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Industry Planning Simplified!


Makashima

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With Beta now out for several weeks, I have been inundated with requests about my simple way to plan factory production lines, that I had shown off during the games Alpha.

Needless to say, since the Beta release, I have been hard at work as a Community Helper and also as the Super Legate of my Guild. But alas, I have finally found some free time to sit down and share a way to make the Industry designing of DU go from Hellish to Simple!


First off:

Firstly I just want to say that this method I will be sharing does NOT replace building calculators, but instead works in tangent with them. A crafting calculator may well tell you all the numbers you need, but it doesn't help organise it all. That is where this will come in to play.

Also it is important that
I credit Juvenious, who initially inspired me to make this and showcase it off in Alpha, which garnered more attention than I ever thought possible, and would like to thank him for his encouragement and help in laying out the ground work. Be sure to visit his Discord *HERE* where he is collecting / making up further standards to help simplify tasks.

 

So what is it?

 

The idea was to create a unique set of shapes, that represent one of the industrial factory units in the game, whilst keeping them simple, elegant and familiar in some way to their related task. Then they are placed into a Legend, something that shows you their representation, along with other information as how to interpret the diagrams fully and easily.

 

In essence, we get this, the SL Factory Standard Legend:
15500345_SLStandardLegend.thumb.jpg.a58d7a60cfc1d208ff2de24a091093f8.jpg

As you can see, a lot of the shapes will either look like a basic silhouette of the industry unit they represent or have some other relation to their purpose. The colour coding is also a massive addition to helping keep things simple, as it then allows you to categorise the industrial units together, helping you keep track of the production line in game, with the colours & their order chosen to mimic that of popular MMO games item grades.

* Please note: The Tier system for the Standard is different to that of the one shown in game. Simply put, the differences are:
- In DU, the level of components and subcomponents is broken down into: Intermediary -> Complex -> Functional -> Exceptional. With there being Basic, Uncommon, Advanced, Rare & Exotic tiers.
- In the Standard, it is broken down simply by what the requirements are of the component. i.e.
Al-Fe Alloy would be Tier 1, as it requires just Pure to make, which is Tier 0. A Warp Cell would be Tier 5, as the highest tier subcomponent needed to make them, is a Tier 4. Basic, Uncommon etc can be seen as a Grade of item, but does not hold any weight in the Legend or diagrams.

 

This is all very well, but how can I get it?

So to get started, you will want to head over to https://diagrams.net which is completely free and does not need an account. All your documents are saved in real time, to your Google Drive.

The other thing you will need is a copy of the Standard Legend I have created. Luckily, I can easily share this with you on here through an XML file that can be imported into the website, allowing you full access to all the shapes and their formatting that I use. The Legend has gone under several updates already and may change to improve functionality so do keep checking back.

 

SL Standard 1.5.xml

* There is currently an issue with downloading attachments on Forums. You can PM me or visit:
Novean Institute of Standards discord
Planet DU


To upload the XML file, you will want to follow this image below:
Import.png.80c06816585306912a6ab742599bea0f.png

(Please note: Select Device if you downloaded the XML file)

This is all great, but how do you use it, exactly?

 

Once you have the XML file uploaded, a blank page waiting for you to start populating, the next thing you're going to want to do is start putting down the relevant icons needed for each individual, unique blueprint that is required, and group them into the Tier colouring system. Once this is done, simply link the icons together, to show where they need to feed into.

This may sound simple... But it could still be absolutely hell, with a plate of spaghetti in the middle. So here's an example:

1900028475_TCUNoTalents.thumb.jpg.67ba724164a34238523ffbf9e4f47e33.jpg

 

So as you can see above, this is how anyone without talents would want to make TCUs for themselves. For individuals, you could simply remove one of the Assembly Line M units and half the numbers to be able to make 1 TCU for your personal endeavours.

There are some simple, but profound guidelines I follow when making diagrams which I can share with you. These are:
1)
Never cross over any lines. If you find yourself boxed in, put the supply in later on, with the containers name for reference to the source. i.e. "Tier 1C"
2) Ensure that your lines always feed from left to right. This will stop any confusion in what is feeding into where. An exception can be seen in the image above, where a feed is coming from Tier 3A, up and looping into the Uncommon Power Transformer, which is fine as the only other connections its joining onto are from other containers, which a container cannot feed into another container without the help of a transfer unit. And we can see there is no transfer unit on the diagram.
3) Always name your containers and keep track of how many links they need to output to. If you find you are over the limit of 10 links out, look into either splitting up your base production to feed into a 2nd container, use a transfer unit for a 2nd container and/or increase your talents to reduce the build times, resulting in needing less industry units for efficiency.

So? What are you waiting for? Get drawing!

Practice makes perfect, after all :) And speaking of such, if you have any feedback or issues with this post, the XML file itself or have any other concerns or questions, please post them here without reservation!

-Soulinks

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57 minutes ago, Sambo726 said:

Attachment unavailable. DU forum attachments are bugged at the moment.

Yup, in the mean time people can freely PM me on Discord for the xml file. It will also be available in the Discord run by Juvenious also and kept up to date there too. Still waiting on invite link for it :D

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13 minutes ago, BaconofWar said:

Planning? I just kind of... drop stuff where there's room and link everything together in an organic and a period specific manner.

This is how you optimize for the short term - by not wasting time creating optimization systems in the first place!?

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26 minutes ago, BaconofWar said:

Planning? I just kind of... drop stuff where there's room and link everything together in an organic and a period specific manner.

I actually do a LOT of this at the moment, finding the market is far too fluid to know where to focus efforts medium long term.  I am finding myself building a lot of independant short run machines to test markets, rather than some of the super computers I see built.  Still brilliant community tool, I use the software for work so will defo pick up the xml

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Just now, Sambo726 said:

Works great. One issue I did find is your xml file will only work with the online version. Desktop version doesn't load your custom legend.

Yes, I have heard this from several sources now... not sure why this is though. The xml is made with the use of the website itself, as its the scratchpad feature. Maybe because I made it on the website? Might not like the app? I'm not sure... I may have to download the app and see if I can figure out why and if there's anything I can do to correct this.

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  • 2 weeks later...

The concept is really, really great for planning, but the editor on the website has one huge issue:
It is not possible to easily move icons around, because you have several selection boxes on each icon, so you can't just hover over it, but you have to hit it's very narrow border.

Also:

How do I color an icon while leaving it's border black?

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