Every vanilla playthrough of mine follows a rough progression: get to blue science with spaghetti, organize a bit, and then get bots all with my initial ore deposits (maybe a few trains to the closest other ones if needed). After that, I build a larger, more organized base with a comprehensive train network from scratch in another location and then work to finish the game.

I assumed this was the norm---or close to it---but I've seen people just progressively expand their initial base at spawn until they beat the game. I feel like I could do it differently just because I have less experience and hence less foresight into what I'll need as I go, but I'm not sure.

What do you guys do? How come?