With this post i want to try something new and built a factory step by step, while documenting the process. Hopefully it will be a little entertaining and maybe act as a tutorial for newer players.
I will edit this thread whenever i have time for documentation, so don't worry if there isn't much to see at the beginning.
Warning: This may spoil your game experience, since i will eventually go through most of the aspects of the game.
1. First Steps
At the start of the game, most of the time is spend by gathering stone, coal and ore to create some furnaces and burner drills. After that it's mostly putting stuff into these furnaces and drills to gather enough iron and copper for a basic power plant. I skip this part, because the images are boring and it's all explained in the tutorial campaign.
2. From Dust
The left part of the image shows my starter factory and it surroundings:
There is the power plant at the lower right and iron processing and some labs in the center. Copper isn't hooked up at them moment, because i want the layout to be nice and clean. Unfortunately i need underground belts for this, so i stick to burner drills for copper for now. All resources are automatically stored in containers and i'm researching "Iron Processing", "Automation 1" and "Logistics 1".
3. Preparing For More
With enough iron coming in and the needed research done, i started to build some serious production. I learned two important things from earlier games: First is the need of intermediate production materials. Belts, assembly plants, inserters, ... all need lots of gears and chips. Building them from just iron and copper plates takes much time. It is advised to pre-produce them in order to speed up construction time. With this in mind i built this temporary production line:
In this image you see the copper and iron production ready, together with production sites for amunition, chips and gears. I also moved the labs up here and guarded them, because aliens started to spawn. Since this factory uses a lot more power than the basic power plant provides, it leads to the second important point: A reliable source of electricity.
The right part of the images shows the upgraded power plant, together with a support plant. The purpose of the support plant is to fuel the main plant and nothing else. Before i used this scheme, i often drained to much power by building stuff which resulted in a full stop of the whole complex. In the most worse scenario you have to pick coal by hand, because nothing is working anymore. By building a support plant it is ensured, that there is always power for energy production, even if the factory runs dry.
I also reconstructed the earlier iron site, which only gathers iron ore and coal now (As seen in the left part of the image). Research goes towards Steel, Armor making 1 and Electronics.
4. Boosting Research.
Now the basic basic infrastructure is set up and the increasing research costs are screaming for automatic science pack production. The following pictures shows a fully automated research station. I measured the output capacity and it is capable of producing ~20 red and green science packs per minute (as long as enough copper and iron is provided). This is more than needed for a long time.
Here is an overview of the full factory, as it is now. Research goes towards Rocketry.
5. Smart Production
Even though building a full-on blue science production line would be the next logical step, i postpone it for now. I would be easily create a messy, half working site and it is not needed at the moment. There are plenty of research projects to be done with red and green packs and setting smaller goals will help the later progress.
First thing i created was a fully automated support production site (B). It creates iron, copper, gears, cables, green and purple chips on demand. There is a smart chest, surrounded by four fast inserters, which is linked to six smart inserters. Whenever i take something out of the chest it is automatically restocked. The main advantage is: It doesn't use resources all the time, because the production is limited to the values set in the smart inserters. If it were running non stop, it would soak up plenty of iron and coal which is needed elsewhere.
I also added a rocket production site (A). These are always nice to have for blasting alien spawner and are used later for blue science packs. The production is limited to 100, since it uses a lot of resources. Steel is also needed at this point, so i set up some furnances (C). You can see that iron is used a lot, and the amount will increase. I already see a shortage coming, so finding another source will be needed eventually.
Research goes towards Armor Making 2 and Logistics Robotics.
6. Blue
Finally it's time for the blue science pack production and with it some of handy aspects of the game are unlocked. Namely cars, better robots, solar panels and trains. The latter two aren't a big deal for me. Solar panels are expensive and only useful for saving coal during daytime and trains are buggy at the moment. But cars are fun and the faster robots with bigger cargo make things easier.
But first things first: Four different parts are needed for blue science packs, rockets and steel are already available. I planed on bringing them with logistic robots, so no new sites have to be constructed for them. For the other two, purple chips and smart inserters, i built a new factory (A). It is composed of two main parts, the green chip production north and the inserter / purple chip production south. All resource streams are brought together at the bottom to create blue packs.
This whole process consumes a lot of iron (most for rockets, steel) and copper (for chips). It was necessary to increase the supply of them by expanding the ore sites and the power plant, which led to new problems with the transport belts being overcrowded. Fast belts had to be inserted at choke points to ensure a steady stream of source materials (B). The trick is not to use them everywhere at once, but only at problematic sections. Curves and T-crossings are a good place to start, since resources tend do travel slower around them.
Since i'm using logistic robots now, they need to be guarded. Aliens attack them if they pass along their way and it's annoying to replace them permanently. I developed a neat method to supply turret around the whole complex without using belts full of ammo all over the place.
In this image you can see the ammo production site (bottom left), which collects ammo into a provider chest. I spread turret stations, like the one in the lower right, all over the factory. These stations have a requester chest connected which demands ammo. They are automatically supplied by the robots, guarding them in the process.
Research goes towards Automobilism and Logistic Robots Speed / Cargo.
7. The quest for iron
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! Thanks !