The Restart Loop

[kinnebian]

I've been caught in a loop of getting up to blue/yellow, then restarting because I get frustrated with my start, early base, or I feel I could do everything a lot neater and faster... Does anyone else get this problem? I've had it in a few other games, but especially factorio. Maybe its just the perfectionist within me..

[Kalanndok]

Yeah...I have that a lot of times...However, in factorio you just put up a lot of yellow chests and let everything be deconstructed to get a fresh start

[BlueTemplar]

Having to 'restart' tends to happen when you land on another planet.
(Joking above, but more seriously : maybe funnel this frustration of yours into this ?)

[r3nt5ch3r]

My perfectionism goes another way: I know that I can only build perfect/final things once I've unlocked everything and have the highest quality available. So restarting doesn't help in any way. Until I reach this point I just let it "flow" and do whatever I want, as I know it can't be perfect yet anyway. I'm using that time to try out things and learn and prepare for the "perfect" setup - I consider this endless journey to be the game itself. Your inner perfectionist will never be completely satisfied with factorio and with the new quality system it became even worse...

[kinnebian]

Thats good advice @BlueTemplar - I'm just worried about biters seiging my base while im away, even with my defenses. I've actually managed to stay very unspoiled for a lot of the new content, so I'm excited, if nervous about being prepared for spess!

[adam_bise]

It is not unusual at all. But you don't have to restart the whole game. At times as I unlock new techs I will level my base and redesign it to utilize all the new tech I have unlocked. For me, this usually happens once I have reached construction bots. New mall, bigger smelters, better layout, less spaghetti. Although admittedly I have not leveled my base yet in SA. All of the glorious spaghetti remains intact

spaghetti.png (2.31 MiB) Viewed 652 times

[kinnebian]

It is not unusual at all. But you don't have to restart the whole game. At times as I unlock new techs I will level my base and redesign it to utilize all the new tech I have unlocked. For me, this usually happens once I have reached construction bots. New mall, bigger smelters, better layout, less spaghetti. Although admittedly I have not leveled my base yet in SA. All of the glorious spaghetti remains intact

spaghetti.png

Wow, that is some main menu worthy spaghetti, its so pretty..
I feel a lot better about continuing into space after this thread,

[Panzerknacker]

Yeah I think it's better to just try to make the best of every game. I used to restart a few times when I was a new player but in the end it doesn't really matter because you will come to another point where things are far from perfect because you reach new technologies all the time that you don't directly know how to implement in a perfect way. So just play until you really finish the game or get stuck. Your next game you will be a better player and on top of that you will have blueprints saved from your previous game that you can use to immediately have some good starting point of certain parts of your factory, then you will have more time to optimize further because of that.

[GrumpyJoe]

If you restart to be faster, aren't you slower overall, by definition?

I mean, if it isn't for a timed achievment many hours in the future (40/100 for SA) it isn't really a thing.

[bombcar]

I used to restart all the time, and for pretty minor things (oh no, my base isn't aligned with this new rail blueprint I want to use, etc).

Then I realized that restarting only makes sense very early game (bad biters, bad start) - because once you get construction robots, you can restart your entire base without restarting the game).

Just move over to the side or above or down and do what you want. Either leave your old base as a mall, or deconstruct it, or whatever. You can even vagabond it into a bunch of rail cars and travel off.

Same thing with Minecraft - the only real reason to restart is you really enjoy the early game OR the mods you use have changed significantly (or, my most common restart, I forgot what I was doing and it's mentally simpler to begin again).

[shopt]

I agree with most here. There's very little reason to restart, especially once you have bots. I think the only reasons would be if you have let evolution outrun your military tech level, or you have run out of a resource and don't have the means to secure more of it, or you really want different map settings. If none of those are true, you may as well make use of the tech, items, and even mining sites you already have, even if you deconstruct everything into storage chests.

[WOOL]

I like to see my base evolve over time and there are still some old, inefficient parts from the early game.

You could think of it like building a factory to build a better factory to build an even better factory etc.

One thing I could do with, and would perhaps benefit the OP, is creating a decent blueprint library for each game stage which would speed up the early / mid game and you would only have designs that you are happy with