City Block form and size discussion

[MisterFister]

I've returned from a Factorio hiatus and have decided that my previous city-block plan of 4LP to a side is insufficient for my midgame needs. In tinkering with distances between roboports (islanded lognets, no base-wide "one bot network to rule them all) LPs, substations, and even experimenting with measurements based on train lengths, I've decided to come at this from the exact opposite direction:

Chunk Alignment

Since there are a decent handful of trainbooks out there that are chunk-aligned, I think that might be a good way to go for my blocks as well.

I prefer equilateral blocks, but I am open to the possibility of rectangular sizes for niche-cases later in the playthrough that I'll be beginning once I've completed this stage. I am theoretically open to non-quadrilateral blocks (i.e. hexagonal) but I've resolved to stick to rectangles and squares for this playthrough.

Power, signal wires, and concrete driving paths will be supplied to each block along the rail connection, and I anticipate that the rail-chunks will be of a separate form-factor from the blocks themselves. I'm not sure biters will factor into my block design, but in case it does, I plan to play with some form of biters -- no idea as to difficulty setting, nor am I fully decided for or against modded biters (Rampant, et al).

I'm curious for feedback from others on this stage of designing. How big is "way too ginormously big" for a plan that is at least theoretically intended to last straight from unlocking rails all the way to late megabase? I'll take notes as I work and provide them here if this thread receives attention or reponses, but I anticipate that I'll begin by looking at 10*10 [chunks] and scale from there. I note that early-midgame difficulty of laying truly large squares isn't a concern, since I can lay blueprint ghosts (including of landfill, as of v0.17.x) and simply come back to complete sections as resources allow and base / biter activity demands. While I will run some mods, I don't foresee any mods dictating block size -- indeed, any mods that would do so such as ABC or Industrial Revolution would prolly simply benefit from huge-ass blocks anyway.

tldr; How big is "too big" for a city block? My context is to attempt to build an entire base out of uniform tiled blocks of the same size, repeating (and likely decentralizing) tiles where needed, and perfectly willing to leave some fallow space in a given block. Indeed, one specific goal is to run LTN mono-cargo trains, and this begets significant space requirements in each block for the train stations -- hence the decision to go big.

[DaveMcW]

Block size does not matter too much. You end up with the same number of trains no matter how big you build, because bigger blocks require more trains.

What matters is how many different items you build per block. More items per block means less trains are needed to carry intermediate products. For the true "city block" experience, I recommend only one or two items per block.

[MisterFister]

Block size does not matter too much. You end up with the same number of trains no matter how big you build, because bigger blocks require more trains.

What matters is how many different items you build per block. More items per block means less trains are needed to carry intermediate products. For the true "city block" experience, I recommend only one or two items per block.

Oh indeed, every block will be mono-process, every train will be mono-cargo.