Building Megabases with the right Game Settings

[darkscaryforest]

Hello, thank you for reading and sharing your experience

I've never built a megabase, only causally played through the tech curve to launch the rocket several times throughout updates. I liked playing on default settings with resource limits and biters, since I feel that I am participating in a sort of "standard challenge." Currently, I have a nice starter base with those settings (last played just before 1.0) and would like to start thinking megabase with it.

I suppose maybe a first step would figuring out how to do 100 SPM?

My problem is in games I always getting into situations where I spend the majority of my time finding new mines, killing bugs around the area, and building train stations to ship it home.

My question is do megabasers typically play with resource richness, frequency higher than normal? Do they turn biters off? Or do you think if I concentrate on optimizing the process of killing bugs, building new mines it would not take an unreasonable amount of time? Could you say what are the standard/typical settings building with megabases?

[Amarula]

I don't think there are any standard settings that will magically make it easier to go mega. If you enjoy playing on default settings, keep doing that, it is totally possible to make a mega base that way (note I did not say easy ) And if you have a nice starter base already, there is no reason you have to change now.

For myself, I love artillery! I upgrade my trains to use nuclear fuel with maximum speed upgrades (I also love how research into braking speed increases the speed the trains use), so they plow through any biters that cross their tracks. I set up stations along a perimeter path for my artillery train, using the artillery range for spacing; the artillery patrol keeps the area bug free, so I can concentrate on other tasks.

The one thing I strongly suggest is to add more power first; then going for 100 SPM is a good target to start with. Good luck! Looking forward to hearing how your factory grows.

[Serenity]

What is reasonable or not depends on your taste. You can definitely build a large base with biters activated. But some people consider clearing out new areas tedious. Which it can be. Even using artillery can get repetitive. A compromise is to turn expansion off. Then you only need to clear areas once.

Personally I don't like it when there is ore everywhere. Even default frequency has a large number of patches. But setting the richness higher is nice. Then your mines will last a long while.
Also keep in mind that richness increases a great deal the farther you go from your starting area. So you can explore a bit in one direction to get really huge patches. You can generate some worlds and use the console to reveal the map for several thousand tiles around you. That gives you a good feeling for what the map settings do.

Just don't listen to people saying you need to do this or that just to save UPS. UPS is important, but the game is so optimized that you don't need to worry nearly as much as some people think. Especially when you build on relatively small scales. Some people apply the same principles to 10000 SPM and 1000 SPM

[Trific]

Building megabases is about logistics. My current base (which doesn't even qualify as a megabase at 896 SPM) requires the equivalent of 26 fully compressed blue belts to move all the iron plates. And those iron plates have to go to crafting machines making steel plate, iron wheels, iron sticks, green circuits, sulfuric acid, batteries, radars, accumulators, pipe, firearm magazines, grenades, inserters, and transport belts. And that isn't counting stuff outside of the direct science lines like assembling machines, drills, more advanced inserters, train stops, etc. The sheer scale at which stuff has to be moved to so many different destinations is what usually overwhelms people, and the sheer tedium of having to rip large parts out just because there is no more room to scale up.

You'll start to feel the pressure of all this going for 100 spm, and probably start to understand why megabases almost always go bot or train, and not belt only. Bots don't require precisely placed infrastructure on the ground, and not only can trains move large volumes, but a single length of rail isn't locked into moving only one or two types of items. At some point you'll realize that dealing with biters and scouting new ore are not the hard part of making a megabase, but they are tedious and interrupt you at the worst time of dealing with an intricate layout, and then you'll understand why people change the settings so they don't have to deal with that stuff so much.

[Laie]

My problem is in games I always getting into situations where I spend the majority of my time finding new mines, killing bugs around the area, and building train stations to ship it home.

I guess it depends on what scale of "Mega" you have in mind. I've never gone beyond a couple hundred SPM, that was totally doable in default map settings. Some totally subjective remarks:

My first recommendation is to take mining efficiency into account. I for one didn't feel like I had an urgent need for stronger weapons, so my infinite research went mostly into mining efficiency. As a result, the belts and stations I had built at my mines were soon incapable of handling the flow.

While deposits do become denser/deeper as you look beyond your immediate neighborhood, that trend doesn't continue forever. As you look further afield, you will continue to find more deposits, but not bigger ones. The typical "default" ore deposit is just too small for blueprinting a mining setup, so each of them is a unique work of art.

Currently I'm on a rail world: that means larger deposits, and biters will not resettle once-cleared areas. The latter is a major boon, I do not need defenses, only a good offense

Rail World ore deposits are commonly large enough for 150-200 mines and half of that area appears to have densities >10k ore/tile -- that would be six fifty hours of continuous mining. While I can do a lot of copy-and-pasting when building the mines, the size of the deposits is still too small for a "Generic Mining Outpost" blueprint.

My (again, subjective) suggestion for someone who wants to build real big: Ore deposits large enough that you can put a generic blueprint right into the middle of them and not worry about not mining the ore around the edges (I often hear the recommendation of mining directly into the trains, which would require very large ore patches indeed). You also want them dense enough that it will last for a long time. I guess they can be fewer, too: there's no shortage of resources on a default map, IMO, it's just that they're spread out over so many small sites.

Personally I don't think I'd want to play entirely without biters: most infinite research is weapons tech, after all, I guess I still want to try it every once in a while. But nests can be very sparse, perhaps 1/10th the default setting or even less. And definitely no enemy expansion.

*EDIT: I forgot that a mine covers at least 9 tiles. Oops.

[Bauer]

I'd say it highly depends on the question whether you're the type who's able to build assemblers, rails, etc. on ore patches or not.

I can't do that. Hence, I have to make sure that I haven't too much ore in the area that's about the foot print of my factory.
I also don't like rebuilding mining outposts again and again. So I set the richness and size to max. With the argument above, I have to set the frequeny to min.
You will need less coal and stone than iron and copper and even less uranium.

[Bauer]

I believe that aliens are meant to add a distraction, RTS-like feature, ressource sink, and/or (especially on deathworld settings) a growth speed limitation. However, if your factory reaches a certain size, all this is no longer the case. You will have outteched your enemy by far and your defences are able to handle them without your interference, you will even stop noticing this any more. They just become a tedious waste of time whenever you're expanding your territory.

The magic of playing mega is in the way getting there. If "mega" means 100 SPM for you, aliens will add a challenge for a significant time. If "mega" means 2700 SPM (full blue belt of each), then aliens add something for the first 2% of the game and are just a nuisance for the rest of the time.

Or you're the type who enjoys watching the continuous death at your outer perimeter or trains plowing through alien corpses. You might want to see a doctor then...

[darkscaryforest]

Thanks for your replies, it's given me great context. As meager as my starter base is, it is probably the biggest I've made thus far and it sounds like I can put it to use, in its world with default settings, to make that 100 SPM factory. You've helped me gain some confidence that this is doable in a reasonable amount of time.

That will make me start thinking in terms of moving large quantities of resources via trains between segmented production areas for different products (and other problems I've just never dealt with). Then once that's done, I can ask myself questions like:
-Would making this X times larger be too tedious to expand with current settings?
-It took me Y hours in expanding mines to get this done, can I expect it to take X*Y hours to make it larger?

If I track how much time I spend doing this, I can gauge the level of magnitude for dealing with this part of the problem to go from there.

[Bauer]

You will find that you need less and less time the more often you try the same thing. Like in real life. Use blue prints (your own) and copy/paste. Spend time optimzing your designs and not reinventing the wheel.

There is one time killer that is totally underestimated.

Walking.
Learn from the best and watch speed-runs. These guys don't need to walk back-and-forth without doing anything. Having to walk back to your mall because you forgot it pick up power-poles really sucks. I also use an armor mod to be able to walk really fast from the mid-game. I also used a teleportation mod at some point. Even cars feel too slow if you need to get to an outpost that's 30 chunks away.

[wobbycarly]

You will find that you need less and less time the more often you try the same thing. Like in real life. Use blue prints (your own) and copy/paste. Spend time optimzing your designs and not reinventing the wheel.

There is one time killer that is totally underestimated.

Walking.
Learn from the best and watch speed-runs. These guys don't need to walk back-and-forth without doing anything. Having to walk back to your mall because you forgot it pick up power-poles really sucks. I also use an armor mod to be able to walk really fast from the mid-game. I also used a teleportation mod at some point. Even cars feel too slow if you need to get to an outpost that's 30 chunks away.

Great point. For those who are not averse to using some mods, Spidertron Extended provides a Mk3 model, that has a huge equipment rack - I think I have about 12 exos in mine and I can run nearly as fast as a train at top speed. When building "mega" I don't think it's unreasonable to have a bit of QoL.

[jodokus31]

I like a building train dedicated for the player only and dedicated stations for them. It's quite fast and easy to get around. Obviously, the spidertron is also nice, because you can let it travel independently and do something else on map view (like the train)
But, I have to admit, that I never build a very huge megabase like some others here.

[ickputzdirwech]

My thoughts about the right game settings:

Resources

• Max richness (600%) for all resources. You don’t want to constantly build new outposts.
• Max size (600%) for all resources except uranium (17%). Small resource patches are impractical. You hardly need any uranium.
• If you don’t want to build over resources turn the frequency down significantly. Set copper and iron to the same amount. For stone about a forth of that is enough. If I remember it right you need even less coal.
• Oil an uranium can easily be on lowest frequency (17%)

Terrain

• Turn cliffs and trees down to 17%. I don’t like disabling stuff entirely but both are just a hassle.
• If you want lots of space to build lower the frequency of water significantly. If you still want to build some nuclear plants I recommend increasing the coverage a bit.

Enemy

• Turn pollution of. You want to focus on building, not constant biter attacks.
• Unless you want to disable biters entirely disable at least expansion. Again, fighting shouldn’t be the main focus if you want to build a Megabase, unless you like the extra challenge.