Octopus Overlords

LordMortis wrote: ↑Sun Dec 06, 2020 8:10 pm My world is getting big enough that I really need to start relearning the logistics bot net and I am sure once I do, I'll be like "why didn't this forever ago?"

Sho'nough.

I wonder if the same thing will happen when I finally get to adding trains. I doubt it, though we'll see. Long long belts are still a satisfactory and reliable way to bring in from new deposits so trains aren't likely to be a thing for a while while continue to reorganize for growth.

LordMortis wrote: ↑Mon Dec 07, 2020 1:46 pm

LordMortis wrote: ↑Sun Dec 06, 2020 8:10 pm My world is getting big enough that I really need to start relearning the logistics bot net and I am sure once I do, I'll be like "why didn't this forever ago?"

Sho'nough.

I wonder if the same thing will happen when I finally get to adding trains. I doubt it, though we'll see. Long long belts are still a satisfactory and reliable way to bring in from new deposits so trains aren't likely to be a thing for a while while continue to reorganize for growth.

As long as you're content with hella long belts running across your world, you mostly won't find yourself dazzled when you use them.

Aside from shipping goods around on a set schedule (which your belts can do for you), I find they're good for point-delivering bulk goods across the map quickly. This is why I have a Logistics stop and train. I can be on one side of my map, farting around with a new factory build and be like "Well, crap. I ran out of Gummy Bears." and then if I don't have any more Gummy Bears in my train, I send it off to the Logistics pitstop that resupplies Gummy Bears and it comes hurtling back with everything I need in a minute or so. Much faster than if I had to jog all the way back, grab the gear, and jog back. I think the further out I'm building, the more valuable that is to me.

It doesn't hurt that I have nicely patterned train rails blueprinted out to cover straight-aways, corners, crossroads, loopbacks, and diagonals - all complete with train signals built in. It's fun to be riding in the train as my drones lay track ahead of me.

I have to say as well that watching my logistics trains whirl around the map is relaxing in the same way Railroad Tycoon games were. Sometimes I just zoom out and watch my factory work. There's not much to watch if you zoom out and watch belts.

Great post! Trains are fun in and of themselves. I set up my world in a way that I'll be reliant on them to make the factory work. The concept of a logistics train wasn't something I dreamed up myself, but seeing youtubers use them to great effect really opened the game up to me!

(Still, I think getting a home-base robot network up is even more satisfying, especially in the vanilla game!)

I decided to start a new base. I present to you: The One Track


One track to rule them all, one track to bind them. One track to bring all the resources into the base.

So the concept here is to attempt to prove that it is possible to bring all of the resources for a megabase (say, 2k science/minute) in on one two-way track. One track brings resources in, the other track takes empty trains back out. I'm purposefully not using any of the resources in the immediate area (with the exception of some oil feeding my starter base, which I intend to dismantle once Atomic bomb is researched). I turned off biters and pollution so I could concentrate on building. I'm also not planning to bring water to my base, because who transports water, really?

ALL the trains, and all the resources, must pass through a chokepoint:


The One Track heads directly south from the base in a straight line. I did a little exploration in every direction before deciding to head south. Here's a picture of the current extent of The One Track. On the bottom of this area I just discovered an iron deposit with 150 million ore! This screenshot is scrolled out as far as it will go:



Here's my second mall. My first one is part of my starter factory, but this second mall is robot-driven and separated into two pieces. Completed inventory is transferred from one robot area to the other by the line of request/provider chests near the middle of the screenshot, and some buffer chests near the train can refill me in a couple of seconds. Keeping the malls separated like this keeps robots from travelling from the other side of the mall to refill my inventory, and it worked out as well as I had hoped!



And here's where the magic happens (I hope). I'm pretty sure that people are doing trains wrong -- I think they are unloading them too quickly and not making them large enough. So my goal here is to unload the trains as slowly as I need to so as not to jam up The One Track. I'm sure there's some kind of theoretical limit on how much throughput one train track can have, but I doubt I'll hit that. We shall see. If this unloads the trains too quickly I can always remove inserters, switch to slower inserters, and so on.



As you can see from the last screenshot I'm about 45 hours into this game. Currently I'm spending almost all of my resources on just building Speed Module 3s and Production Module 3s. The next step is to tear down my old factory, and then I intend to build my new factory to the right of my existing circuit production in the large empty area. I'm going to be doing a robot-centric base as I focused on belts last time.

Butterknife wrote: ↑Mon Dec 07, 2020 11:33 pmOn the bottom of this area I just discovered an iron deposit with 150 million ore!

If I had been drinking coffee, I would have done a splutter and spit. I'm guessing you adjusted your resources from default! My largest (default) ore mines are about 12m ore.

I really like your Logistics factory. Seeing all those production lines so consolidated by simply using drones instead of belts makes me question my life choices, but I'm quite content with my widespread churning systems that are drone-free. Maybe on my next run I'll do drones and go for an ultra-tight base like that one. I imagine it's easy to expand and add ... anything. Paste an Assembler/2xInserter/1xRequestor/1xProvider chest and assign it a product.

I focus heavily on Production modules in order to stretch out resources, and am less worried about speed modules - except in my Smelters and Oil Pumps. That's really the only place I use them for now. I have Beacon arrays in lines next to my Smelters, which operate at something like 300% speed.

I didn't get to biter smearing last night, but I did launch a couple satellites (up to 8 now) and get Energy Damage 9 done. It's been a while since a biter assault got to actually damage my walls now. Instead I focused on expanding mining ops to cover the costs of doubling my blue chip lines. I copied and pasted my blue chip factory so my rocket parts and satellites had their own dedicated line. I desperately need mountains more Copper, though. That's my big bottleneck right now. I cracked open three more mines, but had to almost shut down two at the same time as they're running low.

Butterknife wrote: ↑Mon Dec 07, 2020 11:33 pm I'm pretty sure that people are doing trains wrong -- I think they are unloading them too quickly and not making them large enough.

I'd like to hear more about this. What metric are you using to judge effectiveness?

I'll admit to being skeptical. I have a stretch of track in my 300+ hour world over which almost all my trains have to travel. It was a nightmare because of how closely I had packed the side spurs for unloading raw materials. I don't see the benefit to unloading trains slower - I scaled my smelters to the belt speed and those, in turn, fill trains with materials but only as fast as they are consumed (if there are no trains waiting to be filled, the smelter slows down as does unloading the raw material train). It's self regulating.

stessier wrote: ↑Tue Dec 08, 2020 9:20 am

Butterknife wrote: ↑Mon Dec 07, 2020 11:33 pm I'm pretty sure that people are doing trains wrong -- I think they are unloading them too quickly and not making them large enough.

I'd like to hear more about this. What metric are you using to judge effectiveness?

I took it to mean "Use bigger trains, unload them slower, have less train traffic"

I use zippy 1x4 trains for everything. My railways are getting pretty cluttered. Butterknife is using monstrous 4x8 trains.

Regardless of size, though, I'd still be pushing resources off the train as fast as possible. No way I'd be using one stack inserter. Just my preference.

Paingod wrote: ↑Tue Dec 08, 2020 12:32 pm

stessier wrote: ↑Tue Dec 08, 2020 9:20 am

Butterknife wrote: ↑Mon Dec 07, 2020 11:33 pm I'm pretty sure that people are doing trains wrong -- I think they are unloading them too quickly and not making them large enough.

I'd like to hear more about this. What metric are you using to judge effectiveness?

I took it to mean "Use bigger trains, unload them slower, have less train traffic"

I use zippy 1x4 trains for everything. My railways are getting pretty cluttered. Butterknife is using monstrous 4x8 trains.

Regardless of size, though, I'd still be pushing resources off the train as fast as possible. No way I'd be using one stack inserter. Just my preference.

Yes, this is exactly the principle I'm trying to prove. I know just saying that promotes skepticism, so I'm going to try to prove it by making this base work, then I'll have some evidence. Before this I also used 12 stack inserters on every train car to unload it. I guess the principle is based on making a few different megabases and never really having any trouble with train throughput, which everyone else seems to have. Maybe I just don't build big enough!

Paingod wrote:I'm guessing you adjusted your resources from default!

Nope! Default settings for resources. The further you travel from your base, the bigger the deposits get.

Butterknife wrote: ↑Tue Dec 08, 2020 1:38 pm Nope! Default settings for resources. The further you travel from your base, the bigger the deposits get.

Really? Neat. We'll see what's up if I ever get very far from home.

LordMortis wrote: ↑Tue Dec 08, 2020 2:41 pm

Butterknife wrote: ↑Tue Dec 08, 2020 1:38 pm Nope! Default settings for resources. The further you travel from your base, the bigger the deposits get.

Really? Neat. We'll see what's up if I ever get very far from home.

Seriously. Now I feel like I should mount an expedition to the far-flung reaches just to tap a heavy ore patch. I'm tired of my 1.5m to 3m patches running dry! I get all excited when I find one over 6m.

Just need to bring a few thousand rail segments, enough landfill to kill a small planet, and hundreds of big power poles... then set up a perimeter defense, 'cause that's gonna get dirty...

Oops, I forgot to say “default settings for a rail world”. Don’t want to mislead you guys! But even on a regular world the ore gets richer the farther out you go, so ultimately you would find patches that big, you may just have to travel further.

Spent some time working toward a better red circuit line. I think I have a sort of green circuit line I'm happy with. Slow grow and rebuilding in to city blocks and fitting in roboports as I go. I'm finding the trash/call for stuff not so helpful as it goes slowly, but I'm finding the blue print lay down and walk away and much more importantly, mark this as clear thie land and put down concrete and walk away to be just awesome.

Butterknife wrote: ↑Tue Dec 08, 2020 6:41 pm Oops, I forgot to say “default settings for a rail world”. Don’t want to mislead you guys! But even on a regular world the ore gets richer the farther out you go, so ultimately you would find patches that big, you may just have to travel further.

I went a ways south from my factory and was seeing ores in the 15m to 20m range, so that makes me happy. Not Railworld happy, but happy.

All I really accomplished last night was pushing back the borders along a wall some more. I discovered, too, that somewhere along the way biters snuck in through an area I cleared and had spread substantially behind my walls. I'm pretty sure I cleared them out, but it was concerning for a little while there. I still have maybe 20% of my factory to push out.

Satellites and research are all my factory works on and I'm up to 25 launches now.

Butterknife, that's an interesting concept. I haven't seen anyone else try to address train congestion by slowing down unloading — good luck! You've got about 3 times as many bases under your belt as I (and I've only got a couple of bases with multiple rocket launches—my ugly 1.0 base with about 160 satellites in orbit), and I can safely say that I'm yet to try to optimize my train network. (My reason for making a 1.1 base was partially to make a good looking train network.)

The Meal wrote: ↑Mon Dec 07, 2020 11:02 am Yep, I was hoping the flamethrower turrets could get me through to the Laser era, but now I'm thinking I wouldn't make it. I'd have to have my walls hold off waves of attacks throughout all of my blue science set-up, which would then require me to set up full oil refinery (blue science needs sulfur directly, and plastics indirectly through red circuits; and lasers require batteries). I honestly don't see me surviving that.

I've also concluded that I need to push back the bases in the pollution. I'm not skilled enough at the twitch aspects of the game to pull that off, so I figure I'll need some sort of technological assistance. Defender Capsules (and a couple levels of Follower Robot Count) are within range of Red+Blue+Military science packs, so that's my next bee line. Maybe with some bot assistance I can make the required push-back and get back to playing at a more enjoyable pace.

It worked. (Though I had to make a temporary tiny refinery, boil up 60 plastic, and construct a set of modular armor.)

15 active defender capsules are sufficient for my pushing-back needs, and it feels sooooo good.

Paingod wrote: ↑Mon Dec 07, 2020 11:30 am I've never used the Defender Capsules and found that while Flamer turrets were really effective, feeding them a flow of liquids got old fast even with trains managing it.

This was my first game making either. I'm thankful for each, as they filled a hole I had somehow managed to dump myself into. Based on my last megabase train world settings, I can see the place for remote flamethrower turrets fed with FT ammo trains, but I haven't actually implemented that. I anticipate some of my far flung bases in this enemy expansion rail world will need exactly that kind of defense.

The combat order could use a revamp to make everything useful at different stages. As it stands, when you get Artillery it's pretty much immediately made obsolete by the Spidertron. I felt the same way about flamer turrets. They're nice, but the hassle of fueling them made them inferior to laser turrets.

Artillery is defensive (in my mind). It keeps your immediate environment outside your walls clear of new bases. Spidertron is offensive. You have to actively use it to hunt down enemies. I see a place for both. Flamethrowers filled a needed hole in my current game. I think you're right that for a more general playthrough lasers make more sense (and obviously lasers fill a long-term role throughout the game).

Machine gun turrets to start > Buggy with machine gun > flamer turrets (unpowered, with fuel canisters instead of fluid lines) > (add unpowered mortars) > laser turrets > (add a medium armored car with non-explosive shells) > artillery > tank (with explosive shells) > and finally spidertron as the pinnacle.

Then you could go out into the wastes and drop a bunker with machine guns, flamers, and mortars that could tackle biter bases, while using lasers and artillery for long-term engagements (home defense).

I dunno. Just thoughts. The core of the game for me isn't about combat, but the times when it had to be done I wished it was a little more varied.

That sounds about right to me. I think the defender capsules got a major overhaul at 0.17 or 0.18 (just before 1.0, anyway), and I had never been put in a place where I needed them. They also fill a niche for some of your initial push-back efforts.

The janky Radar array: looking at the map and seeing a tiny pockets where pollution is being absorbed faster than the surrounding area. This told me twice last night that I missed a biter base (or a new one was spawned) in areas I had thought were clear. The third time I went charging over to kill the new biters it turned out to be a grove of trees.

Useful! I don't tend to grab wide swaths of new territory (and I'm pretty good about maintaining good radar coverage inside "my" area), but this does sound like it'd be a nice fall-back.

My saving grace (uh, I should look into that overproduction of yellow ammo though...):


Results (and future plans):

I'm a big believer in defender capsules now that they have been re-worked. They really are excellent for clearing biter areas during the early and middle game. They ramp up in power every time you research how many you can carry or any ammunition research, too -- so they have a really nice power curve.

Different biter types are more vulnerable to ammo than lasers, or lasers than ammo. So once you get a few of the personal laser defenses it combines really well with the defender capsules too (and later the destroyer capsules, which last for 2 full minutes I believe and deploy 5 capsules at a time when you click). So clearing a nest with power armor mark 2 and all the accoutrements becomes as easy as popping 4 or 5 destroyer capsules and then just running through the nest.

Interestingly, the spidertron has kind of nixed that strategy because it becomes available right at about the same time. Instead of capsules, load up on rockets and do pretty much exactly the same thing. The spidertron offers more flexibility in my mind, so is probably better during the late game. But early and mid-game is still ruled by capsules. They are just so much better than turret creep to clear nests.

I failed to use capsules as the name sounded like a one-and-done thing and I didn't want to be too wasteful. I'll give them a shot in my next session.

Butterknife wrote: ↑Tue Dec 08, 2020 1:38 pm

Paingod wrote: ↑Tue Dec 08, 2020 12:32 pm

stessier wrote: ↑Tue Dec 08, 2020 9:20 am

Butterknife wrote: ↑Mon Dec 07, 2020 11:33 pm I'm pretty sure that people are doing trains wrong -- I think they are unloading them too quickly and not making them large enough.

I'd like to hear more about this. What metric are you using to judge effectiveness?

I took it to mean "Use bigger trains, unload them slower, have less train traffic"

I use zippy 1x4 trains for everything. My railways are getting pretty cluttered. Butterknife is using monstrous 4x8 trains.

Regardless of size, though, I'd still be pushing resources off the train as fast as possible. No way I'd be using one stack inserter. Just my preference.

Yes, this is exactly the principle I'm trying to prove. I know just saying that promotes skepticism, so I'm going to try to prove it by making this base work, then I'll have some evidence. Before this I also used 12 stack inserters on every train car to unload it. I guess the principle is based on making a few different megabases and never really having any trouble with train throughput, which everyone else seems to have. Maybe I just don't build big enough!

I don't think it's a function of unloading. I only use 4 green inserters per car on my trains (which are 1x8). I think it's a function of how closely together the side spurs are spaced. I'll try to remember to post a picture tonight, but my original layout effectively had 5 spurs that had less than (or right at) a train length between them that would cause massive traffic jams. I eventually found a signal pattern that would avoid traffic stopping completely, but it would still cause massive queues as 25 trains vied for their turn on that precious real estate. I alleviated even those problems by changing the entrance and exit points and spacing out the spurs that I still had.

Well, I've gotten over four hours out of the demo so far...

I started a 1.1 version last week and have about 12 hours into it. I don't think I've ever played on such a barren world - the lack of forests really lets pollution spread! I tried to keep my footprint small, but it really didn't work. Here is where I'm at after 12 hours. I think it's interesting how much pollution the biter bases absorb as seen by the dent in my pollution sphere.



And here's the base without the pollution. I went out this morning and killed off 5 biter bases that were inside the pollution sphere on the South and East sides using my jeep. My minimal defenses were starting to be pressed before that.



Here are just some close ups of my research and power generation areas. I've almost finished all the techs I have available without adding purple or yellow using these small setups.




That iron deposit in the middle of the last picture used to be 3x as big. As it's waning, I'm supplementing it with a one car train of ore. Once it's all gone, I'll have some nice wide open space to reformat the base.


I more or less hand crafted 9 construction bots and I'm letting them slowly expand my solar array (I built the southeast quadrant by hand). As it expands, I'm turning off my boilers. I just hit the point where I have them completely off which should have a nice impact on the pollution (assuming I don't build a ton right away).



And this, finally, is my little refinery area powering all my red chips, batteries, and sulfur needs. Very quaint.

Isgrimnur wrote: ↑Wed Dec 09, 2020 11:52 pm Well, I've gotten over four hours out of the demo so far...

The smartest thing the devs ever did for this game was that demo. I think you know what you have to do next!

... and here I was, considering cranking the density of trees for my next map to help with pollution control.

Last night was more of the biter-clearing. I sectioned off a large swath of land again and had to backtrack to clear a couple nests that moved in behind me. I also started the process of fully automating reactor fuel. I've been manually stuffing U235/U238/Iron into a factory at my reactor and letting it put together the fuel cells, but that's not how it's done.

The bigger issue was my train system log-jamming twice. The first was because of a new train I put into place at a facility that didn't have space for it to park. Once I fixed that, everything went fine. The second was because trains heading into the Refuel depot kept trying to go down tracks that were already occupied instead of moving up to wait in line at an open slot. I don't know why they were doing that, but once a couple of them did it, I had to get in and manually move things around until they were all parked correctly. Then I added a second pitstop with the same name as the first into the line and trains can pass through at maybe 150% the speed they did before. Should help with the log-jams for now, but I'm left concerned that my extensive train use is going to haunt me. Especially in my earlier modules, which were designed poorly compared to the later ones. I may need to go back and rework some things. I may need to go back and use longer trains that move less frequently.

Awesome base, Stessier! Can't wait to hear your stories.

Butterknife wrote: ↑Thu Dec 10, 2020 8:06 am

Isgrimnur wrote: ↑Wed Dec 09, 2020 11:52 pm Well, I've gotten over four hours out of the demo so far...

The smartest thing the devs ever did for this game was that demo. I think you know what you have to do next!

...Finish the demo?

Ok, you all have made me get the itch to replay this - been well over a year.

I need a refresher... on this hot-bar and how it works....

It's a quick way to make a building, or what ever - or to grab your stack of coal ,etc....

But how do I change what I accidentally put in one of the slots?

On hot-bar 1, the first two positions have coal icon, how would I change it (fix it).... I only see how I can assign something to a blank slot - not how to clear it, or how to re-assign it.

What am I missing.... man - I remember having the motor memory for this - but it's gone - and figuring out that hotbar is killing me right now.

This is a tough game for motor memory. So many ctrl-right clicks and alt-F4 clicks. Setting (or fixing) task bar entries is... the middle mouse button.

Unagi wrote: ↑Thu Dec 10, 2020 5:18 pm Ok, you all have made me get the itch to replay this - been well over a year.

I need a refresher... on this hot-bar and how it works....

It's a quick way to make a building, or what ever - or to grab your stack of coal ,etc....

But how do I change what I accidentally put in one of the slots?

On hot-bar 1, the first two positions have coal icon, how would I change it (fix it).... I only see how I can assign something to a blank slot - not how to clear it, or how to re-assign it.

What am I missing.... man - I remember having the motor memory for this - but it's gone - and figuring out that hotbar is killing me right now.

Middle mouse button removes an item from the quick select. Alternatively you just replace it with another item when your belt is open.

It's not quite the same UI remember, trust me. I am still going through the re-learning curve.

I think this guide to the quickbar is still mostly correct. Not sure what version they were on the last time you played and the jump to 0.17 had some big changes.

The number visible on screen at one time is adjustable in Settings -> Interface:

Thank you!

OMG all, thank you !! And yes, I am from before this major change to the UI, back when it was actually another inventory.

and yeah, the motor memory is slow to kick in, but there is a little something for this the re-learning to go against, but - it actually probably best I look at this as an entire re-learn.

I spent some time last night automating U235 production and now have a steady stream of Fuel Cells trickling out of my factory. I'm not entirely sure I have it balanced well, though.

My process I set up involves rolling U235 and U238 down the line and recycling them back up. On the pathway back up I use Passive Provider chests to make sure the line doesn't get clogged with multiple Stack Inserters ensuring a steady, unbroken stream of U235 and U238 is returning down the line to re-use. 13 Centrifuges churn away, enriching Uranium. On the fuel cell side, I have Requestor chests set to ask for 100 U235 and U238 - BUT - I have the inserters hooked up to them set to only pull from the chests when the Passive Provider chests exceed 2400 of either product. This way I'm functionally only restocking from the main production line when it has a firm excess of product of either kind. If I'm lower than 2400 U235, it's constantly feeding back on itself for continued enrichment... so I only ever draw out U235 or U238 when I have "too much" of either.

Spent fuel cells are broken down and fed back into the production line.

It feels like a pretty clean system, and I'm not sure how it might break. It can't ever run dry of U235 for reprocessing, and doesn't care how backed up the U238 gets. The recycled U238 from refining and fuel cells is used before the U238 from the ore refineries.

I dare say that I have "enough" consistent U235/U238 and Fuel Cells now that I'm considering Uranium Ammo and Uranium Fuel.

I'm not sure how long I'm going to spend in this world. It is default settings, but the resources are ridiculously sparse. I'm trying to switch my aims to prioritize trains and then some type of improved military, because I'm going to have to claim a ton of land to make this work, but I'm not sure how that's going to work. Guess we'll see.

The One Track base continues to grow. As you can see I've identified areas that I intend to build each section of the base. For now I'm putting around 100 assembling machines in each section, that seems about right to balance how many robots can be recharged, but I'll have to see if that works once I start ramping up. For now I'm still trying to build, I'm currently working on getting everything I need to get yellow science produced in my megabase. I'm using a Factorio calculator to figure out how many of each item I need to reach over 2K science/minute.

Science itself is completed from my old base (so everything except white science). I'll get around to cleaning up the old base someday, but for now it turns out I didn't need to rip it up, so I haven't yet. So far no problems with resources on The One Track.

And here's what my base looks like at 55 hours as I launch my first rocket. Now the fun begins!

On the other side. I still have no trains but I finally established a long enough bus that I can start working on increasing my science. I am producing/consuming 51 yellow science per minute. I know that's nothing but it's something to me. Fiberous metal or whatever it's called is a serious bottleneck for me. I'm going to put it on hold while I set up manufacturing for green factories, beacons, and the assortment of inserters.

Trains????

Demo complete.

Isgrimnur wrote: ↑Sat Dec 12, 2020 11:27 pm Demo complete.

So are you going to buy it?

Probably

I've been going back to this over the years and never get far. Always having a hard time with the belts and the inserters. I recall in one of my visits the tutorial spent sometime on the inserters and how to get them to reach from the farthest lane, but i didn't see anything mentioning that with the latest version of the game.

Still no trains but I hit the end of my line until dig out all the copper and iron blocking forward movement. Decided to automate roboports, radar, and large electric poles so I can begin building by map instead of taking minutes traverse the map. I have a good east west stretch before hitting a water patch, and I am beginning a slow project of using radar/roboports to build a giant concrete expansion which will establish my new smelting/foundry area, think... Eventually. Producing concrete is slow when you need to fill in huge blocks.

Inserters come in different flavors.

• Coal powered basic (black), reaches one tile and refuels itself from coal lines that pass by. Really only useful for feeding coal-fired furnaces.
• Standard inserters (yellow), reaches one tile - no filtering, relatively slow. Has trouble picking up items from fast moving belts.
• Extended-Reach inserters (red), reaches two tiles in each direction. This is good for reaching over a belt and onto the one past it.
• Fast Inserters (blue), like the Standard inserters but moves much faster and has no issues with fast belts.
• Stack Inserters (green), moves as fast as the Fast inserters but collects a number of items before doing so. This number is upgradable. These are great for loading and unloading trains and chests quickly.
• Filter Inserters (purple), moves like a Fast inserter but you can tell it what to take but right-clicking it and whitelisting/blacklisting items.
• Stack Filter Inserters (white), a combination of a Stack Inserter and a Filter Inserter.

Reaching past the first belt next to a factory can be accomplished a few ways.

• Use the Red inserter to easily reach the outer belt, but because it's not wildly fast you want to put your "lesser needed" products out there, like if something takes 10 Iron Plates, 10 Green Circuits, but only one Steel - put the Steel on the outer belt.
• Use underground belts to create gaps in the inner belt to easily reach past it.
• You can combine two different products on one belt by having one enter on the left side and the other enter on the right.
• Use underground belts between factories, and have your inserters pull from those. This allows up to 3 belts with an easy total of up to 6 different products to pass by a factory while leaving the outer edges clear.
• Use weaving patterns of belts and underground belts. I'd need a screenshot to explain it. Some of the densest factories I've seen have weaving patterns so complex they become difficult to decipher.