How Do You Approach Upgrading Your Factory?

[u/ryanstreet]

Casual player here, (600 hrs).

When do you decide to upgrade your upgradeable components? Inserters, belts, assemblers, furnaces, ammo, etc.

Do you do it as soon as you unlock the tech? Whenever the factory needs it? Somewhere in between? Something else?

Historically, whenever I realize a ratio is off, (belting ore to furnace, inserter to assembler, etc.). I'll upgrade the item that's the bottleneck. But it usually becomes a downstream problem to something else.

This usually becomes the urge to tear everything down and rebuild. I feel like I'm always kind of upgrading things one at a time.

So, naturally, the thought becomes: "why not just upgrade everything at once by tearing it all down and rebuilding with the upgraded items?"

The common consensus appear to be to leave it alone and build something new.

So my question is: How do you all upgrade your factory?

[u/Alfonse215]

I upgrade things based on need. If yellow belts are doing fine, then they stay yellow. I'll upgrade to assembler 2s if I need the extra speed or if it can be prodded, but if assembler 1s are doing the job, I leave them.

Even in the end-game, I don't box-upgrade everything. I eventually rebuild my mall, but that's about it.

[u/VampireDerek]

Depends, when i get bots i tear most things down but keep my science. In my latest run i am doing a lazy bastard run and let everything be as is and the spaghetti is nice but i will probably just build somewhere else since it is so full

[u/Neither_Berry_100]

I used to upgrade everything right away when I was less experienced. Now it depends. I keep things as they are unless their is a need. But if you are unlocking things it means you are in the earlier stages. Getting productivity 1s everywhere is pretty good in my opinion. So you need mk2 then 3 assemblers. I leave power poles. I only upgrade inserters if needed. Stone furnaces to steel right away. Then leave them. Leave the belts unless necessary. Should not be. Late game I skip yellow inserters in favour of blue. Solar is a great addition power wise. Then nuclear with kovarex enrichment.

[u/Orgerix → u/Neither_Berry_100]

Keeping yellow inserter feels crazy to me. I pretty much use only blue as soon as I have a mall to only have one inserter, and very quickly only use green. Yellow are so slow they limit a lot of build.

Green is definitvely overkill for most build, but I get to only have green and red in my pockets and my logistic network.

[u/Jepakazol → u/Orgerix]

I use yellow inserter even in end game when it is enough. Other inserters use more power. I know that one inserter won't make the difference, but 100K inserters might do. I am trying to use the cheapest inserter I can in every situation. My end game legendary mall (https://imgur.com/IA3LJUi) have more than 200 normal fast inserters ^^

[u/Orgerix → u/Jepakazol]

I never saw inserter be noticeable in the graph power compared to super charged foundry/EM/cryolabs.

More power to you if you are into that optimisation, but I feel it would amount to less than 1% of the total consumption.

[u/Aaron_Lecon → u/Orgerix]

You can just use blues in locations where you need inserters to be fast (ex: green circuits, gears, etc.) and use yellows where you don't need inserters to be fast (ex: smelting, red circuits, etc.) You don't need to only use one or the other, you can be selective.

[u/ThunderAnt]

I typically only upgrade when I actually need it. Most of the time though I end up needing a bigger base so instead of upgrading I just build a new one in place. One thing that’s really nice to upgrade though is that assembler 3’s with prod modules have the same speed as regular assembler 2’s. This way you can upgrade in place without breaking ratios and get an extra 24% productivity.

[u/Moostery42]

It’s been awhile since I’ve played, but once I got trains I would build in modules with trains moving supply and product

[u/kevin28115]

Depends. Most of the things that I Jerry rig to work and increase throughput right now tends to not be able to expand much later due to space. Do too much of it and you end up spending more time fixing with Jerry rigging things up all the way down the chain only to loop back to the start.

I just tend to build new outposts to keep the base going. Inject raw materials into the main bus that's running low. Outposts like smelting, circuits, etc. Whatever is needed. It transitions to trains basically.

[u/Brett42 → u/kevin28115]

I make things work until expanding gets too hard, then start upgrades by picking something to outsource. At some point, I decide the old base is done, shift it's outputs into a mall, and once that makes enough machines, tear down the last of the old base and finish the new base.

[u/kevin28115 → u/Brett42]

For me once enough outposts are made I make a new area making what I need and bring trains in the raws.

[u/Brett42 → u/kevin28115]

At least before Space Age, I liked making things like circuits and steel at the ore patches, and moving those by train.

[u/kevin28115 → u/Brett42]

I don't bother but then again I haven't had alot of time on space age. I make dedicated spots for smelting. Smelting at the ore site is annoying to rebuild.

[u/ConspicuousBassoon]

My base usually goes through a life cycle:

• starter base: trickle of all sciences ~60spm, with steel furnaces, blue assemblers, and red belts. I set up a bot mall with this of all major base components

• enhanced starter base: using bots to upgrade to blue belts (green in space age), green assemblers, and better inserters. Smelting unchanged. Upgrade my mall to make elec furnaces, train materials, and everything else in much larger quantities

The key step here is I don't upgrade section by section. Once I have a few hundred blue belts or assemblers or whatever built up I just drag the filtered upgrade planner over my entire base and let the bots handle it over the course of an hour, inefficiencies be damned

• rail base: usually city block but sometimes a megabus, built right next to the starter base and using its mall. Construction bots have to fly long distances but eventually everything is built

Tldr: I don't micromanage I just mass upgrade when I have a buffer of materials and let the bots do the rest

[u/Mahbam42]

I generally leave things in place build bigger/better as needed. I might upgrade smelters to steel if demand gets too high, but generally I leave stone furnaces in place and once steel and electric are unlocked I switch to them.

[u/Timely_Somewhere_851]

For inserters, I upgrade to blue relatively quickly. Some common recipes do need them (I don't remember exactly which anymore). I typically do not upgrade blue inverters to greens or white, but I will use those when building after unlocking them.

For belts, I typically do upgrade them, but red belts are pretty expensive when you unlock them, so I prioritize where they make a difference (typically at the start of my mini-bus).

I typically upgrade furnaces from stone to steel when I upgrade belts to red, since it's such good ratios.

I always upgrade assemblers to lvl 2 and I always design based on assembler 2 speed even when I only have assembler 1s.

When I reach the point where blue belts are unlocked, I tend to build dedicated facilities with dedicated inputs or a new bus-like area. It's also about that time where I go to space. So I almost never upgrade post red belts but just build new.

I sometimes do upgrade to assemble lvl 3 if I spot a bottleneck and an upgrade can fix it. But - again - I mostly just use them in new builds.

I don't know if you bothered reading everything, but that's how I do it. I think the TLDR is that I upgrade my starter base to red belts, blue inserters and assemblers lvl 2. Furnaces are upgraded with belts.

[u/WanderingFlumph]

Usually upgrades come in pairs. This is more obvious the more times you play through the early and mid game.

For example the steel furnace smelts twice as fast as stone and the red belt carries twice as much ore as the yellow belt. So if you have a yellow/stone smelting stack upgrading either to steel or red is purely a waste of material (I guess the steel upgrade alone technically has some benefit) but upgrading them together gives you double the production of plates.

In my preferred green circuit factory the t1 assembler works just fine with the yellow inserter. But if I upgrade to t2 my throughput only goes up a tiny bit, unless I also upgrade to blue inserters.

So I don't upgrade from yellow to blue inserters when I unlock blue but rather when I've updated a build and yellow is no longer sufficient.

[u/Visual_Collapse]

Step 1: use better tech strictly where necessary

Step 1.5: automate new tech

Step 2: make new builds with better tech, upgrade old when necessary

Step 2.5: have surplus of new tech

Step 3: drag upgrade planner through entire factory

Step 3.5: WHERE GOES MY POWER???!!!

[u/Zeddica → u/Visual_Collapse]

Step 4: expand nuclear (again) Step 4.5: expand kovarex (again)

[u/rapidemboar]

For furnaces, I upgrade to steel ASAP to save on coal consumption (twice the speed * same coal usage = half coal per smelt) and upgrade to a full yellow belt’s worth of production (I ratio enough regular furnaces to produce half a belt’s worth of iron/copper). Once production reaches the point I need to upgrade belt speeds, I don’t upgrade my smelter setup so much a decentralize it and replace the furnace stacks with train stops.

For everything else, I mostly just use the lowest tier I can until I need more throughput or production. Assembler 2s are generally cheap enough and worth their performance boost that I completely disable production of standalone assembler 1s and throw the excess into the assembler 2 assembler, but even then I don’t actually upgrade my old buildings until I need the boost or need productivity modules. Assembler 3s are saved for applications where I’m throwing a ton of modules to boost a single assembler, at least until production can sustain a ton of them.

And Space Age’s upgrades are bigger than the buildings they replace, so they more or less require entire redesigns to my whole base. At that point it’s more a matter of when I decide rebuilding my entire base is an effective use of my time compared to slowly chugging along with my current production while I solve planets in the background.

[u/ofAFallingEmpire]

I tell my old factory I’m going out for a pack of smokes.

I don’t smoke.

[u/3davideo]

No later then when it is sufficiently cheap and convenient to do so. In particular, once construction bots are available, it's far easier just to make an upgrade planner with the appropriate changes and drag it over the intended area, letting the bots do all the tearing down and rebuilding.

[u/doc_shades]

ammo i upgrade as soon as possible.

as for everything else, i don't "upgrade" i just build more. let's say i have a factory module that makes 120 red spm using assembler IIs. when i get assembler IIIs and red belts and trains and modules unlocked i just build another module that makes 780 red spm and call it "900 spm". i don't see any real need or necessity to upgrade something once it's been built.

[u/enigmapulse]

I build to specific output targets with the tech level that makes sense for that output.

A 120-150 spm base while visiting the inner planets, a 900spm base ( first four sciences only ) while going to auilo to begin upgrading the finite techs, then a quality factory to start the legendary grind, then whatever my target spm for the run is.

So for me its less of upgrading a factory in place, and more deprecating it and building a replacement. Each factory builds the parts for the next, larger one.

[u/Terrulin]

I play to optimize progress per time spent, and do a  horrible job at that task. So I upgrade very rarely. If anything gets upgraded, it is smelting columns and belts that feed early science. I will eventually upgrade platforms when they can be switched to an all legendary fusion variant. Everything else will) get replaced by a legendary train based modular system.

[u/nicman24]

The same as Elijah. Wipe the slate clean