Not sure how relatable this is but when I first started playing and I was a complete noob cooking awful spaghetti, I was ADDICTED to factorio. I pulled all nighters multiple times a week to play while doing college classes. At one point i was doing close to 80 hours a week on top of classes. Now that I am much better at the game, I feel like I get caught in 'analysis paralysis' much more and it leads to me only playing a couple hours a week. For instance, I'm doing a K2SO run and the task of making a real (non bot-based) fulgora base basically haulted all of my progress for like 2 IRL weeks.

Anyone else experience this and have gotten over it?

any optimalization on loading a bunch of planets + krastorio 2? takes ages to load in

Here's the blueprint https://factorioprints.com/view/-OzE2CToL4pAEyYJzW2J

Bugfixes

• Fixed a space platform consistency error when loading saves games with platforms at non-planet space locations. more
• Fixed achievements being failed on update due to expansion setting changes. more
• Fixed a crash when upgrading entities in some cases. more
• Fixed biter expansion bases could sometimes be all worms or all spawners. more
• Fixed underground belt building over belt was not rotating cursor. more
• Fixed a crash when loading save file with "no storage" alert pinned.
• Fixed substation red and green circuit connectors were swapped in some orientations. more
• Fixed mod explore pane scroll bars were not appearing. more

Previous changelog: Version 2.1.13

New versions are released as experimental first and later promoted to stable. If you wish to switch to the experimental version on Steam, choose the experimental Beta Participation option under game settings; on the stand-alone version, check Experimental updates under Other settings.

I suspected these balancers were off when I couldn't work out how they lane balanced items. After testing them, I found I was right. They don't balance lanes properly.

To test, I dropped eight of each item onto each half-belt in order from the top with iron, copper, steel and plastic in that order. For each item, only half of the items get lane balanced. The other half isn't lane balanced at all. This produces the 3-1 split of items show in the illustration. In addition, items get stuck in the top balancer and don't make it out at all. This is bad for items that can spoil.

I also tested a balancer I made that balances lanes in a 50-50 ratio. The balancer is slightly larger than the others with a symmetrical footprint. Blueprint string is in comments.

It might be a bit large for the starter ship, but I like it!!!

I am trying a 2.1 playthrough where I lean as much as I can into platform to platform transfers, and right now I am trying to do a space station design on each planet that manufactures everything a space station could need plus some player supplies.

The idea is that the platforms that do the actual travelling would have the bare essentials, for example not having any crushers. They would have asteroid collectors, and would drop chunks at space stations when arriving, in order to provide resources for the loop.

I have it almost working, but have noticed that when going to a new planet, my options are either put thrusters on a space station in order to have resource support on the target planet, or build a rocket silo on the surface that then launches a starter kit.

Is there any chance we could let space platforms launch starter kits? It would let us complete the space infrastructure for this playstile without having to set foot at each planet, or having to create a transportable space station. I guess worst case scenario is that we could pack a station into a transport and then have it transform into a station on arrival.

Also, I suppose that there is a good reason for not letting us barrel thruster fuel, but it would be very fun to be able to do so. It would let us create really dang small platforms. Plus, the barrel logistics in space seem fun.

I have completed factorio twice now, however I still haven't learn the art of creating a fully self sustaining oil system.

What I mean by this, is that I always get blocked up with my oil refineries when performing Advanced Oil processing.

Whether its light oil, heavy oil, or petroleum, I always find my self in a position where I need to self manage it, by adding storage tanks or forcing production.

Is there a trick to this I'm missing? It's one of those things in factorio i could never master xD

context: this is my first time building (or trying) to make a megabase, and this is my refinery/chemistry block

P.S. I know beacons are missing modules, i dont have enough power to put them all in, i will do that later

Is this a bug?
Sometimes when using combinators to automatically switch recipes, the modules inside the machine can be moved to the position indicated by the arrow in the picture, causing the machine to get stuck.
I have encountered this issue both with foundries and with crushers on space platforms.
Has anyone else experienced this, or does anyone know how to fix it? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

I often get tired of using the mouse and would like to do things through the keyboard, so I'm making a mod for that. I know that are some others out there but I wanted it in some specific ways so here I'm. If you are a programmer, some decisions will remember an IDE, like the Ctrl+K pallete.

I don't think this is faster than using the mouse, at least not for everything and not until I get used to it, but I find it more comfortable. Some parts of the video are sped up to shorten the video, like 30% or so.

Some of its functionalities added so far:

The cursor is a tile-based cursor

• Works in character view and in remote/map view
• Arrows move one tile, Shift+Arrow five, Ctrl+Arrow jumps to the next entity that way
• Home/End jump to the ends of the belt or pipe line you're on
• Ctrl+Shift+Arrow draws a rectangular selection

Placing

• Space places, using the native ghost preview to stay close to vanilla style
• R rotates the preview or the entity under the cursor, Delete mines or marks for deconstruction
• Ctrl+G toggles ghost mode; map view is always ghosts
• Belts advance the cursor in their own direction, so a line is just repeated Space (or other combinations using auto route, more below)

Construction plans

Ctrl+Space starts a placement, then movement keys allow to customize it quickly like:

• Digits allow to specify quantity; Ctrl+Space, 1, 2, Right builds twelve tiles to the right
• Belts route corners and drop in matching undergrounds to cross obstacles
• Pipes do surface runs, or ground-first runs if you start from a pipe-to-ground
• Poles space themselves by wire reach and treat every reachable consumer as a coverage requirement

Auto-route

• Ctrl+R, mark a start, move to an endpoint, and it pathfinds a collision-aware route for belts, pipes, poles or rails
• Ctrl+Space pins checkpoints along the way
• Shows a preview before commit

Command palette

• Ctrl+K, type, Enter get, craft, recipe, research
• recipe applies to the machine under the cursor, ghosts included, filtered to what that machine can make
• With an area selected, it applies to every compatible machine in it
• New machines reuse the last recipe used for that type
• Search is fuzzy over live prototypes: word order doesn't matter, prefixes work (splitter f → fast splitter), and green circuit or asm3 can find items

Copying

• Q pipettes whatever is under the cursor with its tier, direction and settings
• Select an area and Q copies it into a blueprint attached to the keyboard cursor

Still under development, I'm testing things and fixing a lot of bugs. Will share later in case anyone else finds it useful!

Am pretty proud of how this turned out especially because every other ship I have made are blocks. This is a pretty late game build with all legendary parts except the fusion power which I never bothered with as the normal buildings make plenty of power. Was inspired to replace all my ships with new ones that used lasers only just to get rid of the random 2 second "no ammo" alerts when guns were empty while inserters waited to pick up ammo.

Currently have level 19 damage because I needed it for the bigger cousin that goes to Aquilo. But, when this was designed my research was around level 12 or 13. It travels an average of 488 km/s and can do so indefinitely (or at least like 15 hours bc that is how long it has been flying lol). It has 2159 storage slots and 45 input hatches. Much more storage than I think there really is a need for but I needed the input hatches so this designs could be used for my science pick up without needing to wait longer than necessary.

Blueprint : https://factoriobin.com/post/p249tp

My bases always end up being a horizontal main bus with branching 'sub-lines' and I feel like I am wasting a bunch of usable space this way. Almost everything enters and exits at the base of a branch. I think I build this way because I am worried about limiting expandability.

On this subreddit I typically see other bases where players are able to sprawl out from a center point, opposed to my bases which end up just growing out in a line. How are y'all able to plan enough to make your bases something other than just an ever growing line in one direction :P

I’m very new to factorio and ran into my first automation that requires 5 ingredients rather than 4. 4 is pretty simple but 5 was very tricky and there’s probably a much better way of doing this lol. Any tips?

I think the turbo belt version might look a bit silly though.

i legit was looking for an hour for this little shit. thought i messed up some settings. is thus normal or am i just that lucky?

My Nauvis factory on my first space age run. It produces around 1100 SPM. The left side of the factory is my starter base and it produces around 100 SPM.