How to plan

[Pec]

Learning as i go as a result its very messy and not built with a long term plan.
Any advice would be appreciated

[Jupiter3927]

You could save your old blueprints into the blueprint library and plop them down where you think they would be best used.
Some players plop down factory bits in blueprint form just to reserve space for them.

I tend to keep an experimental save just to design new blueprints for my factory.
Once the blueprint is finished, I jump back into the main save and plop that blueprint down with most of the planning complete.

Good old pen and paper works great too...

[Fel]

Leave a lot of space so that you can add more machines for each recipe, that's the most basic step you need in order to be able to organize a bit better.

Once you are used to how the game plays out all the way to the rocket, you should have a decent idea of just how important it is to be able to quickly add more machines to make green circuits for example.

After a while, you will be able to start focusing on things like ratios and throughput.

For example, learning how many furnaces you need to fill a side of a belt with plates or how many machines making red science can be few from one machine making iron gear wheels.

Practically all of the early game stuff has fairly easy ratios and understanding them will help you plan quite a bit better.



If you want to make it easier to learn all of those, you could try an approach called "main bus" (there is a guide about it in the steam guides if you want).
While it isn't the absolute best way to lay your factory (not that there is such a thing anyway), it makes it significantly easier to add more machines for each recipe, which is quite helpful when you want to try to get used to ratios and other slightly more advanced stuff.

Once you have a better understanding of all of those things, you will be able to easily figure out how to lay things with the future increase in scale kept in mind and you will be able to design your factory the way you want (trains, bots, main bus, organized spaghetti...).

[Pec]

One other thing im having issues planning when constantly under attack by bugs what can i do about that

[Fel]

There is a lot you can do about that, including disabling them entirely when you are creating the map, or at least increase the "starting area" to the maximum size (it gives you a much bigger zone without nests around the starting location, at least until they colonize it).

Decent defenses can also make enemies an afterthought, especially once you get your hands on some oil and get flamethrower turrets as well as either gun or laser turrets and a layer or two of walls.

[MyProfile]

Turrets are very effective for pest control.
Yellow firearm mag is 5 damage.
Red is 8 damage.
I just finished the game as a newbie with turrets only. Red ammo.

I don't want to ruin your game...



Wall, turret, inserter, belt then power around perimeter of problem areas and main base.

After I got red ammo going the spacing of a turret in same spacing that small wood power poles was plenty until the big bugs started showing up due to evolution. Just add more turrets and power poles where they attack the most.When you get artillery you can easily beat them back and defend a perimeter around your pollution in bad areas. Pure vanilla start.

[knighttemplar1960]

I learned by making mistakes and starting over. Once I unlocked robots and blueprints I started making blueprints that I carried into the next game. I'm still making refinements to my blueprints. If you are done with the game once you launch your first rocket that's up to you but I keep making megabases and refining my blueprints. When a megabase gets so big that I start having UPS issues I start a new one,

[Sebine]

Originally posted by knighttemplar1960:

I learned by making mistakes and starting over. Once I unlocked robots and blueprints I started making blueprints that I carried into the next game. I'm still making refinements to my blueprints. If you are done with the game once you launch your first rocket that's up to you but I keep making megabases and refining my blueprints. When a megabase gets so big that I start having UPS issues I start a new one,

how do i carry over blueprints between games

[MyProfile]

Originally posted by knighttemplar1960:

I learned by making mistakes and starting over. Once I unlocked robots and blueprints I started making blueprints that I carried into the next game. I'm still making refinements to my blueprints. If you are done with the game once you launch your first rocket that's up to you but I keep making megabases and refining my blueprints. When a megabase gets so big that I start having UPS issues I start a new one,

I hear you man. I should have said just finished this game run... I'm hooked and a complete noob.

[Fishy]

Originally posted by Sebine:

Originally posted by knighttemplar1960:

I learned by making mistakes and starting over. Once I unlocked robots and blueprints I started making blueprints that I carried into the next game. I'm still making refinements to my blueprints. If you are done with the game once you launch your first rocket that's up to you but I keep making megabases and refining my blueprints. When a megabase gets so big that I start having UPS issues I start a new one,

how do i carry over blueprints between games

Blueprints can be saved in the blueprint library, which is a separate save from your map.

It should be noted that steam does not backup your blueprint library, so you should make your own backups, especially when updated, but ESPECIALLY if you need go to an older version for whatever reason (mod incompatibility for example).

I also have a save where all my important BPs are in my character's inventory, which does get backed up by steam.

[Stelio Kontos]

i usually try to keep 3 spaces clear on both sides of very long running belts. This will allow easier expansion if you wanted to add more long running belts either parallel or perpendicular to your belts. I like the blue prints idea. i havent quite mastered the blueprints yet

[knighttemplar1960]

Originally posted by Fishy:

Originally posted by Sebine:

how do i carry over blueprints between games

Blueprints can be saved in the blueprint library, which is a separate save from your map.

It should be noted that steam does not backup your blueprint library, so you should make your own backups, especially when updated, but ESPECIALLY if you need go to an older version for whatever reason (mod incompatibility for example).

I also have a save where all my important BPs are in my character's inventory, which does get backed up by steam.

This. I also keep a copy of my blue print library on a flash drive just in case.

[kremlin]

If you are getting raided badly by the critters you probably have their bases within your pollution bubble. Look at the map and make sure pollution display is turned on, anywhere with a red haze you want to clear out the buggers from, preferably giving it room to grow. Carry around extra stacks of ammo (automate production right away, even just yellows) and gun turrets. You can place gun turrets and use shift-click on the ammo stacks when you click on them to load them fast. If you place and load them fast enough you can even plop them close enough to have them attack the worms and spawners, but just having them nearby to assist while you kite around is priceless. Clearing a buffer away from the pollution zone will greatly reduce raids while they expand back to it.

[Knofbath]

Biters absorb pollution, and then come to attack the source of the pollution. One of the natural forces in this game is that as your factory gets bigger, you'll make more pollution, and draw more/larger attacks.

If you don't want your factory to be interrupted, you need to establish a perimeter and defend it. The longer you can keep using yellow ammo in your turrets, the better off you will be, because red ammo makes more pollution, which brings more attacks.

You can also reduce attack size/frequency by reducing your pollution. Efficiency modules help with that, especially in your Miners and Pumpjacks, since those will be more vulnerable to attack because they are further from your main base.

[knighttemplar1960]

Originally posted by kremlin:

If you are getting raided badly by the critters you probably have their bases within your pollution bubble. Look at the map and make sure pollution display is turned on, anywhere with a red haze you want to clear out the buggers from, preferably giving it room to grow. Carry around extra stacks of ammo (automate production right away, even just yellows) and gun turrets. You can place gun turrets and use shift-click on the ammo stacks when you click on them to load them fast. If you place and load them fast enough you can even plop them close enough to have them attack the worms and spawners, but just having them nearby to assist while you kite around is priceless. Clearing a buffer away from the pollution zone will greatly reduce raids while they expand back to it.

If you continue to expand your base you get to the point where your pollution cloud extends beyond your walls and you can't really expand any farther without suffering UPS issues due to the size of the map that is revealed.

Once you reach this level you should have all researches complete and even a few of the infinite damage researches. At this point you should have your supplies and repair automated and you can mostly ignore the attacks because the biters ad spitters aren't going to be able to get through.

This is my current mega base. I'm putting in a new chip factory in the north. Once its in I'll need another iron smelting array, copper smelting array, and 3 more of each type ore patch.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2708334099
This is my current base with pollution cloud.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2708334364

I have artillery range 9 and artillery turrets by each roboport that serves the perimeter. The cleared area around the base is farther than radar range. Its revealed because artillery shells went that far. My pollution cloud actually extends into non-revealed territory. Every 5 minutes or so the biters might succeed in destroying a single wall block. The bots replace it instantly.

The last time I had a wall breach was when I was setting up the new north wall and hadn't finished automating it. Since I always leave the old wall in place until the new wall is up and automated this was not a big deal. My spidertron building crew took out the interlopers, repaired the damage, and completed construction.

[Fishy]

Originally posted by knighttemplar1960:

If you continue to expand your base you get to the point where your pollution cloud extends beyond your walls and you can't really expand any farther without suffering UPS issues due to the size of the map that is revealed.

I'm pretty sure that the pollution cloud will affect UPS whether or not it goes into the fog of war. Those chunks are active. Some megabase players disable pollution after ups becomes an issue
Revealing tons of extra map will affect save size however, which can be annoying if you auto save often.