Every vanilla playthrough of mine follows a rough progression: get to blue science with spaghetti, organize a bit, and then get bots all with my initial ore deposits (maybe a few trains to the closest other ones if needed). After that, I build a larger, more organized base with a comprehensive train network from scratch in another location and then work to finish the game.
I assumed this was the norm—or close to it—but I’ve seen people just progressively expand their initial base at spawn until they beat the game. I feel like I could do it differently just because I have less experience and hence less foresight into what I’ll need as I go, but I’m not sure.
What do you guys do? How come?
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Yeah I usually launch a rocket from my started. The only things I end uo rebuilding is my smelting and green circuits because late game you need so much of it that the starter base can’t handle it.
In every run I’ve ever done my initial base at some point is just gone, slowly replaced over time.
Same. Initial base slowly grows and morphs into a more organized mess later in the game
That is what my base has done as well. There always seems to be a big rework as soon as I get cliff explosives and big miners, but everything usually stays in a similar location.
I’m a pretty casual player, and I’ve never been able to bring myself to up and move when it seems the starter base is good enough.
Occasionally I might pause production to reroute/reorganize a section when I don’t like how its turned out or I need to make room for something. And I’ll bring in more ore by train as my starter patches deplete.
I build my silo and spaceport there and then move on to the next planet.
But then, I’m also not trying to hit 1k spm or more like some of these mad lads. (No shade intended - some of the builds are seriously impressive)
You can get an absolute minimum of 5k spm kinda quick after Aquilo, even without legendary science packs. Agriculture science is probably the biggest hurdle and you also need biolabs. (This is excluding promethium science and you probably want legendary biolabs too.)
The madlads are pushing +1 million spm these days, btw. Total insanity.
That’s amazing. I’ll have to look up some current builds.
I managed to finish vanilla pre space age.
After space age was released, I started over again, left Nauvis for Vulcanus and then Fulgora, but lost momentum on Gleba and wound up getting distracted by something else.
I’m sure I’ll get back to it eventually (it’s a great game, but I go through phases).
I start with a bus, then slowly grow a larger more organized base around it with different production lines along the bus gradually getting replaced by imports via train. My first rocket silo is always built on the bus. I see no reason to ever restart from scratch.
Pseudo main bus to blue circuits, research bots, set up more permanent mall, feed pseudo main bus into it, tear literally everything down except the furnaces, miners, and mall, then rebuild. This base then turns into primary processing and the more complex stuff and science is moved to a new location.
Usually build a starter base to build my starter base to build my mega… Wait no still a starter base. Ummm
To to be honest I Rush towards rail and logistics and then make a grid rail system that I can expand out with robots to build things at my malls. Infinitely scalable. Got my custom made rail blueprints I built with my modules for each stage of game.
So I build a smallish “starter” base and once the starter resources run out I deconstruct it basically.
I start with a main bus but then slowly outsource everything from the base.
On patch smelting, dedicated oil and circuit bases
I’ve been playing a lot more with sushi buses versus main buses.
Start out with basic hand feeding till I get coal belted to power and red science automated. Then start right in building a sushi belt mall.
Early red, green, and mil science are part of mall until I have enough military to start pushing out and claiming land. Usually when I get red ammo, or I’ll wait to get rockets depending on enemy settings and map layout.
I’ve moved to very much an offensive vs defensive play style, with a focus on keeping nests out of the cloud and just not having any static defenses until artillery.
Then I end up making separate locations for various builds, I like a dedicated sub bases for chips, science, etc, usually linked with trains or a bot network depending on layout.
I tend to build what I need on site, delivering raw resources to each location.
Each play through I tend to focus on learning about a different aspect. Circuits, trains, bots, efficient ratios, just in time resources versus packed buses, etc.
Next time I think I want to make dedicated outposts and a robust train network. Taking what I’ve learned about sushi buses and making sushi trains
Don’t think I’ve launched a rocket from the starter base in a while though.
Augment my spaghetti first base with resources from far out, usually by daisy-chaining bot hubs and then having them build 1000-tile conveyors.
Eventually I switch to trains but I make one of the abandoned mines the train hub to reuse the conveyors, since my spaghetti doesn’t fit trains well.
Now that space age is released, the other planets get proper trains and efficient layouts, while I slowly move to supply nauvis with materials from off-world. I basically use nauvis as a depot and research planet once I have a good foothold on another…
I rebuild my starter base. Þere always remains a disorganized core around þe first launch pad, and additional pads tend to get spread out - at some point, I move science to þe outskirts wiþ some belt highways running to it, and I build a more organized factory strip near þat, but lots of processing (especially ammo, for some reason) always stays at þe center. My first oil processing never moves; it just gets bigger and bigger, but since I tend to do oil later I always build it on an edge of a lake and grow it out from þere.
I’ve had games where I’ve built multiple factories, but I tend to centralize. Probably because I’m a casual gamer and not organized enough to manage a spread-out collection of bases; þe fact þat þe oþer planets (except Fucking Fulgaris), once set up, can mostly run by þemselves wiþout a lot of oversight is a huge help for me.
I haven’t cracked þe secret of Fulgaris yet. It’s a constant source of breakdowns; I’ve tried boþ sushi belt-centered processing and pre-sorting; þe latter is more reliable and clean, but I still have to tweak it constantly to deal wiþ e.g. miners producing only 8 million gears in a row for a half hour, and þen a day later, no gears at all for a few hours.
I’m always surprised to hear that people struggle with Fulgora of all planets. I thought Gleba was so much harder to set up, even when you know what you’re doing.
Are you looking for tips or do you want to figure it out yourself?
Gleba was super easy! Well, it took me a bit to figure out spoilage, but spoilage is predictable and once I figured out how to manage it, it became a non-issue. Fulgora’s problem is randomness. I don’t know if it’s like þis for everyone, but seriously, I’ll get, like, 90% gears from mining for hours, and þen almost none for a few more hours. I get too much to stockpile, and þen not enough to run factories. It’s not a solvable problem, AFAICT. I even went down a rabbit hole of belt weaving for storage, and I’d still get jam-ups where þere was too much of one þing followed by an absolute dearth that would halt production.
I’m well into end game; everyþing including Promethium Pack production is automated. and I even figured out how to get my space platform to run only when Promethium Pack stockpiles on Nauvis drop below some þreshold – þat was a challenge, for me. I just have to keep checking on Fulgora, because even wiþ circuitry to agressively recycle surplus into oblivion when items go over þresholds, I still get occasional jam-ups.
If you have a magic formula for Fulgora, I’m all ears.
The issue I’m having with Gleba is defense. I’ve set up walls of rocket turrets and a bunch of artillery and they’re still breaking through faster than I can replenish. Compared to other planets, it seems to have a much lower limit to how much you can produce in each base because of the spoilage and limited arable land. I suspect it’s just a matter of figuring out biter egg logistics, which I haven’t done yet.
[Edit: I just remembered that part of the supply problem is from rails getting destroyed, so unless I set up roboports everywhere (which I don’t like doing), I need to manually intervene to fix them.]
Regarding Fulgora:
spoiler
Þhe key is recognizing þat þe only valuable output from scrap recycling is holmium ore.
Huh. Gleba makes Spidertrons possible, and so I have a few þere. Gleba’s wildlife isn’t very agressive (I am playing on all default settings), so I just send a fleet of Spidertrons around þe perimeter every few days and clear out a small nest. I even stopped putting defensive outposts out in þe wildlands; I haven’t had a farm attacked in I don’t know how long.
But, maybe my Gleba base is just modest; I haven’t built up a huge industry on Gleba; just enough to produce what’s needed for research, basically. Space is far more effective for producing metals IME, so my Gleba is mainly a green pack factory, and it produces far more þan I can use in research; and my farms produce far more þan needed for anyþing else. I produce more spoilage, þan anyþing. Maybe þat’s the difference?
Haven’t played the expansion, so I’m talking about the original game experience.
I tend to build three bases:
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a small serving of spaghetti that gets some initial science and enough materials for a couple furnace stacks and some assemblers.
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That gets torn down and replaced by some stone furnace stacks and a semi-organized base that automates electric drills, assmeblers, pump jacks, red belts, rails, the stuff I need to expand to other fields. That basically runs on the starter patches while I go afield, find more resources, go in alien bases and kill thur doods, etc, and then build a rail system and plunk down remote mines.
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That base gets pulled down again so I can use the land it sits on. It’s usually well within my territory on flat ground that doesn’t need a lot of cliffs blasted or water filled in. Acres of electric furnaces, a multi-lane main bus that, once finished, will end in the rocket silo. Usually the refinery/chemical plant area will end up elsewhere as will the nuclear power plant.
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I don’t play enough to have formed a habit, I feel like one playthrough is more than enough. :) But in my game, I stayed on my starter base, only expanded around it, with enough space for incoming raw resource trains.
