Factorio Forums

I was just wondering what the general consensus is on this: do you rather to rebuild your factory upon discovering a flaw, or instead to start again fresh?

I have barely experienced mid-game factorio because I've always restarted upon finding any flaw with my factory. I felt that it was more work to turn off my factory and rebuild than it would be to just start again new. More recently, however, I have found joy in redesigning and rebuilding my factory. It is a lot of work to perform a major retrofit, but definitely worth it.

Still, what's the consensus?

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=101849

Not exactly the same question, but closely related, I feel.

That kind of question comes back regularly indeed. Here are a few additional discussions revolving around more or less similar questions.

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=48681
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=59505
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=71357
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=76768

Long story short, there is no consensus. Some prefer restart on a new map, other prefer tearing down everything and rebuild on the same map, some prefer to go back and forth between a game in creative and the map they're playing for redesign purpose, some prefer to move couple hundred tiles and rebuild whatever they didn't fancy in their factory; ...

GreenTeaKinase wrote: ↑

Thu May 18, 2023 1:13 am

I was just wondering what the general consensus is on this: do you rather to rebuild your factory upon discovering a flaw, or instead to start again fresh?

I have barely experienced mid-game factorio because I've always restarted upon finding any flaw with my factory. I felt that it was more work to turn off my factory and rebuild than it would be to just start again new. More recently, however, I have found joy in redesigning and rebuilding my factory. It is a lot of work to perform a major retrofit, but definitely worth it.

Still, what's the consensus?

What if I told you, you can combine the way? Don't start a new save, don't rebuild. Plan the next iteration directly close to your working, but not satisfying first version.

GreenTeaKinase wrote: ↑

Thu May 18, 2023 1:13 am

I was just wondering what the general consensus is on this: do you rather to rebuild your factory upon discovering a flaw, or instead to start again fresh?

I have barely experienced mid-game factorio because I've always restarted upon finding any flaw with my factory. I felt that it was more work to turn off my factory and rebuild than it would be to just start again new. More recently, however, I have found joy in redesigning and rebuilding my factory. It is a lot of work to perform a major retrofit, but definitely worth it.

Still, what's the consensus?

Both is problematic, IMO
I would either continue and learn the lessons for next game.
Or I would plan everything in detail in creative or editor mode and check, if it's realistic while playing it as template for a new game.

The first option is better to learn fast, because if you reiterate over every single detail, you never get anywhere.
I would also advice to don't have the expectation to do everything perfectly. The last 10 percent to perfection needs 90 percent of time. So rather invest 10 percent of time to get it only 90 percent perfect. In fact, you never will get it perfect.

EDIT:
Some people also build to rocket or somewhere advanced, rather quick and dirty. Then move out from the center of the map to one direction, where patches get bigger. Then rebuild there, with all the tools and researches. Leave the old base running to provide stuff.
You can build a shuttle train between old and new base and move material. At some point its easier to don't ride back and forth

It's simple at heart: collect a (mental or written, that's a who-do-you-love question) list of "do better next time" things, and when you can't stand looking at the list any longer, start the next one.

Just remember to include your fault-finding-and-fixing process in the fault-finding-and-fixing process: whether you'd have made desirable progress faster by pulling the trigger earlier or later (or by rebuilding in place or in that empty neighboring patch you carefully reserved for oopsie-recovery) depends a lot on you and your desires too, a long list of minor flaws could be intolerable if you're working on execution skill or not even worth remembering if you're just trying to get to the main event.

GreenTeaKinase wrote: ↑

Thu May 18, 2023 1:13 am

I was just wondering what the general consensus is on this: do you rather to rebuild your factory upon discovering a flaw, or instead to start again fresh?

I have barely experienced mid-game factorio because I've always restarted upon finding any flaw with my factory. I felt that it was more work to turn off my factory and rebuild than it would be to just start again new. More recently, however, I have found joy in redesigning and rebuilding my factory. It is a lot of work to perform a major retrofit, but definitely worth it.

Still, what's the consensus?

my take:

if flaw is soo basic, like train lines or a signal wrong in all your T junctions and ure at a megabase lvl... restart...
if i chosen wrong map for my newest midgame idea.. restart...
if i have a bad day today and im not even wanna login to that space exploration map version 10+ that im trying to finish but i need to redo some factories on a new planet...restart, version 11...
if my original idea.. atlantis, after 10 hours of waterfilling and carefully digging etc starts lagging the game...restart.. do it squarical
if today i need to make the mall with yellow belts and i deleted all my blueprints in desperation to try something new and im not at robats yet... restart a save for blueprints only

and so on...
restart... i admire ppl who can rebuild entire factories, reminds me of my first ever save file...

The solution is simple .... have fun.

Deconstructing is super super easy, so I really like to build bigger nearby (almost always, further out), and I take the center apart chunk by chunk. There's really no reason to restart unless you want to. You don't have to do anything unless you want to in this game, in fact.

Use the existing base to make parts for a new base elsewhere, built “better”. THEN tear down the initial base. Don’t tear down a factory without having its replacement already built.

Or, if changing modsets, restart. I don’t usually restart unless I’m changing the scenario up a bit, with adding different mods or turning other mods off.

GreenTeaKinase wrote: ↑

Thu May 18, 2023 1:13 am

do you rather to rebuild your factory upon discovering a flaw?

Depending on how bad is a flaw. Or maybe, this is not a flaw, just "you can do it better"? The last statement will be valid for every single base you build . No base will be perfect.
I suggest you to finish the game (whatever it means to you) at least one time with an imperfect base, because late-game gives new challenges you are not yet aware of.

As long as biters do not wipe your base completely you can always continue. I think it's more fun. "Erase and rewind" is not my way of playing. My main Vanilla map base currently consumes 18GW power, produce 4k SPM and was created at 0.15 beta many years ago.

...researching mining productivity 158...