If anyone is interested here is how many times you use each product to build every building. Steel: 18 Times Circuit Board: 17 Times Iron: 14 Times Super Magnetic Rings: 12 Times Titanium Alloy: 10 Times Plasma Exciters: 8 Times Stone: 8 Times Gears: 8 Times Electromagnetic Rings: 7 Times Frame Materials: 7 Times Particle Containers: 6 Times Glass: 5 Times Processors: 4 Times Photon Combiners: 4 Times Engine: 4 Times Quantum Chips: 4 times Electric Motor: 3 Times Silicon: 3 Times Electro-Magnetic Turbines: 3 Times Copper: 2 Times Graphene: 1 Time Carbon Nanotubes: 1 Time Titanium: 1 Time
Surprising how few buildings use titanium or copper plates directly. Makes sense to just shuttle them in with fidget spinners, along with everything else that supplies 4 or less assemblers.
Another really big advantage with this design is that centralizing all of your production makes it much easier to identify and resolve bottlenecks and throughput issues (as opposed to flying all over your planet trying to locate a specific production facility). It may not be efficient use of planet real estate, but does make for efficient use of engineer time, ease of use, and quality of life. Bravo Nilaus! 👏
I said the same in another comment! If you're disorganized like me, main buses force you to arrange things logically in a straight line. I have an ILS-based "mall planet" and it took almost no time to set up, but now I waste huge amounts of time trying to find things.
@@jamesdowell5268 I guess you can hook up chests with spinners and just request from backpack but I also waste time finding stuff when I need larger quantities
I'm always a little confused by people that are obsessed with efficient use of space. I get if you're going for the no foundation achievement, but otherwise, you have 64 stars with 2-3 planets each, not counting gas giants. You literally have hundreds of planets. You can dedicate entire planets to one item, of course you have space to dedicate for this.
@@7ninjasstudios808 space on the initial planet is limited, especially when you crank up the difficulty of dark fog, and other system needs higher tech. Main bus is most useful for early games, solutions are more diverse for late game
@@7ninjasstudios808 I only do it because I personally find it fun. After you "beat" the game you kindof get to create your own goals, and space efficiency is one that I find to be fulfilling
Thank you. This is super helpful. I don't want to learn all the ratio of different crafts and use calculator. I have started playing this game for experience and had fun but then i watched some youtube videos with tipis because i was starting to had some problems with not enough automation, and i was busy all the time crafting with 30m que.. After watching those videos with tips and blueprints I was discuraged to play this game becaue there was no sense for me just to use other people designs and solution and they where extra efficient and complicated. I remember thinking that there has to be some easy standarized way to craft basic things. And here comes you like a knight in shining armour. I want to have my own experaince and learn a thing or two and not just copy what others did. But this thing is just perfect for me. I can use the bus for some essential crafting and have my own experiance with designing different things. And your way of explaining things work for me perfectly. I have started new game and i have fun again. THANK YOU :)
The only reason I dislike bot/ILS bases over this is: if you're not a fairly organized person, it quickly becomes very hard to remember where you put things. I have a 100% ILS "mall planet" that makes everything and it was extremely quick & easy to build, but now I spend most of my time flying around the planet looking for the one ILS that makes a certain thing. Main buses force you to arrange things logically and in a straight line -- so they're harder to set up, but potentially easier to use once they're done!
If you have it all set up with ILS, then why not fly the completed buildings into a central square or polar hub for easy access? Seems like you're far enough in not to have this issue, tbh.
@@hodorhodl7061 Yeah I do that, what I meant is I have trouble finding the ILS-connected assemblers/smelters that are making the buildings/items in the first place. Using only PLS/ILS to deliver to & distribute from assemblers let's you "get away with" spamming the same ILS-->assembler blueprint anywhere you want on a planet. It's way easier to build in the first place, but I end up with a sea of assemblers in all directions building things unrelated to their neighboring assembler lines, so it's hard to find things. Main buses force me to approximately order my assemblers from the simplest to the most complex outputs, and force me to order them all in a straight line. Way easier to find stuff, given my playstyle
We really appreciate all the hard work you put in for these blueprints and videos. I've been using a handful of your early game blueprints on my recent restart to play against the Fog and it has SAVED ME SOOO MUCH TIME! Thanks!!
This design is brilliant! I've been using it since your first video of it, 3-4 weeks ago. Works perfectly. Easy to set up, easy to expand, easy to customize. 🤘
i bought this game cause of you, but i haven't been playing it since i struggle with designs, and mechanics (im used to fatorio). but this was a very clever way of making a main bus. i didn't know that you can have different configurations of the splitters🤔 this will get me started playing again, THANK YOU!!
I literally learned that about splitters in this video. I didn't know you can have a 2 floor variant. This makes the busses soo easy really if you have the main bus on floor 2 it doesn't get in the way if you have to route something under it. Also the pull-off of stuff with the splitters is gold.
Have you considered designing Farm/Mall Planet? Like half of the planet is for dark fog bases and the other - sorter of loot and mall. I think dark fog drops pretty much all of the resources needed for mall (even thrusters and such) and if you have ~10 max level bases on the planet you get loooots of loot (more than full 30/s belt for a base). One probably could make a mall that completely independent and doesn't consume any mined resources. Also - transforming 10-20 lines of unsorted loot into an orderly main bus would look amazing)
I set up 2 extra lanes between iron and the builders. Both are mostly empty, but I put a box and hat over the splitter of one to request intermediate buildings and the other for a little bit of blue spray for those components (but it could just be made perminant on the lowest belt) On the north side of hub I also have a buffer building extra processors for the mid game but on the lowest priority to feed the belt.
It would be good to get blueprints for the "upgrades" as well -- one for the full late-game bus, one for the proliferation and monitors, and one or two for the ILSes (input and output). While most of these are fairly simple, placement can be fiddly and it's nice to have something preconfigured.
a better counter-argument for the item in the belt would be to contrast with item waiting in planetary, much less in the belt than any planetary based build
I noticed that the sorters pulling stuff out of assemblers to go into other assemblers to be a little slow when starting up the bus. I put the storage behind the assemblers on splitters, then continued the belts to the adjacent assemblers. It still looks aesthetic imo and it prioritizes evenly distributing to the dependent assemblers before storing excess.
You can make this design 2x more compact by having the belts right next to each other instead of spaced out. The splitters have to zig zag instead of being right on top of each other, but honestly that looks very good.
My one suggestion would be to add to the blueprint stub belts with input sorters next to the assemblers. That way you just have to drag belts and you're done, instead of also needing to configure sorters for each one.
I don't like that at all. That would mean there are little empty belt stubs when you have a building with 2 items... ick! and you still have to add sorters for buildings with 4 or 5 inputs
I've done that with mine. I'd rather delete ten extra belts and two sorters attached to the assembling machine instead of fiddling with attaching them. I've moved the power pole one square closer to the bus so that when I'm building a connector between two assemblers I don't have to delete and replace it. I'm also toying with exactly how I want to add an incoming fidget spinner box between the two assemblers for those extra non-bused products, using the same 'I'd rather delete it' logic.
At one point I had decided to box-craft all my buildings with logistics bots supplying all the materials, but to no surprise, it takes way too much room and way too much power to maintain all the bots constantly flying around. In addition, the range of the bots was frustratingly short early game, so I was forced to constantly ferry over items like electromagnetic turbines. After switching to a main bus design (which of course I overbuilt, putting titanium, crystalline silicon, and every other single-use item on), I was much happier with the end result. YOU MUST PROLIFERATE! Amazing how much a little coal can create so many extra products.
Great for beginners but I def prefer a far more compact mall with a combination of pls/belts for most early stuff and logistics boxes for the more unique end game buildings. It also makes it much easier to to grab what you need all in one place, all buildings are in reach with minimal movement.
Love the content and the blueprints, Nilaus, thank you! One suggestion would be to add the youtube links in the description of each Blueprint to the video where you show it's use! It would helpful for newer players like myself.
Just started DSP, and just started using this setup. Its incredibly simple and efficient to use once its up and running. You were right, its a bit of a pain to get it going, but once its up, setting up segments for automation is amazing.
If you alternate the position of the splitters (so they're not right next to each other), you can fit twice as many belt lanes in the same space. It's a little harder to work with because there's less space to see below the bus and place belts under there, but it's literally twice as compact! It's personal preference, really. You can always make a design smaller if you're willing to make it more convoluted :)
If you split off of the top lane instead of the bottom, it's easier to see your working belts and they can return to ground level in the same amount of space as the current design [With exception to the first 1-2 lanes]. All the resources going down the top looks really nice, but it can be a PITA to build under.
Had the same idea months ago, but what Nilaus shows here is quire efficient and above all simple. Alternating splitters for example heavily restricts the amount of items you can request in or you have a much less modular setup as only certain items can go on certain parts.
Ok, but why cause a less efficient to work with design. You have plenty of real estate on the planets to do something like this. It’s neat and orderly, consistent and quick to expand. With staggered splitters it’s way more finicky to work with.
excellent! I have been watching your death world streams but I am glad that you took the time to show us your setup. I've seen some others streamers on twitch do horrible things. Thanks for insisting on non-chaos builds.
I'd be interested, once you've played with it for a bit, to here if you have a recommended order of item that takes advantage of the synergies of similar items. I picked up on the obvious ones like PLS -> ILS -> Gas Collect, but I picked up a few more watching this. Some times it's not obvious until way down the road when you unlock something that you should have inserted something else earlier. A simple "recommended order" list would be awesome.
Truly a work of art :) I've been tempted to try something this, but just haven't yet. It just takes so much space. For that much space (I know it's not as visually interesting) I'd just as much rather use logistics stations... Thanks for all the awesome content Nilaus!
I've been there, too, but I've settled on a sushi belt design. I've come to the conclusion that a main bus quickly becomes way too wide the more buildings you add. Before the Dark Fog update, you needed 34 different types of components (not counting other buildings) to build every single building in the game in vastly different quantities ranging from 0.45/s (strange matter) to a whopping 47.75/s (iron ingot) to satisfy the demand of a single Mk.III assembler per building. Your idea for a hybrid design with bots for lesser-used components is great though. Using Sushi Belts, you only need 4 quad stacked belts in instead of 34 and every single assembler taps the same 4 belts and builds whatever recipe you assign to it (you have to cross-feed buildings to the neighboring assembly machine when you need buildings as components). And yes, I do have a working non-blocking sushi belt mall that builds every building plus drones, vessels and bots. I still have to upgrade it to the dark fog update which should be doable relatively quickly.
@Nilaus The last smelter for your Magnets isn't hooked up! Love all your vids, it really helped me learn how to think more efficiently when planning logistical routes - Yeah, I used your vids to get better at my day job. You rock.
im very new to factory games, and my biggest problem is trying to manage what i have producing and what i need more of a bus makes things so much simpler and easier to understand whats going on, incredible design idea thank you
Something I remember hearing a lot growing up is that the best engineers tend to favor analog design over digital designs, and I feel that relying over a bus over fidget spinners really exemplifies this. Sure you can make everything by drones, but i’ve found that on my first save (where i used modular, only drones designs), ive spent a lot of time backtracking and debugging my system that would have been solidly managed by a bus foundation. The drones are good for patching up holes in the system but are far too unreliable once your entire mall is built upon them. Maybe if the devs take a look at improving the AI of drones past the “last tower built gets priority until full” I would use them more, but hubs are far more trustworthy. Thank you for sharing this!
I've been using this design since I first saw you creating it on stream. The convenience and simple ease of it trumps the spaghetti mess I used to create before.
The only real improvement I can suggest is adding a monitor to certain high-importance buildings. Your old make-everything polar hub had this, and it was useful to reach to "Oh shi-" situations.
The great thing about this design is the customizable and modular design. Don’t like where an item is built, you can change that, Don’t like what’s on the bus, you can change that. Could use “funny” vertical belts for the 1 to 2 buildings (Warning: Devs said it could crash the game and they have no intention on fixing the bug.) I prefer, order based on the crafting grid.
Long lines of colourfull items look cool, but you need a huge amount of space to build this mall, and there are lots of materials just laying on belts. I recently learned how easily you can create sushi belts with new splitters, and also u can use sushi in early game using boxes. With sushi belts u need only 3belts for a mall.
@@Khaim.m the sorting needs to have a dump at the end for all things not sorted, that's how I do it. Have a traffic monitor setup to warn you when it jams too. It's not completely automated. Though I'm sure you can.
It is a SPACE game, and space is full of... space. I don't see the obsession with making it compact. You have tons of space on your starter planet to build anything you need to complete the game with this bus. Optimizing for space is an irrelevant parameter
I've been playing alongside this play through since you started doing dark fogs. I've really enjoyed using this main bus style. A question for you: can you create a "complete" end game bus blueprint that could be dropped down in a new planet? Likely it would go in the "planet scale" blueprints book you have in your bookmarks. What you have already made IS the superior product, a simple and expandable way to increase your main bus as needed... But i'd love it if i could stamp down the end game one that included all the ILS.... maybe for patreon supporters? (I'll sign up!)
Actually ignore the conditional nature of my request regarding patreon. I just went ahead and signed up as a knight of the path. I love your content and am happy to support you just the way you are ;) Keep up the great work... and stay effective!
I create a giant smelter/subproduct array to feed my mall and use PLS's around a giant square so that everything I might want is within grabbing range. The main advantage is that your eyes don't go cross-eyed looking at the same pattern over and over again. There are two disadvantages though. 1. belting all the product neatly is time-consuming. 2. it makes it hard to put all mall products into an ISL later. I have to prioritize just the products I want.
I have to say, I made a bus on mine, though it circles the entire planet >.>. Made it that way just because I think it looks cool. Even have my research circling along lol
You can make the main bus a lot tighter if you offset the splitters ever other two intersections instead of right next to each other. Left right left right left right, etc.
I used his design. While you are correct you can make it more compact im not sure its a good idea. As it is you can snake a belt between splitters or other belt lines if a situation needs small localized spegetti. Ive had a few times where i needed to come out the back side of a splitter and sneek a belt though. Lets not even get into the plate of spaghetti it took to get around that mine my bus ran through.
I was never a fan of main bus on DSP. It takes so much space that probably means burying ores, and eventually I still need to upgrade everything into ILS and some buildings may occasionally need more production speed than one assembler. So I just have been putting everything directly into PLS and ILS. BUT, been playing on a near max difficulty which means I need to build more stuff locally for longer before setting out to other systems, a bus seems more useful. I also have to admit that I have been a bit lazy to draw the blueprint for the bus which previously only useful for a couple of hours, so something just in time for me to watch 😊
no burying ore. tho i did have to drill out a copper patch mid way down to fit 2 assemblers. just used that patch with priority then used the cleaned up real estate.
@@Nilaus Thanks for the info! My main point is that having stronger dark fog makes a main bus more needed so I finally will try to make one and your video came just in time! Thanks for all the guides
I think this is a great design, but a warning / caveat to go along with it. If you want 100% shield coverage of a planet, you need to put shield generators 45 degrees away from each other in all directions. This bus is, of course, larger than a 45 degree span of your planet. So if shield coverage is important to you, then plan pre-plan your shield placements along the 45 degree longitude and equator to accommodate the necessary latitudinal lines.
For 100% shield coverage you only need generators at the two lines closest to the equator (plus the poles, but not the equator itself). The bus might span from the equator to almost the next line, but it shouldn't actually reach the next line unless you're putting too much stuff on the bus. IIRC (don't have the game open right now) 100% coverage requires exactly 22 generators (10 each ring, plus 2 at poles), though you might want extra at the poles if you want something else at the actual pole and placing the generators offset.
@@Mirality Depends on what one means by coverage. The in-game stat measures if there is shield above the ground or not - not the height of the shield. So if you have it stretching and there is blue over an area and not white, then that counts for the statistic - but if you put anything tall there, it will still get hit by a bombardment. If you want the full white shield across the planet, it takes 26. 8 at each 45 degree parallel and 1 at each pole. The game text says you cannot get 100% without a minimum of 25 generators, but I don't think that is strictly enforced in the case of using less for blue coverage instead of white. Just flavor text. Either way, the point is; don't forget to plan for shield placement with your busses.
My 95% coverage blueprint has 20 generators (omits the poles). The shield is deep cyan, not white, but it does say 100% support in the gui. The white bar in the gui doesn't _quite_ go all the way to the edges but it's pretty darn close. I can't really see any variation in the shield itself. On another planet I have 32 generators more closely spaced (and covering poles) with 99% coverage and as best I can tell the same shade of deep cyan. The white bar in the gui is very slightly wider in that one but it's still showing 100% support. It hasn't been battle-tested yet though since I'm still earlyish-game and haven't annoyed the space hive much yet.
I stand by the ILS and bots method but it's cool to see someone actually make a bus. I tried it initially but it just didn't feel good compared to factorio. For a giant hub I think it's great though. I don't think it makes sense for big production setups.
I have to say, great work and thank you. Indeed this is a great way to make a bus, those blueprints to expand it (draggable and spacable too - although you worked out the ideal spacing along the bus I imagine) is appreciated. This would be my go-to if I ever try a bus. One thing that I wonder and I imagine you tried, is that if you want to expand production of things that are made by getting things off the bus, this would expand vertically? as opposed to horizontally but then again how many do we need (with the improved buildings and all). Also it would have been nice if you showed how to get new things on the bus i.e. as the bus gets thicker with new stuff e.g. processors, quantum processors etc. The other contender for building stuff in this game, the other method, is plots with ILS's. Dedicated ILS that only produce one thing, import stuff and export the product. The thing is, especially after the introduction of dark fog, I was imagining that the challenge would be introduced, regarding redundancy and survival and that is the disadvantage of the bus i guess. If the bus gets hit then everything halts. But if you have gone the way of plots, if you lose a plot on one planet, then you have others spread out in the universe, so that means you get a production hit, but can survive (Battlefield Analysis Bases do mitigate that as they do do repair - but sometimes when you get hit, you do get hit). On the other hand, the advantage of a bus in this case, is that if you go the plots way, then you have to remember where the plots are and end up travelling all over the place to get production rate back up. This way, with the bus, if you have one or two (identical) buses, you know exactly where to go to fix it. Having said that, the dark fog seems disappointing to start with. (Emphasis on *seems* cause there is potential if they chose to go that way) Before getting lazy and looking at other peoples hard work, such as yours and thank you, I started by putting turrets everywhere spread around my base, so hadn't realized that the fog only comes from one direction (if you set it up right - almost). Also I did not expect that interplanetary and intra-planetary transportations vehicles would not get hit. You can end up transporting between ILSs and see the "trucks" go right through the fog swarm in space, without getting a scratch. Not knowing that, delayed my getting it up and running, which is a pity since I would have hoped to make more use and incorporate more the whole planetary movement of the game, i.e. how planets move in the solar system, in relation to each other but now more importantly in relation to the fog, as to avoid it. Not sure how they would add that to the game (maybe some vehicles get hit, but how, and do then what? a way for us to organize it so that, time it so that "we don't cross the beams" and make it part of the challenge. It would be nice, coz otherwise it just for show and an idler (the space movement/billiards thing). But how? Don't get me wrong we do get to appreciate things, as the horses-for-courses suitability of inner planets for building dyson spheres (in this case) perhaps, but, and that's the point, generally speaking I like games for such, i.e. promoting learning. So having such modeled star systems with movements etc, is good as long as its part of the game so we bother to think about it towards whatever goal, and how it affects it. Still as I said, its early days. Imagine multiplayer, or a better fog, i.e. trying to hit you where it hurts, i.e. bottlenecks etc and what we can do to mitigate that, i,e, with redundancy and what type of redundancy, bus or plot? Anyway great work, thank you!
Personally I've found a bus system to be super handy in the early/midgame, belts are super cheap and can be quickly automated with like, 2 smelters and a fabricator.
The probably nicest thing about a bus system like this is with planning you can set up early and thus you only have to make your production hub once and just keep upgrading it, and not need to slap down an upgraded one later. The belt and sorter you can leave spaces for to avoid the clustering. I like the elegance and look of this. If concerned about how much space the belt lanes take up, you can stack another lane on top if you move the first 2 rows back a bit and the ramps slide down without clipping and look pretty nice. I suppose if someone was super pressed about the materials on the belts, you could put a return lane in, or like PLS units at the end of the bus to pick up the excess and then ship it back to the start. Power free you could loop the belt back around like maybe returning up top, or looping the planet if you were silly about it. People don't mind a buffer storage box but belt buffer gets them pressed need to relax more.
Looks nice. Last time I tried the factorio bots approach and had stroages with hats all over the place and bots to carry the resources, it was quite the mess.
I’m trying this right now, but the number one thing I find annoying is all the ressource nodes and oil seeps in the way of my bus! As far as I know the starter planet always has one side with ressources and the opposite side is pretty much bare, so that would be great for the bus, except in the beginning before you have planetary logistics, you need your ressources to be close by. And there’s a dark fog base in the middle of the bare half now.
You can "hide" resources by putting down foundations and fiddling with the settings to hide resource veins under the foundation, so can build over them. Of course, you can't use the hidden veins any more, but they aren't gone either, and can be made accessible again by the same tool. It's not an optimal solution, but if you don't really need the resource veins it's a valid option.
As someone who’s inability to organise always becomes my downfall in these types of games, these blueprints and this guide are a massive help. Thank you.
I haven't played in a while the bus design looks neat but unless the game has changed massively with the dark fog update (which I don't really care for fighting enemies in a factory game) All it is is basically an early mid game mall. but none of the products are being fed into logistics tower's so when your working on a project 5 or 10 LY away or 40 - you need to fly back to the mall each time. I prefer to have an ILS dedicated to each finished building so I can request anything to come to me on demand. Second off in the early game the starting planet is annoying because of all the water and invonveniently placed ore patches will inevitably cause obstacles to your mall and by it's nature and lenght it will be using very valuable real estate. right above or below the equator. I like circular polar malls with a revolving sushi belt of warpers around it that are more efficient to fill in using soil pile which is the only resource that's actually hard to get, use useless real estate, the figget spinners have a low travel distance ect. power demands should be the same cause at the end of the day you will just deconstruct all the early game shit and build proper end game arrays to harvest resources to either feed the bus or feed individual ILS's
@Nilaus, If you want to use Drones with BABs, you can set the BABs to grab the drones, then drop the drones on the ground to let the BABs pick them up themselves. Would that be worth trying for you?
While I like the idea of this main bus approach, it just takes up SO much room on the planet when you've got all the different materials on it. I think the bus is useful in the beginning to make all the different buildings up to like Oil processing, but after that I prefer smaller separate production areas. Maybe it's just because I rarely/never use busses in factory games, but it just feels wasteful to have that much area taken up by a sea of belts.
What is more important to have on your starter planet than you central HUB? You have a galaxy worth of space so go build production there and consolidate your construction on the home world
Can you make a blueprint for Titanium Crystals? I know it’s a super easy recipe and setup but I enjoy your designs and optimizations. Would love to see your take on it with blue proliferation.
my construstors have a little bid of belt and sorters for the intakes allready in the blueprint (for easy connecting) but the rest looks very much like my own version
I still prefer your old 'temple of build anything' blueprint. Was easy enough to put the plasma cannon on it, and then modify the belt/sorter/assembler build to have an extension for implosion cannons, missile launchers, shields, babs, and laser turrets. I changed the alert sensor on the intermediate building hub to do turrets instead.
The only thing I don't like with this is it doesn't leave much room for resource input as you scale up prior to logistics. You don't need more than 3-4 factories for belts, sorters etc but many of them take 3-4 ingredients and with only 3 spaces between fabricators it can lead to spaghetti or production limitations. Leaving one more space between fabricators gives more room to scale up without having to change the layout later.
For me, this has completely replaced a compact 'all buildings' mall design I found on Steam two years ago (obsoleted by the combat update too, of course). The bus is great for wide varieties of low-volume items such as buildings. Not so good for bulk production, naturally, but it's important to use the right tool for the job.
This design is theoretically future proof of additional new buildings or components are added in future updates or DLC. Just add more items to the end, and add new belts if the new components meet your threshold for belting (Nilaus says he uses 3, but any number could work)
Was there any implementation of the bus through blocks with storage and spinners? It would be interesting to see. It's just that this bus is quite large for a mall.
How is the Depot connected to the Splitters without a Sorter?? I must be missing something. Tech? Upgrade? Knowledge of this game's mechanics? All the above? I am going crazy. And, yes, I could download the blueprint; however, I need to build this myself since I couldn't think of this myself.
Semi-dumb idea that kind of makes [early game] sense: place the lower producing items (processors, q-chips, etc) at the bottom of the bus and the higher producing ones (copper, iron, stone, etc) at the top. This will minimize the amount of valuable stuff that is sitting on the vertical assembler distribution branch.
I noticed a flaw in the "New Early Hub" "#01 Circuits + Coils" blueprint. The sorters between the last magnet smelter and the coil assembler are incorrect. It is attempting to insert iron ore into the assembler making the coils then another sorter attempting to move coils into the magnet smelter. You can see the smelter has a yellow dot indicating it is not operating.
Hi, Thank you so much for your great videos. I do have a question between belt focused bus and drone focused bus. so my mid game bus is heavily focused on drones. if I can post my video, I have thousands flying around. it makes things easier for me, my personal opinion. The only benefit that I can think the belt focused bus has, is that you can access it very early, and it does not use nearly as much power as drone based. However, in mid to late game power will not be an issue since I usually have 5 equatorial belts of solar and 4 belts of ray receivers. The question I have, can belt focused bus deliver as fast as drone focused bus for the end game? because I remember in factorio, LOVE that game, there was a limit on how much you could do with belt focused bus and then the best bus for mega factory was using trains.
I hacked my way through building a main bus, but I had no space and was forced to run it north/south. While it is working, it is turning into a soppy sloppy spaghetti nightmare!
Look super organized, exactly what I always try and never get 😅 Just for clarification: you "only" use the main bus for constructing buildings? Not for ammo, sphere components, matrix or anything else? And do you seperate the ressource between these types strictly? I'm not sure if I have discipline to not use the main bus for everything 😂
Its sure does look good and its also fairly easy to build. The only issue I had with it is that certain buildings are just to slow to build with just 1 assembler.
Which ones would that be? I have built 60 Science / sec with a single assembler for Belts and only very rarely had issues. Now you even have speed 3 assemblers, so I fail to see what you are consistently consuming faster than the craft speed of your fastest assembler
@@Nilaus I think I had a bottleneck with bots and some other late stuff. That obviously not entirely the builds fault. Should have checked belts and input. Fully on bots was maybe another not so optimal thing. Or me reserving more space would allow for 2-3 assemblers next or behind each other. Tldr: Dont build brain dead :)
Think one way to improve that bus is to sort the buildings by what materials they need. For example a lot of early buildings don't need such complex components like the quantum chips. So it makes no sense to start the quantum chip lane all the way at the beginning. With sorted buildings you can start lines for more complex resources further down the bus. This also mitigates the part you talked about that there is a lot of material on the belt cause belts for those materials are shorter and don't run past all the production that never need them anyways.
It'd be interesting to compare performance between bus & logistics. If it's anything like Factorio's belt optimizations a bus should provide somewhat better framerates.
There is no way whatever planet you build a mall on, in whatever form it takes, has even a tiny performance impact compared to a single dyson sphere. It might be interesting, but it sounds like premature optimization to me.
If anyone is interested here is how many times you use each product to build every building.
Steel: 18 Times
Circuit Board: 17 Times
Iron: 14 Times
Super Magnetic Rings: 12 Times
Titanium Alloy: 10 Times
Plasma Exciters: 8 Times
Stone: 8 Times
Gears: 8 Times
Electromagnetic Rings: 7 Times
Frame Materials: 7 Times
Particle Containers: 6 Times
Glass: 5 Times
Processors: 4 Times
Photon Combiners: 4 Times
Engine: 4 Times
Quantum Chips: 4 times
Electric Motor: 3 Times
Silicon: 3 Times
Electro-Magnetic Turbines: 3 Times
Copper: 2 Times
Graphene: 1 Time
Carbon Nanotubes: 1 Time
Titanium: 1 Time
Amazing, thank you!
Surprising how few buildings use titanium or copper plates directly. Makes sense to just shuttle them in with fidget spinners, along with everything else that supplies 4 or less assemblers.
When you say "every building" you seem to exclude the Mk2 Smelters, Miners, and Chem Labs, correct? Did you exclude anything else?
Thank you mate
Another really big advantage with this design is that centralizing all of your production makes it much easier to identify and resolve bottlenecks and throughput issues (as opposed to flying all over your planet trying to locate a specific production facility).
It may not be efficient use of planet real estate, but does make for efficient use of engineer time, ease of use, and quality of life.
Bravo Nilaus! 👏
I said the same in another comment! If you're disorganized like me, main buses force you to arrange things logically in a straight line. I have an ILS-based "mall planet" and it took almost no time to set up, but now I waste huge amounts of time trying to find things.
@@jamesdowell5268 I guess you can hook up chests with spinners and just request from backpack but I also waste time finding stuff when I need larger quantities
I'm always a little confused by people that are obsessed with efficient use of space. I get if you're going for the no foundation achievement, but otherwise, you have 64 stars with 2-3 planets each, not counting gas giants. You literally have hundreds of planets. You can dedicate entire planets to one item, of course you have space to dedicate for this.
@@7ninjasstudios808 space on the initial planet is limited, especially when you crank up the difficulty of dark fog, and other system needs higher tech. Main bus is most useful for early games, solutions are more diverse for late game
@@7ninjasstudios808 I only do it because I personally find it fun. After you "beat" the game you kindof get to create your own goals, and space efficiency is one that I find to be fulfilling
Thank you. This is super helpful. I don't want to learn all the ratio of different crafts and use calculator. I have started playing this game for experience and had fun but then i watched some youtube videos with tipis because i was starting to had some problems with not enough automation, and i was busy all the time crafting with 30m que.. After watching those videos with tips and blueprints I was discuraged to play this game becaue there was no sense for me just to use other people designs and solution and they where extra efficient and complicated. I remember thinking that there has to be some easy standarized way to craft basic things. And here comes you like a knight in shining armour. I want to have my own experaince and learn a thing or two and not just copy what others did. But this thing is just perfect for me. I can use the bus for some essential crafting and have my own experiance with designing different things. And your way of explaining things work for me perfectly. I have started new game and i have fun again. THANK YOU :)
The only reason I dislike bot/ILS bases over this is: if you're not a fairly organized person, it quickly becomes very hard to remember where you put things. I have a 100% ILS "mall planet" that makes everything and it was extremely quick & easy to build, but now I spend most of my time flying around the planet looking for the one ILS that makes a certain thing. Main buses force you to arrange things logically and in a straight line -- so they're harder to set up, but potentially easier to use once they're done!
Or you can just:
1. planet view and get to the 0ls, you can grab anything from any pls on the planet view.
2. Ask it in a pls, it will arrive there
I believe you can paint your planet using foundation for better recognition of what and where you built
If you have it all set up with ILS, then why not fly the completed buildings into a central square or polar hub for easy access? Seems like you're far enough in not to have this issue, tbh.
@@hodorhodl7061 Yeah I do that, what I meant is I have trouble finding the ILS-connected assemblers/smelters that are making the buildings/items in the first place. Using only PLS/ILS to deliver to & distribute from assemblers let's you "get away with" spamming the same ILS-->assembler blueprint anywhere you want on a planet. It's way easier to build in the first place, but I end up with a sea of assemblers in all directions building things unrelated to their neighboring assembler lines, so it's hard to find things. Main buses force me to approximately order my assemblers from the simplest to the most complex outputs, and force me to order them all in a straight line. Way easier to find stuff, given my playstyle
Good idea@@Serafim1991!
We really appreciate all the hard work you put in for these blueprints and videos. I've been using a handful of your early game blueprints on my recent restart to play against the Fog and it has SAVED ME SOOO MUCH TIME! Thanks!!
I really don't understand why you use blueprints of others, part of the fun comes from making them yourself!
This design is brilliant! I've been using it since your first video of it, 3-4 weeks ago. Works perfectly. Easy to set up, easy to expand, easy to customize. 🤘
I have never had sex with a dolphin.
this video changed everything. i now have a factory for orbital collectors, because why not!!! thanks for sharing your awesome blueprints!
i bought this game cause of you, but i haven't been playing it since i struggle with designs, and mechanics (im used to fatorio). but this was a very clever way of making a main bus. i didn't know that you can have different configurations of the splitters🤔
this will get me started playing again, THANK YOU!!
I literally learned that about splitters in this video. I didn't know you can have a 2 floor variant. This makes the busses soo easy really if you have the main bus on floor 2 it doesn't get in the way if you have to route something under it. Also the pull-off of stuff with the splitters is gold.
This is beautiful! Notes of old school circuit board design!
Have you considered designing Farm/Mall Planet? Like half of the planet is for dark fog bases and the other - sorter of loot and mall. I think dark fog drops pretty much all of the resources needed for mall (even thrusters and such) and if you have ~10 max level bases on the planet you get loooots of loot (more than full 30/s belt for a base). One probably could make a mall that completely independent and doesn't consume any mined resources.
Also - transforming 10-20 lines of unsorted loot into an orderly main bus would look amazing)
He’s got a sorting blueprint which with logistics hats might be really useful to use.
I set up 2 extra lanes between iron and the builders. Both are mostly empty, but I put a box and hat over the splitter of one to request intermediate buildings and the other for a little bit of blue spray for those components (but it could just be made perminant on the lowest belt)
On the north side of hub I also have a buffer building extra processors for the mid game but on the lowest priority to feed the belt.
It would be good to get blueprints for the "upgrades" as well -- one for the full late-game bus, one for the proliferation and monitors, and one or two for the ILSes (input and output). While most of these are fairly simple, placement can be fiddly and it's nice to have something preconfigured.
a better counter-argument for the item in the belt would be to contrast with item waiting in planetary, much less in the belt than any planetary based build
I noticed that the sorters pulling stuff out of assemblers to go into other assemblers to be a little slow when starting up the bus. I put the storage behind the assemblers on splitters, then continued the belts to the adjacent assemblers. It still looks aesthetic imo and it prioritizes evenly distributing to the dependent assemblers before storing excess.
Yeah it’s kinda annoying that you can’t have them 1 tile appart. They’re either 2 tiles appart or too close to build sorters.
You can make this design 2x more compact by having the belts right next to each other instead of spaced out. The splitters have to zig zag instead of being right on top of each other, but honestly that looks very good.
I use this HUB in my game. After I saw u do it a few episodes in. And I love it. OMG.
Thank you so much for these blueprints! I'm going to start a new game JUST because of this. You're the best!
i love this design, it's plain and simply good.
My one suggestion would be to add to the blueprint stub belts with input sorters next to the assemblers. That way you just have to drag belts and you're done, instead of also needing to configure sorters for each one.
I don't like that at all. That would mean there are little empty belt stubs when you have a building with 2 items... ick! and you still have to add sorters for buildings with 4 or 5 inputs
I've done that with mine. I'd rather delete ten extra belts and two sorters attached to the assembling machine instead of fiddling with attaching them. I've moved the power pole one square closer to the bus so that when I'm building a connector between two assemblers I don't have to delete and replace it. I'm also toying with exactly how I want to add an incoming fidget spinner box between the two assemblers for those extra non-bused products, using the same 'I'd rather delete it' logic.
At one point I had decided to box-craft all my buildings with logistics bots supplying all the materials, but to no surprise, it takes way too much room and way too much power to maintain all the bots constantly flying around. In addition, the range of the bots was frustratingly short early game, so I was forced to constantly ferry over items like electromagnetic turbines. After switching to a main bus design (which of course I overbuilt, putting titanium, crystalline silicon, and every other single-use item on), I was much happier with the end result. YOU MUST PROLIFERATE! Amazing how much a little coal can create so many extra products.
It works if you make it a polar hub.
Great for beginners but I def prefer a far more compact mall with a combination of pls/belts for most early stuff and logistics boxes for the more unique end game buildings. It also makes it much easier to to grab what you need all in one place, all buildings are in reach with minimal movement.
Love the content and the blueprints, Nilaus, thank you! One suggestion would be to add the youtube links in the description of each Blueprint to the video where you show it's use! It would helpful for newer players like myself.
Awesome main bus, neat and orderly. Easy to find and order any items you may need.
Just started DSP, and just started using this setup. Its incredibly simple and efficient to use once its up and running. You were right, its a bit of a pain to get it going, but once its up, setting up segments for automation is amazing.
If you alternate the position of the splitters (so they're not right next to each other), you can fit twice as many belt lanes in the same space. It's a little harder to work with because there's less space to see below the bus and place belts under there, but it's literally twice as compact! It's personal preference, really. You can always make a design smaller if you're willing to make it more convoluted :)
If you split off of the top lane instead of the bottom, it's easier to see your working belts and they can return to ground level in the same amount of space as the current design [With exception to the first 1-2 lanes]. All the resources going down the top looks really nice, but it can be a PITA to build under.
Had the same idea months ago, but what Nilaus shows here is quire efficient and above all simple.
Alternating splitters for example heavily restricts the amount of items you can request in or you have a much less modular setup as only certain items can go on certain parts.
@@Taliseth good point
Ok, but why cause a less efficient to work with design. You have plenty of real estate on the planets to do something like this. It’s neat and orderly, consistent and quick to expand. With staggered splitters it’s way more finicky to work with.
@@tricorius9653 It's just personal preference, I like the way it looks when the lanes are compact like that
excellent! I have been watching your death world streams but I am glad that you took the time to show us your setup. I've seen some others streamers on twitch do horrible things. Thanks for insisting on non-chaos builds.
11:07 actually as long as you go directly side-wards from the metal distributer you can fit in 11 belts, given that two of them are metal.
I'd be interested, once you've played with it for a bit, to here if you have a recommended order of item that takes advantage of the synergies of similar items. I picked up on the obvious ones like PLS -> ILS -> Gas Collect, but I picked up a few more watching this. Some times it's not obvious until way down the road when you unlock something that you should have inserted something else earlier. A simple "recommended order" list would be awesome.
Truly a work of art :) I've been tempted to try something this, but just haven't yet. It just takes so much space. For that much space (I know it's not as visually interesting) I'd just as much rather use logistics stations... Thanks for all the awesome content Nilaus!
I like the modularity of this design
I've been there, too, but I've settled on a sushi belt design. I've come to the conclusion that a main bus quickly becomes way too wide the more buildings you add. Before the Dark Fog update, you needed 34 different types of components (not counting other buildings) to build every single building in the game in vastly different quantities ranging from 0.45/s (strange matter) to a whopping 47.75/s (iron ingot) to satisfy the demand of a single Mk.III assembler per building. Your idea for a hybrid design with bots for lesser-used components is great though.
Using Sushi Belts, you only need 4 quad stacked belts in instead of 34 and every single assembler taps the same 4 belts and builds whatever recipe you assign to it (you have to cross-feed buildings to the neighboring assembly machine when you need buildings as components). And yes, I do have a working non-blocking sushi belt mall that builds every building plus drones, vessels and bots. I still have to upgrade it to the dark fog update which should be doable relatively quickly.
@Nilaus
The last smelter for your Magnets isn't hooked up!
Love all your vids, it really helped me learn how to think more efficiently when planning logistical routes - Yeah, I used your vids to get better at my day job.
You rock.
Definitely using this on my next playthrough, may even start a 2nd "main" base on the current one to test it out
im very new to factory games, and my biggest problem is trying to manage what i have producing and what i need more of a bus makes things so much simpler and easier to understand whats going on, incredible design idea thank you
Something I remember hearing a lot growing up is that the best engineers tend to favor analog design over digital designs, and I feel that relying over a bus over fidget spinners really exemplifies this.
Sure you can make everything by drones, but i’ve found that on my first save (where i used modular, only drones designs), ive spent a lot of time backtracking and debugging my system that would have been solidly managed by a bus foundation. The drones are good for patching up holes in the system but are far too unreliable once your entire mall is built upon them.
Maybe if the devs take a look at improving the AI of drones past the “last tower built gets priority until full” I would use them more, but hubs are far more trustworthy.
Thank you for sharing this!
Thats actually very good, and i create my own bus, thanks for the guide!!
When dragging a BP, no need to tab multiple times, just hit the "-" button once, and you're good to drag out several BPs.
I've been using this design since I first saw you creating it on stream. The convenience and simple ease of it trumps the spaghetti mess I used to create before.
The only real improvement I can suggest is adding a monitor to certain high-importance buildings. Your old make-everything polar hub had this, and it was useful to reach to "Oh shi-" situations.
oO, saw your first steps with new bus on twitch some weeks ago. really interesting how you developed it!
The great thing about this design is the customizable and modular design.
Don’t like where an item is built, you can change that, Don’t like what’s on the bus, you can change that. Could use “funny” vertical belts for the 1 to 2 buildings (Warning: Devs said it could crash the game and they have no intention on fixing the bug.)
I prefer, order based on the crafting grid.
Long lines of colourfull items look cool, but you need a huge amount of space to build this mall, and there are lots of materials just laying on belts. I recently learned how easily you can create sushi belts with new splitters, and also u can use sushi in early game using boxes.
With sushi belts u need only 3belts for a mall.
Same, i once a suchi mall blueprint аnd it helped so much and beeng so compact in mid game that i used it until almost the end of the game)
How do you balance the sushi? Won't the belts get stuck with the least used item clogging everything up?
@@Khaim.m the sorting needs to have a dump at the end for all things not sorted, that's how I do it. Have a traffic monitor setup to warn you when it jams too. It's not completely automated. Though I'm sure you can.
They don't get stuck. Google: Dyson Sphere Program - Guide to Sushi Belts@@Khaim.m
It is a SPACE game, and space is full of... space. I don't see the obsession with making it compact. You have tons of space on your starter planet to build anything you need to complete the game with this bus. Optimizing for space is an irrelevant parameter
I did this but I made it half as wide and stacked it two sorters high. Harder to design but super nice.
I've been playing alongside this play through since you started doing dark fogs. I've really enjoyed using this main bus style. A question for you: can you create a "complete" end game bus blueprint that could be dropped down in a new planet? Likely it would go in the "planet scale" blueprints book you have in your bookmarks. What you have already made IS the superior product, a simple and expandable way to increase your main bus as needed... But i'd love it if i could stamp down the end game one that included all the ILS.... maybe for patreon supporters? (I'll sign up!)
Actually ignore the conditional nature of my request regarding patreon. I just went ahead and signed up as a knight of the path. I love your content and am happy to support you just the way you are ;) Keep up the great work... and stay effective!
Very good idea for initial research and staying organized when starting off. Plus belts dont use energy and fidget spinners do
I create a giant smelter/subproduct array to feed my mall and use PLS's around a giant square so that everything I might want is within grabbing range. The main advantage is that your eyes don't go cross-eyed looking at the same pattern over and over again. There are two disadvantages though. 1. belting all the product neatly is time-consuming. 2. it makes it hard to put all mall products into an ISL later. I have to prioritize just the products I want.
I have to say, I made a bus on mine, though it circles the entire planet >.>. Made it that way just because I think it looks cool. Even have my research circling along lol
You'e the hardest working man in gaming.
You can make the main bus a lot tighter if you offset the splitters ever other two intersections instead of right next to each other. Left right left right left right, etc.
I used his design. While you are correct you can make it more compact im not sure its a good idea. As it is you can snake a belt between splitters or other belt lines if a situation needs small localized spegetti. Ive had a few times where i needed to come out the back side of a splitter and sneek a belt though. Lets not even get into the plate of spaghetti it took to get around that mine my bus ran through.
why would that be better? This game takes place in space and you know what space is full of... space! So you have plenty of room to build
I was never a fan of main bus on DSP. It takes so much space that probably means burying ores, and eventually I still need to upgrade everything into ILS and some buildings may occasionally need more production speed than one assembler. So I just have been putting everything directly into PLS and ILS. BUT, been playing on a near max difficulty which means I need to build more stuff locally for longer before setting out to other systems, a bus seems more useful. I also have to admit that I have been a bit lazy to draw the blueprint for the bus which previously only useful for a couple of hours, so something just in time for me to watch 😊
Every world in DSP has ~½ of the planet around equator that doesnt have resources, so you can always find space for this without burrowing ore
no burying ore. tho i did have to drill out a copper patch mid way down to fit 2 assemblers. just used that patch with priority then used the cleaned up real estate.
@@Nilaus Thanks for the info! My main point is that having stronger dark fog makes a main bus more needed so I finally will try to make one and your video came just in time! Thanks for all the guides
@@eonmoon2166 yeah it is a pain to bury them on 0.5x or lower
I think this is a great design, but a warning / caveat to go along with it. If you want 100% shield coverage of a planet, you need to put shield generators 45 degrees away from each other in all directions. This bus is, of course, larger than a 45 degree span of your planet. So if shield coverage is important to you, then plan pre-plan your shield placements along the 45 degree longitude and equator to accommodate the necessary latitudinal lines.
For 100% shield coverage you only need generators at the two lines closest to the equator (plus the poles, but not the equator itself). The bus might span from the equator to almost the next line, but it shouldn't actually reach the next line unless you're putting too much stuff on the bus.
IIRC (don't have the game open right now) 100% coverage requires exactly 22 generators (10 each ring, plus 2 at poles), though you might want extra at the poles if you want something else at the actual pole and placing the generators offset.
@@Mirality Depends on what one means by coverage. The in-game stat measures if there is shield above the ground or not - not the height of the shield. So if you have it stretching and there is blue over an area and not white, then that counts for the statistic - but if you put anything tall there, it will still get hit by a bombardment. If you want the full white shield across the planet, it takes 26. 8 at each 45 degree parallel and 1 at each pole. The game text says you cannot get 100% without a minimum of 25 generators, but I don't think that is strictly enforced in the case of using less for blue coverage instead of white. Just flavor text.
Either way, the point is; don't forget to plan for shield placement with your busses.
My 95% coverage blueprint has 20 generators (omits the poles). The shield is deep cyan, not white, but it does say 100% support in the gui. The white bar in the gui doesn't _quite_ go all the way to the edges but it's pretty darn close. I can't really see any variation in the shield itself.
On another planet I have 32 generators more closely spaced (and covering poles) with 99% coverage and as best I can tell the same shade of deep cyan. The white bar in the gui is very slightly wider in that one but it's still showing 100% support.
It hasn't been battle-tested yet though since I'm still earlyish-game and haven't annoyed the space hive much yet.
This is so cool! Thank you
I stand by the ILS and bots method but it's cool to see someone actually make a bus. I tried it initially but it just didn't feel good compared to factorio.
For a giant hub I think it's great though. I don't think it makes sense for big production setups.
This is beautiful.❤
I have to say, great work and thank you. Indeed this is a great way to make a bus, those blueprints to expand it (draggable and spacable too - although you worked out the ideal spacing along the bus I imagine) is appreciated.
This would be my go-to if I ever try a bus.
One thing that I wonder and I imagine you tried, is that if you want to expand production of things that are made by getting things off the bus, this would expand vertically? as opposed to horizontally but then again how many do we need (with the improved buildings and all). Also it would have been nice if you showed how to get new things on the bus i.e. as the bus gets thicker with new stuff e.g. processors, quantum processors etc.
The other contender for building stuff in this game, the other method, is plots with ILS's. Dedicated ILS that only produce one thing, import stuff and export the product.
The thing is, especially after the introduction of dark fog, I was imagining that the challenge would be introduced, regarding redundancy and survival and that is the disadvantage of the bus i guess. If the bus gets hit then everything halts. But if you have gone the way of plots, if you lose a plot on one planet, then you have others spread out in the universe, so that means you get a production hit, but can survive (Battlefield Analysis Bases do mitigate that as they do do repair - but sometimes when you get hit, you do get hit). On the other hand, the advantage of a bus in this case, is that if you go the plots way, then you have to remember where the plots are and end up travelling all over the place to get production rate back up. This way, with the bus, if you have one or two (identical) buses, you know exactly where to go to fix it.
Having said that, the dark fog seems disappointing to start with. (Emphasis on *seems* cause there is potential if they chose to go that way) Before getting lazy and looking at other peoples hard work, such as yours and thank you, I started by putting turrets everywhere spread around my base, so hadn't realized that the fog only comes from one direction (if you set it up right - almost). Also I did not expect that interplanetary and intra-planetary transportations vehicles would not get hit. You can end up transporting between ILSs and see the "trucks" go right through the fog swarm in space, without getting a scratch.
Not knowing that, delayed my getting it up and running, which is a pity since I would have hoped to make more use and incorporate more the whole planetary movement of the game, i.e. how planets move in the solar system, in relation to each other but now more importantly in relation to the fog, as to avoid it. Not sure how they would add that to the game (maybe some vehicles get hit, but how, and do then what? a way for us to organize it so that, time it so that "we don't cross the beams" and make it part of the challenge. It would be nice, coz otherwise it just for show and an idler (the space movement/billiards thing). But how? Don't get me wrong we do get to appreciate things, as the horses-for-courses suitability of inner planets for building dyson spheres (in this case) perhaps, but, and that's the point, generally speaking I like games for such, i.e. promoting learning. So having such modeled star systems with movements etc, is good as long as its part of the game so we bother to think about it towards whatever goal, and how it affects it.
Still as I said, its early days. Imagine multiplayer, or a better fog, i.e. trying to hit you where it hurts, i.e. bottlenecks etc and what we can do to mitigate that, i,e, with redundancy and what type of redundancy, bus or plot?
Anyway great work, thank you!
Personally I've found a bus system to be super handy in the early/midgame, belts are super cheap and can be quickly automated with like, 2 smelters and a fabricator.
Amazing video again!
I recommend to build a bus only for the basic items. And then build drones.
The probably nicest thing about a bus system like this is with planning you can set up early and thus you only have to make your production hub once and just keep upgrading it, and not need to slap down an upgraded one later. The belt and sorter you can leave spaces for to avoid the clustering. I like the elegance and look of this. If concerned about how much space the belt lanes take up, you can stack another lane on top if you move the first 2 rows back a bit and the ramps slide down without clipping and look pretty nice. I suppose if someone was super pressed about the materials on the belts, you could put a return lane in, or like PLS units at the end of the bus to pick up the excess and then ship it back to the start. Power free you could loop the belt back around like maybe returning up top, or looping the planet if you were silly about it. People don't mind a buffer storage box but belt buffer gets them pressed need to relax more.
Looks nice. Last time I tried the factorio bots approach and had stroages with hats all over the place and bots to carry the resources, it was quite the mess.
I’m trying this right now, but the number one thing I find annoying is all the ressource nodes and oil seeps in the way of my bus!
As far as I know the starter planet always has one side with ressources and the opposite side is pretty much bare, so that would be great for the bus, except in the beginning before you have planetary logistics, you need your ressources to be close by.
And there’s a dark fog base in the middle of the bare half now.
You can "hide" resources by putting down foundations and fiddling with the settings to hide resource veins under the foundation, so can build over them. Of course, you can't use the hidden veins any more, but they aren't gone either, and can be made accessible again by the same tool. It's not an optimal solution, but if you don't really need the resource veins it's a valid option.
@@danielh.9010 yeah I know I can hide them, I did hide some, but at some point I know I’m gonna have to make a hole in my bus to get to them.
Oh boy, as a new player I didn't know you could change the style of the splitters.
That changes things...
So I'm guessing Nilaus is planning to make one of the planets into a "Deathstar" to take out the Dark Storm satellite bases LOL!
could you publish a complete blueprint, maybe not the towers, but all lines and all production?
Thank you!
Its beatiful
As someone who’s inability to organise always becomes my downfall in these types of games, these blueprints and this guide are a massive help. Thank you.
I haven't played in a while the bus design looks neat but unless the game has changed massively with the dark fog update (which I don't really care for fighting enemies in a factory game) All it is is basically an early mid game mall. but none of the products are being fed into logistics tower's so when your working on a project 5 or 10 LY away or 40 - you need to fly back to the mall each time. I prefer to have an ILS dedicated to each finished building so I can request anything to come to me on demand.
Second off in the early game the starting planet is annoying because of all the water and invonveniently placed ore patches will inevitably cause obstacles to your mall and by it's nature and lenght it will be using very valuable real estate. right above or below the equator.
I like circular polar malls with a revolving sushi belt of warpers around it that are more efficient to fill in using soil pile which is the only resource that's actually hard to get, use useless real estate, the figget spinners have a low travel distance ect. power demands should be the same cause at the end of the day you will just deconstruct all the early game shit and build proper end game arrays to harvest resources to either feed the bus or feed individual ILS's
@Nilaus, If you want to use Drones with BABs, you can set the BABs to grab the drones, then drop the drones on the ground to let the BABs pick them up themselves. Would that be worth trying for you?
Thank you so much! This is what I've been trying to figure out for hours now!
While I like the idea of this main bus approach, it just takes up SO much room on the planet when you've got all the different materials on it. I think the bus is useful in the beginning to make all the different buildings up to like Oil processing, but after that I prefer smaller separate production areas.
Maybe it's just because I rarely/never use busses in factory games, but it just feels wasteful to have that much area taken up by a sea of belts.
What is more important to have on your starter planet than you central HUB?
You have a galaxy worth of space so go build production there and consolidate your construction on the home world
Can you make a blueprint for Titanium Crystals? I know it’s a super easy recipe and setup but I enjoy your designs and optimizations. Would love to see your take on it with blue proliferation.
my construstors have a little bid of belt and sorters for the intakes allready in the blueprint (for easy connecting) but the rest looks very much like my own version
I still prefer your old 'temple of build anything' blueprint. Was easy enough to put the plasma cannon on it, and then modify the belt/sorter/assembler build to have an extension for implosion cannons, missile launchers, shields, babs, and laser turrets. I changed the alert sensor on the intermediate building hub to do turrets instead.
The only thing I don't like with this is it doesn't leave much room for resource input as you scale up prior to logistics. You don't need more than 3-4 factories for belts, sorters etc but many of them take 3-4 ingredients and with only 3 spaces between fabricators it can lead to spaghetti or production limitations. Leaving one more space between fabricators gives more room to scale up without having to change the layout later.
For me, this has completely replaced a compact 'all buildings' mall design I found on Steam two years ago (obsoleted by the combat update too, of course).
The bus is great for wide varieties of low-volume items such as buildings. Not so good for bulk production, naturally, but it's important to use the right tool for the job.
This design is theoretically future proof of additional new buildings or components are added in future updates or DLC. Just add more items to the end, and add new belts if the new components meet your threshold for belting (Nilaus says he uses 3, but any number could work)
Thanks
Simply couldn’t get as far as I have in this amazing game without your help. Long overdue thanks from me 👍😊
I like your bus a lot, I even use it in my game. But I don't lay that flat. I have 2 layers. it makes footprint to be smaller :)
Was there any implementation of the bus through blocks with storage and spinners? It would be interesting to see.
It's just that this bus is quite large for a mall.
Perfect, you made me trash my newest run.
I’m not angry, I hated my setup anyway, I just needed a reason to do it, so I’m quite happy.
Thx for the video!
How is the Depot connected to the Splitters without a Sorter?? I must be missing something. Tech? Upgrade? Knowledge of this game's mechanics? All the above? I am going crazy. And, yes, I could download the blueprint; however, I need to build this myself since I couldn't think of this myself.
same issue here
loved it
Semi-dumb idea that kind of makes [early game] sense: place the lower producing items (processors, q-chips, etc) at the bottom of the bus and the higher producing ones (copper, iron, stone, etc) at the top. This will minimize the amount of valuable stuff that is sitting on the vertical assembler distribution branch.
I noticed a flaw in the "New Early Hub" "#01 Circuits + Coils" blueprint. The sorters between the last magnet smelter and the coil assembler are incorrect. It is attempting to insert iron ore into the assembler making the coils then another sorter attempting to move coils into the magnet smelter. You can see the smelter has a yellow dot indicating it is not operating.
it doesn't work if you stamp it down on ghosts, but if you wait until the first part is fully built then it snaps correctly
How do you attach belts on lvl 2 of a splitter? it only lets me connect right at the ground...
I had the same question.
The answer is to press tab before you place it.
There's actually 3 configurations for splitters.
@@ZW6604 OMG thanks haha
Factorio God Returns!
Looks like I'll be rebuilding my bus tonight.
Hi, Thank you so much for your great videos. I do have a question between belt focused bus and drone focused bus. so my mid game bus is heavily focused on drones. if I can post my video, I have thousands flying around. it makes things easier for me, my personal opinion. The only benefit that I can think the belt focused bus has, is that you can access it very early, and it does not use nearly as much power as drone based. However, in mid to late game power will not be an issue since I usually have 5 equatorial belts of solar and 4 belts of ray receivers. The question I have, can belt focused bus deliver as fast as drone focused bus for the end game? because I remember in factorio, LOVE that game, there was a limit on how much you could do with belt focused bus and then the best bus for mega factory was using trains.
I hacked my way through building a main bus, but I had no space and was forced to run it north/south. While it is working, it is turning into a soppy sloppy spaghetti nightmare!
why not layer the charger pole + missle tower thing behind the power pole similar to how you stack belts/sorters/assemblers?
Bus it super helpful
Look super organized, exactly what I always try and never get 😅
Just for clarification: you "only" use the main bus for constructing buildings? Not for ammo, sphere components, matrix or anything else?
And do you seperate the ressource between these types strictly?
I'm not sure if I have discipline to not use the main bus for everything 😂
Can you please show how you support all those belts with each items? All we see is the nice bit but they all have to be made somewhere first right?
Developers should add a dark fog unit that steals from belt storage. A stealth unit perhaps?
Its sure does look good and its also fairly easy to build. The only issue I had with it is that certain buildings are just to slow to build with just 1 assembler.
Which ones would that be?
I have built 60 Science / sec with a single assembler for Belts and only very rarely had issues. Now you even have speed 3 assemblers, so I fail to see what you are consistently consuming faster than the craft speed of your fastest assembler
@@Nilaus I think I had a bottleneck with bots and some other late stuff.
That obviously not entirely the builds fault.
Should have checked belts and input.
Fully on bots was maybe another not so optimal thing.
Or me reserving more space would allow for 2-3 assemblers next or behind each other.
Tldr: Dont build brain dead :)
Think one way to improve that bus is to sort the buildings by what materials they need. For example a lot of early buildings don't need such complex components like the quantum chips. So it makes no sense to start the quantum chip lane all the way at the beginning. With sorted buildings you can start lines for more complex resources further down the bus. This also mitigates the part you talked about that there is a lot of material on the belt cause belts for those materials are shorter and don't run past all the production that never need them anyways.
It'd be interesting to compare performance between bus & logistics. If it's anything like Factorio's belt optimizations a bus should provide somewhat better framerates.
Frame rate drops mostly come from building a Dyson cloud/sphere. It is an amazing job from devs that the game holds, but still.
There is no way whatever planet you build a mall on, in whatever form it takes, has even a tiny performance impact compared to a single dyson sphere. It might be interesting, but it sounds like premature optimization to me.
been following you since your early stream days and I was waiting for this video going more in depth on the main bus. :) perfect!
i always have issues with the terrain not lining up when building a buss i can never get it totally straight like yours