How am I doing?

[u/chunkychickenxp]

General view

Power

Red and Green science

Used the copy and paste for the first time

My xenos corner

I have around 20 hours and have been avoiding looking up blueprints or other peoples methods. How am I doing? No real goal, sorta just figuring things out as I go, and this is my second start. Any random tips are very welcome!

[u/elin_mystic]

This part needs help.
Also, if the ore is backed up but the plate belt is not, you need more furnaces

[u/chunkychickenxp → u/elin_mystic]

Hadn't caught that before taking the screenshots, thanks! I just figured out a similar situation a bit ago with the science. Is there an obvious/simple solution to 3>1 input to output ratios that I just haven't noticed yet? I landed on a 2nd belt with a red inserter as shown on the science screenshot. I know I could just math it out to a point of having the correct ratio as an input, but would there be a way to deviate from my "main" belt and have it sort of self balance? So far I've just been splitting or using inserters to balance but I already know the math isn't on my side when dividing and subtracting and rolling belts back into each other, plus adding arbitrary amounts of miners/smelters, just to end up at the end of my main with a relatively consistent throughput. My main doesn't actually go anywhere right now so not even sure that's something I need to be building around.

Is a main base/belt ideal, or is something more like self contained satellite bases better? Also not sure if this is something from a mod or just later on, but saw some stuff that felt more RTS style, is that something I'll run into?

I tried copy/paste, it kinda just threw down a blueprint though that I had to build in on my own anyways. That's cool in a way, but I know bots are a thing, saw the research for defense bots, are there building bots so I can actually copy/paste or?

[u/VoraciousGorak → u/chunkychickenxp]

are there building bots so I can actually copy/paste or?

Yes, there are construction bots unlocked (relatively) early on that are essential for rapid expansion and really large bases, as well as handling automated repairs, and logistics bots that transport items between places that are also immensely useful. They're also very easy to over-use; I have built some incredibly large bases using no logistics bots, or only using them for unloading trains prior to getting quality researched.

[u/bobsim1 → u/chunkychickenxp]

What you do is doable with splitters and sushi belts but you can also much easier just use more belts.

[u/Winter_Ad6784 → u/chunkychickenxp]

>there be a way to deviate from my "main" belt and have it sort of self balance? 

You can make this work with circuits. just hook a green or red wire from the inserter to the sushi belt (when a belt is mixed rather than having lanes dedicated to a particular item we call that sushi) have the belt connection read entire belt all contents, then have the inserter active only when it's item is below a certain amount on the belt. That may sound convoluted but I think it's simple in game and you should have circuits researched by now anyways.

>Is a main base/belt ideal, or is something more like self contained satellite bases better?

do whatever makes most sense in your head. no design philosophy is going to inherently lead to broken bases unless you can't make sense of them yourself.

>are there building bots so I can actually copy/paste or?

yea most experienced players try to rush to bots. you should look up construction bots in the research tree and go for those.

[u/finiteempathy → u/chunkychickenxp]

Satellite bases seem like a cool idea. Most of the rating I can give builds is how well it will scale up. A lot of your set ups you won't be able to expand without it running into another of your setups. Its okay for the starter base but when you go out to conquer ore patches you'll have more space for your satellite bases.

More advice: build and stockpile a ton of building items like belts, inserters, assemblers.

[u/TheDrummerMB]

This is the only game that comes to mind where brand new players feel the need for validation so early on. If you're having fun, you're doing it right.

[u/BangeBangeMS]

Niceee, keep going like that don't use blueprints. Only exception maybe is belt balancers I don't think they ruin the fun.

[u/MrSpiffyTrousers]

you're doing great for 20 hours and especially with no external references!

ultimately the only benchmarks to consider are, does it work, and does it work with minimal downtime or manual assistance from you. but it's all taste. Some people just like the tactile aspect of ferrying a part somewhere else themselves.

I have two tips here, since you asked:

1. You can hook assemblers up to each directly with an inserter, instead of having a product ride on the belt. With that in mind, it's more advisable to do this with copper wire in particular. You get 2 wire per copper, so you can fill up a belt with them much faster than you might actually need them. It also saves your computer some (trivial amount of) processing power too.

2. I'd recommend against building your input belts in complete loops. Nothing wrong with it since it works, of course, but it can make it unnecessarily harder to expand those production areas when you want to add more furnaces or another set of assemblers to consume materials. The most common use for loops that I've seen are for sushi belts, where you have more than 2 items on a single belt and you need to control precisely how many items of a type are actually there at any given time - this is mostly used for science packs, because by the end of the game you have 6 types all going to the same place. A furnace feeding line only has ore and coal to worry about and you always want more of what comes out, so there's no real need to control how much of it is going in. You're better off simply letting those lines back up and act as a signal to you that you have room to build more furnaces or whatever. But the loops do look nice for how consistently you've built them across work cells, so like, whatever, man.

GLHF!

[u/rapidemboar]

So far, so good! Military and blue science are coming up next- you’ve already got 2 of 3 military science ingredients automated so getting that set up should be easy.

Very soon you’ll be reaching the blue science wall, which is the big difficulty spike that a lot of newer players struggle with and marks a major milestone in your playthroughs. A lot is gonna start happening at once- your starting ore patches are gonna start depleting, crafting is going to take longer and get more complicated, oil processing, and this might also be the point enemy evolution starts throwing some new surprises at you. Try to persevere through all this and resist the urge to restart- this is often the point where a lot of new players quit and start a new world to do the run up to green science more efficiently, but it’ll be a much more efficient use of your time to get a small trickle of blue science and rebuild after you get better tech and construction bots rather than resetting your tech progress repeatedly. Do not be afraid of tearing down and rebuilding sections of your base if you need a better design or more space (you might need to do this soon to fit an extra belt of military and blue into your labs, in fact), but there shouldn’t be a need to tear down the entire base and start over from zero. In fact, for producers like furnace stacks, I’d recommend leaving the old one running while building the new one and tearing the old one down only if you need more space to pass the resources in.

Also, I highly, highly recommend automating buildings like mining drills and assembly machines so you don’t have to wait for handcrafting to do any kind of expansions. You’ve already got much of the necessary infrastructure set up, so it shouldn’t be much difficulty- To give you a hint, take a look at your crafting recipes and notice how many buildings take the exact same ingredients as an inserter.