How to Design Your Very Own Base
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| If you look closely you can see the flying drones that construct the buildings |
Forgive me if I get a bit technical here, but this is what I'm here for. As an engineer I can't help but be technical at times, and boy does it feel good when I am. Now I want to design my bootstrap base, which means considering some design principles that I can follow (and how to know when it's acceptable to break those design principles).
First thing to consider is how best to use my logistics methods. With my current technology I have only conveyor belts and the Icarus for transporting goods. Later on I'll be able to use logistics drones for transporting goods long distance or for organization, but right now belts will be my bread and butter method. There's some limitations on how I can build them, mostly relating to height and making sure they don't get in the way of each other. You can see here that I'm building them with struts when they're going north/south above my line of facilities for just that reasoning.
The other major concern is throughput of each belt. With some upgrades I'll be able to build better belts, but for now my belts are limited to 6 units per second. This means I'll need to consider whenever I'm building just how much throughput the line can handle. There's no point in building more facilities if they're going to be starved of ingredients.
Lastly I want to consider the design for my design. If these facilities were more permanent I'd build a blueprint first before placing, but the items are so modular that I don't have to! I'll build as I go, and modify the construction as needed. It's like building a blueprint, but with buildings instead of ink. I'm pretty sure that I if I did this in Engineer School I'd be thrown out, but hah! The beauty of being all alone is there's no one to be upset with your decisions.
My simple plan is to have a ring of facilities, each "line" going north/south and producing one item, with storages at the beginning to provide easy access if I personally need a bunch of said item. There's three exceptions to this rule. To the left I'll have one line for producing the factories and other buildings I'll require. There are numerous buildings I'll need, but most share similar components, and I'm not worried about throughput, so it'll be fine if the later factories are starved to start. They'll all fill in time, and I won't have to worry too much there. Next to that line will be the construction lines for conveyor belts and the sorters that move items from the belts to the factories. New upgrades will require items of the previous tier, so I'll gradually add on production there as technology allows.
Lastly I'll need raw materials of some sort, which will all come north of the factories. Most of those products will also require some amount of refining to be usable by my factories, so to save space I'll refine them on site. So rather than shipping copper ore in, I'll smelt it first and then ship it.
A New Dawn for the Base
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| Flying gives both a speed boost and is easier to avoid collisions, but does increase energy usage |
And the design starts taking form. The small buildings to the north of the factories split the belts evenly, allowing for one incoming belt to service multiple lines. As I need more of an item, I can easily extend the construction southward to allow for more factories to produce that item. If I need more incoming capacity, I can always build belts above the original ones allowing for multiple incoming and outgoing belts in each line. To make things easy I've been keeping the raw materials to come from the north.
See that facility too down the line? That's constructing foundation. As you might have noticed, there's a good amount of water on this planet. And while water is great for some industrial processes and large bodies of it are needed for starting a biosphere so I can get that sweet sweet oil, it's not very good for building. So I'll pave over it with metal and stone to provide sturdy ground for my facilities.
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| Not pictured: The fields of wind generators I planted to the south to power all of this |
There's a few things left to add on, and then I'll have the oil production ready to go. With that will be more opportunities for additional upgrades. Icarus is quite enjoying the new upgrades I've already gotten. Increased speed, thrusters planetary flight, and more energy. Cleaner energy too, with the tech for graphite. Gets rid of all the nonsense that you'd find in regular coal, leaving only well-organized carbon to burn.
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