Helioghost

Formerly RobotWarsAlex. Anonymising a little in line with my gamertag. Here to follow fandom content for a few things and talk to the void about my factory.

[helioghost]

Working on an anecdotal autism gaming theory.

I've currently got a one dimensional spectrum labelled "grew up playing with..." where "dolls" is at one end with "The Sims" and "trains" is at the other with "Factorio".

Crusader Kings might be somewhere around neutral, whereas other Paradox games swing much more heavily towards train.

SimCity/Cities Skylines also go in neutral territory, perhaps edging slightly towards dolls despite containing trains.

Rimworld I think is in a similar position on the other side of neutral despite containing dolls and no trains.

Oxygen Not Included is actually on the train end of the spectrum despite being a colony game.

Might have to add Sweet Transit to the extreme train end now that I remember what that Discord was like during early access. But I think I might need a second axis to differentiate the type of person who plays that vs Factorio. I'm sure there's a demographic difference. I think a straight "autism" access isn't quite right.

No idea why this is the first thought in my head after waking up early for a train.

[helioghost]

The ratios are wrong and I'm not sure this is optimal in terms of available resources on the planet, but this is producing rocket fuel and I really want to get off this planet.

This is a squiggly mess and I hate it. These cliffs are stupid.

Why did I even say I wanted to come here again?

Oh right, big mining drills and foundries before thinking about rebuilding Nauvis. And those plus cliff explosives would make my life a lot easier on Fulgora.

I should probably automate some of these things. But that means more time on this planet.

I don't know why I dislike it so much compared to everyone else. I find the music ponderous and unengaging. I find dealing with stone production fiddly. I get nervous about running out of coal. The whole place makes more sense to me once you come back with stack inserters. Building around lava is annoying. The worms aren't very interesting to deal with. It's a pain to get around before mech armor. You've got to set up so many production lines that aren't that interesting. Metals in pipes don't make for interesting factory designs to me.

Eh, I've got a trickle of science production on the go. Let's get a batch to Nauvis and unlock cliff explosives and the good coal liquifaction.

[helioghost]

Oh shit lol I forgot I made it to Vulcanus last time

I left Nauvis happily churning away at the boring sciences like projectile damage, lab speed, mining productivity. I've decided I'm not touching imersite at least until I get back from Vulcanus, maybe not til after the first three planets and a factory redesign.

I've got a dozen foundries built.

Oh right, that's it - I finally gave in and shipped some bots and roboports from Nauvis because I was going to go insane without logistics to build all the bits and bobs I needed.

So... what's my priority on Vulcanus?

No idea, apparently I left my jack-of-all-trades foundry running and it filled up my only storage strongbox with copper wires.

...maybe I should come back to this in a week or so when I have time.

[pivsketch]

my favorite panel from my hourlies last week for hourly comic day

[helioghost]

When I play Factorio I try to avoid blueprints for the most part. Designing things is half the fun for me.

Anywhere, here's my latest jank, space platform 'TonZa Terrawyng' designed to get me to Vulcanus in one piece. We'll try bootstrapping the place, because my manufacturing on Nauvis is terrible and it'll take me about a year to get things together.

Space platform design so far not much different, except for needing to split water into oxygen and hydrogen for fuel. Thankfully it comes in the right ratio. The other main difference is iron smelting inefficiency meaning we need a lot more furnaces for the same amount of ammo.

[helioghost]

I've got purple science going but I don't feel good about it

Modules really burn through electronic components so I've struggled to increase production of those a little

...why haven't I stuck productivity modules in my labs yet?

I think the next push should be for Vulcanus, get big mining drills and foundries back to Nauvis. So let's start assembling a platform.

[helioghost]

North-East border is now backed up by the bot network to protect the new uranium mine.

Uranium processing is running (my factory is not happy about how many resources are required to make centrifuges - it's eating through most of my steel). I enjoy the processing being made a bit more interesting with random stone and iron ore byproducts - it makes it less of an isolated process. Similarly, U-238 being used for purple science (next time?). Happy too that Kovarex enrichment is available pretty early and seems to be a bit cheaper than in vanilla (30 U-235 rather than 40).

I've finally realised that my ore smelting ratios were slightly off and that's why there were gaps in my belts.

I then spend another hour tweaking things to slightly improve throughput in a few places instead of making meaningful progress.

[helioghost]

Okay, Northern border is semi-secure. Uranium deposit has been claimed, and some hand-fed sulfuric acid allows me to start building centrifuges.

Rare metals are finally automated

It's just going on belts to blue circuits for now, but there's a station for if/when I need it later.

The chemical requirements for it are a *pain* and asks for an unpleasant amount of stone. Only one belt (not two, I miscalculated) but I need some extra chlorine for the mining, and I'll need more later for lithium.

I'm burning off an upsetting amount of hydrogen that I don't really have a better use for.

[helioghost]

Slow progress now while I refuse to rush to space.

Minimum requirements?

Logistics (done)

All materials required for rockets and space platform components automated and plentiful (copper and iron are fine but I still haven't set up fully automated rare metals, and I need a bigger stone patch)

Yellow or Purple science? Fulgora will be severely limited without elevated rails from Purple. Throughput everywhere will be limited without blue belts from Purple. All the good Gleba techs need them.

Maybe I go

Vulcanus -> Nauvis for Purple Science -> Fulgora -> Nauvis for Yellow Science -> Gleba

...wait a second, yellow science is literally just rocket components.

Just two of those research servers will eat up all my LDS. And that's if I do some horrific belt shenanigans to inject more copper towards the end of my bus because for some reason I only allowed for a single lane in my starter setup. And then I don't really have the circuit manufacturing either. Which is why I didn't want to do this until I'd built up more.

But damage upgrades will be great for dealing with Demolishers, robot speed is always great, and some personal equipment upgrades.

I'm going to have to stretch my borders to get the uranium if I want Purple science. North, I think, looks like a much safer bet than North-West.

In the meantime we've got a developing bot mall

The Eastern border is secure

Next session:

rare metals

West border

North border

more stone

uranium

Maybe we can consider a Vulcanus space platform after that.

[helioghost]

Rocket!

The order of this playthrough seems to be "jamming things in where I can instead of building proper infrastructure".

Everything for rocket parts has been put in at the end of my bus.

In Krastorio you can make rocket fuel mostly from air, which I appreciate since oil patches can run out now, and I've got way more renewable power than I need.

I also had to finally get round to concrete since it's needed for the silo, so that's jammed in.

...maybe I should have routed it a little more centrally, I feel sorry for my bots.

Then we've got a little space optimization science platform growing slowly.

And of course we should jam the cargo landing pad the research servers in to the middle of the base.

So that means logistics!

Now it's definitely time to reorganise things.

[helioghost]

Bot and train networks are now expanding.

Weirdly I seem to be going through more *stone* than anything else. This second mine isn't going to last me long at this rate. And that looks like the demand will only increase since we'll always need stone products for electronic components, but we might reclaim a bunch once we move over to enriched ore processing.

I apparently failed to send this draft after writing it. I've done some more work since then and it turns out enriched ore processing returns a pitiful amount of stone, so the above hope is dashed.

(also I couldn't be bothered to design a station since I've got so much iron ore over here, so I'm just belting it back to the factory for now)

I've managed to spaghetti some military science in, but I'll definitely have to rebuild before purple or yellow science.

I need to get some military science on the go, and start mass manufacturing electric furnaces. Then new mines, new ore processing, grow the grid, build a border wall.

I should also get some concrete on the go, there's been a lot of walking.

I've still not got concrete on the go. But more urgently I'm about to run out of copper.

It's going to take a while before I'm stable enough to redesign the factory for rockets and the rest of the science.

[helioghost]

Krastorio latest

Borders are pretty secure, although I'm avoiding the need for a proper defensive wall by keeping pollution down.

Advanced oil processing is sorted along with a little hand-fed rare metal smelting.

Electronic components weren't too bad (mostly stone and coal) which was all I needed for red circuits which was all I needed for blue science since I already had enough glass.

Science production has kept up at a pretty decent rate - much faster than I can actually build any of the research results, without me having to increase the size of the factory.

The changes to resource balance in this mod feel really weird - I've barely used any coal due to my renewable power plant, but I've absolutely torn through my starting stone patch - the upgrade to Mk2 mining drills with 75% resource drain came a bit late.

The old wood burning power plant is now being replaced by a biomethanol power plant that produces almost twice as much power in half the space while only emitting a third of the pollution, if my math is right.

(the internet had to point out that biomethanol *could* be burned though - the gas power station annoyingly doesn't tell you which fluids can be burned, so I was searching Factoriopedia and failing to spot any candidates other than petroleum gas)

I think my next priorities are:

new stone mine

robots

military science for flamethrowers

border wall

scale up for midgame

[helioghost]

Okay so the factory has grown (as it does)

We've got a mucky little starter base that's mostly a mall, but also chugging through red and green science.

Pollution situation feels a lot better after upgrading to steel furnaces and blue assemblers.

I'm continuing to appreciate my renewable power plant but have just noticed some boilers not getting any fuel so obviously *something* was wrong with my calculations. Or maybe it'll be fixed with an inserter upgrade. Or maybe it's some quirk of which lane gets pulled from by default or - no, there's one belt segment missing >_> Okay and now that I've fixed that, the single fast inserter on each assembler can't *quite* keep up with input demand.

I'm starting to establish some borders as I venture out to grab advanced resources and make sure I can grab replacements for my starter patches when they run out.

I'm doing my best to figure out how the resources are balanced and what would make sense to put on a bus.

iron, steel, and copper plates of course

most of the iron and steel derivatives aren't space-efficient (e.g. 1:1) and/or are only used for mall items

green, red and blue circuits presumably, but maybe electronic components too?

coal, but maybe coke too? if not, then possibly wood which is used for a few things, in addition to being renewable and cleaner to burn than coal/coke

stone, I guess? maybe two full belts since it has so many derivatives (bricks, sand, glass, quartz, silicon) each of which are used for a few recipes - but I needed a *lot* of glass in Ultracube (which is based off Krastorio) and I found that easier to make alongside my furnace stacks. Blue tech will want a lot. Plus crushers and filtrations plants are huge, I don't really want those adjacent to the bus.e

no idea about rare metals or Imersite so far, yet alone what fluids I might want on the bus

that being said, I can already guess I'll want more sulfuric acid than in vanilla

Maybe I invest in trains early? But I never like setting up a proper train network until I have bots. Or do we just focus on the bare minimum we need to get a basic space platform to research the full logistics system?

[helioghost]

Krastorio first impressions:

It's very confusing having to set recipes in furnaces

picking up the spaceship debris is sooo slow

is the initial spaceship power/assembler/lab a pre-2.0 thing? You've got to craft a science lab before you can craft science packs

oh heck I'm already polluting nearby nests

why can't I shoot biters which are right in front of my face???

oh god I'm going to need to invest in proper defence

shotgun feels amazing now, but I'm still dead

turrets are a gift from god

coal and stone stacking to 200 is lovely but makes for some very silly internal buffers in furnaces

greenhouse for wood production makes me very happy - I've never enjoyed ripping up trees for power poles

waaaaaaaaaaait is it actually viable to make a self-sufficient power-positive wood-based power plant??

An unreasonable amount of time later and I am far too pleased with this sustainable power plant.

[helioghost]

Ultracube left a void in my life, so let's try the mod responsible for most of its assets (and the longer I look at it, I think it would have made more sense to play them the other way around).

Krastorio 2 (Spaced Out) looks about right for me - not overcomplicated, and the same basic thing at core, but just adding some more options and a little more complexity to keep things interesting.

Krastorio 2 Spaced Out

Overhaul merging Krastorio 2 with Space Age.

Then let's add, idk: - Better Victory Screen - Bullet Trails - Disco Science - Even Distribution - Helmod - FNEI - Inventory Repair - Milestones - Show Max Underground Distance - Speed Control - Text Plates

Shuffle seed a few times til I get something I vibe with or get bored: 3713913058

[helioghost]

Got distracted yesterday trying out Oxygen Not Included for the first time, and suddenly it was 2am.

I'm not sure how much I actually liked/enjoyed it though. I'm definitely determined to like it less than similar games I've played.

I really want to try solving the Ultracube Helvetica Scenario though before I lose my nerve.

[helioghost]

Helvetica round #1 is underw-

*ahem*

Forgot to plumb water on the South side.

Helvetica round #2 is underw-

Missed some belts on the North side, and I didn't think through the logic to try and siphon 1/4 of the particulate off at the last stage.

Round #3?

I'm just manually toggling power on this to a) make my batteries last longer and b) avoid the cube accidentally looping back through the process when I'm not prepared for it.

Hmm could I improve my logic in the-

Feck, I don't have N-dimensional widgets or Bottled conciousness in my logistics network.

*runs off to fix that*

Okay we're at 32/64 Ultradense composites...

All the machines look clear, I can't see anything stuck.

And there we go!!!

Our little cube is on its way back home <3

We've got 1000 antimatter and 748 units of leftover sap, and my power reserves weren't even touched even though the rest of my base was still chugging along because I forgot to cancel research!

So now in theory I can set it up as a normal train stop and summon the cube only if Helvetica is fully supplied, we don't have enough antimatter (I *think* that's the only tangible output of this process??) and the cube isn't needed anywhere else (this last one might require some efficiency improvements elsewhere - even without any research running, it seems to take a *while* for all my stockpiles to buffer.

So in *theory* if I just put together a production line for Complete annilhilation cards, I can grind my way to victory.

9600 science packs means... 19200 antimatter? So we just need to run this... 20 times?

If it takes at least 5 minutes to run Helvetica and another 5 minutes (optimistic) to restock everything, that's over 3 hours just to stock up on antimatter without doing anything else.

And I can't even do that because the only way to get mineral water is to create deep core crystals which are mostly consumed by science, and those require calcium hich we can only get by producing (and thus consuming) rare earth metals.

So I guess I'll have to get that production line going, and keep flipping over to researching infinite train breaking when I run out of antimatter.

[helioghost]

Tried leaving my computer unattended for an hour. It did not go well. >_>

[helioghost]

Leaving my computer unattended overnight, however, worked great!

Looks like Helvetica only ran another 4 times once I remembered I could stuff productivity modules in the labs.

Not exactly consistent but at least it worked!

[helioghost]

Got distracted yesterday trying out Oxygen Not Included for the first time, and suddenly it was 2am.

I'm not sure how much I actually liked/enjoyed it though. I'm definitely determined to like it less than similar games I've played.

I really want to try solving the Ultracube Helvetica Scenario though before I lose my nerve.

[helioghost]

Helvetica round #1 is underw-

*ahem*

Forgot to plumb water on the South side.

Helvetica round #2 is underw-

Missed some belts on the North side, and I didn't think through the logic to try and siphon 1/4 of the particulate off at the last stage.

Round #3?

I'm just manually toggling power on this to a) make my batteries last longer and b) avoid the cube accidentally looping back through the process when I'm not prepared for it.

Hmm could I improve my logic in the-

Feck, I don't have N-dimensional widgets or Bottled conciousness in my logistics network.

*runs off to fix that*

Okay we're at 32/64 Ultradense composites...

All the machines look clear, I can't see anything stuck.

And there we go!!!

Our little cube is on its way back home <3

We've got 1000 antimatter and 748 units of leftover sap, and my power reserves weren't even touched even though the rest of my base was still chugging along because I forgot to cancel research!

So now in theory I can set it up as a normal train stop and summon the cube only if Helvetica is fully supplied, we don't have enough antimatter (I *think* that's the only tangible output of this process??) and the cube isn't needed anywhere else (this last one might require some efficiency improvements elsewhere - even without any research running, it seems to take a *while* for all my stockpiles to buffer.

So in *theory* if I just put together a production line for Complete annilhilation cards, I can grind my way to victory.

9600 science packs means... 19200 antimatter? So we just need to run this... 20 times?

If it takes at least 5 minutes to run Helvetica and another 5 minutes (optimistic) to restock everything, that's over 3 hours just to stock up on antimatter without doing anything else.

And I can't even do that because the only way to get mineral water is to create deep core crystals which are mostly consumed by science, and those require calcium hich we can only get by producing (and thus consuming) rare earth metals.

So I guess I'll have to get that production line going, and keep flipping over to researching infinite train breaking when I run out of antimatter.

[helioghost]

Tried leaving my computer unattended for an hour. It did not go well. >_>