u/IlikeJG

Dealing with manually mining is getting scarier and scarier how fast they disappear. I need to figure out how to run my economy in a sustainable way quickly or I'm going to run dry.

I'm not super far into the game or anything (I've researched most of what I can do with red research) and I'm gonna try to tackle setting up nuclear soon, as soon as I can get all my essentials squared away. About year 300 or 400 (can't remember) with almost 4k population.

I do have infinite world mines enabled so that helps a lot. I'm only importing oil for now, and soon I'll start important coal just as a supplement to make my mines last a bit longer. I'm mostly only using coal for smelting and other misc stuff but it does add up. I guess once I get nuclear and am able to set up arc furnaces my need for coal will plummet.

I know I'm gonna try to trade servers for iron ore once I unlock them because that seems like a very profitable trade. But I'm not sure what I want to trade for copper or limestone.

I am a long time Factorio veteran (love the game) but one thing that's always vaguely annoying for me is dealing with the oil. Refineries and advanced oil processing etc. like over time I have done it many times and I'm fine at it, I just don't really enjoy it.

But in this game it's just so satisfying. Every time I unlock the next oil processing tech (stage 2 and then stage 3) it's satisfying to make the new build and try to get all the value out of it and process all of the byproducts. Normally with that sort of thing I'm dragging my feet when I have to redesign it and procrastinating.

In my current game I'm basically just using what I need to use (heavy oil for cargo ship, a little bit of diesel for the main ship and a reserve for backup diesel generators, and naptha for rubber and plastic) and then just converting everything left over to Hydrogen. Just a huge setup that concerts 240 per month crude oil to hydrogen and it's so cool.

Mechanical parts are a no brainer switch since they're just straight up more efficient.

But CP1s you are essentially trading more raw iron cost for reduction to the wood and concrete cost. Wood is kinda nice but mostly irrelevant since it's a renewable resource. The concrete costs limestone though which is also not renewable (outside of contracts) like iron ore.

I think the iron recipe is definitely better and in a perfectly optimized world it would be the best.

But switching everything to steel means I don't really need iron anymore (except maybe 2 smelter just for work misc stuff). One less resource to juggle is very nice.

So personally I just go for all steel even though it's a little less iron efficient.

I'm a long time factory game fan. Large amount of experience in Factorio, extensive experience in Dyson Sphere Project and dabbled in a few others.

But my current obsession is Captain of Industry and I've been playing for the past couple of months and I'm in love with it. I'm so surprised it doesn't have more fame in the community as much as some of the other big titles.

I guess it technically is in early access so that could be the reason why.

I love captain of industry because the production chains are so complicated and interesting. And since the map is finite and resources/buildable space is very limited (although you can terraform the map to create more space) it creates a lot of resource problems for the player.

So you often end up bouncing from one resource crisis to the next barely staying ahead of the curve. I have had many cases where I am right on the brink of running out of oil or coal and I barely get to either the next node to start using it or setting up a trading dock to import it in. Not to mention having maintenance or power criseses.

But what I love the most about the game is just how many options you have. There's tons of different strategies you can use in the mid and late game. Many of the recipes and items have a lot of different optional recipes, you can choose to base your economy around importing and exporting certain goods as a trade.

Like for one game I was basically making artificial forests everywhere and had a ton of space dedicated to that so that I could harvest all the wood and ship it off to trade for corn. And then I would use the corn to convert it to biofuel and eventually through a processing chain to Hydrogen and ran all of my transport network off of hydrogen. Basically didn't even need oil at that point.

I'm just surprised I haven't ehard more about it like I do the other big titles.

Being at positive health just gives you pop growth and a tiny amount of unity right?

(Should be "how bad is it" oops)

I want to fully crack my oil down to hydrogen and swap everything over to hydrogen, and I even designed a full setup to do so with 4 distillment lines so 240 crude per month.

Maybe even use it for power too but I know that's super inefficient. And I may just stop at fuel gas for this step. Or switch to wood chips. I don't really want to use coal if I can help it because I'm tired of sucking down coal so incredibly fast.

I know that it's not efficient. I know I'm paying a ton in energy and manpower to get all this oil cracked down. I'm fine with paying a bit extra to simplify everything even if I'm losing out on some efficiency.

But not if it's REALLY inefficient. If it's too bad I should probably just bite the bullet and use it more efficiently.

At the very least I want to switch all my vehicles to hydrogen.

For reference I'm basically in the mid game. I am finishing up all the techs just before purple construction parts and after I get this hydrogen transition done with Im gonna finally start setting up trains and getting my base situated so I can more efficiently supply it so I can then scale up my production.

Is it because the trucks carrying that stuff just couldn't find a place to dump it so they chose the ore sorting plant?

Can I manually designate, for instance: Iron, rock, and dirt in my sorting plant? Assuming I am only mining iron ore and not any other specific ore.

Just the rock and dirt are the unlisted random stuff found while digging?

I'm restarting my game because it's been slowly but surely devolving into a logistical nightmare. Trucks are just not keeping up. Pretty sure it's because I should have been moving more towards trains by this point (just before purple construction parts) to take more of the load.

But my base is just way too tightly jam packed. I could slowly rearrange everything but I'm also dealing with all the nearby mines starting to run out.

So for my sanity I just want a clean start. I want to take what I have learned this game and start new with the intention of keeping things a bit more organized to leave clear lanes open for trains and large vehicles.

Any tips to that goal?

I'm already trading wood for corn and converting that to fuel gas and diesel to run all my vehicles and ships. Just takes 500 wood for a ton of corn and wood seems pretty easy to farm up.

I started doing this because pollution is absolutely killing me and every time I have a disease I get down to like -3% health and start losing tons of pops.

But I realized I can get more diesel through this than I can from importing oil from oil platform. And it costs way less people and doesn't pollute except for the energy needed. It does take a ton of space though.

But looking in the future I can soon turn fuel gas into hydrogen at a much better exchange rate. And hydrogen seems to be able to be used to fuel pretty much everything.

And to top that off corn can be turned into ethanol which can be used for stuff like rubber and plastic which solves that side of the oil problem too.

I just got my research lab II up and running so I guess I'll soon be able to try this.