15
Because this community deserves more activity.
Today was spent setting up a basic Quartz/Silica factory, from one of the pure nodes in the giant Rocky Desert cave.
Got it most of the way done. Need to finish running power along the input belt line, finish enclosing the Depot wing, bring the road up to meet the building, setup truck stations, and color and light the whole thing.
In my last playthrough, I used the strategy of using enough buildings to completely consume all available input. So, if I had 240 iron ore, I would make enough smelters to completely consume that iron ore, enough plate constructors to consume the ingots, and enough rod constructors to consume the ingots too. While it's impossible to keep both the plate and rods running fully at the same time, I can guarantee that my limiting factor will be ore input regardless of the ratio of plates to rods I am pulling from the system. That property can be chained to more advanced parts, so when I make something like modular frames, I can still guarantee I'm input limited, not building limited, by just using the existing plate and rods systems.
Do you account for excavator (not the right name) upgrades and over clocking when you do this?
I usually do, but sometimes, it just doesn't feel feasible. Not if you're going for "pretty" factories, like we're trying to, this time around.
Like, this build will be able to accommodate me upgrading the one miner that powers it to a Mk3 at 250% clock, without needing a clock higher than 250% on any machine. And no belt will need more than 1,200 items/min. But, for example, my first attempt to plan for this factory was to use all of the mine-able Quartz in this cave, not just a single Pure node, and that would have required me to have 40 constructors. It just didn't seem worth it to me, when this facility will already produce over 500/min of each item, when it's fully-upgraded. If that does turn out to not be enough, I'll add another miner, and figure out how to either expand this facility, or build a second one right next to it.
Thank you!