JakenVeina

I started today by figuring out where the next couple of buildings will fit, but then I had some questions in my head about how I'll be connecting them together, so I decided to just go ahead and fully-detail the first building.

Moving back to those other two buildings, I got them fully built out, as well.

I'm getting a 100% failure rate attempting to upload images today. Specifically, the POST https://lemm.ee/pictrs/image endpoint is returning a boilerplate 500 error.

It's actually been flaky for the past couple weeks, but up until today, just repeating the upload a few times gets it to work.

This also was an issue about 3 months ago, but resolved itself within a week or so.

Images are in the 100KB to 200KB range, well below the documented 500KB limit, and my account is about 1.5 years old, so as far as I'm aware, it's nothing on my end.

Not much to show off today. Just made a little more progress on this factory. I've decided, for now, that I'm gonna try this sheltered-but-open-air kinda design. Basically, just no walls. We'll see if it's viable for the other big segments of the factory.

Also picked out a color scheme, based on these nearby..... mushrooms? Coral? Whatever they are.

Spent most of the evening building out this little Geothermal and Sulfur outpost. I'll be using the Pure Sulfur node here in the next build, and I'll very likely be wanting the others in the near future.

That finishes all the prepwork I had in mind. Time to start the next build, proper. Should be the biggest one yet.

Got the remainder of the interconnect finished, today.

Had a slight issue here with the clipping, and the fact that there reeeeeeeally wasn't much room for me to just move the slope forward.

Finagled with the layout of the curves ahead of the incline, and I managed to make enough room for just a 4m incline, and I made up the other 4m farther along.

Also built out the Geothermal outpost, down in the river.

Building my way out to the Blue Crater today, to prepare for the next big build.

Definitely going to want to connect up the Geothermal Geysers up on this ledge, as well as the 3 Sulfur nodes.

Picked a central spot to place down a permanent Radio Tower, for the area, and built out to there.

Decided to go back and re-route this segment, in order to split off another path heading down into the Southern Forest river.

Since there's more Geothermal down there. Also several Quartz nodes I'll almost certainly want in the future.

Before starting on laying out the blueprints for the interconnect, I decided I wanted to collect a few more Mercer Spheres, so I could do a couple tiers of research on the Dimensional Depot. I burn through an entire Depot's worth of Quartz in about 30 seconds when I'm building with these blueprints.

Back to the interconnect, and it turns out these particular variants of flora are still indestructible. The gigantic versions of this same plant aren't, though. Go figure.

Got about half of the blueprints laid before my eyes started giving out on me.

Another factory fully completed.

Very happy with the detailing on the roofs.

Also happy with the little pump station, and the sandwich support for the pipe.

Glamor shots of the main floor.

Also the logistics floor.

Design documentation.

Efficiency SEEMS to be good, since all the final output machines are running at a consistent 100%. But there is still a small issue with efficiency in the Heavy Oil Residue and Fuel pipes. I think they just got over-filled during a period where I had the final Smart Splitter for Rubber misconfigured, and that whole half of the factory wasn't running. Hopefully, they balance out to an equilibrium now that everything's running again. The Plastic half of the factory seems to be running flawlessly.

Oilworks is up and running today. All that's left is cosmetics.

Had to rip out and redo the Water Extractors, because I somehow incorrectly determined I only needed 3, instead of 4. Fortunately, that still fit with the general layout of the building, it just now has a small extra-wide section.

Also came up with a little something to support hanging pipelines, since there isn't a hanging pipe support in the base game. I quite like it.

Oh. So there is, in fact, a hanging pipe support, it's just not actually in the build menu that way. Because screw consistency, I guess.

I still ended up using my little custom thingie almost exclusively, because the vanilla pipe support isn't height-adjustable.

Anyway, I got all the beltwork and pipework done next. Decided to make basically everything ceiling-supported, instead of floor-supported.

Except this spot, where all the crossover, loopback, and sink routing needs to happen. There's just too much going on here.

With a ceiling built out, I was able to run power and get everything online and priming up. We'll see if any flow issues emerge before 100% efficiency is reached, but it all looks promising so far.

Canister closed loops, in action.

First task for today was actually re-working the Liquid Biofuel setup from yesterday, a little bit. Specifically, I realized I needed to do buffering for the inputs to that little subsystem, and I needed to not be sinking the excess. I found it was sinking away the vast majority of the spoils from yesterday's exploration.

I ended up moving the buffer crate for Solid Biofuel BACK to where it was before, along with an additional one for Plastic. However, the Dimensional Depot Uploader for Solid Biofuel is still over on the other side. With this setup, any plastic I dump into recycling will actually get saved for making Empty Canisters, as part of Liquid Biofuel. Before adding this buffer container, I would have to worry about never dropping more than 1 or 2 stacks of Plastic at a time, because it would get sunk otherwise.

Similarly, All Solid Biofuel that's either dumped or crafted from scraps gets buffered, and that buffer feeds both Liquid Biofuel and the Dimensional Depot. Only if BOTH of those are fully backed-up does any Biofuel get sunk. And since Solid Biofuel is getting sunk already, there's no need to sink the Liquid Biofuel as well, that would make it much more difficult to prioritize how and when Solid Biofuel is used or stored.

The three belts here send Solid Biofuel, Plastic and Liquid Biofuel (so I can dump it in the recycler and have it end up back in the Dimensional Depot) over to the Liquid Biofuel Refinery.

Next, I decided, after how much success I had with them yesterday, to make a few permanent Radio Towers, within the developed areas.

A new segment of tubeway gets me a Radio Tower that covers the Oil Coast, where I'll be building next.

Another new segment takes me down along the coast, toward the Oil patches.

This looks like a solid spot. I'm just gonna be using the one Normal node I plopped down an extractor on, in the top-right.

Tubeway.

Here's what I came up with for machine layout. As you might guess, the first new products for Phase 3 will be Rubber and Plastic. Tomorrow, I'll setup the logistics, and see if I can get it powered on.

First item on the to-do list for Phase 3 is upgrading the Coal Power plan to Mk 4 belts. That'll a-little-less-than-double my total power capacity. Which I definitely need, I ended up having to hijack a bunch of Somersloops from my recycling facility last week and use them to make a second Alien Power Augmenter, round about the time I was bringing the FICSMAS factory fully-online.

Next up is expanding the recycling facility to make Packaged Liquid Biofuel. I actually was looking ahead to Oilworks, where I was planning to make Plastic, Rubber, and Packaged Fuel, and I realized... Liquid Biofuel is superior to Fuel in every metric (except that it can't be fully-automated). So, I'm actually going to completely skip making Fuel for its own sake. Liquid Biofuel is gonna be my go-to until I get to Turbofuel, so this definitely needs to be done right.

In the above shot, the building wing on the right is the new part I added on to the existing recycling facility, where Solid Biofuel was already being made.

Here's where Solid Biofuel used to be buffered, for the Dimensional Depot.

Finally for today, I recovered my Somersloops from the extra Alien Power Augmenter I had built, but I still don't have enough to fully kit the new stuff in recycling facility. And that's the magic that's gonna make all the Biofuel stuff really effective, having every single step in the process doubled with Somersloops. So, it's time for some exploring.

Loving the addition of Radio Towers. With that, I can be confident the entirety of Grassy Fields, Southern Forest, Blue Crater, and Eastern Dune Forest are fully cleared out.

On a side note, this trip I think has convinced me I'm gonna need a dedicated weapons factory, eventually. The Eastern Dune Forest is actually a nightmare, I dunno why this area doesn't have the same reputation as the Red Jungle and Red Bamboo Fields.

Great haul, though.

That's Phase 2 completed.

Nothing all that special, really just the same general design as the last two, with a couple slight variations (accent color, and shape of the floorplan).

I ended up ditching the idea of having the entrance on the side of the building, instead of the front. Too much clipping.

Another glamor shot. Oooo, what's that over on the roof? I thought all the FICSMAS gifts had stopped...

Yoooo! A FICSMAS-themed nobe---

Starting up Automated Wiring today.

This might be the largest machine array I've ever had to make, for just a single product. Man, these things need a crap-ton of Wire. 42 Constructors for up to 3,130/min.

I sorta forgot to continue taking progress pics while building.

Everything seems to be running now. Just need to wait for it to prime up, while I finish out the structure. Haven't quite come up with a concept yet for how to take the design from the last 2 buildings, and adapt it to having the entrance on the side.