I finally finished Sea Block! Here's what I learned. [Base tour]

Hi everyone!I started a Sea block base months ago (in 0.15). And this morning I finally launched the FTL drive! It was my first time playing with Bob's mods or Angels mods and it was a lot of fun (albeit frustrating at times). I put together a little album to show my final base:AlbumAdditional mods used:Auto researchAutofillBottleneckEnhanced map colorsHelmodLogistics train networkLoader reduxLong reachNixie tubesShiny Bob GFXShiny Angel GFXShiny iconsSqueak throughText platesUpgrade plannerWaterfillI love the puzzle aspect of factorio; figuring out how recipes work and how to logistically put everything together. After a few progressively bigger vanilla bases I needed a new challenge, and Sea Block turned out to be a big one! I loved figuring out all the different crazy recipes and production methods.Lessons learned:Do use LTN to make a train based base (if you want to go for trains). I had used Logistics train network before in "Vanilla" megabases and I loved it there, but it was really amazing in this base. There are so many different materials in this modpack that making a train route for every station is near impossible. I had over 500 train stations at the end. The only stacker I needed was the LTN depot. Wiring the stations takes a bit of practice but other than that this mod is a godsend.Don't abandon your bootstrap base too soon. I tried to skip the midgame and build an end-game sized base straight after automating green science. Turns out automating blue science is a factor 10 more complicated than red/green and I ended up building most of my base by hand (without bots). I don't mind building the blocks themselves by hand (in fact I prefer it), but all the rails infrastructure and all the different stations really gave me headaches.Do compartmentalize your base. Because I went with a train/block style base, everything was naturally divided into small sections which was great. I could focus on one "simple" block / problem at a time and just let the rest of the base do it's thing. That really helped me keep my sanity. The only time I had to put the game down for a few weeks was when I was working on the only thing I couldn't split up into blocks (Petrochem).Don't try to use pipes to transport all the different Petrochem materials. I tried. I failed. At first I wanted to split all the different Petrochem parts up into different blocks (and use more trains to transport the intermediates). I'm glad I didn't. That would have doubled the size of my base I'm sure. Then I tried to put all the Petrochem components together but connect them with pipes. So. many. pipes. I never got it to work. Ultimately I had to go with barrels and bots, and that worked great. Even with the nerf to barrels in 0.16 I would still go for barrels. The only downside was that a few times empty barrels clogged up parts of the system. But with the new buffer chests that would no longer be a problem either.Finally do try Sea block if you like the puzzle aspect of factorio! I hear the new 0.16 version is more streamlined than 0.15 which is great, and especially the early game is great for easing you into the craziness that is Bobs + Angels mods. via /r/factorio https://ift.tt/2GlnZ6E