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What are the various useful ratios for the basic game?

Posted: Sat Apr 18, 2015 3:29 am
by Peter34
Stuff like 3 machines making Copper Wire to 2 machines making Green Circuit.
1 machine making Gear Wheels to 6 machines making Science Pack 1.

Are those ratios, for the basic game, gathered in one place? If so, where? If not, they ought to be gathered in this thread (and made sticky).

Re: What are the various useful ratios for the basic game?

Posted: Sat Apr 18, 2015 6:40 am
by Koub
Yup, everything is gathered there :

https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... f=8&t=5576

Re: What are the various useful ratios for the basic game?

Posted: Sun Apr 19, 2015 2:38 am
by Peter34
I'm aware of that program, but I'm not interested in a program. I don't need something to let me calculate advance ratios for an entire factory. I'm interested in a bullet point format list of ratios. Notice my use of the word basic in the Subject? That wasn't a coincidence.

Re: What are the various useful ratios for the basic game?

Posted: Sun Apr 19, 2015 2:48 am
by ssilk

Re: What are the various useful ratios for the basic game?

Posted: Sun Apr 19, 2015 8:36 am
by Koub
Well I personnaly use it as the ultimate bullet point list. Every time I don't remember how many of this I should be producing for that, I take my Foreman, and check.It's about as fast as going on the forum or the wiki to see what are the good ratios for this or that.

Re: What are the various useful ratios for the basic game?

Posted: Sun Apr 19, 2015 10:13 am
by ssilk
Btw, there is another fine tool: Factorio-Calc http://rubyruy.github.io/factorio-calc/

I highly recommend to use such tools after the second game or so, cause the problem is here, that we have so many "basic" ratios in this game, that the list would be really long.

And the second problem is: what are basic ratios? I understand there: production ratios till science pack 3 (blue option).

But it would be an idea, to gather them here, cause I plan to put such a "basic" list into the wiki. I begin with:

Mining/furnacing

- Two burner miners per one stone furnace (one is of course also ok).
- if you need more than 10 burner miners in total, you do basically something wrong :)
- 10 electric miner per 12 stone furnace (for ore) (well, this is not nicely calculated)
- you can feed up to 12 furnaces with one basic belt (without curves!) using one lane for coal and one for the iron. Begin with 8, you need some fast belts later.
- you need of course some more ore, plan with 20-30 furnaces for iron and 15-25 for copper in your first game. I tend to have about five-10 times more... :) but I built that many then at a completely different place, so in the first games it's a good plan to built not more than that, also because the pollution will be a problem then.
- until you don't produce science pack 3, your need for copper is low, compared with the need for iron, so always built up iron first.
- you need 6-12 furnaces for steel production (first build 2, then expand as your need rises). They need 6-12 furnaces to fill them with iron.
- for stone you need in the early game just one burner miner, later on 2-4 electric miners will do it.
- you need 1-2 furnaces for that, but make sure, that you always have a chest full with raw stone.
- you need one assembly to make stone walls. Again: make sure to have a chest full of stone bricks

I hope I didn't forget or mixed up stuff. :) I tried to make it simple, you see, the number 12 plays an important role, easy to remember during game, when you need to make some simple calculations in your head. But always make it smaller in the beginning, don't place 12, try it with 6 first. Then expand to the limit (or one below and built a second line instead).

Re: What are the various useful ratios for the basic game?

Posted: Sun Apr 19, 2015 10:46 am
by Peter34
ssilk wrote:- 10 electric miner per 12 stone furnace (for ore) (well, this is not nicely calculated)
This is really nice. I'd say 5 to 6, though. Simpler.
ssilk wrote:- you can feed up to 12 furnaces with one basic belt (without curves!) using one lane for coal and one for the iron. Begin with 8, you need some fast belts later.
Steel Furnaces? I tend to go for 8 Furnaces per setup, although tiat is with curved belts, and always using yellow belts.

ssilk wrote:- until you don't produce science pack 3, your need for copper is low, compared with the need for iron, so always built up iron first.
This may be true. I tend to make one Furnace Unit, 8 Furnaces, for Iron, then another for Copper (maybe half size, 4 or 6 Furnaces but with room for 8 total), then after that I make another two sets of Iron Furnaces.
ssilk wrote:- you need 6-12 furnaces for steel production (first build 2, then expand as your need rises). They need 6-12 furnaces to fill them with iron.
This is interesting!

My hunch has been that 1 set of Iron Furnaces is almost enough to fully feed one similarly numbered set of Iron Furnaces, but clearly that's not true.



Some of the ratios I've seen:
5 Assembly Machines to make Science Pack 1 balances out production rate with 6 Machines to make SP2.
3 Copper Cable factories can supply 2 Electronic Circuit Factories.
1 Gear Wheel Factory can supply, IIRC, 6 Science Pack 1 factories.
To make Science Pack 2 (the Green one), you need twice as many Assembly Machines making Inserters as Making Belts.
1 Copper Cable Machine can support (I think I've read somewhere) 8 Machines making Advanced Circuits. Not sure about this one, though.

...Let's do the "math": Copper Cable is outputted at 4 per second.
An Advanced Circuit machine requires 4 Copper Cable per 8 seconds or 0.5 per second. So yes, it does seem to hold true...

Re: What are the various useful ratios for the basic game?

Posted: Sun Apr 19, 2015 12:25 pm
by ssilk
Peter34 wrote:
ssilk wrote:- you need 6-12 furnaces for steel production (first build 2, then expand as your need rises). They need 6-12 furnaces to fill them with iron.
My hunch has been that 1 set of Iron Furnaces is almost enough to fully feed one similarly numbered set of Iron Furnaces, but clearly that's not true.
Well, the ratio of 1:1 of iron furnace to steel furnace is fact.



I really recommend to use the mentioned tools, cause they are really good in doing the more complex stuff.

Re: What are the various useful ratios for the basic game?

Posted: Mon Apr 20, 2015 10:55 am
by Peter34
Peter34 wrote:
ssilk wrote: Some of the ratios I've seen:
5 Assembly Machines to make Science Pack 1 balances out production rate with 6 Machines to make SP2.
3 Copper Cable factories can supply 2 Electronic Circuit Factories.
1 Gear Wheel Factory can supply, IIRC, 6 Science Pack 1 factories.
To make Science Pack 2 (the Green one), you need twice as many Assembly Machines making Inserters as Making Belts.
1 Copper Cable Machine can support (I think I've read somewhere) 8 Machines making Advanced Circuits. Not sure about this one, though.
1 Pump to 14 Boilers to 10 Steam Engines.

Re: What are the various useful ratios for the basic game?

Posted: Sun Apr 26, 2015 1:00 pm
by Eyebe
Another (simple) production calculator, can be modified for those running mods:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... 1272124506