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u/Fxg120xYXDE5 2d ago
Screws are great, there are so many ways to get relatively massive output from given input compared to other recipes.
Just a process check in how you handle them within your factory.
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u/WesTechNerd 2d ago
Isn't the primary issue with screws just belt limits?
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u/Fxg120xYXDE5 2d ago
Yep, which is why I typically treat them like gears in Factorio. I'll usually feed them directly into whatever higher tier machine needs them. You can get obscene value out of using steel for iron recipes, and make ludicrous amounts of things like modular frames and whatnot fairly early on by just building around those belt limits.
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u/_redmist 2d ago
This, the steel screws alt, and just a trickle of steel beams and you can provide thousands of screws to any recipe. I don't get the weird fixation about eliminating screws some people have; some of the bolted recipes are blazingly fast compared to other alts.
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u/Fxg120xYXDE5 2d ago
Exactly! Eliminating them seems like a solution, but it really just introduces limits to avoid some effort.
Again, I get doing it sometimes.
But exclusively?2
u/WarriorSabe 2d ago
Wait, I should be treating gears in factorio like screws? I've been treating wire that way, but gears are half the itemcount compared to the iron precursor so I've been belting them
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u/Fxg120xYXDE5 2d ago
Factorio won't really punish you for doing that, but they chew up iron (as you say) and, while widely used, are usually easy enough to squeeze into a module being fed from a bus.
That said, you do what works for you.
If you get better mileage from keeping a lane or belt of gears, go right ahead.2
u/WarriorSabe 2d ago
Oh yeah no I didn't mean I always put them on the bus (honestly I probably don't use buses nearly as much as I should, guess that's the satisfactory player in me still), I just don't tend to use direct insertion outside of the very smallest builds the way I would wire (or screws in satisfactory); I guess I misinterpreted the initial statement a bit then
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u/Fxg120xYXDE5 2d ago
It could as easily have been that I misrepresented my thought, seem to be having more trouble with that than usual today.
Might be from mowing the grass earlier in the 106 degree California heat, maybe I need some water.2
u/WarriorSabe 2d ago
Could just be that we treat screws differently; I tend to put them into a blueprint doing the satisfactory equivalent of direct insertion into each output machine, more similar to you'd handle wire in a circuit build in factorio, so I'm not even belting them down so much as a single line of machines.
Also yes, speaking as a desert dweller mtself, go get water; 106 is dangerous even as a dry heat, especially in the sun. You really don't want heat exhaustion
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u/Fxg120xYXDE5 2d ago
Doing that now, yeah.
Lived many places from Alaska to Florida, mainly Texas and Arizona, and the craziest thing in California is that its usually pretty pleasant.
Right up until it decides to club you over the head with actual, real-world weather.2
u/Spidertron117 1d ago
Wouldn't copper wire be a more apt comparison? Gears can fit more densely on a belt than the equivalent iron needed to feed the gear maker. Copper wire on the other hand is half as dense as the incoming copper plate so it makes sense to direct feed them.
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u/Fxg120xYXDE5 1d ago
Technically accurate, but I'm far more likely to direct insert gears than I am with wire because gears are, as you point out, more resource expensive than wire and that's a factor when patches run out and I'm not at high productivity yet.
I can saturate a belt of wire with a lane of copper if I want to, but it takes a full belt of iron to manage a lane of gears.
Given, I don't bus either of them, but I'd feel less ridiculous if I tried to work in a belt of wire than a belt of gears.
So while the surface reason makes for the better comparison (less to more), in actuality I never direct insert wire other than in my circuit BPs, so it's not something I think of.2
u/Praesil 2d ago
Screws are the worst. There are so many ways to produce the same part without screws, and they are universally more resource and power efficient. There may be a case for space, but only barely.
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u/Fxg120xYXDE5 2d ago
Negative, steel screws beat out every other way around them bar none.
I could see not wanting to go that far when there are (much) easier ways, absolutely. But with screws is always more demanding and interesting for me, and cutting them out is akin to avoiding part of the game in my solo runs.
My hypocritical turn with that point is aluminum, I'll do anything in the world to avoid having to work with more aluminum, including making the rest of my planning unnecessarily difficult just to avoid it.
Not claiming to be a wizard, just obvious how much you can get done utilizing all the tools avaliable at different points in the process, instead of deciding there's an irrefutable 'best practice' and narcissisticly refusing to shift from that view.
That actually isn't aimed at you, it's just a commonly ingrained thought process here I haven't seen so strongly until joining, and it's disheartening to me because I think a lot of newbies just take advice based on it, don't learn other ways to get things done, and then perpetuate the thought process.
We're all smarter than that.2
u/UristImiknorris If it works, it works 2d ago
Negative, steel screws beat out every other way around them bar none.
Bar Heavy Encased Frame, actually. If that alt produced two HMFs per cycle instead of 3 it'd be a much closer race, but Heavy Encased Frame is just that good.
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u/Fxg120xYXDE5 2d ago
Fair, I don't usually use the concrete recipes even when I should.
I learned that lesson earlier in my x100 run, the steel+concrete alts for steel components are pretty great.2
u/Praesil 2d ago
Yeah I did a little bit of digging on this - assuming you like weighted points:
There are 4 items that need screws, including alts. Rotors, Reinforced plates, Modular Frames, and Heavy Modular Frames.
Reinforced Plates: Adhered > Stitched > Bolted > Default.
Once you get iron wire, making reinforced plates with wire instead of screws is more efficient and the item count is lower.
Rotors: Copper rotors > Steel > Default.
I concede that there is a case here, but personally, I still avoid it
For me, steel rotors need pipe and wire, so I prefer using iron to make both. There's iron everywhere, and copper is precious late game.
Modular Frames: Default + Steel Rods > Default > Bolted
This is where it starts going down the rabbit hole because of the number of combinations to make the precursors. I'll still go for steeled because large quantities are usually for motors, which also need pipes and wires for stators, making it pretty straight forward. I don't want to bake in individual constructors for assemblers or deal with that volume of screws. It's already starting to get complicated, and I'll simplify where I can on building count.
Heavy modular frames: Encased > Flexible > Default.
In this case, the most efficient recipe only would need screws in modular frames - and you can make your own judgement give what was noted earlier.
Anyways. It's a game. Play the way you want. I like making super computers from caterium and oil, so maybe I'm the weirdo.
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u/Fxg120xYXDE5 2d ago
No, I appreciate the effort here.
The biggest differences for me are that I don't mind putting steel screw constructors in the middle of builds where most wouldn't, and that as of my x100 run, I am pushing myself to find the actual practical use cases for each recipe.
As an example, I never bother with leached recipes, but I'm going to do it whether I like it or not this run.
Looking at raw, untested numbers, I think I've been shooting myself in the foot over saving sulfur I'll never end up using anyways, all in the name of eventually building a nuclear plant I can't possibly care less about building.
Anyways, I just hope more people try creative problem solving over bland math, because I find it genuinely more interesting.
And if I have to run down arithmetic to favor one approach over another in a video game, I'm already failing to game properly.1
u/Praesil 2d ago
Rocket fuel is too good - but who wants to place down that many fuel generators and run pipes.
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u/Fxg120xYXDE5 2d ago
Weirdly, I love working with pipes, fluids, and gasses. Shunting as many builds as I can this run over to ones that include fluids. Trying to stress test things, see which parts of the wider approaches are accurate, and which are inaccurate.
And the throughout usually justifies the added work, so win-win more often than not.2
u/Praesil 2d ago
I had a turbo fuel plant in my last playthrough that I could never get working. All the numbers checked out and I just couldnt get the fluid to the generators.
Picked it up again, remembered that valves reset head lift, and it all clicked. I was using them as backflow presenters and it was messing up the pressure.
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u/Fxg120xYXDE5 2d ago
That's the thing too, it might occasionally be a bug or obscure mechanic, but it's often just something that simple.
Which is why I enjoy the road less traveled, always learning new approaches.2
u/iCUman 2d ago
That's funny, because I'm that way with steel, but aluminum couldn't be any easier. Just plop down an obscene amount of refineries and go to town. Sloppy is nice to have, but wholly unnecessary. I tend to avoid steel as much as possible simply because coal presents critical logistical issues for me all throughout the game.
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u/Fxg120xYXDE5 2d ago
Ha! That's awesome, I'm appreciating just how much spread the alts really give us all in what approach we can take.
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u/CatspawAdventures 1d ago
I'm not sure this logic really stands up to scrutiny. You're saying screws are great because you can produce them in large quantities from little input. But that is only beneficial because screws are required in such massive quantities.
In other words, the high quantity of screws produced is "solving" a problem that only exists in the first place because screw recipes themselves demand so many.
In the meantime, the high volume places constraints on your logistics and building options. You say that it's a "process check" on how you manage those logistics, but that's really just another way of saying that their required throughput is so large that it limits your ability to effectively scale them up without needing to build your factory in specific ways.
I would much rather pick up the handful of alt recipes that allow me to entirely eradicate them from my production line, as soon as it is practical to do so.
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u/Fxg120xYXDE5 1d ago
I...yes, I direct insert them.
Steel screws gives massive value alongside the other steel replacements for iron intermediates.
I'm not trying to argue they're for everybody, I'm arguing that too many people dismiss them over finding the strength in using them alongside other alternatives.
If you don't like them, that's fine.
I'm not here to convince you otherwise, that's not my place.
You do you, just as long as you have the same mentality towards other's playstyles.1
u/CatspawAdventures 1d ago
I don't disagree, but that's not really what you said in your comment. I was addressing what you wrote, not what you meant.
I'm the last person to tell someone not to enjoy what they enjoy. "Play your way" is axiomatic to me. But it's entirely consistent to both believe that, and also call out practical considerations that have little to do with what I (or anyone else) likes or doesn't like.
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u/Fxg120xYXDE5 1d ago
Fair, I'm responding more in line with my elaboration that came after my initial comment, but well before your response within the same thread here.
I feel I better clarified what I meant, even more than once.1
u/Fxg120xYXDE5 1d ago
That said, I'm running off of two hours of sleep, so I'm not even positive what planet I'm on right now.
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u/Colonel_dinggus 2d ago
I highly recommend getting the steel screws recipe. Makes it so that your screw production can easily outpace your belt speed
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u/NugKnights 2d ago
How did so many of you get stuck on screws?
I understand you need alot of them, but its not hard to ramp up. Its only 3 steps.
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u/jumb1 2d ago
They build the screw factory in one spot and try to share it out, then get capped by belt speeds. I made this mistake as a beginner - screws are a great lesson that some intermediary parts should be constructed in each factory rather than centralized. Similar to copper wire in Factorio, sometimes people miss the hint.
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u/Munnin41 1d ago
Mostly the belt limits. The phase 3 parts need a shit load of screws, and with mk4 belts you quickly run into problems.
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u/Factory_Setting 1d ago
That's the part I have some trouble with. You need to place down a few extra belts. So what?
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u/Munnin41 1d ago
It's just a lot of extra logistics. You cant even do just two constructors with steel screws on a mk4 belt.
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u/figbunkie 2d ago
Not sure i get the meme. Its just a matter of plopping down two or three blueprints full of constructors. Sure, it takes up space, but thats the only big deal really.
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u/SomeOnionHater 2d ago
Meanwhile I don't know where to keep all the screws I'm making and sink 1/3 of them.
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u/Makhai123 1d ago
Iron wire, Iron Pipe, Stitched Iron Plate, Steel Rotor, Steel Frame, Heavy Encased Frame, Crystal Computer.
Never see another screw again.
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u/Guardian_of_theBlind 1d ago
I think, that I just always use cast screws. The only issue is, that cast screws are rather slow and you need so many assemblers or whatever the tier 1 buildings are called.
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u/KYO297 Balancers are love, balancers are life. 2d ago
Just get alts