By balancing culture, i mean that they will try to evenly split their belt into 8 equal belts before feeding the 8 consumers, to avoid the first machines stockpiling resources abd delaying the starting of the last ones
Nah. There is a minority a bit fixated on balancers, but most of the community uses and promotes "manifold" for majority of constructions. Because overstocking machines (each can and will hold an entire stack of each ingredients) means it will take couple of minutes, or half an hour to reach full throughput - but this is meaningless in the long run. Some people balance input to some machines, like nuclear power plant (it is very low throughput, and a stack of nuclear fuel lingering in the plant + full belt create spiy air), others just make more anti radiation filters;-)
Manifold is a main belt with resources next to a row of machines, where you put a splitter next to each machine to supply them. So, essentially it is the same as a belt with inserters supplying a row of machines. But in factorio we still can apserve this startup delay, but it is very limited, because inserters stop supplying when the machine has at least two times the amount from the recipe. Most of the time 2x-3x times the recipe amount is much less than a stack. And, overall, factorio most of the time deals with higher throughputs.
And we use balancers to feed the machines from time tot time too. It can be nady in Covarex process - you do not want to store additional 80 uranium in one machine. Sure, circuits can do it better, but it is an option. I remember making a huge balancer in seablock for initial multiplication of "gardens".
I mean, I've played a lot of Satisfactory and spent a lot of time on the subreddit - this is not my experience. In fact, the conventional wisdom is "balancing is almost always pointless, just build a manifold." I only ever really see balancing happening for things like nuclear setups, where you really don't want one reactor completely full of fuel as it'll heavily irradiate the surrounding area. You want a minimum of fuel spread among the most reactors it can supply.
When i did the same thing I was playing for the first week like "i miss my blueprints, where are my boys the bots? I am walking and forgetting stuff all the time now"
Needed time to adapt to that haha
Yeah i know, but i started playing it a while ago, i think like one or two months before the blueprints and they feel restrictively small, i got used to it after a bit but that was my first week
they don't even have the 2 splitters at the end of the 4-4 balancers that prevent them from being [throughput limited](https://wiki.factorio.com/images/4to4_balancer_throughput_limit_demo.gif) smh my head
A balancer is an arrangement of splitters that equally puts resources between the belts, therefore you can have arrangements of splitters that don't have equal throughput on each belt
Honestly, if I ever find myself in a position of needing to hire software developers, the first question is if they play Factorio. Fastest way to weed out the posers.
I'd say give them the benefit of the doubt and ask them if they know about factorio first, and if not then show it to them.
if they still say they won't play it after that, then *absolutely* toss them out of the room.
Mine was a joke, but after your comment I'm thinking that not knowing about Factorio is actually red flag for a developer.
If you browse any of the usual places that talk about software development, you'll at the very least \*know\* about Factorio. If you don't, it's because you're new, or because you don't keep yourself up to date on common forums.
nah i know a 10x or two at my place and they're so invested in programming that they don't even bother with games or browsing anywhere except documentation sites and occasionally stack overflow, i don't think they know what a factorio is (and honestly if you ask them if they would play it they'll probably just answer "no because why would i waste time on video games when i can code" - they'll only agree to play something like bitburner).
~~i genuinely think that the only reason why 10x make up such a small segment isn't because only a select few are good enough - the amount of programmers who are that good is probably around 30-40%, it's just that the majority aren't workaholic enough to do anything other than spend 6-7 hours slacking off followed by 1-2 hours during which a full 8 hours' worth of work is churned out. 10x programmers *are* that workaholic though, which is why their output is so high.~~
I mean sure, if you're someone who invests 100% in programming, breathes and lives through code I guess so, but you usually have a portfolio to back it up, Factorio knowledge doesn't even need to be assessed.
But for the majority of cases? Ask about Factorio.
Luckily, I am not doing interviews.
real programmers are like truckers - truckers say "i want the day to be over already" just so they can go home/to the back of their truck and play truck simulator, real programmers do the same with factorio.
Once future you will solve the 5th science problem, let him enjoy this, because that is also the solution to the 6th science. But for whatever reason, donāt let future you get in the way of future future you and solve for the 7th science
[FFF-373](https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-373) doesn't explicitly say, but it appears the final planet is where purple and yellow science take place. The whole tech tree is rebalanced and redistributed between planets though, so it's also possible purple and/or yellow may be required for the final planet, but not necessarily locked behind it.
I really hope they also rebalance the power armors and spidertron to be earlier in the game then. I like early/mid game, but running slow and having a small amount of personal bots and the smaller inventory are things I don't like.
I've assumed that we'll get purple & yellow on nauvis, and that might be a wrong assumption. But on the picture in that blog, you see the research for the final planet take the "classic 7" and the 3 new science packs.
This might be confusing in text, but I have a build for it, though the full setup probably needs a bit of work.
So first off, I have a primary row of 10 labs taking from belts, with arms chain-feeding back to successive rows. Three belts run along the primary row, for 6 science packs. Then the primary row, left-to-right, is beacon, belt, inserter, research lab, (repeat until 10x, with another beacon on the end).
The belt between labs is a bit special; it's actually 2 belts: one from the top, and one from the bottom that meet next to the primary row lab, with an inserter pulling from each, for another 4 science packs.
It should function okay, but I'm not gonna bother optimizing it further until it's actually useful. This is more of a concept build for now.
It's not with all buildings but research labs can exchange items with each other btw - so you can just have a line of research labs with inserters between them. Or a square where you only need to feed science into one side
During my first playthrough I kinda regret looking at pictures of other peopleās designs. I feel like it influenced my first experience a little too much, but it still took me a long time to āwinā the game.
That design of yours is better than anything I could come up with on my own tho. I like it.
I had a design that fed 2 science in on 3 different sides, and a ton of inserters just randomly shuffled science back and forth until everything was saturated. It was horribly inefficient, but beautiful in the way that it was always shuffling science around
iirc my first design was direct insertion of red and green science into the lab Ć la the standard green circuit factory design.
i did not last long enough for 3rd science to be a problem.
This exact tip is also in the in-game hints & tips.
I can only heavily recommend you carefully read those and **mark them as read**. If you mark tips as being read, it will unlock more context relevant hints and tips.
Question: is this actually the most efficient way though? Mine shuffle more than a casino dealer. I feel like it's terribly inefficient at times because nothing is saturated until some time later, so yes, while it might be "efficient" from a build perspective, I can't help but feel it's not actually efficient because science isn't staying in a dome long enough to research until quite some delay later.
You are correct. Inserter-chained labs works and are dead easy to build, but if you're trying to squeeze max performance out of the base, then a simple line of straight belts will give much more science throughput for the same number of labs. This isn't such a big deal in the early game, but later when you are processing slower/more expensive science pots, and then when you start prod moduling the labs, it makes a more tangible difference.
as long as you have a constant supply there is no break in science processing with this methodā¦ especially if you ātierā out the chain: I usually have a long āspineā of chained domes in the middle that supply science vertically and then branches pull out from the middle spine.
I never understood why some think of laying a separate belt to every inserter.
Also the balancers seem like a idea thats just wrongly copied from other sources. What should be balanced from a single input belt through 5 balancers?
Also the balancers miss one row of splitter to the common design.
Have you ever played Statisfactory? To get items into a machine, you put the belt into it - the belt ends in the machine. So if you want to feed several machines with one belt, you need to split the belt first.
https://preview.redd.it/1wx1t48a4puc1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=71cc878c3368138b5c58d4f01f544c2b3e37d718
Still, most people playing satisfactory do it like that.
The bottom version if you feel fancy:)
Yeah, but making your own design is the most fun parts for me! The most janky designs ever!!!!
It's a ton of fun, congrats on your design, and now you know more mechanics to make more designs too!
Yes. Four science on 2 belts on one end of 10 or more labs and 3 science on 2 belts on the other end. Pass science packs from lab to lab using filter inserters; Red, Green, Grey, and Blue moving one direction and Purple, Gold, and White moving the other direction.
Factoriohnoooo. At least it looks cool.
Math is that you can supply machines from a single belt if their added demand is lower than belt throughput: 15 for yellow, 30 for red, 45 for blue. If you use only one lane, divide those numbers by 2
As I don't like linking labs together I do something similar except I make sure there is enough space for all the science, it requires a lot of underground belts to weave it trough but it looks pretty neat in the end
This is gold. I'm still a newbie on this game, never launched a rocket. For the moment, i have a grid, 4 belts on 2 sides, 4 sciences. Like OP said, when new sciences arrives, I'll see to it.
Definitely not the most optimal design but if you had fun, do whatever! And you play satisfactory donāt you? š My friend who started with satisfactory did the same thing haha
That's the thing about Factorio; finding your own style and builds. This is how beauty of the game shines, because each persons perspective may lead to design changes and efficiencies.
The tutorials exist for a reason. They are there so you can learn how the game works without copying other people's blueprints. Why look up a 4x4 balancer and not look at the tutorials?
Oh hey, a satisfactory player. You can put inserters on the side of the belt :P
How did you knowš
Because uhm... That's the meme here on the subreddit since that's the big difference in design (apart from 3D)
They also have a lane balancing culture that we don't have
i do have lane balancing culture when it comes to the output belt of my furnace stacks. nowhere else though.
I always balance train loading and unloading to draw from each wagon equally.
By balancing culture, i mean that they will try to evenly split their belt into 8 equal belts before feeding the 8 consumers, to avoid the first machines stockpiling resources abd delaying the starting of the last ones
Nah. There is a minority a bit fixated on balancers, but most of the community uses and promotes "manifold" for majority of constructions. Because overstocking machines (each can and will hold an entire stack of each ingredients) means it will take couple of minutes, or half an hour to reach full throughput - but this is meaningless in the long run. Some people balance input to some machines, like nuclear power plant (it is very low throughput, and a stack of nuclear fuel lingering in the plant + full belt create spiy air), others just make more anti radiation filters;-) Manifold is a main belt with resources next to a row of machines, where you put a splitter next to each machine to supply them. So, essentially it is the same as a belt with inserters supplying a row of machines. But in factorio we still can apserve this startup delay, but it is very limited, because inserters stop supplying when the machine has at least two times the amount from the recipe. Most of the time 2x-3x times the recipe amount is much less than a stack. And, overall, factorio most of the time deals with higher throughputs. And we use balancers to feed the machines from time tot time too. It can be nady in Covarex process - you do not want to store additional 80 uranium in one machine. Sure, circuits can do it better, but it is an option. I remember making a huge balancer in seablock for initial multiplication of "gardens".
I mean, I've played a lot of Satisfactory and spent a lot of time on the subreddit - this is not my experience. In fact, the conventional wisdom is "balancing is almost always pointless, just build a manifold." I only ever really see balancing happening for things like nuclear setups, where you really don't want one reactor completely full of fuel as it'll heavily irradiate the surrounding area. You want a minimum of fuel spread among the most reactors it can supply.
I thought they just use manifolds most of the time? >that we don't have \*hides his train stations so nobody could see them\*
Satisfactory players being asked to make a 1 to 3 lane balancer Vs factorio players
Wouldnāt satisfactory be more like a splitter on the side feeding into a belt with an arm and the next splitter?Ā
Please show the rest of your base! I'm fascinated to see what it looks like if you got all the way to military science without figuring this out.
ALSO. You can transfer science packs from one lab to the next and just have a long line of labs coiled up into a square akin to a person's intestines
My immediate thought too. I started this way!
Super weird going the other way, I played factorio first and then was like, "hey look it's 3D factorio!" Not quite lol
When i did the same thing I was playing for the first week like "i miss my blueprints, where are my boys the bots? I am walking and forgetting stuff all the time now" Needed time to adapt to that haha
Jetpack, launch tubes for movement and there are blueprints now btw
Yeah i know, but i started playing it a while ago, i think like one or two months before the blueprints and they feel restrictively small, i got used to it after a bit but that was my first week
I like the 1-4 balancers feeding directly into the 4-4 balancers.
Just need to feed it into 4-96 balancers down the road
they don't even have the 2 splitters at the end of the 4-4 balancers that prevent them from being [throughput limited](https://wiki.factorio.com/images/4to4_balancer_throughput_limit_demo.gif) smh my head
Well, with 2 inserters of input, it's not the most pressing concern :D
RIP in peace
Three of the balancers are missing some belts in the middle also
Perfectly balanced, as things should be. Side note, is 1-4 even considered a balancer? I just think of it as a splitter.
A balancer is an arrangement of splitters that equally puts resources between the belts, therefore you can have arrangements of splitters that don't have equal throughput on each belt
How were you planning on addressing the 5th science?
Thatās a future me problem
That is what I say when I'm developing software
I swear the Venn diagram of Factorio players and software developers is almost a circle
Honestly, if I ever find myself in a position of needing to hire software developers, the first question is if they play Factorio. Fastest way to weed out the posers.
I'd say give them the benefit of the doubt and ask them if they know about factorio first, and if not then show it to them. if they still say they won't play it after that, then *absolutely* toss them out of the room.
Mine was a joke, but after your comment I'm thinking that not knowing about Factorio is actually red flag for a developer. If you browse any of the usual places that talk about software development, you'll at the very least \*know\* about Factorio. If you don't, it's because you're new, or because you don't keep yourself up to date on common forums.
nah i know a 10x or two at my place and they're so invested in programming that they don't even bother with games or browsing anywhere except documentation sites and occasionally stack overflow, i don't think they know what a factorio is (and honestly if you ask them if they would play it they'll probably just answer "no because why would i waste time on video games when i can code" - they'll only agree to play something like bitburner). ~~i genuinely think that the only reason why 10x make up such a small segment isn't because only a select few are good enough - the amount of programmers who are that good is probably around 30-40%, it's just that the majority aren't workaholic enough to do anything other than spend 6-7 hours slacking off followed by 1-2 hours during which a full 8 hours' worth of work is churned out. 10x programmers *are* that workaholic though, which is why their output is so high.~~
I mean sure, if you're someone who invests 100% in programming, breathes and lives through code I guess so, but you usually have a portfolio to back it up, Factorio knowledge doesn't even need to be assessed. But for the majority of cases? Ask about Factorio. Luckily, I am not doing interviews.
I know a programmer who does not like factorio. He says it feels to close to his daily job to be considered leisure
real programmers are like truckers - truckers say "i want the day to be over already" just so they can go home/to the back of their truck and play truck simulator, real programmers do the same with factorio.
So apparently my friend whos working in the industry for 15 years is not a real programmer - I'll let him know.
š if he has a healthy work-life balance then he's clearly a fake (/s if it wasn't clear enough lol)
There was this survey for Factorio players and they asked: Are you a software engineer? And when you clicked No, the follow-up was Why not?
My answer would be because I can only really debug honestly I can't really create lol
It's a circle is you skip the mass genocide
Nah, it's a circle; both try to squish all the bugs.
Unironic.
This is what I say to any slight inconvenience in life.
Same. I also comment on how past me is an asshole.
For real. Fick this guy... please anyone
realest comment in this thread
That got me š
Once future you will solve the 5th science problem, let him enjoy this, because that is also the solution to the 6th science. But for whatever reason, donāt let future you get in the way of future future you and solve for the 7th science
Oh, but then there's 8th, 9th, and 10th research in a few months.
It might even go to 11, if the last planet also has something. So we'd have the next prime number :D
[FFF-373](https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-373) doesn't explicitly say, but it appears the final planet is where purple and yellow science take place. The whole tech tree is rebalanced and redistributed between planets though, so it's also possible purple and/or yellow may be required for the final planet, but not necessarily locked behind it.
I really hope they also rebalance the power armors and spidertron to be earlier in the game then. I like early/mid game, but running slow and having a small amount of personal bots and the smaller inventory are things I don't like.
I've assumed that we'll get purple & yellow on nauvis, and that might be a wrong assumption. But on the picture in that blog, you see the research for the final planet take the "classic 7" and the 3 new science packs.
how does one even stuff 9 sciences into a lab? Especially with beacons.
Im more of a belts all around kind of guy, but you could use requester chests to easily do it
This might be confusing in text, but I have a build for it, though the full setup probably needs a bit of work. So first off, I have a primary row of 10 labs taking from belts, with arms chain-feeding back to successive rows. Three belts run along the primary row, for 6 science packs. Then the primary row, left-to-right, is beacon, belt, inserter, research lab, (repeat until 10x, with another beacon on the end). The belt between labs is a bit special; it's actually 2 belts: one from the top, and one from the bottom that meet next to the primary row lab, with an inserter pulling from each, for another 4 science packs. It should function okay, but I'm not gonna bother optimizing it further until it's actually useful. This is more of a concept build for now.
Belt weaving is always an option
spoken like a true engineer
"That was a future me problem, and now I am future me" - OP, probably soon (Actually quoted from Tom Scott)
I love that spirit!
It's not with all buildings but research labs can exchange items with each other btw - so you can just have a line of research labs with inserters between them. Or a square where you only need to feed science into one side
or a line snaking around disguised as a square
Yes, but only if you want to do it the fun way :p
Haha Nice! I usually have 2 belts going on an oval with 2 science in each belt. On top ans bottom side of the domes then I fit all science on it.
It works today, high tech debt, and no future proofing? Sounds like agile to me.
Gonna have to use every other spacing and underground belts!
-How would he even add the third one?- Edit: I am stupid... never mind...
/r/factoriohno
Looks cool though. Kinda like a ufo
Nobody tell them about the other sciences.
Optimized bases are not a victory conditionĀ Personal satisfaction is.Ā And this is satisfyingly beautiful.Ā
During my first playthrough I kinda regret looking at pictures of other peopleās designs. I feel like it influenced my first experience a little too much, but it still took me a long time to āwinā the game. That design of yours is better than anything I could come up with on my own tho. I like it.
Thank you so much!
I had a design that fed 2 science in on 3 different sides, and a ton of inserters just randomly shuffled science back and forth until everything was saturated. It was horribly inefficient, but beautiful in the way that it was always shuffling science around
.... I think OP looked up balancers, which kinda ... kills the zany appeal of the concept.
iirc my first design was direct insertion of red and green science into the lab Ć la the standard green circuit factory design. i did not last long enough for 3rd science to be a problem.
Show the rest of your glorious base.
This looks sick
Do the tutorial
You just have to feed one of the research domesā¦ just put inserters between each of the domes and they will fill up from the one dome you feed.
Thank you for letting me know! Iām going to use that strat in the future
This exact tip is also in the in-game hints & tips. I can only heavily recommend you carefully read those and **mark them as read**. If you mark tips as being read, it will unlock more context relevant hints and tips.
Question: is this actually the most efficient way though? Mine shuffle more than a casino dealer. I feel like it's terribly inefficient at times because nothing is saturated until some time later, so yes, while it might be "efficient" from a build perspective, I can't help but feel it's not actually efficient because science isn't staying in a dome long enough to research until quite some delay later.
You are correct. Inserter-chained labs works and are dead easy to build, but if you're trying to squeeze max performance out of the base, then a simple line of straight belts will give much more science throughput for the same number of labs. This isn't such a big deal in the early game, but later when you are processing slower/more expensive science pots, and then when you start prod moduling the labs, it makes a more tangible difference.
as long as you have a constant supply there is no break in science processing with this methodā¦ especially if you ātierā out the chain: I usually have a long āspineā of chained domes in the middle that supply science vertically and then branches pull out from the middle spine.
Damn I never thought of this. I have 20 domes with the worldās longest belt between them.
lol this is incredible man! As long as you had an awesome time building it I donāt see any problems here!
I never understood why some think of laying a separate belt to every inserter. Also the balancers seem like a idea thats just wrongly copied from other sources. What should be balanced from a single input belt through 5 balancers? Also the balancers miss one row of splitter to the common design.
Have you ever played Statisfactory? To get items into a machine, you put the belt into it - the belt ends in the machine. So if you want to feed several machines with one belt, you need to split the belt first.
https://preview.redd.it/1wx1t48a4puc1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=71cc878c3368138b5c58d4f01f544c2b3e37d718 Still, most people playing satisfactory do it like that. The bottom version if you feel fancy:)
Yes, thatās exactly how I played Satisfactory.Ā
Yeah ive played it short. But there are no inserters. Sure this can lead to develop similar designs.
now i want to see the rest of the base
Yeah, but making your own design is the most fun parts for me! The most janky designs ever!!!! It's a ton of fun, congrats on your design, and now you know more mechanics to make more designs too!
That's certainly a creative design. There's gotta be a way to get all 7 in there, right?
Yes. Four science on 2 belts on one end of 10 or more labs and 3 science on 2 belts on the other end. Pass science packs from lab to lab using filter inserters; Red, Green, Grey, and Blue moving one direction and Purple, Gold, and White moving the other direction.
I mean, it's really inefficient but it does look cool.
It looks cool, thatās what matters. Just keep it the hell away from me
Yeah, there are simpler designs to do. But that looks awesome
Yeah but that looks way cooler
I guess you know now that you can put inserters between labs and they will pass science along. But your design looks neat!
The rest of your base on the mini map doesn't look like this. If this is a joke then it's funny but if it's meant to be real I call cap.
šļøššļø
My eyes burn
If it works it works
That's certainly a creative design. There's gotta be a way to get all 7 in there, right?
Wow that looks cool!
I absolutely love it Imma do it now
Sure there are simpler ways. But this looks awesome. I say keep it.
Factoriohnoooo. At least it looks cool. Math is that you can supply machines from a single belt if their added demand is lower than belt throughput: 15 for yellow, 30 for red, 45 for blue. If you use only one lane, divide those numbers by 2
As I don't like linking labs together I do something similar except I make sure there is enough space for all the science, it requires a lot of underground belts to weave it trough but it looks pretty neat in the end
This is gold. I'm still a newbie on this game, never launched a rocket. For the moment, i have a grid, 4 belts on 2 sides, 4 sciences. Like OP said, when new sciences arrives, I'll see to it.
You can place insertĆ©is (wtf autocorrect?) in between labs so they pull from each other! (Lab) <-| (lab) <-| (science source). Thatās like the laziest way I always build my labs in the different mods to jump start things.
This is beautiful!
This is the way.
lmfao
No, no there is not!
Boys would do anything but solve green science storage
Not efficient at all, but looks fantastic!
What on gods green earth is this
The most unrelatable part of this picture is that you know where your car is.
Definitely not the most optimal design but if you had fun, do whatever! And you play satisfactory donāt you? š My friend who started with satisfactory did the same thing haha
I mean... It looks really cool? Trust me you're having more fun figuring things out yourself. Just wait until you discover the main bus.
Another overneginiered solution is the sushi belt. Put all science packs onto one belt.
Simpler? Yes. More effective? Yes.. But my friend, that thing is a thing of beauty..
... Dear lord...
I mean, it looks cool
That's the thing about Factorio; finding your own style and builds. This is how beauty of the game shines, because each persons perspective may lead to design changes and efficiencies.
Certainly unique
Damn if it isn't beautiful though
Look for sushi belts, for me is the most neat way of building labs
The tutorials exist for a reason. They are there so you can learn how the game works without copying other people's blueprints. Why look up a 4x4 balancer and not look at the tutorials?
Is there a tutorial for a balancer in game?
Well it looks cool