Start with a small line and upgrade it step by step
Start with a small line but skip upgrading until most detailed slots are available
Unlock all Research options first and than build up an optimized production line
something else (the author of this poll can’t imagine yet)
0voters
Hello everybody,
while reading lot of posting in this forum I’m getting more and more curious how other players get through the game.
I love the challenge of design and redesign so I prefer to start with a small production line. When upgrades have been researched and the budget is high enough I may start to redesign the part of the production line.
To see how the existing parts of the line work together with the upgrade part and how it is influencing not only the output of the line but also in reducing older bottlenecks and creating new ones is part of my fun with the game.
But: How do you enjoy this game? What is your motivation to do it your way?
I usually start with a small basic line that I set off to a corner making basic cars. I then build around 8 or so research labs to try and max out research as fast as possible. I’ll unlock expansive parts first then upgrades. Once I have enough research I’ll delete the labs except one or two so I’m saving some money on labor.
I don’t currently do robot upgrades as the resource importers are significantly slower then what the line is actually able to produce. So that would be wasted money in this case.
After all that I build an upgraded line in addition to the basic one I already had to make many more cars but on a premium scale. This larger one usually takes up the entire floor.
At that point a may or may not delete the old line depending on how well the old cars are selling.
Actually my aim at the moment is getting the highest possible utility rate with the lowest possible number of cars inside the system.
In other words I try to have each station working. and almost every car beeing worked on. Thus you have the lowest wastage of capital
I am an industrial engineer and want to achieve a “Lean” plant.
I do this by having my stations spaced out a lot at the beginning, and then upgrade the bottlenecks one by one as soon as I did the research. Or I create a mission myself with a huge amount of money and everything researched, so I can start optimizing right away.
I simply try to match the speed of the production line to the output speed. Can’t make cars faster than you can export them out of the factory.
And I just upgrade where it’s needed and/or split the line into parallel lines to later join together again.
Usually upgrade from the back to the front in order to not create bottlenecks for having a faster front half of the process, while the rear half is still slow.
Usually I start with a small line but then skip upgrading until most detailed slots are available. But that’s because there is not that much to reasearch yet and the time to research is very fast so I would be constantly rebuilding everything… which is not worth it.
It might become worth it if the research would be slow as hell and if there would be a lot more things to research before getting somewhere. Then you will want to rebuild your factory in between.
Also on the throughput stuff… I actually adjust my entire production line around the time it takes to Fit the Front Axles (First Step in the Production line)… which takes 4.08s when fully upgraded with Extra Robots.
I do that by making everything else run slightly faster than 4.08s, either by using more slots where necessary or just by upgrading slots with Robots until they are below the threshold.
That way I never have any nasty backlogs in my factory and everything produces as fast as it can.
I’m aware of the fact that it’s not entirely possible to get certain slots to work around ~4s, some of them are probable even working at 2.5 or 3s and therefore are a lot idle, but well, I can live with it if it only happens at a few stages.
At least I have somewhere about 66% Running time… constantly. No sudden drops, nothing:
That’s the best I can get currently using 2 production lines each of which is able to produce a car every 4 seconds, so effectively exporting a car every 2 seconds. Also it is able to produce 512 design variants. Each of the 2 production lines has a unique set of 8 options that are or aren’t installed… effectively creating 2*2^8 = 512 variants. Yeah an awful lot of clicking at first export but once you are through with that it’s epic. I can even sell them at 75-100% premium because I seem not to overflow the market too much due to having all these variants.
Yeah, it’s a custom made map I fiddled together in the text editor because the map editor ingame is too buggy. It’s only to stress test the engine and find bugs etc… so no serious playthrough. I know the amount of importers is quite unfair and unrealistic compared to the stock maps the game comes with. xD
I might be able to improve the uptime with an even bigger factory which allows me to adjust the amount of slots/robots better to match the desired throughput… but I guess that will have to wait until 1.08 because currently most of my maps get busted quite fast due to the notorious Resource Pending Bug.
@ MeduSalem: This is awesom! And inspiring
Maybe others would like to try your custom map or take a look into your savegame so would you please upload it somewhere?
Well… the savegame is busted with the Resource pending bug… so it will crash shortly after loading. I’m currently waiting for 1.08 to see if the bug goes away. And if so then I might upload it.
If it doesn’t go away or if the savegame becomes obsolete to make the update work I will have to build a new factory anyways.
Needs to be extracted into the Production Line Folder.
I also realize now that I gave the map 3M cash at start… because copied the mega.txt and then resized as needed. If you think it is too easy that way feel free to open the file and adjust the value. xD
thanks for the votes and replies.
I’m a bit supprised that a majority either start with a small production line and rush through the research or just pass all research projects to finally build up the most specialized production lines.
I mainly spend my time messing about attempting to get a sub 1 second run going on a modded map/savegame, but thus far i always hit the resource limit.
If i play without mods, its 4 research built, then power plants to offset the hydro costs, then a quick dirty line to get income flowing, then build up a secondary line thats far more optimized, to whatever time goal i set at the start.
I don’t. I’m figuring out the best possible starting point. Because if I start playing this game too soon, i will get burned out and miss all the coolest features that gets in last.
But if you get in now, you can help make the game better
And you can just play it a bit, then go play some other game for a while and come back later, seeing all the improvements and new stuff and all. Or just keep playing and seeing it improve, that is the best part of playing games that are early in development and tbh, I am having more fun playing games in early development than games that are “finished”.
Been working on making as much in-house from scratch, got time down to 3 second car. Working on 2-second car with better layout (grouping producers around the fitters rather than far away, far away caused issues with undersupply until I had high-speed resources).
Fun fact; it takes just over 9 seconds to make a tyre, you need 4 per car, at 1 car every 2 seconds you need 19 of them! Ran out of space for the 2-second car and might have to rip apart my 3-second car line for space.
Paint shops are equally rediculous, looking at a 14 finish dryers without upgrades. Might go for the upgrades to get it down to 12.
Think the time challenge is the most fun to get out the game at this point, likely move to adding more importers and clustered exports on the default maps just to push it.
