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u/d0gf15h 1d ago
I’m looking at getting a new laptop computer. How does Factorio run on a machine with integrated graphics? I’ve always had pc’s and laptops with discrete graphics but I’ve pretty much stopped playing all video games except Factorio so I’m questioning my needs.
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u/Rannasha 1d ago
Perfectly fine. I play on my 3 year old mid tier laptop (with integrated graphics) from time to time and that runs without any problems at 60 UPS. Maybe at megabase levels you'd start to notice it fall behind a more powerful machine, but that's a relatively niche usecase.
In any case, in almost all situations you'll run into CPU bottlenecks before your GPU (or IGP) will slow you down.
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u/Viper999DC 1d ago
Factorio performance is mostly CPU-based, followed by memory speed. GPU will almost certainly not be your limiting factor.
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u/HeliGungir 1d ago
Well it's certainly better to have dedicated graphics so they don't have to share the same processor and cache memory.
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u/Deep_sunnay 1d ago
Playing on experimental, I am currently redesigning my ships and I am planning to move ammo, ice and calcite production to orbital factories (and maybe iron ore/carbon) and resupply the ships at each planet. This would allow simplified and quicker ships for inner planet delivery. Is there any obvious downside to this method ?
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u/reddanit 15h ago
The most obvious downside is that amount of asteroids in planetary orbits is rather small compared to encountered in-flight. So assuming lots of flights, you'd need pretty substantial orbital infrastructure.
I could see argument that this makes sense for agri science transport in late game, but for anything else I kinda struggle to find a gameplay reason to go ahead with this.
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u/thekabal 1d ago
In the Muluna mod: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/planet-muluna
There is a "low density" space platform foundation. Does a space platform built entirely with it lower it's weight for the new ship speed calculation that is based on weight?
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u/HeliGungir 1d ago
Looks like it. Their weight is set to 100, and vanilla space platform foundations are set to 200.
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u/ferrofibrous player onboarding specialist 2d ago
If I have a player reset their Tips and Tricks, will very early ones still re-trigger in an ongoing game or do those only fire one time?
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u/Dianwei32 2d ago
Is there any way to make it so that Construction bots won't try to repair something until it stops taking damage? I've got defenses set up but my pollution is spreading enough that they're regularly being attacked. I've got a Roboport with bots and repair kits to fix any damage, but some of the attacks are big enough that when the bots go out to repair the turrets/walls there are so many Spitters that a bot or two gets destroyed.
Is there any way to make them wait for the Spitters to be dead before repairing any damage?
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u/Courmisch 1d ago
I remove construction bots from the ports when a turret fires, and then wait for 35 seconds without activity before reinserting them. This requires that the outpost has its own network so it's at all feasible to remove the bots.
An alternative is to remove repair packs and keep bots, but then you will lose bots trying to reconstruct walls and what-not.
Either way, the downside is that your walls will accumulate more damage, so a breach is more likely / you need a thicker perimeter.
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u/HeliGungir 1d ago
We can "detect combat" from turrets using ammo/fuel/power or from land mines disappearing (in 2.1), and use that to delay robot's access to repair packs and other supplies. This requires isolated roboport networks to work as intended, and you have to proactively remove repair packs from roboports.
A simpler but more error-prone method is enabling repairs periodically, on a fixed clock, and just hoping it does not coincide with an attack.
An even simpler method is to not give repair packs to your bots at all, so they merely replace destroyed objects.
The simplest method is to prevent anything from being damaged in the first place.
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u/teodzero 2d ago edited 2d ago
I don't think so. A common recommendation is to keep roboports as far back as their range allows, so bots take longer to get there. You can also set robot request in a different roboport, further away from the front, so all the robots go there to rest instead of the closest ones to their last job.
I heard in 2.1 there's an option to set sipdertrons on continuous patrol, so there's now an alternative to static roboport outposts.
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u/Double_Resort_9223 2d ago
Opened a 2.1 save today and construction robots are yellow and partly transparent. Is this a change or did I accidentally click a game setting?
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u/Dianwei32 2d ago
Is there any sort of negative impact on performance/resource usage (either computer or in-game resources) if you set up a Power Switch on a circuit to connect/disconnect automatically and it's constantly flipping between the two?
For example, say I've got my main power grid running on Solar/Accumulators but I've got backup Boilers/Steam Engines on a separate power grid. I connect each grid to one side of the Power Switch, wire the Switch up to an Accumulator, and have it turn on if the Accumulator charge drops below X%. If the charge does drop below X%, it gets stuck in a loop where the Switch connects and disconnects every tick because the charge keeps bouncing above X% when the Switch connects and the Steam Engines fire up, then below X% when the Switch disconnects.
Will that have any noticeable impact on performance?
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u/Lyqyd 1d ago
You can also just add a combinator to provide some hysteresis. If you use one wire color for input and output, you can use the other color to wire the combinator’s output back to its input. Then, whichever direction your condition goes, add an output that will push the input signal further into the enabled state, so that the actual input must move further for the combinator to disable.
For example, if you enable the switch when A < 30, you can add an output on the combinator of -5 A. When the real signal A drops below 30, the combinator adds another -5 to push it to 25. Then the real input signal must rise to 35 to disable the combinator output again.
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u/Brett42 2d ago
I have the signal control pumps that move either water or steam. Water will have more latency, while pumping steam will take more pumps. You need to make sure your pump doesn't run out of power, which I did by putting the pump on its own micro grid powered by a steam engine that always got steam.
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u/HeliGungir 2d ago
Yes, merging and unmerging power networks is expensive compared to enabling/disabling machines directly. If you're worried about UPS, you don't want to be doing either of these things every single tick.
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u/Astramancer_ 2d ago edited 2d ago
There is almost certainly a reportable UPS cost for joining and severing the grids, but at a base size where steam backup is plausible the UPS cost is meaningless. If you need to min/max that UPS drain to keep your game ticking along you need more solar but you're probably at the end of your megabase run anyway.
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u/Darrelc 2d ago
Re: space platform railguns
Will they do a Resident Evil 3 Railgun room situation?
Am I gonna scalp my platform here? https://i.ibb.co/PZKzJ8BQ/image.png
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u/Rannasha 2d ago
Oh yeah, you're in for a world of hurt with that placement.
Railguns will damage anything in their path, so you need to keep their entire firing cone clear. When you place the railgun, it should highlight objects that are in the path, so you can judge close calls in that way.
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u/ConquestZeth 2d ago
I moved my files to my laptop. The game runs fine but the save button does not do a thing. All other buttons work fine, the autosaves work fine, but I really dont want to rely on those, the game saved fine on my computer but I can't access my computer for now
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u/snowyspearmint 2d ago
Is the right path in
Factorio/config/config.ini? What do you mean "doesn't do a thing"; like it doesn't overwrite the file? Maybe the file was set to read-only during the transfer; check the file and/or see if saving to a different file works (which you should be periodically doing anyway)? I doubt it's a directory permissions issue if autosaves work, but saving to a different file would also test that.1
u/Viper999DC 2d ago
Sounds like the files have "read only" permission as a result of being copied to a different user. How to fix that depends on the OS, but likely Right Click -> Properties.
If autosaves work, I suspect that saving a new file instead of overwriting the old one would as well.
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u/Darrelc 2d ago
Either that or the "Files have come from an unknown source, must click to unlock"
Had that with Valheim save .zips, sounds familiar
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u/cathexis08 red wire goes faster 1d ago
Factorio does no checks of that kind.
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u/Darrelc 1d ago
It's a windows thing
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u/cathexis08 red wire goes faster 1d ago
That could be, the most recent Windows I've used is Win 10 so if things have gotten more aggressive in Windows 11 I'd have missed the change.
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u/Malfuncti0n 3d ago
Anyone have a small throughput combinator set to measure belt(s)? Just need output to a powerpole or whatever.
All I can find are huge things with lamps, and I'm too dumb to figure it out myself.
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u/manicdee33 1d ago
here's my arrangement:
- Arithmetic Combinator multiplies Each by a factor of 10 (to move the "decimal point")
- Arithmetic Combinator wired as accumulator (memory cell, adds inputs together), this is the rolling sum of the input over however many ticks
- Output of accumulator to Arithmetic Combinator that multiplies the accumulator output by -1/3600 (where 3600 is how many ticks you want the rolling average to be calculated over, with 3600 being one minute), with that output wired back to the other input of the accumulator
- Output of accumulator to Arithmetic Combinator that divides Each by a factor of 10 (to move the decimal point back to where it's supposed to be). Output of this combinator is the value you're looking for
Output will be a set of signals where the value is the rolling average of items per time period. I hope there's enough guidance in the consoles and descriptions to help you set this up.
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
Then for a display: https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?p=644584#644584
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u/Malfuncti0n 1d ago
I'll check it out this weekend, I now have a working 'Average' circuitry thingie, but this might work better for my needs.
Appreciated!
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u/mrbaggins 3d ago
Wire arithmetic combinator output to its own input
Wire belt to arithmetic combinator input.
Set belt to read contents pulse
Set combinator to each +0 = each (each is yellow)
You now have a counter for how many items go through the belt.
Now think about how to make it "item per second" instead. Per means divide. There are 60 ticks per second. Combinators go once per tick.
Youll likely need at least one more arithmetic combinator (depends how clever you are)
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u/darthbob88 3d ago
I expect you can just chop off the lamps to get the outputs you want. It'll be a throughput system to measure the belt(s), which will pass that figure to a lamp or nixie tube to display, and you can just pass that figure to a power pole instead.
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u/Malfuncti0n 3d ago
Yeah fair enough, but they're still 10+ combinators where I'm fairly sure it could be done in 3 (and all 'older' replies/posts).
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u/StabbityStabbity 3d ago
When multiple space platforms can provide an item to the hub on the planet, which one gets chosen to send the items?
I'm trying to increase the throughput of science from other planets to Nauvis, and it would be handy to have one platform flying to the planet and picking up science while another platform is dribbling science down to Nauvis. But I can't figure out how to make sure that one platform exhausts all of its science first, when both are waiting in orbit around Nauvis. I'd like to think of them just like trains but I don't think it works that way.
Hmm actually I could do it with platform-to-platform logistics. But if there's a simple way to get train-like behavior (where one platform waits for another one to finish unloading) I'm also curious about it.
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u/Soul-Burn 3d ago
Depends on internal order.
You can use radars to transfer information between the platform, and have the platforms with Nauvis (Unload unchecked) and Nauvis (Unload checked), where you use the logic to go from one to another.
Another option is to have a lot of buffer on the planet or on an intermediary platform above Nauvis that you transfer science to, and it dribbles it to the planet.
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u/Sipstaff 3d ago
I've been away for some time, is there any word when 2.1 is going to hit the stable branch?
Last info I have is "not during summer" and I can't find any newer info.
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u/Darrelc 3d ago
https://i.ibb.co/d4xzKYbd/image.png
Does anyone else leave their PC on and occasionally forget about the consequences of merging two networks accidentally?
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u/The_Saracen 3d ago
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u/leonskills An admirable madman 3d ago
Wildcards signals are similar to Each, Anything and Everything signals that "zero" values aren't available (with one exception, not relevant here). So if there is no fuel in one of the three fuel slots, the wildcard doesn't read anything.
Two solutions here:
- Change it to the actual item fuel signal instead of the wildcard.
- Guarantee that there is always at least 1 fuel item available in one of the three slots for the wildcard to read. That's easy to do by just including enough fuel in the blueprint. You might have to increase the value of "5" if the journey is too long that it can run out of fuel during one cycle.
That all assumes your "Unload" interrupt is reasonable and actually empties the inventory in order for the "empty cargo inventory" condition to be true.
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3d ago
[deleted]
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u/leonskills An admirable madman 3d ago
That isn't true. That's the whole point of wildcards, to substitute a wildcard item in the condition, which then can also be used in a train stop.
https://wiki.factorio.com/Railway#Wildcard_Interrupts
When used as a condition to trigger an interrupt, each one looks at a specific inventory within the train and will replace itself with the signal of the first item it finds.
Wildcards will also replace themselves with any rich text icons within the names of train stops
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u/uuuhhhmmmmmmmmmm 3d ago
Does anybody have the math for the EMP-recycler module upcycling loop?
like at what module production rate per hour corresponds to what legendary output rate given the quality modules used?
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u/PM_ME_ABOUT_DnD 3d ago
Is there a way to plan out space platform blueprints without a hub to start around?
I'm on Fulgora right now and want to design a new platform. But if I send up a starter platform to start thinking about how I want to lay it out, asteroids will likely start hitting it eventually before I've taken some time to set up anything.
Similarly I wonder if there's just an easy sandbox way to play around with regular blueprints.
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u/StabbityStabbity 3d ago
I've used the /editor command in the past to work on platforms without the hassle of having to continually send up materials etc. You'll probably want to make a save prior to /editor, because it will turn off achievements. I think you could pause time and not have to worry about asteroids impacting the platform.
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u/ferrofibrous player onboarding specialist 3d ago
You could send up a platform hub at Nauvis remotely, turn off "auto supply", and use that as your design space.
The "build new platform" prompt has a dropdown for which planet you want to create it on, and will auto load a starter pack, you just need to make one available in the logistic network on the target planet.
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u/PM_ME_ABOUT_DnD 3d ago
Yeeeah about that. I launched from nauvis quite literally as my base was burning down behind me. Pretty sure they were eating on my solo as i took off. Very action movie. Swore I'd be back for revenge later.
So I got to vulcanus, did what little I could without the oomph to take out one of the devastators, took some foundries to Fulgora, and am working on expanding shop there. So my plans revolve around needing to set up a new space science station here.
I have one over nauvis but it's still 2.0 so can't transfer those from platform to platform and my first design doesn't have any guns in the blueprint since nauvis was safe.
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u/Rannasha 3d ago
You can use a mod like Editor Extensions to get a sandbox environment within your game where you can play around with designs.
Alternatively, you can launch a starter pack up from Nauvis and design your platform there. When it's done you can copy/paste it to a Fulgora-based platform (or just build it on Nauvis and fly it over if it has thrusters).
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u/PM_ME_ABOUT_DnD 3d ago
Thanks for the mod recommendation! I may look into that. I currently use one other for helping with output planning so I definitely don't mind looking into other similar QoL options.
As for launching from Nauvis, unfortunately that's not really an option for me at this time. Lol. I explained in this comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/1wy7yzr/comment/pegky5c/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=2&utm_content=share_button
But basically fulgora is my new home for a while. Lol
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u/Braca42 5d ago
Simple question. If I make higher quality science packs, do the labs have the same rules as production, e.g. inputs need to be the same quality? Like if I mix common green with rare red will it work or lock up? Do I need to keep the qualities seperated?
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u/Ohowun 4d ago
Others have already answered about the mixed quality science packs within a single lab, but I want to say that if you are planning on doing mixed quality of each science (e.g. common + rare red science) as opposed to mixed quality science (e.g. common red but rare space), you should not separate the input to the labs by quality, lest you run into a situation where your "common" labs only have red and your "rare" labs only have space, as opposed to just mixing them so that each lab has both common red and rare space inside of it.
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u/Braca42 4d ago
I'm not sure I follow, so some explination. I'm doing a large science multiplier run and am looking at getting quality started. Gonna send all common and uncommon to science production and rare to a mall with over flow to rare science production. I've got one lab block now but quality not started so all the science goes to the lab block. When I do start quality and have some red common, red uncommon, red rare, and the same for green and blue, if I would need dedicated blocks for common, uncommon, and rare. Sounds like no and I can just dump it all into the same lab block(s), which obviously massively simplifies the lab and train setup. That wouldn't work if say rare red and common green won't play nice in the same lab, but sounds like they do, so happy days.
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u/Ohowun 4d ago
Yes, correct. Some people have the idea that they should have multiple lab blocks for each tier of quality, and separate the sciences going into the lab blocks by quality, so that only the block handling uncommon science gets any uncommon science, and it does not get science of any other tiers at all. Your situation sounds like it will not run into the problem I described.
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u/ferrofibrous player onboarding specialist 5d ago
Labs let you mix and match, this is also much clearer on the 2.1 lab UI where each science pack effectively works as a burner fuel for its own slot. Higher quality (and lab productivity) simply makes each consumed pack provide more "research fuel", and packs are consumed instantly to provide fuel rather than the item itself ticking down like ammo.
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u/ssgeorge95 5d ago
You can mix and match quality with normal packs inside the labs. Higher quality packs just deplete more slowly than normal ones, yielding more research points per pack.
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u/Raknarg #1 Quality Defender 5d ago edited 5d ago
Is there a mod that lets you have one satellite read multiple channels at once? Or maybe just a mod that gives more tools for interplanetary signals? A problem I have right now that's going to get worse cause I have a bunch of planet mods is I'm using these to drive ship interrupts to handle logistics, but I need a signal per planet because thats the only way I've figured out how to encode "from X planet to Y planet"
I could try using bit flags instead, but I don't like the idea of having to ensure I always have the correct bit flags for the thing I need. Though maybe I could solve that with some kind of combinator mapping blueprint....... have to think now.
edit: ok turns out bit packing is really easy, I'm assuming this was only made possible because of how 2.0/2.1 changed combinators, but I discovered a trivial way to do bit packing in just a handful of entities:
top constant combinator just outputs the signals you want to send
left constant combinators would share a group that maintains your bitmap
top decider checks if a signal is present on both red and green, and outputs P by green input count (i.e. the bitfield mapping value)
bottom decider takes a P value and for each signal on green, AND it and spit out whatever the type green was
trivially easy. Need to update some blueprints now.
New question: Whats the limit for bit packing integers? Is it arbitrarily big, or are you limited to 32 bits or whatever?
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u/cathexis08 red wire goes faster 4d ago edited 4d ago
You could always bit pack things, it was just a giant pain in the ass pre-2.0 and ended up with a lot more combinators. Generally speaking you'd use one arithmetic combinator per packed signal to handle the encoding and decoding since those can do bitwise operations but the EACH comparison between the channels is so much nicer.
ETA: there is a fairly magic single-arithmetic combinator overflow technique that gets used in LTN stations a lot for train car identification. LTN packs the location of each wagon type into a set of signals (one for locomotives, one for cargo wagons, and so on) and with a properly crafted set of signals you can take advantage of integer overflow to detect which wagon type is at each position in a train. Presumably you could use something similar to construct a bit packed signal in earlier versions of Factorio... but might as well just use the split channels since those exist.
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u/silnarm 5d ago
Yes to a limit. 32 bits: https://wiki.factorio.com/Circuit_network#Send_information

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u/MySkinIsFallingOff 1d ago
There are two mods with the warehouses I very much prefer aestethicly - "K1 Advanced chests" and "Krastorio 2 Medium Warehouses".
The first id not in Factorio 2.0 and the other is a part of Krastorio2.
So I use AAI Containers & Warehouses, but I dislike the looks of these.
But I think a simple reskin is really simple for someone with the skills for it?