I have posted my base before, actually just a few screenshots. I really was not in the mood for going through all the work to actually post my 160 MB save.
But since my megabase only uses belts AND in the most recent FFF V453000 asked for some belts-only megabases, I decided its time to invest some more time for my favourite game.
Since the base is belt-only and fun-only, there are some strange concepts like recycling unused ore for steel, which is of course unneccessary if you just analyze the numbers and build your base right. But I think most of the fun is just doing what you feel to be happy to do right now and then just do it.
Actually there is now ONE requester chest, because thats actually the last save existing marking the end of the belt-only era. Now I am at a point where belts are just more of a pain in the ass than not, so right now I am 20 hours further and my factorio is already heavily populated with bots.
You might also wonder why there are only 250 SPM in the stats. Thats because I am playing with cost*10 for science AND expensive setting. I dont know how many SPM I would have when I would have played on normal settings. But if expensive is twice as expensive ad normal, then 250 SPM on my base is 5000 SPM on a normal base. Tell me when I am wrong, I really dont know. I am just a producer after all!
As a player with 600 hours of playtime (on this base at least) I have an own opinion about the Bots vs. Belts topic as well.
For me, it is a fact that bots are way less fun than belts.
For me, it is a fact that belts are way more frustrating than bots.
The solution should NOT be to nerf bots, but to buff belts. (Nerfing is always a bad thing anyway.) But it is just boring to raise the throughput. Whats the point? If you just boost the speed, in the end the only change is that a number rises. You should buff the "fun" in the belts instead.
So whats fun? For me, fun is to build an elegant solution for a suddenly appearing problem. I really love the presented splitter extension and I wish there are more of them. I hope it also solves the really frustrating problem of belt balancing. I really HATE the fact thats its so ridiculously hard to actually do belt balancing. All I want are full belts all of the time. But a station always has 6 (or 12, if both sides are used) chests per wagon. And if you happen to have 5 blue belts waiting for ore, you have a problem. I know there are many Rube Goldberg machines out there, solving the task more or less good (i.e. the belt balancer wiki page), but in my eyes thats NOT a solution, thats a work-around for a fundamental problem.
I will use belts and bots at the same time, depending on the fact how hard it is to actually use belts. Yes, thats the way I work. I try belts first, because they are most fun to build and they "feel right" to use. But if its just too hard to use them, then I switch to bots. So I ask you to make belts
I also vote for automatic belt compression by inserters!
Honestly I don't have an easy solution for the problem "oh, I need more throughput here. Oh, the belt is already blue... oh, to add a second belt, those structures have to more down 1 tile. Oh down there, there are more structures.". Those scenarios happen quite often and in most cases, I need around 30 minutes until I have added a second belt... Not that fun indeed.
But I have an idea, and you programmers will probably not like it. Have you played Heroes of Might and Magic? I love that game. There is also an underground map. You toggle underground/surface map with a button. The portals of both levels are at the same place. If that would be possible in Factorio, you could add a whole layer of underground construction (limited to belts and pipes). The most biggest advantage would be that you can plan corners and curves. This would be a massive belt feature, since it would solve most space problems belt users have. I would love that feature, because it would give me so much more space for belts. Space a full factory just does not offer anymore.
Ah yeah, get the save here: http://5.9.116.181/beltsonly.zip