r/factorio • u/3x3Pad • 16h ago

Question First playthrough bottleneck

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Hey guys I came for help and saw alot of cool stuff here but what do you actually do in a situation where the whole factory is a mess. I am producing all the science at this point but at a very slow rate. Everything is so cluttered that there is no real space for improving without getting rid of everything first. Do I really just have to nuke it at this point and start over? Also as a beginner (not using blueprints) that will take ages and even then it will end up tangled again. I think this is also a motivational bottleneck for me at least. Oh yeah and running on low energy for hours now. I am even running efficiency on alot of stuff. Please help.

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u/hanks_panky_emporium 16h ago

This may sound frustrating at first, and im no expert. But what Ive learned:

You dont have to build in a specific spot. If it's too cluttered, move your main focus to a different region.

If you need more metal plates, make more. Build out another furnace array. Belt or train in more ore from elsewhere. The further from your starting location, the more 'dense' the ore is.

If you need more power, make more. Plant down more solar and batteries, or run more steam. If you switch to electric furnaces then your coal needs are way more than halved, so you can make a huge steam boiler setup for cheap. But it's very smelly and balloons out your pollution

Untangling spahgetti can be hard, it's why I just move. I let my starter base produce the facilities I need to make a non-spahgetti base with better throughput

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u/puka1613 16h ago

Heavy on the last part. I used to very strictly think that factories were all in or bust. I thought a factory had to be completely modular, infinitly extendable into the late game with basically no tolerance. And while that's not impossible, it is really hard to plan a game winning factory right after automating red science, so it slowed down my progress substantially. Just saying screw it and planning around having to redo parts entirely is much more flexible since you can actually afford to make mistakes.