Tutorial:Transport use cases

2016-12-20T14:32:59Z

Latias1290: Various grammar and style fixes

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This page compares the three main [[Transport]] methods: [[Belt transport system]] (conveyor belts), [[Railway]] (trains) and [[Logistic robot|Logistic robots]]. Note, that there are two more useful methods to transport stuff: The characters [[Inventory]] and the [[Vehicles/Car]]. (Especially the car has an extremely high capacity and can be used instead of trains - of course you need to drive everything yourself, see the chapter about the car).

The best choice depends on the context in which they are used. For example on the amount of resources you need to transport, or how far away they are.

== Comparison of Belts, Trains and Logistic Robots ==

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! width=10% |
! width=30% | Belts
! width=30% | Trains
! width=30% | Logistic Robots
|-
| Throughput
| Constant, low for one belt, precisely calculable, limited
| Extremely high, fast, not easily calculable but constant, nearly unlimited if enough space,
| High in small areas, not calculable/chaotic, unlimited if enough bots, cannot be optimized, terrible over long distances and bulk goods
|-
| Space required
| Small for simple products, large for complicated product chains
| Large due to train stations and bends. There is a difference in using [https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=35806 Rollon-Rolloff-Stations (lot of space) or Terminus (much smaller)].
| Small for complex products.
|-
| Optimization
| Highly optimizable. Source of never ending fun.
| Seldom really needed - better rebuild or built more tracks. For larger networks you can get some trouble with deadlocks/gridlocks, if not optimized, using chain signals. Optimize train stations: connect either with belts (complex) or with logistic bots (recommended).
| Optimize placing of roboports (for charging) and used number of ports vs. number of bots in the air.
|-
| Parallelization
| High. Two parallel belts have the doubled throughput as one. Cost is also only double. On the other hand: Afford to build that doubles also.
| Extreme. Two parallel tracks can transport 5-10 times more trains than one, cause if a track is blocked the trains can choose the other free track and so they don't need to stop. The afford to build two tracks in parallel is lower than doubled.
| Not so good. Doubling the amount of bots from one to two surely doubles the throughput, but doubling robots from 500 to 1000 can result in complete chaos.
|-
| Initial costs
| Very small as long as conveyor belts are short. Still good with parallel belts. Larger when making express transport belts. Expensive with express; which should be used for special cases only.
| Considerable amount of material is needed for initial locomotive. Small costs (when compared to the increase of transport) for making rails.
| Roboports and especially bots require a lot of resources to make. Logistic bot upgrades are very expensive, but needed and must be calculated into the total costs. Maintaining costs a lot of time.
|-
| Use of energy
| Gratis. Free. Always an object of discussion. ;)
| Low. The usage of fuel is currently very affordable.
| High. The roboports need a lot of energy and the bots take even more energy, as more are in the air. This can be a big problem, but is normally not an issue.
|-
| Items in transit vs. duration of transport
| Bad. 100 tiles of belts stores about 700 items if fully loaded, but takes with basic belts 56 seconds for transport. With express belt, this is only 3 times faster.
| Very good. Lot of items transported in very short time.
| Chaotic. When jammed it can happen, that the most important items are unreachable in the air.
|-
| Maintenance costs
| None
| Some fuel needed
| Considerable amount of electricity needed
|-
| Pollution
| None
| Some
| None, indirectly caused by use of electricity.
|-
| Best used for
| High throughput, bulk-goods (ores, some intermediates), small to medium distance. Examples include raw materials and simple products.
| High throughput, long distance. Examples include transporting ores or plates from resource fields to main factory area.
| Extremely high throughput over very short distances (< 50 tiles), low to medium throughput over medium distance (50-500), catastrophic over long distance. Best used in main factory area for complex products like modules and advanced circuits. Also best used for products needed in smaller quantities like placeable structures and ammunition. Unbeatable for train station (loading/unloading chests).
|-
| Most annoying problems
| Left/right lane problems (part of the game), splitting off the right amount of items.
| Deadlock situations (in complicated crossings), complex train-station and signal setup.
| Blocking of roboports by waiting for charging, "stupid" behavior that far away bots are used, instead of near and vice versa, Robots that take a "shortage" and cross a native village.
|}

== Experts ==

=== Belts ===

* Practical up to distances of 500 tiles (to compare: a radar station watches up to 200 tiles, with a 100-tile "radius").
* Useful for connecting small resource-fields to the factory area, as the capacity of a belt is limited to about 700 items per minute in the best case, when using basic belts. With fast or express belt, this is higher (up to 1750) but the price is gigantic. Using multiple parallel belts is costly, but with basic belts still affordable over long distances.
* Best for working within an automated facility for '''bulk goods''', eg. transporting ore, plates, circuit boards, etc over short or medium distances.
* Store, over long distances, a not to be underestimated number of items (about 12 per tile, with two lanes, so you can calculate over 500 tiles with 6000 items!). This storage is out of reach and could be counted as wasted, until it is transported.

Note: the length of 500 tiles is just a "rule of thumb", and comes from these facts:
* It takes nearly 5 minutes (4.44) for an item to run from one end to the other on 500 tiles of [[basic belt]]s.
* A belt with 500 tiles stores about 3571 items (about a chest of resources).
* The fact, that about after this length it makes sense to use train.

The advantages of belts are:
* Belts have a constant throughput rate.
* Calculations are easily possible (such as "Do I need more belts to transport items from the mines?")
* Basic belts are cheap compared to tracks and and are easier to build
* You can easily see how much items are on the belt, which makes it easier to assess if you need more throughput.
* You can use the belt as an open storage: you can store about 72 items in a length of 10 belts, when using both lanes (but for long belts this is a big disadvantage!)

Disadvantages:
* Limited transport capacity, due to the limited throughput.
* Slow. This is a problem with very long belts because it takes a while to fill the belt. The items on the belt cannot be used. A belt with length of 100 holds 714 items for 56 seconds. With trains this is much lower (10 seconds) and as long as they are not loaded into a wagon, they still can be used.
* Items on the belts are "lost items" until they are transported.

Belts have the best short-distance throughput for continuous, direct-to-factory transportation. '''This is especially true, if you use basic belts in parallel, cause this combination has an incredible high throughput at low costs.

=== Trains ===

* Trains should be used to get items from big and distant resource fields. Nothing can compare with it, especially, when thinking about speed. The planning is difficult and the building itself is currently tedious. (tip: use the train to build the rails, this is much faster: sit in the train and build the next rail before you, hold mouse, start driving slowly. You can use it also to build the power poles like so).
* Trains are for linking separate factory assemblies together over long distances. This additionally lets you 'take a ride' out to outposts that require attention.

By smelting ore locally and ship the plates via train, you can double your wagon capacity and route directly to a storage yard or factory. See also [[Transport/Compress_by_Pre-production]].

An interesting thread: [http://www.factorioforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=6799&p=53609#53609 Long distance transport].

=== Logistic robots ===

* Logistic robots should be used in a limited area with dense building placement In most cases this is the main factory area. With some updates the logistic bots can handle enormous amounts of items.
* Bots are terrible at long distances and bulk goods: It's not a good idea use bots for ore-transport or from/to furnaces. It is possible to use them for this task, but don't hold your breath for this to work perfectly; there are several issues with the AI that cause them to work inefficiently more often than not. Some players take that problem as challenge.
* They do a perfect job on bulk-goods, if they can charge between their jobs, which is the case on train-stations: Train comes in, train is unloaded, bots transports to the target chests, bots charge. Next rain comes in.
* Bots do a perfect job if you use them for random transport of expensive products; transport intermediate products to where they're needed within the local network, especially if it's completely impractical to route a belt for the job.

Bots, while great at moving sparse items with slow production speeds, are a very costly thing to integrate with high-volume affairs like mining/smelting because they need frequent breaks to recharge.

The exception is the incredible benefit they offer to train stations because of the space-logistical challenge of routing and load-balancing belts around the train tracks, especially since it isn't necessarily 'constant flow', offering them time to recharge.

== Seeing from throughput side ==

A [[Basic transport belt]] cannot transport much more than 700 item/minute and an [[Express transport belt]] (the fastest) not more than 1750 (see above). Now compare that with a locomotive: a [[Cargo wagon]] can deliver 2000 items (ores) '''per wagon'''! And if you smelt the resources at your outpost and transport intermediate plates (copper, iron) you can transport 4000 per wagon. So when speaking from throughput, you need to swap to train or make multiple parallel belts.

This picture might change when you developed [[Logistic robot]]s. But that is not true! They can't be beaten for relatively small areas, especially with their researched bonuses, and they have some kind of intelligence; they try to deliver all requests as equally as possible.

But bots are terrible at long distances and bulk goods. Here are some calculations, which explain the problem (all calculations are assumed with full upgrade for the logistic bots!):

Needed robots to transport 3000 items per minute over a distance of 50 tiles you need:
Robot speed: 3 tiles/sec (basic speed) * 1.4 (logistic speed bonus) = 4.2 tiles/sec
Needed time for one transport: 100 tiles / 4.2 tiles/sec = 24 secs
Need robots per minute: 24 secs / 60 secs = you need 0.4 bots to transport one item per minute over 50 tiles.
Because of Logistic robot cargo: 0.4 bots / 5 items per transport = 0.08 bots to transport one item per minute
Total: 3000 items * 0.08 bots/per item = 240 bots
240 is a high, but still very realistic number for a logistic network with 4-5 roboports.

Needed robots to transport 3000 items per minute over a distance of 500 tiles you need:
Needed time for one transport: 1000 tiles / 4.2 tiles/sec = 240 secs
Need robots per minute: 240 secs / 60 secs = you need 4 bots to transport one item per minute over 500 tiles.
Because of Logistic robot cargo: 4 bots / 5 items per transport = 0.8 bots to transport one item per minute
Total: 3000 items * 0.8 bots/per item = 2400 bots

2400 bots need a quite big amount of resources to produce, not accounted the needed research (for bots, speed/stacksize bonuses), number of roboports and the needed energy.

That leaves conveyors and trains.

Trains are faster than belts and offer better logistic control as you go between logistic networks.

Belts simply take forever, and you may wind up with a lot of asset tied up with simply being 'in transit'. You should see items sitting on a belt as "non-useable storage". Backed up belts can be a good thing for buffer space, but long belts are just inefficient, or better: You loose the control over the other end, due to the long gap; the resources on the other side could be long depleted, but you see it only five minutes later.

=== Or in other words ===
The afford, to squeeze out the last 20% of belt-performance rises depending on distance and total amount and at some point the train will win. But in your central factory area the bots will never be beaten. On the other hand: in small areas, and for simple throughput of one type of item (furnace iron ore to iron-plates for example) we can place some belts in parallel, which is cheap and efficient (uses no energy) and when using parallel belts we reach also enormous throughput. For later game, the [[Fast transport belt]] is a good compromise between cost and efficiency, and the [[Express transport belt]]s should be use only for short sections.

=== Or in more other words ===
The amount of robots you need is directly dependent on the density you built. The central part of your factory should be dense, cause not only throughput is important here, but also speed: How fast can an item be produced in total (including the transportation time).

== See also ==

* [http://www.factorioforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=3948 Discussion about using conveyor belts vs. trains]. There are some interesting tips in this thread.
* [http://www.factorioforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=5478 More trains vs. longer trains]
* [http://www.factorioforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=5715 Deciding which items to re-make and which to keep on belts?]
{{Languages}}

User:Latias1290

2016-12-20T13:50:00Z

Latias1290:

I'm here to chew bubblegum and kick biter ass... and I'm all out of bubblegum.

I'm Foxite on the forums.

Tank

2016-12-20T13:47:12Z

Latias1290: /* Movement */

{{Languages}}
{{About|the armored combat vehicle|the liquid storage container|Storage tank}}
{{:Tank/infobox}}

The '''Tank''' is a heavy armored fighting [[vehicle]] added to the game in [[Changes in v0.11|Alpha 0.11]]. It is a mid-game weapon with two guns; an integrated [[Submachine gun]] and a powerful cannon that uses [[cannon shells]].

Since Engine units can only be built in Assembling machines, Tanks (like [[Car]]s) may not be built from by hand from their raw materials.

== Achievements ==
{{Main|Achievements}}
The tank is directly connected to the following achievement:
; Steamrolled
: Destroy 10 spawners by impact.

==Combat==
The tank is a strong fighting vehicle due to its large health pool and the very high damage of its main weapon, the cannon. Additionally, due to the ability to employ drones within the vehicle, it can be used as a form of drone or capsule transport vehicle, with the player simply using capsules to fight their battles. The tank particularly shines in battle against [[Worms]], as their unavoidable projectiles are much less of a problem for an entity with a high health pool.

The tank lags behind in speed, however, compared to the player and the car. As a result, it may not perform as well in combat against melee enemies or enemies with shorter range than the player, as it has more difficulty dodging enemies. This may result in the tank being destroyed quickly, leaving the player in a tight spot.

==Movement==

The tank is very robust, and unlike the car can move through and destroy [[Tree|trees]] with near impunity, though forward momentum is required to do so. This can also be employed as a weapon against [[Enemies]], although certain enemies and structures (nests in particular) will deal high damage to the tank in the process.

The tank is slower than the car, but the freedom of being able to traverse tree-filled areas easily makes it a preferred vehicle among many players for exploring lands abroad. The tank can also rotate in place while standing still, which is useful for getting out of tight spots.

==Capsules and Bots integration==

[[Player#Capsules|Capsules]] can be used while inside the tank, including combat robots. [[Construction robot]]s, including those from a [[personal roboport]] within range of the tank will repair damage if [[repair pack]]s are available. Also, [[Logistic robot]]s can still refill the player's inventory. This can be very useful for reloading as new ammo dropped off to a player driving the tank will first be loaded into the tank if space is available.

==Development data==

https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-56

https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-51

https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-48

https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-44

* [http://www.factorioforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=6973 Vehicles and Powered Armor] - make a laser tank

== See also ==
* [[Enemies]]
* [[Damage|Damage & resistances]]

{{LogisticsNav}}

[[Category:Weapons]]
[[Category:Combat]]
[[Category:Vehicle]]

Official Factorio Wiki - User contributions [en]

Tutorial:Transport use cases

User:Latias1290

Tank