Question: what settings are used to start game to make mega base?

[mrvn]

What I use for large bases

Biters off
Pollution off
Evolution off
Expansion off
Railworld settings - Frequency low but with larger, richer deposits
Water turned down, and larger scale. Much less water.
Cliffs off
Trees off
(Yes, it's possible now that you start with one wood and can make two power poles to get science going. Slow start but very rewarding to not have to deal with trees later.)

Sounds like there should be an options for trees in starting area only.

[T-A-R]

So either I got an exceptionally bad map seed (default settings, just disabled cliffs) or this tactics was maybe fine in some older versions of Factorio, which did not have so many biters and had bigger ore patches. Or maybe I just don't understand how you do it?

We do seem to play a different game, i overread the part default. I usually play railworld, and most of the times with modified settings. (checked some settings, and i have reduced both frequency and size of enemy bases on most maps).

I don't really care for achievements when building a mega base. Since biters will distract/tax too much (just enough to have them as reason for military tech).
And when hunting achievements i don't care for a megabase. Since they all finish withing 20 rockets.

In search for your most preferred settings, i really enjoyed this mod to tweak your setting in game without rebuilding your base.

[Dixi]

I think all settings are personal preference. There are no strict rules.
Some people want more challenge - they can build megabase on default settings, or using death world.
While others, who wan to build a megabase some new interesting way can turn biters off and set ore to "a lot", maybe infinite. Just to save time.

Since Factorio is very user friendly and configurable game I prefer to change game settings later, when I decide that I like my base and I want to make it bigger. If I feel that low resources starts to make task repetitive, I regenerate bigger ore deposits. If biters makes save game too big, I remove them, or make them less annoying, by disabling expansion.

Using right mod, or a few strings of lua code you really can fine tune the game as you like.

[junyyt]

Currently doing my first "mega" playthrough and I figured that most of the settings on standard would be fine, with the exception that ore patches are super rich.

Reason being that you will get to the point that output from a single small ore patch covered in miners will simply not be enough. Thus you will have need to spread out, however you will need to replace mining outposts way less frequently. I consider the whole coordination of outposts to be an important element of the game, however constantly replacing them is something that even the devs have acknowledged needs a rework. myccpay.com

[dog80]

You can use any cheat if you need it to enjoy the game.

wow dude take it easy

[MrBadDragon]

But the resource areas really only take about 40 mining machines and seem like they won't last all that long ....

On a "default" start, your initial ore patches will provide enough raw materials to get the starter base/mall and science research up to blue science. By that stage you should have a well advanced infrastructure which will allow outposting as needed. Typically I plan to replace the starting ore patches with stations that replace this production as I ramp up to a rocket launch.