What is a "mega base"?

[Hedning]

Obviously there is no official definition, but when people talk about "mega bases" how big are they? 1k science per minute? More? less? It may be different from person to person, so what do you mean when you use the term?

[KatherineOfSky]

I normally consider a base a "megabase" when it's gone past the main bus stage and branches into outposts to create intermediate products. Its really hard to put an exact definition on it.

Pre-0.15, science ended, (no infinite reserach), and 1 RPM was considered a "Megabase". Now with science progressing, 1k science/minute is like a mega-mega base.

[Phileksa]

Originally posted by KatherineOfSky:

I normally consider a base a "megabase" when it's gone past the main bus stage and branches into outposts to create intermediate products. Its really hard to put an exact definition on it.

Pre-0.15, science ended, (no infinite reserach), and 1 RPM was considered a "Megabase". Now with science progressing, 1k science/minute is like a mega-mega base.

by that definition, my tendency to start using trains as multi-purpose conveyor belts to simplify building factories that make specific items means i have a "megabase" already ... and i've yet to develop the laser turret. in point of fact, i don't feel comfortable really getting the research going until i can get the trains running between a string of bases, each making a variety of intermediate products to feed to other bases, which may make other intermediate products, to finally make the science packs with.

[KatherineOfSky]

Only you can decide your own definition of "megabase". Most bases have a defined progression. If you started that progression early -- great!.

[Hedning]

Originally posted by Phileksa:

by that definition, my tendency to start using trains as multi-purpose conveyor belts to simplify building factories that make specific items means i have a "megabase" already

And I dont start with a "bus" design neither. There's no way of defining exactly what a mega base is, however I still got a pretty good picture of what she considers it to be. How about you? What do you consider a mega base?

[Phileksa]

Originally posted by KatherineOfSky:

Only you can decide your own definition of "megabase". Most bases have a defined progression. If you started that progression early -- great!.

thanks for the complement, KatherineOfSky. :-) i find it easier to run with the train earlier rather than later, since so many things start requiring so many different products once you pass a certain point. i have no idea how to get twenty different belts of goods in to an area to feed all the factories there, so i use trains instead.

Originally posted by Hedning:

Originally posted by Phileksa:

by that definition, my tendency to start using trains as multi-purpose conveyor belts to simplify building factories that make specific items means i have a "megabase" already

And I dont start with a "bus" design neither. There's no way of defining exactly what a mega base is, however I still got a pretty good picture of what she considers it to be. How about you? What do you consider a mega base?

Hedning, i am not sure how to define a "megabase." running the trains i do, each segment takes up a huge pile of space. the first one i usually build is a basic refinery base, where crude is converted to heavy oil, light oil, and natural gas. that is followed by a base where i make lubricating oil, then a heavy oil cracking base, then solid fuel, then a light oil cracking base, then plastics and sulfur, then sulfuric acid, then batteries, and then laser turrets and those battery things.

i suppose just that sequence alone, being that it is actually considerably larger than my initial base, could be defined as a "megabase." i mean, if you assume that a "megabase" takes up huge piles of space.

i can usually manage to serve all my stations with only five or six groups of trains, but each train does carry eight different items. i just put the right train on the right track in a base and load or unload the appropriate car. like i said, like a super conveyor belt. each train has two engines and nine cars - the first car is used to carry fuel for the engines. fuel is loaded on the trains at the solid fuel facility. at their normal stops, it's taken from the "tender" and fed to the locomotives.

trains this long do mean stations are quite large facilities in their own right, and thus their accompanying stations are also large, and so i tend to make the specialized facilities pretty big, too.

all this sprawl and specialized production probably would, for most people, qualify as a "megabase," even though i do start building it awfully early because trying to route the belts is just too much work in my humble opinion.

i do relish the logistics robots and the logistics systems when they come available. because then there are no more belts! just robots flying everywhere! although that does tend to be a huge power hog. XD

i probably play strangely. to have a huge sprawled out base before i have laser turrets, i mean.

[Hedning]

That's interesting, so you are more concerned with footprint than production capacity, ie a mega base can be something that takes up a lot of space even if it it's only a handful unmoduled assemblers in total.

[impetus_maximus]

"Mega is a unit prefix in metric systems of units denoting a factor of one million."

so i guess if you make a million of something an hour one might consider that a mega base.

[TruePack]

Originally posted by impetus maximus:

"Mega is a unit prefix in metric systems of units denoting a factor of one million."

so i guess if you make a million of something an hour one might consider that a mega base.

Or if it takes your base a million hours to make something like an iron stick.

[teravisor]

Originally posted by KatherineOfSky:

Only you can decide your own definition of "megabase". Most bases have a defined progression. If you started that progression early -- great!.

Problem with that definition is that we can't talk about it because we would be talking about different things without understanding each other...

There are quite a bit of possible ways of defining megabase:
1. By how you build it. There is a stage when you simply slap blueprint of huge amounts of assemblers/furnaces/refineries, connect them to rail network, and send trains; after that it just works. You can define megabase by size of each 'block' you build and their count.
2. By how much you produce. Like 1k spm (science per minute) or rocket per minute.
3. By how busy your logistics are (I mean in whole, not as robots). Amount of trains, robots in air, etc. (Or like time when belts start to hurt your UPS - updates per second).
4. By how much space base fills with facilities.

But general definition would be... "A very huge base".

Originally posted by impetus maximus:

"Mega is a unit prefix in metric systems of units denoting a factor of one million."

so i guess if you make a million of something an hour one might consider that a mega base.

A lot of movie's Megathings like megabeams and megarobots are smiling at you.

[KatherineOfSky]

Originally posted by teravisor:

But general definition would be... "A very huge base".

LOL, that should be implied by the prefix "mega" in the word :-) I was giving my opinion on what that generally entails.

However, you could indeed have a megabase that's pure sphaghetti!

[daemonworks]

There's also the old saying about building a base to make your base.

Many folks who build things they call megabases tend to build an initial base that makes everything, their starter base, but they view it as just a bootstrap for the much larger "real" base that's focused on maximum throughput and UPS efficiency.

[daemonworks]

Come to think of it, you could make a case that any base large enough to make you start serously thinking about UPS efficiency is a megabase.

[impetus_maximus]

yes, i make a mini base which i handi-cap myself to modivate myself to make my train network factory 'towns'.

yes, i agree if UPS start to suffer you are probably @ mega. that or you are playing on a potato. i'm seeing reports of 0.16.* factories running at 60UPS when they were at 20ish on 0.15. so mega bases going to get more megatie with 0.16.* :p

[THE kilroy]

For me, power consumption is a good indicator or comparison of scale.

[DukeOfDelmar]

I consider my current megabase as having hit that status when I started mass-replicating/tiling my 180x144 factory block that produces all the sciences and rockets from raw materials.

I think megabase is more about proven scalability than absolute volume - does it have a defined process (manual or automated) for continued expansion? If so, it is at least a potential megabase, and if it has followed that process for a few dozen hours successfully, then it is probably an actual megabase.

Even better question - what constitutes a gigabase? Do any even exist today?