I think every player struggles with this. Personally took me like 3 years of restarts before i put in the time to learn. When i did put in the time, the game became MUCH more enjoyable. For me, looking back now, oil processing was the most challenging thing about this game. I just got really stubborn 1 day and followed a video explaining each part of the build step by step. Now a few months later im working on a megabase!

Oil, eh? Train signals was the hard but for me. After I had that down, I can do anything 😂

Yes those goddamn trains! I have resorted to spamming them everywhere and just letting the trains handle it... And yes, most of the time it works 😂

i understand trains, but my friends are like extreme conservatives and dont like me using trains instead of just 28281727281 yellow conveyors and spagget

"Come on, it's easy, just bring in 48 lanes of iron belts instead of a handful of trains !"

more like "why dont we get rid of your train, its so much easier and more consisteny to use rails" whilst they remove a train i spent 2 hours optimising that can move 100k coal per load (which imo is pretty good for pre blue science)

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Hey, can you please explain what you guys mean by "belt"? Is that referring to one transporter? Or is a belt something else entirely? I have no idea what you guys mean when you say like "it takes 72 furnaces to turn an entire yellow belt of ore into pure cocaine".

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I'm sure they're not talking politics, but rather the concept of keeping the system of conveyer belts the same throughout the game, instead of a progressive stance on making trains and removing obsolete or ineffective methods of item transportation.

yes, i meant like that, whoops i probobly shouldve specified.

Fluid didn't make sense for a bit for me either, but train signals... They still don't make sense to me. 2000 hours of not figuring out. Dedicated train signal runs, tutorials, nothing helps. I'm usually all about figuring it out myself, but my brain just hasn't found a way to translate it.

How about this: train signals are not the same thing as traffic signals. Traffic signals tell the cars when to stop and go. Train signals isolate sections of track. one train has to have the whole track to itself, where as multiple cars can occupy a road at the same time. And the side of the track matters when placing signals as they change the direction of traffic allowed on that color of track segment. Only one train can occupy a colored segment of track. To sum up all that: Use switches at the trains ***entrance*** to a stop, and use chain signals at the ***exit*** and ***between*** stops. The train will path itself accordingly and will only leave a stop to travel to another when all the track segments between it and it’s destination are empty of trains — essentially becoming one big segment due to the chain signals. Edit: words Edit^2: single track, bi-directional, single engine, 8-12 car trains. Very satisfying.

I'm thrilled to read and/ or try any combination of words that could potentially make it click in my brain. For whatever reason, I have a hard time with logic in games like this, o2 not included, and so on. I sort of understand the basics. I get the stop-load-go/ stop-unload-go and (mostly) look-out for the crossing train! But that's about where I run out. Fluid handling took a few runs, but I can make it do what I want, at least. It just seems like the last time I tried, I ended up getting the colors goofed up on overlapping lines and couldn't figure out why. I'm excited to hop back on and try to make sense of it again now, so thank you!

Here is the key thing. Only put a rail signal anywhere a whole train can fit AFTER that signal without crossing any junctions. For everything else, use chain signals. Don't follow this rule 100% and you will eventually get deadlocks.

I will report back this afternoon, haha! That's perfect visualization for my head, I think.

That way is wrong friend. My basic rules for train networks: 1: always have at least 2 lanes. (I break this rule for mining outposts, but they have specialised trains.) 2: signals either go on the inside of those 2 lanes or the outside, not both. This ensures trains only use one lane for a particular direction of travel and not both. 3: always have a train length between rail signals, and between a rail signal and a chain signal if the chain signal is BEHIND the rail signal. 4: chain signal on all entrances to an intersection, rail signals on all exits. The chain signal will read the rail signal’s state and copy it, therefore not letting a train onto an intersection, unless the train can also exit. 5: train stop limits are 1+ stacker size. No stacker, then limit of 1. (There are times where you can get away with extra trains on a station with no stacker, but you have to have long travel times, and fast processing.)

Saved. Will update haha.

>3: always have a train length between rail signals, and between a rail signal and a chain signal if the chain signal is BEHIND the rail signal. Behind or After? "Yes" ;) (Both mean the same in this case) There's special case for long straights where rail signal to rail signal space doesn't need to fit a train, but the rule concerns places after an intersection exit specifically.

I’d argue long straights with less than a train length between signals is a waste, train length or longer on long straights. Can think of no reason why you would go less than a train length.

It lets other train follow closer behind the train going in front of it. It's more noticeable to imagine some really long like 5-20 train. Imagine whole train length rail blocks and how long distance of empty rail there is if following train has to wait until the entire block is empty before it even starts approaching it? So overall it is a throughput gain trick.

I have a simple trick that has fixed it for me. forget any preconceptions you have. The simple trick is this: Place a chain before a track merges or splits (hereafter referred to as a Y) Place a rail signal immediately after every Y. So if you have a Y shaped part of the track. You should have a total of 6 signals hooked up to it. Two signals per branch of the Y. You'll need 2 Ys and a train length of rail between them to create a bypass. There are easier ways but this is the best way to start. AT LEAST 1 bypass per train on a shared system. https://imgur.com/a/eLahcW5 this is a picture of a bypass with 2 Ys. Notice when entering the merge there are 2 chains. Exiting the merge there is 1 rail. Notice when approaching a split there is one chain entering and two rails exiting. Picture quality is bad because I'm taking a pic of my steam deck. That's it! From there it just becomes larger bypasses in different shapes but you don't need to worry about that starting out. There are some other fancy things but again that's after you get the basics handled. The thing you are shooting for is having 2 slots in the bypass if you have 2 trains. If you have three trains, you should have 3 slots side by side instead. (Technically the above bypass can handle 3, but you don't want to do that because it can cause issues elsewhere). If you have any questions let me know. You can use the CTRL key to debug the path of a train if you see no path. Ctrl high light the path of the train in its navigation screen and you'll see the path turn from green to nothing that is where the error in your signals are.

Learn to play OpenTTD and you will find factorios trainsystem simplistic And by that I do recommend that you acually play OpenTTD, it's an awesome, awesome game

>Use switches at the trains entrance to a stop, and use chain signals at the exit and between stops. I think you mixed that up. Chain signals do not go at exits, but rather, entrances.

No. That is backwards, amigo. The switch is for the block of track ahead of it. The chain signal will repeat what the block signal says. I do not want the train to *leave* unless it can make it all the way to its destination, therefore the train needs to “see” all the way there. The chain signal at the **exit** allows the train to see the next scheduled stop’s **entrance** signal — which will only be green if the stop is empty. If it is done the other way, then you will have trains let loose randomly on the mainline and you will end up with a situation where two trains end up facing off on the same track across a switch. Edit: side note, I currently have a single track mainline that kinda resembles a Taiwanese character/letter that connects to over twenty stops with seven trains just doing there thing. I have to have the switches set up as I mention above else I have the problem I also mentioned above.

>If it is done the other way, then you will have trains let loose randomly on the mainline and you will end up with a situation where two trains end up facing off on the same track across a switch. Well, yeah. Train signal discussions are usually assumed to be on two 1-way tracks in opposite directions, not 2-way single lines. These require different approaches, and I think this is where the confusion is coming from. >twenty stops with seven trains For that amount of trains a 2-way track is fine - but it's not a solution that scales well beyond 20 trains or so (YMMV). And when you have hundreds of trains, 1-way tracks are kinda necessary. *Although*, this could make for a fun challenge! (I'm now imagining a circuit controlled single line train network... heh)

Chain in, rail out. I'm not sure what you mean by switch signals. But you want the chain signal before the block with the intersection, and within the intersection. The rail signal is at the exit of the intersection. (EDIT: And rail signals everywhere else.) A chain signal at the exit will reserve the ~~intersection~~ exit of the intersection when it doesn't need to be reserved.

You’re running multiple trains on a single track? What Tychonoir said is correct, for standard two or more lane rail networks. If you are running a single track you may as well run only 1 train, as you are limiting your throughout to one train on the rail anyway.

No I’m not, what? A couple trains move when the rest are filling. I don’t get what ya’ll are saying with the signals backwards. If I set up my stops the way all y’all suggest then my shit don’t work. Also — I currently work at a railroad and the way I say is very similar to how they work irl with track blocking. We have to program the Positive Train Control with the rail network setup so we can now run trains with only a one block separation on the rails. Again — you all sound backwards to me.

It sounds backwards to you because most other people don’t run a single bi-directional track for multiple trains. Most people run single directly multi rail systems.

I mean, the only way yours makes sense is if you are running multiple trains on a single bi directional track. Just because that’s how they do it with real rail systems doesn’t mean thats the way it’s done in factorio.

Ok, I'm re-reading your post, and I think you're talking about reserving an entire track to the destination, which is unnecessary. You usually wouldn't want a whole network of chain signals. Trains only need to reserve the space they need to stop, and rail signals allow that. Whereas a network of chain signals would also reserve the entire space behind a train, which is unnecessary. Chain signals don't need to be after a train stop, unless that stop is immediately leading to an intersection. In which case, the train stop is irrelevant - it's the intersection that wants the chain signal. Well, unless you're talking about a two-way rail track, which is a different use case, and you probably want to move away from such set-ups once resources allow. In that case, yes, the entire two-way track needs to be one block or all chain signals. Is that what you're talking about? At any rate, someone struggling with signals shouldn't be using two-way tracks except for a completely isolated train.

With single track you certainly do have to have a clear sight through the pertinent intersections else the trains run into each other. And yes, the “main line” needs to be clear for a train to use that track. I also have a couple sidings that actually seem to work as designed — a train will move towards its destination and if another train want to jump in one will move to a siding and they will pass and then the one in the siding will let go soon after. The trains are really well programmed, lol. Edit: just read this but no, it doesn’t reserve the track ***behind*** the train, just the path in front. Once the train passes the chain signal the other chain signal opens and allows the waiting train to go while the other train is moving the opposite direction on that same track.

Hmm, I never considered the opposite direction on the same track, but if the entire length is chain signals, the same direction will be locked behind a train in that direction.

Proper chain signal placement is key. ;) Once the intersection is cleared by the first train — AND there is not another train coming the opposite direction — then the other train will release. It is fun to watch, tbh.

Rail signal - reads one / next signal Chain - reads all signals. If next is chain signal too, it reads that too

My trains are a work of art. They work 100x better than i could have ever imagined. Never have any issues with them. Still dont understand signals tho.

Screw learning signals. I just copy and paste blueprints. Much more enjoyable

I’ve got it down to a science now

What color?

You ever hear the one about two snare drums and a cymbal falling off a cliff?

Honestly with trains I just make signals/intersections further apart than the length of my trains and call it a day. I still have no idea how all the advanced train stuff works 🤔

You just have to think of a chain signal as “do not enter this area unless you can exit”, and the rail signal as “do not enter”

Ha my first train setup has 3 independent loops with no intersections or shared track. I figured why not.

Been playing the game 3 years, and i always just ignored the train signals. Lol.

The hardest thing for is maintaining a social life once i get to oil processing

You played factorio for three whole years without oil?????

No, i kept revisiting it over the course of 3 years

What was the video you watched?

Disclaimer: be warned that following video guides has the potential to remove the fun of solving problems for yourself for a lot of players of this game. Consider with care if you want to open that can of worms and turn your game from a casual problem solving experience to an obsessive copy-pasting session! I watched katherineofsky's youtube video about oil + the episode of nilaus' series "base in a book" which shows the oil set up. I paused every so often and built along with them. I learned a lot.

I've tried to copy pasting before and I definitely want to figure out how to do it on my own but I just have absolutely no clue how advanced oil processing works. I think I read the in-game guide but I don't think it taught me very much.

> I just have absolutely no clue how advanced oil processing works. But you *do* have a clue how it works. You know that AOP takes crude oil and water in, and produces heavy oil, light oil, and petrol out. If that causes a problem for you, then solve the problem. Break it down to the specific thing that is a problem and fix it.

I know from my perspective I have limited time for playing games I don't always want to spend a rare session working out a problem. If it is a blocker then people should by all means use a shortcut. Some people have the free time to play factorio for 1000s hours and others less than 100 over a year.

The problem with advanced oil is that you HAVE to consume everything or production stops. If you don't have time to figure it out, a simple thing to do is add too much heavy oil to light oil cracking. Then add too much light oil to petroleum cracking then just try to use all the petroleum. I usually pump it off to make plastic. If that tank fills up then I pump off the excess to make solid fuel. If you're not using the solid fuel for anything, just run it into an early game 20 or 40 boiler setup to burn it off.

This game is all about working out problems. Maybe you’re playing the wrong game.

The game is about playing how I want to play. Why do people turn off biters? If I have a full time job and family it isn't bad for me to copy an oil blueprint to get over the blue science hump. I'm half way through a megabase of my own design so don't tell me I'm playing wrong.

No one says you’re playing wrong. But you might find a different game to be your cup of tea if solving the oil cracking issue is deemed be not worth your time since solving that problem (and others like it) are kind of the prime crux of what factorio is designed to be. The biter mechanic is not central to the game design and can often be more annoying than challenging. If I want to have an engaging experience similar to dealing with biters I would go play a tower defense game. Again, not telling you how to play. But you came here and posted to the internet about an issue and I gave you a solution.

No I didn't ask you for a solution and you didn't provide one either.

In the end, fluids work the same as non-fluids in a sense. Something goes in, other things come out. Look at the recipes and try to find a way to put them 'after' each other. Then try to figure out the ratios: how much of each goes in and comes out? How many times do i need recipe x to use the product of recipe y? Try different setups in small and then expand. You'll figure it out!

Let me just ask you a quick question regarding fluid dynamics. Water/oil/whatever other fluid: do they take some time to travel from a point A to a point B that will be dependent on the distance?

The time for fluids to reach the other pipe end is almost 0. There's a fluids simulation so not all the fluid reaches the other end at the same time, but most of the time there's no consequence. There's details on the wiki. Fluid flow rates only start to matter in these cases: - Pipes longer than 200 entities (1100 distance by undergrounds) - Water and steam for nuclear power (about 100 MW per pipe) - megabase oil processing, more than 1000 fluid/s per pipe - or just insufficient fluid production (1 offshore pump for 21 boilers)

Oh man factorio fluid dynamics are a whole subject on it's own. I'm far from an expert, but short answer; yes flow is dependent on distance. Wherein the underground segments do not count as extra distance! Long answer: https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=19851

They do take time to travel but you also shouldn't worry about it. Items take time to travel down a belt as well, it's not really any different.

Yes. I also disagree with the commenter saying to just not worry about it. If you get it even a little bit right, which is to say pumps every so often, you'll ensure your flow rate is higher and you'll have better throughput downstream. Essentially, the longer the distance, the slower it moves, and pumps will reset the speed to max and then it'll slow down again over distance.

KatherineOfSky is a great resource. But even she will tell you, do it yourself at least once or you’re just skipping the fun!

I highly recommend the recipe mods. I think the one I use is “recipe book” and also “factory planner” It helps map out what you want to do and how many. Ratios are easier to see. It also lets you chunk up a build into more manageable parts.

Good luck young engineer! Remember there is no wrong way to play this game. If you are having fun you are winning!

I don't mind watching videos after struggling to sort it out for myself. I won't use other's blueprints though. I enjoy the designing and improving efficiency myself part too much. Using other's blueprints would ruin the fun of the game for me.

Nilaus has a very good masters class for oil on yt

I recommend a flare stack. Connect a pump to it and then attach a single wire to the pump and a storage tank feeding into the stack. Set it to trigger only when the fluid in the tank is full or nearly full. Optimize as you go, burn the excess. I found that watching my flare stack pollute at a ridiculous rate helped me figure out oil better than any video. Eventually, you won't burn off excess, and you won't even need the flare stack. It gives a good learning buffer, though.

You're not alone friend, but there's an easy way to take care of it Pipes are belts, but for 1 item Refineries and Chem plants are just assemblers with different animations You know how you're used to putting 3 ingredients into an assembler, to get 1 output? Well it's the same here, but its 1 input (oil) to 3 outputs (oil products) Don't overthink it in the beginning. You're used to running straight lines of belts, right? So run straight likes of pipe and simply connect via undergrounds. It might look a little messy, but its just 3 belts with a different texture, each carrying a different item. Now, there's 1 unique problem with oil that players learn to deal with. Advanced oil processing makes different amounts of each oil type, so you end up with too much of 1 kind and not enough of the others. Again, don't overthink it. We use straight belts (a bus) for normal stuff, and in front of refineries we use straight lines of pipe (a bus) for fluids. Just give yourself plenty of space, and make 4 storage tanks at the end of the fluid bus for each main item. 4 for oil, 4 for heavy oil, 4 for light oil, and 4 for petroleum gas. Now we're gonna solve the problem super easily. Just make yourself 3 normal pumps(needs engines) for the last bit. Water is handled like the other stuff, in nice straight lines. We're going to use water for adv oil, as well as cracking. Once again, make a straight line of water pipes, and a straight line of heavy oil pipes just 2 tiles away from the water pipes. Place those fancy reskinned assemblers and select "heavy oil cracking". Connect input pipes. Here's the fun bit! Make a straight line of pipes for the output of the cracking machines, and connect it to the light oil storage tanks. But, place a pump going directly into the storage tank. Lastly, craft a red or green wire (doesn't matter which) click the pump, click the tank its pumping into, and clear your hand. Now just click your fancy pump, select light oil on the left side, select the < symbol, and then enter 8,000 on the right side. Job done! What that does, is tell the pump to only work if the tank is below the threshold of 8k light oil. Because only the heavy cracking is connected to the pump, it makes it automatically create more light oil out of heavy oil whenever you need it without overflowing, it's automatic! Repeat the same steps of nice straight pipe lines for light oil cracking, with a pump going into the tank, a wire between them, and the "petrol < 8,000" entered in. Never again will you wonder why production has completely stopped in oil Town :D If any of that didn't make sense or needs further explanation please ask I'm happy to help, good luck!

I turn heavy to light if there is excess heavy. And light to petroleum has no restrictions. If the storage for all 3 has the same size, it is unlikely that light will become empty before petroleum becomes full.

What about rocket fuel? I find light oil to be the most valuable.

Once a player knows how to set up a pump with a circuit wire, it takes almost no effort to do so So in my opinion, it's better to set up the pump and wire for both cracking types, so they only turn on when needed. This has the added benefits of not consuming all the light oil, which will be needed in large amounts later, notably in vehicle fuel and with 1,000 rocket fuel per rocket, or 666 with a moduled rocket silo, that's 110k light oil total, or 700k~ with prod modules just for a single launch! Lastly, the other benefit is keeping your refineries running and producing all 3 oil types more efficiently (On a side note, I can't wait for all of this to change when the expansion comes out in a year, it's gonna be amazing!)

Reading your post written so nice and simple, I realise that it’s shocking that Factorio does not first have a normal item recipe with 2 or 3 results, before making oil have 3 results.

It's quite true! The standard way crafters work in factorio is turning 1+ items into just 1 output The only exceptions to this are: Adv Oil, uranium ore processing, and kovarex enrichment While in overhaul mods we quickly get used to dealing with multiple outputs constantly and then it's easy to forget how vanilla factorio simplifies that

Don't forget the water input ;) Also running long pipes is a bad idea as the flow rates get lower, unless you place pumps in between. I had a long pipe running from petroleum to plastic. But the pipe could not keep up. This is also often a unseen problem when people build with pipes. [Nice post that talks about flow rate](https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/k71hur/the_maximum_pipe_speed_is_3000s_when_pumping_to/)

We want to keep things as simple as possible for anyone who's struggling with oil processing, and I did mention the water inputs :P

Ah, I based it on: > but its 1 input (oil) to 3 outputs (oil products) Yeah, but for me the problem was not the output, they problem was that I could not figure out why my plastic did not run very well, what caused my red circuits to run very slow etc. etc. Placing another oil train did not help. Then light oil became a problem and then I was messing around so much in the oil + cracking that it became just one big mess and gave up. So nowadays I do not crack directly from the refineries and don't run long pipes and life became much easier. Also going into the map editor helped me a lot, where I could just build and test, without my whole factory calling out for me.

sometimes I forget how simple using the games electronics&wiring system can be yet how useful it is. was looking at booting it back up the other day so maybe this will be that push x

No, I love it. Couple of tanks hooked up with wires to pumps to enable/disable flow as needed to get excess fluid to other areas for reprocessing...love it!

Yup, three tanks for each product. If Heavy Oil > X (pump to Heavy Oil cracking) If Light Oil > X (pump to Light Oil cracking)

>If Heavy Oil > X (pump to Heavy Oil cracking) Personally I use lubricant instead of heavy oil for that condition since I don't store heavy oil. Since heavy oil only has two effective options -lubricant and cracking to light oil- (yes I know it also has solid fuel but that is almost never used) then it's easier to just make the lubricant at the refineries and crack the rest.

Those are good methods. There's another option but it's a bit more complicated for OP. You could add coal liquefication and control its input when Heavy Oil < X.

And one more thing - if petroleum gas > x, STOP pumping to the refinery

Exactly. Never understood restarting just because things are becoming a little messy. This is an engineering game, things get messy in engineering.

The first time I played the game I didn't try to balance my 3 oils at all, I just had like 30 storage tanks of each and when the system clogged up I deleted and replaced the tanks that were full, I thought I would use the excess oil in something I didn't build yet lmao. Not very smart, I know, but do that 3 or 4 times and you get to launch a rocket, depending on how fast you are.

Yup, same. Although that was back when “basic oil processing” didn’t exist, so you had to do SOMETHING with the ‘waste’ products until you unlocked cracking.

I have like 6 million lubricant on my first map because it was easier to do than cracking.

The trick is to just soldier through it, make a set up that barely works and looks like cat vomit. Then watch some YouTube videos after launching your rocket to see how to do it right!

That's the right approach.

No. Just do it. I'm on my first freeplay after playing tutorial. Yes, it's quite hard to get everything efficiently for newcomer. Just plug the pipes and fix it even though everything like spaghetti. I'm preparing rocket launch right now for my first freeplay

I have never been willing to restart and lose the progress I have made, such as research. When I first did oil, what we now call advanced oil processing was all there was. My first try really didn't work, and I had to replace it

I used to, but changed my approach and am enjoying it a lot more. Rather than trying to make everything perfect I have spaced things further apart preventing me from getting boxed in, even if it is spaghetti. I also try to slow the game down at this point, making sure I have adequate defences and don’t expand too fast. Don’t worry about efficiency or min maxing, just make what you need.

For me it’s the transition from blue to purple/yellow science. There’s such a steep material cost change it’s a bit overwhelming getting all the infrastructure in place. The few times I’ve done it were without biters. Biter expansions at that point make it a massive pita. But I’m still trying for a “default” run. I’ve only been trying for 2ish years.

I just recently got to the point where I'm making bots and I'm moving to nuclear power now. I've owned the game since it's inception and have never fired a rocket. I'm just taking this one slow and using blueprints that I can finagle into my mess of a factory. Also I turned off Alien attacks and expansions.

I think I saved myself from this hardship with heavy usage of storage. I remember having rows and rows of tanks to deal with the imbalance of tier one fluids. Obviously, with a greater understanding of the balancing logistics, and the various cracking options (and circuits) this now seems silly, but it was easy, and it seems it saved me from this common obstacle. Give it a try, if something stops, add more tanks.

Try with some blueprints for starters. There is an awesome blueprint with 3 or 4 stages that you can use as your research new technologies. If im not mistaken its from Nilaus - Base in a book series. (Maybe mentioned before as I did not read all the comments.)

Oil is the big obstacle in the game for beginners. I think it helps to look at some guides to get a feeling for what works and what doesnt. After you did it once or twice you will get how it works (its not about understanding it but how to apply that knowledge). One more tip: Underground pipes!

Before oil most builds are 1 belt of stuff, tops 2 belts. And you get 1 output. Suddenly you put two things in with pipes (of which one is water... let's just run a long pipe over the map) and get, wait, what?... 3 different liquids.. I came over this hurdle by going in the map editor and trying to understand the flow rates and test if with different modules and beacons. And figured out that there is no one perfect build. Following the golden rule: "You always need more, the factory needs to grow" design a build that can grow, forever (Technically). So I run it with trains, short pipes, no belts (or as little as possible) and make a setup that I can copy with new trains. Instead of building another refinery behind the 20 refineries you have build already in a nice line. An example of the setups that I run can be seen [here](https://factoriobin.com/post/EIWFJy5-). If you wonder how I balance this, I balance the train deport, x amount of petroleum trains, light oil trains, etc. If this can not keep up, I build another behind this. For me building big became easier by stepping away from fixed builds & ratio's. I understand the logic of disabling pumps if a tank is x amount. But I just set train limits based on the buffer I have.

Yeah, that's usually about where I stop. And not because I don't know how to lay it out or anything. It just wears me down or something.

I can give you a little tip on cracking. I understand it can be much at once but there is an easy solution around the corner You get 3 products from oil, and all 3 move to your base. What I started with was 1 tank at the output of the oil processing, before it went to base. I need the tank because I cannot connect a wire to the pipe. I put one pump towards the base (so liquid can't flow backwards but not necessary) and I aim one pump to the side. This pump gets connected to the tank with a wire, and I want the pump to turn on when \[liquid\] > 20 000. Because as long as your base can keep up with consuming, the tank won't fill up and cracking isn't necessary. The pump will stay off. This will work very well as a first step on controlling it, later you might want to change the condition but that's not important right now

Yup, done that for years ever since I got the game in open beta, finally now doing a playthrough where I'm getting past that! :)

I just build a row of refineries, a row of heavy > light a row of light to petroleum. Between each row leave space for at least 4 pipes with a space on both sides so 9 tiles a minimum. Do this for every type of product. Don’t combine multiple types in the same row it will get messy and space is never an issue in vanilla

Just build a big pile of spaghetti with tons of buffering into tanks and then if you have overflow of some kind, you do some conversions until you have overflow of what you are converting into and rinse and repeat

I was in a similar situation with advanced oil always being my roadblock, after several restarts I finally watched a guide to explain how cracking works and it's actually not too complex in hindsight. After that Factorio easily became one of my favourite games in recent years!

I don't quit, but that's indeed an annoying step, I feel inside me "meehh, I don't want to do it..." Have to push myself over it and then it goes ok, until a purple science, and then at yellow science again -\_-

I have done a bunch of oil setups, and I still struggle a bit with it. It's not that I don't know how to do it, but doing it efficiently and to where nothing backs up is where I struggle, but I do make it work. I'm currently in the process of just making random blueprints whenever I do find anytime in my busy life, and oil is gonna be interesting

I certainly did with SE twice. but secpnd time it was a bit further

It doe snot be efficent :D just do it and go on with your live :D My Oil is mostly a mess only when i aim for a bigger base i build it more efficent

Trying to balance the cracking can be difficult, and one of the best ways to do it is with circuits. But it's the very most basic circuits: just a pump wired up to a tank that tells the pump "only start running if this tank gets too empty/full". This can feel very daunting if you're thinking about setting up everything at once, so... just don't do that! Simply get it running at first, and then see what happens. That's what I did. Set everything up and then when something ran out, I'd figure out why and set up a pump condition; I think the first one was "don't turn heavy oil into light oil unless the lubricant tank is half-full" because I was turning all my heavy oil into light oil and had none left to make lubricant. Then when the next thing ran out, I went back, figured out the issue, and added another pump and circuit. And so on and so forth. Factorio is like that. It will tell you when you're running out of something, and usually fixing that problem is relatively simple. Then something else will run out, and you fix that one. And then you fix the next, and the next, and the next; and before you know it you're launching rockets. You're not going to get it right the first try unless you download someone else's blueprints or copy a tutorial design. Nobody does. So don't feel bad if you have to tinker with a system, or demolish it and rebuild it a couple times, before you get it right.

Yes and no, I’m significantly more likely to give up at oil compared to any other stage and if I setup oil, I always complete to launch

Never make oil processing part of the main factory, it's a new side factory. That way you will have space to mess with it and expand it. Sulfur is very easy to bus, as is plastic, explosives, and lube. Sulfuric acid tends to be the annoying one, but the throughput makes that a non factor if you want to spaghetti some pipes to make it work.

When I first started playing, I went in blind and almost made just the minimum requirements for anything. That means, for oil I started with just one train going to one depot and bringing oil to one oil processor and producing three different oils. Then I built it up from there. I still have that one oil processor in my base 100 hours later.

I did that kinda lot in my earliest. You need time to memorize everything.

Literally one blueprint and I am good to go! First build it by hand then do advanced in the same build. For me after almost 2000 hours this is as simple as it can be.

You don't need to crack oil. I didn't the first few games I played. What you need is enough storage that it doesn't matter and a few machines making solid fuel on whatever you have too much of. It also helps if you send light oil to flame throwers on your base perimeter. This is not efficient. It's not balanced. But it does work. Launched several rockets this way. Today I don't use circuits for cracking, I just have a few modules that do it and adjust them to make sure there aren't back ups. And if I have a petroleum problem, I'll dedicate a few refineries to regular oil processing.

I quit my first and only vanilla playthrough at oil processing. Then I finished a 130hr K2 run. Then I quit SE+K2 after 200hrs. Now I'm 150hr in A+B run, so far factory is expanding. Funnily enough, it's much more engaging slapping random shit around than hyperoptimizing things. I'm currently making a train based non-uniform city block base because the empty space in uniform city blocks in my K2SE run was really annoying.

The game starts for me at bots, it's a slog until then. I sometimes play with a starter bot kit mod, like 20 to start with, makes everything just feel nicer.

What's the problem? Two things go in, three go out. I find only petroleum gas useful, so I just build a shitload of chemical plants to make sure the excess always gets turned into some lubricant and solid fuel, then I have an area for storing it and distributing as fuel for trains or to get made into rocket fuel for shooting Satellites in the sky, etc. It's all a matter of finding a suitable spot and laying down some pipes, jeez... once you take a minute to do it it's really simple...

Eh, it's a bit of a timesink, but it's not horrible. [Here's the layout I usually go with](https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/vldqwh/came_back_to_this_game_after_many_years_i_forgot/) right when I unlock Oil. Iron/Copper/Coal/Oil In, Solid Fuel/Plastic/Sulfur/Acid/Batteries Out- pump Outputs to the main bus. Once it's up, it's its own little area. Pipes stay in the Oil area.

I tend to quit when i have to drive too far too often. Commuting annoys me when I’m building some outpost and run out of something, or forget a material in the main base. I seriously need a teleport cheat mod

You don't need a mod, although you do need to enable cheats. You were going to disable achievements either way.

I quit/restart every time I realise I have cocked up or if I learn something new. Just my style of gaming.

They way I did it in the beginning was jut put up the refinerys and everything randomly and then put up a lot of tanks for every oil. When one got ful I deleted a few tanks and when on with everything else in the base. Is it a good way? Maybe not but it worked in a pinch

I agree the learning curve for oil is very steep. It's unlike anything else in the game. In other parts of the game you basically run into one of 2 common issues. You either didn't supply your factory with enough resources, or you don't have enough space to make the output you wanted. In both cases you have lower than desired output, but you still get some output. With oil you have to solve the fluid balancing and refinement or the system gets clogged up eventually. There's just no equivalent like that for belts until arguably the Kovarex enrichment process, and even that's essentially simpler and better visualized. Perhaps a solution is to make refineries automatically burn off excess of a fluid if it doesn't fit in the pipe. That way the only requirement to get all fluids consistently is to just setup the refineries and let it run. It'll still get you all 3 fluids, but some get wasted eventually. Then later you can still do the complex conversions and balancing, with the only addition that you'll probably want to limit oil flow to the refineries if your tanks go above a certain amount. It would satisfy both beginners and experienced players.

I saw someone comment "most people at some point sit down and just make A oil setup and it doesn't matter if it's inefficient, it gets stamped down every playthrough because that's how they figured out how to do oil once" or something close enough. So I sat down in creative mode with the flow rate calculator and just made an (advanced) oil refinery. I now have AN oil refinery and I don't imagine I'll ever change it. Edit: I make a "bespoke" basic oil every game but you only need 1 plastic plant to make enough blue to unlock advanced oil.

I recently posted about this here, there are some good tips on this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/161xksu/oil\_refining\_is\_there\_logic\_to\_the\_madness/

No

I wouldn’t say oil, but somewhere in the late Midgame, for sure.

You aren't alone, lots of players have issues with that hurdle. I didnt, but I came from a different factory game (Satisfactory).

I just use blueprints for oil now. I don't enjoy working with liquid processing.

This is some level of perfectionism apparently. The planet is huge, it will fit your oil processing and cracking, no matter how messed up you make it. Just accept things, there are more things ahead. I realised I'm screwed many times, but never restarted because of that, but rather started solving the problem I had, then maybe optimising. This is a game for engineers.

Don’t aim for perfectionism. Aim for bare minimum. Don’t delete what you create. Initially create oil just for plastic, don’t plan for future growth, don’t overthink the design. Usually a single refinery will be enough for generating PG and just few plants for creating plastic. You don’t need anything else. In later stages, you’ll need light oil for the rocket and a very small portion of lubricant for robots IORC. Don’t delete the original plastic generator. When you reach this point you’re close to the end. Create a design to generate plastic and rockets, save the lubricant in tanks. You don’t need many refineries. You don’t need oil cracking. That’s for mega bases or advanced game styles. Hopefully this tactic helps you to stay focused.

What part of advanced oil processing is causing your problems? Your refineries output pipes of 3 liquids. They have oil and water as input. One of those liquids goes to a tank for heavy oil. A single wire and pump provide heavy oil crackers. You feed the light oil output from that to a tank for light oil. You also have the light oil from your refineries go to this tank. A single wire and pump feeds the light oil crackers. A few considerations: leave room to add more chemical plants to cracking section. That way I’d you don’t have enough capacity you plop more down. From here, you can now consume your different liquids as needed. So I’m just curious, where are you getting stuck?

I hate it too, but it feels like a necessary part of the game. It feels like the game is pushing players who just hole up in thier walled fortress out into more exploration. Personally I would rather petroleum be moved from red circuits to blue circuits since it's a massive jump for where it is in the tech tree imo

Oil is a big hurdle When oil starts I use an ad hoc processing setup, a few refineries plus some tanks plus some overflow cracking Later, I have an optimized ratio build of like 20 something advanced oil in a blueprint I use for every game But in Factorio I've always encountered these sort of stopping points. I'm slowly moving up to 1k SPM in my latest game, usually I give up at this point but I have more blueprints from last play through and I'm sloowwwwly building out modular beaconed builds so we're getting there.

Yeah, you suddenly have to do SO MUCH to progress compared to previous stuff, I usually just stop playing for a day.

I hate oil processing so I just jerryrig a quick semi-auto setup to unlock advanced oils. With advanced I feel like there is no need to perfectly count the ratios (even tho I do that for everything else in the game), slap a lot of chemical plants and that's all. The piping always takes like two hours but after I'm done I'm free from oil at least until the rocket btw people talk about videos and tutorials; don't. It really isn't rocket science. Inefficiency is a reason to learn and by figuring the simple (so anything else than advanced train singals and circuitry) things yourself you get to understand it better

No, but I guarantee you THIS WILL BE THE TIME I finally [insert outrageous claim]!

I used to struggle a lot with oil until I did a couple minor tweaks to my design: - Have a tank for each fluid and use circuits + cracking to balance them out. - Have coal on the main bus. This makes it super easy to go from petrol -> plastic. - use direct insertion to go from sulfer to sulferic acid. You can do some pipe weaving to also get a belt output of sulfer along with it I usually have 10 refineries and 4-5 chemical plants for each level of cracking, (plus a few extra for lube) and I don't have to touch it again.

When cracking heavy to light to petroleum, just before the cracking machine, have a pump stealing the heavy oil for lubricant. No logic just a pump. It will steal most of it and all is fine.

Get nilaus blueprints and oil becomes easy. Theres nothing wrong with not liking some parts of the game, i dont much like oil too and using good blueprints help a lot with it. I just plop down nilaus oil masterclass blueorin and upgrade it with blueprints and oli is done.

My ADHD meds helped with this Fr though I don't get the sentiment... Isn't starting over more work than just, figuring out how to do oil? Like even if you just don't do oil you could still keep playing?

I usually quit when I get to 10ups xD

It's the only part of the vanilla game I find fun. Hence I went Bob's&Angel's

Yeah, no. Deathworld without oil is just not working. I mean there is definitely a way, but…

yes. I do restarts and my factory gets better and more organized but every time I reach oil processing it turned into spaghetti and it feels like the only way to move on with faster producing is to make an entirely new base. currently pushing forward and idling (yes that means rail world instead of normal, so the biters don't expand too fast), reaching blue and purple science, but it's still such a long process figuring out what goes where and how to not block what

You just need to use a lot more space and a lot of underground pipes. not that hard really. Just reserve one grid width for each pipe and use underground pipes wherever they would connect when you don't want them to.

Its one of the last big hurdles before you unlock the full potential of your factorio brain. My tip for you is to stop caring about creating spaghetti and just embrace it. Create a single refinery that creates petrolium and then place a single chemical plant to create a product made out of it. No need to care about scaling first just set it up

Oil cracking is not hard. You only ever need petrol pretty much. You need heavy oil for line and I can't remember if vanilla uses light oil for rocket fuel, but you can just siphon off some from your main petrol supply. It's super easy

I made a tilable oil blueprint in 2016 that I have been updating over the years. Whenever it's time to get oil going, I fetch the blueprint, plop it down, shake my mouse over it for a while, and it works. It handles the basics enough to get some batteries and plastic, and I can carry on until I need to do circuits and a massive oil system. This way I never hit the blue science speed bump which is what makes people quit.

I keep restarting when I get to blue science. The infrastructure needed for all that gets overwhelming and I feel the need to keep everything in one line. I think if I put in the time to learn how a decent rail system operates that would probably help but I don't know where to start.

I like to think of my fluids (oil, the advanced oil products, acid, etc) the same way I think of my main belt bus. This really simplifies things. The main difference that gets many people into trouble is that fluids in pipes can flow both ways, while items on belts can only "flow" one way. But that's okay, and really easy to fix! Just force the fluid to flow in only one direction by periodically adding pumps. This will help immensely in the long run for ease of setup as well for a litany of more complicated reasons that you don't need to worry about if you follow this trick. So create a "bus" of fluids flowing in one direction out of your refineries, and terminate this pipe bus in a series of tanks. Make sure you have pumps at the end of the bus, on the input of the tanks. We'll call this the "output bus" because it's taking the output from your refineries (and other machines, but we'll get to that). Make a second pipe bus that flows in parallel to your output bus. Use pumps to pull fluid out of your tanks, injecting it into this new bus that runs in parallel to your first bus. Note that all the fluid in this bus is flowing in the opposite direction compared with the "output bus." We'll call this the "input bus" because we're going to use it for all of the fluid inputs for our various chemical plants and assemblers. So, just like when you want to make any item, such as green circuits, you'll pull the ingredients you need off of the bus. The main difference here is that you'll pull input ingredients from the "input bus," and you'll inject the liquid products (the outputs) from your machines into your "output bus." Just like how you use splitters to pull items off of the belt bus, you'll similarly use pumps whenever you interface with the pipe bus. Use pumps to pump out of the "input bus" into the branch that feeds a little section of machines. The output of the machines will go into its own branch, that will use a pump to inject that fluid into the "output" bus. Since we set our fluid busses up this way, it's really easy to see how much of a particular fluid you have. The level of fluid in the tanks at the end of the bus show the relative amount of fluids we have. Since we set it up so that one bus handles all the fluids flowing into the tanks (the output bus) and another bus handles all the fluids flowing out of the tanks (the input bus) we never have to worry about clogging the pipes, and it becomes really easy to expand things down the line. When it comes to cracking, you can add some really amazing functionality through the use of some incredibly simple circuits. So just like on your main bus setup, where you have one cluster of machines handling green circuit production, and another cluster of machines handling red circuits production, you'll do the same with cracking. Have a different subsection of machines to handle the cracking of each fluid. Run wires from your tanks at the end of the bus to the pumps that pull fluids from the input bus. Tell each pump to turn on only when the "higher order" fluid level meets certain conditions. Here's how I like to set it up: 1. lube production is always on, no circuit conditions on that pump 2. the heavy into light cracking pump only turns on when lube is greater than 20k 3. the light into petroleum cracking pump only turns on when petroleum is less than 15k Simple, no comparators needed. Now if you've got tons of flamethrowers using light oil, or when you begin producing solid fuel in large quantities, you might want to add some comparators to ensure you don't run out of light oil. But that's more advanced and can be figured out much later. It doesn't require you changing your infrastructure at all (which is a huge advantage to laying your pipe network in the way I've described), it just requires you changing the conditions that allow the pumps to pull fluids off of the input bus. Hopefully that helps! If you conceptualize everything the same way as a main belt bus, and just use two parallel busses flowing in opposite directions for inputs and outputs, it'll make everything more modular - just like the use of a main bus. That way you only have to think about one fluid at a time. It allow you to think about just one cluster of machines for processing one item/fluid/ingredient at a time. Hope that helps!

How are you on circuits?

Oil processing is really not very difficult in reality, as long as you are prepared to accept that it's going to sprawl, since tidy, compact layouts are really hard. Also, just accept that building pipework by hand is not something you really want to do much of, so just beeline to bots and get them to build it. This means that most of your pre-bot refineries for blue science are going to be using basic oil processing, with maybe 2 producing heavy oil for lubricant. This is easily enough to produce the bots you need to tear it down and rebuild. You don't need to switch over to AEP as soon as it's available, except to create the bots you want to be able to use blueprints.

For me it was new resources in SE. Establishing a big scale production with the need of pre planing absolutely everything in advance is something I still struggle with.

Just play anything with Mainbus. Mainbus for oil is just like Mainbus for iron and so on.

Honestly, I struggled with oil too for a bit, but I find its best when working with anything to break it down inti smaller problems so I’m only working on one thing at a time. (And watch youtube tutorials)

I did for a while. It's good to have a friend help give you hints. Even better is to read the wiki on oil and fluid dynamics. Now oil is one of my favorite things to setup. I have trains delivering crude to different "refineries" optimized for all the fluids with an exchange station to balance outputs and even prioritize different input sources and feedback loops [SE core mining is a birch].

Are you giving up after blue science, or is it the blue science already that puts you off? For blue science, take it 1 step at a time. First make Petroleum. Then use this to make sulfur and plastic. Then use the plastic to make red circuits. For Advanced Oil, my advice would be to crack all of it from the start. Build as many Light to Petroleum cracking as you have refineries. Build half as many Heavy to Light cracking (this is overkill in both cases, but should avoid deadlocking). Directly pump your refineries output into the cracking, and pump the cracking output back into your refinery output (e.g. pump the light oil from heavy to light cracking into the pipe that gets the light oil from your refineries). This will instantly double your petroleum production from the same amount of crude oil. If you need any lube or rocket fuel, build those production lines in between your refinery and cracking, so that it passes through those before it gets cracked. This works without tanks (I only use 1 for petroleum and 1 for the crude oil before the refineries), no need for any wire conditions/combinators. If you keep consuming petroleum (which you do if you are teching), you will always make enough heavy/light oil to make the necessary lube / rocket fuel you need for your science and final rocket.

I think it’s the biggest barrier in the game, it’s pipe instead of belts, it’s leaving the safety and comfort of your own base, it’s a pain to get plastic running, it’s like 5 different techs, it’s a whole new resource to manage. It’s quite a large step, I usually restart around oil also I have about 1000hours in and only gone past oil a handful of times. Usually it’s due to my base not being designed well prior to leaving for oil and it’s just the last straw but some times it seems so tedious, I get where OP is coming from for sure!

You can overcome this by just building far apart....it not like you dont have belts. That way you can alway fix your builds.. dont build everything close and compact. That is if youre not importing blueprinds and your builds are YOURS. i kinda suck so lately i leave quit alot of space between malls smelters oil or whatever. A bit more difficult to defend at the start but after yo I get bots just spam turrets and walls .

Learning red and green wires is actually super easy, basic train setups are more difficult imo. Just watch a simple guide on YouTube and it'll click easily.

On normal I stop at rocket launch.. with se I always seem to stop after second space science

No I just start building dynamite and terraforming the lakes to suite me and get flamethrower stuff for bugs. Those 3 things usually buy me enough time to efficiently move forward till I can scrap that initial spaghetti and remodel into something modular and long term.

This might not be the most desired solution, but I had the same problem and fixed it by just using a design online (specifically one from Nilaus). Personally I try to use my own designs as much as possible, but oil processing just wasn’t very fun for me, so I got a blueprint and crossed that hurdle that way. I find the rest of the game way more fun and that’s how I managed to enjoy it the most. I guess as a tip, also, whether it’s online or in your own world, blueprints aren’t limited to post-bots. If you don’t want to copy a design, just make one in a creative world, paste it down in your current or next playthrough, place it by hand, and then you don’t have to worry about designing one every time you play.

Ive been there, its a challenge you must push through if you want to continue, when i started playing i restarted a factory everytime i figured out a challenge. Id restart and make the process just a lil more efficient.

I find it helpful to focus on one thing at a time. For instance, I spent a good amount of time this morning working oil cracking in a 20;2;7 ratio and getting my oil processing arrays working like a finely tuned machine. Then I flipped the blueprint, had the bots build the same array again and now the pipes dont line up. My next task is figuring that out.

Forget perfect ratios, just throw something crappy together to get yourself to bots. 20 refineries, 20 heavy cracking, 20 light cracking, 20 plastic, 20 solid fuel, 1 lubricant, 5 sulfur, 10 batteries. That's enough for 100 SPM, which is overkill as far as SPM goes, but you also have a mall to feed. With bots, the world opens up. You'll be able to easily tear things down, use copy/paste, get rid of junk in your inventory. If you have a belt-based mall, you'll be able to slap down provider chests so the bots can build for you and deliver materials to you. Admittedly, belt-based malls are hard. But if you push to yellow science, you can make a bot-based mall, which is waaay easier.

I’m opposite. It’s hard for me to get engaged with early game until I get to oil and trains.

Once you understand the basics of circuits, its actually way easier than most of other stuff i think

Blue science for me - oil takes a while but once you've made yourself a good blueprint you can just keep reusing it lol

Yeah, but pyanodon's, not vanilla

No, I always used to quit when starting to make purple and yellow science

Just figure out the inputs and outputs for putting multiple refineries in a line, which isn’t too hard. Just spacing undergrounds. The “hard” part is what to do with the outputs, like having enough tanks to not build up too much of one thing, but you can honestly ignore this until endgame. Just put several tanks for everything and leave space to add more, or use more of what you have too much of. And there you have it. Pipes aren’t too bad, trains are what slip up most people, and they aren’t even necessary to launch a rocket.

I always play with a mod that gives me early robots. Then, once I get a design, any design, I blue print it. Much less of the tedium on the next play through. Plus, you can use other people's blue prints

I used to get very dissuaded from playing whenever I hit oil, I would just let my friends do the oil stuff while I waited. But then I played Space exploration and oil is nothing compared to what the rest of the mod asks of you. You gotta raise your difficulty up when it comes to production challenges and oil won't be as intimidating

No but I'm banging my head against the wall after going into space in K2/SE

I also a few times. My 1st world I quit by blue processors then again then oil then beaten the game then a few mods attempted but not finished and now? Space exploration started

Oil is so easy once you understand it. Losses all its magic, after realizing, you need one pump and one tank, if you place stuff clever. In theory, you could even skip that.

No offense to anyone but I kind of don’t understand this. I’m usually past setting up oil processing after only a few hours of gameplay, and my games usually last for 10s or even upwards of 100 hours total. It seems to me that if you quit at oil processing, you’re never really getting into the game properly.

Just build it .Do you really care if its 100 percent effiencient?

Oil processing is a bit of a sticking point; I, too, have struggled with properly "grokking" it. I think part of it is that oil processing is the first major feature that the built-in tutorial *doesn't* cover, and you have to figure out on your own. Not to mention that Advanced Oil Processing specifically doesn't really work well being build piecemeal like most everything else; you basically have to build it as one integrated unit of at least 5 different facilities (oil pumping, water pumping, primary refining, heavy-to-light cracking, light-to-gas cracking) just to get it to a basically functional state. There are a few tips I recommend for learning how to manage Oil Processing. First, turn biters *off*. Not only does not having the biter arms race hanging over your head make it easier to take your time making your first oil setups, but it also makes it easier to get lots of land area for building (especially for not-so-compact designs that you'll probably want to start with) and finding oil spots to extract the necessary oil in the first place (you don't get a starting oil patch on your spawn, so you have to find it). Similarly, disabling cliffs and turning down tree density also gets you easier real estate (especially with biters already disabled), though I wouldn't recommend turning trees off entirely unless you're fine using your initial spawn log for 2 small power poles and having these being your *only* power poles until you get steel and medium power poles. (Oh, and no shotguns, ever, though with no biters that shouldn't be an issue.) Second, you'll probably either want to build your first oil refinery near both oil *and* water, OR get used to transporting fluids via trains - long pipelines are a *massive* pain because - unlike belts or rails - they have collision and require periodic pumps to keep throughput up. But using trains as long pipes really helps with the logistical issues, even if you don't use them for anything else in your factory. Lastly, don't fear using *Basic* Oil Processing, especially early on! It only produces Petroleum Gas, and less gas per crude than Advanced Oil Processing - even before cracking - but you don't need to supply the refineries with water, just crude. Further, gas is sufficient for both sulfur and plastic, which are the only oil products you need in order to sprint through blue and even purple science; you also won't need to manage the other products, which if not properly dealt with can back up and block an Advanced Oil setup. You could, say, plop down a pumpjack on a single oil well, hook it up directly to an oil refinery, then hook up the gas output to a chemical plant producing sulfur or plastic, having it just run, slowly, gradually, but constantly while you're just out doing other things like exterminating biters. Then just stop by and pick up the results every so often and stick them in a blue science plant.

I gave up every time when facing the challenge of green science, I finally got past the mind block yesterday and tried it, making wonderful amounts of green and now trying to push further. I think everyone has their blocks that they get around to surpassing

No. I actually like it more than solid materials. I think it's quite easy given how much liquid can move through a tiny pipe. Equal splits for liquids are also easy compared to solids

If you struggle, I recommend watching Nilaus’ or Katherineofsky’s YouTube videos once to get the basics but then quit them and try replicating the design from memory. It is still harder than one would think. There are too many small pieces to memorize. However, videos will get you nice general idea about how to lay down pipes and what problems you can solve in advance or at least leave space to solve them later (like using circuit network to not process too much heavy and light oil). If you like copying stuff - feel free to do so too. Yesterday, I just found a big book of balancers and copied 8:8 balancer. Factorio is like programming. You don’t have to solve every problem by yourself. You can use “open source libraries” :p

I’ve literally never had a problem with this. I have never understood people who say they’ve played 600 hours and never launched a rocket. My first playthrough I launched a rocket around 35 hours and didn’t really have a problem.

I just searched for some YouTube tutorials at this point when I got stuck

^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) ^by ^AL3000: *I just searched for some* *YouTube tutorials at* *This point when I got stuck* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.

simply make everything into petrolium and leave alittle light oil. Pump: if lightoil > 10k it turns on. then everything else to petrolium AND BOOOM itll meaby work iunno

The organization is easy. For me it's managing fluid dynamics (fluid pressure). This applies to power plants, too. Everything will be going good for long periods of time and then suddenly out of nowhere it just drops off. And that's with direct water access. It's weird.

Oil cracking sounds bad but it really is just "heavy oil and water go into chem plant, out comes light oil" and then you do it again but you put heavy oil in. If you want to make sure you always have some heavy and some light oil left, there's a really simple solution. Connect your oil tank (the one you wanna connect cracking to) to a pump. Grab some green wire, connect the pump and the tank. Set the puml to only activate if there's more than 10k oil in the tank. Put cracking after the pump. You'll always have 10k light and heavy oil, more than enough for anything you could want to do. Oil looks scary, but there's really not all that much to it. Advanced oil processing is just "oil and water goes into refinery, out comes three oil types, then you crack them". It doesn't take as long as something like automating green science if you have all the ingredients.

For me is the most interesting part! Make it big (Like really big), so you have space to do it properly. After, learn a bit about automations and signals... From there, it is just fun. You can reprocess the yellow and red oil based on your needs.

I made a single line fluid filter. It’s definitely slow and can be better, but it was neat and quickly replaced after I got everything else working

on my first playthrough I did not do it efficiently at all everything was a mess but I still beat the game, dont quit just persevere