Applying upgrades

[the.angelhunter]

When I have two objects together (See: https://imgur.com/a/wxqoM8d ), I can easily place a conveyor belt between them. But when upgrading the belts, these are near impossible to target. Is there a secret to this, or is it easier to just tear it down and rebuild.

[umop-apisdn]

Advice: Build factories with a little more space between buildings; there's no good reason to cram everything so tightly together.

Given that you've already built too closely, your options are now more limited.

[Vegas Doc]

I'm surprised with how you ended up with this mess, you know that if you want to upgrade belts/lifts, just select the upgrade from the menu (Q) logistics, then point your build gun at the old belts, it will turn blue if you have enough resources for the upgrade, red if not, and then put the old parts into your inventory. You don't have to dismantle (F) and then assemble with the new belts/lifts with a two-step process, just one quick clean blast with the build gun.

What is kind of frustrating is when you upgrade the belts, you get back the parts from the old belt which fills up your inventory fast, I would hate to lose those parts (i.e. iron plates when you upgrade to Mk2 using reinforced iron plates, or reinforced iron plates when you upgrade to Mk 3 with steel beams etc. because sometimes they go into crates if your inventory fills up, which could be hard to recover if you are building tall stacks of conveyors, or high up on a pillar, mountain top, arches etc. thank you Coffee Stain for the ladder in the Awesome shop to get to those crates.

But... as Umop-apsidn said, you really need more space between your buildings and connections, it's a rookie mistake, and it has been said that when you are designing an assembly line, it's highly likely that you're going to need about 2 times as much foundation space than you thought that you would, that's why ADA encourages you to build vertically instead. It's not uncommon to tear down the whole assemble line and put in the new belts, buildings, truck stops, additional floors etc, so this mistake really didn't cost you anything, it was a learning experience that you've shown to other players what happens when you try to cram a whole lot of something into a small space, the only good reason for that is lack of concrete and iron plates for the foundations you need, which can happen in the early game, if you use them, and you have to use foundations, ramps, lifts etc., if you are building vertically to save space in constricted areas due to the geological obstacles depending on which zone you're building in.

Good Job, good question, good example of the problems caused if you try to condense the area your factory is constructed in, it's not like shrinking a circuit diagram blueprint into an IC chip or something, leave lots of room for expansion, and be prepared to tear down the whole "old assembly" when you get improvements or upgrades. Happy Pioneering!

[umop-apisdn]

Originally posted by Vegas Doc:

I'm surprised with how you ended up with this mess, you know that if you want to upgrade belts/lifts, just select the upgrade from the menu (Q) logistics, then point your build gun at the old belts, it will turn blue if you have enough resources for the upgrade, red if not, and then put the old parts into your inventory. You don't have to dismantle (F) and then assemble with the new belts/lifts with a two-step process, just one quick clean blast with the build gun.

It appears to me that you didn't look at the provided screenshot, Doc; the space the belt is in will require dismantling the equipment on one side or the other in order to access it.

In this particular instance, dismantling and rebuilding is likely the only solution. Planning ahead can prevent this issue in the future... perhaps this would be a good time to adjust the building strategy?

As for building vertically, I'll point out that conveyor lifts can snap directly to buildings; I'll leave it to the reader's imagination to determine whether that information will be useful in subsequent builds.

[the.angelhunter]

Originally posted by umop-apisdn:

Advice: Build factories with a little more space between buildings; there's no good reason to cram everything so tightly together.

Given that you've already built too closely, your options are now more limited.

Alright, leave more space it is then. I leave plenty of spaces around the production lines, for walking and adding more production lines. But I try to keep the spaces in-line as close as possible. Cause I won't be adding machines directly in-line at that point, and having long belts there would just be a waste of materials and space. I would even directly snap the splitters and mergers directly to the machines if I could. And thought the option shown in the screenshot was a valid option cause I could place the first belt, but then upgrading was a hassle.

@Vegas Doc, thanks for the explanation. I did know about the upgrade procedure, it was just that targeting the old belt didn't work due to lack of line of sight.

[Vectorspace]

If you can see the belt then *usually* you can target it to upgrade, even when it's as cramped as that. Try different angles, including above and below.
But sometimes, the only way to upgrade is to dismantle the splitter/merger/machine

[kLuns]

I sometimes place a conveyor lift in front of a building to prevent this. Then I build the next thing and remove the lift. Or in some manifolds it can be crammed and never needs to be updated because the sidebelts won't increase in flow when the factory grows by adding buildings and not increasing clock speed.

Don't cram if you want to expand by increasing clock speed in stead of buildings. Or do the math first.