factory styles

[VANGUARD]

In a previous save my whole factory was modular, meaning each intermediate product had its own production line, scattered across multiple systems.
Each production line is quite simple to build.
The downside on the other hand is the waste in energy, warpers, and computation needed to transport stuff to where it is needed.

For my current save I decided to do the opposite: creating production lines for finished products only, which take raw resources and handle all the intermediate products internally.
Since only raw resources and finished products need to be transported there's no waste.
Plus no sudden need to expand the production of i.e. green engines to satisfy the factory.
On the other hand each production line is a nuisance to build, since each step needs to be calculated and the needed facilities puzzeled together to make it somehow compact.

I guess for future builds I want to be some where inbetween both styles.
What approach do you take for your factory?

[josmith7]

Like you I originally did a modular design. But now I'm mostly playing with making integrated blueprints that pull in raw material and output finished products.

That's not 100% true - I just build a missile production line that I couldn't be bothered to fully integrate (stupid gravity missiles are stupidly complex) so it's actually broken up into about 6 'from raw' factories. (And I've still got a bunch of older blueprints I haven't take then time to convert to 'from raw' -- plus early game blueprints and my mall are not 'from raw' because it doesn't really make sense there)

The switch was partly for the challenge, and partly to assist in scaling production - since, as you noted, if the blueprint includes all the intermediate components then I don't have to run around the galaxy fixing shortfalls as buffers exhaust and they show themselves. With 'from raw' blueprints there's only a few things that could cause issues (insufficient power, insufficient mining, insufficient transport -- and I can pretty much diagnose any of them at the underperforming factory)

[Rai]

Blackbox for the powergrid, modular for science and rockets.

[pemmons1]

Avoid exporting titanium or silicon ore if you possibly can. It's more efficient to smelt it on-site because it takes two ore to produce one ingot. With other raw resources it's not so important. In fact, I recently realized that with proliferation, you actually get somewhat more than one ingot per unit of ore. So I export iron and copper ore, stone, and coal to my home planet (as needed) and keep using all smelting and other production facilities that I have built there without consuming any more of its raw resources.

Aside from that, producing finished products from raw materials wherever they are found seems like the best strategy. There are many blueprints designed to do that, although I wish there were more that do not rely on advanced production facilities and Mk.3 belts. (Gotta start rolling my own, esp. for turbines.) Easy-does-it is my motto at least until late game.

[b...]

Did both. and raws make for ugly designs with "protruding" smelters so I tend to use ingots and magnets as inputs.
Scaleability ultimately falls off and you revert to massive single item blueprints since calculating a input to output ratios with proliferators are a pain and there's always a waste/wait somewhere

[Andy]

If I find a good lava planet, or one with a lot of coal, I'll usually just have it create basic items for other planets to come get. Gobi planets or Mars planets have lots of open space so I'll use them for finished products. Either way, I'll still use modules for everything because it takes so little time to plop them down.

[SKARDAVNELNATE]

Find a rocky planet. Ship in all ores, coal, water, crude oil. Use logistic bots and drones to move things from one production chain to another. I have a mix of assembly lines that cover just one stage of production and machines that do multiple stages. I expect once I have extra systems some of them will serve as hubs for the others rather than set up factories in every system (or one central hub).

[VANGUARD]

I was thinking about doing it this way, too, as a middleground.
Carting raw resources to a planet and processing it all there instead of directly to a production line.
This way one can keep each production lines simple.
If there's a shortfall it only affects production on that planet and not the whole factory.

[DragonMaster3]

Created blueprints for whole middle section of planet for science (white 3600/min), rockets(900/min + solar sails), misc (proliferator, lenses, fuel, warpers). Raw input. Home system is for hub - creating buildings. Usually it's 2 misc planets, 2-4 rockets, 20-30 science before my notebook starts to boil :)