How tedious is it to expand factories?

[officer]

Let's say you were changing around orientation of your conveyors to accommodate for a new module (hardly played the game, please forgive my caveman speak), how difficult would reorganization be? Would there be any at all?

[Fenix]

you will probably tear down your factory a lot.
However you can minimize it, with manifolds and remember you can always go up.
This is a basic manifold
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3351044926
I can just expand out, adding more smelters, and just upgrading belts and miners

[Ovrlord Etna]

numbers change so much in later teirs that It is usually just best to rebuild it all. Your outputs go up 10x starting numbers and the materials are needed for 5+ different items to be combined halfway across the world.

[Gal Kraft]

In my case, I restarted once I hit a threshold in the game, which required an expansion in my factory I wasn't expecting. Could have just as easily made the changes, but it's kind of fun for me to restart and build a little smarter next time, and get a little further. So yes, it's tedious enough to provoke that behavior at least for people like me.

As you expand in the game, you're also expanding inventory. So the game progression runs parallel with research progression, which eases some of the tedium. Smart splitters come into play for easier belt configurations. Underclocking comes into play for unique setups with machines going into other machines that would otherwise be unbalanced. Blueprints (with a limited capacity) come into play to help with megafactory setups requiring much repetition.

So, rebuilding is all but imminent. Best not to think too hard on it at the start. The tools to rebuild are quite nice though. Even if you disassemble something that you don't have the space in your inventory for, it leaves a free crate with the stuff in it. And the world is vast, so you can just start up an entirely new factory (or module) while leaving the old one where it is.

Hope that resembled some sort of answer for you.

EDIT: yeah basically just what they said ^

[Dirtyshadow]

It's a teardown if it's a recipe change or it's just a huge scale it's better to scratch build.

But if you planned your manifold you could use blue prints to add more machines to a line.

[Bobucles]

For the early few setups, feel free to tear them down. Later in the game when you get mastery over more map space, just keep the old factory going. Build a new one elsewhere.

[Torgonius]

Really depends on how well you planned ahead. I learned to just make mine expandable to the max output of the node. It's just a matter of extending the manifold, or just building a 2nd or 3rd floor.

[ShelLuser]

Originally posted by officer:

Let's say you were changing around orientation of your conveyors to accommodate for a new module (hardly played the game, please forgive my caveman speak), how difficult would reorganization be?

Heavily depends on the way you build and what you planned during building. Also what you want to do.

When I started my factory I focussed on a central storage area where everything had to be kept and everything I did after that was fully focussed on that specific area. However, I kept my copper section separate so I applied the same strategy there, and then later almost did the same for my steel production but eventually combined that with my copper section.

So expanding... well, for me that meant dragging conveyors around to check if I could split some feeds and feed 'm into new devices. But there's more....

Some expansions have to be made "elsewhere" (most likely). My starting base is in the grassy fields, but there's little coal and no oil there. So my oil processing plant is almost on the other side of the map. That in itself is also an expansion, but not one which directly affects my main base.

Yet that even opens up other possibilities. Because now that I'm on the other side of the map, I'm also close to yet another collection of iron & copper nodes... nodes which can also be used to expand on the overal production lines even more..

Right now I'm >< close to done building a train line between my oil / plastic plant, my aluminum plant and of course my main base. Lots of expansions but none of which directly affect my base.

... maybe apart from building a main train station and of course a few drone stations as well.

So it heavily depends.

As for my main base... I planned some of it out, left a bit of space, but also rebuild a few sections.

[Lil brekky]

Ranges from quite to extremely tedious

[Kage Goomba]

If you have to ask....you already know the answer....get used to tedium.

Is it required? No.

Depends entirely on what you want to do and how to do it.

Some don't tear down their initial factories - and expand elsewhere - some completely tear them down - some build in a way that allows them to minimize tear downs.

I personally maximize each-and-every-node.

Cause I don't want to expand needlessly.
That means rebuilding at times.

[The Big Brzezinski]

It's tedious to the point that I never do it if I can help it. Logistics are easy once you have trains, and there are always more nodes you can start new production lines from.

[Twelvefield]

Yes, by all the gods above and below,

IT
IS
TEDIOUS

Either you are smart and groove on figuring out how to min/max a completely fictional supply chain (but not motivated enough to say, go out and do this as a volunteer or paid employee in the real world and help the planet), or else you brute-force your solution.

[PsYcHo_O]

There is no need to tear down any factory except for personal reasons. It can be quite annoying to do but there are a few things that help:

• If you build your factory mainly with blueprints it's much easier to do because you can remove whole blueprints.
  
• You can also quickly remove up to 50 pieces at once, but this is only useful if you really want to remove everything.
  
• You can also lock the removal tool to a specific part to only remove those (e.g. aim at a splitter, lock it to splitters and mass remove only splitters).

[kLuns]

Keep room for a splitter at the miner. Send the original amount into the old factory and use the rest for a new one on top.

[EAX]

Be smart, build wide and build high, leave space every now and then between your machines and conveyors.
Every new tech that unlocks new machines should be planted further away with lots of space in between or on another floor.

After around ~20-25ish hours of playtime i had to reorganize shortly after coalpowerplants and it took me ~7 hours to do so, when ive found new materials to use and unlocked more things to do.

[Flash✪Gordon]

Originally posted by The Big Brzezinski:

It's tedious to the point that I never do it if I can help it. Logistics are easy once you have trains, and there are always more nodes you can start new production lines from.

Originally posted by Twelvefield:

Yes, by all the gods above and below,
IT
IS
TEDIOUS

Extreme tedious and demotivating. The latter is the more important for me.

There is plenty of space and absolutely no shortage of nodes. Therefore never rebuild! Just add new (modernized) factories at fresh nodes. The old factory will still contribute , never touch a running machine!

The only case I could imagine to tear down an old factory is when I just *plaster* blueprints where the old factory has been. Usuallay that involves one blueprint with smelters, one blueprint with constructors, (one blueprint with assemblers), ...

One blueprint - three storeys high - is usually enough for each of the processing steps.

===========================================================
Tl;dr:
Default modus operandi: Build new factories at new nodes.
Never rebuild, expand. Go a storey higher if there is no space. If you are in an extreme restricted area and you have your blueprints ready, then you might - if you feel like it - plaster your new blueprints. That is done extreme fast. Hence I dont call it rebuilding. But again: There is so much empty space with so many unused nodes. Nobody *needs* to tear down an old factory.
===========================================================


A factory is like your baby. You created it with a lot of heartblood. It's heartbreaking to tear it down. Hence better don't do it. Learn planning enough empty space around your factories to easily expand them at a later time. Anticipate that you already own the fastest belt. That will tell you the number of machines you need if you wanna max out production. Or maybe you are pragmatic and you don't need the maximum?


==> Good example of expand, don't rebuild:

Originally posted by kLuns:

Keep room for a splitter at the miner. Send the original amount into the old factory and use the rest for a new one on top.