whats a good starting strategy?

[Peter34]

No, that mining setup burns coal to mine coal Feeding the miners directly into each other limits the amount stored to the max stacksize. My setup is only limted by the chest size.

Both of you have a point. But the problem with using chests as buffers, early game, is that each Burner Inserter burns 1 Coal to move only 47 items. I tested it with moving Stone, and 2 Coal as fuel gave me 94 moved Stone, 47 per Coal, with no reason to assume that Coal, Iron Ore or Copper Ore weighs any more or less than Coal does.

This means that the efficiency loss, per Burner Inserter used to move Coal, is a bit over 2%. If you have 50 Coal you need moved, you'll end up with actually only 47 point something Coal moved, the last 2 point something (2.13 to be more exact) having been wasted.

I sincerely hope electric Inserters are a lot more energy-efficien than that. Because I tend to find myself using multiple Inserters in any given process. Usually at least two, one to take it from a Chest and move it to a belt, and another to take it from the Belt and move it into another Chest. With ore it's usually four. One to take from the Miner's Chest to first Belt, another to take from first Belt to Furnace, a third to take from Furnace to 2nd Belt, a fourth to take from 2nd Belt to somewhere else (usually this somewhere else is a buffer Chest, adding a 5th step, then a 6th Inserter step to move it out from the buffer Chest onto another Belt).

Each Burner Inserter used to move Coal costs 2.13%, 0.0213 units of Coal. The remainder is thus 100% - 2.13% = 97.87%.

With a two-Burner Inserter "chain", the remainder is 97.87% times itself twice (or lifted to the 2nd power), so only 95.79% are left.

That's not bad. But if you have a "chain" of four Burner Inserters, then it's 97.87% lifted to the 4th power, showing that only 91,75% are left. You've now lost more than 8% in total.

For a "chain" of six, it's 97.87% lifted to the sixth power, which gives 87,89%. You've now lost more than 12% of the Coal you started with.

Of course, those figures are for Burner Inserters, which are easy to test. I just plonkd down 2 Chests, stuffed one with Stone, the other empty, then put a fresh Burner Inserter between then, fed it 2 Coal, and went AFK. When I came back, 94 Stone had been moved.

I am assuming that the efficiency loss for electric Inserters is less than 2.13%. Hopefully rather a lot less. 1.5%, one could hope. Which - again - sounds like a trivial difference, but when you compound it through the massive "chains" of Inserters used in the game, it adds up. 98.5% to the 6th power is 91,33%, so now a bit over 8.5% is lost, instead of a bit over 12%. If it's 1% then a bit under 6% are lost. If it is 0.5% then around 3% are lost.

I don't know what the inefficinecy value/loss value is for electric Inserters. I just know that it has got to be lower than 2.13%.

[Peter34]

Do you guys purposely restart until you land in the middle of a desert? I never have problems finding wood.

I like deserts. The terrain colour is a nice contrast to the various things I build and gather. So yes, I usually restart until I find meself in desertland with nice deposits of Iron and Coal nearby, some Copper not too far away, and at least a minimum of Stone and some water.

As for trees, you just have to run a bit, in a desert, to find them. Find a biome border or something, plenty of trees there. Or if you can't find that then run around gathering deadwood. Those are very scattered, which is annoying, but it's still doable to gather a stack of 50 or 60, although it's nicer to have 150-200, which is what I'll gather if I can find a patch of forest near my desert starting area.

[Boogieman14]

Do you guys purposely restart until you land in the middle of a desert? I never have problems finding wood.

Same here, I've actually been hoping for a somewhat less wooded starting area. In one of my more recent games, I've even added explosive termites because it was such a pain to get through that darn forest.

[Xecutor]

For me optimal starting point is something like wood to the left and desert to the right

[Boogieman14]

This means that the efficiency loss, per Burner Inserter used to move Coal, is a bit over 2%.

You clearly play the game differently than me I absolutely don't care about efficiency, if there's not enough, I'll put down more miners. If there's no space for more miners, I'll build a train to somewhere I can put down more miners I've been known to build fields of radars to increase power usage so I have a reason to keep those trains running and hauling in coal (and yes, in my last few games, I stuck with steam power for that same reason )

[Xecutor]

@Boogieman14 : But we are talking about game start, where every piece of coal counts
So, efficiency is important in context of OP.

[Boogieman14]

Hardly. At least in the games I've played there's only been one instance where I got into a bit of a tight spot because my base ran out of coal. In my latest game, I'm actually turning coal into oil (Bob's mods) because I have so much of the stuff (and hardly any oil in base)

[Peter34]

This means that the efficiency loss, per Burner Inserter used to move Coal, is a bit over 2%.

You clearly play the game differently than me I absolutely don't care about efficiency, if there's not enough, I'll put down more miners. If there's no space for more miners, I'll build a train to somewhere I can put down more miners I've been known to build fields of radars to increase power usage so I have a reason to keep those trains running and hauling in coal (and yes, in my last few games, I stuck with steam power for that same reason )

The reason I did that analysis was for the early game. I was wondering how to best allocate my scarce early-game Coal. How much to Burner Drills, how much to Furnaces, how much to Burner Inserters

What I found is this:
1 Coal in Miner yields 7.4 result (e.g. almost 7.5 Coal, Iron Ore or Copper Ore, or presumably almost 7.5 Stone.
1 Coal in a Stone Furnace can melt a bit over 10 units of Iron Ore or Copper Ore. Maybe 11, but not much more. Between 10 and 11.5.
1 Coal in a Burner Inserter can move 47 items from one Chest to another Chest.

After the early game, I'll just shrug and use the power. I don't mind. But early game, I feel this urge to get out of the steam age, get electricity going, so I can do research and automated production.

[Xterminator]

Do you guys purposely restart until you land in the middle of a desert? I never have problems finding wood.

Yeah same here. I rarely get a map without tries, and personally I like having tons of trees around as long as it leaves me room to build. Slows pollution, and is more pretty imo.

As for cooltv's question... I pretty much have the same answer as everyone, so not going to go in to detail. :p
I plop first miner on iron with it dumping into a furnace, then feed them with wood, then make 2 more miners and place them on coal facing each other, them one more with a furnace on stone, then last one on copper with furnace.
From there I just go straight to electricity. Unless I get a horrible starting area ( like no trees, or resources really spread out), then this whole process only takes me like 10-15 minutes max.

Hope this helped mate!

[Peter34]

Do we have a time for how long it takes for two facing Coal Drills to fill up? As i how many minutes it's safe to leave then unattended?

[n9103]

I don't know what the inefficinecy value/loss value is for electric Inserters. I just know that it has got to be lower than 2.13%.

Pretty sure no one actually answered this question, so I'll take a whack at it.

Burner inserters have a listed 180 kW while running, and when taken through the formulas previously presented, gives a rough approximation of 8MJ of work done in 47 cycles. This is good enough for me to take that 180 kW figure as actual use rate. (Yes, I could go digging through files, but I'm trying not to, and just using math and observed values.

Electric inserters have a listed 13kW while running. But they also have a 50% efficiency penalty from the boilers, so to compare to the burner inserter, just double the use rate to 26kW. (It's probably 12.5 and 25, but let's let the rounding error stay and count it as a conservative figure.)

Now it becomes simple arithmetic. 26/180=x/.0213 or .0213(26/180)=x, x~= .003 or .3%

So yes, much lower inefficiency value in theory.
Easily proven with a similar setup you used to get the 47/coal figure, but having a pump, boiler and engine attached, and putting the coal in the boiler instead.
Factorio uses ideal networks and doesn't simulate heat or transmission losses.
My figure is likely a little bit off, since this method can't really account for the idle drain of electrical devices, but being that there's almost a magnitude of difference in power use, the power drain is negligible for all reasonable values.

And there's N9103's latest contribution to the science of Factorio

[Peter34]

Electric Inserters seem, according to their stats, to have both a power drain for existing, and an additional power value (which rightly should be an energy value - power is energy per time unit, i.e. 1 watt is 1 joule per second) for usage.

I'm going into the game, loading a saved situation, to see what those values are.

...

Okay, Burner Inserter:
Energy Consumption: 180 kW.

Electric Inserter (the yellow one):
Energy Consumption: 13 kW.
Drain: 400 W.

So in usage per second, it's about 13.8 times more efficient, but in usage per item moved it's more efficient than that, since it cycles faster, so that it can do more moves per second than the Burner Inserter. Not like a lot more, but it's maybe 20% or 33% faster, or something like that. So it's at least 15 times more efficient in terms of usage.

It also has a "drain" just for existing, just for being conncted to the electricity grid, but that's only 0.4 kJ per second. Given that 1 Coal is 8 MJ, that amounts to one coal burned per second per 2000 idle Electric Inserter. I imagine I can live with that...

It's just a pity the game interface doesn't show how fast, either in cycles-per-seconds or in relative speeds, the various Inserters are. We know which ones are faster than others, but not by how much. The Factorio Wiki has some figures, but I don't know where they're from, or if they're valid for the current version of the game.

I'm also not sure whether it's good or bad to replace all Inserters with Fast Inserters. They use more electricity, but move stuff faster, but do they move stuff sufficiently faster as to be worth the usage cost (idle cost is the same)? Clearly in some cases you want the fast ones, but in many others you don't. I often find myself hand-crafting a lot of green magic potions, though, and for that alone it might be worth to replace all yellow Inserters with blue ones so I can make the green potions faster. And also to mainly hand-craft blue Inserters because I know those won't get "eaten up" from my inventory when I later hand-craft more green potions.

[n9103]

A couple users have commented that the speed increase out does the power increase, when it comes to yellow v blue.
I haven't done any testing, but I generally handwave all the power issues of inserters since they are all relatively negligible.
Instead I build faster ones where yellows can't keep up with my intended speed.

As for the handcrafting, I would say that you've probably done something wrong if you're handcrafting in single player after the first tech level you're handcrafting. (Multiplayer is a bit different, since there's a minimum doubling in the handcrafting speed.)
I have similar feelings about handcrafting blue inserters. Those should be automated almost as soon as green science, and green science should be a high priority goal for a new game.

[ssilk]

The idea to take the efficiency of the burners into account is good, but look also into these threads: https://forums.factorio.com/wiki/inde ... ower_usage