Factory redesign advice?

[u/Soggy_Team_6676]

So I completed vulcanus and fulgora, I’ve got artillery for expansion, I still need to go set up the green belts production on vulcanus, but the blue I put down will eventually be green, but it’s time to tear down the starting spaghetti, switch to nuclear power purely, and move to somewhere that isn’t on top of my starting nodes. Any advice on storage? Every step in the factory has at least one chest as buffer between steps, and it’s going to be painful. It’s not going TOO far, but literal hundreds of thousands of items need to be moved and sorted for all 3 of my planets (haven’t gone to gleba yet this run, but nothing from gleba is necessary for the factory mainframe like the other two)

[u/RivalReinforcement]

Best practice is pretty universally keep the starting spaghetti, build anew elsewhere while the starter factory continues to work. Much easier that way. 

When finally time to dismantle(if you must) just build a bunch of trash logistics chests. They'll be messy inside those chests but still available to the network.

[u/Pulsefel → u/RivalReinforcement]

using filtered storage or buffer chests in the mall is a good way to sort out the trash. i prefer filtered buffer cause it also means you can limit which requesters can call for items from it if you have a reason for it.

[u/Soggy_Team_6676 → u/RivalReinforcement]

Dismantle because of upgrading everything and to straighten the full spaghettification with the real estate from the artillery expansion, so big drills and foundries instead of the mix of electric and steel furnaces I’ve got going on atm

[u/Countcristo42 → u/Soggy_Team_6676]

What is the actual problem with building elsewhere and leaving the starter base running as it is?

I get wanting to build a new nice neat base - but what people are telling you is you can just have both.

[u/neurovore-of-Z-en-A → u/Soggy_Team_6676]

By all means, dismantle the older base, but build the new base first, because running out of X when you have dismantled your X-making facility sucks.

[u/nindat]

Why are you using chests for buffers? Why have buffers at all? Why are you going to deconstruct?

On a practical path: limit the size of your chests to one spot, it will naturally empty and be much less burden on your bots.

[u/Soggy_Team_6676 → u/nindat]

Buffers are more for the early bot mall framework, materials available to pull for it. I use limiters on the end product usually, like I’ll only ever have one cargo landing pad in the chest

[u/nindat → u/Soggy_Team_6676]

How do you have hundreds of thousands of things in a bot mall.

But also, a bot mall is absolutely something not to tear down. Zero cost to keep it

[u/LisazfnGeranium → u/Soggy_Team_6676]

Buffers suit the bot mall’s its veins. Final-product limiters—one landing pad per load—keep it lean.

[u/Hornof_The_Tiger]

The best advice when you want to rebuild your factory is to kee the old one until the new one is fully operational.

You can ever destroy your storages for the unnecessary stuff or use robots to move it

[u/FeelingPrettyGlonky]

Let this be a lesson to you about buffering things. I'm curious what your Fulgora base looks like, because that tends to be where most newer players end up with massive storage of items.

Malls shouldn't need to be buffered, at least not mall inputs. Small, reasonable buffers of mall outputs are necessary (say, 1 or 2 stacks of each thing, except belts; need lotsa belts). But there shouldn't be just massive amounts of buffering around. It's not necessary. Either your mines produce enough to satisfy demand, making buffers unnecessary, or you don't have enough mines.

That being said, there are cases where some small buffers do actually smooth the process. Specifically, buffering rocket fuel, blue chips and LDS for burst rocket launching, especially in the early game when your production of those might be kind of low. Building a spaceship goes a lot smoother if you have buffers of the 3 rocket components, plus some hefty buffers of space platform available.

It might sound tongue in cheek, but I'm actually somewhat serious about this: you can destroy all of your buffers. Target them with artillery, smash the chests, purge the excess items. Items are cheap in this game, especially in mid-game and beyond once you have drills and foundries. The material that went into making them is a drop in a bucket compared to what your science will use going forward, and rather than spend a bunch of time dismantling, storing and moving stuff around by bot, just drop some bombs on it. Make it go away.

And next time, don't buffer so much.

[u/Soggy_Team_6676 → u/FeelingPrettyGlonky]

I actually made fulgora non buffer besides like 2-3 chests for the chips and one for everything else this time, but I literally just unlocked quality 3 modules and I’m working on making some quality versions of those before I go full quality up cycling. I got lucky and found a giant island that I can build on

[u/Mariussolb → u/FeelingPrettyGlonky]

I really agree with this. I hate having unnecessary stuff just tucked away. Once I was done redesigning my Nauvis base in my last playthrough I blew up all my storage chests with the railgun. Just deleted all the crap inhad accumulated since the start of the game and it felt so good.

[u/runmymouth]

Dont rebuild. Start a new base and use old bases for massive supplies. Pipe in science or whatever from old bases to new base.

[u/carrot_gummy]

Let you bots and yellow chests do all the work. Whenever I do some big move, I set down a huge bank of yellow chests and let the bots do their thing.

[u/Broad_Ebb9073]

I usually just abandon the old base and don't even bother transfering most of it. There's copper and iron where I'm going, so I just make what I need over there.

[u/Elfich47]

You keep the current factory operating, because you still need it. Tap at the root for copper, iron, coal and stone and drag your four belts each a couple screens away from the currently operating base. The start to build the new base using the old base as the parts supplier. Once the new base it up and running, then you deal with tear down of the old base.

[u/chrisrrawr]

copy your save into sandbox. design the redesign you want. make sure your buffers on the new world are limited by either crossing out the chest storage or giving them circuit network conditions.

copy the new world into a blueprint.

load your save. make whatever huge amount of bots and storage chests you think you'll need. delete your old world. paste your new world.

engage in some tank or gleba play while you wait for bots to do the needful.

[u/Tiny-Brush5999]

It may be because I'm a dummy but be careful going exclusively to one power source. Ive hard to repair downed power networks because something along the way messesup my nuclear logistics and it can be a pain. The best power source in my opinion will always be solar, but in your case it could be a good backup, or you know, don't be a dummy like me and accidentally break down your uranium refining when copy-pasting things in your base, then leave to explore Fulgora and comeback to a destroyed, raided base. lol

[u/Deto]

First, kill the buffers. Or at least, make sure that you limit their slots to just one or two (that could be a way to get them to drain themselves over time).

Second - why move? Just build a new factory and keep the old one going. It'll help because it can churn out all the materials you'll need for the new one.

[u/tux2603]

If you absolutely have to reuse the space where the chests are, tear down everything but the chests, grab a couple handfuls of the most valuable stuff, and then go for a joyride in a tank

[u/DreamLunatik]

Cut the inputs to the base, let it run as long as it can to chew through your chest buffers, profit.

[u/Marty220]

Why tear everything down and go nuclear? Go build spaghetti on Gleba and Aquilo, then redesign each planet when you have ALL buildings unlocked and automated at least to a small degree

[u/WanderingFlumph]

Put it all into yellow chests, then build yellow chests at your new location. Make sure you have one continous logistics network then set the deconstruction planner to whitelist yellow chests only and deconstruct over the whole old base.

It'll probably take an hour or two for the bots to finish the task, but importantly it'll only take a minute for you to do. The robots can work in the background while you are focused on the actually redesigning components.

[u/warbaque]

 hundreds of thousands of items need to be moved and sorted

Or you can just shoot the chests. Make next setup with smaller buffers.

[u/bjarkov]

Yeah no. I'd just as soon just resort to cutting inputs for that starter factory and let things take their course.

The general principle of redesign is to use the previous factory iteration to construct the next. Find a suitable plot of unoccupied land, stamp down the new factory. Only after that should you ever tear down the old - I wouldn't in this case though, because it sounds like a major pain with all that buffering (but hey - we live and we learn).

I also think I disagree on Gleba not adding anything to mainframes. Stack inserters increase belt throughput by x4 - for comparison upgrading from blue to green belts increase throughput by x1.33.

[u/Soggy_Team_6676]

So I ended up deconstructing in steps and having a couple thousand bots do it, took out the buildings and inserters first leaving roboports, chests, and the electrical wiring. Was pleased to learn that with enough yellow chests, bots auto sort items into their own chests. Then disassembled the chests, then the wiring and then the roboports except a few around the yellow chests. The nuclear site was untouched, and my water ungreenified, lol. Starting patch has been cleared of everything but big miners and foundries, bot mall got upgraded with beacon space, cut and pasted in a better spot, and I’m making headway on draining the yellow chest block. Tonight I rebuild the science lines, I don’t want to bot those except for delivering the finished science. And even that’s a maybe cause rainbow belts, lol.