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The original was posted on /r/factorio by /u/neltisen on 2024-10-17 19:17:35+00:00.
Spaceship Victory that is. I’m not sure I can manage to finish the hidden victory by monday.
The game started about a year ago or so. Solo run as I had no friends willing to join. Started as a newbie that barely touched rail system, did not know how to effectively setup the trains and had no clue about combinator systems. Ended up setting up an automatic fleet of spaceships using combinators (did not update SE since January, cause January update would break a big part of my outpost systems), created One-to-Many spaceship system supplying outposts, heck, even solved arcosphere based recipes and made closed self contained loops for each recipe using them. After all those hurdles I feel like I’m ready for the DLC (it might even be too easy actually).
Run started relatively normal. Nothing too big. First message about CME arriving was a shock, then a rush for Umbrella and finishing steam battery setup just a shy hour before it arrived. Which in turn brought a biter issue that got neglected for over 20 hours. A cache containing the Railgun helped with biters a lot, though.
After sending the first spaceship, the real game started. Decided to move from bus base to train base. Designed a relatively ok-ish train block and scanned the whole planet before deciding location of the megabase. Then was the time for the perimeter claiming. As I’ve heard “estimate how much space you would need, adjust it for expansion and add some more”, so, well:
Took about 40h or so to clean that. By the way, great thanks to Mononaut for PQRS system (reddit account deleted) and r/knightelite for making a post about it with link for the guide. This system became the heart of my base.
In the end I did not need this much space:
Progression had ups and downs. I guess the usual issues and hurdles everyone sees in K2SE. I could get Immersite and Cryonite on the closest moon, then Vulcanite on closest planet. Then progressively other SE materials one after another. Space Elevator tech was god sent for outposts, coupled with first free spaceship and later on Ion based spaceship fleet and trains bringing mats to orbit, never having to worry about electric power due to solar panels on orbital stations. At this point I’ve completely resigned from rocket deliveries and made a new train based orbital base.
After getting pylons I’ve decided to make block 128x128 (up from 100x100 on the surface), those blocks are also big enough to fit up to 12 trains if needed (up from 8). Along the run I’ve also decided on 60SPM production for every science pack (that means for example if I produce 60SPM T4 science pack I’d produce like 140 SPM T3 pack - 60 SPM + whatever amount is needed for T4 in addition). Most of time it’s down to a single building per block, but sometimes it’s multiple.
The biggest achievements during the run are:
- one-to-many ship supplying outposts with analogue clock:
The system picks up signals from all outposts and sends ship wherever there’s need for fuel, cannon ammo or elevator cables.
- Solutions for all arcosphere recipes:
As I’ve decided to make everything block-based and transported via trains, then I would make no exceptions for arcosphere techs either. For that I could not use heuric solutions. I needed an exact solution. Like a real engineer! Is it annoying to solve? Yes. Is it harder? Yes! Did my brain overheat? Multiple times? YES! Was it satisfying when I found a solution and it actually work? OH HELL YES!!!
Basic idea behind it is that most recipes (all but 1) have 2 different outputs. Every output can go through specific foldinf/polarising recipes specific amount of times and it will return to the initial state. Problem was down to solving a matrix. In the end I’ve made a solver, where I only type inputs and outputs to get which recipes have to run for amount of times. After that it’s all down to just connecting everything up. Most problematic are recipes where there are 5th parts (2/5 to left, 3/5 to right for example). Traditional 1 to 5 splitters work well in high throughputs, but with minuscule numbers of arcospheres it doesn’t work exactly well. In the end I’ve designed memory cell based splitters:
It counts 2 spheres to one side, 3 to other side, then resets. Simple and elegant. Some recipes are very, very simple, like black hole data cards:
Everything was just falling in place until nanquitite processsors. This one recipe outputs same arcospheres, just in a different ratio! Earendel is a sadist!
Well, as I’ve learned about a memory cell, I tried to use them to make a smart splitter that would decide when to put spheres to one recipe and when to other. Took me like 2 hours before I’ve realised how to solve it and make it work. Basically, there’s always 6 spheres output per cycle (1x Xi + 5x Lambda or other way around). 2 Memory cells read the belt leading toward chest. If Lambda is 5, then top inserters activate, if Xi is 5, then bottom inserters activate. Next decider combinators read inserter arms. When total number of spheres moved by inserters equal 6, then all memory cells reset
That was the final hurdle. After that all that was left was wait for DSS4 packs and launch a chonk ship fast.
That was a long and fun journey. I’ve learned a lot there. I can’t live without my trains anymore and combinator systems can be really handy. I’m glad that I’ve managed to finish it just shortly before the DLC release. As closing words I’d like to thank everyone that directly or indirectly contributed to ideas and finding solutions along the playthrough. I wish for Wube a successful DLC launch and for all our engineers a fun Factorio 2.0 experience.
If anyone has any questions, feel free to poke me.