To tear down and rebuild, or just start over? The eternal question....

[Jeffreyac]

Well, think for the first time I'm going to try a complete teardown and rebuild. My games generally go in the following stages:

1) The beginning. The intrepid adventurer sees all the space and resources out there, and steps forward into a bright new world!!

2) Initial planning. OK, coal is there, and iron is there, and copper there, so we'll smelt here and drive a bus that way. And it really WILL be a bus this time! It'll be great!

3) Early construction. Cool, red and green science is on line and automated! Now to find some oil!

4) ....crap. Iron's being starved out for some of my assemblers. Oh, there's the problem - I've run too many things from this iron line. Maybe if I add a shunt here, and route an extra line there... and I can cram in an extra assembler here. .. Oh, wait, that's where I had to cram in the engine assemblers for the blue science. Now, where do I put the rest of the stuff for the ingredients for blue science packs???


5) It's done! Blue science automated, and now... uh.... holy cow, where did my bus plan go? We've got a yarn tangle here...


....and I spend the rest of the game trying to find ways to fix all the problems I've caused earlier by poor planning and haphazard construction. In the past, most of the time I just start over at this pint. I've persevered occasionally, and even got a win with a tangled mess (mostly because I got robotics online, and a logistics network, and then didn't care where anything went anymore - just let swarms of logistic bots make up for the random and haphazard building style I'd managed. But most of the time the amount of finageling just overwhelms me (as I'm reluctant to rip out anything I've already done - after all, it WORKS, right??) and I figure it's easier to begin again.


This game, though, was a little interesting. I had no oil for a REALLY long time, finally finding it a LONG way south, and by that time I had my main base plus three satellite bases (one coal, one iron, and one stone, as I'd actually started extremely stone poor...) attached by rail. I almost gave it up, but I had defended the existing stuff really well - so I figured what the hell... By the time i found oil, got it hooked up via rail, and built up automated blue research, the game had been going on for something like 15 hours, and medium biters and spitters were appearing regularly.

So now I'm at a loss. I COULD execute my first complete tear down - I've got good potential for infrastructure, with a good idea now of what to rebuild, and probably make it pretty good. The one patch of oil I have had 5 stron spawn points, with a total yield of something like 600% (several were over 100% yield) - but I'm concerned by the time I really get running, the spawns will be getting stronger still, and I'll be playing catch up all game. An experienced player might relish the challenge - but I'm more of an advanced beginner (and it's worth noting here that this is the first game I've ever played post-16, so I have no idea on the new tech/science packets or what the heck to do with uranium...)

My gut feel is to start over (again!) and just apply what I've learned (again!!) in the hopes that the start is a little more normal paced, and I don't have to wait quite so long for oil. But the little voice in the back of my head wonders if it wouldn't be easier to just tear EVERYTHING out of the base and rebuild it from the ground up - the only thing that scares me is that gives the aliens about a 16 hour head start (plus a large number of nest kills; I've driven them away from satellite bases a number of times) to accelerate the evolution, and I'm not sure I'll keep up.


...advice?

[ThreeTreeCheese]

How about you keep your old base running while building another base somewhere else? Just reroute materials to your mall instead of science assembly. A few times I have attempted to tear down the base but soon realized that I did NOT have enough materials.

[brian_va]

if you are going to build a "better" factory, use the existing factory to build the stuff needed for the new one. if you made an attempt at a high capacity bus, it's probably going in one direction. use splitters and break it in two, the old factory one direction and the new factory in the other. take what you have learned and do better. once you figure out this new, optimized factory doesnt have the capacity you want, do it again.

thats why its lovingly called cracktorio.

[MaddogDino]

For ages I played this game up to the stage of needing to tear down and start fresh......Until I realised that to get to a megabase you need to keep pushing on. You'll never make a megabase if you restart everytime it gets manic and messy. The solvinmg solution for Factorio Megabase is push on through the burn. It will come together unless you quit it for another attempt. Have a bit of faith in yourself and a lot, I mean a very lot......a huge amount...of space to build.

[brian_va]

Biters are more annoying than a threat when you start out. Just have to make sure that defenses are part of your overall expansion plans.

[Stal Hamarr]

I can sympatize with your feelings. I also consider myself an "advanced beginner". I completed the game a couple times (one rocket launched), but never went further.

This time around I decided to build a real 2 science/second base, wich is nothing for most people on this forum. But the circuits needed for 2 high tech science per second are actually a big deal at this stage. So I did the math and realized I need something like 4x my actual production of green circuits.

Same eternal question: restart, rebuild or find a solution? I decided to find a solution. In this case it will be my first attempt at a de-centralized green circuits production base.
This will probably lead to all sort of problems down the line, but who cares?

It will be a learning experience for a future 4 science/s base.
Can't learn anything if I never leave my comfort zone.


So, my very humble advice: don't destroy everything.
- Keep your current base for the fundamental needs. Turrets, ammo, assemblers, the usual logistic stuff, trains. You don't a spectacularly efficient base to build this stuff.
- Research only what's really necessary. Don't research stuff that you will be using 12 hours in the future. This way you reduce unnecessary production and pollution.
- Push at least to yellow science (high tech). The previous science packs are nothing compared to high tech science, if you want to produce it at the same rate. It will require a significant upgrade to your production chain and it will give you all sorts of logistic problems.


You seem to have a decent network in place. May as well put it to some use to build a more efficient base without going again through the boring early game.

[Xilo The Odd]

for a tear down and rebuild i often reserve an area for that to happen and make sure i have everything i need to make the rebuild happen. then i'll typically try to set it up on a creative map and BP chunks of it and try to move everything over to the new spot and reorganize it.

i usually wait to do a rebuild now until im ready to convert to nuclear power since i'll be uprooting my current power system and reorganizing it.

[MisterSpock]

I build 3 bases:

Small base with 10 assemblers: belts, gears, circuits, science and ammo
2nd base: Finite Science 0,75/s + big mall
3 Base Mega

[BlueRock]

I would recommend pushing ahead on the existing base. Reasons are as follows:
1. Although the aliens get tougher, once you get to near the point of competing your laser damage/speed increase research, or flamethower damage research things get easier again. Especially once you get artillery, then it is game over for the aliens.
2. Eventually you will build another base or two or three... so better to get all the experience you can on your first base in both early AND late game so you can better improve all aspects of your next base. Once you get bots with a few upgrades and familiar with blueprinting, it gets pretty easy to re-build or move things around enough to keep moving forward..
3. It is more fun to play late game anyway, IMHO.

[BitterSwede]

The way I tend to do it nowadays is to make a starter factory, get it up to the basic stuff (bots, building materials, tracks etc.) and then basically abandon that entire base. Normally, I don't even get to automate production units or industrial science in that base before it is nearly abandoned.
I just use that starter base to pick up stuff I need to build the next one, having it keep producing the building blocks for a much larger base, until either resources run out or I have a better way of getting a higher volume of the building blocks on demand.

In my still ongoing playthrough, I even have a secondary "starter base" thing going on, that I'm at the end stages on. Was going for an early train-based, gridded megabase, but that was a bit trickier than I thought and I ended up very short on some resources, so that initial megabase is now just to provide the rest of the megabase with building blocks and to keep science going.

Today I'm starting on the real megabase, high volume production.

But the point is that nothing is torn down and rebuilt, I use the existing infrastructure as a supplier to build it properly elsewhere. Taking blueprints of the factories that work, building from scratch where I find better ways to do it. Spacing everything out once I know where things need to go. And I think most importantly, once at that stage, stop relying on a "main bus", when it's far more efficient to have a central smelting area and ship it out from there to where it needs to go via train. I took that last part one step further and send all metals, plastic, coal etc. to a central storage area and then have all trains picking it up from there.