Making my first Mega Base - The Setup

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mrt144
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Making my first Mega Base - The Setup

Post by mrt144 »

Good Morning,

So I finally did the thing I wanted to and launched a bunch of rockets and that was all good and jolly. Now I want to get crazy! How Crazy?

1 Rocket Launched Every 60 seconds. Is this a tall task? Sure! But that's why we do it right?

So let's go over initial game setups then

0. Sandbox Mode - I don't want to walk. I'll also turn on research instead of granting techs because I am kind of love with the idea of a bare bones research area to start where I do the bare minimum to get research while I build and build and build and build. In fact I'd like to do a little wrinkle where I do the bare minimum in my research build and have a quaint little research area on my base known as the 'Idea Factory'. It'll be a cute little vestige of what enabled the whole damn thing in the first place. Research time is not that important to me since I'll eventually get there over the hundreds of hours I intend to devote to this project.

1. I think I'm going to turn off biters. Boo! Hiss! My reasons are pretty specific - at a certain point in my first big playthrough I reached a point with artillery and robots that I could reasonably just automatically expand outward with standard a artillery blueprint and just slowly chip away at surrounding baddies - that was tedious and not especially engaging after a certain point. Despite one of my favorite pleasures being watching the shells hit their targets on map view, I think turning off biters is a good idea.

2. Cliffs - turn to minimum? I think so just for the sake of being able expand. Enough to keep it interesting but not so many that I have to reroll the map multiple times.

3. Ore - Low frequency, Very High Richness, Very High Size. I want to expand way far outwards and use trains, lots of trains! Is this going to nudge me in that direction?

Is there anything else for a Mega Base setup I'm missing with settings?

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Re: Making my first Mega Base - The Setup

Post by DaveMcW »

If you're going no biters, I suggest you drive a few kilometers away from the start to build your base. The resource richness becomes so good that you will never run out.

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Re: Making my first Mega Base - The Setup

Post by eradicator »

No biters, no trees, no cliffs, no water → you can devote 100% of your time to building the actual factory instead of wasting time on repetitive cleanup duties. Drawbacks: No trees in vanialla is impossible due to lack of powerpoles, requires either starting wood or a mod that makes poles from non-trees. No water severly limits the location of power plants if you don't have mod that helps with that (i.e. by producing water in a machine).

No biters is a good choice as biters eat UPS for breakfast. Pollution only has a tiny impact on UPS, but it's not required if there aren't any biters in the first place.

Also if you're not mentally ill (==achievement addict) you can change any of these settings at any time during play with a simple console command.

How many sustained SPM did your previous factory have? It's generally recommended to build a 100SPM factory to get used to the challenges that large scale sustained production brings.
Last edited by eradicator on Wed Oct 10, 2018 7:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Making my first Mega Base - The Setup

Post by nosports »

So,

i was at the just same point...
And i resolved to :

1. Play with the existing map further and expand

2. i try out some mods which i find interessting, but are not changing the Base game

3. i try out some production / transportation concepts
- currently playing with some bots for automatic expansion (but which could assimilated with the AVATAR or TELEPORT mod)
- have set up a easy expand able method for solar-panel power (relying on Bots, so i don't need to be on site for this edge) I just place the solar / akku panel-blueprints and every thing will go along, including the delivery of the buildings (which my base can supply in plenty over time)

If you have a full base which can do rockets in some reasonalbe time, i suggest to load the Ion-Canon mod. The Ion canon mod can auto target biters so over time all in radar-reach will be wiped clean, albeit some slowly but a 166 Ion-Canon are currently up to thier task

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Re: Making my first Mega Base - The Setup

Post by mrt144 »

eradicator wrote:
Wed Oct 10, 2018 7:31 pm
No biters, no trees, no cliffs, no water → you can devote 100% of your time to building the actual factory instead of wasting time on repetitive cleanup duties. Drawbacks: No trees in vanialla is impossible due to lack of powerpoles, requires either starting wood or a mod that makes poles from non-trees. No water severly limits the location of power plants if you don't have mod that helps with that (i.e. by producing water in a machine).

No biters is a good choice as biters eat UPS for breakfast. Pollution only has a tiny impact on UPS, but it's not required if there aren't any biters in the first place.

Also if you're not mentally ill (==achievement addict) you can change any of these settings at any time during play with a simple console command.

How many sustained SPM did your previous factory have? It's generally recommended to build a 100SPM factory to get used to the challenges that large scale sustained production brings.
I was at about 75 or so SPM with Space Science Packs in my first big play through. There were things I did poorly or didn't have the vision for mostly with trains. I seriously want to do a lot of onsite processing going forward whether that be oil or plates or anything really.

I have a basic sketch of how I want to lay this out

'Idea Factory' A very bare bones research area where I do the bare minimum to eek out the beakers I need. Keep it simple, keep it tidy.

'Factory of Things' A somewhat robust factory that just makes building materials I need to build the factory. Belts, Inserters, Underground Belts, Steel Poles, Concrete, etc etc.

'Power Factory' A Nuclear facility that sucks in all the processed uranium and spits out all the power I need. I've seen some fun designs and I want to get my Gigawatts going.

'The Mega Factory' The main attraction. The thing that gets me to 1 rocket per minute. This could be a composite of several mono item factories that send their output via train to the next leg in production.

'The Train Yard' A place to refuel and keep trains from messing up other trains.

One other thing I want to avoid is using logistics robots. As handy as they are, I think I mostly used them to cover for gaffes and just to do the train stop loading and unloading.

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Re: Making my first Mega Base - The Setup

Post by evopwr »

Hey, zOldBulldog and I are both on the same mission. I've been going for 3-4 weeks now, hundreds of hours, and still haven't even built a rocket silo. The base is now far far larger than the minimap size. About to (finally) start turning some of it on tonight, to test the design concept in earnest, and then no doubt spend the next few weeks redesigning and expanding it. lol.

My goal is a little crazy, wanting several rockets per minute. I initially thought 10 p/m, but I'm probably dreaming - time will tell.

My setup was trees = Very low. Water = Very Low. Cliffs = None. Biters = None. Also I went Uranium = Very low, but I'm running infinite resource mod, so no risk.

I do suggest using mods Angels Infinite Ores, and Resource Spawner Overhaul (RSO) - it means you get a percentage of an ore field as being much much richer (like goes forever, same way as oil does, but richness % drops down over time (but still produces)).
You can also run a console command to regenerate all resources (have to rebuild outposts at new locations tho), if you ever need it.
Otherwise without Angels Infinite Ores, even if you put size as Rich and large as possible, you'll still spend a fair chunk of time just (re)building outposts all the time once they run out. That's not fun. Building the main base is the fun part.

The one thing I do recommend, is getting your design right if doing a district based approach, because once you have a massive base, and change your mind on the design, it takes dozens of hours, and thousands of constructions bots, to rip everything up, and lay it all back down. (consider many hundreds of chests stacked full of like 4.8-9.6k items in each chest...). So painfull... Sigh... So get your BPs right early on.

I'd also suggest doing a Bootstrap starter base, to get research going and automate making everything, then build your megabase out to the side somewhere separate. Jumping straight in to megabase from the get go is not practical.

Good luck!

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Re: Making my first Mega Base - The Setup

Post by eradicator »

evopwr wrote:
Thu Oct 11, 2018 1:32 am
I do suggest using mods Angels Infinite Ores, and Resource Spawner Overhaul (RSO) - it means you get a percentage of an ore field as being much much richer (like goes forever, same way as oil does, but richness % drops down over time (but still produces)).
As someone else mentioned above, in a no-biter scenario getting a car asap, packing everything up and driving 10-20 kilometers in one direction will get you huge resource fields. And as you only have to drive the distance once the 30 mins or so that takes are negligible compared to the base-building time. A far more interesting approach than just turning ore patches to infinite.
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Re: Making my first Mega Base - The Setup

Post by zOldBulldog »

@mrt1r4, welcome to the big map club. As evopwr mentioned We are on similar paths. I am a bit more focused on having fun and trying designs to make this my maybe "last and permanent" map to keep using until UPS forces me to stop.

Here are a few lessons learned so far:

- I did not disable biters nor did I drive 20km out. That was a mistake, but since I did disable expansion so that they are not constantly interrupting my design work, I will just extend my main train line there.

- I used a nice map I found instead of generating my own. It was a good idea, even though ores are a little too scattered. It forced me to devise new mining tactics to clear space before building. So, at least initially I don't make a small train stop per ore deposit, but instead I make a small outpost train station that receives ores from 4-8 mines via belt.
I am really liking the approach and I suspect I will always use it from now on.

- I originally started with a square the size of the initial large starter area, a rail cross in the middle and a perimeter rail. Even trying to keep the base neat, the location of the deposits led me to a messier base than I liked. No good. Eventually I came across a post by Eradicator saying he uses a linear main rail line to reach good deposits faster. I am in the process of restructuring my base to it and it is leading to a much nicer layout and train flow.

- Making a simple 1-track 1-direction ore rail loop that goes through the smelter ore unload stacker and stops does wonders to keep ore trains out of your main line. No intersections, no trains that stop other trains. They just zoom from the ore outpost to smelter unload and back. And it leaves the main line uncongested. Absolutely loving it.

- Order of stations along the linear main line matters in order to optimize traffic. A tentative order from left to right is: Smelter outpost, Oil (and all of its derivative products) outpost, Green Circuit outpost, Red Circuit outpost (making them from iron/copper/plastic... So that local green circuits are made on-site), Blue circuits (also from minimally processed supplies and making own green/red circuits), low and high volume production malls).

- Nuclear outpost by definition goes near your first good uranium deposit.

- I am not there yet, but I plan to have a simple 1-lane "return line" rail parallel to the main line (north of the outposts) to send empty trains back to the smelter or their source factories.

- On this map I upgraded from my old trusty 1-2 trains to 1-4-1 (one direction) for my initial trains and stations. But it was immediately obvious I would later need bigger trains. So, I designed the main line to support trains double the size. Proved to be a good idea. And by the time I need even bigger trains I will have expanded far out and be building a larger base, rail, stations, etc and leaving the little 1-4-1s in their initial corner of the world (with maybe some deliveries of iron/copper plate, stone, coal and nuclear fuel).

- I discovered a few quality of life mods I now consider essential:
--- Bottleneck, to easily identify trouble spots.
--- Squeak Through, for ease of movement.
--- Progressive Running, to make it easier to move with several exoskeletons on.
--- Miniloaders, for cleaner train stops and conserving UPS.

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Re: Making my first Mega Base - The Setup

Post by mrt144 »

Thanks for the push in the right direction. I did a bit of exploring last night and there are some absolute monster ore fields way out there at the edge. So massive I think this mega base will seem more like a quilt of outlet malls than a base proper. Lots of long haul trains with lots of cars cutting through the vast expanse of prairie and desert. I reckon it'll be so spread out that I can get away with a lot of point to point trains instead of having to build a proper network for rocket assembly.

I'll be back with a new thread when I get further along. So far I just have my bootstrap base plugging away slowly on research to unlock the building items I want for the 'Factory of Things'

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Re: Making my first Mega Base - The Setup

Post by evopwr »

+1 for Bottleneck and SqueekThroughMods.
I'll have to look in to the ProgressiveRunning, that sounds useful.
What does the MiniLoaders mod do?

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Re: Making my first Mega Base - The Setup

Post by evopwr »

eradicator wrote:
Thu Oct 11, 2018 7:30 am
evopwr wrote:
Thu Oct 11, 2018 1:32 am
I do suggest using mods Angels Infinite Ores, and Resource Spawner Overhaul (RSO) - it means you get a percentage of an ore field as being much much richer (like goes forever, same way as oil does, but richness % drops down over time (but still produces)).
As someone else mentioned above, in a no-biter scenario getting a car asap, packing everything up and driving 10-20 kilometers in one direction will get you huge resource fields. And as you only have to drive the distance once the 30 mins or so that takes are negligible compared to the base-building time. A far more interesting approach than just turning ore patches to infinite.
Yeh, I clicked on to that after I had already started, and its too late now. Ah well....

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Re: Making my first Mega Base - The Setup

Post by eradicator »

evopwr wrote:
Thu Oct 11, 2018 8:14 pm
Yeh, I clicked on to that after I had already started, and its too late now. Ah well....
Factorio will happily add or remove any number of mods to a running map, unlike other games ;). It's never too late to convert to the-only-true-path®™. :p
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