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As you grow your factory inFactorio, you may have trouble keeping all of your resources organized, especially if you’re prone to developing spaghetti factories. Rushing to the next tier of Science often causes these issues, as you build only what’s necessary at the moment, leaving little room for future expansion without a full teardown.
Luckily, there is a simple solution to this problem that can greatly help with organizing your factory: the main bus. This structure is essentially a never-ending line of Belts that carries almost every item you may need, letting you sprout off smaller factories to the side to refine these items into more complex components. Below, we’ll take a look at how to build and take advantage of a main bus.
What Is A Main Bus?
A main bus is a series of belt lines that contain basic items that are used in most recipes in the game. Your main bus can either extendvertically or horizontally, but there’s no functional difference between the two beyond personal preference.
The advantages of using a main bus includehelping you stay organized, creating acentral flow of materials, while also beingeasily expandableby simply extending the bus further. However, main buses take a lotmore belts than other factory structures, and it can take a while to get from the start to the end of the bus in developed factories without the use of vehicles or trains.
How To Set Up A Main Bus
Before you start building your main bus, scout out a suitable area. You’ll want to find a location that will let youbuild in a straight line uninterrupted for a long distance, so avoid building intolakes or cliffsif you can help it.
If you do run into a lake, you may useLandfillto cover it up and keep building.
Once you’ve found a good location, all you have to do isstart building your belts in a straight line. Typically, main buses are built infour-column blocksat a time, with each block of four belt columns carrying one type of item. This isn’t a strict rule, however, and sometimes you may only have need for one or two belts per block and item type.
The reason for keeping blocks in four-column blocks is so thatan underground belt can pass between them.
Another thing to consider iswhat items you want your main bus to carry. Typically, you’ll want to have a few four-column blocks of the basics:iron plates,copper plates, andsteel. From there, a few common additions areiron gear wheels,electronic and advanced circuits,steel plates,processing units,batteries,plastic bars,stone, andsulfur.
When adding materials into your main bus, be sure touse a belt balancer near the beginningso that all four belt lines areequally saturated.
The best part about using a main bus is that it iseasily expandable, so you can reallyadd any item that may be useful in multiple placesthroughout your factory.
How To Draw From A Main Bus
When it comes time to actually use the materials in your main bus, you’ll want to becareful that you don’t leave the rest of the belt column under-saturated. To do this, you’ll want to balance the belt as you create a fork for the departing material.
There are a few different ways to accomplish this, but the easiest is to simplyre-balance the belt after you take from one column, using astandard four-column balancer. This will keep the main bus from running out of materials later down the line.
You’ll also want to ensure that your smaller factories that are using the main bus’s materialsaren’t drawing more materials than are necessary for that factory, as this can cause bottlenecks and throughput issues later in the bus.Always keep in mind ratios andthroughput requirementswhen splitting off a section of your main bus.
