Nauvis 03 - Smelting and Bus
· factorio
Overview << Nauvis 02 < Nauvis 03 > Nauvis 04 >> Vulcanus
Smelting and Bus
Steam Power
The next step once the factory is generally laid out is to move Steam power to its final location. This layout provides three rows of 24 steam engines eventually, but no more than the starting 6 or maybe 12 are needed at this time.
Electric Drills
Next is to move from burner mining drills to electric mining drills on all the resources. It’s also a good idea to have radars researched and to throw some down as wide as possible to keep an eye on biters. With only small electric poles available I use a less than maximal pattern of drills. A full row on ones side of the belt and a pair of drills on the other to provide space for poles.
Coal
Fully mine the coal resource and run half of it to your steam power through the future iron smelting blocks, and aim the other half south, so that it can be run through bottom iron smelting block west under stone block and uP through copper smelting blocks. Directions will very based on coal resource and city block layout, but generally want to provide both sides with coal as well as the steam power.
Iron and Steel
Set up the top-most iron/steel smelting block. 4 double rows of stone furnaces fit well into the 50x50 block, with each double row being fed a belt half coal and half iron ore. The first two double rows output iron plates, while the bottom two switch halfway through to feed the iron plates into the second set of furnaces to output steel. Completely mine out the iron resource, you probably won’t get more than 2 belts of iron ore to feed the smelting block, so split it into 3 at the block and feed 2 to the iron plate rows, and split the 3rd to the two steel rows.
A good idea is to have steel researched by the time you complete the first iron/steel block so that you will quickly get steel axe researched. It will make clearing city blocks of trees quicker until hand grenades are available.
Radars
Pay attention to your pollution as the smelting city blocks are built out, as it will spread and attract biters. Also drop more radars as you build out power poles to further city blocks. 1 radar every 4 blocks is good space for total coverage.
Copper
Once iron/steel is done it’s time to build out copper. It’s similar to the iron/steel buildout except that all 4 double rows are the same to generate copper plates. Not much copper is needed early on, so only mine out enough of the resource for a single belt and only lay down a single double row of copper plates.
Steam Power
Keep an eye out on power, you will likely hit the current steam engine limit. It will be time to fill out the first row of 24 steam engines.
Stone Bricks
Might as well get the stone furnaces built out as well. They won’t be required until military science, but you can start making stone bricks to hand build the roads around city blocks to make running quicker. Initially stone is built out like copper smelting, but just 2 double rows of 12 furnaces and then a belt of just stone for the bus. Later landfill and concrete blocks will be added. You want 2 full belts of stone, but chances are the intial resource isn’t large enough for that, so I run a single belt and split it at the stone city block send one belt to a row of furnaces and another straight to the bus.
Bus
Layout the bus with a template that provides the spacing and entity for each belt. I use a constant combinator ghost to specify the entity. The layout start 3 spaces from the stone road and then follows a pattern of 4 columns of belts followed by two spaces. This provides the ability to run yellow underground belts across the bus. Left to right the entities are generally 2 sets of copper, circuits, liquids, rock/stone/steel, coal/iron, and a final full iron. There will be spots where different entities will be involved and use the space of another where it’s not needed, like plastic and sulphur. For the copper and iron runs that are 4 wide I like to run a 4x4 balancer where possible.
Green Circuits
Now that I have a fledgling bus, I can put together our first real production: green circuits. This blueprint used the very common ratio of 3 copper coils to two green circuits. I’m only going to lay down half the blueprint and use less than half of that, and it should produce enough for now (and a chest to collect a couple hundred for handcrafting). The half-blueprint takes two belts of copperplates and two belts of iron plates and outputs one belt of green circuits to the bus.
Time
002:49 - time to green circuits on the bus.