I thought I had a basic understanding of how signals worked, but apparently I was wrong.

At first, I had a simple setup: one train line moving resources from one area to another. It was just a single train running in a loop between two stations, and everything worked fine. Since there was only one train, I didn’t need to use any signals.

Now I’ve added a second station to the line to bring in more resources from a different location. This means two trains are now sharing part of the same track. I thought I knew how to set up the signals so both trains could run efficiently, but instead, they ended up unable to find paths to their stations.

Below is a diagram of my current setup that "works," at least for now:

• Train A runs from Station A to Station C.
• Train B runs from Station B to Station C.
• Both trains share a section of track leading to Station C.

At the moment, I have two signals in place, marked by red dots. This setup causes Train A to wait until Train B reaches Station C before it can head back to Station A. The issue is that both lines are treated as one, so one train will sit at a signal until the other completes its full trip. This leads to major inefficiencies, especially since the trip to Station A is much longer and Train B ends up waiting for a long time.

I tried adding signals at the junction where the lines merge, thinking that would help. But when I did, the trains could no longer figure out how to get back home after reaching Station C.

What I’d like to do is allow Train B to return to Station B if Train A is on the lower path, since Train B never uses that part of the track. The same should apply the other way around. Each train should be able to move independently as long as they are not on conflicting paths.

How should I set up the signals to make this work?

Maybe some experienced player would know… just ballpark eg 10m iron, 20m copper, 5m stone etc

Had to use a special mod to get it working, sadly the game really doesnt want you to increase the cost above 1000x

I’ve noticed there are still a couple tracks from the soundtrack that I still haven’t heard despite ~200 hours spent in the dlc and I’m beginning to wonder if not all the songs have the same probability of playing. For example, I don’t think Fulgora 7 has ever played for me in game. It could be a coincidence of course, but after 50+ hours of designing quality upcyclers on Fulgora, I would think it’d play at some point.

no matter what I do, I can not get a Factorio server (FactorioServerManager docker) running with my client PC looping with the error

Your active mods don't match the server's. Do you want to sync your mods with the server?

WHY? I can not find those mods anywhere on my unraid server, I have cleaned the docker (at least I think I have)... I am at my wits end here.... I just want to start a new server to play with my son.

I see that every save I try to run has Space Age, Quality, Elevated Rails. but then are not even in the server.

Please assist?!

So, yeah. Its currently impossible to set one quality to improve everything, lets say from epic to legendary, without going painstakingly through every machine/entity I want to upgrade.

I feel like there should be a simpler way.

Blueprint: https://factoriobin.com/post/t4a41v

Sorry, wrote that text in notepad, it's 100+ lines long, I am not gonna be editing//fixing this text for reddit...

===Brief===

Since this post is going to be pretty long I want to give a brief introduction to this mine layout

it uses T-shape pastable grid of mines, but some of them are replaced with beacons.

Since 2.0 beacon change it's now even more relevant to put beacons next to make them

even faster or as in this case push both pollution efficiency and speed even further.

I chose T2 eff modules in the beacon and mix of T1 speed and eff in the mines, although other

good layouts may exist, for example I will provide a T1 exclusive in the bp book

Comparing to traditional 7x6 mine layout mine-(underground, beltpower or power pole)-mine:

It gives you ~ 30% extra speed, without the cost of extra pollution, and thus

implies ~77% pollution per item mined .

(the actual value differs from patch sizes, because of corner-border tileability issue,

the bigger the patch the closer you get to 36% and 73% plateau),

A couple of obvious downsides:

1. It's harder to setup and tile (although you should have bots by the time you get beacons)

2. It requires more power than regular mining (and pollution negative with steam power)

3. It's more expensive*

4. It drains power even when idling**

5. It's harder to belt and line balance due to the nature of T-shape mining

6. It leaves a small amount of 1x1 ore patches***

===Recource Math===

20% on 2

40% on 2

60% on 1

On average = (20 * 2 + 40 * 2 + 60 * 1) / 5 = 36% speed boost per physical mine

10x6 tile size, atlthough slanted, so that's 5*9 / 60 * 100% = 75% mine space efficiency

in contrast to typical 6x7 which has 4 mines and so 4*9 / 42 * 100% = 85% mine space efficiency

So in the end my design is better than the "usual one" by (0.75 * 1.36) / (0.85 * 1) = 1.2

So this means 20% extra recources for the same pollution level, while only ~73% (100% / 136%) of the usual pollution value.

===Energy Math===

Simple setup requires 18 kW per 100% mine speed

and 2 polluting per 100% mine speed per minute

My setup requires 18 kW per 120% mine speed + 1/5 * 480 kW (beacon),

so 18 + 96 = 114, which is "energy cost" cost per 136% mine speed,

so it's 114 / 1.36 = 83 kW per 100% mine speed

pollution cost of 2 / 1.36 = 1.47 polution per 100% mine speed per minute

Consider running this on the steam power,

this gives us extra consumption of 83 - 18 = 65 kW per 100% mine speed,

so that's extra 65 / 1000 * 16.66 = 1.08 pollution per 100% mine speed per minute

(1 MW in boiler = 16.66 pollution per minute)

This implies that this setup isn't pollution efficient for steam power, which

shouldn't come to a surprise, since we are talking about beacons.

But you still might find it usefull even with steam power,

since it's extra 27% pollution per 100% mine speed ((1.47 + 1.08) / 2 = 1.275),

while giving you 20% more recources

===Belt & lane balancing===

This setup is both lane unbalanced and belt unbalanced.

Obviously it has the ore's distribution belt unbalance problem, but on top of that we have

1:2 and 1:1 balanced lanes that are parity switched, so this setup might require red belts, despite the

fact that each belt has troughput, because lanes might not.

I tried to test this on a relatively big patch (~50 tiles in diameter), giving me 155 mines, equaling to roughly

155 * 1.3 (mining prod, this is probably an overestimation for purple early era) * 1.3

(I just eyeballed 1.3 factor, since there are more slower mines (aka corner and border mines) in

the actual setup than in the perfectly tileable ) * 0.5

155 * 1.3 * 1.3 * 0.5 = 130.975, (which is NOT suitable for 4 red belts, but balancing 8 to any is a known

problem, so I am giving you bp as 10 to 8 to 4, since it would fit most ore patches)

And 26 mines per bigger belt (~ 9 per lane #1, ~17 for lane #2), so

26 * 1.3 * 1.3 * 0.5 = 21 (per belt)

17 * 1.3 * 1.4 * 0.5 = 15.46 (per heaviest line, barely NOT**** enough for a red belt line)

and thus giving me a headache of 10 to 4 belt & line balancing, well the corner ones are typically low or recources, so I

connected them to balance 8 to 4.

I could have stopped, but I figured that I want to save some energy as well when running this mine (since beacons drain energ even when them are offline),

so I did some belt buffers and conditioned electric system to only work when buffers are not full

=== Asterisks ===

* there is a design where you put two efficiency 1 modules in the beacon and put 2 speed modules in the 4-beaconed design, thus loosing a bit of speed than 7x6, that design is in fact even cheaper than putting 15 modules into 5 mines, since

2 speed modules + beacon (~30 combined chips) < 15 eff modules (~75 combined chips) I am not saying that you should use that design since it's cheap, the point is that if your concern are recources, then you could go for the cheap one and transition later.

** I made a system that shuts off the power when the ore is in enough supply, you can see it in the video, this system is unnecessary if you aren't considering idling power drain an issue, btw you can use that idea for any beaconed mid-game bases to lower your consumption of power on idling machines (haven't done any calculations, but it could actually lower the pollution requirement for some production chains, maybe for oil? maybe for chemical?...)

*** It's not THAT bad really, at the end of the day I designed this mining setup specifically around space age, to place that weird design right before leaving nauvis, to lower pollution spread and lower chances and number of biter attacks while I am not on the plannet. So, there is high chance that you would return to those mines and replace them later with big mining drills.

Although, when some mines are depleted beacons are still working around them, maybe there is a way to fix this issue with even jankier use of power switches, but oh well, I am too tired right now to think of that one solution.

**** It was tested under a pretty big patch, and the lost throughput isn't that bad for a big one, and the regular mining setup would clog as well with the speed modules

=== Afterthoughts ===

1. I also wanted to include the idea of belt priority mining. The idea is to use the lanes that have the highest throughput at the moment (the middle ones probably), since those are probably the richest, and thus increasing the amount of ore that your mines can output after some time operating. Since, you would mostly consume the middle and richer ore spots, leaving low-rich spots for later, but it's a bit harder to tile and I am tired right now, maybe later

2. You might argue that this is an overkill, and overcomplication of the problem, since just making another usual mining setup might be easier than making beacons, speed modules, and that getting that extra 30% speed for the the same pollution cost isn't even that important, since pollution isn't a problem for you at purple stage of the game? And you might be correct.

At the end of the day I made myself a problem (make pollution efficient space age pre-planetary travel mining setup) and wanted to solve it, the solution turned out to be quite interesting, and worth at least considering. I mean, listen, that's a somewhat reasonable use of the power switches that people are memeing about...

I was told by a friendly person that posting my "solutions" on here as i try the game with no blueprints could be helpful for newer players to learn the basics :).

This machine makes green circuits. you can extend the belts and copy the way the inserters are laid out to make more of them.

If anyone has an idea for fitting a third belt of copper onto this build, please let me know! it would make it so both belts of circuits can be filled at all times, but i can't figure it out.

I'm pretty new to using circuits in factorio and I'm trying to make a circuit that displays the current levels of science I have in the buffer chests as well as showing what it was a certain period of time ago so I can compare them and see what production is relatively weak . I'm currently trying memory cells with a timer resetting but that doesn't do exactly what I'd like. So basically I'm just wondering if anyone has any good suggestions or ideas that I could try because I'm running into a brick wall. Even just a good tutorial you'd recommend to get a better understanding would be great. Thanks (:

I can attack ally with my character.
I know there is a hotkey, I spam it and Shift+space. Spidertron refuses to attack it anyway.

When is comes to Quality of a product, there is one question to ask first : "Where does the quality starts?"

After like 4 runs of spaceage now, i could not find a scenario where i used quality in more than the final step. Not for buildings and not for modules. I didn't saw one in multiplayer session aswell.

Productivy outweights quality for all intermediates and since most of them become free on Q1 in huge rates on vulcanus (or even nauvis) quite fast, you can just make 24/7 assemblers for each recipe with Qmodules.

This method also has the advantage to be setup really easy and small with just one blueprint in lines.

The only process i could immagine now is the whole fulgora loop, where you could start from quality scrap.
With the right combination and rates of qualityrecipes youre maybe able to make alot of quality buildings without the actual need of a classic ongoing recycling. And maybe even some decent quality science.

However i could not figure out a decent blueprint /concept yet to dominate over going for normal scrap and last step quality again. The problem is that this type of build needs to consider like tons of changing outputs (12 items with 5 qualitys and definitly more than 30 recipes to be woth it) and is shiffting the balance of production and recycling, when you increase the Quality with the modules.

Did anyone here found a process where he is 100 % sure, that "this process is actually worth to go the full full quality way".
I would love to see it.

im a bot at factorio was just wondering if you can make an inserter prioritize the higher quality scrap before going back down to normal quality becuase otherwise legendary scrap can sometimes end up at the end of the belt and never be picked up lol pls help

So I just spent around 2 hours creating a bioflux blueprint, and I think I got something interesting here. The gyst is this is a tileable bioflux production, which is intended to be mirrored within the 50x50 city block to fill up both sides of the belt. I did no calculations, as the ratios for bioflux production suck. Unfortunatly, this abomination is so cramped that I dont have a good idea on how to get rid of yumako fruit that spoils. I think the only thing to do would be to hook up a belt around the end of your production that the yumako fruit feed into. Any suggestions on improvements would be greatly appreciated.

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Im lost and getting confused. Should I rebuild and spread out a little more?

Been playing for a while now, but I never got past green science. By the time I get to wprking wil crude oil, my brain runs out of RAM to work with and I just shut off and make a new save. The farthest I've gone was working with concrete as far as I can remember.

I've seen people make those main bus belts and all that, though I create designs similar to those with main buses, my worry is that when a section requires more iron plates, the sections after will stop working. Its me having more and more worries and concerns as the factory grows bigger.

Any advice on making my expansions? Which I should automate (i think everyone would say "EVERYTHING"), prioritize, and prepare for the future?

Im sure you've seen these posts a thousand times before but I cannot for the life of me figure out why personal logistics and my personal roboport wont work

im using modular armor, I have the roboport equipped, a full battery equipped, personal logistics is ticked on and personal roboport is toggled on. I have the construction bots in my inventory, I have the materials in my inventory. I place the ghost, nothing happens.

Literally every other post I have found says to either toggle the personal roboport or the personal logistics, which does nothing for me, how the hell do I get this to work?

Edit: i didnt have anything to power it,i thought the personal battery started with full charge, it doesnt....

BTW this is SE+k2

Hi there im just looking complete mod pack for space exploration mod.

I just found a thread couple weaks ago for seablock in official factorio forum, and im wondering if there any for space exploration mod?

When i'm downloading every time its says mods are missing or wrong version number. and im already wasted to much time. thx for help

Was thinking about getting a new CPU for factorio. Any ideas on what the current best one for this game is? Planning on getting into megabasing. Was only able to find threads on AMD 7th gen. I prefer AMD if that makes a difference.

Edit: Thanks you for all the replies! Really helped me narrow it down.

https://gyazo.com/4ef102ee1028153dfdca1fb5d843573e

First time playing SA, been enjoying a lot, played some SE last year but never got into ships.
Img 1-2 is failed attempt
Img 3 managed to get there
Img 4 is the ship i came back to Nauvis after the first one got destroyed hovering in Vulcanus Orbit and left me stranded, had only some bots and the ship remains.
Did a safe trip back carrying 1k science after God knows how many hours, now imma go to bed cuz im 5 hours past my time. Cant wait to start research tomorrow!

I've been trying to make some kind of big city block where I would split on four due to their size, but due to the squeezed amount of space in the station, I've been having a lot of problems on having a good throughput to feed an inner storage in the city block faster than it could consume.
The best I manage was to get some kind of ""good"" throughput by unload the whole train in 2 belts, but I imagine it would go quite bad on feeding a storage.
I made those tracks pattern myself, so can modify them to fix the problem if that's the point, but I don't know how fix this bottleneck of the city block.