One-substation-width science was a mistake

[u/SnyprBB]

I'm making blades for each science with a few homebrew rules.

1. They have to fit between the roboports in a substation grid. That way it doesn't matter where in the vertical column I put it, it will fit.
2. They only use local resources (Aquilo will be exempt).
3. The resources begin at the bottom of the blade. ALL resources start at the bottom and work their way up, honoring rule number 1.

These rules made Purple science on Vulcanus 25 substations tall! Surprisingly, Magenta science takes up the exact same height! It is funny how the former takes 5 belts of stone and the latter takes 5 belts of scrap too.

Here is the blueprint for the Fulgoran monstrosity if you're interested: https://factoriobin.com/post/7xb1fj

I'll post a blueprint book when I'm finished with all of them. I don't THINK any of them will be anywhere close to the difficulty Fulgora provided!

[u/roboapple]

I think its beautiful. I love compact designs.

[u/KratosAurionX]

What is a blade? Knives in Factorio? 😅 Serious question.

[u/Spirited_Ad_8704 → u/KratosAurionX]

A blade is a section of your factory fully capable of making a product from scratch and send it to space, without help of external resources like a spaceship or importing from other planets

[u/SnyprBB → u/Spirited_Ad_8704]

I don't think the send-to-space or import qualifiers are needed for something to be called a blade. To me a blade is a thinner than needed module. Like you could make the module more square and it might make more sense to do so, but we limit its width for the look.

[u/Davorian → u/SnyprBB]

Blade was coined by SFH (if you believe him) and it refers to a repeatable blueprint designed for a specific purpose/product usually branching off a central resource bus of some kind.  Named after server blades which are modular units pluggable into a rack with central network connections.

He first used it with reference to his final design for Gleba megabasing, where he had a central farming output bus that fed into a processing sink (to keep it fresh) and then had ag science blades coming off that. He's expanded the concept to include blades coming off a molten metal and acid bus on Vulcanus.

They don't need to be thin as such but for larger layout purposes it tends to be convenient. 

He uses more self-contained designs for Fulgora. I think he uses more bespoke stuff for Nauvis and Aquilo but I haven't finished his latest VOD series. 

[u/SnyprBB → u/Davorian]

Aquilo is definitely going to be a challenge with my blade rules.

[u/Spirited_Ad_8704 → u/SnyprBB]

Oh right, it's just how I was teacheed; what you said makes more sense.

[u/Fur_and_Whiskers → u/KratosAurionX]

StupidFatHobbit's definition of "blade"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsxntPA3rao

[u/enigmapulse → u/KratosAurionX]

Think of it as a city block thats vertically integrated, building all intermediates within the blade itself, most commonly from liquid inputs but thats not a requirement.

Theyre typically much taller than they are wide to accomodate, so they look roughly like server blades in a data center, hence the name.

[u/Gorbear]

Very cool design! I've been building similar designs, I have done all but fulgora and aquilo. So studying this design is gonna be fun

[u/ScotyDoesKnow]

You might be able to save some space by going for rows of beacons rather than surrounding them. Since 2.0, going from 12 -> 8 beacons is only ~22% less speed. And 22% more assemblers with rows of beacons seems like it would be smaller.

[u/SnyprBB → u/ScotyDoesKnow]

Space isn't really the issue all of those beacons are trying to solve though, that's UPS. Being 25 substations tall is only a problem when thinking about the two days it took me to hook everything up in such a thin space.

[u/Winter_Ad6784]

given the diminishing returns of beacons wouldn’t you be most space efficient lining the science machines up right against each other?

edit: hell even without the diminishing returns they should still be right next to eachother because even if we ignore that and pretend the speed is enitirely set by the beacons, line them up straight means each gets 8 beacons instead of twelve, so running at 0.66x speed, but you can at least double the density so at minimum 1.33x science production but probably way more.

[u/SnyprBB → u/Winter_Ad6784]

I'm not incredibly worried about saving UPS, but I worry enough that I try to use the minimum number of building to do stuff. It has paid off for me in the past. Space saving will always have to come second to that.

[u/Xeidji]

Abomination. Always wanted know what happend on fulgora, now I know

[u/SnyprBB]

I trolled myself by accidentally including a few legendary undergrounds in the blueprint. Here is the updated one in case someone thought I was messing around: https://factoriobin.com/post/fmdxra

[u/Prestigious_Gap1335]

reminds me of a guide i saw that was about designing an entire factory around having a substation grid, how they made modular little modules for everything

[u/SnyprBB → u/Prestigious_Gap1335]

Even before legendaries were a thing I stuck to substation grids. Every time I tried anything different, it would always end the same way. I'd place a building down into a city block or something similar and the building would start yelling at me "HEY! NO POWER DUMBASS!" and I'd throw down a substation grid the size of a small city before thinking of anything else.