What Do I Do From Here? Best Mods?

[GLaDOS]

About one week ago to date, I bought Factorio. Yesterday I have installed Bob's Mods, but I have -0 clue how to use them. So I disabled all of Bob's Mods. I have about 17 man-hours clocked in the game, and have the basics of automation down. I have the "basic" factory down. including a wall surrounding, turrets, and oil processing. But I need help, it seems that everyone else has this MASSIVE , intricate factory and I have this. Long story short, what I am asking is; what are the best mods, and what can are the steps I take from here? Any and All feedback is welcome.

(P.S. I am just a newcomer to factorio, so if you don't mind, try to explain everything to where I can understand it.)

[Koub]

Hi GLaDOS (:D),
First of all, you don't need mods, you can make a megafactory with vanilla as much as anything else.
The real thing is scaling. at the beginning, you need little of everything. But as you grow, you'll notice that a little up in one ot your final products output translates into a very consequent upgrade of your raw material needs.
Tbh, you can "finish the game" with a very reasonable factory. Even if one can argue about what "finish the game" is in a sandbox like Factorio.

With Factorio, you're only limited by the hardware. Whatever you do, you can do it faster. You can feed 4 science labs for you research ? ok you can research faster if you manage to feed 8 labs. But for that, you'll need a way bigger smelting zone. and that's the same thing with about anything else. whatever you build, you can build more and faster but you need to scale you input.

And that's how megafactories are born when you have like 16 science labs running full speed, and need a massive capsule building facility because your pollution has pissed aliens a lot and they have these huge bases, and you have to expand because the tiny ore patches you have at starting point won't be enough, and so on.

What's fun is that you can always make faster, stronger, better. Just aiming for the rocket launch with a small enough factory not to use up all your starting ressources is OK for the few first games, but not forever.

The difficulty often arrives when you try to scale and say to yourself "darn, should have left more space for that". Usually, rebuilding from scratch a little further is a very valid option.

[Edit] I see you're doing a lot of things manually (inserting your sciencs packs into the labs, for example).
The idea of Factorio is to automate. Bring your science packs to the labs with a belt, and insert them into the labs with inserters. and so on ... whatever you do "by hand", try to automate it.

[albatrosv13]

deleted

[ilostmahbucket]

Suggest no mods for your first rocket launch. Bobs mods is great once you've done that and want a (almost frustrating) new challenge of complexity. It took me 60 hours for first rocket launch. My first factory was a mess and impossible to expand from poor planning.

TLDR
Immediate observation is you need automation of basic power input (coal into boilers) and raw plate output.
My main suggestions are to use more space than you think you need so you can grow later, and put a heavier focus on automating things. CTRL left click is your best friend for speed early game, learn it. But make sure you find a good smelting layout that is automated and expandable. Key. Coal should be automatically going into anything that needs its power.

My early game looks like this:
Automate iron plate, copper plate, coal, stone. Basic drills. No belts/inserters yet. Chests.
Get electricity ASAP thereafter. Plan future space for( forty) steam engines.
Automate coal from belts into boilers to power steam engines.
Plan larger base layout (north for large smelting centers, further north for trains bringing ore. Belts bringing raw material south, core factory area/factory assemblers expand to south and east. Solar panels to west. Leave large space for oil/liquid processing near oil+water)
Automate ore smelting centers with belts, inserters, with electricity/coal input, plate output, and leave large space for expansion.
Couple turrets near electricity output and smelters.

Once first belt of iron plate is automated, create assemblers for all basic iron derivative items into chests right away, can rebuild later so don't obsess over placement. Belts, underground belts, bullets. Create other assemblers even if you can't automate their input quickly (like red science) and you need to manually add input. Output from all these assemblers goes into chests and now you have assemblers building all the basic items, output into chests in one clustered area, and your ability to research build fast jumps. I love over automating belts and using them to plan layouts or even write text with the belts.

Early Mid game:
After that, expand your smelting areas and belts outputting raw materials to a long line, 2-4 belts wide line that never stops its direction. Everything is split off this supply.
Build like a tree trunk and branches, where your main input of iron and copper is the trunk, and lines splitter off from that like branches, feeding assemblers as the leaves.
Automate red science.
Automate every item there is into chests. Limit chest capacity if you want. (Red x)
Expand defenses.
Automate green science.

I think that's enough tips to boost your current map significantly for now into rocket base potential!

[ilostmahbucket]

Here's a simple framework, easy to build and that will last you all game, for a fully automated smelting center that leaves room for 3x3 smelters and 3x3 beacons in between. You can expand this design easily horizontally and vertically I usually make 40 smelters for copper ore and iron ore as a starting point, 10 per output belt with four belts carrying iron plate.

Draw it out with the belts first!

[greep]

First things first, drop that wall, it's going to hamper your expansion efforts. Get a machine gun with piercing rounds and armor (or turret creep but that's lame), and kill every spawner nest in range without a worm. This will give you a good buffer to boldly explode your factory. Once you have some breathing room, for a long time you will only need a loose perimeter around your factory without walls, and a few turrets at every mining post. You should only really think of building a solid perimeter when you can at the very least control one minimap sized portion of the map, before that aggression is the best way

Second, keep in mind you started in a desert, which isn't that hard for experienced players (might add an hour or so to get going), but that's basically hard mode. If you want an easier time, start in a (not too dense) forest with no large bodies of water.

Last note: probably don't need that many radars. I build exactly two, then get rid of them shortly after They really suck up electricity.
I would also advice never building solid fuel, although as a new player you might want to on your heavy and light oils