Factorio 2.0 Circuit Network Tutorial ❇️ : Basics to Intermediate - Automate Your Factory!

Unlock the full potential of the Factorio 2.0 Circuit Network with this in-depth tutorial and guide. From some basics to intermediate, with special focus on the updates and changes that come in the 2.0 and Space Age update. Xterminator explains some simple concepts like setting up light meters to measure resource amounts, to controlling assembling machine recipe, ingredient requests, and SR Latches. Beginner players and more experienced players will hopefully find this helpful in automating more processes in their factories! 🚀

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Factorio is a game in which you build and maintain factories. You will be mining resources, researching technologies, building infrastructure, automating production and fighting enemies. Use your imagination to design your factory, combine simple elements into ingenious structures, apply management skills to keep it working and finally protect it from the creatures who don't really like you. Join forces with other players in cooperative Multiplayer, create huge factories, collaborate and delegate tasks between you and your friends. Add mods to increase your enjoyment, from small tweak and helper mods to complete game overhauls.

Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
1:35 Light Indicators & Custom Colors
6:15 Changing Assembler Recipes
12:20 Setting Requests From Recipe
13:25 SR Latch
22:52 Easily Getting Stack Sizes & Requests
31:40 Outro

#Factorio #factoriotutorial #factoriocircuits #factoriocircuittutorial #factoriocircuitnetwork

[tjlambaes]

I’m so glad you didn’t tell us what the wires do and blah blah blah about the basics. I’m not sure if anyone else is like me, but I really want to learn more about using combinators as memory cells and the different uses for advanced circuit networks kind of like the s latch you showed.

[alessandrosantarini]

For the output of the assembler you need to filter or it will output ingredients as well. That is why it is filled with gears and plates :D
On the train example will actually cause problems. You will request 333 motors but you will start FILLING the train, this will ask for MORE motors. You have two options:
1) trash unrequested, when the train will leave robot will pick up trash, but you need to also set filters for the inserters or if a new train comes it will start mixing.
2) use another math combinator to reduce the amount of the request on how much the train is filled (not 100% sure is working in this way).
2-bis) you can probably use a latch to store and disable request chest when you reach the amount

Overall yes, you can do very powerful stuff. Another use is to use a stack combinator BEFORE having the request input in the assembler. So it will ask for a stack of that item. This is quite handy because of some recipe that have like 1 iron plane (damn pipes!!), and it will be slow to operate because it will request just 1 at the time. There is another use case of the request reading assembler ingredients where you can blueprint the amount based on the variable of the recipe!

[cmdrblahdee]

For the selector combinator, the thing I immediately started using it on is the asteroid collectors. If you have it sort the list of rocks you have from least to most, then set the filters based on that output, you're always grabbing what you're low on.
Use a constant combinator to make sure nothing is "forgotten"

[TallinuTV]

17:20 - I'm glad you caught that if you have it set to "equal 1000" it will only turn on if the value precisely hits 1000. (For instance, if it goes from 999 to 1001, because inserters can move more than one item at a time, it would never turn the inserter on unless something else reduced the amount to exactly 1000.)

[jethrolarson]

I have to say this is the first time I've been able to understand the SR latch. Good job there!


Definitely want to see more advanced stuff in the future. Maybe focused on specific solutions like you did for the train. I know I've used circuits a lot in ship design to make assemblers do multiple recipes there to save space; Manage foundries; set alarms and ready conditions for ship departures; manage fuel usage (optimizing fuel efficiency as well as getting the ship to slow or stop if ammo runs low); control sushi belt contents; etc

[FMPthEmAd]

With one combinator and one constant emitter :
- in constant emitter : 1 yellow belt ; 1 red belt ; 1 blue belt
- in combinator : If "each" < 51 then "each" at 1.
- in factory : use recipe.
At the beginning of the loop, every belt signal is at 1 because there's no belt in chest. So each signal is at 1, and factory take the first one avalaible : yellow. So it makes 50 yellow belts.
Now Yellow belt signal is at 51, so 0 after the combinator. Factory takes fisrt recipe avalaible, that is now the red signal. And makes 50 red belt. And at last 50 blue belts.
When there's 50 belts of each in chest, each signal is at 0 after combinator. And factory stop.

[EmilyGamerGirl]

The big thing about lamps is, if you just want them to be colored, you don't need to use ANY signals- you can just use the dropper button on the lamp and enter R, G, B values yourself! The signals are useful if you want the color to change based on a circumstance- for instance, you could have it be green when full, yellow when medium, and red when low.

[daniel]

I've been trying to figure out the SR latch on my own for a long time now, now I finally understand the concept of it.

The selector combinator also gave me a nice idea to set up an automatic mall.

[xnooknooknook]

I saw the train and was hoping you were going to show some new trick on how to make a balanced loader. Great vid! Space Age has me working with circuits way more than I ever did before.

[kenoomish]

For the crafter

As someone suggested already, you can just say EACH if less then certain amount, then output EACH. But that will stop working if all of one item gets taken out or it will start producing new item if something else gets put in by accident, it is better to use a constant on a second wire as a setter of what should be produced, you can also make it to compare EACH coming from the storage and check if it is less then the EACH from the constant combinator, this will allow you to also specify what amount of a certain item you want when setting the desired items in the constant.

Note tho that this will still cause issues if the input is the same as output and one of the item is used in creation of another (like the belts in video), this will cause the machine to produce desired amount of first item, then switch to making the second one, taking first item out of storage causing there to be less of that item in storage and switching the recipe back to the first one, taking the item out and putting it back, realizing then now there is enough of that item so no new one needs to be crafted and switching back to the second recipe causing it to flipflop between those two recipes.
I figure it could be fixed by including an SR latch but it would lose the ability to set specific amounts for certain items...

If anyone is curious, that would require you to set values for the items you want to produce in the constant combinator to one then you connect it to the decider, lets say with red wire, connect storage with green wire to input, then you connect red wire from the output to input. Now for the decider combinator, the setting signal is EACH from green is less then, say 50 AND EACH on red is more than zero. The output should be EACH at count one. Now we set the resetting signal, for that we make new block in the decider by using the OR and inside that we are checking that EACH signal on red wire (in this example) is equal to two AND the EACH signal on green is less then, lets say 200 (make sure to give it some larger margin since assemblers will take some stock inside). With this you take green wire from the output (the one not connected to input) and connect it to the assembler.

[MacManChomp]

You can use a single decider to change assembler recipes in your design by using a constant combinator with your limits. Send the destination contents to the decider on a green wire and constant on red and compare green < red, but if using a logistics network, items will sometimes go below zero. That will cause errant signals unless you filter them out, which can be done with the same decider using AND Red > 0. Wire colors don't actually matter here, but signal separation does, so you can swap the colors without issues.

[guillaumebourgeois]

Not gonna lie the biggest shit i learn with your video (except of all the really cool network example) is that you can put a train at the end of another to make it a two way train. My mind fucking blow.

[MrTomyCJ]

7:50 I having tried, but maybe you could have a constant combinator with the amount of each item you want, outputting a red signal, and a decider combinator that outputs any green signal (coming from the chest) that is lower than the red signal. For similar setups you often need to also read the item that inserters are holding, otherwise things tends to flicker.

[jackofsometrades]

I use the "set recipe" feature for modules. If any of the module counts go below X, the whole block of assemblers will start producing that module. I wanted to focus on something else instead of setting up three blocks.

[ytiq]

On changing recipes. You can put your constants into constant combinator than use ariphmetic to subtract all from all and you get your filters

[StickerWyck]

Packed RGB means all the 0-255 components are combined in the same channel. It's the most complicated option but it's also the most powerful as it allows you to assign multiple colours to multiple lights without wiring them independently (which can be an absolute mess of wires). It works by adding up the RGB components together in 3 powers of base-256. To put it a better way: [Packed value] = (blue value) + (green * 256) + (red * 65, 536). You can even blueprint a little circuit to convert RGB to Packed to do all that math for you at the cost of slight latency to the circuit.

[KrimsonStorm]

I think my favorite thing to do with the new circuit network is for belting in ingredients up to space. Instead of using bots to fill rockets, read requests from the space platform, do some logic with deciders, and tell which arms to activate to throw into the silos.

For example, on volcanus I'm shipping out tungsten, calcite, foundries, miners, and then both military and metallurgy science. Divvy up which silos launch what items, and then the order it should fulfill requests.

Boom, no bots needed for most deliveries. Works great for belt and train heavy playstyles, like mine.

Now excuse me I got to figure out how to belt only gleba. I still wish we could scan the spoilage percentage of an item.

[arielmoonsoo]

I'd have to double check the docs, but I believe you can translate the separate R/G/B triplet into the combined color by performing the following operations and saving the result to the same signal R<<16, G<<8, B

WRT recipe selection - my quirky (1.1 vintage) way of doing things would be to have a constant combinator that outputs the following:
1 yellow belt
1 red belt
1 blue belt
101 white dot
101 iron plate (technically not necessary for this setup)
101 gears

You would then wire this combinator and the chest to the input to the logic combinator, which would be set to 'Each < white dot', output each. If you wanted different thresholds (ie: 50 yellow, 100 red, 200 blue), the constant combinator would be set to something like the following:
151 yellow belt
101 red belt
1 blue belt
201 white dot
201 iron plate
201 gears

If you wanted to prioritize what gets built, you could feed the signal from the constant combinator and chest to an arithmetic combinator calculating white dot - each, outputting each. You may need to filter it through a logic combinator (each > 0, output each current value) and then a selector combinator (output max). This would tell the factory to build whatever you had the greatest deficit of.

Read Stopped train was present in 1.1, BTW

[extaticMav]

Great video thank you. The receipe one you could theoretically have your entire mall creating the item you need at any given time based on demand. Cool

[nguyendi]

For SR Latch, You don't need different color wires. The S signal ( check signal) will not recount itself, It will constantly output 1 even if you loop it back. Unless your output wire also check another number down the line, thus add a new total. I don't see any reason to use a different wire. An If you want a Clock, You actually need to Input X <=60, Then output both X =1 and X = Signal count to make a 60 Ticks clock.
On space platform, there are so many wires going around, Engine fuel control, side Turrets only shoot when stationary, Auto trash items, Auto Repurpose Asteroid with SR latch, and stop over filling Asteroid. I find it easier to separate circuit function by color.