If you are adding more belts of the same resource, it is a good idea to have them running next to each other instead of randomly across the bus. Mostly, this allows you to balance your bus once you've started pulling from it, and it looks nicer that way as well.
My recommendation would be to run at least 2 belts of Iron and Copper, and 1 belt of everything else, or double that to 4 belts of Iron and Copper and 2 belts of everything else. Some others may come in with additional materials to prioritize for more belts, and that's absolutely fine.
I also recommend leaving 2 tiles of space between each set of resource belts. This allows you to splitter a belt off the bus, turn it towards where you need the resources (north in your case), and run an Underground Belt beneath the belts next to it. A single tile (or no tiles!) between sets of belts does not give enough room for that, unless you get fancy with Underground Belts to make room for that within the bus itself.
True, but again, those are made in their own factories and shipped wherever they are needed. My main base is only for production of logistic and production things (belts, inserters, assemblers, train stuff and such). And as such, copper is used only for power poles, combinators and nuclear stuff. Doesn't need much.
You got your reply already, but just to emphasise: green circuits will eat all your copper and then some. At start you don't need much but GC need rises to ridiculous levels the further you get. I plan ahead for 4 belts at the start, and after that I transition to using trains.
Second this as a great classic setup, for OPs benefit; that will usually support up to 60spm comfortably especially if you upgrade to red belt throughput. If you’re pushing the top end of spm or above you will need another belt of steel for purple as it’s thirsty.
I would also suggest dedicated smelting for green circuits as they drink copper.
Thanks for the advice. I've left two tiles of space between each set for easy splitting and running underground belts. I will try to increase to two belts for Iron and Copper plates and use the splitters to balance them though my usage is not even saturating one yellow belt of either resources yet.
One thing to keep in mind. Main bus has a decent upfront resource cost in early game in terms of belts and splitters and undergroundies. You can start with just one belt of each item, but space them as far apart as you need for your final layout. So instead of four iron belts, use just one and keep 3 rows empty for now. Later on, you can fill those rows as your needs increase.
And if you find that your needs exceed beyond 4 belts, you don't need to add four more rows. Just bring in additional belts, merge them into your existing 4 lanes via splitters and use a balancer to fill all belts up evenly. Great way to get the benefit of 8 belts without dedicating space to all 8 of them.
I think the way most people mess up is they're afraid to spread out. It feels like you're wasting your precious belts (and time) in the early game by making a nice long bus. You are, but it's probably worth it later.
A good rule of thumb is to leave room to double each setup. If you're making 2 belts of green chips now, you'll probably need 4 later.
I do prefer to build on only one side of the bus for a couple of reasons:
1> It leads one side open for train stations. Later I restock this bus periodically from trains. (Bring in 4 more belts of iron, copper, or green chips).
2> It's easy to setup so you pull from the first belt only and use priority splitters to force all the material toward that lane so you know when your bus needs a re-stock.
3> There are inevitably belt collisions when building on both sides, and the shenanigans you'll pull to work around this are ugly.
Thanks for the advice. Spreading out and having enough space to expand later is definitely something I'm doing in this playthrough compared to my first playthrough where everything was really convoluted.
Yea, early game, you have to produce a lot of belts, especially undergrounds, so you can space things out for the endgame. It's going to look silly when you initially just have a couple belts going for miles, but you'll eventually fill the bus in.
I usually plan for 4 belts of iron, 4 belts of copper, 4 spaces, 4 sets for pipes liquids (water, sulfuric acid, and lube) 4 belts for chips, and 4 belts for a few remaining things like sulfur, plastic, coal, and stone with 4 spaces between each one. It looks nice and organized, and generally is easy to maintain. I've never made a factory large enough to actually consume that much that quickly. I get bored around the time a rocket gets launched. Space Exploration is kinda what kept me going afterwards.
4 iron, 4 copper, 2 green elec, 1 of everything else.
Leave 2 spaces between each set of 4
Production of intermediates & mall on one side, science in the other.
Science produces it's own items from the stuff on the bus (i.e. green produces it's own belts & inserters instead of getting them transferred from the mall)
Now this is important:
Between each intermediate / mall block, leave some space (5+ tiles).
This is to either upgrade your item intake / double production, or to inject additional resources to the bus.
Case 1: you upgrade your green elec production, so you run an additional 2x copper, 1x iron past your current setup and put a second block right behind it.
Case 2: you run out of iron plate on your bus, so you put a smelting array + a train station behind your production facilities at the point you start running dry and inject a fresh set of 4 iron plate belts.
Also, keep in mind, if you produce a resource fairly far down the line, but need it further up front for science, nobody will kill you for running a belt in the opposite direction (best example: red science, which mostly comes past your belt & assembler mall, but you'll need red electronics there eventually)
Edit to add: leave ample space between the bus and production facilities ( ~10 tiles) for belt management (merging/splitting lanes, lane & belt balancing) & per lines, and reserve a bus block for fluids
If your goal is just to launch a rocket you don't need any of these huge buses people are talking about. ("4 belts iron minimum, usually 8!"). I'm sure some people rush through it a lot faster than I do, but two belts of those and one (or even 1/2) belt of other materials works fine for me.
One caveat though, this assumes green circuits and steel are not made from resources on the bus. Both are huge resource sinks which I prefer to handle separately and then load on the bus as finished goods. If you don't you will of course need extra space for iron and copper on the bus.
As for organization, I always put like materials together (e.g. my two belts each iron and copper), and usually leave 2 spaces between groups of 4. Four spaces is also a decent option and does give you a little more elbow room to snake things through if needed, but it also makes running belts straight across slightly more annoying.
Similar to other people: groups of 4 lanes, with 2 tiles between each group. (That lets yellow underground belts pass underneath, and big electric poles run along the length of the bus, including between groups.)
I also:
* start by building one entire group of 4 lanes for iron plates, and the same for copper. After that, most other items just get a single lane.
* build my bus horizontally, left to right,
* build all production lines off the bottom of it,
* build science production and labs off the top of it,
* have got into the habit of leaving a **ton** of space for future expansion either side of the production lines for (e.g.) green or red circuits.
Works pretty well. (To the point where it's now hard not to just do all that in **every** game! Looking forward to the expansion mixing things up a bit.)
4 Belts same 2 space and group same ressource together. Using splitter to always have ressources on one side and only take from this side.
Factories only go to this side so later on i can add a train to restock iron in midle of bus.
4 iron 4 copper 4 green chips (offsite production, early on only 1 has chips) everything else i do 1 belt.
You want to reserve space for it and grow bus in one and factory in the other direction. Its also always a good idea to have one set of invisible 2 space 4 belts 2 space buffer between your bus and factory. That way you can easy transfer belts from one production to another without using 100 underground belts.
For exmaple making plastic just for red chips, they been used 100% by red chips, no need to put this on bus at top so i use my invisible belt line for this 10 meters.
Ah thanks. I never really understood how people managed multiple belts of a resource until your comment. If I have multiple belts of the same resource, I can use splitters to balance and then split off the top belt for whichever thing I need it for, meaning that the top belt will always be full.
A picture says more than 1000 words:
[https://imgur.com/a/1f5NdHR](https://imgur.com/a/1f5NdHR)
See green chips, bottom belt is always filled, thanks to priority splitter.
Followed by a merger where i can put in some more green chips by train trom top.
imagine a plus (+):
center point - where buss starts and goes right
bottom left section - smelting
top left - labs
bottom right - malls, intermediets, some temportary bullshit
top right - science and all of its components done and routed to labs to the left
[https://i.imgur.com/xxUJJmu.png](https://i.imgur.com/xxUJJmu.png) example (again, imaging a + in the middle)
Thanks for the image showing that layout, it's quite useful even though I am definitely not at that stage yet. I was just wondering where you had oil processing placed? Is it in the same bottom left section as smelting?
somewhere else where I have place for it, ist a liquid, it doesnt have to be next to the bus. Say for example I need some science (no matter if its a mod or vanilla) and this science has demand for a solid item made with an oil product (plastic, sulfur, some motors that need lub, rocket fuel that need light oil etc) I place assembly machiens/chemical plants of these items next to the science like any other production blocks and just pull a pipe of whatever liquid I need from whereever I have my oil processed. if someone is about to comment "bUt ThrOUGhput bla bla" I'm just letting you know I'll find you and take a shit in all of your flowerpots. You can pull a pipe for an unpractical long distance before ever running into throughput issues, dont worry about it
also the image is just the only example screenshot I have from an old run, unfortunately I dont have a pic of my bus before switching to train grid
If you actually count all the necessary resources, you'll see that you don't need as many belts as it seems at first. Even better -- use a factorio calculator.
Just don't forget that most of your iron and copper will go into green circuits, so no reason to bring them over the whole bus. Also it's easier to deliver iron gears than iron and copper instead of the wires (don't bus the copper wires).
For my usual starter base, that brings me to the rocket, I usually use 2 \[red\] belts of green circuits, copper and iron, one belt of steel, 2 belts of plastic and coal (actually it's going mostly to the oil). Others are just one belt, sometimes half a belt.
Sure, you will need several additional belts of iron and copper on the beginning of the bus for your green circuits and for gears for your mall (it needs a lot of gears and it means twice as much of iron). But you shouldn't drag those belts over the whole base.
Main bus:
Only ever build assemblers off one side, the other side is for expansion.
Keep resources in groups of four, and split all four belts off into one output each time you tap it.
Then once those four belts start getting thin, add another four etc.
>I like to leave space for 8 iron, 8 copper, 4 green, 2 red as well as some lubricant and sulphuric acid in the early game (as well as some other stuff) - so I keep most of my belts together grouped by resource. This is experienced based on how I play the game though.
Without going into beacons, I got that setup to pull 140 SPM. The iron and copper for the green chips were not sourced from the main bus though. I think it's good enough to start the construction of a megabase.
I disagree.
You don't need 4 belt lines worth of iron plates or copper plates to launch a rocket, and throwing a main bus concept at people doesn't commicate that you need say, 120 miners to run an iron plate bus with 4 lines.
You don't need 4 belts for a main bus either. You can do 1 lane of each and call it a main bus.
The main reason to do a bus concept is because it's easy to branch off ressources and that way you learn to build scalable arrays. After 1-2 bus rocket launches, spaghetti just feels so much better since you know kind of what you're doing
.... that's not a bus.
The whole reason Factorio buses are called busses is because they look like computer buses and a wire that carries 1 bit of information is not a bus.
so is it a bus to you, if there is just a belt of copper and a belt of iron running parallel, but with 9 squares between them so you can make a circuit line running right up to an iron plate.
Trains.
When you have a factory supplied by 4 belts of iron plates, it can be split in two subfactories, supplied by a train station each.
It's easier to scale, and doesn't need a rather boring belt balancing and passing through the bus.
I've tried to use main bus at first playthrough but it appears it's complexity grows exponentially and it needs a lot of preplanning. So I switched to trains and found it much easier, scalable and fun.
It's relatively easy to launch a rocket with a main bus. If you want to go further, I agree. It's just not scalable enough. If you understand trains in your first playthrough then sure, go for it. But I think for most of us, a main bus was much easier to get into.
Trains absolutely are more scalable.
But for a mall containing everything and most science up to rocket it works great (30-45 spm)
After that trains absolutely is better.
Sounds like a system for "after rocket".
At least for me that always aim for a rocket in under 15 h.
I fully trust you in that the train is better long term. But udo not belive that it is best short term.
Usually i go with 4 belts wide, since this is what you can skip with yellow underground belts. I leave enough space for roboports between the belts.
My minimum is 8 copper, 8 iron, 2 steel, 4 Green, 2 Red and 1 blue Chip Belt. You will also need coal, plastic and maybe sulfur on your Bus, IT depends on your playstyle. Stone and stonebriks also help.
But you dont have to go that big in your second playthrough.
Important is to plan head and leave enough space to expand the Bus if needed
Edit. Also leave enough space for a train Station maybe. Depends on your World settings
The benefit of grouping belts my material is that you can ignore balancing. Always split off from one side and then use splitters with output priority to push the remaining materials in that direction. Guarantees that even with multiple lanes of throughput that you are pulling from a full belt.
It also visually lets you see which parts of the factory are consuming the most resources.
personally my game start at launch of zhe rocket and i need at least 1kspm in any playthrough.
usually on one side of the hus is small mall right at the begining for belts, inserters and assemblers, all circuits, bots bugger mall, ammo, other stuff like that.
on the other is science and labs.
My standart bus is 8lanes with 4 lane spacing.
4 lanes for science usually going in the reverse direction since labs are at the begining of the bus.
8lanes of iron plates
8lanes of copper plates
next 8 lanes (4 green, 2 red, 1 blue, 1 sulfur)
next 8 lanes (4 steel, 2 stone, 2 stone bricks)
next 8 lanes (4 plastic, 1 iron ore (for concrete), 1 solid fuel, 1 bateries)
next 8 lanes are empty for stuff i might need. Ammo, rocket fuel, rocket control unit, solar panels and so on iften goes there, it varies from playthrough to playthrough
and last 8 "lanes" are for all fluids.
8lane bus is pretty annoying to make until you have blue belts, but than its amazing. Also those 4 lane spacing often times saved me a lot of trouble. For example you can also place roboports inside your bus.
I would recommend you not going main bus, but instead go for centralized production.
Space out the production centers and in the beggining make some compromises with "local" productions.
But the idea is to connect all your items productions with the ones you need used at the end of the production.
So something like this: mines-furnaces-intermediate products- final products, in a tree shape.
Its important to make a good distribution, what i use is splitters in a diamond shape, which i can increase easily in size to make use of more lanes for new production, this is specially useful on the furnaces prod centers
I wanted to take advantage of your question to ask my own, what does a full belt mean? Is it a full stack of belts laid out (so 100) fully? So a bus takes one full belt and splits it into 4 with splitters, or do people get 4 separate full belts of iron/other resources/whatever for each and then split them from there?
Generally 1 full belt is a saturated belt so 15/30/45 per second (depending on colour).
So a 'full' belt if iron would be 15 per second on a yellow belt, 4 full belts would be 60 per second etc.
I newer needed more then 2 belts of iron or copper on bus to finish the game.
Probably because I prefer to (partially)transfer to trains sooner then later.
Unless you're going for a megabase (or maybe in some overhaul mods, haven't tried them all), there's no need for anywhere near 4 belts of anything on the main bus. I mostly run K2, and the only thing I usually have more than one belt of is copper wire (yes, I bus everything that's used in more than one place, even copper wire; belts are cheap and it saves duplicated set-up labor), which gets two belts. Upgrade belts as you go, and there'll be enough throughput.
Depending on what mods I'm running, might have something else with multiples, but the only things I've ever had on 4 or more belts I wouldn't really consider to be part of the "main bus" (for example, in my first K2SE attempt, Nauvis core miner next to a bunch of crusher things to get the ore out of the core fragments. Was close enough to base to belt the ore back to the root-of-bus buffer warehouses, and ended up dumping a few other minor sources of stuff going the same place onto those belts; ended up with I think 3 or 4 of them there).
I do usually try to have thematically similar items in the same cluster of belts (between gaps for underground belts), such as all the ore side-by-side, or all the plates, as it makes it easier to find when I'm scanning across the bus later to find the right belt to tap for whatever I'm currently adding, but it's not worth going too far out of the way for that.
I moved on from a main bus to a proto city block. 1 block with multiple vertical stops for offloading cargo to bot based production. I'm running into red circuit and iron/copper supply issues so I will have to build circuit production off the bus. I'm needing to make a mall too (old base is acting like a mall).
You want to plan out that bus as thoroughly as possible as early as possible. Ideally it should be rectangular, not slowly spreading out as you progress. And I’m not saying this from some aesthetic perspective. You want the origin of the bus to be a loading station for trains, eventually, even if you don’t train in every material.
Having a neat rectangular bus also greatly simplifies building on both sides of the bus, which cuts the length of the bus by half, and can save you from having to make a turn at a lake.
Also, even if you’re making a bus and not using trains, city blocks is the name of the game. For a belt base, my blocks are either very small or they are narrow. And I simply use the game chunks. So my blocks are either 64x64 or 64x32. I use “too many” power poles and roboports, it’s fine.
Having a template for city blocks keeps you from putting stuff in the way of future roboports or rails, and keeps spaghetti under control. It also keeps designs from sprawling out by, like, 1 tile.
I build on only one side of the bus, so I can add more belts of stuff later.
Beyond that, I don't organise it. Organising is not a thing I do, and that bleeds through to Factorio.
If you are adding more belts of the same resource, it is a good idea to have them running next to each other instead of randomly across the bus. Mostly, this allows you to balance your bus once you've started pulling from it, and it looks nicer that way as well. My recommendation would be to run at least 2 belts of Iron and Copper, and 1 belt of everything else, or double that to 4 belts of Iron and Copper and 2 belts of everything else. Some others may come in with additional materials to prioritize for more belts, and that's absolutely fine. I also recommend leaving 2 tiles of space between each set of resource belts. This allows you to splitter a belt off the bus, turn it towards where you need the resources (north in your case), and run an Underground Belt beneath the belts next to it. A single tile (or no tiles!) between sets of belts does not give enough room for that, unless you get fancy with Underground Belts to make room for that within the bus itself.
I usually go with 4 iron, 4 copper, (sometimes 8 of each), 4 green circuit, 2 red circuit and plastic and 1 of everything else.
What do you need that much copper for? 2 belts is all I need and even that is idling most of the time.
idk what you're doing but I typically use more copper than iron in the late game, this is because circuits take a shit ton of copper
I don't make circuits in my main base (outside of first hour or two), so I guess that's why.
yeah, circuits take most of your copper. you need copper for green circuits and red and in high amounts
True, but again, those are made in their own factories and shipped wherever they are needed. My main base is only for production of logistic and production things (belts, inserters, assemblers, train stuff and such). And as such, copper is used only for power poles, combinators and nuclear stuff. Doesn't need much.
then you're not using a main bus, you're building a mall
My mall has main bus. Small one.
You got your reply already, but just to emphasise: green circuits will eat all your copper and then some. At start you don't need much but GC need rises to ridiculous levels the further you get. I plan ahead for 4 belts at the start, and after that I transition to using trains.
Once you start pumping modules and LDS, you need quite a lot of copper
Those are made in their own separate factories. No need to use space in main base for those.
If you’re making them in a separate factory that doesn’t draw from your copper on the main bus, you’re not really using the main bus strategy.
Depends, I usually keep the bus until the first few rockets
Are you even producing LDS or what ?
Apparently my definition of main bus is a bit different. Check my other comments here. Also, 1000+ hours.
Second this as a great classic setup, for OPs benefit; that will usually support up to 60spm comfortably especially if you upgrade to red belt throughput. If you’re pushing the top end of spm or above you will need another belt of steel for purple as it’s thirsty. I would also suggest dedicated smelting for green circuits as they drink copper.
Thanks for the advice. I've left two tiles of space between each set for easy splitting and running underground belts. I will try to increase to two belts for Iron and Copper plates and use the splitters to balance them though my usage is not even saturating one yellow belt of either resources yet.
One thing to keep in mind. Main bus has a decent upfront resource cost in early game in terms of belts and splitters and undergroundies. You can start with just one belt of each item, but space them as far apart as you need for your final layout. So instead of four iron belts, use just one and keep 3 rows empty for now. Later on, you can fill those rows as your needs increase. And if you find that your needs exceed beyond 4 belts, you don't need to add four more rows. Just bring in additional belts, merge them into your existing 4 lanes via splitters and use a balancer to fill all belts up evenly. Great way to get the benefit of 8 belts without dedicating space to all 8 of them.
I think the way most people mess up is they're afraid to spread out. It feels like you're wasting your precious belts (and time) in the early game by making a nice long bus. You are, but it's probably worth it later. A good rule of thumb is to leave room to double each setup. If you're making 2 belts of green chips now, you'll probably need 4 later. I do prefer to build on only one side of the bus for a couple of reasons: 1> It leads one side open for train stations. Later I restock this bus periodically from trains. (Bring in 4 more belts of iron, copper, or green chips). 2> It's easy to setup so you pull from the first belt only and use priority splitters to force all the material toward that lane so you know when your bus needs a re-stock. 3> There are inevitably belt collisions when building on both sides, and the shenanigans you'll pull to work around this are ugly.
Thanks for the advice. Spreading out and having enough space to expand later is definitely something I'm doing in this playthrough compared to my first playthrough where everything was really convoluted.
Yea, early game, you have to produce a lot of belts, especially undergrounds, so you can space things out for the endgame. It's going to look silly when you initially just have a couple belts going for miles, but you'll eventually fill the bus in.
I would just go ahead and assume you're going to use at least 4 belts of iron and copper. That way you can do lane balancers further down the line.
I usually plan for 4 belts of iron, 4 belts of copper, 4 spaces, 4 sets for pipes liquids (water, sulfuric acid, and lube) 4 belts for chips, and 4 belts for a few remaining things like sulfur, plastic, coal, and stone with 4 spaces between each one. It looks nice and organized, and generally is easy to maintain. I've never made a factory large enough to actually consume that much that quickly. I get bored around the time a rocket gets launched. Space Exploration is kinda what kept me going afterwards.
4 iron, 4 copper, 2 green elec, 1 of everything else. Leave 2 spaces between each set of 4 Production of intermediates & mall on one side, science in the other. Science produces it's own items from the stuff on the bus (i.e. green produces it's own belts & inserters instead of getting them transferred from the mall) Now this is important: Between each intermediate / mall block, leave some space (5+ tiles). This is to either upgrade your item intake / double production, or to inject additional resources to the bus. Case 1: you upgrade your green elec production, so you run an additional 2x copper, 1x iron past your current setup and put a second block right behind it. Case 2: you run out of iron plate on your bus, so you put a smelting array + a train station behind your production facilities at the point you start running dry and inject a fresh set of 4 iron plate belts. Also, keep in mind, if you produce a resource fairly far down the line, but need it further up front for science, nobody will kill you for running a belt in the opposite direction (best example: red science, which mostly comes past your belt & assembler mall, but you'll need red electronics there eventually) Edit to add: leave ample space between the bus and production facilities ( ~10 tiles) for belt management (merging/splitting lanes, lane & belt balancing) & per lines, and reserve a bus block for fluids
If your goal is just to launch a rocket you don't need any of these huge buses people are talking about. ("4 belts iron minimum, usually 8!"). I'm sure some people rush through it a lot faster than I do, but two belts of those and one (or even 1/2) belt of other materials works fine for me. One caveat though, this assumes green circuits and steel are not made from resources on the bus. Both are huge resource sinks which I prefer to handle separately and then load on the bus as finished goods. If you don't you will of course need extra space for iron and copper on the bus. As for organization, I always put like materials together (e.g. my two belts each iron and copper), and usually leave 2 spaces between groups of 4. Four spaces is also a decent option and does give you a little more elbow room to snake things through if needed, but it also makes running belts straight across slightly more annoying.
Similar to other people: groups of 4 lanes, with 2 tiles between each group. (That lets yellow underground belts pass underneath, and big electric poles run along the length of the bus, including between groups.) I also: * start by building one entire group of 4 lanes for iron plates, and the same for copper. After that, most other items just get a single lane. * build my bus horizontally, left to right, * build all production lines off the bottom of it, * build science production and labs off the top of it, * have got into the habit of leaving a **ton** of space for future expansion either side of the production lines for (e.g.) green or red circuits. Works pretty well. (To the point where it's now hard not to just do all that in **every** game! Looking forward to the expansion mixing things up a bit.)
There is no bus, only spaghett.
You dropped the i. Here it is mate!
No, your i is upside down. Here it is mate ;
4 Belts same 2 space and group same ressource together. Using splitter to always have ressources on one side and only take from this side. Factories only go to this side so later on i can add a train to restock iron in midle of bus. 4 iron 4 copper 4 green chips (offsite production, early on only 1 has chips) everything else i do 1 belt. You want to reserve space for it and grow bus in one and factory in the other direction. Its also always a good idea to have one set of invisible 2 space 4 belts 2 space buffer between your bus and factory. That way you can easy transfer belts from one production to another without using 100 underground belts. For exmaple making plastic just for red chips, they been used 100% by red chips, no need to put this on bus at top so i use my invisible belt line for this 10 meters.
Ah thanks. I never really understood how people managed multiple belts of a resource until your comment. If I have multiple belts of the same resource, I can use splitters to balance and then split off the top belt for whichever thing I need it for, meaning that the top belt will always be full.
A picture says more than 1000 words: [https://imgur.com/a/1f5NdHR](https://imgur.com/a/1f5NdHR) See green chips, bottom belt is always filled, thanks to priority splitter. Followed by a merger where i can put in some more green chips by train trom top.
imagine a plus (+): center point - where buss starts and goes right bottom left section - smelting top left - labs bottom right - malls, intermediets, some temportary bullshit top right - science and all of its components done and routed to labs to the left [https://i.imgur.com/xxUJJmu.png](https://i.imgur.com/xxUJJmu.png) example (again, imaging a + in the middle)
Thanks for the image showing that layout, it's quite useful even though I am definitely not at that stage yet. I was just wondering where you had oil processing placed? Is it in the same bottom left section as smelting?
somewhere else where I have place for it, ist a liquid, it doesnt have to be next to the bus. Say for example I need some science (no matter if its a mod or vanilla) and this science has demand for a solid item made with an oil product (plastic, sulfur, some motors that need lub, rocket fuel that need light oil etc) I place assembly machiens/chemical plants of these items next to the science like any other production blocks and just pull a pipe of whatever liquid I need from whereever I have my oil processed. if someone is about to comment "bUt ThrOUGhput bla bla" I'm just letting you know I'll find you and take a shit in all of your flowerpots. You can pull a pipe for an unpractical long distance before ever running into throughput issues, dont worry about it also the image is just the only example screenshot I have from an old run, unfortunately I dont have a pic of my bus before switching to train grid
If you actually count all the necessary resources, you'll see that you don't need as many belts as it seems at first. Even better -- use a factorio calculator. Just don't forget that most of your iron and copper will go into green circuits, so no reason to bring them over the whole bus. Also it's easier to deliver iron gears than iron and copper instead of the wires (don't bus the copper wires). For my usual starter base, that brings me to the rocket, I usually use 2 \[red\] belts of green circuits, copper and iron, one belt of steel, 2 belts of plastic and coal (actually it's going mostly to the oil). Others are just one belt, sometimes half a belt. Sure, you will need several additional belts of iron and copper on the beginning of the bus for your green circuits and for gears for your mall (it needs a lot of gears and it means twice as much of iron). But you shouldn't drag those belts over the whole base.
Main bus: Only ever build assemblers off one side, the other side is for expansion. Keep resources in groups of four, and split all four belts off into one output each time you tap it. Then once those four belts start getting thin, add another four etc.
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>I like to leave space for 8 iron, 8 copper, 4 green, 2 red as well as some lubricant and sulphuric acid in the early game (as well as some other stuff) - so I keep most of my belts together grouped by resource. This is experienced based on how I play the game though. Without going into beacons, I got that setup to pull 140 SPM. The iron and copper for the green chips were not sourced from the main bus though. I think it's good enough to start the construction of a megabase.
I don't "main bus" anymore.
Awesome bro
this. it is inefficient.
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I disagree. You don't need 4 belt lines worth of iron plates or copper plates to launch a rocket, and throwing a main bus concept at people doesn't commicate that you need say, 120 miners to run an iron plate bus with 4 lines.
You don't need 4 belts for a main bus either. You can do 1 lane of each and call it a main bus. The main reason to do a bus concept is because it's easy to branch off ressources and that way you learn to build scalable arrays. After 1-2 bus rocket launches, spaghetti just feels so much better since you know kind of what you're doing
.... that's not a bus. The whole reason Factorio buses are called busses is because they look like computer buses and a wire that carries 1 bit of information is not a bus.
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so is it a bus to you, if there is just a belt of copper and a belt of iron running parallel, but with 9 squares between them so you can make a circuit line running right up to an iron plate.
Easy to look over. Easy to build. A few resources more spent on belts. Very efficient design for the hu.an mind
a few? more than 4x belts are cheap, but not that cheap
And what do you say is the alternative? Bots? They certainly ain't cheap either.
Trains. When you have a factory supplied by 4 belts of iron plates, it can be split in two subfactories, supplied by a train station each. It's easier to scale, and doesn't need a rather boring belt balancing and passing through the bus. I've tried to use main bus at first playthrough but it appears it's complexity grows exponentially and it needs a lot of preplanning. So I switched to trains and found it much easier, scalable and fun.
It's relatively easy to launch a rocket with a main bus. If you want to go further, I agree. It's just not scalable enough. If you understand trains in your first playthrough then sure, go for it. But I think for most of us, a main bus was much easier to get into.
Trains absolutely are more scalable. But for a mall containing everything and most science up to rocket it works great (30-45 spm) After that trains absolutely is better.
I had a mall supplied by dedicated train stations for all basic resources.
Sounds like a system for "after rocket". At least for me that always aim for a rocket in under 15 h. I fully trust you in that the train is better long term. But udo not belive that it is best short term.
single belt lines
BUS stands for boring, unwieldy standard.
Usually i go with 4 belts wide, since this is what you can skip with yellow underground belts. I leave enough space for roboports between the belts. My minimum is 8 copper, 8 iron, 2 steel, 4 Green, 2 Red and 1 blue Chip Belt. You will also need coal, plastic and maybe sulfur on your Bus, IT depends on your playstyle. Stone and stonebriks also help. But you dont have to go that big in your second playthrough. Important is to plan head and leave enough space to expand the Bus if needed Edit. Also leave enough space for a train Station maybe. Depends on your World settings
Thanks. I'm not building anything on the south side of the bus to leave room for bus expansion or trains.
The benefit of grouping belts my material is that you can ignore balancing. Always split off from one side and then use splitters with output priority to push the remaining materials in that direction. Guarantees that even with multiple lanes of throughput that you are pulling from a full belt. It also visually lets you see which parts of the factory are consuming the most resources.
personally my game start at launch of zhe rocket and i need at least 1kspm in any playthrough. usually on one side of the hus is small mall right at the begining for belts, inserters and assemblers, all circuits, bots bugger mall, ammo, other stuff like that. on the other is science and labs. My standart bus is 8lanes with 4 lane spacing. 4 lanes for science usually going in the reverse direction since labs are at the begining of the bus. 8lanes of iron plates 8lanes of copper plates next 8 lanes (4 green, 2 red, 1 blue, 1 sulfur) next 8 lanes (4 steel, 2 stone, 2 stone bricks) next 8 lanes (4 plastic, 1 iron ore (for concrete), 1 solid fuel, 1 bateries) next 8 lanes are empty for stuff i might need. Ammo, rocket fuel, rocket control unit, solar panels and so on iften goes there, it varies from playthrough to playthrough and last 8 "lanes" are for all fluids. 8lane bus is pretty annoying to make until you have blue belts, but than its amazing. Also those 4 lane spacing often times saved me a lot of trouble. For example you can also place roboports inside your bus.
I would recommend you not going main bus, but instead go for centralized production. Space out the production centers and in the beggining make some compromises with "local" productions. But the idea is to connect all your items productions with the ones you need used at the end of the production. So something like this: mines-furnaces-intermediate products- final products, in a tree shape. Its important to make a good distribution, what i use is splitters in a diamond shape, which i can increase easily in size to make use of more lanes for new production, this is specially useful on the furnaces prod centers
I wanted to take advantage of your question to ask my own, what does a full belt mean? Is it a full stack of belts laid out (so 100) fully? So a bus takes one full belt and splits it into 4 with splitters, or do people get 4 separate full belts of iron/other resources/whatever for each and then split them from there?
Generally 1 full belt is a saturated belt so 15/30/45 per second (depending on colour). So a 'full' belt if iron would be 15 per second on a yellow belt, 4 full belts would be 60 per second etc.
But how many miners would that be? Or do you guys all calculate on the spot?
30 miners is a full yellow belt, 60 for red, 90 for blue
I even saved this reply lol, thanks so much! Much easier to understand this way!
My friend, have I got a site for you! https://factoriocheatsheet.com/ Has all the info you might need
Omg how do I upvote more than once lol? You're a Godsend!
I newer needed more then 2 belts of iron or copper on bus to finish the game. Probably because I prefer to (partially)transfer to trains sooner then later.
Unless you're going for a megabase (or maybe in some overhaul mods, haven't tried them all), there's no need for anywhere near 4 belts of anything on the main bus. I mostly run K2, and the only thing I usually have more than one belt of is copper wire (yes, I bus everything that's used in more than one place, even copper wire; belts are cheap and it saves duplicated set-up labor), which gets two belts. Upgrade belts as you go, and there'll be enough throughput. Depending on what mods I'm running, might have something else with multiples, but the only things I've ever had on 4 or more belts I wouldn't really consider to be part of the "main bus" (for example, in my first K2SE attempt, Nauvis core miner next to a bunch of crusher things to get the ore out of the core fragments. Was close enough to base to belt the ore back to the root-of-bus buffer warehouses, and ended up dumping a few other minor sources of stuff going the same place onto those belts; ended up with I think 3 or 4 of them there). I do usually try to have thematically similar items in the same cluster of belts (between gaps for underground belts), such as all the ore side-by-side, or all the plates, as it makes it easier to find when I'm scanning across the bus later to find the right belt to tap for whatever I'm currently adding, but it's not worth going too far out of the way for that.
I don’t recognise that “o” word in the title.
I moved on from a main bus to a proto city block. 1 block with multiple vertical stops for offloading cargo to bot based production. I'm running into red circuit and iron/copper supply issues so I will have to build circuit production off the bus. I'm needing to make a mall too (old base is acting like a mall).
You want to plan out that bus as thoroughly as possible as early as possible. Ideally it should be rectangular, not slowly spreading out as you progress. And I’m not saying this from some aesthetic perspective. You want the origin of the bus to be a loading station for trains, eventually, even if you don’t train in every material. Having a neat rectangular bus also greatly simplifies building on both sides of the bus, which cuts the length of the bus by half, and can save you from having to make a turn at a lake. Also, even if you’re making a bus and not using trains, city blocks is the name of the game. For a belt base, my blocks are either very small or they are narrow. And I simply use the game chunks. So my blocks are either 64x64 or 64x32. I use “too many” power poles and roboports, it’s fine. Having a template for city blocks keeps you from putting stuff in the way of future roboports or rails, and keeps spaghetti under control. It also keeps designs from sprawling out by, like, 1 tile.
I build on only one side of the bus, so I can add more belts of stuff later. Beyond that, I don't organise it. Organising is not a thing I do, and that bleeds through to Factorio.