I know I should be keeping the base small, but where else can you build things like 17 belt worm tower and a huge conveyor system for meat products.
Most of chem science research done, somehow at 58-60ups.
First couple of hours with PY. Should I cook more?
I finally comitted to updating to 2.1. With mixed results ;) I'm currently around 1000 hours into my play and on science pack 6. To give you an idea of the scale of my base. I have about 900 trainstops. I run into two problems that i can't seem to resolve
Thanks a buch!
Hi All
Fairly new to modded Factorio and thought I might as well jump in at the deep end.
Would love any tips/advice.
After the last 30 hours being mostly idle time, I finally researched PV yesterday.
Victory screen (somewhat underwhelming, but satisfying nonetheless)
I began the journey on christmas day 2024, on a whim while taking a break from my Space Age playthrough after reaching Vulcanus. After restarting once after 10 hours because I had inadvertently invoked editor mode, I made my first splitter a some days later after 31 hours playing time.
As customary, here are some thoughts and reflections on the last 20 months of playing Pyanodons.
Auto to Logi, first 100 hours
I started out trying to make a main-bus - I knew very little about Py at this time. This was, as I discovered, not a very viable approach. This is what it looked like when I had reached Py1:
Next step was to make some bots and work on Logistic science, meaning things like intermetallics and cottongut.
Automation science took 3 hours, py1 clocked in around 45 hours laters, and logi took 65 hours. When I had reached logi, I had racked up 115 hours of gameplay. At this point I was hooked.
Trainification
City-block transformation in progress.
After logi started the Great Transformation To City Blocks. Yes, some people think they are boring, and I can agree with that. But it had at this point become clear that I needed structure and order to offload the sheer mental load that Pyanodon presented. Having rigid city blocks caused some problems with the larger AL builds (and wasted quite a bit of space on some of the smaller builds), but it also served as a scaffold so that I did not need to think about things like where to put my train stations.
Py2 to Py4
Py2 took an insane 200 hours, mostly because I spent so much time building (and rebuilding) rails until I was satisified with how it worked. The old starter base was being cannibalized:
Remnants of the old starter base
At this time I had started to use YAFC-CE for all factory planning. I can highly recommend it, although the UX took a bit to get used to.
After py2 I took a break to finish my Space Age playthrough, and resume working on chemical science a month or so later. Chemical science took another 200 hours, and I was dreading the future if "200 hours per science" was going to be the norm. At chemical science, the base had grown to this:
I experimented a bit using colored concrete for different blocks, but I eventually removed that because it looked ugly on the map. There are still remnants here from the old starter base, and the surrounding early-game builds. My bot-mall which would serve as my command center for the rest of the game can be seen as well:
Py3 was a bit faster even if I spent more time cleaning up old base remnants. When I finished Py3, I had been playing for 687 hours, and had spent 10 months calendar time playing. I started working on blue circuits making silly things like
I reached production science at 873 hours play time, then I took another break to do a Dyson Sphere Program playthrough. In the Pyanodon time-scale, it felt like a coffee break. Here is the base on the way to Py4:
Production science done, working on Py4
I had at this point gotten a bit tired of Pyanodon, so work was slow and I had several week-long breaks where I just didn't feel like playing. But some zen gardening later I reached Py4, after spending weeks making perfect samples:
Perfect samples (not even all the ingredients)
The base was becoming pretty large at this point, and I had yet to make a base-wide bot network. Some rail blocks where partially or completely bot-driven, like my second Bhoddos build:
Direct-inserted spores, and belted bhoddos, and remaining ingredients delivered by bots.
Power
I suffered a catastrophic power failure leading up to Chem, which forced me to revert to an older save. I was relying on the breeder reactor to supply a couple of GW of power (don't ask why), and I had backed up on consuming the spent fuel cells. After that I transitioned to a ZI biomass powerplant Mk02:
I eventually built 4 of these, before switching to tidal power which eventually came to bear the bulk of the power load in my end-game base, together with two RTGs.
After Py4 it is mostly downhill (production/py4 is the real Py end-game, it is said, with intelligent unit and a bunch of other expensive late game stuff).
I reached utility science at 1139 hours after only 65 hours since py4, and first space science at 1164 hours, just 30 hours later. Remaining time to PV was spent fixing a number of bottlenecks, such as carbon fiber, vanadium pentoxide, super alloy, fertilizer, LDS, and a bunch of other things.
The last 20 hours to PV was just monitoring the base, and doing some final touchups.
Conclusion and random observations
End-game science setup:
Now off to other things. And by "other things", I mean "other overhaul mods", like B&A or Nullius. I haven't decided yet.
The last stretch has been a bit of a slog because of a bunch of bottlenecks showing up but here I am.
I'm going for a grid/train base with only 1-1 trains. I just love to see the litle ants moving everywhere to resupply the base, so I opted for as much traffic as possible (hopefully without deadlocks, which has been ok so far).
Chemical science seems to open up a whole lot of new/Alternative production chains which hopefully will help me to solve some supply issues. Currently I'm rushing the new vatbrains wich seem like a no brainer (pun intended). I sotckpilled almost every brain I had for thoose 300h so it should keep me going for a while, but I'll have to setup something more stable soon.
Last pic is the mall that has been carrying me ever since I moved to rails. It's an automall designed so I can desichain factory in case I need to expand production. Nothing that fancy but it's quite reliable (It's a lot of manual setup but I use a priority system for items to avoid deadlocks).
If you have any questions regarding the base feel free to ask.
Edit: I'm playing the full suite but just regular difficulty (no hard mode no spoilage). And for QOL (and my own sanity) I gave myself a power armor with exosqueleton and some end-game bots.
2 years ago, I made my first post-report on my PY mod progress. At that time, after 950 hours I've unlocked the Chemical Science pack: https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/1bbkcb0/py_completed_chemical_science_950_hours_checkmark/
Now, a 1.5-year break to complete Factorio 2.0 achievements and 700 more hours of play, I've unlocked PY Science Pack 3. A significant portion of this 'session' was spent on upgrading my trains to Mk02, redesigning/replacing the train station with faster trains and wagons with higher capacity. Naturally, I had some trouble upgrading my save to the 2.0 version, but it took no more than 5-10 hours (don't remember the exact time).
In the last few months, I've seen a few posts of other people completing PY in a much shorter time, including runs in the 'hard mode'. I consider those played MUCH faster and better than mine, but I hope my post will encourage some other players to give PY a try. Yes, my pace is much slower than many others; yet I enjoy every hour of it and focus on optimizing factory efficiency.
I play with bitters (though I disabled their evolution at some point). I also play in "almost hard mode": even though I did not enforce the "Hard Mode" mod, I avoid wasting materials and byproducts by balancing production and utilizing all subproducts.
Some interesting details about my playrun.
Science:
Earlier I was aiming for 10 SPM, but considering that each next science tier increases the needs/amount of lower tech science, I decided to aim for PY Science Pack 3 production for 30 per minute.
My current SPM is around 26, with PY Science Pack 3 production speed at 30/m, but actual consumption at 12.8 pack/m. I guess I would need to increase the number of labs of biocomputers, but even with the current speed, I unlock new techs faster than I can get good use of them.
Electricity:
My energy consumption for the last 250h is around 15 GW. The majority of it comes from 2 High-pressure Steam Turbines Mk02 that are powered by 24 Biomass Powerplants Mk02 burning Charcoal Briquettes. I also burn some Coke and leftovers of regular and refined Natural Gas.
Trains and stations:
I have 291 trains and 2481 stations so far. Yes, I do use the LTN mod. It seems like this is not the best one, but I'm not sure if I'm gonna switch to a new one.
As I already mentioned, the majority of trains were replaced with the Mk02 variant (both locomotives and wagons). This took a significant amount of time. Yet, considering the number of issues with the bandwidth I had in the earlier game, the ability to carry twice as much load with the same number of trains helps a lot.
A very unpleasant problem was that my stations were not compatible with shorter wagons, so I developed a model of a 'gradual' transition to shorter trains. I do plan to upgrade later to Mk03/04 trains, and hope my design will sustain that. I still have some Mk01 trains, but they are not in use, and I might replace them once I unclock Km03
Same as before, I have around 40% of 1-1 trains, and the rest are 1-4. Yet, the more I move the less I need trains that carry a big amount of load, and I feel like soon the majority of trains will be switched to 1-1.
Bitters:
As much as I disabled aggression, evolution and expansion for bitters. I still have many nests around and when I expand, I do some clean up with the help of Tank and a combination of defender and disruptor bots. It takes some time so I plan to start using artillery for a bigger clean-up, but that would trigger bitters to attack my otherwise undefended base. Here is the total # of kills
Milestones:
Map:
Will be happy to answer questions or accept recommendations.
Thanks for reading!
Started my first Py game, 3 hours in and I have something very vaguely resembling automated-ish belts+undergrounds and inserters, currently trying to get research to splitters.
I have over 1000 hrs in Factorio so like to think I have some idea what I'm doing, but this is something else!
Why am I putting myself through this?! 🤦♂️
Can anyone clue me in on any rules of thumb, dos, don'ts, tips, tricks, or any other information that could help me eek out the most from the initial handout the game graces us with?
From what I already managed to realise, copper is the scarcest material in the early game needing ash to make it, so anything that will help me get more copper from the starting automation stage will be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
I noticed I was out of barrels, which usually means something has gone wrong and I have way too many of something. So my top offender...simik blood.
Time to see if I can make pudding or something.
I see a lot of early game milestone achievements on here, but not many late game updates (for obvious reasons), so I thought I'd share that I reached utility science! (Full standard Py version...AL+AE, no spoilage, no hard mode)
2,024 1-1-1 trains, 2,867 stations, and 174 caravans in the base. I decided to use default train logistics, so not using LTN or Cybersyn. I have a love/hate relationship with caravans. They're a cool mechanic and have their place, but I'd go crazy doing a caravan-only base. I mainly use them for items with high stack sizes (like ash) or in the older, congested sections of the base (near the center).
I included an overview image of the base, my Vatbrain setup (this changed a lot since early game), and - since there was a post earlier today with a beautiful mall setup - my crappy mall. I end up hand crafting most buildings, so haven't really found a need to build a big mall - just the basics that I use a lot of.
I don't know what I'll do with myself after I reach Pyrric Victory. This has taken me more than 14 months real time. There have been ups and downs along the way, but overall still loving it!
Current mall a little before military science. What does your mall look like?
Usually when the game has tried to troll me to this point, it's included recipes with technologies that are wildly useless (ex. Fawogae to Raw Coal). I saw that this one adds Cellulose to make Filtration media and worked to use it without actually comparing to the prior recipe. I got all the way to having Cellulose where I make filters before I realized that this version of the recipe actually lowers throughput. I guess I'll have to start looking at these "upgraded" recipes a bit more closely up front.
finally got to py sci 2, I can finally relax for a bit... fish was surprisingly the most annoying part about it. still haven't gotten around to messing with caravans yet, no other mods except py.
Does Py have anything super neat or cool later on? Krastorio has next level purple belts etc., Bobs/Angels has two new armor tiers to make you into Ironman. Does Py have anything similar or is it just pure pain as people are saying?
Hey guys, I am doing ash reprocessing and it creates a huge amount of coal dust, I would like to add it to a line op fuel to be burned, where it is prioritized over the main line.
I don't want the main line to clog up or have only one lane accessible, anyone any Ideas how I can do this?
Personally syngas from hot syngas really fixed some big problems, oh and saline from drilling fluid.
I can never bring myself to make bedding for animals I'm going to slaughter though. I always use the more basic recipes for that.
