What is my Mid-Game goal?

[Grimbot]

After playing for a few hours and figuring stuff out, I started over. Now I've got a pretty sweet base going. I've got a central fuel and ammo belt that feeds the whole tamale, and factories building everything I'm tired of doing. I took out an alien nest in front of the iron field that I wanted, and I'll soon need the stone and iron near the next closest nest. I'm currently researching Automobilism and experimenting with oil and trains.

But, honestly, I'm not sure what to be looking at next. Should I be aggressively securing alien bases? Preparing for a future in plastics? I still don't need Science Kit 3, but I'm headed that way. What do you think?

[DarkMyau]

Well start looking to make everything bigger. Your going to need an insane amount of green circuits for the late game.

[Agamemnon-Hellmapper]

If you don't have blue beakers yet, go set up the production for it. It will be a while before that runs smoothly. Also, get some combat gear and start hunting for artifacts.

[Gregorovitch]

In general I would say it's time to bite the bullet and deal with the Science Pack 3 issue. For many reasons.

One important one is to get advanced oil processing asap. The reason for this is that you will need oceans of petroleum gas to make batteries and plastic, What advanced oil processing lets you do is a) increase the amount of gas coming from primary distillation of crude, b) crack heavy oil into light, and c) crack light oil into gas. As a result you need far less crude oil to meet gas requirements which will slow down the number of new oil wells you need considerably, a major advantage.

There are two approaches to Science Pack 3,

One is to build a dedicated closed system to make the batteries, smart inserters, steel and advanced (red) circuits you need to make SP3's. This is a well known mind ♥♥♥♥. You can obviously copy someone's design for it if you want to.

I prefer a second approach which is to set up initial general circuit production (green and red), inserter production, battery production and steel production in their own areas ready for upgrade later before tackling Science Pack 3 becasue I know I'm going to need stacks of these things anyway. Once you've done that taking a line of each of the four products to make SP3's is a snap.

[Targa]

Originally posted by Grimbot:

After playing for a few hours and figuring stuff out, I started over.

Get used to that, haha. Pretty much every time I learned something new about the game I started over so my base would have a better layout. I probably have 20 different games in my save folder. Without seeing your base and research status, I can't say exactly, but I can give you a general idea of what I do from beginning to mid-game.

1. Huge smelting lines (iron plates, copper plates, and steel plates).
2. From there I make a smallish area for pipe, pipe to ground, grenades, railroad tracks, curved RR tracks, stone brick, and walls (RR track assembly machines have a "reserved spot", since I don't have the research complete early). The reason these are in a separate area is because they require stone and coal, which I don't like to run through my entire factory.
3. Green circuits area. Initially I'll build two opposing sets of x3 copper cable machines feeding x2 green circuit machines, but will reserve more room to expand it later.
4. I make an "aisle" for my early personal stuff. I start with an assy. machine making gears, then feed a belt from that down to Belts > Splitters > Underground Belts > Inserter > Fast Inserter > Long-Arm Inserter > Repair Pack > Assy. Machine 1 > Assy. Machine 2 > Turrets. That aisle requires a belt of gears, green circuits, and iron plates (and copper for the turrets).
5. Opposite side of the aisle: Medium electric pole, Big electric pole, piercing ammo (all require copper and steel).
6. I then set up my permanent research area, and set up red and green production (with reserved areas for blue science and purple science).
7. Once that's done I research oil processing and start with that whole setup (pumpjacks, storage tanks, refineries, etc...)
8. While I'm doing #7, I'm researching engine/car/railway/automated trains/rail signals. I start RR track production as soon as I can.
9. Run railroad to a few different iron/copper/coal/oil deposits.
10. Set up the "engines to robots" production line. (engines > heavy oil to lubricant > electric engines > robot frames > robots (eventually)).
11. Set up the Advanced Circuit assy line (reds).
12. Set up the Modules assy line (efficiency/speed/productivity).
13. Somewhere in between #7 and #12 I set up the sulfur > sulfuric acid > battery production as well as plastic production.

I guess that's what most would consider "mid game"? Of course there's usually a lot of other things I do during all that, such as killing aliens and whatnot. Some may question why one of the first things I do is to set up grenade-making (I actually start making them while still in the "burner phase"). Early-game, it's the only effective method for clearing large areas of forest, and I always play heavily forested maps (I dislike the looks of the other biomes).

The real answer to your conundrum is something I asked not long after I bought the game also. You actually have to play through the game in order to know what you should be doing next. I got lucky early on and found Scarhoof's YouTube Lets Play tutorial series on the game, which is probably the best (or one of the best) out there. Watched that (still do) religiously every day to learn what's coming next, and what I should be preparing for, as well as how to prepare for it. Gah, that was a much longer reply than I had planned on posting...

[DaemosDaen]

Depends on your definition of 'mid game'. My early game is getting science set up (all 4) with a few small assembler setups for early game production. (thoes are removed in the mid game.)

My mid game is then building a second factory to produce all the things I need to make then endgame factory (the rocket silo launching facility) I'll sometimes merge the foundries for the first and second factories depending on land layout

The late game is normally 3/4s my gameplay, but ...

There are other ways to play, that's just mine.

[Ric]

Best tip I can give it never ever under-estimate how many green and red circuits you're going to need going into mid-late game. Over produce to hell! unless you love efficiency maximum then prepared to get the calculator out. i'm a hoarder so like amass large quantities of everything ;)

It's quite sickening how many everything uses green/red and eventually blue circuits in late game....lol!

Look at what your late game items need crafting wise and attempt to setup your base to suit. Or just get a metric tonne of robots to fly everything where it needs to be :)

[maestro]

You should try using a proven method. I've only been playing week now but thanks to youtube I've managed to do pretty well using the tree, or bank method or something similar.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=660757563