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My favorite thing about this game (besides the IMMENSE QoL features) is how it scales. You start with a single belt, and a 1-tile cutter, and you scale up to space belts and cutter platforms. You use the basic buildings to design your own version of those buildings on a macro scale, and it's just so satisfying.
Truly. I identify as having a logistical/modular brain but this man blows me out of the water with his skill and speed at coming to solutions. I need to sit and think to come up with these kinds of solutions, and they're usually not nearly as clean!
One thing i do to not confuse my blueprints like that, is to take the sample shape icon, (the one you use to demonstrate before/after of a shape in the blueprint name), and make it completely unique to direction, what made the swapper blueprint so confusing was that your swap blueprint only worked on 2 sided symmetrical shapes, but wont work on lets say a shape with 1 of each shape type in each corner. what i do is instead of displaying the icon shapes like you did with a symmetrical shape (CrCrCuCu) i only use the symmetrical shape for blueprints that i know ONLY works with symmetrical shapes, and then any other blueprint that works in general no matter the shape (like the one you came up with at around 18:00) i display them with a unique (CuRuWuSu), and then ofcourse colour them to my liking. because this shape, since it has a unique shape in each corner, will never ever work on any blueprint that isnt 100% generic (like the one you struggled with because it seemed like it switched the two top corners, but it actually cut and switched the two oposite corners, but since it was a symmetrical shape it worked). this way its way easier to destinguish what blueprint to use, and lets me use the smaller compact ones when they work. hope that wasnt TOO confusing, :D
I stepped away to try for myself first, and its always lovely to get validation that I've had the right mindset making the modular blocks. It's very cathartic just pulling from my little library and having things spit out the correct things.
Some things I would like to point out: When you went for the shape with the 4 different pieces and build something to swap them, I was like "wtf is that man doing", as at the time I did not understand, why you stopped progressing your milestone and went to do something else. Just after you were done with that I realized that your milestone actually requires that. So a little "hey the milestone now needs a different stacked tile for the squares, so lets see on how we can swap them" would have been nice to be able to follow the logic there :D cant wait for the trains though, its a fun journey.
Just recently finished the milestones and built a basic make anything machine (no pins or crystals). Using blocks from my own blueprints is so satisfying to easily complete remaining tasks.
I await the day you build the logic network to have a module that can produce any shape depending on input. This was possible in Shapezio, and I really hope this also works here. I'd say that's the point when we can say we have "completed" the game. :)
Love this game. Just bought it and put down about 15 hours of gameplay. It's great how it goes from micro to macro factory game. I need to set up painting train stations soon get get every color of every shape to do auto-sorting.
Yip, each video I find out more and more how better Nilaus's mind is, but I have some designs that aren't too bad for the blueprint only (impressed myself).
I just came up with a good idea you could use. Instead of noting how many lanes an input takes, copy the system used in Unix file permissions. Use bits to indicate a binary value for 001, 010, 100, etc. for what levels the lanes are expected to be on. All possible combinations fit into values 0-7. This assumes you'll only use the full 4 lanes per level.
you could even use 0 through 4 for each bit position to indicate the amount of lanes in that level, 442 would be 4 lanes in the first and second level and 2 in the third, for example
I feel like you'd be able to take this concept to the next level with incorporating wires and logic gates. Input can be specific shape components and you program the output shape. Then just modulate the inputs
17:50 You can also do it by using one 180 rotator, a swapper, a CW rotator, a swapper and a 180 rotator in that order. That's 2x5 tiles, and is generic. Came up with it while watching your video and tried to make my own swapper.
I saw you started a series and I pinned it, played Shapez to til the endgame begins, and now I'm watching - nearly caught up, I'm kinda stuck at wires gotta say, having developed a sort of main bus system, only got wires left to perfect I reckon....
Shame to see the challenge fail at the 7:47 mark when you edit one of your blueprints for a rotation. (I'm just giving you a hard time. Great episode!)
Loving this game, Built my first MAM for the top layer only (still need to build logic for pins and crystals but working on it). Going for JIT but got changeover down to 15 min so far. Cannot wait to see what you do when time comes too
You do realize that your "generic" design fails to meet the throughput, though. You can see it at 23:58, the belts are still not full. You are stalling the swapper by having the jump in the middle fill up before the other piece can catch up.
I decided to make the shape and fluid miners just balance between the outputs so I don't have to deal with setting up ones for each level. I can just throw down 2 (now 3) miners and have a full belt.
XD i was to lazy to rotate the shapes for a perfect swap. But that challange will come for sure. The third layer makes stacking things on top of each other difficult. I make a lane splitter, solve each layer on it own, and then merge the layers back together.
So if we design platforms for specific roles like side destroying, cutting, rotating, painting, etc, this can make mass production of shapes easier on a grand scale.
Yes, definitely! I mean, if you really want to it's also viable to design platforms which are quite specific to certain shapes. That might be somewhat reasonable for the milestone shapes, because you'll keep those factories around to increase your operator level. But modifying or extending them will probably involve a lot of work and the difficulty might be overwhelming at some point. It also means that copy-pasting platforms for other purposes won't be as easy, and when designing a new factory for another shape you'll often have to start designing new platforms from scratch. It's a question of play style, but modular is definitely easier and way more scalable. If modular is becoming too easy, you can always find new challenges by trying to design more efficient platforms, e.g. new variants that can handle 3 layers of input, or a bigger platform that can handle 2 or 3 space belts as input instead of just 1 belt.
How do the pipes interact when you put two painter modules next to each other? I guess it's fine because while pipes are bidirectional the connections between platforms are _not._
Let me start by saying that I don't think you can compare factorio and shapez. If I'm honest, shapez does get repetitive. (I'm ~10 hours in) The argument that "factorio" is just the same thing, but with different ingredients only holds weight if you consider each individual recipe. But, broadly speaking, factorio builds on what you've already done. I haven't had that experience with shapez at all. I've almost always just torn down the previous build once the milestone/task is complete. There's no reason to keep anything around. Blueprints satisfy all. I've built a couple of very basic modular blueprints. (split it this way, that way, etc), which does just turn it into a copy-paste spree. Shapez doesn't have the feel of "you're building a massive factory". It feels like a puzzle game (not that it's a bad thing). When you break down factory games down, you end up with exactly that. Yes, factorio has blueprints, and it does eventually get to that point of just pasting down the next thing that's needed. But I think that's the rub. There's more to factorio than _just_ the puzzle part. There's the rest of the game that makes it a game. Just my two cents. I'm still playing both, as shapez is a bit easier to jump into when I've got a quick second, and factorio for the longer sessions when time permits.
I had that idea as well, wanting to maximize the use of every piece of every shape resource but the game lacks an overflow capability which means that if you don't design things to use up every piece at the same ratio you will get jams and lose belt efficiency. Even if you're using them fully at the same ratio, the unequal length of your belt lanes will cause jams as the different machines fill up more quickly on only one lane and then stop consuming which jams the machine that is producing it further up the chain. It's a nightmare and can't be fixed until they make a splitter with a priority output so you can trash the excess shape parts and keep all the machines working. I haven't unlocked logic yet, so maybe there's something you could do with it, but I really don't think so.
@@DarkSolZero Oh I was thinking I'd just use trash modules. So that a tile of quarters outputs to another tile that is just a dead end of trash as a stopper. When I wanted that piece I'd replace the trash tile. That was my plan at least. However I tried Shapez 2 yesterday for 2 hrs and bounced off. So I'll never really know. Something about the game feel I couldn't put my finger on. The stuff Nilaus praised as being satisfying and easy to use I found the opposite.
Very much looking forward to your train guide. Have unlocked that teir, but have yet to fully figure out their point... The only real advantage I can see is using less space blocks? But so far, that has not been an issue for me.
They're also faster. When your resources are 100 space blocks away, trains can get there in like 10 seconds, compared to belts in about 2 minutes. It also costs you 100 foundations instead of 600 or 1200, plus you can double up train tracks for multiple sources and destinations. Once you get to milestone 8 and 9 and beyond, you're very likely to be building for 4 or 6 or 12 full space belts of 12 lanes each
@@marshallc6215 You can also load a lot of shapes (or fluid) on one train, once you have all three levels unlocked. Every wagon can be stacked with up to three packages (size can be increased through the lab points), that means a delivery of a lot of stuff all at once.
@@marshallc6215 And at endgame, you can deliver trains directly into the vortex, which is vastly higher throughout than the 12 space belts you can connect.
To summarize: high throughput, high speed, and low platform unit cost (makes it economical to reach distant locations, because rail cost is zero, contrary to space belt cost). EDIT: oh, and also easy, unconstrained vortex delivery.
It's possible to make a much more compact 2-tile swap if you only use swappers rather than cutters, somewhat equivalent to how a 2-2 lane balancer is a lot smaller than 2 1-1 lane balancers. Terrible ASCII art: | F F | ( ) ( ) | ( ) | | C A | ( ) ( ) | F F | Where F is a 180, C is clockwise, A is anticlockwise, ( ) is a swapper and | is a belt. That handles an entire belt of input so it's < 1/4 of the size and easy to fit in a 2x1 platform.
Hey, was watching the video and decided to try and come up with my own solution, happy to find that I'm not the only one who made it better, nice one! I didn't bother with CW and CCW though, just repeat it, although there is a nice symmetry in your design
this did not work for me because it switched the top too, perhaps i didn't understand your ascii art but the joining of the inner lanes gave me an idea so this is what worked for me: C A C A ( ) ( ) | C C | ( ) ( ) A C A C with this only the bottom was changed.
