Can't understand hate for handcrafting and love for early malls

[jodokus31]

Also note that the early mall will be crafting belts, underground belts, splitter, inserters, furnaces, electric mining drills all in parallel and ahead of time....

Ah, I thought, you wanted to follow up, that the precrafted item buffer is major resource sink and can compete with progressing somewhere else...
That's at least that, what I have said.
I'm generally a friend of a mall, but it can be too early to be efficient. Later in the game, it's a no-brainer, to have a decent mall

[mrvn]

It's possible for the early mall to suck up all your resources. But it's not that much if you limit everything to a stack. Or even more conservatively don't put chests into the mall, just let the assembler produce electric miners till it stops with output full. Easy to pick up 4-8 miners then. Not so good to pick up 50. Want a few more miners per visit? Place a belt instead of the chest to get a few more items produced ahead of time, 4 items per belt. Alternatively get a blueprint with a inserter wired to a chest. Now you can program the inserter to put exactly as many items into the chest as desired without having to research combinators first or pay for the wire.

[quineotio]

Also note that the early mall will be crafting belts, underground belts, splitter, inserters, furnaces, electric mining drills all in parallel and ahead of time....

Ah, I thought, you wanted to follow up, that the precrafted item buffer is major resource sink and can compete with progressing somewhere else...
That's at least that, what I have said.
I'm generally a friend of a mall, but it can be too early to be efficient. Later in the game, it's a no-brainer, to have a decent mall

Get your mall to produce the most needed items first, and design your buffers to be in a ratio of how many of each item you're likely to use. So for example, get it to make belts first and inserters second.

In the very early game you don't need an entire chest of each item - only enough to build at the scale you're building. So in the early game I might let my buffer for fast inserters be 150, but in the late game I have two full steel chests of them, because when I build a massive smelting section I need a LOT of inserters. I have 12 full chests of blue belts...

Getting your ratios and routing correct takes time to learn, but you get better at it. The starter base in my current factory has served me well for 100s of hours. The only thing I've needed to do was upgrade the assemblers/inserters/belts - which I did with the upgrade planner, and route in new resources when the intial patches ran out.

Also, I let my starter base be separate from the major production so that they don't interfere with each other. The purpose of the first base is to unlock science (which it doesn't need to do very quickly), and to provide the resources I need to build the next, larger factory.

[quineotio]

One thing I'll add is that if you're finding that the early things in your production line are eating all of your resources, split your lanes so that they go to different things. For example, if your belt assemblers are eating all the cogs so that your electric mining drills aren't getting any, split your cogs into two lanes. Then, if your mining drills need them, they'll get them, and if they don't, all he cogs will go to your belt production (after the lane to your miners is full).

[mrvn]

If your belt assemblers are eating all the iron plates then that means you are constantly removing belts from the output chest. Apparently you need those belts. Stop placing so many and the miners will get iron plates. It's not like it takes that long or that many iron plates to build a stack of belts.

Note: if you would be handcrafting all those belts then you wouldn't be able to hand craft miners either.

[jodokus31]

Also note that the early mall will be crafting belts, underground belts, splitter, inserters, furnaces, electric mining drills all in parallel and ahead of time....

Ah, I thought, you wanted to follow up, that the precrafted item buffer is major resource sink and can compete with progressing somewhere else...
That's at least that, what I have said.
I'm generally a friend of a mall, but it can be too early to be efficient. Later in the game, it's a no-brainer, to have a decent mall

Get your mall to produce the most needed items first, and design your buffers to be in a ratio of how many of each item you're likely to use. So for example, get it to make belts first and inserters second.

In the very early game you don't need an entire chest of each item - only enough to build at the scale you're building. So in the early game I might let my buffer for fast inserters be 150, but in the late game I have two full steel chests of them, because when I build a massive smelting section I need a LOT of inserters. I have 12 full chests of blue belts...

Getting your ratios and routing correct takes time to learn, but you get better at it. The starter base in my current factory has served me well for 100s of hours. The only thing I've needed to do was upgrade the assemblers/inserters/belts - which I did with the upgrade planner, and route in new resources when the intial patches ran out.

Also, I let my starter base be separate from the major production so that they don't interfere with each other. The purpose of the first base is to unlock science (which it doesn't need to do very quickly), and to provide the resources I need to build the next, larger factory.

If you buffer 150 fast inserters in early game, we speaking of a different early game. I would buffer those maybe at purple/yellow science stage. Yellow inserters are different, as I need those for smelting lines. Here 100-200 are nice after red/green science is up.
As for early, early game, i would automate
- some copper wires and iron gears with temp assemblers after unlock assemblers
- belts and iron gears after building the first iron line.
- circuits and yellow inserters after building first copper line
- iron pipes at some point, but long before oil.

Another question is, do we need a fully fletched mall before logi-network?

[quineotio]

Another question is, do we need a fully fletched mall before logi-network?

If you build the mall correctly it will last all game.

[jodokus31]

Another question is, do we need a fully fletched mall before logi-network?

If you build the mall correctly it will last all game.

Of course it will, but the effort to build a botted mall is a lot less.
But then again, I'm playing seablock and a belted mall for all tiers and things is quite a task, which I did one time and probably never again.

EDIT: fixed typo: should be "botted mall" instead of "modded mall"