Efficiently Moving resources around

[dka13]

Hey all! Ive completed the game and now am looking towards a MegaFactory(whatever your definition), of maybe 1000SPM. Ive seen the calculators and everything and can use those for to set up the assemblers. But I am unsure how to go about designing the system to move resources where they need to go. I currently have a bus, but expect that wont be enough. So im currently looking for ideas. I know that trains are the way to go, especially with a large factory, but personally im not a huge fan of the railway squares look (plus ive already invested a bit in my current setup). Of course ill use trains but id like them to be set up differently.

Any ideas?

Ive attached a snip of the current layout of my factory

[Zavian]

In my current game I am aiming for a 1500 science/minute factory. My current design philosophy is to build a number of remote outposts each making one (or sometimes two) intermediate products from raw resources. Then I rail those intermediate products back to my science base where they are made into science packs and sent to labs. (You can also make the science packs at remote outposts, and just rail the packs to a central set of labs). For some of these intermediate products I will have 2 or 3 production outposts.

Blue circuits. Note that this playthrough I am requiring a gap of 3 spaces between beacons.

BlueCircs3.png (4.22 MiB) Viewed 846 times

So blue circuit production smelts its own iron and copper, makes its own plastic, and produces its own red and green circuits. It also has an attached refinery that makes the petrol, acid and rocket fuel. (Some of the rocket fuel is used for refuelling trains locally, some is exported to other outposts so they can refuel their trains, and the rest is sent to the science base for space science. Make sure you design the refinery so that petrol/acid production doesn't block if rocket fuel isn't being used, and so that rocket fuel production doesn't completely block if circuit production is temporarily shut down. If you want to avoid that complication, then you could build a dedicated rocket fuel refinery).

Doing things this way avoids the ups costs of having things loaded and unloaded from trains an excessive number of times, and avoids the massive congestion that central smelting causes. It also means that the science base can use a bus. (eg the science base need about 303 iron plates/second which is one unload station and only 8 belts).

[Serenity]

You really don't have to do the boring railway grid to have sub-factories for certain things.

Consider moving out from the starting area though because distance ore patches are richer.