Resource Production, Usage Philosophy; Share Your Thoughts

[Sting_Auer]

I am very interested in learning about other people's philosophies for resource production and usage, and I'm sure many others are. To meet this assumed demand, I have created this thread as a place for people to discuss their overall philosophies, thought processes, and underlying logic for how and why they design their factories the way they do, and why they produce specific things and how they use them.

As an example of the kind of topic that should be discussed here, I prefer to use Solid Fuel in place of Coal due to Solid Fuel being more efficient on a per-unit basis, and being an infinite resource. Coal will run out eventually, but oil will never run out. Relatedly, I prefer to use steam turbines fueled by Solid Fuel instead of solar panels as a way to save space and resources.

Please feel free to put forward your thoughts, and ask questions about other people's input. Suggesting theoretical scenarios is also welcome as a way to spur discussion and get insight into people's underlying logic when faced with varying situations. You may even learn some things about yourself you didn't know before!

EDIT: As some more examples of the kind of topics for this thread:

Just how hard will you try to fully, 100% automate something?

At what point do you decide it's easier to have something output into a chest and then move it yourself?

At what point does having a train or super long conveyor belt become better than using a car to move some stuff between bases?

What is your usual behavior regarding resource stockpiling or hoarding?

[Nova]

To be honest, I don't exactly understand what you want. Could you describe it more and/or give more example?

[ssilk]

I always avoid using solid fuel, cause I need the oil for production.

[Xecutor]

I prefer solar over steam engines. Space is not really a problem even on hard mode.
Yes, if juice in batteries runs out before the night ends, you will be in trouble. But time of absolute darkness is relatively short.
If your solar power setup is flowed, you have whole day to fix it. Without much rush.
But if you add new pack of steam engines to steam engines only power setup, and their consumption of the fuel will become higher than production and you fail to notice this soon enough,
that could be supertroublesome to fix.
Yes, it's a problem of being careful and watching over fuel consumption, but no one is perfect and if you got too absorbed into building of some new cool stuff, you might easily miss it.

I have a bad habit of trying to optimise my old setup to absolution instead of expanding and simply building new production chains.
I understand that it's a waste of time (and resources), but ... damn it's fun

[Eurofighter1200]

First i prefer solid fuel but later i go on solar because i can use the Oil for better thinks then energy production and with a demand on over 60 MW the steam engines are not a really option it get to expensive. And psace is enought on the Map i play on hard and i have so uch free space where i killed all the biters.

Im interested in how others used the logistical system with the logistic and buildrobots acually i have over 1 k of them flying around and have a hughe network on every important tile of the map i can order goods from them but so they need more then 20 MW of energy thats a lot for me

[Jythier]

Honestly in my current base I used trains only because I wanted to use trains. I didn't need them, but I wanted to experiment.

I don't mind wasting resources because it's an infinite map. I can always just wipe someone out and build on their locations. But I guess I need to work on being more tight with my resources. I have a hard time with that, because my belts are so long. Also, if I run out of resources before destroying the next enemy base blocking my expansion, then I'm going to have more problems than I'm ready to deal with and no way to deal with them.

Mostly I just try to use whatever resources I can as soon as I can. Pump the ore out of the ground ASAP. It's not doing any good in the ground. Turn it into plates ASAP too, because ore does nothing.

In the later game I've been turning as much copper plates into wire as I can, too, while still letting some go through to the train to my main base. The wire then gets made into electronic circuits, which also go in the train. So I ship iron plates, copper plate, steel, and EC's to my base instead of manufacturing those on-site. Of course, I have another train that runs the iron ore from the mining site to this processing site. So I have three major base areas at the moment, and I'm looking for another one. My first coal deposit has also run out, which stinks because I actually use coal in processing something now. So I can't just use a different fuel, because it requires coal specifically. The amount it uses is ridiculously low, though.

I start with steam engines like we all do, but as soon as solar power comes into play I'm building it. Get an assembler up and running that and accumulators and repower the base. Space is not an issue for me, so I just pick an empty area and panel it up.

[Xterminator]

Interesting topic. Here is some of my info:
As for hoarding, I have a big problem with that in games, always have for some reason. It's the worst in RPG games for me, but still pretty bad in Factorio. I will boxes just full of like advanced circuits, or engines etc just because I don't ever want to use them all. Lol

As for power. I start with steam power obviously, but once I get enough logistic bots to do decent blueprint placements, I use solar. Space is never really an issue for me, and I just like the idea of solar power better. I also almost never use solid fuel to power my boilers, unless I start out with almost no coal near by. I prefer to use the oil for other stuff like batteries etc.

I really only use trains if it is an extremely long way away. Otherwise I just use fast belts. I'm sure that is a horrible way to do it, but oh well. :p there is infinite resources in Factorio luckily. Haha