first base, don't know what to do

[twanboy]

I currently have a good copper smelter and an iron smelter that needs improvement. I can automaticaly make green, red and yellow potions. I also have a setup for all the circuit boards. my oil setup is a mess. I also have no main bus. all the iron and copper is transported arround my factory with 1 belt each. my factory is a big mess and I don't know if I should start over or make a better factory in this world . what would you suggest?

[twepy]

This game has practically no penalty in rebuilding your factory, so its very feasible to tear down the parts that you dont like and rebuild it or build a new Mk2 factory before tearing down the Mk1 factory. The main disadvantage of resetting in my opinion is that you are back to square 1 and have to redo the stuff you already know until you progress into unknown territory again. If you dont mind by all means go ahead and reset, i found it much more interesting fixing my factory and seeing my factory completely change over time. Starting a new game is usually for me to try different game, for example a railgame (long distance for resources) or a deathworld (high difficulty).

[Jap2.0]

EDIT: I didn't see Twepy's post until after I posted this. I don't know why I thought I should edit this to say that, I just thought I should.

A few things:

• You don't need a main bus. I cannot stress this enough. Some people prefer to use a main bus design, but it is by no means necessary. It is certainly more organized and some people like a main bus design, but because you don't have a main bus doesn't mean you're doing it wrong. Once I tried to build a base with a main bus and I simply couldn't. I was bored with it before I even had green science fully automated.
• Whether you expand you factory and try to improve it or start over is entirely up to you. If you try, you can probably remedy most of your problems (except probably implementing a main bus now, but again, you don't really need one. If you really want, you can rebuild a large portion of your base when you get bots.), but if you think it would be more fun to start over, start over. The opinion of the forum shouldn't change your mind, you should go with which way will be more fun.
• Yellow is a very advanced science, so you probably want to make blue next. (If by any chance that was a typo, purple and yellow science are on a similar tier, so make whichever one you want more first.) Most technologies (maybe even all) which require yellow also require blue.
• You will always need more of something. Right now you need more iron. If the patches you are mining right now aren't fully tapped, fill them up with mining drills. If they are, then belt more iron in, or use trains. There are several mini-tutorials relating to trains in-game, and if you need further help, ask on the forums. Then you should probably double or triple your smelting. One belts is not enough, and iron usage will increase rapidly. You will have to do the same thing to copper eventually. You will almost always be building more production or needing more supply, so this won't be anywhere near the last time you'll have to do this.
• There are a few ways to increase the supply of iron to your assemblers. You can put another belt (or two) next to your existing belt, or if you don't have enough space, merge the belts later along the line when the belt becomes nearly empty.
• For oil, I recommend having a tileable design (if it's in a blueprint, that's even better) like this:

  

  Oil.PNG (511.47 KiB) Viewed 4262 times

• No matter what, having fun is your main concern.

[twanboy]

I forget to mention that I also have blue potions automated. I think i'll continue with this factory. Thanks for your replies!

[Jap2.0]

If you also have blue science automated, then you're actually doing very well. If you want, when you get purple science you can research the logistics networks. That allows you to put items into provider chests and request them in requester chests, so you can practically throw stuff anywhere along with a requester chest, if you want to follow that path (I use belts for large portions of may base, but they are still helpful).

As for the help, you're very welcome. I was there once too .

[5thHorseman]

I completely agree with Jap2.0 about not needing a bus. However, I strongly suggest you try it and see if you like it. Even if you don't, some of the tricks you learn about planning ahead while making your first (or second, or third) bus can really help you when you are making a factory that does not use a bus.

At least, it did for me

[Engimage]

My suggestion.

Ofcourse there is no need to start over. In Factorio base redesign is one of the things that actually keeps you playing it. Like the main point is to constantly rebuild/optimize stuff cause you will always want more and won't be satisfied with what you got currently.

So make a plan of what do you want to achieve. Then start to build your goal step by step removing old stuff on the way. And always leave a lot of space between stuff so you can adjust later.

[Frightning]

If you find yourself looking at the spaghetti monster you made going "I don't even wanna try and fix this mess", then my suggestion is that it is time to start planning and constructing a 'mark 2' base, using the more advanced technology that you now have access to. You conveniently have the right packs automated to research logistics chests which allows for a nice, easy, beltless design (like I did in my kilobase, which btw, was a 'mark 2' base...you can still see the old 'mark 1' base on the map pics to the west of my new factory: viewtopic.php?f=204&t=27061). For future bases, you may want to try out a 'bussed building store' I find that method really handy for automating most things I need for early base building, and it can be extended pretty far into the game. The new science recipies are making me reconsider some of the things I used to automate on the bussed building store because they are used later in science packs that I want to automate, so it may be better to automate them later, and I am also starting to think more about how to build designs that scale up sooner because of how the new science recipes increased resource demands for research.