Tips for getting better?

[Alien_Squasher]

Hey all, I am somewhat experienced with just under 1500 hours in game, but I am trying to get better at building and most importantly being more efficient with my in game time.

Currently I am doing a SE+Krastorio 2 run with Rampant

I am trying not to copy other people's blueprints in favor of doing everything myself as part of the challenge, but I continually run into the issue that I am overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the automation that is required for this playthrough.

The main things I've been focusing on up to this point are:

Scalable, tileable builds built to ratio

Main bussing raw resources and the most commonly used intermediate products

Using bots to import for complex recipes

Using rails to solve the issue of expandability with mining patches

Trying to use circuit networks to build a smarter factory

The main thing I'm doing wrong is that I'm a bit of a perfectionist with my builds, if it isn't optimized and it doesn't look good I don't like it. This means that instead of doing quick and dirty automation I end up spending all my time making perfect blueprints, which is a major time suck when there's like 30 intermediate products you have to manage before you can produce the end products you need.

I know this is a bit of a "me" problem, but do any of you have any tips for being better?

[mmmPI]

Maybe this is a "me" answer, i used to be more of a perfectionist and had to find ways to cut on slacking if i wanted to finish longer modpacks. Which in retrospect i am not practicing that much anymore as i can enjoy quick and dirty automation a bit more than back then now.

Fixing time schedule !

" the next x hours my free time is going into [this] "

" [this] is my objective for this week, here's how i'm going to achieve it starting with [that] on monday, nothing on tuesday i'm busy , [that] on wednesday, and [all that] this WE "

" If i plan for a 250 hour game, at 50 hour i expect to have [this] or 100 hour [that] and 200 [all that] "

If you planned before hand how much time you dedicate on something like "that new oil patch" , "fixing defense", "doing purple science". You start to be more and more accurate in your prediction, i found you can also during the task get a feel on wether or not you are "wasting time" or not so as to avoid little time sink when it matter the most.

It sometimes yield "unfinished" or "sub-optimal" build but it will "have to do for the time", it need to be designed this way, make something that barely works in the first 10 minutes, and keep improving it until you run out of time to make sure you have something at the end, and you can always "add" to the schedule "fixing previous". I found it a way to allow myself "advancing" even if i couldn't quite get the finishing touch on a particular build right which could have prevented me to move on when 80% of the work is done, and the bell ring, you go to next task instead of doubling or tripling the time to get 100% right. And often time when times comes to "fixing previous" , new tech are availables.

I took example on speedrunners and their "splits", those try to seek performance and measure precisely their results, i trusted and have now verified their methods and the reasons they use those worked with me

Another thing i found helped me finishing long modpack is to be flexible on the time schedule, because if it's too rigid it can feel not fun, or to always be "late", same as for "keep some room near the main bus", "keep some empty time period in the schedule" x).

Now on a different note if you like perfect build and want to have time for it, i think there are mods that can help reducing the cost of receipes or tech, so that more time is spent on designing "the perfect blueprint" rather than on "scaling it x and y times ", i don't mind using them, i know my style of playing is already containing plenty of self imposed challenge for aesthetic reasons, if i'm not willing to compromise on that for a particular modpack, and i think the modpack is long or difficult enough already for my personnal rigidity to be added on top, then i can still alter the modpack,to adapt it to the time available IRL. similar to the "keep some empty time period in the schedule", "add some mods that you could use as shortcut/plan B in the mod pack to give you more options to adapt once the game is like 200 hours in already".

( if 3 or 4 time in a row the time schedule cannot be respected or the build made in the available time is too ugly, and there was not enough empty period in the schedule to add some "fixing" for everything, maybe it is possible to skip or alter some of the future planned thing, by using a "cheesier" solution here and there to recover some time on the schedule).

Again schedule is more a guideline it doesn't matter if it's not strictly respected, but one can prepare tools to try to respect it so the guideline is more effective than just "oh i'm late that's bad" like in speedrun they would scrap the run, but if you are 200 hours in, you may want to develop "recover" strats, in speedruns as in non-speedrun game , at a different scale, but i found the idea inspiring/helping me.

[Alien_Squasher]

Maybe this is a "me" answer, i used to be more of a perfectionist and had to find ways to cut on slacking if i wanted to finish longer modpacks. Which in retrospect i am not practicing that much anymore as i can enjoy quick and dirty automation a bit more than back then now.

Fixing time schedule !

" the next x hours my free time is going into [this] "

" [this] is my objective for this week, here's how i'm going to achieve it starting with [that] on monday, nothing on tuesday i'm busy , [that] on wednesday, and [all that] this WE "

" If i plan for a 250 hour game, at 50 hour i expect to have [this] or 100 hour [that] and 200 [all that] "

If you planned before hand how much time you dedicate on something like "that new oil patch" , "fixing defense", "doing purple science". You start to be more and more accurate in your prediction, i found you can also during the task get a feel on wether or not you are "wasting time" or not so as to avoid little time sink when it matter the most.

It sometimes yield "unfinished" or "sub-optimal" build but it will "have to do for the time", it need to be designed this way, make something that barely works in the first 10 minutes, and keep improving it until you run out of time to make sure you have something at the end, and you can always "add" to the schedule "fixing previous". I found it a way to allow myself "advancing" even if i couldn't quite get the finishing touch on a particular build right which could have prevented me to move on when 80% of the work is done, and the bell ring, you go to next task instead of doubling or tripling the time to get 100% right. And often time when times comes to "fixing previous" , new tech are availables.

I took example on speedrunners and their "splits", those try to seek performance and measure precisely their results, i trusted and have now verified their methods and the reasons they use those worked with me

Another thing i found helped me finishing long modpack is to be flexible on the time schedule, because if it's too rigid it can feel not fun, or to always be "late", same as for "keep some room near the main bus", "keep some empty time period in the schedule" x).

Now on a different note if you like perfect build and want to have time for it, i think there are mods that can help reducing the cost of receipes or tech, so that more time is spent on designing "the perfect blueprint" rather than on "scaling it x and y times ", i don't mind using them, i know my style of playing is already containing plenty of self imposed challenge for aesthetic reasons, if i'm not willing to compromise on that for a particular modpack, and i think the modpack is long or difficult enough already for my personnal rigidity to be added on top, then i can still alter the modpack,to adapt it to the time available IRL. similar to the "keep some empty time period in the schedule", "add some mods that you could use as shortcut/plan B in the mod pack to give you more options to adapt once the game is like 200 hours in already".

( if 3 or 4 time in a row the time schedule cannot be respected or the build made in the available time is too ugly, and there was not enough empty period in the schedule to add some "fixing" for everything, maybe it is possible to skip or alter some of the future planned thing, by using a "cheesier" solution here and there to recover some time on the schedule).

Again schedule is more a guideline it doesn't matter if it's not strictly respected, but one can prepare tools to try to respect it so the guideline is more effective than just "oh i'm late that's bad" like in speedrun they would scrap the run, but if you are 200 hours in, you may want to develop "recover" strats, in speedruns as in non-speedrun game , at a different scale, but i found the idea inspiring/helping me.

Dude this is honestly some sage advice.

This makes me think that low experience Factorio is spaghetti bc you don't know what you're doing, and high experience Factorio is also spaghetti because there are too many new recipes for you to know what you're doing either, and I feel like mid experience Factorio is where you build the "perfect bases".

Also, breaking down the run into blocks is basically the only way to not go insane with this many new recipes just like you said. It's better to get an 80% perfect build and then do 3 other things rather than get a 100% perfect build and spend all of my time on it.

Thanks again for the advice

[mmmPI]

Thank you, i wish i was more sage, so i tried to think.

And your answer made me think of that meme : https://joyreactor.com/post/5289949

I think your explanation ressemble, but is more fair, when it say "the experience" change the way you play. When you start you make less and less mistakes and strive for "the best" very regular and things, but when you are very familiar with the game, you know where you don't have to make things perfect because it will still work, or where you can make things a little special and it won't cause trouble. Somehow you can't leave something at 80% if you don't know what 100% look like. Another risk is going 150% or 400% overdesigning/building . You need to have gone through the full thing at least couple time to know when diminshing return starts, for the future run to be able to spent time more effectively.

To me the thing that really help and is a common in all game with all modpack is having a mental representation of "large amount of iron ore" makes "medium amount of iron plate" which becomes "even less green circuit" which becomes "even less blue". Even if the particular example is not accurate for the vanilla game. Once you play the game a lot you may be better at gauging the amount of time you need to automate something, and let other thing buffer in chest, or "trickle for 5 hours" while you do another task. But you can't let one of the "early" thing in the production chain having lower production than the consumption of the next. It helps having a well organised base to know what's going on. But having 'only' a "mental-representation" allow, when using spagetthi, to know if that particular pasta has priority, is supposed to trickle or can be used to branch off a production of [thing] , and where to plug [other things].

It can look messy, but it's not messy. It has a logic of organisation that is just not "spatial" or "geometric". But the principle that makes it work are not different than on nicely organised base. At least to me that's how i do them, if the "important" is respected, it can look whatever i want and still "work". Defined as "allowing me to follow schedule"

Also i tend to play now with a self-imposed guideline that says "lab should never stop". It helps even with big modpack to manage time i found, because you can estimate how much time "before the end" if "everything goes according to plan", when/if you need to add labs. Instead of having say 30 that are sometimes not working and i feel pressured to automate the next thing to get them going again, or inefficient to have them sit there and do nothing, i tend to now go for low number of labs, like 12 or even 6. This way i can "anticipate" better i found what is going to be problematic, before it is problematic really. It's not like 5 minutes of inatention will make me lose 2000 research points and miss the schedule. With say only 6 labs, having a 100 belts carrying science to them is like a 2 hours buffer to give warning when it deplete. Giving again time and flexibility because sometimes you have "finished" everything, are waiting for science, and can bring some of those 80% build a little closer to 100% in that time taken from the schedule.

Not sure that is a "tip for getting better" or my way of doing after so many hours, i tried x)