Factorization: Sell me

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portablejim

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Jul 29, 2019
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They make a network out of anything with an adjacent inventory. From this perspective, you can have "stations" of mod-specific barrel clusters, networked with, say, furnaces (under the floor, etc). Quetzi puts this style to use in his streaming world, if you ever catch him on Twitch.

As to the OP, the only one that can sell you on Factorization is you. A large part of its appeal is workflow and aesthetics, which are too subjective to sell. For instance, I prefer not only being able to see my items arrayed on the wall, but being able to exactly select how many I want to retrieve, rather than rummage through a floor full of chests. The remainder is scale - it doesn't take too long in game progression to fill even a gold/diamond chest full of any number of items coming out of a standard quarry - never mind a frame quarry. The routers handle this at light speed, without pipes or tubes.
One thing which I have not seen too much of is retrival from the system. LP makes it easy but expensive, vanilla buildcraft or simple redpower systems have you going to the barrels (not that problematic), and more complex redpower systems (i think) require more tubes and space. How easy is it for routers to do arbitary requests?
 

Sebyen

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Jul 29, 2019
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One thing which I have not seen too much of is retrival from the system. LP makes it easy but expensive, vanilla buildcraft or simple redpower systems have you going to the barrels (not that problematic), and more complex redpower systems (i think) require more tubes and space. How easy is it for routers to do arbitary requests?

You can have a router set up to drag any certain item(s) out of any inventories that is in the system be it chests barrels or any machine. Problem is that you can't tell it to get whatever item you want from the system without adding it to the filter and you can't tell it how many you want. You could add an item to the filter and have a leaver to turn it on when you want something then turn it off. Then later when you want another item you put that in and so on. Not nearly as useful as LP as you can't control the amount and you actually need at least 1 of the item you want.

However if your really crazy you could make a massive system with Redstone and routers that with the click of a button or another Redstone signal tells certain routers to pull stuff and have it on long enough for certain amounts, but I hardly think it would be worth the trouble.
 

DR3ADLORD

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Jul 29, 2019
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They don't actually have to be touching. Just nearby.

Actually this is false. The Router recognizes it is nearby but it does indeed have to be touching for it to work. Routers can be made to do a ton of different things if you learn the basics and give them a shot. They can be far more useful for moving things than pipes are and are very neat. If you want a quick video on some basics then I got a video up ( which also proves routers have to literally be touching the "network of machines").

I also have a similar barrel setup and I explain some of the details of it. As well as some other automated things are up on my channel.

 

Tylor

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Nov 24, 2012
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Can router feed a cluster of generators with fuel? Or collect scrap from cluster of Recyclers?
 

Zjarek_S

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Jul 29, 2019
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Yes it can, but for 64 recyclers you will need a bandwith upgrade. Serving many machines at the same time seem to be a main use of the router (but there are many more).

Back to main topic, I absolutely love FZ ore processing system. It changes it from small part of the workshop, to the whole system, that you must plan, expand as needed etc. It is another goal in the game.

Pocket crafting is IMO the fastest way to craft things. I no longer have to remember what project table I need to use next. Keyboard shortcuts during crafting help a lot, I don't think any other crafting solution provide expanding components in circle, or rotating of the components (bog earth). Balancing is also very useful.
 

ShneekeyTheLost

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First off, thanks for the responses, particularly Sebyen and DR3ADLORD, for your responses, I really appreciate it. I really like being able to utilize every mod I install, and not having anything I could do with Factorization has been an annoyance for me.

I prefer more compact designs which don't really require a whole series of machines. Typically, I use TE and a hopper, in series. The only slot I care about inputting to is the hopper, and the output gets re-routed automatically to where it should go. I also prefer to have a handful of chests rather than a whole wall of barrels to achieve the same function. However, the router does have a lot more functionality than I originally gave it credit for, and for those who prefer more sizable manufactorums, Routers would certainly be an extremely viable way to automate everything.

Routers also make barrels at least viable, if cumbersome and space-consuming. They also make the Factorization ore processing at least fully automated, which is nice, even if it doesn't obviate having to wait around 20 minutes for it to get done.

I'm still a bit stymied with the pocket crafter and the portable hole, though.

For the Portable Hole, why would I ever want it as opposed to, say, a Forestry Backpack or Redpower Canvas Bag, which have more storage, require much cheaper ingredients, and in the case of backpacks, have additional sorting and storage functionality?

The pocket crafter... I still don't see it. Using up inventory slots is terribad. Frequently, my inventory is largely full, I have nowhere to put stuff other than in one of those nine slots that don't belong in the recipe. If I have to sort out my inventory to use it, I can just drop a crafting bench. If I have to drop something to get it to work, I can make and drop a crafting bench instead.
 

Cloud

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Jul 29, 2019
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I didn't know routers can work so well, might finally consider using routers for my processing room. However, the pocket crafting table isn't too useful for me too. It is easier to place a crafting table on the ground than trying to throw things on the ground to free up space.
 

Magicferret

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Jul 29, 2019
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Not only do routers make a network out of all touching inventories but out of all inventories touching those inventories in any direction, including other routers. One day (possibly when there's more router upgrades for supplying inventories and things) I'm going to have all my machines and routers in one giant very speedy network. Just need a few hundred enderpearls, nothing too expensive. :p

I agree the machines are clunky for mass ore processing but the routers make it easy to do all automatically. Putting buckets of water in mixers seems primitive at first as opposed to an internal water tank like other mods, until you realise you can replace those buckets at breakneck speed with routers. A lot of the machines seem built for that system rather than pipes or tubes. Crystallizers for example are impossible to automate fully with pipes because you can't evenly distribute between the slots. I can't resist linking this thread again, just because it shows that it's possible to automate the entire ore tripling process using enough routers.
 

Pinkishu

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Jul 29, 2019
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Turtle operated barrel storage system <3 ftw

As for routers: too much included functionality for my tastes. It's like i could make a mystic block that mines, grinds and smelts all ores on all the stone it touches (ok it isn't that bad but you get the point(.
I could and it would be convenient but at the same time kinda boring~ :3
 

WTFFFS

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Jul 29, 2019
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Turtle operated barrel storage system <3 ftw

As for routers: too much included functionality for my tastes. It's like i could make a mystic block that mines, grinds and smelts all ores on all the stone it touches (ok it isn't that bad but you get the point(.
I could and it would be convenient but at the same time kinda boring~ :3
Well the original idea of routers was a mystic block with little demons running between the inventories if I'm reading the old changelogs right :D
 

Sebyen

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Jul 29, 2019
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I'm still a bit stymied with the pocket crafter and the portable hole, though.

For the Portable Hole, why would I ever want it as opposed to, say, a Forestry Backpack or Redpower Canvas Bag, which have more storage, require much cheaper ingredients, and in the case of backpacks, have additional sorting and storage functionality?

The pocket crafter... I still don't see it. Using up inventory slots is terribad. Frequently, my inventory is largely full, I have nowhere to put stuff other than in one of those nine slots that don't belong in the recipe. If I have to sort out my inventory to use it, I can just drop a crafting bench. If I have to drop something to get it to work, I can make and drop a crafting bench instead.


The difference between the Bag of holding (not portable hole that's thaumcraft :p ) and forestry bags and canvas bag etc is that the bag of holding increases your actual inventory while the bags add another inventory that you have to right click the bag to access. Forestry backpacks can't hold everything... And your inventory can obviously hold whatever you want. While other bags can hold anything they all have the thing in common that you have to right click the bag to get access to the inventory while the bag of holding is just pressing 1 button on your keyboard and this can be done when your inventory is open WHILE your crafting items with your pocket crafter.

Lets look at it this way.. Without the bag of holding and without bags you can hold 36 different items with bags you can hold much more but you really don't want to fill your inventory with bags since then you have no inventory space for items. With the bag of holding you could potentially hold 24 more bags! So you could keep one side of your portable hold with bags and the other with items for example.

Im not saying the bag of holding is better then forestry backpacks or ender pouches or canvas bags, what I'm saying is that the combination of all 4 gives the most possibly inventory space.

Forestry backpacks holds all your basic materials like cobble, dirt, wood, ingots, dusts, mob drops, building blocks, glass. Your ender pouches gives you access to your sorting system so you can anywhere you want put in items and have them automatically sort and finally canvas bags can hold tools and other materials the forestry backpacks can't hold then finally the bag of holding increases the number of bags you can hold so you don't have to completely clutter up your inventory with bags and it also increases your action slots and actual space for items.

The pocket crafter is much better then a regular crafting table IF you have the bag of holding, as you said you often don't have space for crafting with the pocket crafter but with the bag of holding you can just press a button and one of your sides of the bag should usually have space to craft. Also the pocket crafter is much like a project table in that when you exit out of crafting the stuff in the crafting grid doesn't pop out on the floor, and you can shift click items from your inventory to the crafting grid making mass production easy. The best part is the "even out all the mats button" its saves sooo much time instead of having to manually balance the items everytime just put 1 item in each slot then press the button and it balances perfectly.

As for what you said about routers vs TE for ore processing, yes I agree with you there, a simple TE system with much less machines and a couple of chests is better for a simple system for normal circumstances.

However what happens to that system if you start mining like crazy and gets tons and tons of ores I highly doubt that system would be very good at keeping up just for the fun of it in my world I disabled mystcraft instabilities and set up 2 quarries and a modular steves cart with highest level drill in a world with many dense ore symbols, If I tried TE for this amount of resources I would need millions of pulverizers and powered furnaces or I would need tons and tons of sand and literary drown in slag.
 

ShneekeyTheLost

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The difference between the Bag of holding (not portable hole that's thaumcraft :p ) and forestry bags and canvas bag etc is that the bag of holding increases your actual inventory while the bags add another inventory that you have to right click the bag to access. Forestry backpacks can't hold everything... And your inventory can obviously hold whatever you want. While other bags can hold anything they all have the thing in common that you have to right click the bag to get access to the inventory while the bag of holding is just pressing 1 button on your keyboard and this can be done when your inventory is open WHILE your crafting items with your pocket crafter.
Or... just have another bag, with more inventory space?

Lets look at it this way.. Without the bag of holding and without bags you can hold 36 different items with bags you can hold much more but you really don't want to fill your inventory with bags since then you have no inventory space for items. With the bag of holding you could potentially hold 24 more bags! So you could keep one side of your portable hold with bags and the other with items for example.

Im not saying the bag of holding is better then forestry backpacks or ender pouches or canvas bags, what I'm saying is that the combination of all 4 gives the most possibly inventory space.

Forestry backpacks holds all your basic materials like cobble, dirt, wood, ingots, dusts, mob drops, building blocks, glass. Your ender pouches gives you access to your sorting system so you can anywhere you want put in items and have them automatically sort and finally canvas bags can hold tools and other materials the forestry backpacks can't hold then finally the bag of holding increases the number of bags you can hold so you don't have to completely clutter up your inventory with bags and it also increases your action slots and actual space for items.
Yea... not seeing it. I'd have to hold down keys to try to access the bags and put in a whole 'nother step to getting my stuff. Not worth the hassle.

The pocket crafter is much better then a regular crafting table IF you have the bag of holding, as you said you often don't have space for crafting with the pocket crafter but with the bag of holding you can just press a button and one of your sides of the bag should usually have space to craft. Also the pocket crafter is much like a project table in that when you exit out of crafting the stuff in the crafting grid doesn't pop out on the floor, and you can shift click items from your inventory to the crafting grid making mass production easy. The best part is the "even out all the mats button" its saves sooo much time instead of having to manually balance the items everytime just put 1 item in each slot then press the button and it balances perfectly.
If I'm going to that much trouble and making a lot of stuff, I'm going to be back at base, where my project table has far superior mechanics. The only use for a pocket crafter is for crafting on the go. Unfortunately, it eats up my inventory to do it.

As for what you said about routers vs TE for ore processing, yes I agree with you there, a simple TE system with much less machines and a couple of chests is better for a simple system for normal circumstances.

However what happens to that system if you start mining like crazy and gets tons and tons of ores I highly doubt that system would be very good at keeping up just for the fun of it in my world I disabled mystcraft instabilities and set up 2 quarries and a modular steves cart with highest level drill in a world with many dense ore symbols, If I tried TE for this amount of resources I would need millions of pulverizers and powered furnaces or I would need tons and tons of sand and literary drown in slag.

That's simple. For that, I'd have a RP sorting system set up. Each ore is a different color. Each of the colors goes to a different hopper. Each hopper is the 'input' slot for a pulverizer, which has a Powered Furnace below it (for the bonus ores) and an Induction Smelter beside it (for the regular smelting), and beside that smelter is another pulverizer with an attached igneous extruder functioning as a cobble-generator, to feed the smelter sand.

They could be run in serial, directly adjacent to each other, and not disturb functionality, therefore this entire production could be done in a 5x5 square. All outputs run to the same pipe/tube system which funnels them to whatever storage I have set up for it.

Of course, that's an arbitrary example which will never occur in actual gaming, since if you are going to give yourself dozens of dense ores symbols and disable the negative qualities of them, you might as well just use creative mode to cheat in whatever you want. However, my facility which can handle that kind of volume is in a far smaller area than a Factorization facility built to handle a fraction of that input.
 

Sebyen

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Jul 29, 2019
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Or... just have another bag, with more inventory space?

As I said there comes a point where there is no more room for bags you can hold up to 36 bags but then you have 0 space for tools and items. With the bag of holding you get 24 more slots to play with.

Yea... not seeing it. I'd have to hold down keys to try to access the bags and put in a whole 'nother step to getting my stuff. Not worth the hassle.

Pressing 1 button to switch between the 2 sides of the bag of holding is easier then opening a bag IMO as you need to have your bag in your action slots then move your selection to the bag then finally right click. With the bag of holding its a simple keyboard press and you have access to your other inventory.

If I'm going to that much trouble and making a lot of stuff, I'm going to be back at base, where my project table has far superior mechanics. The only use for a pocket crafter is for crafting on the go. Unfortunately, it eats up my inventory to do it.

The project table isn't actually in FTB yet though so it's a good replacement atm, it wont be long until 1.4.5 or 1.4.6 packs release and that will no longer be a issue however. Still the pocket crafter has the balance all items functionality and you can organize a recipe in your inventory without having to go to a project table. For somewhat complex items that you will make a lot the project table is clearly superior though with the plans.



That's simple. For that, I'd have a RP sorting system set up. Each ore is a different color. Each of the colors goes to a different hopper. Each hopper is the 'input' slot for a pulverizer, which has a Powered Furnace below it (for the bonus ores) and an Induction Smelter beside it (for the regular smelting), and beside that smelter is another pulverizer with an attached igneous extruder functioning as a cobble-generator, to feed the smelter sand.

They could be run in serial, directly adjacent to each other, and not disturb functionality, therefore this entire production could be done in a 5x5 square. All outputs run to the same pipe/tube system which funnels them to whatever storage I have set up for it.

Of course, that's an arbitrary example which will never occur in actual gaming, since if you are going to give yourself dozens of dense ores symbols and disable the negative qualities of them, you might as well just use creative mode to cheat in whatever you want. However, my facility which can handle that kind of volume is in a far smaller area than a Factorization facility built to handle a fraction of that input.

For that system to handle large amounts of ores like in my example it would be much bigger and not as compact and easy to access and change stuff it would also be much harder to expand.

Now in most cases you won't get that large amounts of ores and that system would be perfectly fine. Im just saying routers and advanced machines can handle large amounts of ores the easiest and the best in terms of space, efficiency and expandability.

As for creative mode vs dense ores that's up to personal subjectivity, personally I found setting up a system that could handle 2 quarries and a fully upgraded modular cart in a dense ore world pretty fun, while spawning in stuff with creative is no fun at all. Its up to each person to figure out what's fun and what's not when playing single player for multiplayer I would never want to play on a server with dense ore enabled.
 

ShneekeyTheLost

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For that system to handle large amounts of ores like in my example it would be much bigger and not as compact and easy to access and change stuff it would also be much harder to expand.
No, it wouldn't. It would be able to handle that kind of input just fine. And if I needed to expand it, that's pathetically easy as well. Two pulverizers, one powered furnace, one induction smelter, an igneous extruder., and a hopper. Drop it down, hook it up. Plug and play modular design. Maybe you should go look over TE and what it can do again.
 

Sebyen

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Jul 29, 2019
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No, it wouldn't. It would be able to handle that kind of input just fine. And if I needed to expand it, that's pathetically easy as well. Two pulverizers, one powered furnace, one induction smelter, an igneous extruder., and a hopper. Drop it down, hook it up. Plug and play modular design. Maybe you should go look over TE and what it can do again.

Before I had my whole router setup I was using TE at least to some extent, 1 pulverizer didn't even come close to handle 1 type of ore from 1 quarry.. That means id probably need 2-6 pulverizers per ore depending on the rarity per quarry, Not to mention the massive influx of ores the steves cart would cause. In my case that would mean maybe up to 40-60 pulverizers to not have a buildup maybe more maybe less, if you think that's smaller then the system in my picture I don't know what to say.

I prefer TE though for when Im not getting crazy with dense ores or whatever.
 

Sebyen

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If a TE machine doesn't have a full internal power, it will run slower.
If your talking to me then that was never a problem at that time I had a energy cell always full close by with something like 15-20 biogas engines running to power all my systems.
 

TheNoobYouHate

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They don't actually store many times more stuff than chests, without the upgrade that requires you blowing up a diamond block to get.

I do not understand the hate for needing to blow up a diamond block.

IF this were UNmodded minecraft. then YES. that would be a horrid thing, but take into account that you can almost find 40+ diamonds an hour with MODDED minecraft. this should not be a issue.
 

ShneekeyTheLost

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Before I had my whole router setup I was using TE at least to some extent, 1 pulverizer didn't even come close to handle 1 type of ore from 1 quarry.. That means id probably need 2-6 pulverizers per ore depending on the rarity per quarry, Not to mention the massive influx of ores the steves cart would cause. In my case that would mean maybe up to 40-60 pulverizers to not have a buildup maybe more maybe less, if you think that's smaller then the system in my picture I don't know what to say.

I prefer TE though for when Im not getting crazy with dense ores or whatever.
Really? Because my setup was using a single pulverizer and it was keeping up with two quarries with simultaneous input, both run at 10 MJ/t.

The setup I described to handle the input you mentioned was five such setups. Thanks to TE being so friendly with deciding which sides to output/input to/from, I can just set them up adjacent to each other, barring energy hookups, and be done. The Sorting Machine simply routes each ore to a different setup so you don't have hopper backlog.

I do not understand the hate for needing to blow up a diamond block.

IF this were UNmodded minecraft. then YES. that would be a horrid thing, but take into account that you can almost find 40+ diamonds an hour with MODDED minecraft. this should not be a issue.
Not unless you cheat yourself in a Notebook. Finding the Dense Ores symbol can take hundreds of ages to find. Might be able to manage that kind of output in one haul by going to Twilight Forest, at least in a large mound, but then you'd have to survive said large mound, which would likely need Nano+ gear to survive and not need to spend a few hours dying repeatedly until you get your ores and get out.