Defeated by rebuilding

[Chili Dogs]

I have hit a roadblock in my build, I played through the game once before following along with Nilaus' YouTube play through/guides to learn the basics and good planning and now that I am on my own, unassisted cluster I am simply at a loss, I have no motivation to rebuild all my early game supply chains, my basic mall is a disaster with a large spaghetti mess of belts, I just unlocked PLS/ILS and now that I can re-organize and use drones I just cannot for the life of me actually find the strength to tear everything down and rebuild it all.

My Yellow Science is super slow as I can not get enough Titantium coming (ILS from off world) in to keep it smooth and I just really feel like I hit a wall.

Does anyone else ever have this issue and if so how do you get around it?
Thanks!
(I will happily take some screenshots of my disasters if needed/wanted lol)

[cswiger]

Play something else and come back to DSP later when you feel like playing it again.

[Zigamus]

+1

[Kyrros]

Meh, I rarely tear down things on the home world, especially in the early and mid-game.

Things built pre-Yellow are fairly simple anyways and there's not much you can do to improve on them since there's so few ingredients for items in those early parts of the game - so taking the time overly 'min-max' those areas can feel a bit fruitless at times.

Now that you have PLS/ILS unlocked you can make the rest of your Purple/Green Science and Rocketships factories a little more streamlined - without worrying too much about the previous setup areas.

Each color of science takes more time per individual cube than the colors before it, blue being the quickest (1 every 3 secs) and green being the slowest (2 every 24 secs).

Science, at least early on, can be best set up in the following ratios to get 'even amounts' of each color type.

3x Blue
6x Red
8x Yellow
10x Purple
12x Green

or some multiple thereof. I generally go with the assumed max lab stack size of 15, as that upgrade is opened up decently early.

1 Stack of Blue (x15)
2 Stacks of Red (x30)
3 Stacks of Yellow (x40)
4 Stacks of Purple (x50) and Green (x60) each

Each of those Stack Clusters will produce 300 Cubes of each type per minute (or 375 if 25% proliferated). So a stack of 5 White labs (x75) will meet your needs at the begning of the end-game. If you proliferate the other previous colors at +25%, you will need 6 stacks of White labs (x90) plus an extra spare x4 labs on their own for a total of x94 White labs

You won't need overly huge amounts of science until you start to get to Infinite research, and by then, you'll be expanding elsewhere, so even less need to try to 'optimize' your home world... just import finished products from elsewhere and consume them.

As for your Titanium problem, it sounds like you maybe have built too small on your 2nd world.

A cluster of 12 smelters can process 1 full belt (Mk1) of incoming ore. The means having 6 on each side of the belt, with the outputs feeding to belts on the two outsides, merging them together down on the far end.

(This is where creating one of your first blueprints is usually best, as those 12-count smelter clusters are used for just about every raw ore you need to process - create a 'blank recipe' x12 smelter cluster, then use the '>' and '<' keys once they're built to choose/copy/paste the desired recipe from the first smelter to all the rest)

3 or 4 of those 12-smelter clusters (36-48 total) should supply you with all the Titanium you need for quite awhile. Each 12-smelter cluster can usually be fed by 2-3 miners from a single patch of ore nodes. Miners CAN overlap individual ore nodes with no penalty. Find two Ti patches relatively close to one another, then go nuts with 8 miners or so distributed between the two patches, plop down an ILS, and boom, no TI problems again until those two patches run dry.

Starting purple and green science is when newer players tend to get the most overwhelmed by the production chains, as there's a lot of new ingredients combined with old ingredients to begin making the new sciences - which means expanding already in-place productions of some old items even bigger than before. All those ingredient needs can quickly get overwhelming, at least until you have a good idea of the recipes themselves (which you will have on further playthroughs, hopefully)

I find the factoriolabs recipe calculator for DSP to be particularly helpful in reminding me plan what I need for my next goal.

https://factoriolab.github.io/dsp
Here's a sample of 50 labs making purple cubes[factoriolab.github.io] (as per the lab ratio recommendation above). This site just shows what you need, not any actual layout ideas... it's usually pretty straightforward. You will need less buildings the higher Mk# an assembler is and also how much proliferator you use. (I recoomend at least proliferator Mk2, as it can be made from a single patch of coal nodes with no other ingredients needed)

So, yeah, super helpful in helping wrap a players head around what is needed next.

[NoBoobshere]

I felt the same way. I also tried like a madman to improve everything and then gave up at some point because everything felt even worse. Then I started to use blueprints. There are websites that are specifically designed to copy blueprints and use them directly in the game. An example would be
https://www.dysonsphereblueprints.com/

In the beginning it felt like cheating, because it was much faster, but in the end it helped me a lot to understand production chains and patterns and to try things myself. Now I'm on my 5th savegame with mods and I'm trying to build everything on my own.

Hope this helps you to enjoy this game a bit more, because once you have found the satisfaction to make small improvements even in the blueprints, it lights a whole new fire :D

[Kyrros]

As for your 'Mall Issues' - I find overly large malls to be more trouble than they're worth, especially in the early game where not all your recipes are unlocked yet and your drone speed and low mech power cap really hurt your ability to build larger things in reasonable amounts of time. Malls are a bit of a concept-import from Factorio, and were a little easier to implement there than here in DSP, both ingredient and production-chain wise.

I made myself several smaller blueprints of common groups of things I'll need large numbers of, usually only 1 factory of each item included in a blueprint.

I have a blueprint for Miners/Smelters/WindTurbines/PowerPoles/Mk1Assemblers
I have another blueprint that makes all my Mk1 and Mk2 belts/sorters, a few stacks of chips, and a few stacks of (copper) electromagnets.
I have another blueprint that makes all my 'stone' products - Stone Bricks, Glass, Prisms, Plasma Exciters, and Photon Combiners
I have another blueprint that is used less often that makes Chem Labs, Science Labs, and Refineries

They're small footprint, manageble, and can be placed just about anywhere without worrying about terrain - especially when blueprint sizes are limited by count-size in the early and mid game.

As for your blueprints, I would definitely try your hand at creating your own, first - as it really does help solidify your knowledge of recipes and material flow throughout the production chains, making your own gameplay much more comfortable and smooth going forward. (Again, the factoriolabs site helps greatly with planning your designs!) After that, then definitely take a look at some decent blueprints and blueprint ideas out there and then borrow liberally (okay, steal - don't judge me) the parts of different blueprints you like, incorporating different techniques into your own designs. I believe Nilaus hosts their own samples on their home site.

Best advice I can give, especially to newer players, is to not give up too early or to get too frustrated once the game curve starts to steepen. It does get steep, but it also helps you learn it all that much quicker, such that by the time you get to the end, you've really actually learned a whole lot more in a short amount of time than you realized when you were struggling in the middle. For many players on their first solo (aka non-YouTube guided) game, they get to about where you are right now - feel exactly how you feel right this very moment - then decide to just start a whole new game fresh. They have knowledge, and can get back to where they are, much quicker than the first time - all while having an improved home setup afterwards. I can attest to that personally, heh.

You learned a lot more on your 2nd game going solo than you did on the play-along with Nilaus' videos. The fact that you recognize that your initial home planet setups DO need improving shows that you've actually learned it for real now, moreso than you did from your first game just mimicking/following along what someone else did without having to give it a whole lot of thought, yourself. So, seriously, congrats on growth and knowledge... you've already become a better DSP player and didn't even realize it until now!

[Chili Dogs]

Originally posted by Kyrros:

As for your 'Mall Issues' - I find overly large malls to be more trouble than they're worth, especially in the early game where not all your recipes are unlocked yet and your drone speed and low mech power cap really hurt your ability to build larger things in reasonable amounts of time. Malls are a bit of a concept-import from Factorio, and were a little easier to implement there than here in DSP, both ingredient and production-chain wise.

I decided to show you a few screenshots of what I am working with at the moment (mall and science). It was all going so smoothly lol.

I do appreciate the words of encouragment! I will get it all sorted eventually, I just feel, defeated. I refuse to fully give up and start over.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2851962268
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2851962276
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2851962283
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2851962291
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2851962297
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2851962301

[Kyrros]

Originally posted by KIWI FOX:

<<Screenshots of Malls / Science>>

Are those before- or after- shots? Honestly, those look pretty good as far as a Mall goes - things appear to be being produced/boxes filled with a pretty decent variety of items at your disposal.

Your science ratios are little out of whack (again, as mentioned above, 3:6:8:10:12 by color) but you don't 'lose' anything by having idle labs in some of the lower tiers, as individually, they are produced much quicker (especially Blue/Red jello) in each single lab than later jello recipes.

I would definitely look at proliferating the ingredients that go directly into the labs to make jello, as the Proliferator used at the top/end of a production chain tends to have a better bang-for-buck in terms of ease and resource usage than at the bottom/beginning of production chains. I would skip Mk1 and go straight to Mk2 prolif as it's able to be made all from the same coal patch.

That, and the Ti shortage can be alleviated fairly quickly by expanding extraction/smelting on your 2nd world(s)... it looks like your ILS importing Ti is still empty.

So, yeah, honestly, it's pretty good for you, judging solely on your screenies provided. Very little probably needs changing as you go forward

[Chili Dogs]

Originally posted by Kyrros:

Originally posted by KIWI FOX:

<<Screenshots of Malls / Science>>

Are those before- or after- shots? Honestly, those look pretty good as far as a Mall goes - things appear to be being produced/boxes filled with a pretty decent variety of items at your disposal.

Those were taken about 10 minutes before I posted them. I booted DSP up a bit ago just to get them.
I know my ratios are bad now lol, especially since I am working to get T3 belts, assemblers and Sorters going. I will look into it, at some point I am just going to devote a play session to tearing down old stuff and grab my calculator and start optimizing. I had Proliferators going but moved them out to squeeze more crap in lol. I have a box full of the spray and the buildings ready to go whenever I get the urge to reincorporate them.

[Kyrros]

As a general rule, the simpler your mall, the better, as it is best served ONLY supporting the Icarus mech and its inventory. (i.e. only making Building/Structures/Belts, etc)

You don't want to 'mall out' small amounts of each and every material, only to export it outside of your mall and into your your Non-mall recipes, like Science and various rocket parts - you end up building too small of amounts and then those small amounts get spread out even thinner amongst all the different higher tier Science and Rocket tech that needs those parts.

Unless you build absolutely HUGE amounts of Subcomponents to ship out to everything else (which a 'mall' should not be designed for), you're better off having dedicated (and isolated) supply chains for each individual Science and later on, Rockets. Your screenie of the yellow labs shows only 6 Chem labs producing Plastic and Organic Crystals - those alone can only support 8 yellow labs (and you have 24 yellow labs built) not even counting other recipes that will use plastic later (purple jello and Mk3 assemblers).

Here's where 3rd party 'calculators' come in handy - strongly recommend the factoriolabs calculator for DSP if you want to start planing builds/ratios of subcombines, etc.

If you want to utilize all 4 stacks of 24 labs at once, then you will need 18 Chem labs each of both Plastic and Organic Crystals, and 12 Assemblers of Ti Crystals (since you're using Mk2 assemblers)... have all of that on the side somewhere, using PLSs to import things like refined oil and Energetic graphite, then keep it all directly connected to your labs, so you don't accidentally send that newly-made plastic to somewhere other than your yellow labs.

Raw oil is another item I tend to proliferate fairly early on, as many oil refineries are needed pretty early on. In the example of 24 yellow labs above... you need 30 refineries just to make the plastic you need for only the yellow labs. Proliferating that initial raw oil with Mk2 proliferator will get you an extra 20% refined oil right out of the gate, reducing it to 25 needed refineries for yellow science.

... and 'Yes', you can Proliferate your Proliferators, making them all that much more effciient.

TL;DR
Malls should generally only be used to directly supply the Icarus mech with the things it needs to place/build/manufacture items itself, not your entire factory for every single subcomponent. Have dedicated supplies of subcompnents for each major science and rocket part or much larger non-mall sized manufacturing hubs/centers for common or other mass-needed components

[kris44dad]

One of the things that keeps me coming back to a new DSP game is, "I can do this better". Right around yellow cubes can be frustrating at times. You're scrambling to get PLS/ILS/vessels/drones on-line, and a lot of things have to come together all at once for that.

[Donohue]

I was making similar mistakes early on and overcrowding a lot of my builds. It might be dull but early on letting the game sit to build up belts and get some better spacing really helped my builds out. Makes it a lot easier to do the transport ship transition and to scale up during the mid-game

[Chili Dogs]

Originally posted by Donohue:

I was making similar mistakes early on and overcrowding a lot of my builds. It might be dull but early on letting the game sit to build up belts and get some better spacing really helped my builds out. Makes it a lot easier to do the transport ship transition and to scale up during the mid-game

So what I ended up doing is just making new builds, away from my main cluster of crap. and I will slowly start phasing out the main "mall" and set up PLS chains for every main component and bring items to individual stations to build new things instead of piping materials down one giant cluster of all my currently in production items.

[Mr. Fibble]

Take a break and when you come back avoid following a series that will make you play it the way someone else thinks you should.

Nilaus does offer some good build layouts and tips but if you don't want to be his brand of "effective" then by going down that rabbit hole the fun of the game will become lost to you, as I think you seem to have found out the hard way.

There's no obligation to cueball every world you set foot on just because someone else thinks it's the right way. This is a game and it's up to you to find out how you will enjoy it. One of my more enjoyable saves was where I left the homeworld pretty much untouched and avoided big blueprints and arrays until I was on the other planets. I had fun so doesn't matter if I wasn't "effective" or "optimised" or any of the other things that matter to other people not playing MY game.

So long as you're producing more of something than you'll need in the immediate future then ratios will generally take care of themselves.

[Inkotron]

n00b

try doing push-ups to increase your stamina.

[Rekal]

I think you're looking at the big picture and letting it overwhelm you. Take things a step at a time and it won't seem so much of a chore. Also, keeping things connected so they don't shut down will let you stop and do something else anytime you like.

Here's kind of a step-by-step. Focus on the inputs first.

Head to your miners, hook them up to a logistics station. Planetary Logistics Station is probably fine since you only have the one planet this stuff was being sourced to anyway. The miners are probably hooked straight to smelters, so run the ore through the PLS, and then loop the ingots through the PLS as well. Since the ingots are being fed to something already if there is ever a pause it will build up in your PLS. Keep the PLS closer to the miners since you'll probably redo the smelters somewhere else. Of course, set the ore to supply and ingots to demand.

Once all your miners and smelters are hooked up, do oil next. PLS are great for oil all over the planet and you'll need more since it is used in red, yellow, purple, and green science until you tap a new planet with organic crystal mines. Even end game it will always be used in purple science to make plastic. Be sure to put a PLS between your oil seeps and your refineries as well. That will let it buffer, and if the seeps ever degrade too much you can just switch it to demand to ship some oil from other PLS.

Just small little changes around the planet and suddenly all of your resources are available through the PLS network.

Once all your inputs are hooked up, switch to outputs. In this case, the only real output is science or Dyson sphere parts. Hook all your old science output into a PLS with everything set to demand and keep it looped to your research buildings so science doesn't stop.

With all your inputs and outputs hooked up you can turn to updating designs. Again, start at the beginning. Build some sizable smelting columns for each resource you use hooked up to a PLS. Then go to the mining PLS and delete the original smelting bunch you had there. New beefier build in place, original space is cleared, all factories are still being fed so no shutdowns to worry about.

Once your smelting is set planet wide, the next step depends on what you want to ship around. Do you want to ship around intermediate products (coils, gears, chips, circuit boards etc) or just the ingots and build the intermediate products to ratio with the final product? For example: You could ship copper and magnets to build coils and then ship iron and copper to another location to build circuit boards. Then ship the coils and circuit board to yet another location to build blue cubes. Or just ship the iron, copper, and magnets to one location, build just enough of the coils and circuit boards to feed them directly into blue cubes.

Just remember to leave the old running in place until the new designs are up and running so you can take a break anytime. There's plenty of space, no need build over an old factory directly if you don't need to.