I just beat the game for the first time! What now? (Come give me your suggestions)

[NotSoObvious]

I have had my eye on Factorio for a long while and picked it up about a week ago. Oh boy, 51.4 hours later I launch my first rocket on a second attempt (no biters this time, yes I know it adds to the efficiency, but I wanted a chill experience in my off time (which became all of my off time ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥)). Funnily enough I got the "Logistic network embargo" achievement. I never really paid much attention to robots except the personal ones I had in the personal roboport so was surprised to see only 8ish% of players having it. Didn't complete all of the science and I can't lie, the final push to launch a rocket was a bit of a slog.

All that being said, very satisfying game loop and I got a super basic crossover train system going. There seems to be a huge (and I mean HUGE) amount of depth and megabases far in excess of my puny little main bus with super slow blue circuit production.

I suppose I am looking for the post-first-launch content (which I know is "factory bigger"), but more than that I would like to get your recommendations for:

1. What to explore that I didn't in my initial run (main bus + personal robots mainly to build solar arrays)
2. Advice on existing mechanics (For instance, I was ALWAYS running low on copper, despite having the same setup as iron ie a train that would come unload copper ore and a local copper mine delivering direct ore to a 24 furnace array yet seemingly produced too few copper plates despite my iron setup being the same and always at max capacity)
3. Mods you guys consider essential either for 1-time experiences or QoL.

Any other comments always welcome and thanks for reading this little excerpt of a new player now dreaming of belts every night and hoping to have the brainpower to map out a megabase one day

[Fel]

For 1, have a look at the tech tree and/or the things you could produce and see if something interests you.
Solar power is great for not requiring any maintainance after being built but you could have a look at nuclear power and all of the uranium stuff.
Some of it revolves around better ammo for fighting but there is also a great fuel for your vehicles (and stone/steel furnaces if you want) and the nuclear power can produce quite a bit, especially when you manage to make a tileable setup to be able to keep adding reactors touching existing ones.


Copper is a weird thing because initially you need fairly little compared to iron, and it suddenly ramps up in a major way as you get into the later parts of the tech tree.
This is mostly caused by circuits, in particular the green circuits that you end up needing a large amount of.

What you can do is identify some things like that and make sub-factories for them, with trains handling the transportation of ingredients and finished products.

Cutting up your factory like that can open up quite a few options for you in terms of design but it kind of requires a basic understanding of train signals in order to make a large network of trains on 1-way rails.


Also to note is that deposits further away from spawn are better as distance grows so if you need more resources it's often a good idea to keep going mostly in one cardinal direction instead of expanding in all directions.




For mods, there is not really such a thing as must-have, most of it is "I wish recipes were more complex" (this one in particular comes with several levels, with the "hardest" being borderline masochism for example), "I want more enemies variety", "I want better weapons", "I want to go to space after launching a rocket", "I want a tool to determine the correct ratios ingame", "I want inserters that can turn 90°"...
As you play more and more you'll find yourself wanting to change the base game in fairly specific ways to suit your tastes, that's where mods come in.

[Khaylain]

I will always recommend "Lazy Bastard" achievement run. It's an eye opener, or at least it was to me.

I believe that in general you end up needing a lot more copper than iron later in the game, which may explain why you felt you were always low on copper.
I don't know how much you did with trains, but learning to use the Train Limit parts of trains is massive.

Personal mandatory QoL mods:
* Squeakthrough (lets you move in between everything in your factory, even between pipe segments (I pretend the engineer is just crawling over or under them)).

Personal optional QoL mods:
* Ghost on Water (lets you put down blueprints on water and it will set down ghost landfill underneath all the entities in the blueprint.
* Waterfill (or equivalent) to be able to put down some water if you need to.
* Tiny Start (makes it slightly less grindy in the beginning by giving you some personal robots)
* Big Bags (makes stack sizes quite big)
* Afraid of the Dark
* Gah! Darn it Water!
* Factory Planner or Helmod (mostly for bigger modpacks, but not useless for "vanilla" Factorio either)

For another type of Factorio gameplay I can recommend the modpack "Warptorio 2" (without the expansion or whatever it's called, apparently the expansion is really difficult without more people)

[Khagan]

1. Congratulations on your first rocket.
   
2. The factory grows.
   
3. While iron demand increases steadily throughout the game, the demand for copper ramps up rapidly in the late game: both yellow science and rocket construction use lots. Productivity modules are your friend. They give a boost at every stage of processing: ore to metal, metal to wire, wire to circuits, basic circuits to more advanced circuits, etc.
   
4. The factory grows.
   
5. Have a go with nuclear power. Yes, it's hugely more complex than solar, but it's also hugely cheaper in resources. Once you have the hang of it, massive solar fields become a thing of the past (at least until your factory is so huge you start worrying about UPS).
   
6. The factory grows.
   
7. No mods are essential. I have played for mumble-mumble thousand hours without ever using a single one, though I will probably try one of the popular overhaul mods at some point. I do recommend trying a marathon game though; the slower science gives quite a different feel to the game.
   
8. The factory grows.

[NotSoObvious]

Originally posted by Fel:

For 1, have a look at the tech tree and/or the things you could produce and see if something interests you.
Solar power is great for not requiring any maintainance after being built but you could have a look at nuclear power and all of the uranium stuff.
Some of it revolves around better ammo for fighting but there is also a great fuel for your vehicles (and stone/steel furnaces if you want) and the nuclear power can produce quite a bit, especially when you manage to make a tileable setup to be able to keep adding reactors touching existing ones.


Copper is a weird thing because initially you need fairly little compared to iron, and it suddenly ramps up in a major way as you get into the later parts of the tech tree.
This is mostly caused by circuits, in particular the green circuits that you end up needing a large amount of.

What you can do is identify some things like that and make sub-factories for them, with trains handling the transportation of ingredients and finished products.

Cutting up your factory like that can open up quite a few options for you in terms of design but it kind of requires a basic understanding of train signals in order to make a large network of trains on 1-way rails.


Also to note is that deposits further away from spawn are better as distance grows so if you need more resources it's often a good idea to keep going mostly in one cardinal direction instead of expanding in all directions.




For mods, there is not really such a thing as must-have, most of it is "I wish recipes were more complex" (this one in particular comes with several levels, with the "hardest" being borderline masochism for example), "I want more enemies variety", "I want better weapons", "I want to go to space after launching a rocket", "I want a tool to determine the correct ratios ingame", "I want inserters that can turn 90°"...
As you play more and more you'll find yourself wanting to change the base game in fairly specific ways to suit your tastes, that's where mods come in.

Thanks so much!

I never really explored nuclear power (I ripped out and remade my furnace arrays for steel, copper and iron and that was an evenings work so struggled a little with the lack of other progress) and had a "massive" (at least by my standards) 8x4 modular solar array of 25 panels + 4 poles + 21 accumulators) so power was never really an issue.

The main bottlenecks I tended to run into was green circuits (oh yeah baby, have 3 arrays dedicated to them wasn't enough and that was bottlenecked by my copper plate production for coils

That and fluid processing being a massive mind-**** as you have to find outlets mainly for petroleum gas in order to keep the fluids running.

Blue circuits were the slowest though I only had 6 factories and couldn't seem to get ratios right to keep them flowing + space became an issue.

I clicked fairly early on that further away deposits were better, though I had to redo my train 3x because of a signalling error lmao. What a joy.

Mod advice is appreciated, seems reasonable in all you said.

Considering doing a "blueprint only" run where I take community blueprints and build nothing from scratch myself.

[NotSoObvious]

Originally posted by Khaylain:

I will always recommend "Lazy Bastard" achievement run. It's an eye opener, or at least it was to me.

I believe that in general you end up needing a lot more copper than iron later in the game, which may explain why you felt you were always low on copper.
I don't know how much you did with trains, but learning to use the Train Limit parts of trains is massive.

Personal mandatory QoL mods:
* Squeakthrough (lets you move in between everything in your factory, even between pipe segments (I pretend the engineer is just crawling over or under them)).

Personal optional QoL mods:
* Ghost on Water (lets you put down blueprints on water and it will set down ghost landfill underneath all the entities in the blueprint.
* Waterfill (or equivalent) to be able to put down some water if you need to.
* Tiny Start (makes it slightly less grindy in the beginning by giving you some personal robots)
* Big Bags (makes stack sizes quite big)
* Afraid of the Dark
* Gah! Darn it Water!
* Factory Planner or Helmod (mostly for bigger modpacks, but not useless for "vanilla" Factorio either)

For another type of Factorio gameplay I can recommend the modpack "Warptorio 2" (without the expansion or whatever it's called, apparently the expansion is really difficult without more people)

All of this is super interesting, thanks! What does "Afraid of the dark" do and "Gah! Darn it Water"?

Lazy bastard is the one about not crafting by hand right? or only 120 items or something. I will definitely consider this for automating a personal repository of items. I did something a little similar though forgot to automate a few key items. I guess it'll keep me tighter to the spirit of the game and build me a little resource kingdom. In this one I kept having to make red inserters, which is trivial for sure, but would be nicer to just pick up 50 every so often from a resource chest.

[NotSoObvious]

Originally posted by Khagan:

1. Congratulations on your first rocket.
   
2. The factory grows.
   
3. While iron demand increases steadily throughout the game, the demand for copper ramps up rapidly in the late game: both yellow science and rocket construction use lots. Productivity modules are your friend. They give a boost at every stage of processing: ore to metal, metal to wire, wire to circuits, basic circuits to more advanced circuits, etc.
   
4. The factory grows.
   
5. Have a go with nuclear power. Yes, it's hugely more complex than solar, but it's also hugely cheaper in resources. Once you have the hang of it, massive solar fields become a thing of the past (at least until your factory is so huge you start worrying about UPS).
   
6. The factory grows.
   
7. No mods are essential. I have played for mumble-mumble thousand hours without ever using a single one, though I will probably try one of the popular overhaul mods at some point. I do recommend trying a marathon game though; the slower science gives quite a different feel to the game.
   
8. The factory grows.

1. Thank you ever so much, I'm a creative more than a systematic thinker so this was a stretch for me and I have no doubt I had tonnes of inefficiencies, but it was fun!
2. and yours brother, and yours
3. So I have learned haha
4. blessed art we, to have factory
5. I didn't see any uranium at all on my map, either a testament to the need for more radars or unfavourable map generation
6. Long may it continue
7. What's a marathon game?
8. and we grow with it...or something

[Fel]

https://mods.factorio.com/
This is where you go for mods (to download them you can do it ingame but the website version is better for informations about the mods).

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/AfraidOfTheDark
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/GDIW

The later adds recipes with different configurations for the input and output slots, for those times where you would want to put water where the raw oil input is and vice-versa for example.


Lazy bastard is a great achievement to try because it teaches you about automation of everything instead of having to wait for your character to craft inserters and such.
It takes a bit to get used to it but it's definitely something you want to do at least once.

[Khagan]

Originally posted by NotSoObvious:

7. What's a marathon game?

A start-up option that greatly increases the cost of research, and also makes some basic recipes (e.g. green circuits) more expensive.

BTW, I don't recommend using other people's blueprints, at least until you have much more of your own experience. By all means look at them for inspiration, and do build up a collection of your own blueprints to streamline parts of the game. But figuring out how to do things for yourself is a major part of the game.

I'll second the suggestion that others have made to try a lazy bastard run.

[knighttemplar1960]

Try for achievements. You'll learn a lot from a lazy bastage run.

[Nico]

My suggestions would be either to focus on gettign a huge megabase (if that is something you like, I don't), try to do an or several achievement runs to try to get them all (be aware that this won't allow any mods), or, the last option, you use full overhaul mods to play completely different games compared to vanilla factorio.

My favorite thing so far in Factorio was to try out all the different full overhaul mods, since, there are many of them and most of them are much bigger than Vanilla. For starting out you could go with Krastorio 2, which is quite close to Vanilla, or Industrial Revolution 3 is also not too bad.

If you want more complex runs, bob&angel is really complex and fun. And if you want a really long run you can also try out Space Exploration. Which btw is also compatible with Krastorio 2 in case you want the super long run to also be more complex. Or you could also try out Nullius, which also provides a unique experience (also without enemies)

And in case you really dislike enemies attacking you but like enemies in general and also (Minecraft's) Skyblock challenge I can recommend Seablock. It's based on bob&angel, so it's similarly complex, but you start on a small island and everywhere is water except for a few island full of worms that attack you if you get close. And you need to gather ores with water and slowly expand your island with landfill.

But ofc there are also many smaller QoL or minor feature mods that could really help you. One really popular mod is squeak through. Also, if you decide to play some more complex full overhaul mods I would also recommend the helmod mod, since it's a huge help in figuring out how to actually craft anything, since the possible recipe chains are very complex and sometimes also allow many alternatives. And well, there are so many possibly interesting small mods that it would be difficult to really name them all, maybe just look through the full list on your own and take what you want.

[RiO]

Originally posted by Khaylain:

I believe that in general you end up needing a lot more copper than iron later in the game, which may explain why you felt you were always low on copper.

Yup. There's a tipping point once red circuits and low density structures start getting involved where all of a sudden you switch from needing 1.5~1.75x as much iron as copper, to needing ~2x as much copper as iron.

If you want to have a smooth switch-over you need to have the copper infrastructure already prepared for that. Which, if I had to boil it down into a suggestion:

Don't just build big. Anticipate big. And plan big.


For that same reason, my second suggestion would be:

Don't turn your existing factory into a mega base.
Treat it like a playground. Try out new designs. Try out new ideas.
Figure out ratios.
You have access to the full tech tree. So figure out builds that can scale from early tech to late tech and be easily modified for it. etc. etc.

Then take all of that newly acquired knowledge. And start over.

There's an adage from software engineering that applies here:
"Every piece of software should be built twice. The first time, to learn how to build it. The second time, to actually build it."

Originally posted by Khaylain:

I don't know how much you did with trains, but learning to use the Train Limit parts of trains is massive.

Seconded. Train limits and a request-demand automated distributed train system, is basically the only way to transition to mega-base scale.

Originally posted by NotSoObvious:

Mods you guys consider essential either for 1-time experiences or QoL.

QoL

• Squeak through[mods.factorio.com]
  Reduces entity bounding boxes to allow the player to ... squeak through. You can pass between buildings and over pipes and walk through forest unhindered.
  
• VehicleSnap[mods.factorio.com]
  Lines out your car to a predefined set of angles. Most useful to align perfectly to the four cardinal directions and prevent driving off a road and into a powerpole.
  
• Rate Calculator[mods.factorio.com]
  For impromptu overview of production:consumption ratios on already placed production lines.
  
• Helmod[mods.factorio.com] or Factory Planner[mods.factorio.com]
  To plan out to-ratio production line builds in advance.
  
• Safe Waterfill[mods.factorio.com]
  One of the many waterfill mods available that allow you to place bodies of water where you need them for pumps. (Because nobody likes training around water. Trust me on that.) This one is different in that it has actually competent recipes that don't exactly hand it out 'for free'. It's on the same level as landfill. Also, it's by the author of the Nullius total conversion mod - and is explicitly compatible with it.
  (Nullius up-ends the entire pool of ingredients and recipes, so a lot of mods need to have their recipes explicitly remapped to logical equivalents for Nullius.)

One-time or optional additive experiences

• Transport Drones[mods.factorio.com]
  Build a road network to distribute items between production lines with trucks.
  (Caution: the trucks move around via the biter AI. In large numbers this hits hard on your UPS. Not recommended for megabase scale.)
  
• Cargo Ships[mods.factorio.com]
  Adds container and tanker vessel based transport over water, along buoy lines. Best described as "trains on water" I think.
  
• Bob's Adjustable Inserters[mods.factorio.com]
  Inserters you can manually configure to drop on any tile within a given radius (which is expanded through tech research) and on any of the two belt lanes.
  Considered a cheat by some; but is very nice with ingredient heavy total converison mods and a damn near requirement for some.
  
• Advanced Fluid Handling[mods.factorio.com]
  Branching and angling your pipes underground. Very nice for compact builds.
  Adds configurable overflow and top-off valves to control fluid flow.
  Also considered somewhat cheat-like; but again - close to required for fluid-heavy recipes in some total conversion mods.

Total conversions - aka 'and now for something totally different'

• Krastorio 2[mods.factorio.com]
  Second incarnation of the starter-friendly of the total conversions. Adds lots of +1 tech goodies. A few interesting new combat mechanics. Pollution scrubbing. More recipes based around handling gasses and fluids.
  
• Nullius[mods.factorio.com]
  For more advanced players. Heavily invests in turning recipes from isolated production lines into a web, with all manner of conversions sideways and back down to raw materials. Capitalizes on that by introducing a lot of byproducts to handle, either by shaping them into something that can be used elsewhere; or by shaping them into something that can be safely voided in either a chimney or an outfall.
  Hamstrings you on means of power production; and for the first half of the game requires you to build your own accumulators based on its priority system of backup, mainline, and priority turbine power along with mainline and 'surge' factory buildings - the latter of which only kicks in when surplus power is available.
  
• Industrial Revolution 3[mods.factorio.com]
  Latest incarnation of Industrial Revolution. A series of mods centered on iterative refinement of products (The more steps you take; the better your end-yield) and heavily features processes like crushing; washing; alloying; casting; etc.
  Divides the game play into technology 'eras'.
  Worth a play through for the 'steam era' alone - as it has you run everything, inserters included, on steam power transported via special steam pipes.
  
• Space Exploration[mods.factorio.com]
  Undeniably; the most polished of total conversions. Though the way its author tries to funnel you towards a certain styles of play is ... somewhat abrasive, let's say.
  Takes Factorio and turns it intergalactic. You'll build a delivery network of cargo and travel rockets and settle multiple worlds; all of which have different qualities to them wrt available resources; terrain variance; etc. You'll also build space platforms in orbits; in asteroid belts and in asteroid fields. Space Exploration requires a lot of patience and a lot of gut feel for planning ahead. It is not friendly on mistakes that can be corrected in that sense. And by word of its own author: it is written to expect that certain people will irrecoverably fail; or never even grow to be capable to finish it.

[Big [REDACTED] Marty]

the mod better inserters is amazing, so many possibilities for optimization now possible

[NotSoObvious]

Originally posted by RiO:

Originally posted by Khaylain:

I believe that in general you end up needing a lot more copper than iron later in the game, which may explain why you felt you were always low on copper.

Yup. There's a tipping point once red circuits and low density structures start getting involved where all of a sudden you switch from needing 1.5~1.75x as much iron as copper, to needing ~2x as much copper as iron.

If you want to have a smooth switch-over you need to have the copper infrastructure already prepared for that. Which, if I had to boil it down into a suggestion:

Don't just build big. Anticipate big. And plan big.


For that same reason, my second suggestion would be:

Don't turn your existing factory into a mega base.
Treat it like a playground. Try out new designs. Try out new ideas.
Figure out ratios.
You have access to the full tech tree. So figure out builds that can scale from early tech to late tech and be easily modified for it. etc. etc.

Then take all of that newly acquired knowledge. And start over.

There's an adage from software engineering that applies here:
"Every piece of software should be built twice. The first time, to learn how to build it. The second time, to actually build it."

Originally posted by Khaylain:

I don't know how much you did with trains, but learning to use the Train Limit parts of trains is massive.

Seconded. Train limits and a request-demand automated distributed train system, is basically the only way to transition to mega-base scale.

Originally posted by NotSoObvious:

Mods you guys consider essential either for 1-time experiences or QoL.

QoL

• Squeak through[mods.factorio.com]
  Reduces entity bounding boxes to allow the player to ... squeak through. You can pass between buildings and over pipes and walk through forest unhindered.
  
• VehicleSnap[mods.factorio.com]
  Lines out your car to a predefined set of angles. Most useful to align perfectly to the four cardinal directions and prevent driving off a road and into a powerpole.
  
• Rate Calculator[mods.factorio.com]
  For impromptu overview of production:consumption ratios on already placed production lines.
  
• Helmod[mods.factorio.com] or Factory Planner[mods.factorio.com]
  To plan out to-ratio production line builds in advance.
  
• Safe Waterfill[mods.factorio.com]
  One of the many waterfill mods available that allow you to place bodies of water where you need them for pumps. (Because nobody likes training around water. Trust me on that.) This one is different in that it has actually competent recipes that don't exactly hand it out 'for free'. It's on the same level as landfill. Also, it's by the author of the Nullius total conversion mod - and is explicitly compatible with it.
  (Nullius up-ends the entire pool of ingredients and recipes, so a lot of mods need to have their recipes explicitly remapped to logical equivalents for Nullius.)

One-time or optional additive experiences

• Transport Drones[mods.factorio.com]
  Build a road network to distribute items between production lines with trucks.
  (Caution: the trucks move around via the biter AI. In large numbers this hits hard on your UPS. Not recommended for megabase scale.)
  
• Cargo Ships[mods.factorio.com]
  Adds container and tanker vessel based transport over water, along buoy lines. Best described as "trains on water" I think.
  
• Bob's Adjustable Inserters[mods.factorio.com]
  Inserters you can manually configure to drop on any tile within a given radius (which is expanded through tech research) and on any of the two belt lanes.
  Considered a cheat by some; but is very nice with ingredient heavy total converison mods and a damn near requirement for some.
  
• Advanced Fluid Handling[mods.factorio.com]
  Branching and angling your pipes underground. Very nice for compact builds.
  Adds configurable overflow and top-off valves to control fluid flow.
  Also considered somewhat cheat-like; but again - close to required for fluid-heavy recipes in some total conversion mods.

Total conversions - aka 'and now for something totally different'

• Krastorio 2[mods.factorio.com]
  Second incarnation of the starter-friendly of the total conversions. Adds lots of +1 tech goodies. A few interesting new combat mechanics. Pollution scrubbing. More recipes based around handling gasses and fluids.
  
• Nullius[mods.factorio.com]
  For more advanced players. Heavily invests in turning recipes from isolated production lines into a web, with all manner of conversions sideways and back down to raw materials. Capitalizes on that by introducing a lot of byproducts to handle, either by shaping them into something that can be used elsewhere; or by shaping them into something that can be safely voided in either a chimney or an outfall.
  Hamstrings you on means of power production; and for the first half of the game requires you to build your own accumulators based on its priority system of backup, mainline, and priority turbine power along with mainline and 'surge' factory buildings - the latter of which only kicks in when surplus power is available.
  
• Industrial Revolution 3[mods.factorio.com]
  Latest incarnation of Industrial Revolution. A series of mods centered on iterative refinement of products (The more steps you take; the better your end-yield) and heavily features processes like crushing; washing; alloying; casting; etc.
  Divides the game play into technology 'eras'.
  Worth a play through for the 'steam era' alone - as it has you run everything, inserters included, on steam power transported via special steam pipes.
  
• Space Exploration[mods.factorio.com]
  Undeniably; the most polished of total conversions. Though the way its author tries to funnel you towards a certain styles of play is ... somewhat abrasive, let's say.
  Takes Factorio and turns it intergalactic. You'll build a delivery network of cargo and travel rockets and settle multiple worlds; all of which have different qualities to them wrt available resources; terrain variance; etc. You'll also build space platforms in orbits; in asteroid belts and in asteroid fields. Space Exploration requires a lot of patience and a lot of gut feel for planning ahead. It is not friendly on mistakes that can be corrected in that sense. And by word of its own author: it is written to expect that certain people will irrecoverably fail; or never even grow to be capable to finish it.

This is so much advice, and much to consider, thank you for the megapost and all the links, I have much to ponder it seems. Better inserters and pipe mechanics might sound cheaty but I think are definitely in the spirit of the game, just another layer of depth.

[Nhika]

YOU LAUNCHED A ROCKET?
I've never. XD

[brian_va]

I'll second, or maybe third I'm not sure, the suggestion to not look at community blueprints, at least not for a while. Once you see the "best" smelting array or circuit factory, its hard to use anything else.