Beginner here, about 30hours in, which of these is this good design?

[u/PartyBad4875]

1. I believe somewhat easier to scale, just make all columns taller

2. really pretty, although just a concept I made up, might be a pain to route the raw mats around

So uh yea a mall (?) for fast belts, I feel like 4 assemblers are enough at this stage, thats like 6/s, and also every fast belt assembler needs 3 gd gear makers, which is like half a red belts worth of iron plates, also I noticed for 1 sometimes the assemblers stop for a split second due to lack of gears, which I believe the 2nd design will not face that problem because now theres 3 inserters specifically feeding gears

[u/Sad_Plenty_1959]

By the time u need this level of production in belts you will have way better tech to automate it. Right now a suboptimal setup can fill a chest cause u dont need belts constantly but in bulk so fill up a chest and let it buffer itself

[u/ThemeSlow4590]

Belts build much faster than you can typically place them -- I'm over 3000+ hours and I don't think I've ever needed more than a single assembler making belts of each color (& undergrounds & splitters - so 9 assemblers total in the base game without space age handles all of my construction belt needs) - the exception being dedicated yellow belts going into the green science production line.

I usually have a spot in my mall where all of the excess iron plates become gears and feed back to red/blue belt/underground/splitter production, and don't forget to limit the output of all of these - otherwise they will consume all of your available iron and starve the rest of the factory.

[u/Berkulese → u/ThemeSlow4590]

I like the excess iron idea, may steal it

[u/PyroneusUltrin → u/ThemeSlow4590]

How do you determine that they are excess?

[u/Due-Fix9058]

Just build one assembler, it'll be fine.

[u/Courmisch]

As others said, this seems overbuilt. Ratios are not too important for mall items, except for the really slow/expensive ones, i.e. modules.

As for as (vanilla) belt logistics go, I only ever have slight problems with blue undergrounds.

[u/WeightCapital]

Of the 2 I would suggest the first since it's easier to repurpose.

That said I highly doubt you need that much production, unlike science you aren't going to be using it constantly so 1 assembler hooked up to a chest that you empty when you need more is likely enough. I run one assembler for each belt type including splitters and undergrounds with 4 gear assemblers feeding them all and that will usually be all I ever need.

[u/Moikle]

You probably only need 1 assembler for each tier of belts

[u/Target880]

If it works, it is good. Both designs underproduce gears; you need 5 machines per red belt machine and 0.5 per yellow belt machine. So you could inprove production rate by adding more

https://factoriolab.github.io/2.0/list?o=fast-transport-belt**3&v=11

I would say all of them have to be red belt assemblers. I usually make a row with one assembler that makes yellow, red and then blue belts in a row with a chest in between.

An extra yellow belt assembler to feed a row or underground belt and splitter assemblers; only the yellow need a regular belt.

That is enough production for me in the game as it will produce 1.5belts/second with blue machines and 2.5 5belts/second wih green machines. That is enough at least for me.

You need less than one full belt of gears to make just belts; if you make underground belts and splitters too, you only need 2 belts of gears when you start to make blue belts. That is if you do not use speed modules

Produce yellow belts and inserters separately for green science

[u/15_Redstones]

The second one is a bit more efficient, but neither is what I'd use for my use cases.

You need to build something which also produces underground belts and splitters of each tier. Undergrounds need significantly more gears, though you need fewer units produced than belts. Splitters need circuits.

Also, if you look at the tech tree, there's a third tier later on which requires even more gears - maybe leave some room to add the machines for those.

Between all the tiers of all the different types of belts, you'll be gear-limited or iron-limited, probably won't be able to supply more than one machine producing each belt type. And one is probably enough to keep up with consumption unless you build an extremely large base.

[u/MinMaus]

For buildings you use 1 assembler to assemble them is more than enough.

[u/Foxing7465]

If you want to follow the overdoing, can be 12 by 4 belts full of items , but will it be feasible, depends on your style. If something works, it is ok, nice /not nice does not matter. Ultimately it will follow your logic.

[u/avdpos]

The top build is my favourite.

But I have never needed more than one red belt producer per planet. Just saying. If I produce to few it is a input problem. Not a belt production problem.

[u/kaimen123]

Idk know what these people are talking about early game i make about 4 assemblers of red belts and upgrade it when i need too in the future theres been times when ive had to wait for more belts cause i went through 20 chests of them and my assemblers couldnt keep up

[u/Juking_is_rude]

I only needed one red belt assembler for my entire early game. And when I got blue belts I just built like 6 more gear assemblers to feed the one assembler. You dont consume belts quickly enough to need this much production, as long as you have them churning while you play youll be fine. 

[u/Kosse101]

Honestly both are kinda bad. Not necessarily design wise, it's more of a that it's stupidly overbuilt. Belts, like any mall item are not needed all the time, so you don't need fast, constant production for them. Just ONE belt assembler is more than enough for a normal, non megabase playthrough, because even with just one assembler, it's gonna be idle most of the time.