FYI: When you cut out belts to toss in that PLS to fix the copper usage problem going to your missile assemblers, you never hooked the 2 belts back up with circuit boards and engines. That's why you ran out of missiles. In the same are, you added another generator, but the energy shards are used up too fast to feed them through to a 4th plant, you need to run another set of three not a set of 4. I thought further upon your usage of filters in the BABs directly combined with my idea that a BAB with 10 lasers encircling it and a power pole paired with a second of the same type would be an almost unbeatable build. Here's the where's and why's of the combined build I was able to imagine... Given that for the fog: a fog base swarm max size is 180 units, all bases are laid out in a hexagonal pattern, pulling all mobs upon spawning away from the core maximizes loot collection potential, avoiding base building destruction/damage is desired for highest continuous drop rates, and the total number of items dropped by the fog at max level(24+) is 57 items( 5 fog unique)... Also given that: a BAB supports 12 construction drones for repairs, 9 ground level output bays, 1 roof output bay through a large depot and a DLS, BAB drones repair the closest building to the BAB best, multiple BABs repair each other... A "perfect" farm and filter should be obtainable with 6 BABs, 6 wireless power poles, 18 PLS( or 12 ILS), 60 lasers, up to 54 dedicated belts, and up to 6(+2 small depot/DLS into the PLS/ILS) large depots/DLS. It is organized into 3 build sets distributed equally around a fog base, centered inline with the alternating middles of 2 base corners just outside of the laser range of the inward-most lasers. Take a BAB belt all 9 lines away from the front and encircle it with 10 lasers and a wireless pole, the side without ports is the inward( to the base) facing side, and copy a duplicate of the same to 1 side, run the belts into 6 PLS or 4 ILS( adding a splitter/depot/DLS or two for the extras)... that building pair would be duplicated 2 more times equally around a base, after adding 10 filters per BAB and piping it all out to the PLS/ILS's. The why goes off this formula,.. each BAB drone has 1 building it is responsible to keep repaired and they are the buildings closest to the BAB, thus constant and quick repair when under attack... each laser has to kill off only 3 mobs per swarm( 180/3 nodes=60/20 lasers=3 mobs/laser)... each belt has a dedicated line and even if it fills up and stalls won't effect the output of other items... the 6 BABs are(/should be, untested,) close enough around the base core that their pickup ranges overlap and thus up to 60 items can be retrieved and filtered away( or 54 without DLSs) into a PLS or ILS network for use elsewhere. I hope you find the idea interesting enough to attempt it as it was you filtering the BABs into 6 items each and overlapping their pickup ranges that inspired me to modify my original design thusly. If you stay with dedicated output belts then there is no advantage in using stackers, but your belt and filtering system as it is would improve if you stuck 3 stackers before the last splitter going into the splitter/filter run.
Great comment! To your first point, my bad, I totally forgot about getting those hooked back up! I've already recorded part 18, so that won't get fixed until part 19, I'm afraid. Thank you so much for pointing that out! I really like the farm concept, although that might be a project for sandbox mode/making a custom blueprint rather than this run. My initial thought is that I would give up on getting ALL the drops in order to remove the requirement for DLS, so probably skip Wood, Plant Matter, and maybe Prisms? That would allow 6 bases to handle 9 drops each. A potential issue I see is effectively weaving the belts through the laser turrets in such a way as to keep all the lasers close enough, but I think that just means some creative belting is needed. If I can come up with/test a design I like in sandbox mode, I'll definitely try to put a video together on it!
FYI: When you cut out belts to toss in that PLS to fix the copper usage problem going to your missile assemblers, you never hooked the 2 belts back up with circuit boards and engines. That's why you ran out of missiles.
In the same are, you added another generator, but the energy shards are used up too fast to feed them through to a 4th plant, you need to run another set of three not a set of 4.
I thought further upon your usage of filters in the BABs directly combined with my idea that a BAB with 10 lasers encircling it and a power pole paired with a second of the same type would be an almost unbeatable build. Here's the where's and why's of the combined build I was able to imagine...
Given that for the fog: a fog base swarm max size is 180 units, all bases are laid out in a hexagonal pattern, pulling all mobs upon spawning away from the core maximizes loot collection potential, avoiding base building destruction/damage is desired for highest continuous drop rates, and the total number of items dropped by the fog at max level(24+) is 57 items( 5 fog unique)...
Also given that: a BAB supports 12 construction drones for repairs, 9 ground level output bays, 1 roof output bay through a large depot and a DLS, BAB drones repair the closest building to the BAB best, multiple BABs repair each other...
A "perfect" farm and filter should be obtainable with 6 BABs, 6 wireless power poles, 18 PLS( or 12 ILS), 60 lasers, up to 54 dedicated belts, and up to 6(+2 small depot/DLS into the PLS/ILS) large depots/DLS. It is organized into 3 build sets distributed equally around a fog base, centered inline with the alternating middles of 2 base corners just outside of the laser range of the inward-most lasers. Take a BAB belt all 9 lines away from the front and encircle it with 10 lasers and a wireless pole, the side without ports is the inward( to the base) facing side, and copy a duplicate of the same to 1 side, run the belts into 6 PLS or 4 ILS( adding a splitter/depot/DLS or two for the extras)... that building pair would be duplicated 2 more times equally around a base, after adding 10 filters per BAB and piping it all out to the PLS/ILS's.
The why goes off this formula,.. each BAB drone has 1 building it is responsible to keep repaired and they are the buildings closest to the BAB, thus constant and quick repair when under attack... each laser has to kill off only 3 mobs per swarm( 180/3 nodes=60/20 lasers=3 mobs/laser)... each belt has a dedicated line and even if it fills up and stalls won't effect the output of other items... the 6 BABs are(/should be, untested,) close enough around the base core that their pickup ranges overlap and thus up to 60 items can be retrieved and filtered away( or 54 without DLSs) into a PLS or ILS network for use elsewhere.
I hope you find the idea interesting enough to attempt it as it was you filtering the BABs into 6 items each and overlapping their pickup ranges that inspired me to modify my original design thusly.
If you stay with dedicated output belts then there is no advantage in using stackers, but your belt and filtering system as it is would improve if you stuck 3 stackers before the last splitter going into the splitter/filter run.
Great comment!
To your first point, my bad, I totally forgot about getting those hooked back up! I've already recorded part 18, so that won't get fixed until part 19, I'm afraid. Thank you so much for pointing that out!
I really like the farm concept, although that might be a project for sandbox mode/making a custom blueprint rather than this run. My initial thought is that I would give up on getting ALL the drops in order to remove the requirement for DLS, so probably skip Wood, Plant Matter, and maybe Prisms? That would allow 6 bases to handle 9 drops each. A potential issue I see is effectively weaving the belts through the laser turrets in such a way as to keep all the lasers close enough, but I think that just means some creative belting is needed. If I can come up with/test a design I like in sandbox mode, I'll definitely try to put a video together on it!