Early game mall

[Hurkyl]

One feature I've not seen in other mall designs is optimization for browsing. Usually one has to run through a fair amount of mall to get to the chests containing the items one is interested in. When you have logistic bots this becomes a non-issue since the bots will collect the items for you. But what about in the early game?

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2794632267

This is a design I like for my early malls: it's designed to deposit items in a row of chests right up against the walkway I use to move around my starter base. Using underground belts as shown, it's not too hard to fashion groups of three items that can be produced in a line and transported up front. And if desired you can spaghetti other items through as well for easy collection, such as the chests for red and blue circuits appearing in the screenshot.

The first three rows -- the belt trio, the inserter trio, and the assembler/miner trio (along with a couple gear assemblers not depicted) -- are usually the first semi-permanent structures I build in a starter base after starting my smelter columns and green chip factories.

I don't usually leave space for a passenger train station; that was a lucky feature of the current base I'm starting.

I'm not too concerned with my starter mall being extensible or having a complete catalog since I usually plan on my starter base being relatively small -- the purpose of this design is mainly just to facilitate construction of my starter base and the materials to start building elsewhere once I have an idea for longer-term structures.

[knighttemplar1960]

That's a good idea. I've always built my starter base in the order that I researched it.

[THE kilroy]

Nice lookin. Very organized.
I prefer the cheaper faster uglier versions for earlygame cause resources and time are limited but i am also that guy who enjoys spagetti(its not a requirement, im just down with it)

[DsnowMan]

Good timing. I'm going for the lazy bastard achievement and I needed a good mall design. I borrowed the design from the first row and ran with it

[Hurkyl]

Originally posted by knighttemplar1960:

That's a good idea. I've always built my starter base in the order that I researched it.

I do too, sort of.

The first three rows are mostly fixed because I still have immediate need for most of those items when I start the mall, and it's really convenient to do belts and inserters in those groups. (the spot for the assembler 2 maker is reserved after being unhappy dealing with it the first few times I started using this pattern)

However, all subsequent groups of three are plopped down as I feel a need to start mass producing more types of items. I do try to do a little bit of planning so that adjacent rows can share a feed, but ultimately they can be whatever I want to add at the time, so long as I have enough space to keep running belts behind the mall and/or tap a nearby bus.

[rikkitikki]

Someone once challenged me to make a user friendly mall and this is what I came up with. Since then I have come to enjoy mall design as a central part of the game, though most of you will probably find it horrifying. I liken it to a classy hotel in Jakarta or Taipei-- clean and organized inside, chaos and dystopia outside lol.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2795999213