Factorio Circuit Networks Explained in Under Three Minutes
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- čas přidán 9. 08. 2023
- Is this video, circuits
Consider supporting what I do: / zyllius
Yes, is it actually under three minutes.
Music Used:
Kirby Nightmare in Dreamland - Butter Building - Hry
This is a re-upload because the other one was a bit too much with the text boxes, and I'd rather some people get lost with some minute detail than everyone be overwhelmed with information.
Yes, I'm going to do a MUCH more in depth tutorial after this that's filled with practical examples, but hopefully this will familiarize you with the basics of how they work mechanically.
Hopefully this is a good enough introduction. And I stand by that you don't actually need to know anything beyond this to use circuits effectively in normal gameplay.
excited for it!!! need to get back into factorio
I Love you
Still killed it the first time Dosh
Well this was a quick fix
Was literally watching the video as it got privated, it actually interrupted the video instantly and I couldn't continue. Didn't know CZcams updated the status of a video even as you're watching it. Kinda neat.
Quick, simple, easy to understand, and most importantly: not 50 minutes
Kind of ironic since there's no way you had enough time to watch it before you commented. Did you watch at 2x speed?
Speak for yourself. I watched it all and my retarded brain couldn't understand
@@cottonman132it’s a reupload
I still want 50 minutes of dosh showing me how unworthy I am for the factorio gods
@@shadowflamelightburst4503 and this was also one of the top comments on the first version of the video, as well.
These tutorials are brilliant. I've forgotten everything in the train one, but I've also forgotten everything from all the 50 minute train videos Ive watched, it's inevitable. Much nicer to just watch a short refresher :)
Also a guide like this is much more likely to get you an answer to any particular question you had about trains
I forgot everything from this one
and somefolks just learn but at caffine fiend high speeds and thus it helps anyway
It's ultimately because of how our brain effectively retains information: anything that is unused get discarded. Just try to apply this to your personal project and you won't ever forget.
@@pxh6129 this is why intros are so much better than in depth tutorials. Your advanced just-in-time shipping network will not make sense to me until I build it from the ground up myself with "when empty/when full" conditions, then improve from thwre
Using signals to count the ore at a train stop, and only allowing trains in when there was enough ore for a pick up (to prevent trains hanging out in loading bays for too long) was probably the most complex things I've done with signals. Looking forward to upping my game.
For even greater convenience, I highly recommend the Logistic Train Network mod. You wire up your containers to the train stop, and add a combinator that causes the stop to request items when it doesn't have enough. Then a train, which was sitting in a depot, goes to whichever train stop that's providing enough of the requested items, and then delivers those to the requester.
I'm currently using it in a city block playthough, and it removes *so* much of the finicky admin tedium.
I have such an immense respect for the intelligence of you factorio players. Cause I got lost about 30 seconds in
i've literally only read the input of a storage tank to turn on and off a pump to my oil cracking, you're probably ahead of me
Honestly you really don't need to. Keep these systems simple and it'll be easier to copy, build, troubleshoot and fix.
When it comes to logic circuits - less is more.
@@Mr.Sparks.173You FOOL! You think I'm playing Factorio because I want things to be *SiMpLe?* Such a grand and intoxicating innocence, how could you BE so naive?
No, sir, I spit upon your efficiency, I spit upon simplicity, and I spit upon all the extra items you have from not building one thousand combinators!
Something very important to note about signals is that they always default to *0* whenever there's nothing else going on
This means you only need a single Decider Combinator to rig a train stop to flip between having 0 or 1 maximum waiting trains, based on whatever signal!
(I personally string together the train stop's storage chests to the combinator and have the signal be Having Enough/Not Enough of the item the station is giving/receiving)
Love these short-form videos. A lot of Factorio creators don't seem to understand how to do them properly, either because they're unnecessarily long winded and/or aren't using a script. I know a lot of work goes into making something short good. "I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time." - Blaise Pascal
Hell you can honestly do just about everything you need in a vanilla playthrough with just wires, you don't even need the combinators
I like how you can do banger 1 hour videos and at the same time quick and simple "tutorials"
His hour long videos are actually as compressed as this 3 minute one if you look at play time
Most of my understanding of wires in this game comes from me decyphering your ramblings about using them during your videos, so it's really nice to get an actual tutorial from the expert.
This is an ideal tutorial. My primary issue with most game tutorials, including factorio, is that everyone takes too damn long to explain something simple, this leads to people thinking easy concepts are hard. 99% of factorio signals are setting a X>Y=enable signal, definitely dont need 20 minutes to cover that. Great job as always.
I'm not sure I like the re-upload more, but removing them makes for a cleaner video and doesn't compel me to pause constantly to read the clarification, so its fair play.
yeah i especially like how if i already knew all this stuff i would already know it and this just says again what i know, and since i don't know anything, this basically just told me again what i already know that signals control stuff but no useful info about how to begin using it
@anchez-os3fv Do you have a question? If so, there's this really great 3 minute tutorial I found that, in the first 1.5 minutes, describes almost everything you could possibly need to know for about 90% of all circuitry usages in all factorio :D . In the last 1.5 minutes it goes into some unnecessary detail for advanced stuff that you'll likely never need so you can safely ignore it. If you've got a specific scenario that you think wasn't covered, I can probably walk you through it though, so feel free to ask.
@@wilshireanasurimbor3068 well I came looking for a tutorial that explained the basics of using networks even if just briefly and left knowing a vague idea of the concept with no actual explanation of the mechanics of using it. I've heard the OP is pretty well known for factorio so I thought it would explain more. I watched a video by another guy that was longer but explained much more how to actually use it. I'm just surprised so many comments are saying how this video was such a good tutorial that explained it so well. Seems like you would have to ALREADY know how to use it for this to summarize it for you.
@@MarioSanchez-os3fv Well I would say that the poster is well known for doing ridiculously elaborate runs, using extremely complex circuit mechanics akin to building computers in game, and generally being sarcastic. The 3minute tutorial is a great reference, and is more than all the information one needs to use circuits in game.
Circuits are dead simple: connect wires to stuff and use the game's GUI to set things like X>Y to turn on/off inserters/machines/etc. If you need more than that, the factorio wiki does a great job both explaining basics and giving examples of common uses (SR Latches, Memory Cells, etc. etc.).
With these two things, this tutorial and the factorio wiki page, you can get through even the most complex mods in factorio (Pyanadon, Space Exploration, Seablock, etc.).
@@wilshireanasurimbor3068 yeah I see that now the title just doesn't convey that.
Literally the best Factorio tutorials. Specific enough to give you a general understanding but vague enough to let you screw around and find out the rest. Thank you!
Im on my first factorio world and I just unlocked these. Perfect timing.
You probably won't use them
One of us....one of us...
Seriously though, I hope you're enjoying it so far. For me, the real fun begins with trains.
You most definitely won't need them just yet.
Yeah, as the in-game tutorial says, it's not hard to launch a rocket without ever touching these. It's always nice to know what you have at your disposal, though. And you may eventually find that some advanced setups benefit highly from the wires, such as uranium enrichment, oil refining, and many-to-many train setups.
I look forward to the in-depth tutorial. I know the basics, but coming up with usecases that actually help my base is the hard part. If it fits the tutorial, can you show some designs you tend to use a lot?
Something I often use is I setup a logistics network at a remote outpost and multiply the value of all items in it by negative one. Then I have a constant combinator with however many items I want unloaded. Then, I add the signals together. This gets sent to filter inserters to set their filters. I can also use it to enable the train station only if I'm missing at least five of something.
You still have to load up the train (I just assign slots in the cargo wagon to specific items with middle click), but it gets around the problem of having only twelve inserters and chests and makes it really easy to add new items. I use it for supplying all the materials for defenses and for building new wall segments.
There's a much more complicated version that makes sure the filter inserters only try to unload things on the train, but it's a pain in the ass.
Two common use cases I have seen and highly recommend are managing your oil cracking/management and fuel rod insertion at nuclear power plants. Out of the box (i.e. no logic), both of these can be highly inefficient, which can be improved signifigantly using circuits.
Another use case I fell in love with was sushi belts on my assemblers. Rather than wiring up a complex network of belts to my assemblers, I used sushi belts to feed more complex recipes, allowing 3+ input assemblers to have the same form factor as a 1-2 input recipe (since my later designs also output to the sushi belt and split off the output product using a filter splitter, just make sure you wire the output inserters to turn off once the output belt is full or the output product will clog up the sushi belt).
Man, your ciruit builds in your videos were always mindblowing. Now that you're doing a tutorial on circuits i cant feel but get super hyped on what i might learn to improve my factories 😄
Thanks for making these. I've always been too overwhelmed with trying to learn shit from the wiki, so this actually helped me understand it in way less time
Thanks for the concise video, I mainly use the circuits to alert me when bottlenecks happen for now, but I'll think of ways to intergrate them better.
Please make more quick tutorials like this
I spent 20 minutes frustrated on christmas eve wondering why my combinator wasnt letting me turn on and off a platform trying to compare the box to the rail, watched like 3 tutorial videos that didnt explain anything.. and this video did it in 35 seconds. thanks dosh. your videos saved me again.. this time from insanity
This is actually understandable and useful, thanks
Never once even touched these wires in my entire factorio play time, Don't think they'll ever get used in the future either. Generally just considered it research when nothing else is researchable and programming practice for those in the know of how it all works.
Good to understand how these Circuit Networks actually work, since I've actually never used them. When it came to trains, I at least ran one circle train (That was 6 cargo wagons long) to run a mass transit of materials around my base... but now I'm learning how to actually USE Networks and Trains, thanks to these videos Dosh. Thanks for everything you've done!
id love more factorio tutorials! they're short and to the point unlike most other tutorials on CZcams
advanced tutorial when?
The cutoff in the middle of "OK bye" makes me giggle
Great stuff as always
Lmao I just finished banging my head over an auto supply train; i figured it out eventually. Looking forward to the in-depth video!
This is brilliant! And while you do have a in-depth tutorial on circuits coming up, I was wondering if you could do another three to five minute video explaining how to make and use clocks, memory cells, and latches? (Or at least a video that is them extracted from the master course) They are things I try to use and have read up on plenty, but can never remember how to set them up. Having a video about those specifically would be really helpful.
As I've had to explain signals in Factorio about 40+ times now having this is so much better... just slap your friends with this and problem solved, thanks Dosh!
I feel like I’ve seen this before
Thank you very much, I've been playing the game since 2016 and never knew the complete mechanics of combinators. Now I know what the second output option in decider combinator means, thank you very much.
I can't say that I'm interested in the subject but I can't help myself, Dosh speaking about complicated things in my ears is why I like their videos.
Broooo, this is what i neeeeded, thanks so much!
This is the one area of the game i just can't get my brain to wrap around & thus never used only tried miserably.
Looking forward to the long explanation video bcos I'm going to need it 😅.
Like all the rest of your videos I will sit here with a confused look and in awe that someone understands this.
This was a perfect summary, thankyou
Oh thank god I understand so much more of the space exploration gameplay now🤯
Gold channel! Can you make a video about (production ratio calculators + production graphs & planning ) ? It seems like the latter is an undiscovered subject on CZcamss
thank you so very much, I doubt i will ever be as good as you but this helps me not be as bad. cant wait till you upload the advanced.
I really enjoy your videos your a genius
Looking forward to the advanced!
This was basically my understanding of signals and I know a few tricks so I am looking forward to the Advanced course
Hell. Yes. I barely understand what was said, but I needed this.
One thing I would like to add, that you glossed over.
Connecting the input to the output of a combinator is the most common way to make a simple memory cell. Though they tend be easier to manipulate with single tick signals.
Great! Thanks for info!❤
thank you for this! as an EE and study power stuff i know bacis but this still helped.
Thid video is godsent, I am doing my first full factorio run and my favourite factorio youtuber does a tutorial! Nice!
I enjoy that it ends with a nice and firm, but friendly "Ok"
I'm playing SpaceKrastorio, and thank you. I knew this video would come in handy :D
This tutorial would be usefull earlier, but I already learned everything in here already just from watching your gameplay lol, your work with signals is just too good
Is that Kirby Squeak Squad music? Nice!
I dont know why it took this long for the Factorio community to produce an introductory video to circuits that isn’t 10 hours long. Thank you
Best tut on this so far.
you are an amazing youtuber
still awesome
Great vid!
Good info. Now I know how they work but now I need a how to use. If I could see some practical examples for these I might actually place one
You know what I’m still gonna fall asleep to this vid. Just gonna put it on repeat until I fall asleep hopefully I’ll actually understand circuits by tomorrow 😂
I watched this a couple months ago but rewatching it everything just kind of made sense. Don’t think I’m gonna be using any advanced circuits in my factory any time soon though
Tbh you could do an analisys of your train cramming skills showed both on your Krastorio2 and SeaBlock playthroughs.
Anyways, great video! :D
Very nice! thank you!
Woow I just wached a tutorial that was about things I already knew because I was aware that this channel would be entertaining and to the point.
Videos like these are so great! Short and you only say relevant information.
I'd say slow it down 10% thought. Adding some pauses in between information helps with retention.
So now I can begin to make spectacles of logical horror like Logi-Brain. Thanks Dosh!
Good vid. Surprisingly it only takes a very basic understanding of circuits to make all the sushi you want
i lost it when you said "wire", need to rewatch it again i suppoz
great video, very simple :)
There's a neat trick you can do with the enable/disable of any inserter (yes, even burner inserters, somehow), exactly one arithmetic combinator, and a bunch of chests that you want to fill/drain more or less evenly (like at a train stop), so long as it's only one kind of item you're dealing with (you can probably make it work with any number of items, but I haven't gotten that working yet due to lack of need).
Anyways, how to make it do the thing:
First step, lay out your train stop with all the chests and inserters, but don't let it have any items yet. Count how many chests there are, and remember which item you're passing thru those chests into or out of the train.
Second step, wire all the chests to ONLY ONE color circuit network wire, and send that wire into the input of an arithmetic combinator.
Now, set the arithmetic combinator to Divide, with the left signal being the item that's going thru the chests, and the second signal being a constant equal to however many chests you had. This gives you the average number of items in the chest, because an average of more than 2 numbers is just "Add up all the numbers, then divide that by how many different numbers there were", and connecting all the chests to a single color of wire already added together all the items in the chests, and the constant that the arithmetic combinator is using matches the number of "different numbers" aka chests you have.
So you have the average number, what do you want to do with it? Well, I usually tell the arithmetic combinator to output the average signal to "Signal A", where A stands for Average, just so that I don't get confused.
OK, Step Three, and here's where it can malfunction if you don't wire it up right.
First, which inserters are we talking about here:
I usually make my train stops with 6 chests and 12 inserters per cargo wagon, with 6 of those inserters linking the 6 chests and the cargo wagon, and the other 6 linking the chests and the belt. For a "standard" 2-4-2 double-headed train (what I usually use, out of habit more than anything), that would be 24 chests and 48 inserters, but if it's a high demand item I'll also do double sided load/unload from that train so it would in that case end up with 48 chests and 96 inserters.
In any case, if you always have 2 inseters per chest, we can keep going, I'll tell you how to adjust for more inserters being used all the way at the end, but I have to get the basic concept out of the way first.
So, 2 inserters per chest, one moves items between the train's cargo wagon and the chest (or vice versa), and the other one moves items between the in or out belt and the chest (again, direction doesn't really matter yet).
I'm talking about the inserters that move items between the belt and chest.
Now that that bit of explanation is out of the way, let's start actually building again. You've already got ALL the belts chests and inserters arranged next to a piece of rail to load or unload a train, and you have an arithmetic combinator calculating the average number of items (what you want) in any given chest. That's good, now let's put that number to work.
Look at the color of wire that's going into the arithmetic combinator, and use that same color wire to connect up the output of the arithmetic combinator and all the inserters that transfer items from or to the chests to or from the belts (respectively). This feeds the average signal into each combinator, and you should have two SEPARATE wires of the same color now, one adding up all the chests and feeding that number into the combinator, and one coming out of the combinator and feeding the calculated average into the inserters.
Now, take a wire of the OTHER color, and connect it between one inserter, and the chest it is interacting with. The idea is for the inserter to have two signals going into it, an A signal carrying the average on one color wire, and the actual chest contents signal on the other color wire. We can't let those two signals mix, so we have to use two different color wires. We also can't let the actual chest contents of any other chests show up on this wire, so we need to make a lot of really short wires that are not connected to each other, with each wire connecting a chest and the inserter that allows items to go to or from a nearby belt.
OK, that's SUPER IMPORTANT, so don't get things cross-wired or it'll either act like the circuit wasn't even there, or it'll deadlock.
Step 4, setting the conditions on the inserters. This part's a lot easier.
All you have to do is compare the contents of the chest to the average, but now the direction the items are going matters, because that determines which comparison you need to use.
If you are loading items into the chest from the belt, you should set "Chest contents less than or equal to A (A is the average signal, remember?)".
You can't use just plain old "less than", because I've discovered that if everything backs up like you want it to, that will deadlock the inserter (it's just doing what you told it to, even if what you told it to isn't what you meant).
If you are taking items OUT of the chest and putting them on the belt, you should set "Chest contents greater than or equal to A (with A again being the signal carrying the average number of items per chest, compared across all the chests)".
And again, you can't use just plain old "greater than" or it'll deadlock when things get backed up.
In both cases, the default state is "do something even if they're equal", and that's why they don't deadlock when you use the "Less/greater than or equal to" condition.
That's all there is to it, unless you made a more complex station that uses more inserters interacting with the belt than there are chests.
If you built a "normal" train stop, you can stop here, that's it, you're done, let items go into or out of the chests and watch it automatically balance feeding items into or taking items from the train, all your cargo wagons should be filled or drained at roughly the same time now assuming you have belts feeding chests feeding cargo wagons for all the cargo wagons in that train.
But what if you DO have one of those more complicated stations with more inserters than normal? Well, it's not TOO hard to accommodate that, in reality.
All you need to do is make sure that all the inserters that can interact with a given chest have an isolated circuit wire that reads the contents of the chest and send that value to the inserter(s) putting items into or taking items out of that individual chest (and on to or off of a belt).
So if you have a train stop that has only 2 chests, with 2 inserters feeding items from the cargo wagon into the chests, and from there another 4 inserters feeding items from the chests on to the belts, you should have an isolated circuit network wire connecting a given chest with it's 2 associated inserters that are putting items on the belt. The circuit network conditions on those inserters remain unchanged, it should still work just fine.
This would be a lot easier to explain with pictures, or a blueprint, but I think I still managed to get the point across adequately.
I don't know if this video exists because of my comment two weeks ago or not, but thank you for making it anyway
Impressively done.
Oh also, that background music is perfect.
Great!
I can't wait for the advanced tutorial in under 3 minutes! 😅
Great stuff
Advanced course when? Amazing stuff dosh
He went and did it again, you cant keep getting away with this !
I do eagerly await your "advanced" Circuit Network explanation video, hopefully with some worked examples (hopefully you have a better way to make a "trash train" work than my method which uses far too many combinators, I know there's a simpler way but it has eluded me so far).
Thank you, very concise and great, only one thing left: we need the advanced course
It is out - see **Building Circuit Abominations in Factorio**
@@nahblue Thanks, I've watched that one multiple times the past few months
I'm convinced this is the best factorio channel in the market today.
I'm so sorry Trupen. Still love you.
I am very happy Butter Building (and my favorite version of it) is the baclground music
I much rather watch quick and short videos like this 15 times than watch one 30 minute video explaining things.
Thank you so very much. I've been trying to play Space Exploration for about 2 months now but I haven't been able to figure out circuts so I can setup automated resupply rockets. Maybe with the advanced one I will finally be able to wrap my head around it.
Did you check the rocket circuitry guide in the space exploration wiki?
Thank you so much! Unironically, this and train tutorial gave me more useful info than all of the guides I watched on the same topic. If I may make a small request: I'm a bit confused on a city block design and it's comparison to a main bus. I've looked up some videos, but it's mostly 20 hour series without much explanation on WHY EXACTLY would you make it this way.
Why you'd make a city block design?
It's because it's uniform and connected by trains, so if you're low on circuits, you can just copy your entire circuit block and have it just work. It's for expandability reasons. Some people go way too hard into City Blocks even though they have no intention of expanding beyond one build for each item, but that's it really. It's just a bunch of trains so resources can go wherever they're needed and every build is the same size so it's easy to copy and fit into your rail network
@@DoshDoshington Ah, I see. So it's almost like OOP. It's not really for efficiency, but it's just easy to add more stuff without re-doing your whole base. That makes sense. I would assume the hypothetical "optimal" solution would include both city block and direct belt chains. Thank you for the response!
I feel like I just skimmed the unix MAN page.
Like.
Yes, you definitely, technically, told me on the most fundamental level, how to interact with this and how to automate it.
But goddamn if my eyes don't glaze halfway through talking about combinators.
Finding a project you want to try to solve with combinators is definitely the best practice
One of the most satisfying things I've done in Factorio was tinkering with wires until I got a 7-segment display to accurately show my crude oil reserves. It was a pain and a half, but was so nice to see completed.
Wow, youre right; they really are conceptually simple!
I actually understand them now thank you
Me watching this with the magic roundabout theme playing in my head: Ah yes now I understand.
Also the most important hint: don't overcomplicate stuff when you do circuits, for the most time there is ingame feature that do the function way better and go to wire only if it's easier to understand.
ah finally, my brother can now understand circuit conditions.
Thank you!
Nice, finally a tutorial worth watching. Tough, still not gonna need that information, as I'm not touching signals, but its finally good to know how they operate. ( I may have hundreds of hours in this game 😅)
thank you dosh ♥
Thanks Dosh!
Ah, logic circuits: Protecting every single nuclear power plant I've ever made in factorio and mindistry alike.
One of these days I need to figure out how to wire up a train to listen to circuits so that one mega train can do all of my hauling for me.
"This is a wire"
Dear god
"There's more"
No...
I have seen you make some truly Beautiful (unholy) creations with circuit networks
Thanks for taking the time to spread your cursed knowledge to plebs like myself.
Now I just need to wait for the more in-depth vid
Imma use this
Nice and compact love it
Didnt even dare to use calculators ect
Just started realy playing factory (with space exploration dont know why )20 h in and i only realise 50 iron miners are only starterbase for the starter base for the starter base
Oh this is a dream thank you!
getting in early for video three of recommending Mindustry to Dosh. it's mos tof the best of Factorio with a strong tower defense as[ect all wrapped up in an RTS, and it seems like exactly what you wanted from R.U.N.E. 3000 from the the archouse video!
This video is 3 minutes long, but you said in UNDER three minutes, I'M RIOTING
have you ever played around with the wiremod addon from garry's mod? it's hard to say how similar it is to circuit networks, but i've messed around with it in the past and there's some pretty neato stuff you can do with it
Just download the game looking forward to more helpful videos. By the way I really enjoy your videos