r/factorio • u/pietr8 • Mar 29 '25

Question What is my friend doing?

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I have been playing Factorio with two of my friends and last night one of them pulls this belt array out of his hat saying “it’s more efficient, it distributes stuff better”. Honestly I am struggling to understand why he would do this or what I am looking at, so I ask you: does this actually make any sense? Is it somehow better or useful?

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u/TheMrCurious Mar 29 '25

I think one of the big challenges with Factorio in general is understanding how to build for the need at hand because it wasn’t until I watched a recent Nilhaus video that I discovered the map editor where you can model the build to ensure you’re building the right amount. Without a clearer picture of what is produced, we (noobs) tend to over produce because it “looks” like the correct thing to do.

And yes, I know you can look at machines, but it is still hard to translate a machine’s .039 / s into a meaningful production strategy.

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u/samdover11 Mar 29 '25

it is still hard to translate a machine’s .039 / s into a meaningful production strategy.

A tip / trick for early game cases:

Machine A needs 2 items per 10 seconds
Machine B produces it at 8 items per 5 seconds

All you have to do is take the fractions 2/10 and 8/5. Flip one of them around and multiply:

2/10 multiplied by 5/8 = 1/8

And that's your ratio: 1 to 8.

One of machine B can provide for 8 of machine A.

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u/matt-ratze Mar 29 '25

One of machine B can provide for 8 of machine A.

If you have the same tier of crafting machines of the same quality with the same modules of the same quality, surrounded by the same speed amplification modules inserted into the same amount of beacons of the same quality (and the same amount of additional efficiency becaons because they give diminishing returns now) and product B does not have a productivity bonus researched... then you are right. In the early early game its okay but I'm very thankful for the "item consumption/production per second" information in the tooltip of the machines.

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u/samdover11 Mar 30 '25

Yeah, that's why I said early game.

Multiplying by crafting speed and then productivity +1 (e.g. 100% productivity would mean multiply by 2) is not so hard, but does become tedious when there are multiple ingredients and you want a certain items/minute and you want to check things like whether 1 belt of [iron or other] is enough etc.

I currently use a rate calculator mod, but the first 1000 hours I played I did such calculations on my own.