Is "Flying Spaghetti Monster" a valid answer?

So I'll throw in that there's a performance hit for huge factories. The game chunks the world state, it's why your frame rate goes up when you walk to a new area. A huge mega factory in one area will limit you in that area, and it will start to feel sluggish later on. Separating your factories across multiple areas helps because it will spread the load across the CPUs cores, and it will feel faster. Your gpu will also be happier to not need to render everything

I got halfway through the post before I realized it wasn’t about over-engineering a Java application.

I did both… never could settle on one or the other.

But finding areas suited to intermediate components (such as oil to plastics, fuel byproducts, etc in one area) then using trains to send them to be used in more complicated factories was fun.

So extraction to intermediate for some things across the map and then all those shipped to a mega factory for larger and final products could be a compromise

I created stackable blueprints that include a specific type of building, for example constructors. They have an input and output on the ground and i can build them higher and higher as long as the belt is fast enough to push in and out the materials.

By doing that i normally have one or more towers for each component, similar to your mentioned microservice architecture.

On the ground i connect these towers to build the downstream components, essentially creating your mentioned microfactories out of the towers/microservices. Perhaps Manyfactories is a better name, as it's somewhere in-between micro and mono.

It's fast, scalable throughout the research tiers and pretty enough for my own standards.

I suppose I'd call what I do a "mill and factory" architecture which seems to be similar to yours.

I'll find a resource site - take for example the infamous now-nerfed cliff in the west Northern Forest, and I'll put an iron mill there that does everything from smelting up to, say, reinforced plates or modular frames. Same with steel mills, refineries etc.

These will feed a small number of major centralized factories. One that I'm in the process of building the 1.0 version of now is always located in the southern Rocky Desert that I call the Desert Automated Manufacturing Node...In my Update 5 playthrough I amused myself by giving all my facilities rude names with technical sounding acronyms, and the DAMN stuck. I still call it that. It's the mid-game factory, it makes motors, crystal oscillators, heavy mod frames, circuit boards, AI limiters, high-speed connectors, computers and supercomputers. Big factory that takes up most of the big empty section of the biome. It, along with the late game (radio control units, turbomotors etc.) and now the quantum process factories will ship goods to the Project Assembly Tower where the space elevator lives.

My nuclear power plant is as self-contained as possible; I don't like pulling from main production to feed power so it gets a whole weird mishmash factory unto itself. This ended up being the only successful sushi belt in my last playthrough, as I needed several kinds of things in fairly small amounts.

If on-site production ~~reduces~~ increases stack size of a raw material by a considerable margin I will do that, which means basically everything except aluminium (I did the math... I think). All those products are then shipped to the main factory to add to the chaos.

I first determine the part I need, look at the map and find a group of nodes that can support the part, then build a microfactory. Basic parts then get sent to larger factories that have assemblers/manufacturers. The exception to this rule is that screws for any factory are made on-site until I find enough recipes to remove them from my production chain. I also tend to stay away from iron/copper/limestone impure nodes (using only normal/pure) until power is no longer a concern.

All factories are visited by train and collect a residual amount that is then sent to the HUB and joining warehouse for my personal needs (one-stop shop).

I used to be at your extreme where I would have huge microfactories building e.g. screws and train them all over the place. I was also at your friend’s extreme at one point, doing only a single item on each floor, ending up building as high as the top of the space elevator.

The last playthrough before 1.0 dropped (and the one before it), I have adopted more of a hybrid approach where the only micro factories I tend to build are aluminum, oil processing, and energy production… plastic/rubber, coal plants, fuel processing, turbo fuel, etc.

Then I train it to the megafactory. I also haul in all raw resources except the ones mentioned. The hybrid approach I am liking is to smelt on floor 1, constructors on floor 2, assemblers on floor 3, etc. So I mix things on different floors. It makes it harder to manage, so I have to keep the megafactory smaller. Then I go build another megafactory somewhere else.

I start with a flying spaghetti monster off a cliffside and then try to graduate to microfactories to conserve CPU load, especially once I make the shift to refineries.

On our shared server there's a big emphasis on anesthetics so I usually build relatively small independent standing factories - but sometimes these factories will do something like bringing smelted iron ingots into modular frames while as other times they'll just be focused on a single step.

I think the microservice approach is more likely to be vulnerable to unbalanced ratios if that's a thing you care about - having a belt of iron feeding into a full balanced chain to produce frames is easier to balance once and never worry about again.

Microfactories connected by train

As a developer, this is clearly the micro services architecture, where a mega factory is clearly a monolith

In theory I like micro factory design for how neat and tidy it can be. I'm a really disorganized person though and in practice I make a monolithic mess lol

Strip mall. Everything has it's own little store, with the back area where new stock arrives. Even has a nice multi lane road going the middle.

I very much lean towards the microfactory approach - locate a cluster of resources within reasonable belting/piping distances, design a factory which can consume the cluster's entire production of the limiting resource (clocking others to match) to make 1 output or maybe 2, then provide that output to the rail network. Some production chains make it easier to have certain inputs taken from the rail network.

Within one of these factories, items are refined further for each floor they ascend but I rarely enforce a 1 product/floor rule - in particular I find it convenient with many Assembler/Manufacturer recipes to have an input that is directly fed from a single Constructor using clock speed to match production with consumption. This usually means each microfactory underclocks its most power hungry buildings a fair bit which keeps their consumption moderate. Each microfactory ideally has a single priority power switch to turn off its entire production chain if its consumption is becoming a problem and I set up a priority sequence for them.

Hmm, I tend to do initial processing at the extraction location if it's beneficial or neutral. No need to ship all the raw ore around unless I can't simply do that for one reason or another. Then everything gets shipped to the big factory at the space elevator.

I then figure out what end product I need and how much and put the required machines into a building. I then build other building which do the inputs for that till I finally arrive at the raw ore or the pre processed stuff like iron ingots.

Basically clusters of buildings that provide output as necessary either with a bit of over production or underclocked to match.

I call it modular factory because I don't care about having all of my screws coming from one place and only one place. It also means that it's all custom built and not with blueprints. But at least it kinda looks like a computer Mainboard from above.

I often built one big tower on stilts with empty 'maintenance' floors in between factory floors in which I hide lots of spaghetti. I often have had a mall (subject to change now) and usually set out to built part X, get the raw resources needed and cram it all on one floor of the tower.

I have also previously abused the fact that you can use trains to get under the water line. Deep enough under it and you won't get damaged. Have built myself an under water base a la bioshock. Was great fun.

Now in 1.0 I have set up my main base and I am considering options of where and what to do. Just got my trains and will see where it takes me.