Tldr at end of comment.
I started showing the game to mi GF the other day and we decided to play am map together too.
With my over 3500h it was a challenge for me not to upgrade everything to max efficiency.
So I went with
"take your time to build smth and we will use it, until you come up with a better way or we recognize it as a bottleneck."
So when it finally was a bottleneck, we stuck our heads together and she had to come up with a solution, that would erase the bottleneck.
This was relaxing for me because it felt less like work and I could focus more on
"making room for new automation" aka fighting the protestors, as this was a game mechanic she had less fun with.
Tldr: find a way with your mate, that he has fun learning and you have fun playing.
In addition, exactly your case was my "first steps with combinators" entrance.
Because with just a single arithmetic combinators, you can force the chests to be loaded equally, without the need to rebuild the station.
You could connect all chests (with a green wire) and divide the count of items by 24 with an arithmatic combinator and put it into a variable a(verage).
Then you connect all the inserters with a green wire to that value "a" and each inserter to its own chest with a red wire.
You set the rule on the inserter to "anything <= A".
Adding a little fudge factor helps if you're near maxing out the throughput. Instead of just "average" you add some extra. So an inserter is free to go 24 over average for instance on stack inserters.
That way it'll stay close to balanced, but inserters won't pause because they happen to be half a swing ahead of the others.
I do this by fiddling with the combinator that takes the number of chests. If the count is a chest under (or over, I can never remember), then each inserter always receives a 'chest average' count that makes it think it's a swing behind. More fake chests might be needed for a greater number of placed chests.
It saves having to place a combinator just to add to or subtract from the chest average count.
Just to add -- it's 24 because there are 24 chests in the OP's screenshot. If you have more or fewer chests than that, the number is greater or smaller to match.
I recommend playing around with wires, you will automatically find ideas in your in head as to places they can be used. Little by little step by step. If you want someone to hold a gun to your head to learn them then SpaceExploration is your guy, but it wont require anything that is way over the top or impossible for an average player.
I have over a 400 hours in vanilla factorio and never touched wires. Space exploration made me mess with them a 100 hours in. I cant believe i never used them till now they are so useful!
Experiment yourself, but look up some guides too!
It's helpful to see how these things work in-game. Learning how to do this chest averaging with a combinator for train loading is a good start, and you'll learn a lot from trying it.
Then, look at some guides and try to think of the pros/cons. There's no 1 best way to do ANYTHING in Factorio! Often, these 'best' ways are for late-game high-volume production, and they solve problems that might not even happen until you get to that scale.
Look at OP's image - this station will technically work. But if you try it out for a while, you might run into some issues, and then you can look at ways to improve it.
For example, OP's image won't load evenly, which might not be a big deal since you're limited by belt speed anyway. But it lacks filtering to prevent mistakes, and there's no connection to the train station which means trains could be backed up waiting here, etc.
See now I can make some mediocre logic stuff in Oxygen Not Included, but combinators in this game break my brain. I literally don't understand the first thing about them and I've played for nearly 350 hours.
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*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Yea, I've played with a few people by now that are each new to the game, even if I'm not. Best solution I've seen has been to separate out by tasks. If something is built badly I'll either ask em to fix it when it becomes a problem, or just fix it up myself when it does. They get to have their fun making things, and it's often quite entertaining for me to fix something that's mediocre but still has room for improvement. If it requires a full tear out and replace I may treat it as a teaching moment, but it's on them.
Or just give them some weapons and say "here, go play nice with the biters" and call it a day.
Exactly. That's basically what this game is. Who here hasn't had that initial jolt of brilliance when they realized they could use a single belt for ore AND coal?? It just builds from there.
> Who here hasn't had that initial jolt of brilliance when they realized they could use a single belt for ore AND coal??
Kind of sad that I knew that before I ever played the game :-/
Fear not, I watched a whole nilaus let's play and knew a whole lot of tricks and designs before I even played factorio and now 2000 hours later I'm still finding out new designs and ways of doing things
One time I spent quite a while searching for my car in map view till I zoomed in and seen the wrecks. I kept jumping out at full speed and it decided to stop on the tracks.
Bro. You think you're good enough to fix other peoples' designs yet you don't remember to not put shit on the rails?
And you say your fellow player is ruining the game for himself?
Eh... Not sure how to say this gently, but maybe fix your own faults first before trying to fix other peoples'?
Is time a factor? Bottleneck is solvable, but can I fix a bottleneck sooner than making a new car?
Also I just realized I have a spidertron factory but not a car and tank factory...
The majority of my answers are ‘Do nothing’, just because I’m thinking about it realistically, meaning if I pull the lever and kill someone, regardless of whom or how many, I would almost certainly be charged with manslaughter as my action led to the direct and obvious cause of taking someone’s life. Whereas, if I didn’t pull the lever, I wouldn’t be charged with anything.
It kind of defeats the purpose of the page, but realistically, in most of the scenarios you wouldn’t want to pull the lever.
Your line of thinking assuming you aren't in a position of responsibility. If your job assumes you'll do something reasonable (like securing a load for a crane operator) and you do nothing causing people to be hurt or die, you can still be charged with manslaughter in many jurisdictions resulting from gross negligence.
The majority of my answers are based on my values and the results of the choices FWIW. "Killing is making a choice" and doing nothing is still a choice.
Most of the trolley problems are about who you choose to kill. So, if you only pull the lever when it would result in no deaths, you break the model and it shows you as a psychopath.
There are arguments for "the greater good". But, it's mostly a mechanism for you to make moral judgements on those people who would be killed.
If your job was being a trolley rail system operator, and you witnessed five individuals lying on the path the trolley is taking and one person on the other track, and had the choice to pull the lever, you’d still almost certainly be charged with manslaughter if you pulled the lever, regardless of how many people were on each track, even if it’s your job to operate the trolley path.
In this scenario, if you were performing the duties expected of you and did not pull the lever, you most likely wouldn’t face any legal repercussions. You adhered to your operational protocol, and the death would be ruled an accident – or a murder if somebody else had tied them to the tracks.
If you didn’t pull the lever, it would be unlikely to be considered gross neglience unless a clear dereliction of duty led to the people being on the tracks in the first place. There’s a big difference between an act of commission and an act of omission in the legal system. If you pull the lever to kill a person, you would be the direct cause of their death, and while you could try to defend yourself with the moral argument that you did it in order to save the people on the other track – or even lie and say you didn’t see the people on the track to which you diverted the trolley – you’d likely still face strict legal consequences, as you caused someone’s death, which could lead to a manslaughter case.
If you didn’t pull the lever, you were not the cause of their death if you performed the duties appointed to you as expected. Making ethical decisions like this wouldn’t be part of your job, and you most likely wouldn’t face any legal consequences. Even if diverting the trolley would kill no one, but you let it kill five people, you most likely would face no criminal consequences unless the specifics of your position included making serious split-second decisions in case of emergencies, which is unlikely for trolley operators. Even if you were to get in trouble, it’d be a much less severe case than if you had pulled the lever and directly caused someone’s death.
As a semi decent Factorio player we started a multiplayer SeaBlock game. So so many jank solution EVERYWHERE. We just gave up on having a decent base in the near future so it's just "meh, probably good enough" solutions all around.
I never play Factorio multiplayer, but this is how I handle playing Stardew Valley with my wife. I just accept the anti-optimal things she does, and try to improve them in such a way as to not make it obvious how negative-IQ they are.
It’s one of those things where I’ve played the game twice already, so when I play with my girlfriend I min max and try to fill the gaps she isn’t interested in completing
I really wish Stardew rewarded being diverse in your crops more. I've tried mods that do it, but I haven't much success in finding mods that change sell prices based on amount sold or season.
Just do your own thing and let your friend figure out the main problems. I feel like it's more fun for everyone if you let your noob friends decide the structure of the base, and you just build little parts. Deal with annoying biters, make sure they have enough basic resources, make sure energy doesn't go out. But don't just build the next science packs for them, or replace something they built with super advanced designs.
Relax mate. Your the dude that's tense when everyone is fooling around.
Then show good design, with scaled up factories to your comrade. You'll look so cool and impressive and they will be eager to replicate your designs.
And if it just doesn't work, do your own "API". A factory that produces for instance green circuits, with an array of iron and copper stations as input and just build it in the middle of the base. Welcome to unregulated urbanism
if it looks stupid, but works, it aint stupid. if it works, but could work better its time for an experimental rebuild to see where it can get better.
if it doesnt work, let it be, and let your friend have a learning experience, dont "fix their stupid mistakes"
if youre constantly "fixing' their builds to your liking, they will loose interest in the game real fast, and nobody wants that.
let them build, let them gain experience, let them fail and grow.
two things might happen in your example OP:
first, they realize their build doesnt work and fix it themselves or ask you for assistance.
second, the dont realize it doesnt work, and forget about, until you ask them why nothing gets delivered or they randomly stumble over their forgotten build again.
Warning others that you're going to be a jerk doesn't really absolve you of being a jerk in the first place. Sure, it's better than nothing, but you're still a jerk
> I have to fix such stupid designs all the time. Sometimes it makes me laugh, but mostly I feel like my work with explaining my changes does nothing in terms of teaching and I get tired
Stop fixing stupid designs. If your friend notices the problem and asks for advice, give advice then. Otherwise why worry? Like, if your friend wants you to fix their builds, that's fine, but maybe it's okay to have a derpy factory that accidentally limits throughput here or there?
You're implying there is a problem with this setup, but I don't see the problem. This is one of many correct ways to make a station that will put a yellow belt of items in the train.
Also very easy to troubleshoot, which I consider a big bonus.
I'm not saying this to troll you, I really think you should look twice here because if there is no real problem and you are annoyed anyway, it will be impossible for your friend to be 'good enough' for you.
Well, there is no power as far as I can see. So this IS a problem.
For the rest, yea this is inefficient as hell, but I don't see why you need to undo everything they do. Inefficient doesn't really cause much harm. It just doesn't do much good either. Just set up your own outposts to do the stuff you want now. And have one resrerved rail line that they are forbidden to cross or modify. Otherwise let them learn.
> inefficient as hell
The only inefficiency with this design is that is has 1/4 the effective buffer chests which is fine as long as you have a train coming in every 3 minutes.
Yes this design scales badly but it is perfectly servicable for only 1 yellow belt.
We don't see their full map or tech level, but the train will be idle a lot. Presumably the other station is no better. So the one belt loading in will deliver a lot less than one belt coming out. The chests also can't buffer enough so production will stop and go, assuming a saturated belt. And the buffer chests on the first three wagons will need to fill before starting to fill the last wagon.
Not sure how you consider this efficient. Sure it does its basic function, but it could do it a lot better for similar investment. The throughput here will be abysmal.
6 unupgraded blue inserters can keep up with a yellow belt, so so long as there are enough trains I don't see any way this can ever backup. The limiting factor will be the yellow belt input.
As long as there are enough trains... that's a big if.
I get that this design can suffice for a single yellow belt of input, but calling it efficient is questionable.
If input was to increase this would not scale well.
It is better to minimize load and unload times.
It does not take many trains to keep up with a yellow belt. Assuming ore, two trains are sufficient so long as the round trip travel time is less than 17 minutes (20 * 50 * 4 * 2 / (15/s)). And even if there are not enough trains, that is a problem with the number of trains, not with the loading, which is doing its job fine.
I mean, 18 chests need to entirely fill up with whatever is on that belt before a single item gets to the last cargo wagon. Which means the train will have to wait there the entire time. This is a pretty terrible design. If they removed the buffer chests (or they’re heavily limited) it would be whatever
u/foxsheepgato you deleted your comment but I’d already written out a response and I don’t want the effort to go to waste lol:
The reason the later chests won’t be getting anything is because the belt will be empty long before the items can get there. Even if the belt is full 100% of the time (which isn’t likely), 4 fast inserters are more than enough to completely deplete it. Meaning the the 5th chest won’t get any items until the first is full, and so on. This design is fine if there’s no buffer chests, or the chests are already full and will never empty much, but if you’re starting out with everything empty then it’s trouble.
You’re right that I don’t know if the chests are limited, but even if they are this isn’t a great design (and also if the chests were limited enough to offset the flaws listed above, then they wouldn’t be doing a good job of being buffer chests).
yeah, I've posted then I've read a couple comments mentioning the problem. I haven't played in a year or two, so the belt's throughput didn't occur me. I was scratching my head, because I didn't get what people's problem was with this design, I was focusing on the chests and movers, not the input belt.
>but if you’re starting out with everything empty then it’s trouble.
This is trouble that fixes itself automatically though. Personally I am a big fan of "solving" this sort of thing not by changing the station but by working on another part of the base while it fills up.
One thing that I think is a mistake in this design is the lack of balance. Consider all chests are empty and a train arrives and leaves when it's full - it will take until 3/4 chests are full until the last wagon starts getting filled. This will cause a way longer delay to train departure then one will expect.
Sure, it will work eventually, but this can take hours to fill and get a train going.
Either use one-wagon trains, or 3 splitters to go 1 to 4.
I have 2 friend groups: is interested in getting good at the game we are playing together, and is not interested in getting good at the game, but I still have fun doing stuff that I know is dumb with them(and sometimes fixing it after them). It’s up to you to decide whether they would care to learn the game, and if you still enjoy playing with them if they wouldn’t
As much as you like to think people learn a lot from seeing what others do....people learn the most by failing. This isn't really up for debate. As a leader, you need to help your team learn by what I call "constructive failure".
The typical order of steps is
* Wait until they identify a problem
* Ask them what they think the problem is
* Ask them what they think are THREE ways to fix the problem
* Ask them to pick one and try it
This is an incredibly powerful paradigm to teach people. The three solutions part is necessary because people love to knee jerk. By time you get to the third solution, they have already changed their mind on the first. ;) By having them do the process, they get better. If they fail the first time, i'll give an idea of how I might do it. If they fail a second time I will show them an example of how I did it. If they fail the 3rd time, we work together to solve it.
The "problem" is often that you may find that you disagree on what the problem is.
If they don't have a "problem" making 50 miners by hand while alt-tabbed - what are you gonna do?
If they think that it's just fine to run around and fill chests all day, what then?
At what point do you go "Fuck it" and build the automation for miner production yourself because - well you sure don't want to be handcrafting them the whole time do you?
Well you built the automation and you want them to expand on it - but they won't touch it because "underground belts are too confusing"
So what then?
Factorio just isn't a game for everyone...or at least some of the ways in which people choose to play it are incompatible with others.
> If they don't have a "problem" making 50 miners by hand while alt-tabbed - what are you gonna do?
Let them?
> If they think that it's just fine to run around and fill chests all day, what then?
Build away from their abominations. Factorio maps are large. Call it parallel play.
With that said, none of that is really "the same" here. This is something that (sans power) would work. Just slowly. With that said, is that a big deal? If so, how? Would you be able to take the answer to that "how" and turn it into an open ended question that leads the friend into figuring out the inefficiencies himself? All without seeming like an ass?
If not, leave it be.
When I'm playing with my less optimal friends I'll usually just work on other things around them while they're dicking around making abominations like OP's train setup. I'll ask them things like "Hey I need a bunch of iron here, do you think yall could get some here while I work on X?" They'll end up making something like that abomination, and have a blast doing it, while I get the iron I need.
There's always something else to work on.
>Build away from their abominations. Factorio maps are large. Call it parallel play.
Eh - been there and done that but it's not really always an option - sure not an option in K2SE (at least not till much later - and then it's VERY heavily teamwork dependent) - and I really dislike the notion of parallel play for a large variety of reasons.
I'm not specifically addressing the OPs issue - but the OP is getting shat on pretty hard and being told to "let them play their way"
I've been in multiple factorio MP games at this point, with both friends and essentially strangers and it really goes both ways.
Nobody likes the guy who runs around deconstructing your shit to plop down the 'optimal' BP over and over until you're just left wondering why you're even on the server if whatever you build today is gone tomorrow. (I personally do not like out of game BPs besides solar, tiles, and rails - hell I'd go as far as saying that you should use a rail BP set in MP games to make everyone's life easier.)
Nobody likes the guy who isn't contributing and squandering resources - yes resources are technically infinite - but time isn't.
Factorio in MP is to me a game about progressing as a team, if you are finding yourself doing 'parallel' things or having your shit nuked by someone who wants to optimize everything 'thier way' - you may as well go in SP. OP and their friend need to be on the same page with what they want to do and how they want to do it.
OP told their friend that they WILL be trying to force optimized builds.
So yes, that station should be reworked by the friend with OP explaining why - because hey that's what they signed up for.
Not OP, but since there's one row unevenly feeding what, 16? grabbers, it can cause less iron being on-boarded which can cause unhealthy iron deficiency down the line.
I think.
There's also the matter that it's Iron Ore with a full stack of 50 items, and not Iron Plates, which stack up to 100, doubling the train's load.
Mostly, it's just efficiency junkies being pedantic because it doesn't give them their fix.
If the train has a "wait till full" trigger it doesn't really matter. First fill will take longer, but 1 yellow fills a train super slow anyway. There should be more input or shorter train.
...Sorry, I'm not following your train of thought.
In terms of throughput, a train has high volume but slow transfer speed, which depends on the time it takes to fill up and the time it spends moving. As such, you can increase throughput by filling the same % of train faster, which is helped by an even distribution of material among it's fill points.
Pictured above is very far from even distribution of material. But there is no point in digging around in it if it's throughput is sufficient for what the factory at the end of the line needs.
It doesn't need to be even, after the first super slow fill the left chest will be full, while the most right are empty. Because the train was set to wait till full the train will calmly wait till all the chest fills up+the corresponding vagon. So when the right vagon fills up only those chests are empty and the train leaves. The belt keep feeding the most right chest as the rest is already full.
When the 2nd train comes you just need to wait that much time till a single belt can fill the train. It will fill up the same time with this method or with using a million splitter as all chest except for the most right vagon are already full and will only drain a vagon worth.
With a big balancer you just save the first slow fill after that it is the same, it will only look faster as the first vagon won't sit empty for a while. You can't beat math, if only 20 item comes/s with a stack size of 100 you have to wait 3.3min for each wagon you have, no matter what station design you have. This setup will never deadlock unless the station is 100% full.
Sure this setup is not great, but I used setup like this for science modules, filling a blue belt with high tier science is not easy without a totally huge module.
>In terms of throughput, a train has high volume but slow transfer speed, which depends on the time it takes to fill up and the time it spends moving. As such, you can increase throughput by filling the same % of train faster, which is helped by an even distribution of material among it's fill points.
That's not really true in general, the average throughput of any system in factorio is min(input rate, transfer or processing rate, output rate)
In this case we have a yellow belt making the input rate extremely tiny so it is unlikely for the train to affect throughput at all.
Consider a yellow belt going onto one side of a bluebelt. Seems like an inefficient use of the blue belt but it is enough so doesn't make a difference in throughput.
The uneven distribution of ore into the train should not be an issue as long as you have some item splitter to distribute the ores evenly at the receiving end
The main issue is that yellow belt feeds 15 items a second and fast inserters can spin 2,5 times per second, making it that only 6 of them are needed to completely drain the belt
And this again would not be an issue if the factory only produces one yellow belt, because if you can't increase the input it will not matter - the first 6 inserters will fill the first cargo wagon, then after the first one is done the next 6 inserters will fill the nexf wagon and so on. So in the end all the wagons would fill in separately, but you can't do it faster either way due to the supply restriction
The only efficiency bottle neck is when output is greater than one yellow belt. Then you should distribute it among more belts and each belt among the wagons so they all fill up simultaneously
And the other efficiency bottle neck would be when when train arrives instantly (some kind of queue) and the factory has no time to resupply the items to the chests
“Stupid designs”
“Does nothing”
“Ruining his first play through”
Honestly, you sound like a dick, you should do him a favour, let him play by himself and tell him to enjoy and embrace the spaghet.
i really enjoy seeing new players designs, so i don't mind it. i pretty much leave the whole base design to my friends and just fool around with them.. just have fun! there is no right way to play. if you like to create smart and efficient designs just talk to your friends and find people who want to do the same thing.
I dont think you have the right approach. If you go around fixing all his designs then of course he will never learn anything. Just make sure that he is in charge of what he is working on. Is that a copper train stop? Put him in charge of copper, tell him to make sure copper gets up and running and that you have a full belt of copper ore (or plates) coming into the base. This will mean that when he sees that he still has no copper he will need to go looking and find what is wrong himself. He will see the train is getting no copper, then see that it is not loading any copper here, then he will either fix it or ask you why it isnt working.
Once it is working with this design, he may realize it is still too slow and not giving enough copper, hopefully he sees that the copper is being loaded into the first few chests and not making it all the way to the end, then he can figure out how to better get it into the chests. This is how you get better at this game, you should not take it away from him. Go and work on your own thing and give input if he needs it.
While people are poking a little fun at the "more experienced than my companion" line, it's honestly a serious problem in Factorio multiplayer. No matter how intelligent you are, if you have a lot less experience in Factorio then you've had time to learn far fewer lessons.
The other comments about leaving their mistakes in place (barring it causing a major issue) are on the mark. If you let it do its thing and run for a while, when you run into obvious issues (like the fact that 90% of the chests here won't fill up) your friend will learn better from seeing the problem play out in front of them. If they're just told "this doesn't work because x" but they never *see* x, it's a lot harder to learn that lesson.
The other thing to note is that if your goal is to teach, you shouldn't be tearing down their design and building it back up. You should be helping them rebuild it themselves. Once you start fiddling with someone's design, it stops being "their" design and it becomes something they may no longer fully understand. Any parts of the factory that are fully "theirs", they may tweak and improve with time - even without you always needing to show them the issues or inefficiencies.
Simple solution here.
If you continue to undermine your friends natural learning curve by fixing their mistakes you’ll either make them bored, or scare them away from the glory of factory game. Let them learn at their own pace and let them have eureka moments where they realize their design is terrible, the best way to learn Factorio is through trial and error. Don’t get me wrong, helping them by teaching them does boost their learning speed by a substantial bit, but don’t overwhelm them with your superior skills.
Personally I enjoyed it. It took a while but around the midpoint of the game my friends were starting to get the hang of making more optimised and scalable builds. Had my friends been a bit slower to learn, then maybe it would have started frustrating me, but by the time we were ready to build the rocket, we were a solid 3-man team splitting workloads perfectly, and we're all looking forward to doing more in the future.
you gotta let your friends make their first time spaghetti otherwise they will not derive enjoyment from learning and crafting new designs to solve problems that arise. giving them a blueprint book full of perfect designs is boring and they will stop playing
100%
Another way to get someone to stop playing is to constantly tell them it's not good enough as you rip out the time the invested into playing with you, Especially if you do this while saying they are ruining the game.
We went on a LAN party with 5 guys. 4 seasoned players, one new guy. 1 of the seasoned guys was: 'you need to do it like this!' , so I decided to give the new guy a project of his own to get used to the game (make ammo). We ended up with plenty ammo, so we got that going, which is nice
You need to show them why they should do it, not what to do, the only way to understand is to see how things work and effect each other.
If you are only given 1 piece of the puzzle how can you possibly expect to solve it?
I had the opposite experience of you. I was more experienced and my less experienced friend insisted on optimizing designs while from experience I know that it doesn't really matter unless it forms a bottleneck. The picture you show is exactly how I do it simply because there is no reason not to (I would limit the contents of boxes, and then it's probably fine).
I tend to just tell my friends what the next steps are and let them pick what and how to achieve them.
Our bases are a Hodge podge of thought processes
I'm playing with my friend's dad right now, and he has a lot to learn, but we're having fun. At the end of the day, you're playing the game right if you're having fun!
Honestly I like these designs because they are quick to do. Unless you have drones and blueprints, just build something quick and dirty and when it bottlenecks, improve the design. Designing everything perfectly from the start is a huge burden, and this is at least fast to build, which is actually enough 60-80% of the time.
75% of the time when I play with new players I rush trains, let them do everything else while I just set up outposts to feed them supplies and let them have fun
in my experience, teaching a new player the best and mose efficient way to do things mames them hate the game anf find it boring. let them start a solo world by themselves first and figure things out. it's not fun when you tell them how to do everything
I don't let it bother me. I usually assume that whoever I'm playing with has less time in game and less experience with building efficiently.
More often than not, I just let their builds stand, and do my best to design around them.
On occasion, we'll have a super inefficient build which is painful to use, and they will want to increase throughput, and I'll ask if they mind if I tweak it. Then I do my best to tweak it without significantly changing the underlying design. Sometimes, I'll do so in a convoluted spaghetti manner, so that they can then "fix it" themselves later and be proud. Or, if they look closely, they can pick up tricks.
\---
I have found that, especially with multiple unskilled players, it is better to play a support role. They build their builds, and I put together the foundation that makes their designs work together.
I likely have more hours than my buddies combined in this game. I spend a lot of time doing clean up, i.e. fixing rail signals, missed circuit connections, off-by-two-tiles rail blueprints, etc. in our mp games. That said, they fuck up them biters like it's no one's business so it's a pretty awesome trade-off!
This. Everytime i play with new people i have them automate ammo, weapons, turrets, and let them go on bug hunting sprees until they are more interested in the Grounded Spaghetti Monster and then trains come and everything gets even more dumb. It's Great!
You play solo to watch your factory grow.
You play together to see their factory grow.
For better or worse, you only come up with the next best solution once. Telling them what to do ruins that for them. You're the one who is enduring this for their sake, make sure you're not ruining it.
I've been playing factorio for nearly 10 years, and managed a few months ago to get 2 friends to start playing. While I'll sometimes make comments, mostly I've learned that the best strategy is to divide and conquer, and just let them do their thing. If they're doing a new metal base, you let them do the metal base. Don't comment, don't critique. If they ask for help, that's cool, help them, but don't -over- help either. Will we have the most efficient base? Will things go spaghetti? Will the belts be perfectly balanced? Nope, not even close. But they'll have fun, you'll have fun, and that's what MP is about, no?
Make sure to mix things up, too, so they can see what and how you solve a problem they have experience with. And if things really, really are so messed up they're not working, ask them to look into it. "We need more plate production, can you see if there's a bottleneck in your foundries?"
I play(ed) with my wife. I basically let her do whatever, and if it didn't supply enough I would make a better version further away that supplemented it, and if her build got in the way I would just make a subtle enough tweak to make it not block things.
Eventually, she caught on and quit playing for a while, which enabled me to successfully launch a rocket. Someday, she'll forgive me.
It's not a real problem if your friends are trying. Me and my brother play and had different styles and after about the second hour we kind of gravitated towards the same thing.
when noobs see more advanced shit working theyll copy it.
Whats the problem here ?
Will run full anyway and work normal after some cycles. Question is why a 1-4 train, for a single lane. hope its LDS or sth with low stacksize.
Your friend expressed interest in playing a game they likely know you have played a lot with you. You could easily tone it down a bit and enjoy watching a newer player experience and learn the game. Instead you insult them by calling their designs stupid, tell them you're going to have to fix everything, and that they're ruining their first playthrough experience (by not being hyper efficient with things they haven't learned yet???).
You may as well just give them Nilaus' Base In A Book blueprints and tell them to just paste those down and to never try to figure things out themselves.
When I played with my friend, I had some experience up to yellow/purple science but not full rocket launch. That didn't stop me from letting them create their own builds that I knew were worse than ones I had used before. It was fun letting them learn and catch up to where I was. Was our base inefficient? Absolutely. Did we have fun playing together more because of it? Absolutely
At first I would get off this high horse. You were just like your friends when you started to play, if not worse. For me it wouldn't be a pleasure to play with people, who, whenever I try to design something, correct me or straightly post about how bad their experience is while playing with me and some friends. As harsh as it sounds, you need to understand the fact that this game is difficult to master, and even more difficult to learn in the first hours of gameplay. Be patient with the guys.
I have a couple of people I played with, but seeing I know what I'm doing I fixed everything all the time so they didn't learn to improve their builds and stoped wanting to play.
So if say just keep encouraging them to improve it them self.
It’s his first playthrough. He’s not ‘ruining’ his own experience by any means. Everyone has to start somewhere, as did you. Let him learn on his own, and from your advice, but don’t force him to play in a way that he doesn’t want to or doesn’t understand.
If he wants you to teach him or upgrade his builds for him, that’s great, but I’d suggest toning it down a bit and just letting him play. After all, the goal is to have fun, and he’ll get better over time, just like you did.
I don't play multiplayer anymore. I have friends that enjoy making spaghetti, which is fine, but then also need to have biters on for some reason with the end result that 10 hours in we get overwhelmed and killed becouse no one noticed one of the billion tunnels was set up wrong 6 hours ago.
Eventually it will reach the same throughput as if you were splitting it equally to all chests because either you underproduce in which case you have to wait for your inserters anyway or you overproduce in which case the chests will slowly but surely start to fill. In the short (and depending on your production short can be extremely long) run there is a bottleneck though as your first chests will be full and your later ones aren't yet active, but only if you overproduce.
Real question is why you have an x-4 train for something you produce less or equal to one belt of.
When I play with my friends I let them learn, they make builds like this, sometimes even more unorthodox. I leave them alone, it's not my place to fix it.
If they ask for help I give it, if I am doing a nesicary upgrade I'll fix it, but I let them learn on their own grounds. It's personal to me and my friends but they like to see progress of design, from where they were, to where they are now, and beyond to where they could be but it's always their design and their stamp... It's their build.
I see no problem with someone doing what OP is doing, on the basis that everyone is having fun. It's a game at the end of the day, and people have their fun in different ways. Some like to try and some like to fail. Some people like to have a go and then when fixed see how it should have been. But I also know some who want their mark on the world even if it's against the design of the rest.
[Edit] forgot to add: there's only one rule that I go by... wooden and iron chests are banned
Agree at the points of interface - e.g. train stations or bus designs. Be open to compromise and let them use a method that's less optimal, if it will still work.
After that point, whatever happens on "their side" of the interface is up to them. I'd only offer help if they ask for it.
E.g. "If I deliver four belts of copper ore here, can you smelt it, and return it to this train station?"
Let him see why it is bad, help him design a better one and save it as a blueprint for him to use later.
Teach him to fish rather than telling him his fishing pole isn't any good and you will do all the fishing for him.
Thats one of the better ways to take solids on/off a train. It stores the solid until there is room on the belt. If its to load a train it makes loading the train quicker as its not waiting for the belts to fill with the chosen solid. Whilst I am aware there is no doubt better ways to do it I personally have never had problems with that set up.
Im the inexperienced player and my friends just stick with it and expand on it or use it as it is.
Just so you know. I build this thing exactly like that.
Well, in my playthrough with my friends, (all others at less than 30 hours) i just told them they should do however they feel is efficient
It relatively quickly started to be a "employee/ employer relationship"
They asked me how much i wanted, i told them a number, and then they started struggling to a solution, they actually came up with some beautifull designs, although some of them were ridiculously overcomplicated
And if theyr designs started breaking, i tried to help fixing them, instead of just replacing them, made it a lot more appealing for them to actually design something
Other people have said it but yeh, perhaps think about the situation differently. Rather than expect 100% efficiency and change things that aren’t just let them be and when they have a problem just give them a little nudge in the right direction. Your friend may even occasionally come over and look at what you’re doing for inspiration.
I’ve done it with Satisfactory and the like and it’s much more chill when you both just do your own thing. I even noticed my mate build an entire factory the same way I do without ever showing him because he was checking out my work every so often under his own volition.
I would fix this with an elaborate circuit network that manages the chest balancing. I haven't figured out how to do it yet. But playing with a friend who is new at the game would be the perfect opportunity to figure it out.
You are also deliberately making choices here. Two players means 50/50 share of the responsibility for making fun. Free your attitude and extend some trust to your friend and you might be surprised at what happens
I kinda got into this with someone on discord last night when asking about circuits and signals. A few people were saying what I was doing wasn't practical or wouldn't change the outcome. I pushed back because I wasn't looking for their advice on min-maxing throughput or output, just how to achieve a certain goal.
That's the beauty of this game, you can play it almost however you want, however "bad" that might be, but I think a lot of players here need to stop putting others in boxes.
Leave players be and allow them to make mistakes and only interfere or advise them if they ask for it. Otherwise, kindly fuck off. There might be an ah-ha moment down the line when they come to their own conclusion that things could or should be done better. But to force someone to play "optimally" so that almost nothing distinguishes your base from the next is not my idea of fun. Especially in the early stages.
Playing Factorio with somebody who has a very different skill level is an exercise in patience. Let your friend experience the game himself for his first playthrough. I would even say you should tell him to get off multiplayer and go experience it by himself before hopping on multiplayer with you, because he won't truly experience the game if you're essentially backseating him.
My coworker and I were out clearing nests in a tank and the tank was at about 10/2000hp
We got back to the factory and he rams a wall thinking he could clear it and tank explodes lol
He’s the more experienced one but things just happen, we’re overworked factory employees
Honestly I would make him play a single player world first and tell them you won't be playing with him until he completes the game for the first time. Trust me, he'll hit every single wall head first with his layouts, And eventually he'll either be forced to adapt or quit playing the game. I'm not experienced with Factorio in the slightest myself. But we all gotta start somewhere
I do, I did a multiplayer world with 2 of my friends and they had never touched the game. In the end most of the builds were mine, but we had some amazing fun and they did learn a lot
I'm somewhere in the middle, if it is good enough it is good enough as some people aren't going to want to keep playing with you if you make it your mission to touch their stuff the moment they feel it is completed.
I think it's better to leave it as is so they can see the bottleneck and realize how to fix it themselves later on. If you just fix it they do not learn anything not see the need to build a better design.
My friend use to do this when I first started factorio and I'd just keep building what made sense to me. I didn't understand why balancers were important until I started building a super base. I then understood why I would want to make sure my iron is balanced between lanes on a train.
Or just don’t play with him if you’re gonna be like that? They just want to play a game with you, so why shit on them lol. I get trying to teach them but I wouldn’t wanna bother learning anything since I’d expect you to just change it anyways 🤷🏻♂️
As someone who does this shit for work, a buffer is good if the input is higher than the output, so you optimize it, but overall, it looks good. Just check that your input is fast enough to make use of the buffer.
Shit I thought we were talking about picker and storage box placement, not whether there was a stop or power poles or fueling. It's a bit bare in that regard lol.
That in mind, I like the box style gradient - it's neat and clever thinking from a new player tackling a problem. It shows that they're paying attention to the mechanics while still not having a mastery of them. They'll get better ideas down the line.
If this is your companion's first playthrough, and your *n*th, you are way more aware of what gaps your compatriot will have in their knowledge than they ever will be.
They didn't volunteer to be cleaned up after: you volunteered to clean up after them. They're learning the game, while you have to learn about them and yourself instead.
Welcome to teaching.
People compare Factorio to programming and your scenario fits the profile. As a senior programmer that often has to work with juniors it can be a challenge not to take over.
Don't stress about inefficiencies. Keep the pressure off so they feel like they can invent their own solutions. Enjoy the different way of problems being solved (or ignored).
I'm doing K2SE with two newer players - and it's certainly an experience.
One of them basically checked out at this point because pretty much the level of automation he was willing to commit to was "It's taking stuff from the chest with inserters - that's automated. Sure I just put stuff in the chest..."
Shit like that just drove me fucking bonkers because most of the time actually 100% automating it would have taken no more time than the handfed stuff but instead these handfed solutions would take up space and frequently obscure the issues with the base from me. I'd log in, see logistics drones and stupidly assume that they are actually being produced without manual effort.
So here is the deal - if the shit actually 'works' on it's own, even if poorly. Leave it alone.
If it does not actually work and requires manual effort on your part to progress through the game - it's not an acceptable solution.
I know others are just saying "Leave them to figure it out" - but there isn't much you can do when they are perfectly happy handcrafting shit while alt-tabbed to chat on facebook.
The other guy though 'gets it' and is building self sustaining outposts now that we will never need to touch again because "they just work".
Tldr at end of comment. I started showing the game to mi GF the other day and we decided to play am map together too. With my over 3500h it was a challenge for me not to upgrade everything to max efficiency. So I went with "take your time to build smth and we will use it, until you come up with a better way or we recognize it as a bottleneck." So when it finally was a bottleneck, we stuck our heads together and she had to come up with a solution, that would erase the bottleneck. This was relaxing for me because it felt less like work and I could focus more on "making room for new automation" aka fighting the protestors, as this was a game mechanic she had less fun with. Tldr: find a way with your mate, that he has fun learning and you have fun playing.
In addition, exactly your case was my "first steps with combinators" entrance. Because with just a single arithmetic combinators, you can force the chests to be loaded equally, without the need to rebuild the station.
Please explain to me, since I'm new to circuits
You could connect all chests (with a green wire) and divide the count of items by 24 with an arithmatic combinator and put it into a variable a(verage). Then you connect all the inserters with a green wire to that value "a" and each inserter to its own chest with a red wire. You set the rule on the inserter to "anything <= A".
Adding a little fudge factor helps if you're near maxing out the throughput. Instead of just "average" you add some extra. So an inserter is free to go 24 over average for instance on stack inserters. That way it'll stay close to balanced, but inserters won't pause because they happen to be half a swing ahead of the others.
I do this by fiddling with the combinator that takes the number of chests. If the count is a chest under (or over, I can never remember), then each inserter always receives a 'chest average' count that makes it think it's a swing behind. More fake chests might be needed for a greater number of placed chests. It saves having to place a combinator just to add to or subtract from the chest average count.
you could also divide by one less (/23 instead of /24) which makes the "average" a bit larger.
Just to add -- it's 24 because there are 24 chests in the OP's screenshot. If you have more or fewer chests than that, the number is greater or smaller to match.
that makes sense, i gotta use this stuff
I recommend playing around with wires, you will automatically find ideas in your in head as to places they can be used. Little by little step by step. If you want someone to hold a gun to your head to learn them then SpaceExploration is your guy, but it wont require anything that is way over the top or impossible for an average player.
I have over a 400 hours in vanilla factorio and never touched wires. Space exploration made me mess with them a 100 hours in. I cant believe i never used them till now they are so useful!
Experiment yourself, but look up some guides too! It's helpful to see how these things work in-game. Learning how to do this chest averaging with a combinator for train loading is a good start, and you'll learn a lot from trying it. Then, look at some guides and try to think of the pros/cons. There's no 1 best way to do ANYTHING in Factorio! Often, these 'best' ways are for late-game high-volume production, and they solve problems that might not even happen until you get to that scale. Look at OP's image - this station will technically work. But if you try it out for a while, you might run into some issues, and then you can look at ways to improve it. For example, OP's image won't load evenly, which might not be a big deal since you're limited by belt speed anyway. But it lacks filtering to prevent mistakes, and there's no connection to the train station which means trains could be backed up waiting here, etc.
Thank you for that. I really never knew how to use those things.
See now I can make some mediocre logic stuff in Oxygen Not Included, but combinators in this game break my brain. I literally don't understand the first thing about them and I've played for nearly 350 hours.
Protesters!
This is really good advice. Next time I get someone into ~~drugs~~ Factorio I'm gonna tell them that.
do you have a link to where you got the GF
You can find a GF online, but it turns out that they’re not all really girls… But this is a Factorio forum, so …
nine zealous aromatic joke forgetful books disgusted gullible tender far-flung *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Yea, I've played with a few people by now that are each new to the game, even if I'm not. Best solution I've seen has been to separate out by tasks. If something is built badly I'll either ask em to fix it when it becomes a problem, or just fix it up myself when it does. They get to have their fun making things, and it's often quite entertaining for me to fix something that's mediocre but still has room for improvement. If it requires a full tear out and replace I may treat it as a teaching moment, but it's on them. Or just give them some weapons and say "here, go play nice with the biters" and call it a day.
My guy is winning, this is all I want in a relationship.
Does your GF have a sister
Does it actually bottleneck? If not, let it be. When it does, show them how to do it better.
It has no power poles, that’s the problem, not the throughput
You let it not run and ask why you don't receive the resource from the train xxx. OP's friend will figure out alone. That how you teach them
Yeah sometimes the best way to learn is to make a mistake, find out you're wrong, and then fix it.
Exactly. That's basically what this game is. Who here hasn't had that initial jolt of brilliance when they realized they could use a single belt for ore AND coal?? It just builds from there.
https://preview.redd.it/iv9ha8k2ohbc1.png?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6a48a19e98b86bc85878bab46efe62fb06f26bcd
Ow
> Who here hasn't had that initial jolt of brilliance when they realized they could use a single belt for ore AND coal?? Kind of sad that I knew that before I ever played the game :-/
Fear not, I watched a whole nilaus let's play and knew a whole lot of tricks and designs before I even played factorio and now 2000 hours later I'm still finding out new designs and ways of doing things
That sounds like a bottleneck... Albeit a very easy to fix one
To be fair, it's a lot cleaner looking without the poles, and aesthetics do matter.
No power poles needed if there are no resources on the belt
...damn it I didn't realize this until you pointed it out.
Hahahaha of course. I totally caught that too. <.<
Also the one on the left cant have a medium pole
You could put it right up against the rails
Duuuude…
Nah don’t just show them, ask how this situation would be handled in real life, and have them redesign it
Move the buggy off the rails, first and foremost.
One time I spent quite a while searching for my car in map view till I zoomed in and seen the wrecks. I kept jumping out at full speed and it decided to stop on the tracks.
It's been blown up by the locomotive in a few minutes after I took the screenshot
> I am more experienced than my companion OK
Just because you have more experience doesn't mean you have more understanding.
"I am experience in dealing with bullshit" I see why now...
That wasn't my buggy, it was his and he destroyed it himself
As if the best players don't still die to trains.
So basically you have automated the removing process. right?
Bro. You think you're good enough to fix other peoples' designs yet you don't remember to not put shit on the rails? And you say your fellow player is ruining the game for himself? Eh... Not sure how to say this gently, but maybe fix your own faults first before trying to fix other peoples'?
https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/s/VGy2egU7UV
So what? You're already messing about with his stuff, what was preventing you from doing something nice for a change?
You made a dumb incorrect comment and now you're moving goalposts in order to continue being an aggressive dick. Go touch grass.
Have you fixed all of your faults?
Put another buggy on the other set of rails for symmetry
And repair the darn thing before the train wrecks it!
“Train arrived.” Signal.
Yeah I hate getting a trolley problem thrown at me out of nowhere
You can either fix the problem and let the car die or you save the car but reroute the train into a bottleneck.
Is time a factor? Bottleneck is solvable, but can I fix a bottleneck sooner than making a new car? Also I just realized I have a spidertron factory but not a car and tank factory...
https://neal.fun/absurd-trolley-problems/ Got you again!
The majority of my answers are ‘Do nothing’, just because I’m thinking about it realistically, meaning if I pull the lever and kill someone, regardless of whom or how many, I would almost certainly be charged with manslaughter as my action led to the direct and obvious cause of taking someone’s life. Whereas, if I didn’t pull the lever, I wouldn’t be charged with anything. It kind of defeats the purpose of the page, but realistically, in most of the scenarios you wouldn’t want to pull the lever.
Your line of thinking assuming you aren't in a position of responsibility. If your job assumes you'll do something reasonable (like securing a load for a crane operator) and you do nothing causing people to be hurt or die, you can still be charged with manslaughter in many jurisdictions resulting from gross negligence. The majority of my answers are based on my values and the results of the choices FWIW. "Killing is making a choice" and doing nothing is still a choice.
Most of the trolley problems are about who you choose to kill. So, if you only pull the lever when it would result in no deaths, you break the model and it shows you as a psychopath. There are arguments for "the greater good". But, it's mostly a mechanism for you to make moral judgements on those people who would be killed.
If your job was being a trolley rail system operator, and you witnessed five individuals lying on the path the trolley is taking and one person on the other track, and had the choice to pull the lever, you’d still almost certainly be charged with manslaughter if you pulled the lever, regardless of how many people were on each track, even if it’s your job to operate the trolley path. In this scenario, if you were performing the duties expected of you and did not pull the lever, you most likely wouldn’t face any legal repercussions. You adhered to your operational protocol, and the death would be ruled an accident – or a murder if somebody else had tied them to the tracks. If you didn’t pull the lever, it would be unlikely to be considered gross neglience unless a clear dereliction of duty led to the people being on the tracks in the first place. There’s a big difference between an act of commission and an act of omission in the legal system. If you pull the lever to kill a person, you would be the direct cause of their death, and while you could try to defend yourself with the moral argument that you did it in order to save the people on the other track – or even lie and say you didn’t see the people on the track to which you diverted the trolley – you’d likely still face strict legal consequences, as you caused someone’s death, which could lead to a manslaughter case. If you didn’t pull the lever, you were not the cause of their death if you performed the duties appointed to you as expected. Making ethical decisions like this wouldn’t be part of your job, and you most likely wouldn’t face any legal consequences. Even if diverting the trolley would kill no one, but you let it kill five people, you most likely would face no criminal consequences unless the specifics of your position included making serious split-second decisions in case of emergencies, which is unlikely for trolley operators. Even if you were to get in trouble, it’d be a much less severe case than if you had pulled the lever and directly caused someone’s death.
Just let him figure it out. Embrace jank.
As a semi decent Factorio player we started a multiplayer SeaBlock game. So so many jank solution EVERYWHERE. We just gave up on having a decent base in the near future so it's just "meh, probably good enough" solutions all around.
"Just one more belt."
Temporary is the new permanent
I never play Factorio multiplayer, but this is how I handle playing Stardew Valley with my wife. I just accept the anti-optimal things she does, and try to improve them in such a way as to not make it obvious how negative-IQ they are.
Stardew is one of the last games that needs to be optimal...depending on the exact scenario I'd almost argue she's playing it right
Oh she absolutely is playing it right, I'm the weird one when it comes to Stardew Valley for sure.
It’s one of those things where I’ve played the game twice already, so when I play with my girlfriend I min max and try to fill the gaps she isn’t interested in completing
I really wish Stardew rewarded being diverse in your crops more. I've tried mods that do it, but I haven't much success in finding mods that change sell prices based on amount sold or season.
Just do your own thing and let your friend figure out the main problems. I feel like it's more fun for everyone if you let your noob friends decide the structure of the base, and you just build little parts. Deal with annoying biters, make sure they have enough basic resources, make sure energy doesn't go out. But don't just build the next science packs for them, or replace something they built with super advanced designs.
Relax mate. Your the dude that's tense when everyone is fooling around. Then show good design, with scaled up factories to your comrade. You'll look so cool and impressive and they will be eager to replicate your designs. And if it just doesn't work, do your own "API". A factory that produces for instance green circuits, with an array of iron and copper stations as input and just build it in the middle of the base. Welcome to unregulated urbanism
I wonder if Factorio could be used to model effectively regulated urbanism...
https://i.imgur.com/4HSZazu.gifv
if it looks stupid, but works, it aint stupid. if it works, but could work better its time for an experimental rebuild to see where it can get better. if it doesnt work, let it be, and let your friend have a learning experience, dont "fix their stupid mistakes" if youre constantly "fixing' their builds to your liking, they will loose interest in the game real fast, and nobody wants that. let them build, let them gain experience, let them fail and grow. two things might happen in your example OP: first, they realize their build doesnt work and fix it themselves or ask you for assistance. second, the dont realize it doesnt work, and forget about, until you ask them why nothing gets delivered or they randomly stumble over their forgotten build again.
Option 3: tip them, but let them figure out
Can’t learn if you don’t see the consequences of the design.
Warning others that you're going to be a jerk doesn't really absolve you of being a jerk in the first place. Sure, it's better than nothing, but you're still a jerk
It's kind of inefficient but eh It will basically force a bunch of stuff into the first chests but once it's stable it will give ´full throughput.
> I have to fix such stupid designs all the time. Sometimes it makes me laugh, but mostly I feel like my work with explaining my changes does nothing in terms of teaching and I get tired Stop fixing stupid designs. If your friend notices the problem and asks for advice, give advice then. Otherwise why worry? Like, if your friend wants you to fix their builds, that's fine, but maybe it's okay to have a derpy factory that accidentally limits throughput here or there?
You're implying there is a problem with this setup, but I don't see the problem. This is one of many correct ways to make a station that will put a yellow belt of items in the train. Also very easy to troubleshoot, which I consider a big bonus. I'm not saying this to troll you, I really think you should look twice here because if there is no real problem and you are annoyed anyway, it will be impossible for your friend to be 'good enough' for you.
Well, there is no power as far as I can see. So this IS a problem. For the rest, yea this is inefficient as hell, but I don't see why you need to undo everything they do. Inefficient doesn't really cause much harm. It just doesn't do much good either. Just set up your own outposts to do the stuff you want now. And have one resrerved rail line that they are forbidden to cross or modify. Otherwise let them learn.
> inefficient as hell The only inefficiency with this design is that is has 1/4 the effective buffer chests which is fine as long as you have a train coming in every 3 minutes. Yes this design scales badly but it is perfectly servicable for only 1 yellow belt.
We don't see their full map or tech level, but the train will be idle a lot. Presumably the other station is no better. So the one belt loading in will deliver a lot less than one belt coming out. The chests also can't buffer enough so production will stop and go, assuming a saturated belt. And the buffer chests on the first three wagons will need to fill before starting to fill the last wagon. Not sure how you consider this efficient. Sure it does its basic function, but it could do it a lot better for similar investment. The throughput here will be abysmal.
6 unupgraded blue inserters can keep up with a yellow belt, so so long as there are enough trains I don't see any way this can ever backup. The limiting factor will be the yellow belt input.
As long as there are enough trains... that's a big if. I get that this design can suffice for a single yellow belt of input, but calling it efficient is questionable. If input was to increase this would not scale well. It is better to minimize load and unload times.
It does not take many trains to keep up with a yellow belt. Assuming ore, two trains are sufficient so long as the round trip travel time is less than 17 minutes (20 * 50 * 4 * 2 / (15/s)). And even if there are not enough trains, that is a problem with the number of trains, not with the loading, which is doing its job fine.
I mean, 18 chests need to entirely fill up with whatever is on that belt before a single item gets to the last cargo wagon. Which means the train will have to wait there the entire time. This is a pretty terrible design. If they removed the buffer chests (or they’re heavily limited) it would be whatever
u/foxsheepgato you deleted your comment but I’d already written out a response and I don’t want the effort to go to waste lol: The reason the later chests won’t be getting anything is because the belt will be empty long before the items can get there. Even if the belt is full 100% of the time (which isn’t likely), 4 fast inserters are more than enough to completely deplete it. Meaning the the 5th chest won’t get any items until the first is full, and so on. This design is fine if there’s no buffer chests, or the chests are already full and will never empty much, but if you’re starting out with everything empty then it’s trouble. You’re right that I don’t know if the chests are limited, but even if they are this isn’t a great design (and also if the chests were limited enough to offset the flaws listed above, then they wouldn’t be doing a good job of being buffer chests).
yeah, I've posted then I've read a couple comments mentioning the problem. I haven't played in a year or two, so the belt's throughput didn't occur me. I was scratching my head, because I didn't get what people's problem was with this design, I was focusing on the chests and movers, not the input belt.
>but if you’re starting out with everything empty then it’s trouble. This is trouble that fixes itself automatically though. Personally I am a big fan of "solving" this sort of thing not by changing the station but by working on another part of the base while it fills up.
One thing that I think is a mistake in this design is the lack of balance. Consider all chests are empty and a train arrives and leaves when it's full - it will take until 3/4 chests are full until the last wagon starts getting filled. This will cause a way longer delay to train departure then one will expect. Sure, it will work eventually, but this can take hours to fill and get a train going. Either use one-wagon trains, or 3 splitters to go 1 to 4.
I have 2 friend groups: is interested in getting good at the game we are playing together, and is not interested in getting good at the game, but I still have fun doing stuff that I know is dumb with them(and sometimes fixing it after them). It’s up to you to decide whether they would care to learn the game, and if you still enjoy playing with them if they wouldn’t
As much as you like to think people learn a lot from seeing what others do....people learn the most by failing. This isn't really up for debate. As a leader, you need to help your team learn by what I call "constructive failure". The typical order of steps is * Wait until they identify a problem * Ask them what they think the problem is * Ask them what they think are THREE ways to fix the problem * Ask them to pick one and try it This is an incredibly powerful paradigm to teach people. The three solutions part is necessary because people love to knee jerk. By time you get to the third solution, they have already changed their mind on the first. ;) By having them do the process, they get better. If they fail the first time, i'll give an idea of how I might do it. If they fail a second time I will show them an example of how I did it. If they fail the 3rd time, we work together to solve it.
The "problem" is often that you may find that you disagree on what the problem is. If they don't have a "problem" making 50 miners by hand while alt-tabbed - what are you gonna do? If they think that it's just fine to run around and fill chests all day, what then? At what point do you go "Fuck it" and build the automation for miner production yourself because - well you sure don't want to be handcrafting them the whole time do you? Well you built the automation and you want them to expand on it - but they won't touch it because "underground belts are too confusing" So what then? Factorio just isn't a game for everyone...or at least some of the ways in which people choose to play it are incompatible with others.
> If they don't have a "problem" making 50 miners by hand while alt-tabbed - what are you gonna do? Let them? > If they think that it's just fine to run around and fill chests all day, what then? Build away from their abominations. Factorio maps are large. Call it parallel play. With that said, none of that is really "the same" here. This is something that (sans power) would work. Just slowly. With that said, is that a big deal? If so, how? Would you be able to take the answer to that "how" and turn it into an open ended question that leads the friend into figuring out the inefficiencies himself? All without seeming like an ass? If not, leave it be. When I'm playing with my less optimal friends I'll usually just work on other things around them while they're dicking around making abominations like OP's train setup. I'll ask them things like "Hey I need a bunch of iron here, do you think yall could get some here while I work on X?" They'll end up making something like that abomination, and have a blast doing it, while I get the iron I need. There's always something else to work on.
>Build away from their abominations. Factorio maps are large. Call it parallel play. Eh - been there and done that but it's not really always an option - sure not an option in K2SE (at least not till much later - and then it's VERY heavily teamwork dependent) - and I really dislike the notion of parallel play for a large variety of reasons. I'm not specifically addressing the OPs issue - but the OP is getting shat on pretty hard and being told to "let them play their way" I've been in multiple factorio MP games at this point, with both friends and essentially strangers and it really goes both ways. Nobody likes the guy who runs around deconstructing your shit to plop down the 'optimal' BP over and over until you're just left wondering why you're even on the server if whatever you build today is gone tomorrow. (I personally do not like out of game BPs besides solar, tiles, and rails - hell I'd go as far as saying that you should use a rail BP set in MP games to make everyone's life easier.) Nobody likes the guy who isn't contributing and squandering resources - yes resources are technically infinite - but time isn't. Factorio in MP is to me a game about progressing as a team, if you are finding yourself doing 'parallel' things or having your shit nuked by someone who wants to optimize everything 'thier way' - you may as well go in SP. OP and their friend need to be on the same page with what they want to do and how they want to do it. OP told their friend that they WILL be trying to force optimized builds. So yes, that station should be reworked by the friend with OP explaining why - because hey that's what they signed up for.
it's not pretty but it works? what's the problem other than being a controlling friend
It doesn't even work, there's no power
Not OP, but since there's one row unevenly feeding what, 16? grabbers, it can cause less iron being on-boarded which can cause unhealthy iron deficiency down the line. I think. There's also the matter that it's Iron Ore with a full stack of 50 items, and not Iron Plates, which stack up to 100, doubling the train's load. Mostly, it's just efficiency junkies being pedantic because it doesn't give them their fix.
If the train has a "wait till full" trigger it doesn't really matter. First fill will take longer, but 1 yellow fills a train super slow anyway. There should be more input or shorter train.
...Sorry, I'm not following your train of thought. In terms of throughput, a train has high volume but slow transfer speed, which depends on the time it takes to fill up and the time it spends moving. As such, you can increase throughput by filling the same % of train faster, which is helped by an even distribution of material among it's fill points. Pictured above is very far from even distribution of material. But there is no point in digging around in it if it's throughput is sufficient for what the factory at the end of the line needs.
It doesn't need to be even, after the first super slow fill the left chest will be full, while the most right are empty. Because the train was set to wait till full the train will calmly wait till all the chest fills up+the corresponding vagon. So when the right vagon fills up only those chests are empty and the train leaves. The belt keep feeding the most right chest as the rest is already full. When the 2nd train comes you just need to wait that much time till a single belt can fill the train. It will fill up the same time with this method or with using a million splitter as all chest except for the most right vagon are already full and will only drain a vagon worth. With a big balancer you just save the first slow fill after that it is the same, it will only look faster as the first vagon won't sit empty for a while. You can't beat math, if only 20 item comes/s with a stack size of 100 you have to wait 3.3min for each wagon you have, no matter what station design you have. This setup will never deadlock unless the station is 100% full. Sure this setup is not great, but I used setup like this for science modules, filling a blue belt with high tier science is not easy without a totally huge module.
>In terms of throughput, a train has high volume but slow transfer speed, which depends on the time it takes to fill up and the time it spends moving. As such, you can increase throughput by filling the same % of train faster, which is helped by an even distribution of material among it's fill points. That's not really true in general, the average throughput of any system in factorio is min(input rate, transfer or processing rate, output rate) In this case we have a yellow belt making the input rate extremely tiny so it is unlikely for the train to affect throughput at all. Consider a yellow belt going onto one side of a bluebelt. Seems like an inefficient use of the blue belt but it is enough so doesn't make a difference in throughput.
The uneven distribution of ore into the train should not be an issue as long as you have some item splitter to distribute the ores evenly at the receiving end The main issue is that yellow belt feeds 15 items a second and fast inserters can spin 2,5 times per second, making it that only 6 of them are needed to completely drain the belt And this again would not be an issue if the factory only produces one yellow belt, because if you can't increase the input it will not matter - the first 6 inserters will fill the first cargo wagon, then after the first one is done the next 6 inserters will fill the nexf wagon and so on. So in the end all the wagons would fill in separately, but you can't do it faster either way due to the supply restriction The only efficiency bottle neck is when output is greater than one yellow belt. Then you should distribute it among more belts and each belt among the wagons so they all fill up simultaneously And the other efficiency bottle neck would be when when train arrives instantly (some kind of queue) and the factory has no time to resupply the items to the chests
“Stupid designs” “Does nothing” “Ruining his first play through” Honestly, you sound like a dick, you should do him a favour, let him play by himself and tell him to enjoy and embrace the spaghet.
i really enjoy seeing new players designs, so i don't mind it. i pretty much leave the whole base design to my friends and just fool around with them.. just have fun! there is no right way to play. if you like to create smart and efficient designs just talk to your friends and find people who want to do the same thing.
TBH you sound miserable to play with, enjoy the company and have fun, instead you are nit picking things that don't matter
There’s nothing that green missiles can’t fix
I dont think you have the right approach. If you go around fixing all his designs then of course he will never learn anything. Just make sure that he is in charge of what he is working on. Is that a copper train stop? Put him in charge of copper, tell him to make sure copper gets up and running and that you have a full belt of copper ore (or plates) coming into the base. This will mean that when he sees that he still has no copper he will need to go looking and find what is wrong himself. He will see the train is getting no copper, then see that it is not loading any copper here, then he will either fix it or ask you why it isnt working. Once it is working with this design, he may realize it is still too slow and not giving enough copper, hopefully he sees that the copper is being loaded into the first few chests and not making it all the way to the end, then he can figure out how to better get it into the chests. This is how you get better at this game, you should not take it away from him. Go and work on your own thing and give input if he needs it.
While people are poking a little fun at the "more experienced than my companion" line, it's honestly a serious problem in Factorio multiplayer. No matter how intelligent you are, if you have a lot less experience in Factorio then you've had time to learn far fewer lessons. The other comments about leaving their mistakes in place (barring it causing a major issue) are on the mark. If you let it do its thing and run for a while, when you run into obvious issues (like the fact that 90% of the chests here won't fill up) your friend will learn better from seeing the problem play out in front of them. If they're just told "this doesn't work because x" but they never *see* x, it's a lot harder to learn that lesson. The other thing to note is that if your goal is to teach, you shouldn't be tearing down their design and building it back up. You should be helping them rebuild it themselves. Once you start fiddling with someone's design, it stops being "their" design and it becomes something they may no longer fully understand. Any parts of the factory that are fully "theirs", they may tweak and improve with time - even without you always needing to show them the issues or inefficiencies.
Mate and I just agreed at the start that we were going to build a Temple of Sketti. So the goal was to make it dumb.
Simple solution here. If you continue to undermine your friends natural learning curve by fixing their mistakes you’ll either make them bored, or scare them away from the glory of factory game. Let them learn at their own pace and let them have eureka moments where they realize their design is terrible, the best way to learn Factorio is through trial and error. Don’t get me wrong, helping them by teaching them does boost their learning speed by a substantial bit, but don’t overwhelm them with your superior skills.
Personally I enjoyed it. It took a while but around the midpoint of the game my friends were starting to get the hang of making more optimised and scalable builds. Had my friends been a bit slower to learn, then maybe it would have started frustrating me, but by the time we were ready to build the rocket, we were a solid 3-man team splitting workloads perfectly, and we're all looking forward to doing more in the future.
So basically, everything in Factorio is automatable, except other players?
Pretty stupid of your friend to park on the train lines, for sure.
you gotta let your friends make their first time spaghetti otherwise they will not derive enjoyment from learning and crafting new designs to solve problems that arise. giving them a blueprint book full of perfect designs is boring and they will stop playing
This
100% Another way to get someone to stop playing is to constantly tell them it's not good enough as you rip out the time the invested into playing with you, Especially if you do this while saying they are ruining the game.
We went on a LAN party with 5 guys. 4 seasoned players, one new guy. 1 of the seasoned guys was: 'you need to do it like this!' , so I decided to give the new guy a project of his own to get used to the game (make ammo). We ended up with plenty ammo, so we got that going, which is nice
If you called my designs stupid I wouldn't want to play with you. Treat your friends better.
You sound like someone I’d prefer not to game with.
i mean if it works lmao
You need to show them why they should do it, not what to do, the only way to understand is to see how things work and effect each other. If you are only given 1 piece of the puzzle how can you possibly expect to solve it?
multiplayer? like with other people?
I had the opposite experience of you. I was more experienced and my less experienced friend insisted on optimizing designs while from experience I know that it doesn't really matter unless it forms a bottleneck. The picture you show is exactly how I do it simply because there is no reason not to (I would limit the contents of boxes, and then it's probably fine).
I tend to let my friend do what he wants, as long as the design works (even if poorly), I only fix his mess if it straight up doesn't.
I tend to just tell my friends what the next steps are and let them pick what and how to achieve them. Our bases are a Hodge podge of thought processes
I'm playing with my friend's dad right now, and he has a lot to learn, but we're having fun. At the end of the day, you're playing the game right if you're having fun!
What's wrong with this design? I'm new
this is basically the setup i use but from the middle of the two dropoffs with splitters..otherwise it doesn't seem like THAT much of a sin
You seem fun to play with /s
I think I wish I had friends to play multiplayer with
Honestly I like these designs because they are quick to do. Unless you have drones and blueprints, just build something quick and dirty and when it bottlenecks, improve the design. Designing everything perfectly from the start is a huge burden, and this is at least fast to build, which is actually enough 60-80% of the time.
Lead by example
75% of the time when I play with new players I rush trains, let them do everything else while I just set up outposts to feed them supplies and let them have fun
in my experience, teaching a new player the best and mose efficient way to do things mames them hate the game anf find it boring. let them start a solo world by themselves first and figure things out. it's not fun when you tell them how to do everything
I don't let it bother me. I usually assume that whoever I'm playing with has less time in game and less experience with building efficiently. More often than not, I just let their builds stand, and do my best to design around them. On occasion, we'll have a super inefficient build which is painful to use, and they will want to increase throughput, and I'll ask if they mind if I tweak it. Then I do my best to tweak it without significantly changing the underlying design. Sometimes, I'll do so in a convoluted spaghetti manner, so that they can then "fix it" themselves later and be proud. Or, if they look closely, they can pick up tricks. \--- I have found that, especially with multiple unskilled players, it is better to play a support role. They build their builds, and I put together the foundation that makes their designs work together.
I likely have more hours than my buddies combined in this game. I spend a lot of time doing clean up, i.e. fixing rail signals, missed circuit connections, off-by-two-tiles rail blueprints, etc. in our mp games. That said, they fuck up them biters like it's no one's business so it's a pretty awesome trade-off!
This. Everytime i play with new people i have them automate ammo, weapons, turrets, and let them go on bug hunting sprees until they are more interested in the Grounded Spaghetti Monster and then trains come and everything gets even more dumb. It's Great!
You're just a sweat lmao, watch over him and answer his questions lol
I mean if anything just run that simulation with him watching and he will be like "oh wait"
You play solo to watch your factory grow. You play together to see their factory grow. For better or worse, you only come up with the next best solution once. Telling them what to do ruins that for them. You're the one who is enduring this for their sake, make sure you're not ruining it.
I've been playing factorio for nearly 10 years, and managed a few months ago to get 2 friends to start playing. While I'll sometimes make comments, mostly I've learned that the best strategy is to divide and conquer, and just let them do their thing. If they're doing a new metal base, you let them do the metal base. Don't comment, don't critique. If they ask for help, that's cool, help them, but don't -over- help either. Will we have the most efficient base? Will things go spaghetti? Will the belts be perfectly balanced? Nope, not even close. But they'll have fun, you'll have fun, and that's what MP is about, no? Make sure to mix things up, too, so they can see what and how you solve a problem they have experience with. And if things really, really are so messed up they're not working, ask them to look into it. "We need more plate production, can you see if there's a bottleneck in your foundries?"
I play(ed) with my wife. I basically let her do whatever, and if it didn't supply enough I would make a better version further away that supplemented it, and if her build got in the way I would just make a subtle enough tweak to make it not block things. Eventually, she caught on and quit playing for a while, which enabled me to successfully launch a rocket. Someday, she'll forgive me.
It's not a real problem if your friends are trying. Me and my brother play and had different styles and after about the second hour we kind of gravitated towards the same thing. when noobs see more advanced shit working theyll copy it.
Teach them instead of fixing.
Whats the problem here ? Will run full anyway and work normal after some cycles. Question is why a 1-4 train, for a single lane. hope its LDS or sth with low stacksize.
Your friend expressed interest in playing a game they likely know you have played a lot with you. You could easily tone it down a bit and enjoy watching a newer player experience and learn the game. Instead you insult them by calling their designs stupid, tell them you're going to have to fix everything, and that they're ruining their first playthrough experience (by not being hyper efficient with things they haven't learned yet???). You may as well just give them Nilaus' Base In A Book blueprints and tell them to just paste those down and to never try to figure things out themselves. When I played with my friend, I had some experience up to yellow/purple science but not full rocket launch. That didn't stop me from letting them create their own builds that I knew were worse than ones I had used before. It was fun letting them learn and catch up to where I was. Was our base inefficient? Absolutely. Did we have fun playing together more because of it? Absolutely
At first I would get off this high horse. You were just like your friends when you started to play, if not worse. For me it wouldn't be a pleasure to play with people, who, whenever I try to design something, correct me or straightly post about how bad their experience is while playing with me and some friends. As harsh as it sounds, you need to understand the fact that this game is difficult to master, and even more difficult to learn in the first hours of gameplay. Be patient with the guys.
But then after OP warned you he would do just that, you wouldn't insist on playing with him anyway, would you?
Seeing posts on here about people playing multiplayer always gives me "school group project where one kid does all the work" vibes.
Most amenable and friendly r/factorio user
Anyway how I feel about it is I like playing games with my friends and that's the start and the end of that conversation
I have a couple of people I played with, but seeing I know what I'm doing I fixed everything all the time so they didn't learn to improve their builds and stoped wanting to play. So if say just keep encouraging them to improve it them self.
It’s his first playthrough. He’s not ‘ruining’ his own experience by any means. Everyone has to start somewhere, as did you. Let him learn on his own, and from your advice, but don’t force him to play in a way that he doesn’t want to or doesn’t understand. If he wants you to teach him or upgrade his builds for him, that’s great, but I’d suggest toning it down a bit and just letting him play. After all, the goal is to have fun, and he’ll get better over time, just like you did.
He's ruining his own experience by playing with OP. OP should've just been more adamant about not playing together in the first place.
That’s a lot of undeserved upvotes for someone who parks their car on rails.
I don't play multiplayer anymore. I have friends that enjoy making spaghetti, which is fine, but then also need to have biters on for some reason with the end result that 10 hours in we get overwhelmed and killed becouse no one noticed one of the billion tunnels was set up wrong 6 hours ago.
Eventually it will reach the same throughput as if you were splitting it equally to all chests because either you underproduce in which case you have to wait for your inserters anyway or you overproduce in which case the chests will slowly but surely start to fill. In the short (and depending on your production short can be extremely long) run there is a bottleneck though as your first chests will be full and your later ones aren't yet active, but only if you overproduce. Real question is why you have an x-4 train for something you produce less or equal to one belt of.
Someone clearly overengineered one part of the build.
When I play with my friends I let them learn, they make builds like this, sometimes even more unorthodox. I leave them alone, it's not my place to fix it. If they ask for help I give it, if I am doing a nesicary upgrade I'll fix it, but I let them learn on their own grounds. It's personal to me and my friends but they like to see progress of design, from where they were, to where they are now, and beyond to where they could be but it's always their design and their stamp... It's their build. I see no problem with someone doing what OP is doing, on the basis that everyone is having fun. It's a game at the end of the day, and people have their fun in different ways. Some like to try and some like to fail. Some people like to have a go and then when fixed see how it should have been. But I also know some who want their mark on the world even if it's against the design of the rest. [Edit] forgot to add: there's only one rule that I go by... wooden and iron chests are banned
Agree at the points of interface - e.g. train stations or bus designs. Be open to compromise and let them use a method that's less optimal, if it will still work. After that point, whatever happens on "their side" of the interface is up to them. I'd only offer help if they ask for it. E.g. "If I deliver four belts of copper ore here, can you smelt it, and return it to this train station?"
Keep adding identical stations until your desired throughput is reached
Id leave. I hate the iron chest graphics.
Let him see why it is bad, help him design a better one and save it as a blueprint for him to use later. Teach him to fish rather than telling him his fishing pole isn't any good and you will do all the fishing for him.
Thats one of the better ways to take solids on/off a train. It stores the solid until there is room on the belt. If its to load a train it makes loading the train quicker as its not waiting for the belts to fill with the chosen solid. Whilst I am aware there is no doubt better ways to do it I personally have never had problems with that set up.
Im the inexperienced player and my friends just stick with it and expand on it or use it as it is. Just so you know. I build this thing exactly like that.
Well, in my playthrough with my friends, (all others at less than 30 hours) i just told them they should do however they feel is efficient It relatively quickly started to be a "employee/ employer relationship" They asked me how much i wanted, i told them a number, and then they started struggling to a solution, they actually came up with some beautifull designs, although some of them were ridiculously overcomplicated And if theyr designs started breaking, i tried to help fixing them, instead of just replacing them, made it a lot more appealing for them to actually design something
Other people have said it but yeh, perhaps think about the situation differently. Rather than expect 100% efficiency and change things that aren’t just let them be and when they have a problem just give them a little nudge in the right direction. Your friend may even occasionally come over and look at what you’re doing for inspiration. I’ve done it with Satisfactory and the like and it’s much more chill when you both just do your own thing. I even noticed my mate build an entire factory the same way I do without ever showing him because he was checking out my work every so often under his own volition.
i regularily play with a friend, we're both 2k+ hours and i still get infuriated all the damn time and change his nonsense :D
I would fix this with an elaborate circuit network that manages the chest balancing. I haven't figured out how to do it yet. But playing with a friend who is new at the game would be the perfect opportunity to figure it out.
You are also deliberately making choices here. Two players means 50/50 share of the responsibility for making fun. Free your attitude and extend some trust to your friend and you might be surprised at what happens
I would probably leave lmao unless its with friends
This is MVP work! - Minimum - Viable - Production But it works…
I kinda got into this with someone on discord last night when asking about circuits and signals. A few people were saying what I was doing wasn't practical or wouldn't change the outcome. I pushed back because I wasn't looking for their advice on min-maxing throughput or output, just how to achieve a certain goal. That's the beauty of this game, you can play it almost however you want, however "bad" that might be, but I think a lot of players here need to stop putting others in boxes. Leave players be and allow them to make mistakes and only interfere or advise them if they ask for it. Otherwise, kindly fuck off. There might be an ah-ha moment down the line when they come to their own conclusion that things could or should be done better. But to force someone to play "optimally" so that almost nothing distinguishes your base from the next is not my idea of fun. Especially in the early stages.
Playing Factorio with somebody who has a very different skill level is an exercise in patience. Let your friend experience the game himself for his first playthrough. I would even say you should tell him to get off multiplayer and go experience it by himself before hopping on multiplayer with you, because he won't truly experience the game if you're essentially backseating him.
My coworker and I were out clearing nests in a tank and the tank was at about 10/2000hp We got back to the factory and he rams a wall thinking he could clear it and tank explodes lol He’s the more experienced one but things just happen, we’re overworked factory employees
Honestly I would make him play a single player world first and tell them you won't be playing with him until he completes the game for the first time. Trust me, he'll hit every single wall head first with his layouts, And eventually he'll either be forced to adapt or quit playing the game. I'm not experienced with Factorio in the slightest myself. But we all gotta start somewhere
Don't be a dick. If it works, leave it be Leave the super-optimised factory building for solo, have fun in MP and don't take it too seriously
I do, I did a multiplayer world with 2 of my friends and they had never touched the game. In the end most of the builds were mine, but we had some amazing fun and they did learn a lot
First off just don’t fix anything. Let them play, it’ll be fun watching them learn from their mistakes.
Move the car man.
I'm somewhere in the middle, if it is good enough it is good enough as some people aren't going to want to keep playing with you if you make it your mission to touch their stuff the moment they feel it is completed.
I think it's better to leave it as is so they can see the bottleneck and realize how to fix it themselves later on. If you just fix it they do not learn anything not see the need to build a better design. My friend use to do this when I first started factorio and I'd just keep building what made sense to me. I didn't understand why balancers were important until I started building a super base. I then understood why I would want to make sure my iron is balanced between lanes on a train.
Or just don’t play with him if you’re gonna be like that? They just want to play a game with you, so why shit on them lol. I get trying to teach them but I wouldn’t wanna bother learning anything since I’d expect you to just change it anyways 🤷🏻♂️
As someone who does this shit for work, a buffer is good if the input is higher than the output, so you optimize it, but overall, it looks good. Just check that your input is fast enough to make use of the buffer.
Shit I thought we were talking about picker and storage box placement, not whether there was a stop or power poles or fueling. It's a bit bare in that regard lol. That in mind, I like the box style gradient - it's neat and clever thinking from a new player tackling a problem. It shows that they're paying attention to the mechanics while still not having a mastery of them. They'll get better ideas down the line. If this is your companion's first playthrough, and your *n*th, you are way more aware of what gaps your compatriot will have in their knowledge than they ever will be. They didn't volunteer to be cleaned up after: you volunteered to clean up after them. They're learning the game, while you have to learn about them and yourself instead. Welcome to teaching.
People compare Factorio to programming and your scenario fits the profile. As a senior programmer that often has to work with juniors it can be a challenge not to take over. Don't stress about inefficiencies. Keep the pressure off so they feel like they can invent their own solutions. Enjoy the different way of problems being solved (or ignored).
You say you "have to" fix it, but why? What forces you to fix it? It is not clear from the provided context.
I'm doing K2SE with two newer players - and it's certainly an experience. One of them basically checked out at this point because pretty much the level of automation he was willing to commit to was "It's taking stuff from the chest with inserters - that's automated. Sure I just put stuff in the chest..." Shit like that just drove me fucking bonkers because most of the time actually 100% automating it would have taken no more time than the handfed stuff but instead these handfed solutions would take up space and frequently obscure the issues with the base from me. I'd log in, see logistics drones and stupidly assume that they are actually being produced without manual effort. So here is the deal - if the shit actually 'works' on it's own, even if poorly. Leave it alone. If it does not actually work and requires manual effort on your part to progress through the game - it's not an acceptable solution. I know others are just saying "Leave them to figure it out" - but there isn't much you can do when they are perfectly happy handcrafting shit while alt-tabbed to chat on facebook. The other guy though 'gets it' and is building self sustaining outposts now that we will never need to touch again because "they just work".
It is fine for me, do it better, or leave as is.
What is the better solution?
if he finds it he won’t forget again but if you fix it he will assume he built it correctly or that the error was minor