7 ms·

Nah, as others have pointed out, green circuits are used everywhere. Since they meet that requirement, the only thing else to ask is, "Do the materials take up

Nah, as others have pointed out, green circuits are used everywhere. Since they meet that requirement, the only thing else to ask is, "Do the materials take up more or less space than the item produced?" For green circuits, it takes less transport to move the green circuits than to move the materials to make them, so you should make them centrally and distribute the circuits. Copper wire, on the contrary, is used in many things but takes up more space than copper plate, so you should make it locally.

kentonv 6y ago
If belt networks were only about capacity, sure. But you can't put two different kinds of things on the same belt lane without creating some serious trouble. So, the more different kinds of things you want to transport by belts, the more parallel belts you need. Plus, you need those parallel belts early on, even before any of them are running at capacity. I find it much easier to lay down just iron/copper belts and upgrade them as needed -- upgrading speed in cases where adding parallel lanes is inconvenient.
- cortesoft 6y ago
  Sure, but this is only an issue if you need less than a full belts worth of green circuits... if you remove that belt of green circuits, you are going to have to replace is with MORE than one belt of raw materials.
  - llukas 6y ago
    On full scale it is about trains worth of green circuits.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- fennecfoxen 6y ago
  It’s not just about capacity. It’s also about: - using machines efficiently (in the sense that a central production facility means idle-capacity can be used elsewhere) - replacing production efficiently, I.e. yolo build a potato-quality factory now so that it’s actually producing, then expand it to hyper efficient maxed productivity modules in all the machines between maxed speed beacons later (so your resources go further and you don’t need to spend as much time building remote bases), but do not interrupt production forever to rebuild everything during the transition. Yolo-building with a high quality strategy to replace components is also a great strategy for startups. In either case the real limiting resource is manpower. And I typically target about 8 belts of green circuits, to feed a nonstop-rocket shop (avoiding the major transition off belts altogether.) Get a balancer design off the Internet. It’s fine. :)
- svick 6y ago
  > But you can't put two different kinds of things on the same belt lane without creating some serious trouble. Sure you can, it's called a "sushi belt" and with some simple combinators, it can work reasonably well.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
X6S1x6Okd1st 6y ago
Yeah copper wire and wheels are one of the few things that I almost always produce at the local site.
munchbunny 6y ago
Electronic circuits are a great example of "it doesn't really matter because for 99% of players the factory won't fall apart due to this decision." In practice it can go both ways. Many of the production chains that take green circuits as an input require such low quantities that 1-2 assemblers is more than enough, so the marginal complexity of trickling them to where they're needed is low. And they only require the two basic input resources that are needed almost everywhere, so the alternative of making them on site isn't that complex either. However, if you are trying to do a megabase (where you keep playing post-endgame and basically scale for the sake of scale), your green circuit demand shoots through the roof, and you will end up sinking half of your basic materials into making green circuits. At that point the plumbing itself becomes so complex to maintain high throughput that centralizing green circuits is an economy of scale decision. Additionally, the production ratios (number of assembler units you use for each intermediate product) will change, so it's easier if all of the green circuit production is in one place than to make individual changes in a lot of places. Green circuits are distinct because (1) they don't save that much space compared to the basic materials you input to make them, and (2) demand for them is modest at first, but becomes a primary bottleneck if you're going for scale, and (3) their inputs are resources you need almost everywhere, so they're already there anyway. Most of the other resources for which you consider centralizing production, you do it because you save a ton of bandwidth by centralizing, or because demand is always high, or because the inputs are more complex to move (such as fluids). In practice demand for green circuits is so huge primarily because of demand for blue circuits, so I will often make all circuits offsite and ship them in. The 20+:1 compression ratio you get from moving blue circuits offsite is a much bigger win.
- a1369209993 6y ago
  > However, if you are trying to do a megabase [...] it's easier if all of the green circuit production is in one place As you allude to later, it's not really about green circuits for a megabase. Since blue circuits require 24 green circuits (20 directly and 2 for each of 2 red circuits), your huge demand for green circuits comes mainly from blue circuit production. It makes sense to centralize blue circuit production, so most of your green circuit production should be right next door, which is both on-site and centralized. But the green circuit production that isn't feeding directly into blue still doesn't really matter whether it's on-site or centralized.
m463 6y ago
> Copper wire, on the contrary, is used in many things but takes up more space than copper plate, so you should make it locally. I thought the same thing, but I think copper plate stores 100 in a stack and copper wire stores 200 in a stack. I don't know what that means for inserters. (like low density structures - can stackers move more of them, even though you can store less in one slot?)
- cortesoft 6y ago
  Sure, if you are transporting them via rail it would be the same.... but on belts, nothing stacks.
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  It's not so much about stack size as it is about how much you can fit / move on a conveyor belt. A lot of the setups I've used involve having a copper wire factory (or two) right next to the factory that uses them, no belts / buffers in between.
LoSboccacc 6y ago
tbf of you're shooting at efficiency you should be build a circuit conglomerate not because of transport, but because of beacons
Cthulhu_ 6y ago
But you only need iron and copper plates to make green circuits; in bigger factories, if you want a central place to make green circuits, you'll end up having to use 3 dedicated belts just for green circuits. But that's what I had anyway in my last game, a big central line with a lot of the essentials. I think next time I'll go for a central line with just iron and copper and mini bases that take from it, or something. More trains as well, bringing in ore from all over the map.
- haar 6y ago
  Smelting on site and shipping plates doubles your train volume as you can stack 100 plates per slot vs 50 raw material. Can make your train routes/efficiencies easier to manage.
me_me_me 6y ago
Factorio and Soft Engi, it doesn't really compare. This and parent post quickly proved my wrong.

kentonv 6y ago

If belt networks were only about capacity, sure. But you can't put two different kinds of things on the same belt lane without creating some serious trouble. So, the more different kinds of things you want to transport by belts, the more parallel belts you need. Plus, you need those parallel belts early on, even before any of them are running at capacity. I find it much easier to lay down just iron/copper belts and upgrade them as needed -- upgrading speed in cases where adding parallel lanes is inconvenient.

cortesoft 6y ago
Sure, but this is only an issue if you need less than a full belts worth of green circuits... if you remove that belt of green circuits, you are going to have to replace is with MORE than one belt of raw materials.
- llukas 6y ago
  On full scale it is about trains worth of green circuits.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
fennecfoxen 6y ago
It’s not just about capacity. It’s also about: - using machines efficiently (in the sense that a central production facility means idle-capacity can be used elsewhere) - replacing production efficiently, I.e. yolo build a potato-quality factory now so that it’s actually producing, then expand it to hyper efficient maxed productivity modules in all the machines between maxed speed beacons later (so your resources go further and you don’t need to spend as much time building remote bases), but do not interrupt production forever to rebuild everything during the transition. Yolo-building with a high quality strategy to replace components is also a great strategy for startups. In either case the real limiting resource is manpower. And I typically target about 8 belts of green circuits, to feed a nonstop-rocket shop (avoiding the major transition off belts altogether.) Get a balancer design off the Internet. It’s fine. :)
svick 6y ago
> But you can't put two different kinds of things on the same belt lane without creating some serious trouble. Sure you can, it's called a "sushi belt" and with some simple combinators, it can work reasonably well.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

X6S1x6Okd1st 6y ago

Yeah copper wire and wheels are one of the few things that I almost always produce at the local site.

munchbunny 6y ago

Electronic circuits are a great example of "it doesn't really matter because for 99% of players the factory won't fall apart due to this decision." In practice it can go both ways. Many of the production chains that take green circuits as an input require such low quantities that 1-2 assemblers is more than enough, so the marginal complexity of trickling them to where they're needed is low. And they only require the two basic input resources that are needed almost everywhere, so the alternative of making them on site isn't that complex either. However, if you are trying to do a megabase (where you keep playing post-endgame and basically scale for the sake of scale), your green circuit demand shoots through the roof, and you will end up sinking half of your basic materials into making green circuits. At that point the plumbing itself becomes so complex to maintain high throughput that centralizing green circuits is an economy of scale decision. Additionally, the production ratios (number of assembler units you use for each intermediate product) will change, so it's easier if all of the green circuit production is in one place than to make individual changes in a lot of places. Green circuits are distinct because (1) they don't save that much space compared to the basic materials you input to make them, and (2) demand for them is modest at first, but becomes a primary bottleneck if you're going for scale, and (3) their inputs are resources you need almost everywhere, so they're already there anyway. Most of the other resources for which you consider centralizing production, you do it because you save a ton of bandwidth by centralizing, or because demand is always high, or because the inputs are more complex to move (such as fluids). In practice demand for green circuits is so huge primarily because of demand for blue circuits, so I will often make all circuits offsite and ship them in. The 20+:1 compression ratio you get from moving blue circuits offsite is a much bigger win.

a1369209993 6y ago
> However, if you are trying to do a megabase [...] it's easier if all of the green circuit production is in one place As you allude to later, it's not really about green circuits for a megabase. Since blue circuits require 24 green circuits (20 directly and 2 for each of 2 red circuits), your huge demand for green circuits comes mainly from blue circuit production. It makes sense to centralize blue circuit production, so most of your green circuit production should be right next door, which is both on-site and centralized. But the green circuit production that isn't feeding directly into blue still doesn't really matter whether it's on-site or centralized.

m463 6y ago

> Copper wire, on the contrary, is used in many things but takes up more space than copper plate, so you should make it locally. I thought the same thing, but I think copper plate stores 100 in a stack and copper wire stores 200 in a stack. I don't know what that means for inserters. (like low density structures - can stackers move more of them, even though you can store less in one slot?)

cortesoft 6y ago
Sure, if you are transporting them via rail it would be the same.... but on belts, nothing stacks.
Cthulhu_ 6y ago
It's not so much about stack size as it is about how much you can fit / move on a conveyor belt. A lot of the setups I've used involve having a copper wire factory (or two) right next to the factory that uses them, no belts / buffers in between.

LoSboccacc 6y ago

tbf of you're shooting at efficiency you should be build a circuit conglomerate not because of transport, but because of beacons

Cthulhu_ 6y ago

But you only need iron and copper plates to make green circuits; in bigger factories, if you want a central place to make green circuits, you'll end up having to use 3 dedicated belts just for green circuits. But that's what I had anyway in my last game, a big central line with a lot of the essentials. I think next time I'll go for a central line with just iron and copper and mini bases that take from it, or something. More trains as well, bringing in ore from all over the map.

haar 6y ago
Smelting on site and shipping plates doubles your train volume as you can stack 100 plates per slot vs 50 raw material. Can make your train routes/efficiencies easier to manage.

me_me_me 6y ago

Factorio and Soft Engi, it doesn't really compare. This and parent post quickly proved my wrong.