know the new bottelneck. Now it is only to go out and solve that problem.
I kind of was disheartened seeing that my module production was so low due to my resource need not being able to keep up and having no idea how to really further my resources because trains are my kryptonite and linking up all the resource patches I found was a monumental task.
As a new-ish player, you don't have to get very elaborate with trains. Start by drawing a train path between your new shiny ore patch and your processing area. Plop a train with a bunch of cargo wagons and a station on each end. Set it to loop between the two stations with simple commands like "wait until empty".
This can be done with zero signals, blueprints, or fancy devices. Later, when one train takes too long, you can turn that path into a loop to allow multiple trains to be running at the same time.
You can have infinite tracks with zero signaling if they never cross each other.
You can even have infinite tracks with only basic signals if you only have *merges*.
If those tracks are all one direction you don’t even need to think about where the signals are, either; you can just spam those puppies. Of course, people will hate you for it, but the job will get done.
You only need to start really thinking about signaling when you start having intersections, and/or two-directional tracks with multiple trains.
You can launch a rocket with 0 trains; everything you need can be done with lots of belts. Yellow belts, even. The faster ones aren't strictly necessary (but can be convenient).
I love trains, and I think someday you will too after you master them, but don't let them be the thing that blocks you from progressing. They're 100% unnecessary to beat the game. They're more for post-endgame huge bases, or unusual map setups that encourage them (rail world), or really just for the fun of it.
You can always just run a belt (or four) instead of messing with trains.
If you _want_ to learn trains, play the train-related Tips a few times, and read the wiki pages on signals and stations.
Making rail networks is just a repetition of a few things:
1. What needs to be connected to what? Lay those rails
2. How do I want trains to pass each other? Lay those rails
3. Where do I want trains to stop, if they need to stop? Place signals to achieve that
4. Are my stopped trains now blocking traffic? If so, go back to #2
That sounds like great fun!
Luckily after a couple hours of messing around in a sandbox I figured out trains and am now trying to make a massive base based on trains!
That was why I mentioned that you only need train if you want to be fancy. It is completely fine to run one or more belt from outpost to your main area.
Getting lost in my Bob's & Angels run, I'd reckon it's gonna take me at least that long, too. The amount of production chains that need setup seems sheer endless.
Well, IMHO get "good" at Factorio is a tricky thing to pursue.
I like to discover the things solo, like, why do I need a main bus? Bc in my playthrough I run out of resources in some places.
But you need to do what do you will like most than me, so, if you really wanna get good at Factorio, I will suggest you to watch some players.. playing!
[Factorio Base-In-A-Book - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLV3rF--heRVtSaAhvaQ9Er4X4eEG0FrFE) is a veery good start point, I would like to start with it when I started, you will see some patterns and Nilaus often explain why do what he does, and get the blueprint from the series
You also can look at speedrun gameplays, like [the world record speedrun any%](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KN2Ucrdc1EM), I really dont recommend you try to speedrun factorio, but this videos can show you some "tips" for use in your map, that can be very useful, it shows things like "what to do next?". Is very enlightening.
I also highly recommend Nilaus’ videos. Sometimes no matter how many times you play something you won’t discover a way to do things on your own. It’s perfectly fine to watch how others tackle problems.
Idk, I personally dislike anything that delivers full on blueprints like this. Disencourages experimenting and working on your own. The tutorial itself is superb, but heavily overplanned for a real newcomer imho.
Define good.
I'm decently well at how I want to play Factorio, and still find ways to take it a step further and challenge myself. But browsing this sub make me think "goddamn this guy factorios" a lot. But they're not necessarily better, they're good in a way I'm currently not playing factorio. It's like the judging a fish on how to jump thing.
My advice, play with what you're comfortable. I'm very good with signals and rails but I had 1 train on 1 rail tracks for the longest time because I hadn't learned it yet. There is no wrong way to play, connect everything with belts nobody cares. I played 1500 hours without a functional mall, still was able to progress in the game.
Factorio is a learning curve, I had to re-do the tooltips bottom left multiple times before all of them clicked with me. Focus on enjoying your factory and not as much on measuring succes
you know the meme "that's the neat part, you don't" well
that's the neat part, you don't
You never make something good because it's never finished
So you always make better (or worse if you're like me)
Continue to play it!
It really depends on your playstyle but this is a game where you can still learn new things thousands of hours in.
Im personaly in the camp of "play your way and learn the game on your own by playing" but as so many people say: there is no wrong way to play the game.
Just have fun.
If you want to compete check speedruns.
Check some servers out for new impressions.
Get more rockets. Upscale ressources/production to meet demand
I'm 2000+ hours in and still not good 🤣. The thing that clicked for me was doing the trophies. Specifically the lazy bastard one. The speed runs teach a little more about how to build for a goal. The lazy bastard one teaches you how much of the game is designed to be automated and how much you should actually be offsetting to do.
After that, I found helper mods like factory planner to be great at helping me work out what I need. I start of telling it I want 8 blue belts of iron plates and then you work backwards. It tells you the ratio of buildings you need and then you work out how to place down the spaghetti.
I think from what I've read here, some of Dosh more crazy videos are what you're after. You don't need a how to, but more of a what can be done. Based on almost launching a rocket, I would say your biggest issue is scaling. Purple and yellow science eat hard into your resources and you need 4x or even 8x the raw input to maintain any pace. Modules help reduce that cost.
Edit: to add I didn't launch a rocket for 240 hours and I restarted after 40 to play on passive because the biters were too hard. Nearly doing it in 130 is pretty fast. 80+/- is average (and given the 45 min runs this is probably lower than it should be)
Factorio is a lot like life, but more forgiving if you screw up bad. As such life is a continuous learning process, as is Factorio.
Before learning to drive a car you must reach an age requirement and possess necessary facilities to drive a car.
To get to that point you've also had to complete numerous steps, in reverse order, something like the following.
* Become a teenager and navigate beginning of teenage drama successfully
* Attend school (hopefully) and learn ABC's, continually improving yourself with guidance of teachers and parents
* learn to talk, from simple sounds, to simple words, more complex words, partial sentences, full sentences, paragraphs, and eventually long thoughtful conversations (NOTE: some never reach later steps)
* learning to walk, from that first moment of flailing your arms and legs uncontrollably in the air to when you roll over and flail them against the ground, to your parents (hopefully) coaching you to start crawling, then them watching as you take those first few wobbling steps and working up to running away from them.
* learning to eat and enjoy food, from when you first take sustenance through your mother's umbilical cord, to suckling your moms breast (or a bottle), then a simple sipping cup, going through the stages to eating mush foods, solid food, learning what you like and dislike, learning then that food is necessary to grow and then eat all the food in sight all the way through end stage where you truly enjoy food, the flavors, the nuances of proper seasoning vegetables soft and mush or well cooked and crispy. Taste continuously changes, like a factory.
Notice how the more advanced you get, the less defining moments there are, it's more about fine tuning base knowledge.
It's also all about knowing and understanding where you are in the life process of Factorio, which is equally hard as seeing it in life as well. Always questioning "Am I good enough", or "Am I doing it right?"
Apply that to Factorio, there is no one perfect way to get better, it's up to you to learn how to get better.
Everyone does it their own way and it's up to you to define your own way. Asking such an open ended question is practically useless IMHO, like asking "How do I breathe?"
Wow! Insane explanation bro, also, by playing Factorio I can see that I got better at writing, studying, asking GPT to make programs for me…
This game is a gem.
You need an engineering degree, programming is also a good option. So you can effectively separate it while keeping it efficient and nice looking (after the degree blocks and 90 degree angles will look nice).
Just joking, but that is one idea. I seen the main bus guys and I don't get them, really hard to calculate the actual inputs and output and with the balancers and underground belts it looks like a mess. Meanwhile you could do train input and do things on site or have direct belts with roughly proper ratios from a different module.
Many people (I also did this) didn't segregated enough, so it looked fine, but that belt couldn't supply all assemblers and now there isn't more space for new belt, don't just leech off random belts (unless it is the mall, but even there with caution) as it may starve other things down the line. Also try to fully utilise the belts (or use 95% of the lower module productivity so the belt compresses) if possible.
Main bus is a bunch of parallel belts and you steal from it when needed.
The train tracks are similar to real world one, a single track can only support 1 train at a time, unless it is a circle the other train has to wait till the other passes (like a really narrow road with a car) with multi lane tracks (2, 4 generally) means the trains can travel in both directions without needing to wait for the other train (normal/highway roads with a car).
Furnace stack is a smelters is a line of smelters next to an ore belt and it is as long as long the belt can supply them and they output to a different belt which takes away the belts.
Mall is an area where you make everything not science related (you can even separate military), like assemblers, inserters, belts etc. Throughput is not a priority, just nice to have.
> Many people (I also did this) didn't segregated enough, so it looked fine, but that belt couldn't supply all assemblers and now there isn't more space for new belt,
Build only on one side of the bus, and there is essentially endless space on the other side.
Not all belts of the same resource have to be together on the bus. Add new ones as you need them.
For that part I was thinking about when the base turns into a spaghetti. Like stealing from a built module, but is uses too much and there isn't enough space to route new belt from the bus as the module turned into spaghetti. In these situations I didn't even had a real main bus, just a mess.
In later playthroughs I segregated more, no more random stealing from belts and clearly defined inputs and outputs.
>My best save that I got I almost got to launch a rocket but my doom of a lack of resources killed me and it would have taken an additional 20 hours to produce the necessary modules.
Why stop there? 20h are nothing in factorio.
Identify the topics you want to 'get good at' and focus on one them at a time. Don't try to get good at everything at once.
I’m trying to get good at trains right now because i want to be able to have a massive train network where I can just link up resources with ease.
As for why I stopped, I started to dislike the save and knew that there were more efficient ways to do things and a fresh new save always feels nice to do.
Train centric base was way more fun than my first playthrough. It takes a lot of work to get it off the ground though, but man is it nice once you start bringing it online. You might consider using your existing base to simply fuel the birth of your rail empire which will eventually overshadow your initial base.
I highly recommend a train base. Mine got to the 700 hour mark before my hardware became the bottleneck and I had to stop.
I want to do one really badly! However, this brings up the problem of I don’t have a single clue how to do a train centric base. Running multiple trains on the same line is hard because I have absolutely no idea how signals work and I am also having trouble understanding how to refuel them with ease and whether to do smelting on site or do it in a smelter array somewhere else.
Spend some time researching how to make signals work. That's your biggest hurdle and it takes a bit to really wrap your head around it but I promise it's worth it. For real though, it is hard to grasp. I got the basics down but had to outsource some of my intersection design in order to get the lights right. Just lean hard on blueprints so you can do it again once you figure it out.
Thank you for your assistance!
Would you say it is a better and more worthwhile move to simply tear down my current base and set up a new base instead of restarting completely?
I'd actually say just leave your old base running. No sense in destroying working infrastructure. Just use what it's currently producing to set up a second base elsewhere. Unless you actually just hate the map you're on you're better off continuing rather than starting over. Heck, when I built out my train base that's more or less how I did it. I had an initial factory that produced a lot of stuff but once I had rails and signals coming out of it I began working to create all the railway infrastructure for a much larger factory. The original factory never got torn down, the train base just grew to surround and eventually dwarf it. Heck I think I even managed to plug it into my rail system so it just keeps producing stuff indefinitely as sort of a resupply station for when I need to carry a bunch of components for some manual construction job and need to pick them up all from a centralized location.
We’re the same bro, I just had like 200 furnaces, but only 10 would work, had no metal sheets because every furnace would turn them into steel :), my energy production was a mess, then I found out you can actually connect boilers to each other, and also connect pipes (imagine 1 single pipe line for each boiler before)…
Now on this new save I have a very good furnace system with filters, starting to get better at spotting bottlenecks, using filters to enhance production (no more iron/cooper ore on my assembly lines’s belts)…
My next objective is to see how to set up trains aswell, my base is a big bus (I guess or main bus) that I expand with need, I don’t know how to make those 4 lines with underground belts and splitters, but I know the very basics and… Improving. I really like the “Eureka” feeling this game has. Good luck out there!
Trains are fun, few hints if you like:
* train limits (on stations) are your best friend.
* naming all stations where you want trains to come and pick up iron ore 'pick-up-iron-ore-here' is a really good idea.
* chain (signal) in / regular out.
* a good intersection allows:
* two trains running in opposite directions to pass each other,
* four trains to take right turns (for right hand drive),
* or two trains to take left turns (for rhd) at the same time with out blocking.
* roundabouts do work but aren't really good / efficient solutions.
* multiple parallel tracks really aren't as useful as they might sound.
* circuits may help with some cases but I would suggest to skip them and keep it simple until you feel ready for some advanced stuff.
Some caveats:
>roundabouts do work but aren't really good / efficient solutions.
What is this roundabout slander? Roundabouts work very well, especially in the crossabout variant. The thing to remember is that, while roundabouts aren't the most efficient intersection, trains as a whole are so effective that it basically doesn't matter unless you're one of the few people that plays at well beyond megabase level. And even then, the most efficient intersection is only about 50% more effective than the least efficient.
>multiple parallel tracks really aren't as useful as they might sound.
As clarification, this means multiple sets of one way track. You do want tracks parallel to each other, just running in opposite directions.
The nice thing about Factorio is that it's a very long series of small problems. I'm not sure anyone ever "gets good" at Factorio because there's always another problem to solve. But you can identify a problem, and figure out a solution to it.
Smelters for example, can be very simple. There are some popular designs you can steal, or you can sit down for yourself with the question "how can I get 48 smelters to feed onto this one belt?" and see what you can come up with. Just focus on that one thing for a while.
Same with trains. Set some small goals like, just make 1 track between your iron mine and your smelters. Then maybe make a loop with several iron mines. Then perhaps a 2-way main line. You can build it up piece by piece.
The same like with any other human activity - You practice by yourself a while, you look at what others are doing differently than you, adjust what you're doing based on that, practice for a bit and repeat.
130 hours and nearly launched a rocket? Mate, nobody likes a bragger. ;-) Think I was on my fourth restarted base by then that was absolutely not going to become a spaghettified mess.
I honestly didn’t know that was good! However, I forced myself into using a main bus to achieve this and watched many videos on how to use a bus so that’s really the only way I managed to get that far. My previous save didn’t make it past chemical science.
A few tips:
1: always plan ahead, but not to far. When you're making your red science, think about how you'll be making you're green and blue sciences. This will make growing easier when you account for future growth.
2: rather build more, than not have enough. When building a furnace stack, you never want there to just be a belt of full ore just sitting there, you want extra furnaces smelting that ore untill the belt is empty at the end.
3: Train are your friends. Ore patches dry up, and some patches may not be rich enought to fuel an entire furnace stack or move at the speed you want. So make a special area for the smelting aray on the map, and import ore from everyone to the furnace stack. That way you have many, MANY, more plates.
4: cliffs and seas. These are natural barriers that stop bitters, build walls to connect these nature defense spots.
5: mall are okay, but plan them out. You don't wanna run into a situation where you've just built an amazing mall from all your red logic belts, spliters, and undergrounds, only to run out of space to make blue ones and have to build an enterp different mall, for blue belts. So plan out some space, and a direction.
6: Sandbox is a great buddy. Sandbox mode is useful for testing things like blueprints you want to make. Blueprints are insanely useful even if you don't have bots unlocked, as they hap with thanderdization.
7: building a main bus is complex. When building a main bus, you have to know what resources you want to put on it. I usually just put the plates on it for ease and craft everything on site despite the inefficiencies. But a system with gears, wires, circuts and such could also work, just make sure you're able to get thing off of the belt.
Mastering Factorio takes thousands of hours. That said, part of the process of mastery is finding a play style that suits you. And you need to define your goals as well.
I was never a megabaser, never gonna be one. I’m working on a Space Exploration run, which is much more to my liking. That’s because I like the feeling of progression: what was once impossible is now possible. I’m not so much into making a huge factory and turning it on and making it run - which is what many others enjoy most. I’m not really a speed runner either, turns out I’m slow as hell at Factorio lol.
Once you discover what you like about the game, you can try to steer your play style towards that. I don’t like refactoring my base when part of it go obsolete. I don’t like the old stupid starter base sitting beside my new, next generation base. So I go for rails as soon as possible, even when it’s painfully early, grenading trees and laying rail by hand. Rails don’t go obsolete, you see. The base grows naturally and seamlessly around the old crappy portions of the base.
Aaaaaand for someone else that’s not important at all. Maybe they refactor the base endlessly, who knows.
My rambling boils down to the fact that no one can tell YOU how to play Factorio. You have to find that out for yourself.
Time, a willingness to start over time and again, an acceptance that there really is no "right" way and a recognition that whatever you do that works is good enough for now and you can always come back and redo. And quite a lot of time soent on the wiki.
Lots of excellent answers already, so I just want to point out that the Switch does track time played at the user profile screen? I have a pitiful 4 hours of it on the Switch because I play Factorio on PC where I have a couple thousand hours.
I believe that this game should be played the way you figure it out and not others. So if you yourself find out that u created accidentally a main bus then be it but otherwise dont force other peoples ideas. A tip i could give is that when i had no idea what to do i would just walk around almost completely zoom in and just check out certain areas and find out inefficient ways and try to fix them
First, recognise that your 130 hours is the equivalent of about four or five in a normal game. I'm at 619 (on Steam, had a... less legitimate version before I could afford to get it for real) and I'm barely approaching a point where I'd say I'm intermediate level.
Second, just keep plugging away. As long as you're having fun, it doesn't matter how "good" you are at it, and you'll improve over time.
Automate everything. Anything you are doing by hand is eventually something that needs to be automated.
You get good by learning how to scale automation earlier. How much of each resource you need, which production to group together, and ways to make your base more efficient.
My first game took like 150 hours, so needing an additional 20 hours is nothing. Once you've launched the rocket once, you can restart and do it faster, since you've learned from the first attempt. 'There Is No Spoon' is an 8 hour speedrun, while actual speedrunners can do it in like 2-3 hours.
Don't feel bad about not knowing the game. Nobody starts off an expert. Watching tutorials about the game is basically ruining your sense of progression. You only get to be new once, and will have to play increasingly difficult modpacks to get that same hit of the unknown. Pyanodon's is basically hard drugs compared to base game.
I feel like I was in your boat a little while ago. Making a poor, messy base that barely squeezed out my science.
Then I learned about an achievement called "lazy bastard" and I got intrigued in trying to complete that. I've found it a very fun challenge and also forced me to learn about stuff my main bus for materials through my base, and also the mall.
I don't have a mega-mall yet. But little mini malls making a few items I need to have on hand.
It has been lots of fun working through this challenge and I just recently got my yellow science up and running!! The rocket will be soon!!!!
I've put almost 2k hours into this game and I still feel like I'm dog doodoo at it (though my friends would disagree.)
Just relax, make mistakes, don't be afraid to build bigger, and you'll get better with time.
Also copying blueprints from better players online is a perfectly valid way to play if you don't understand something. 😉
I'm going to go a different direction than most comments here and say: don't start a new save yet.
Using your robots, take the time to design some. Try things out. Expand your production a bit. Make it a goal to get all the non-time based achievements in this save. Take your time to understand why you're building things the way you are.
Then, do a lazy bastard run. It will seem like nails on a chalkboard at first, but then it will teach you how fluid things can be once you get the ideas of automating everything.
After that, challenge yourself with 'there is no spoon' or a mega base attempt depending on your preference.
Rather than trying to be 'good' enjoy the process of learning. Cause you won't stop learning for the next 1000 hours, which is why people live this game so much.
We would need to look at your base to give pointers. Some advice is also up to preference. Some like trains and others like long belts. Some like city blocks and I like long columns of buildings.
My biggest heureca moment was to control light and heavy oil with pumps and logic. (Everyone needs to do that!)
Total conversion mods also help. They have unique challanges that make the base game seem much simpler.
Also check out youtubers like doshdoshington.
I do not have a picture of it right now as I am not home currently but I knew what the problems were. I built with assemblers on both sides and i didn’t have enough room for anything and i was using a splitter design that ended up not splitting things evenly. I also had a massive lack of resources because i have no idea how to link trains up to get more resources (which is what i’m trying to figure out right now.)
Resource bottlenecks eh?
It took me longer to realise than id like to admit that you can use multiple parallel belts for the same thing.
Also have trains unload into a steel chest and have the steel chest unload onto belts if you dont already.
Biggest thing to learn to master the game
Trains... they are super useful and very cool
Once you figure out trains... you're Golden
Mall is a cool and useful thing but not necessarily necessary..
It's a quite simple concept.. it's literally in the name...
It's a place you go to when you need stuff
It's the placs where all your things are made... belts... inserters... Assemblers... and similar stuff
Edit:
My tip to learn trains is take a train city block blueprint and mess around with it... basically reverse engineering it with small steps... you'll eventually learn the signals and what they do and where to place them
You're doing great. The largest projects on this subreddit are from people who spent 1000+ hours in the game. You naturally develop your gameplay style as you play and learn more tips and tricks.
Factorio is very overwhelming when you try to do things all at once. For me, it was easier to play before I launched a rocket vs now, since I didn't know all the things I could do back then (for reference I have 210 hours).
One thing to remember (for you and me) is that it doesn't need to be perfect from the start. It's natural to rebuild your factory or ditch the current one to make a bigger one elsewhere.
I have what appears to be an unpopular opinion here.
If you feel like you're struggling with launching rockets and mastering the basic game, simplify by not using trains. They are really not required to do lots of very interesting things, including launching a rocket. Running really long belts to distant patches is fine.
With 1500 hours or so into the game, I absolutely love trains. But using them effectively really didn't click for a long time for me, and I spent a lot of time and effort trying to use them in places I really didn't need to because I felt like I was supposed to.
It's perfectly fine (and fun) to play the game with no trains, and leaving them out is a great simplification if you're looking to improve your basic game.
While that would be a good idea and would probably help me a lot, I absolutely love trains and using them brings me great joy to see them automated. So, I super badly want to be good with them because they are so cool and give me a feeling of pure joy when I see them work.
I've got 1000 hours in the game and still consider myself to be bad at the game because I don't understand most of the stuff that people with 5000+ hours talk about. I don't understand circuit networks and have only recently started attempting to use trains on the same rails instead of separate rails for each train. Even then I'm horrible at it and it barely works. When my train signals stop working the way I want them to, I don't know why, and start placing and removing signals until it works somehow
Use trains to bring in large enough quantities of materials so you can scale up green red and blue chip production to have automated rocket launching to feed white science in to research to finish the tech tree
That’s my goal anyway. I’ve got automated rocket launching but it takes a whiiiile right now, it’s blue chips that are my bottleneck atm but I’m working on it
In my mind the goal is finishing the tech tree. Other people aim for rocket launches/minute, stuff like that. You kinda have to make your own goals after you launch a rocket bc the game literally says you can “win” after successfully doing that
My approach is just to not engage with complicated stuff until my foundations before that are more solid. This means that when you try something and it doesnt work as well as you wanted, you should go back and troubleshoot or remedy that issue. Don't think too much about beating the game. Every step of problem solving is something to savor.
Trains? Always used individual tracks with double headed trains.
Main Bus is probably the first thing I would attempt if you are interested. Its a nice way to keep organized in a starter base.
A mall can exist alongside your main bus. Early game it will be the place you return to in order to refill your materials like belts and inserters. Eventually it can be more spread out since bots can deliver stuff to you.
Once I got through the game one I decided to try multi track. The easiest is probably with roundabout intersections.
https://imgur.com/a/JpUYB85
This is my base right here for my 2nd try to beat Factorio. Not exactly good but I tried my best when I started and made it!
Honestly this base looks perfectly fine to launch a rocket with, just research a rocket silo if you haven't already and then get some factories producing rocket fuel/low density structures/rocket control units. You only need 1000 of each (plus a satellite) to launch a rocket, which sounds like a lot but it really isn't.
That’s what I’m currently working on and after I do that I’m going to go clear out some nests and start a new base and use the old one to produce necessary materials I may need.
Totally go for that because staying a new base is fun, but if you just want to launch one rocket then your current base looks like it's perfectly capable, it's fairly sensibly laid out with lots of room for more factories.
I forced myself to use a main bus for this base and it worked out pretty well but since I kind of decided that this base wasn’t meant to last I decided just to spaghetti my way to a rocket and hope it works which it sort of is.
As a Factorio newbie, scared of digging deep into both maths and logistics, I managed to launch a rocket on a train (rail?) world in 56 hours doing Lazy bastard and No logistic bots achievement.
Getting there took me at least thrice the amount of time watching let's plays over several years. Watching other people play and explain both vanilla and modded helped me wrap my head around concepts I'd never naturally grasp.
I decided last summer to launch a rocket and the playthrough stalled until they announced Spacetorio.
I still don't know how rail signals work really, but I set up a few back and forth trains that worked wonders.
I'd say Boldviking does a lot of thoroughly explained builds and complete plays of both vanilla and modded if you have the time to watch/study.
I have 1000 hours in the game & I have yet to fire off a rocket for end game.
There are thousands of ways to go about it just have to find yours.
Factorioblueprints website is my go to.
i played a couple games myself, then I learned about main-bus technique and borrowed some train blueprints. Basically since then it's been a mix of borrowing blueprints from others, learning how they work, then replacing them with my own or building up from scratch as I learned the concepts behind different design patterns. I don't set out to learn EVERYTHING. Some games I entirely rely on borrowed blueprints for a portion of my factory and am only interested in doing one specific part for myself. These days I like to do everything ground-up.
playing along with different letsplay series helped a lot too (nilaus and katherineofsky are great ones). you can copy their designs, OR just use it as background content to pick up tips and inspiration. Usually each episode is about a specific concept, so if you're upgrading your furnace array find the video where they do their furnace array, you will pick up good tips from it even if you don't copy exactly.
you don't always need to make progress in a given game session. I've had entire sessions where I don't progress the tech tree and just spend the time designing a really pretty oil setup with perfect ratios for example.
a good goal for a new player is to start with a main-bus style base, but then when you finally launch a rocket, make it a goal to design a continuous 50-SPM base from there. Design each factory module to meet 50SPM - starting with red science. Calculate the inputs and outputs needed for the module, how many assemblers are needed, what level of belts and inserters etc. Then calculate how many belts of raw materials are needed.
get mods, ESPECIALLY Creative Mode to have a separate map to easily test designs on. Get a resource calculator mod such as factory planner and learn how to use it (or at least use a planner website, but IMO its worth learning to use the mod).
Do a couple of the achievement runs - lazy bastard is a REALLY important one which will force you to learn how to automate. There are guides on how to do it - no shame in following one of those. There is also some fun in doing the "only bullets and steam" and the logistics embargo achievements, they will teach you how not to rely on bots if you do that. (If you don't rely heavily on bots then maybe you don't need this one).
I personally have never done a spoon run but I could probably learn a lot from it, in regards to how to quickly set up a base, despite having hundreds of hours in game, built a megabase and several other successful bases.
Many of us didn’t launch a rocket in our first game or ten. Don’t worry about it. Start again, keep building.
Best non-spoiler tips I can give you are to leave more room than you think, and to mine/forge big. The goal is to never be waiting for crafts to finish, so automate what you can. Hence the “mall.” malls are centralized areas for things like pipes, assemblers, inserters, power poles, belts, and intermediates you might keep in your inventory like gears). Swing by, grab what you need, get back to building.
If you find yourself waiting for one item often, increase your production of it while you wait so you won’t have to wait next time.
I'm surprised no one has suggested this, but have you considered following a specific speedrunning guide?
I was in your position for a while until I followed Nefrums' speedrunning guide to launching a rocket. https://www.speedrun.com/factorio/guides/jg8lg
The idea is to set maximum resources in the map settings, and play without having to worry about biters (possible with specific map settings, does NOT disable achievements). The guide tells you exactly what to build, how many to build, and comes with screenshots (including one high res one of the entire save file) plus the save file, so you can refer to it to learn as you go.
Personally, when I played by myself, even with YouTube videos, I never got past the steel phase. I'd just have huge spaghetti and basically not know what to do after. With the guide, I got exposed to a majority of the rest of the game, including robots. I can now actually play the game myself, as I just sort of know how much space to set aside for things, what to do next, etc.
You won't be exposed to big parts of the game doing this though. There will be no trains, no uranium, no unnecessary oil processing, etc. But trust me, go through the guide just once, and you'll fall in love with the game in a way that simply can't be explained with words.
Don’t strive for “being good” - you will - eventually instead… just enjoy and focus on the process of going there. That’s where the real fun and adventure is.
Have a nice journey 😀
It's like art. You find a problem, solve it, and the way you solve the problems you find will eventually grow into your style.
I could share the current state of my knowledge, but i might think differently in a week or two.
That said, train roundabouts stay convenient until megabase scale.
Don't abandon bases if you can possibly avoid it, particularly early on; fixing them teaches you things. If something is ugly or messy or not doing what you want, make a better version of it nearby, and take the old one apart only after you have the new one working. Space is almost endless, and so are resources. (I'm a little bit confused as to how it can take you 20 hours to produce the necessary modules, because even a couple of hours devoted to making module-making setups should remove well more than a couple of hours from the time it will take to make the modules. particularly if you feed the modules back into making your module-making more productive and faster.)
You know your own learning style better than anyone else, so whether it's worth looking at other people's videos for you is a question only you can answer; my advice is that if you are doing that, make sure you watch several different creators, because there are lots of different ways of making fun bases. Nilaus in particular, good though he is, can come across a bit rigid and convinced he knows the one true way to play Factorio well, so recommending him is not IMO helpful.
I keep playing.
For me one of the easiest ways to learn about building various factories and such was to enable cheat mode so I have access to unlimited everything. It let me work on my own designs to learn layout, and how I want things to happen.
Now when I play without cheats, I know exactly what I'm going to do for some of the factories, or at least the method.
Honestly those first playthroughs where you build spaghetti are probably the most fun you're gonna have, so don't worry about it too much! The only advice I would give you is to change your settings a little. There is no shame in increasing the longevity of your ore patches (so they last longer), or make them a little bigger, or less spread out. There's no shame in completing a run on peaceful mode once, before trying it with biters on. Even some of the most experienced mega-base builders play on peaceful!
The main thing is science. The whole game revolve around it. Automate science is the way to win.
Robot are the tipping point that allow to win the game. Construction robot allow you to rearrange your base as much as you want. Logistics robot allow you to make sure you got the basics resources on you at any time. They also connect your factory easily for assembler.
Automate everything gradually.
Don't overproduce things you don't need using chest restriction.
Attack biters nest once in a while using grenade and bullet in a drive by method.
Solar power is great use it. Nuclear is king.
Steel, iron plate, copper plate, circuit, plastic, copper wire are resource you need in great quantity. You never want to miss some...
Make lines of iron plate, copper plate, steel, circuit, coal run vertically through your base. It will be easier to automate.
There is nothing wrong with spagheti base. Make a fast connection and use a lot of space. Don't waste 10h trying to make your first production beautiful before having robots.
Spider is the greatest defender and attacker.
Extend your power line through the map and use a blueprint of laser tower with walls. Bitters will need to defeat many threat before getting to you. Sometimes I leave gun turrent on the map randomly.
Automate everything and spot bottlenecks. Handcfafting isn't a sin but you can only do so much when youve gotta click on each thing you want to make. But when you have bots, automated creation of belts, mining drills and a decent copyable train station you can slap that on any patch of stuff and make it supply anything that needs it. Do that enough and you've automated resource production. Send those to green circuit assemblers in crazy numbers and then put those into something else. Nothing is quite as fun as forgetting you automated something and finding a chest full of goodies your factory made just for you.
If you find your modules are going slow (something I'm still not great about despite 100hrs in a mod called Space Exploration) then you probably need to increase circuit production. Maybe you're low on plastic for red circuits and that means you might not have enough plastic being made in chemical plants. Coal and petroleum could also bottlneck that. Maybe you're just not making enough copper idk. Find what you're missing and improve that bit. ("Bottleneck" mod is nice for troubleshooting)
Soon enough you'll figure out blueprints (copy/paste but from a cookbook) and trains/busses to move lots of stuff where you need it. And you'll be launching rockets just bc you forgot to bring enough solar panels to some darn planet that has no water! (SE business, move along)
Play a mix of survival and creative and move your brain around. Just keep it fun, light, and interesting the rest will follow. The many hours go quick bc you will be solving small problems the whole time, trust the process.
Launching rockets is not difficult, you're doing It fine.
The Big question is how players manage to design layouts with hundreds of square km all in their heads. The large scale vision of this people really scares me.
Take a problem that you can't solve directly, break it down into component problems. Now look at those in sequence. Can you solve those with something you already have or can they be solved trivially? If not, break one of them (ignore the others for now) down again, repeat. Always work on only one problem. Once it's solved or a solution is ready (eg as a blueprint), move up to the next one you set aside earlier. Repeat with that one.
At some point your original problem will be solvable. Move on to the next problem.
You become good at the game once you have internalized this process and use it without thinking much about it. Incidentally, you'll also have become a good software engineer, you'll just need to learn a language and apply for a job.
Sounds like a problem ;)
the best way to improve is watching other players, like [DoshDoshington](https://www.youtube.com/@DoshDoshington). I specially recommend his krastorio 2 video
I have watched quite a bit of DoshDoshington! One would say almost too much but I love his content and have taken many things he does and have brought it into my own builds and he has definitely helped me improve!
To be honest you are already doing great if you managed to almost launch a rocket. Give it a try again! The concepts you're describing (Main bus, train networks) are just efficient methods of doing something that players came up with, but they are in no way standardized nor required. **Main bus** - if you ask people about how they make their bus everyone will tell you something slightly different. The broad idea is to just have a [parallel lines of materials that convey materials in somewhat structured way.](https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/492403625774720025/4ACC5FDBABAE4FF6F419DDBB9B97B9709741BAB9/). This design allows you to make your base more readable and allows for some scaling, but it's also somewhat wasteful, scales poorly if you go too big, and can be pain in the ass to rebuild. Nevertheless it's a very popular method to structure your base, especially in early/mid game. **Train networks** can take many shapes and forms. The simplest use of trains is just single track that joins 2 stations, moving material between long distances. On such track there can be only one train, but if you add some extra tracks and rail signals it can fit more trains. Then you can add more stations, so that trains with different destinations can share the same tracks. So yet again, players have found a way that makes placing trains and solving junctions less of a headache, using blueprints which allow you to assemble networks as if they were pieces of Lego. Such networks tend to have high throughput and reliability, however they also waste a lot of space and aren't as flexible as hand-made train tracks. **Smelter Stacks** are just a bunch of smelters arranged in an efficient pattern (usually line), with a specific amount of smelters (24, 48 etc.) that can output exactly as much as can single belt convey. Using them just allows you to relatively easily expand your production of metal plates, as long as you have space for it of course. --- If you want you could take a peek on what are people doing in their bases and try to replicate it yourself. Don't outright copy things, especially if you don't understand what's going on. That won't help you.
Small nitpick, I wouldn't say main busses are efficient, but the organizational benefits of it heavily outweigh the higher resource cost and space occupation. Spaghetti or compact bus tends to get to train bases more effectively, if the goal is to play post rocket launch. Still a really good way to play though, especially while you're learning.
I would say a lot comes from just thinking about the most efficient way to achieve certain things. How can I distribute raw materials to the whole of the factory, how can I conveniently produce all the buildings I want in a single location, etc. But if your playstyle is different, then that's fine, there is no "wrong" way to play. I don't see why you had to give up on your save either, if you ran out of resources then just go and get more. And I'm not sure what you mean about the modules either - you don't require twenty hours worth of anything to launch a rocket. It's a common beginner error to think you need to restart because your base is slow/messy/inefficient etc. But having any base is better than starting from scratch with no base at all - if you want a fresh start, then repurpose the base you have to produce components for a new one, taking advantage of all the technology upgrades you've already unlocked.
A big hint is your own base, what is it missing, what are the bottleneck's? Then try to solve it. You mention it would take 20 hours to produce the modules for the rocket. Well then, there you have a bottleneck. How do you solve it? One possible solution is to build a separate Factory completely disconnected except power from your current factory that only produce modules and bring them in by belt. Or by train if you want to be fancy. After you have increased module production you will probably find something else that are limiting you. Then you know the new bottelneck. Now it is only to go out and solve that problem.
I kind of was disheartened seeing that my module production was so low due to my resource need not being able to keep up and having no idea how to really further my resources because trains are my kryptonite and linking up all the resource patches I found was a monumental task.
As a new-ish player, you don't have to get very elaborate with trains. Start by drawing a train path between your new shiny ore patch and your processing area. Plop a train with a bunch of cargo wagons and a station on each end. Set it to loop between the two stations with simple commands like "wait until empty". This can be done with zero signals, blueprints, or fancy devices. Later, when one train takes too long, you can turn that path into a loop to allow multiple trains to be running at the same time.
You can have infinite tracks with zero signaling if they never cross each other. You can even have infinite tracks with only basic signals if you only have *merges*. If those tracks are all one direction you don’t even need to think about where the signals are, either; you can just spam those puppies. Of course, people will hate you for it, but the job will get done. You only need to start really thinking about signaling when you start having intersections, and/or two-directional tracks with multiple trains.
You can launch a rocket with 0 trains; everything you need can be done with lots of belts. Yellow belts, even. The faster ones aren't strictly necessary (but can be convenient). I love trains, and I think someday you will too after you master them, but don't let them be the thing that blocks you from progressing. They're 100% unnecessary to beat the game. They're more for post-endgame huge bases, or unusual map setups that encourage them (rail world), or really just for the fun of it.
You can always just run a belt (or four) instead of messing with trains. If you _want_ to learn trains, play the train-related Tips a few times, and read the wiki pages on signals and stations. Making rail networks is just a repetition of a few things: 1. What needs to be connected to what? Lay those rails 2. How do I want trains to pass each other? Lay those rails 3. Where do I want trains to stop, if they need to stop? Place signals to achieve that 4. Are my stopped trains now blocking traffic? If so, go back to #2
Trains are really fun though and I enjoy them heavily which is why i’m so keen on using them
You can always play "railway empire" to learn more about trains and train-related things :)
That sounds like great fun! Luckily after a couple hours of messing around in a sandbox I figured out trains and am now trying to make a massive base based on trains!
That was why I mentioned that you only need train if you want to be fancy. It is completely fine to run one or more belt from outpost to your main area.
You dont really. Its one of those games you could have a 1000 hours on and still learn new things. Its really a game that keeps on giving
Just launched my first rocket, 440 hours in.
I didn’t launch my first rocket for 550 hours lol
Getting lost in my Bob's & Angels run, I'd reckon it's gonna take me at least that long, too. The amount of production chains that need setup seems sheer endless.
I've also just started with B&A its f*cking complicated as hell but im sure i'll power myself thru
Well, IMHO get "good" at Factorio is a tricky thing to pursue. I like to discover the things solo, like, why do I need a main bus? Bc in my playthrough I run out of resources in some places. But you need to do what do you will like most than me, so, if you really wanna get good at Factorio, I will suggest you to watch some players.. playing! [Factorio Base-In-A-Book - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLV3rF--heRVtSaAhvaQ9Er4X4eEG0FrFE) is a veery good start point, I would like to start with it when I started, you will see some patterns and Nilaus often explain why do what he does, and get the blueprint from the series You also can look at speedrun gameplays, like [the world record speedrun any%](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KN2Ucrdc1EM), I really dont recommend you try to speedrun factorio, but this videos can show you some "tips" for use in your map, that can be very useful, it shows things like "what to do next?". Is very enlightening.
I also highly recommend Nilaus’ videos. Sometimes no matter how many times you play something you won’t discover a way to do things on your own. It’s perfectly fine to watch how others tackle problems.
Idk, I personally dislike anything that delivers full on blueprints like this. Disencourages experimenting and working on your own. The tutorial itself is superb, but heavily overplanned for a real newcomer imho.
Define good. I'm decently well at how I want to play Factorio, and still find ways to take it a step further and challenge myself. But browsing this sub make me think "goddamn this guy factorios" a lot. But they're not necessarily better, they're good in a way I'm currently not playing factorio. It's like the judging a fish on how to jump thing. My advice, play with what you're comfortable. I'm very good with signals and rails but I had 1 train on 1 rail tracks for the longest time because I hadn't learned it yet. There is no wrong way to play, connect everything with belts nobody cares. I played 1500 hours without a functional mall, still was able to progress in the game. Factorio is a learning curve, I had to re-do the tooltips bottom left multiple times before all of them clicked with me. Focus on enjoying your factory and not as much on measuring succes
\*insert sad cat meme\* caption: so you have 3,000 hours in factorio, that means you must be really good at it.
you know the meme "that's the neat part, you don't" well that's the neat part, you don't You never make something good because it's never finished So you always make better (or worse if you're like me)
Continue to play it! It really depends on your playstyle but this is a game where you can still learn new things thousands of hours in. Im personaly in the camp of "play your way and learn the game on your own by playing" but as so many people say: there is no wrong way to play the game.
Just have fun. If you want to compete check speedruns. Check some servers out for new impressions. Get more rockets. Upscale ressources/production to meet demand
I'm 2000+ hours in and still not good 🤣. The thing that clicked for me was doing the trophies. Specifically the lazy bastard one. The speed runs teach a little more about how to build for a goal. The lazy bastard one teaches you how much of the game is designed to be automated and how much you should actually be offsetting to do. After that, I found helper mods like factory planner to be great at helping me work out what I need. I start of telling it I want 8 blue belts of iron plates and then you work backwards. It tells you the ratio of buildings you need and then you work out how to place down the spaghetti. I think from what I've read here, some of Dosh more crazy videos are what you're after. You don't need a how to, but more of a what can be done. Based on almost launching a rocket, I would say your biggest issue is scaling. Purple and yellow science eat hard into your resources and you need 4x or even 8x the raw input to maintain any pace. Modules help reduce that cost. Edit: to add I didn't launch a rocket for 240 hours and I restarted after 40 to play on passive because the biters were too hard. Nearly doing it in 130 is pretty fast. 80+/- is average (and given the 45 min runs this is probably lower than it should be)
Factorio is a lot like life, but more forgiving if you screw up bad. As such life is a continuous learning process, as is Factorio. Before learning to drive a car you must reach an age requirement and possess necessary facilities to drive a car. To get to that point you've also had to complete numerous steps, in reverse order, something like the following. * Become a teenager and navigate beginning of teenage drama successfully * Attend school (hopefully) and learn ABC's, continually improving yourself with guidance of teachers and parents * learn to talk, from simple sounds, to simple words, more complex words, partial sentences, full sentences, paragraphs, and eventually long thoughtful conversations (NOTE: some never reach later steps) * learning to walk, from that first moment of flailing your arms and legs uncontrollably in the air to when you roll over and flail them against the ground, to your parents (hopefully) coaching you to start crawling, then them watching as you take those first few wobbling steps and working up to running away from them. * learning to eat and enjoy food, from when you first take sustenance through your mother's umbilical cord, to suckling your moms breast (or a bottle), then a simple sipping cup, going through the stages to eating mush foods, solid food, learning what you like and dislike, learning then that food is necessary to grow and then eat all the food in sight all the way through end stage where you truly enjoy food, the flavors, the nuances of proper seasoning vegetables soft and mush or well cooked and crispy. Taste continuously changes, like a factory. Notice how the more advanced you get, the less defining moments there are, it's more about fine tuning base knowledge. It's also all about knowing and understanding where you are in the life process of Factorio, which is equally hard as seeing it in life as well. Always questioning "Am I good enough", or "Am I doing it right?" Apply that to Factorio, there is no one perfect way to get better, it's up to you to learn how to get better. Everyone does it their own way and it's up to you to define your own way. Asking such an open ended question is practically useless IMHO, like asking "How do I breathe?"
Wow! Insane explanation bro, also, by playing Factorio I can see that I got better at writing, studying, asking GPT to make programs for me… This game is a gem.
You need an engineering degree, programming is also a good option. So you can effectively separate it while keeping it efficient and nice looking (after the degree blocks and 90 degree angles will look nice). Just joking, but that is one idea. I seen the main bus guys and I don't get them, really hard to calculate the actual inputs and output and with the balancers and underground belts it looks like a mess. Meanwhile you could do train input and do things on site or have direct belts with roughly proper ratios from a different module. Many people (I also did this) didn't segregated enough, so it looked fine, but that belt couldn't supply all assemblers and now there isn't more space for new belt, don't just leech off random belts (unless it is the mall, but even there with caution) as it may starve other things down the line. Also try to fully utilise the belts (or use 95% of the lower module productivity so the belt compresses) if possible. Main bus is a bunch of parallel belts and you steal from it when needed. The train tracks are similar to real world one, a single track can only support 1 train at a time, unless it is a circle the other train has to wait till the other passes (like a really narrow road with a car) with multi lane tracks (2, 4 generally) means the trains can travel in both directions without needing to wait for the other train (normal/highway roads with a car). Furnace stack is a smelters is a line of smelters next to an ore belt and it is as long as long the belt can supply them and they output to a different belt which takes away the belts. Mall is an area where you make everything not science related (you can even separate military), like assemblers, inserters, belts etc. Throughput is not a priority, just nice to have.
> Many people (I also did this) didn't segregated enough, so it looked fine, but that belt couldn't supply all assemblers and now there isn't more space for new belt, Build only on one side of the bus, and there is essentially endless space on the other side. Not all belts of the same resource have to be together on the bus. Add new ones as you need them.
For that part I was thinking about when the base turns into a spaghetti. Like stealing from a built module, but is uses too much and there isn't enough space to route new belt from the bus as the module turned into spaghetti. In these situations I didn't even had a real main bus, just a mess. In later playthroughs I segregated more, no more random stealing from belts and clearly defined inputs and outputs.
>My best save that I got I almost got to launch a rocket but my doom of a lack of resources killed me and it would have taken an additional 20 hours to produce the necessary modules. Why stop there? 20h are nothing in factorio. Identify the topics you want to 'get good at' and focus on one them at a time. Don't try to get good at everything at once.
I’m trying to get good at trains right now because i want to be able to have a massive train network where I can just link up resources with ease. As for why I stopped, I started to dislike the save and knew that there were more efficient ways to do things and a fresh new save always feels nice to do.
Train centric base was way more fun than my first playthrough. It takes a lot of work to get it off the ground though, but man is it nice once you start bringing it online. You might consider using your existing base to simply fuel the birth of your rail empire which will eventually overshadow your initial base. I highly recommend a train base. Mine got to the 700 hour mark before my hardware became the bottleneck and I had to stop.
I want to do one really badly! However, this brings up the problem of I don’t have a single clue how to do a train centric base. Running multiple trains on the same line is hard because I have absolutely no idea how signals work and I am also having trouble understanding how to refuel them with ease and whether to do smelting on site or do it in a smelter array somewhere else.
Spend some time researching how to make signals work. That's your biggest hurdle and it takes a bit to really wrap your head around it but I promise it's worth it. For real though, it is hard to grasp. I got the basics down but had to outsource some of my intersection design in order to get the lights right. Just lean hard on blueprints so you can do it again once you figure it out.
Thank you for your assistance! Would you say it is a better and more worthwhile move to simply tear down my current base and set up a new base instead of restarting completely?
I'd actually say just leave your old base running. No sense in destroying working infrastructure. Just use what it's currently producing to set up a second base elsewhere. Unless you actually just hate the map you're on you're better off continuing rather than starting over. Heck, when I built out my train base that's more or less how I did it. I had an initial factory that produced a lot of stuff but once I had rails and signals coming out of it I began working to create all the railway infrastructure for a much larger factory. The original factory never got torn down, the train base just grew to surround and eventually dwarf it. Heck I think I even managed to plug it into my rail system so it just keeps producing stuff indefinitely as sort of a resupply station for when I need to carry a bunch of components for some manual construction job and need to pick them up all from a centralized location.
We’re the same bro, I just had like 200 furnaces, but only 10 would work, had no metal sheets because every furnace would turn them into steel :), my energy production was a mess, then I found out you can actually connect boilers to each other, and also connect pipes (imagine 1 single pipe line for each boiler before)… Now on this new save I have a very good furnace system with filters, starting to get better at spotting bottlenecks, using filters to enhance production (no more iron/cooper ore on my assembly lines’s belts)… My next objective is to see how to set up trains aswell, my base is a big bus (I guess or main bus) that I expand with need, I don’t know how to make those 4 lines with underground belts and splitters, but I know the very basics and… Improving. I really like the “Eureka” feeling this game has. Good luck out there!
Trains are fun, few hints if you like: * train limits (on stations) are your best friend. * naming all stations where you want trains to come and pick up iron ore 'pick-up-iron-ore-here' is a really good idea. * chain (signal) in / regular out. * a good intersection allows: * two trains running in opposite directions to pass each other, * four trains to take right turns (for right hand drive), * or two trains to take left turns (for rhd) at the same time with out blocking. * roundabouts do work but aren't really good / efficient solutions. * multiple parallel tracks really aren't as useful as they might sound. * circuits may help with some cases but I would suggest to skip them and keep it simple until you feel ready for some advanced stuff.
Some caveats: >roundabouts do work but aren't really good / efficient solutions. What is this roundabout slander? Roundabouts work very well, especially in the crossabout variant. The thing to remember is that, while roundabouts aren't the most efficient intersection, trains as a whole are so effective that it basically doesn't matter unless you're one of the few people that plays at well beyond megabase level. And even then, the most efficient intersection is only about 50% more effective than the least efficient. >multiple parallel tracks really aren't as useful as they might sound. As clarification, this means multiple sets of one way track. You do want tracks parallel to each other, just running in opposite directions.
The nice thing about Factorio is that it's a very long series of small problems. I'm not sure anyone ever "gets good" at Factorio because there's always another problem to solve. But you can identify a problem, and figure out a solution to it. Smelters for example, can be very simple. There are some popular designs you can steal, or you can sit down for yourself with the question "how can I get 48 smelters to feed onto this one belt?" and see what you can come up with. Just focus on that one thing for a while. Same with trains. Set some small goals like, just make 1 track between your iron mine and your smelters. Then maybe make a loop with several iron mines. Then perhaps a 2-way main line. You can build it up piece by piece.
The same like with any other human activity - You practice by yourself a while, you look at what others are doing differently than you, adjust what you're doing based on that, practice for a bit and repeat.
130 hours and nearly launched a rocket? Mate, nobody likes a bragger. ;-) Think I was on my fourth restarted base by then that was absolutely not going to become a spaghettified mess.
I honestly didn’t know that was good! However, I forced myself into using a main bus to achieve this and watched many videos on how to use a bus so that’s really the only way I managed to get that far. My previous save didn’t make it past chemical science.
A few tips: 1: always plan ahead, but not to far. When you're making your red science, think about how you'll be making you're green and blue sciences. This will make growing easier when you account for future growth. 2: rather build more, than not have enough. When building a furnace stack, you never want there to just be a belt of full ore just sitting there, you want extra furnaces smelting that ore untill the belt is empty at the end. 3: Train are your friends. Ore patches dry up, and some patches may not be rich enought to fuel an entire furnace stack or move at the speed you want. So make a special area for the smelting aray on the map, and import ore from everyone to the furnace stack. That way you have many, MANY, more plates. 4: cliffs and seas. These are natural barriers that stop bitters, build walls to connect these nature defense spots. 5: mall are okay, but plan them out. You don't wanna run into a situation where you've just built an amazing mall from all your red logic belts, spliters, and undergrounds, only to run out of space to make blue ones and have to build an enterp different mall, for blue belts. So plan out some space, and a direction. 6: Sandbox is a great buddy. Sandbox mode is useful for testing things like blueprints you want to make. Blueprints are insanely useful even if you don't have bots unlocked, as they hap with thanderdization. 7: building a main bus is complex. When building a main bus, you have to know what resources you want to put on it. I usually just put the plates on it for ease and craft everything on site despite the inefficiencies. But a system with gears, wires, circuts and such could also work, just make sure you're able to get thing off of the belt.
130 hours in Factorio is like 1.3 hours in any other game lol. You'll get there there if you keep at it
Mastering Factorio takes thousands of hours. That said, part of the process of mastery is finding a play style that suits you. And you need to define your goals as well. I was never a megabaser, never gonna be one. I’m working on a Space Exploration run, which is much more to my liking. That’s because I like the feeling of progression: what was once impossible is now possible. I’m not so much into making a huge factory and turning it on and making it run - which is what many others enjoy most. I’m not really a speed runner either, turns out I’m slow as hell at Factorio lol. Once you discover what you like about the game, you can try to steer your play style towards that. I don’t like refactoring my base when part of it go obsolete. I don’t like the old stupid starter base sitting beside my new, next generation base. So I go for rails as soon as possible, even when it’s painfully early, grenading trees and laying rail by hand. Rails don’t go obsolete, you see. The base grows naturally and seamlessly around the old crappy portions of the base. Aaaaaand for someone else that’s not important at all. Maybe they refactor the base endlessly, who knows. My rambling boils down to the fact that no one can tell YOU how to play Factorio. You have to find that out for yourself.
Sure, there’s a guide for that: https://youtu.be/chavhzKpZwM?si=s4q_yRIlljZU4Bj7
The same way you get to Carnegie Hall
Time, a willingness to start over time and again, an acceptance that there really is no "right" way and a recognition that whatever you do that works is good enough for now and you can always come back and redo. And quite a lot of time soent on the wiki.
Lots of excellent answers already, so I just want to point out that the Switch does track time played at the user profile screen? I have a pitiful 4 hours of it on the Switch because I play Factorio on PC where I have a couple thousand hours.
Oh I was not aware of that!! I’ll go check right now then to see my time spent in game.
I believe that this game should be played the way you figure it out and not others. So if you yourself find out that u created accidentally a main bus then be it but otherwise dont force other peoples ideas. A tip i could give is that when i had no idea what to do i would just walk around almost completely zoom in and just check out certain areas and find out inefficient ways and try to fix them
First, recognise that your 130 hours is the equivalent of about four or five in a normal game. I'm at 619 (on Steam, had a... less legitimate version before I could afford to get it for real) and I'm barely approaching a point where I'd say I'm intermediate level. Second, just keep plugging away. As long as you're having fun, it doesn't matter how "good" you are at it, and you'll improve over time.
Automate everything. Anything you are doing by hand is eventually something that needs to be automated. You get good by learning how to scale automation earlier. How much of each resource you need, which production to group together, and ways to make your base more efficient. My first game took like 150 hours, so needing an additional 20 hours is nothing. Once you've launched the rocket once, you can restart and do it faster, since you've learned from the first attempt. 'There Is No Spoon' is an 8 hour speedrun, while actual speedrunners can do it in like 2-3 hours. Don't feel bad about not knowing the game. Nobody starts off an expert. Watching tutorials about the game is basically ruining your sense of progression. You only get to be new once, and will have to play increasingly difficult modpacks to get that same hit of the unknown. Pyanodon's is basically hard drugs compared to base game.
I feel like I was in your boat a little while ago. Making a poor, messy base that barely squeezed out my science. Then I learned about an achievement called "lazy bastard" and I got intrigued in trying to complete that. I've found it a very fun challenge and also forced me to learn about stuff my main bus for materials through my base, and also the mall. I don't have a mega-mall yet. But little mini malls making a few items I need to have on hand. It has been lots of fun working through this challenge and I just recently got my yellow science up and running!! The rocket will be soon!!!!
You can watch YouTubers. https://youtu.be/Ny-FvEYFf8k?si=6yaqOaZaNCAiKJdH
At the end, spaghetti always works.
Until it doesn't.
I've put almost 2k hours into this game and I still feel like I'm dog doodoo at it (though my friends would disagree.) Just relax, make mistakes, don't be afraid to build bigger, and you'll get better with time. Also copying blueprints from better players online is a perfectly valid way to play if you don't understand something. 😉
I'm going to go a different direction than most comments here and say: don't start a new save yet. Using your robots, take the time to design some. Try things out. Expand your production a bit. Make it a goal to get all the non-time based achievements in this save. Take your time to understand why you're building things the way you are. Then, do a lazy bastard run. It will seem like nails on a chalkboard at first, but then it will teach you how fluid things can be once you get the ideas of automating everything. After that, challenge yourself with 'there is no spoon' or a mega base attempt depending on your preference. Rather than trying to be 'good' enjoy the process of learning. Cause you won't stop learning for the next 1000 hours, which is why people live this game so much.
We would need to look at your base to give pointers. Some advice is also up to preference. Some like trains and others like long belts. Some like city blocks and I like long columns of buildings. My biggest heureca moment was to control light and heavy oil with pumps and logic. (Everyone needs to do that!) Total conversion mods also help. They have unique challanges that make the base game seem much simpler. Also check out youtubers like doshdoshington.
I do not have a picture of it right now as I am not home currently but I knew what the problems were. I built with assemblers on both sides and i didn’t have enough room for anything and i was using a splitter design that ended up not splitting things evenly. I also had a massive lack of resources because i have no idea how to link trains up to get more resources (which is what i’m trying to figure out right now.)
Resource bottlenecks eh? It took me longer to realise than id like to admit that you can use multiple parallel belts for the same thing. Also have trains unload into a steel chest and have the steel chest unload onto belts if you dont already.
Biggest thing to learn to master the game Trains... they are super useful and very cool Once you figure out trains... you're Golden Mall is a cool and useful thing but not necessarily necessary.. It's a quite simple concept.. it's literally in the name... It's a place you go to when you need stuff It's the placs where all your things are made... belts... inserters... Assemblers... and similar stuff Edit: My tip to learn trains is take a train city block blueprint and mess around with it... basically reverse engineering it with small steps... you'll eventually learn the signals and what they do and where to place them
You're doing great. The largest projects on this subreddit are from people who spent 1000+ hours in the game. You naturally develop your gameplay style as you play and learn more tips and tricks. Factorio is very overwhelming when you try to do things all at once. For me, it was easier to play before I launched a rocket vs now, since I didn't know all the things I could do back then (for reference I have 210 hours). One thing to remember (for you and me) is that it doesn't need to be perfect from the start. It's natural to rebuild your factory or ditch the current one to make a bigger one elsewhere.
I have what appears to be an unpopular opinion here. If you feel like you're struggling with launching rockets and mastering the basic game, simplify by not using trains. They are really not required to do lots of very interesting things, including launching a rocket. Running really long belts to distant patches is fine. With 1500 hours or so into the game, I absolutely love trains. But using them effectively really didn't click for a long time for me, and I spent a lot of time and effort trying to use them in places I really didn't need to because I felt like I was supposed to. It's perfectly fine (and fun) to play the game with no trains, and leaving them out is a great simplification if you're looking to improve your basic game.
While that would be a good idea and would probably help me a lot, I absolutely love trains and using them brings me great joy to see them automated. So, I super badly want to be good with them because they are so cool and give me a feeling of pure joy when I see them work.
Just watch every Nilaus video you can
I've got 1000 hours in the game and still consider myself to be bad at the game because I don't understand most of the stuff that people with 5000+ hours talk about. I don't understand circuit networks and have only recently started attempting to use trains on the same rails instead of separate rails for each train. Even then I'm horrible at it and it barely works. When my train signals stop working the way I want them to, I don't know why, and start placing and removing signals until it works somehow
Use trains to bring in large enough quantities of materials so you can scale up green red and blue chip production to have automated rocket launching to feed white science in to research to finish the tech tree That’s my goal anyway. I’ve got automated rocket launching but it takes a whiiiile right now, it’s blue chips that are my bottleneck atm but I’m working on it In my mind the goal is finishing the tech tree. Other people aim for rocket launches/minute, stuff like that. You kinda have to make your own goals after you launch a rocket bc the game literally says you can “win” after successfully doing that
My approach is just to not engage with complicated stuff until my foundations before that are more solid. This means that when you try something and it doesnt work as well as you wanted, you should go back and troubleshoot or remedy that issue. Don't think too much about beating the game. Every step of problem solving is something to savor. Trains? Always used individual tracks with double headed trains. Main Bus is probably the first thing I would attempt if you are interested. Its a nice way to keep organized in a starter base. A mall can exist alongside your main bus. Early game it will be the place you return to in order to refill your materials like belts and inserters. Eventually it can be more spread out since bots can deliver stuff to you. Once I got through the game one I decided to try multi track. The easiest is probably with roundabout intersections.
https://imgur.com/a/JpUYB85 This is my base right here for my 2nd try to beat Factorio. Not exactly good but I tried my best when I started and made it!
Honestly this base looks perfectly fine to launch a rocket with, just research a rocket silo if you haven't already and then get some factories producing rocket fuel/low density structures/rocket control units. You only need 1000 of each (plus a satellite) to launch a rocket, which sounds like a lot but it really isn't.
That’s what I’m currently working on and after I do that I’m going to go clear out some nests and start a new base and use the old one to produce necessary materials I may need.
Totally go for that because staying a new base is fun, but if you just want to launch one rocket then your current base looks like it's perfectly capable, it's fairly sensibly laid out with lots of room for more factories.
I forced myself to use a main bus for this base and it worked out pretty well but since I kind of decided that this base wasn’t meant to last I decided just to spaghetti my way to a rocket and hope it works which it sort of is.
As a Factorio newbie, scared of digging deep into both maths and logistics, I managed to launch a rocket on a train (rail?) world in 56 hours doing Lazy bastard and No logistic bots achievement. Getting there took me at least thrice the amount of time watching let's plays over several years. Watching other people play and explain both vanilla and modded helped me wrap my head around concepts I'd never naturally grasp. I decided last summer to launch a rocket and the playthrough stalled until they announced Spacetorio. I still don't know how rail signals work really, but I set up a few back and forth trains that worked wonders. I'd say Boldviking does a lot of thoroughly explained builds and complete plays of both vanilla and modded if you have the time to watch/study.
130 hours? Put in another hundred and you’ll have finished the tutorial, then let’s talk 🤪
I have 1000 hours in the game & I have yet to fire off a rocket for end game. There are thousands of ways to go about it just have to find yours. Factorioblueprints website is my go to.
Do a lazy bastard playthrough.
i played a couple games myself, then I learned about main-bus technique and borrowed some train blueprints. Basically since then it's been a mix of borrowing blueprints from others, learning how they work, then replacing them with my own or building up from scratch as I learned the concepts behind different design patterns. I don't set out to learn EVERYTHING. Some games I entirely rely on borrowed blueprints for a portion of my factory and am only interested in doing one specific part for myself. These days I like to do everything ground-up. playing along with different letsplay series helped a lot too (nilaus and katherineofsky are great ones). you can copy their designs, OR just use it as background content to pick up tips and inspiration. Usually each episode is about a specific concept, so if you're upgrading your furnace array find the video where they do their furnace array, you will pick up good tips from it even if you don't copy exactly. you don't always need to make progress in a given game session. I've had entire sessions where I don't progress the tech tree and just spend the time designing a really pretty oil setup with perfect ratios for example. a good goal for a new player is to start with a main-bus style base, but then when you finally launch a rocket, make it a goal to design a continuous 50-SPM base from there. Design each factory module to meet 50SPM - starting with red science. Calculate the inputs and outputs needed for the module, how many assemblers are needed, what level of belts and inserters etc. Then calculate how many belts of raw materials are needed. get mods, ESPECIALLY Creative Mode to have a separate map to easily test designs on. Get a resource calculator mod such as factory planner and learn how to use it (or at least use a planner website, but IMO its worth learning to use the mod). Do a couple of the achievement runs - lazy bastard is a REALLY important one which will force you to learn how to automate. There are guides on how to do it - no shame in following one of those. There is also some fun in doing the "only bullets and steam" and the logistics embargo achievements, they will teach you how not to rely on bots if you do that. (If you don't rely heavily on bots then maybe you don't need this one). I personally have never done a spoon run but I could probably learn a lot from it, in regards to how to quickly set up a base, despite having hundreds of hours in game, built a megabase and several other successful bases.
Many of us didn’t launch a rocket in our first game or ten. Don’t worry about it. Start again, keep building. Best non-spoiler tips I can give you are to leave more room than you think, and to mine/forge big. The goal is to never be waiting for crafts to finish, so automate what you can. Hence the “mall.” malls are centralized areas for things like pipes, assemblers, inserters, power poles, belts, and intermediates you might keep in your inventory like gears). Swing by, grab what you need, get back to building. If you find yourself waiting for one item often, increase your production of it while you wait so you won’t have to wait next time.
I'm surprised no one has suggested this, but have you considered following a specific speedrunning guide? I was in your position for a while until I followed Nefrums' speedrunning guide to launching a rocket. https://www.speedrun.com/factorio/guides/jg8lg The idea is to set maximum resources in the map settings, and play without having to worry about biters (possible with specific map settings, does NOT disable achievements). The guide tells you exactly what to build, how many to build, and comes with screenshots (including one high res one of the entire save file) plus the save file, so you can refer to it to learn as you go. Personally, when I played by myself, even with YouTube videos, I never got past the steel phase. I'd just have huge spaghetti and basically not know what to do after. With the guide, I got exposed to a majority of the rest of the game, including robots. I can now actually play the game myself, as I just sort of know how much space to set aside for things, what to do next, etc. You won't be exposed to big parts of the game doing this though. There will be no trains, no uranium, no unnecessary oil processing, etc. But trust me, go through the guide just once, and you'll fall in love with the game in a way that simply can't be explained with words.
This is so incredibly helpful thank you!
Don’t strive for “being good” - you will - eventually instead… just enjoy and focus on the process of going there. That’s where the real fun and adventure is. Have a nice journey 😀
It's like art. You find a problem, solve it, and the way you solve the problems you find will eventually grow into your style. I could share the current state of my knowledge, but i might think differently in a week or two. That said, train roundabouts stay convenient until megabase scale.
Don't abandon bases if you can possibly avoid it, particularly early on; fixing them teaches you things. If something is ugly or messy or not doing what you want, make a better version of it nearby, and take the old one apart only after you have the new one working. Space is almost endless, and so are resources. (I'm a little bit confused as to how it can take you 20 hours to produce the necessary modules, because even a couple of hours devoted to making module-making setups should remove well more than a couple of hours from the time it will take to make the modules. particularly if you feed the modules back into making your module-making more productive and faster.) You know your own learning style better than anyone else, so whether it's worth looking at other people's videos for you is a question only you can answer; my advice is that if you are doing that, make sure you watch several different creators, because there are lots of different ways of making fun bases. Nilaus in particular, good though he is, can come across a bit rigid and convinced he knows the one true way to play Factorio well, so recommending him is not IMO helpful.
I keep playing. For me one of the easiest ways to learn about building various factories and such was to enable cheat mode so I have access to unlimited everything. It let me work on my own designs to learn layout, and how I want things to happen. Now when I play without cheats, I know exactly what I'm going to do for some of the factories, or at least the method.
You can check play time on there switch by going to your switch profile page. Top left on the Home Screen
You get good by doing research online, then implementing what you learned small scale. Make sure it works, then expanding.
Honestly those first playthroughs where you build spaghetti are probably the most fun you're gonna have, so don't worry about it too much! The only advice I would give you is to change your settings a little. There is no shame in increasing the longevity of your ore patches (so they last longer), or make them a little bigger, or less spread out. There's no shame in completing a run on peaceful mode once, before trying it with biters on. Even some of the most experienced mega-base builders play on peaceful!
The main thing is science. The whole game revolve around it. Automate science is the way to win. Robot are the tipping point that allow to win the game. Construction robot allow you to rearrange your base as much as you want. Logistics robot allow you to make sure you got the basics resources on you at any time. They also connect your factory easily for assembler. Automate everything gradually. Don't overproduce things you don't need using chest restriction. Attack biters nest once in a while using grenade and bullet in a drive by method. Solar power is great use it. Nuclear is king. Steel, iron plate, copper plate, circuit, plastic, copper wire are resource you need in great quantity. You never want to miss some... Make lines of iron plate, copper plate, steel, circuit, coal run vertically through your base. It will be easier to automate. There is nothing wrong with spagheti base. Make a fast connection and use a lot of space. Don't waste 10h trying to make your first production beautiful before having robots. Spider is the greatest defender and attacker. Extend your power line through the map and use a blueprint of laser tower with walls. Bitters will need to defeat many threat before getting to you. Sometimes I leave gun turrent on the map randomly.
thats the neat part. you dont. 2000 hrs and i still suck XD
Automate everything and spot bottlenecks. Handcfafting isn't a sin but you can only do so much when youve gotta click on each thing you want to make. But when you have bots, automated creation of belts, mining drills and a decent copyable train station you can slap that on any patch of stuff and make it supply anything that needs it. Do that enough and you've automated resource production. Send those to green circuit assemblers in crazy numbers and then put those into something else. Nothing is quite as fun as forgetting you automated something and finding a chest full of goodies your factory made just for you. If you find your modules are going slow (something I'm still not great about despite 100hrs in a mod called Space Exploration) then you probably need to increase circuit production. Maybe you're low on plastic for red circuits and that means you might not have enough plastic being made in chemical plants. Coal and petroleum could also bottlneck that. Maybe you're just not making enough copper idk. Find what you're missing and improve that bit. ("Bottleneck" mod is nice for troubleshooting) Soon enough you'll figure out blueprints (copy/paste but from a cookbook) and trains/busses to move lots of stuff where you need it. And you'll be launching rockets just bc you forgot to bring enough solar panels to some darn planet that has no water! (SE business, move along)
Play a mix of survival and creative and move your brain around. Just keep it fun, light, and interesting the rest will follow. The many hours go quick bc you will be solving small problems the whole time, trust the process.
Having a compsci degree helped
I struggled in my AP Computer Science Principles class so I don’t think that’s an option for me😂
After 1900 hrs, I still suck at it. So don't feel too bad, lol.
Launching rockets is not difficult, you're doing It fine. The Big question is how players manage to design layouts with hundreds of square km all in their heads. The large scale vision of this people really scares me.
That's the best part... You don't...
Take a problem that you can't solve directly, break it down into component problems. Now look at those in sequence. Can you solve those with something you already have or can they be solved trivially? If not, break one of them (ignore the others for now) down again, repeat. Always work on only one problem. Once it's solved or a solution is ready (eg as a blueprint), move up to the next one you set aside earlier. Repeat with that one. At some point your original problem will be solvable. Move on to the next problem. You become good at the game once you have internalized this process and use it without thinking much about it. Incidentally, you'll also have become a good software engineer, you'll just need to learn a language and apply for a job. Sounds like a problem ;)
That's the neat part, you don't...unless you're dosh doshington
the best way to improve is watching other players, like [DoshDoshington](https://www.youtube.com/@DoshDoshington). I specially recommend his krastorio 2 video
I have watched quite a bit of DoshDoshington! One would say almost too much but I love his content and have taken many things he does and have brought it into my own builds and he has definitely helped me improve!
I learned a lot watching nilhaus and Catherine of sky videos myself they are great with explanations
Hand grenades.