Guide: Shorter path/milestones to late game designs

[zOldBulldog]

In over 1000 hours of game play I invested less time trying to launch rockets and more time trying to figure out better ways to do things. I studied the classic ways of doing things but always questioned doing things the way "everybody does it" in search for better methods and designs. Some of what I ended up with will be obvious to expert players, some will seem absurd. So, read this with an open mind, feel free to criticize (in detail and with logical arguments) as you might convince me to change my mind, and get ideas to improve your own approach.

This guide starts as a modest list. Over time I will add screenshots examples of how you might choose to do these steps and more details.

GOALS OF THE METHODS IN THIS GUIDE

- The goals in this guide are NOT to simply launch rockets. I this guide, rockets are only a means to Space Science and to the improved robots, mining, etc that come with it,
- To minimize the tedium of the early game.
- To invest as little as possible in early game tech that needs to be replaced.
- To avoid as much as possible designs that will need to be replaced.

STEPS/MILESTONES

- Burner stage:
--- As short as possible
--- Location is determined by proximity of resources.
--- Drills/furnaces count of 8 coal, 8 iron, 2 copper, 1 stone.
--- Start steam power plant with at least 1 boiler and steam engine.
--- Start minimal science, logistics and automation research.
--- Early automation includes switching to electric drills, furnaces (assembler directly fed from stone miner), gears, Yellow belt/underground/splitter, blue assembler.
--- Small (but expandable) belt fed stone furnace lines for iron, copper and a tiny steel one (you want a steel pick and maybe enough steel stockpiled for the next stage steel furnaces).

- Leaving burner/early stage "base" once:
--- Automated red/green science wit about 4 labs.
--- About 1/4 to 1/3 of a standard 40 boiler, 80 steam engine power plant is built.
--- Switched from miner to electric drills.
--- Automated production of red belt/underground/splitter and steel furnaces. This might seem premature but it pays off.

- Construction base that later mutates isn't your mall for low volume production:
--- Location and sufficient is important. It is the first piece of your construction supply production malls area.
--- Fairly small. My current one is 3x3 chunks, produces small quantities of almost every item, includes its own smelting, ultra-compact oil processing, makes and launches robots, does all of the research (late research quite slowly but has not affected me) and produces critical supplies for rail, solar and nuclear power, and supplies to start my other facilities. It *does not* produce things in volume. For that I build small dedicated volume malls (i.e.: modules).
--- Surrounded by specific things on all 4 sides.
----- Volume malls next to it and expanding in one direction.
----- Bus on a side it shares with the volume production malls. This is *not* a main bus, it is a bus that supplies the production malls only.
----- Train station(s) on the remaining one or two sides. Delivers materials to the local bus (no raw ores) . Also, loading bays for Pax/construction trains of various kinds, especially if you do automated outpost construction for mines, or supply deliveries to you when you are building a factory.
----- Initially you deliver ores to it (via belts, not trains), for its smelting lines. Later, once you have outposts doing smelting, oil, red/green/blue circuits you might want to feed it those instead and abandon or remove the steel smelters.
--- Can typically be powered with a single standard 40 boiler/80steam engine plant, and you might be able to make a nuclear plant as your next source of electricity, but you may be more comfortable with a second steam plant or supplementing with solar (you got robots, so even slow solar expansion due to low volume production is fairly painless).
--- Note: You can achieve the above with a normal bus design, smelters on one end, multiple production lines hanging off the bus, etc. If so, allocate plenty of space. Another option is to use somebody else's compact design (I plan to make mine available once I am finally happy with it). Another option is to design your own compact version. If you choose to design your own compact version you should expect to spend hundreds of hours and multiple versions that underperform in one way or another during the early or late game until you manage to make it work for you, but it can be a fun project.

- The volume expansion:
--- Keep ore trains off the main line.
--- Smelting outpost, using beaconed electric furnaces. Plan big and build only what you need now, you will grow into it. Don't worry about not having the beacons or modules yet... it will underproduce but eventually you will catch up once you have modules.
--- Oil products outpost. Located centrally from your known oil field, deliver by pipe if you can. Oil Processing, lubricant, plastics, sulfuric acid, batteries, explosives. Basically anything that uses a Chem plant. This is your initial supply. Later you might make additional single product outposts of these things.
--- Green, red, blue circuit outposts. Beaconed. Each designed to fill a train. So, if you use 4 wagon trains, each outpost should be designed to produce 4 blue belts, each from basic materials delivered to it by train (or could be belt from the other circuit outposts if they are near. Green receives iron/copper plates, red the same plus plastic and makes its own intermediate greens. Blue all of those. Why this way? Because you can then set it to be infinitely repeatable in one direction: it will be just more train bays and more production lines of the color needed and the ones that feed it. Yes, that means that filling a train of blues would require a pretty big setup, but you don't have to build it all from the beginning... Build as much as you need and send that blue train out mostly empty at first.
--- Modules. Finally! And now you can start beaconing all those lines.

Freedom:
--- Now you have virtually everything you need, and even with slow research you probably almost completed it all. You can now do anything you want.
--- If you want lots of science, make a bus and high volume science lines.
--- If you want Mega rockets, do that.
--- If you want a 50km train line to large ore deposits, bingo!

Whatever your plans don't forget artillery, nuclear fuel and the other special toys you did not research yet.

[ColonelSandersLite]

--- If you want Mega rockets, do that.

I don't know what a Mega rocket is or how one goes about procuring them, but I want one!