Starting to look at reddit a bit for ideas. Haven't done that since I started this playthrough. My only knowledge comes from what I learned playing Factorio in 2016-2017, when I was watching tutorials and let's plays and being on reddit. But many of the concepts today, like the mall and city block and whathaveyou, didn't exist back then or at least I don't remember them. It's interesting to see how the community evolved over the years and of course seeing all the great additions to the game. Even an awesome space DLC is coming out very soon! Factorio is truly a great game and one of the shining products of the digital distribution model, which allows devs to work on a game for years instead of shipping it on CD once and being done with it.
Despite what people on the codex like to say, gaming is in an incredible state for exactly this reason. It truly is the golden age of gaming, and I really do believe that, go to hell boomers.
One thing of note is that a lot of these "my first base" posts on reddit use community designs. I have to wonder why people are doing the same things instead of figuring it out for themselves. Even now I'm not trying to burn any of the designs I see into my mind and instead just see if I can trigger some ideas of my own for my base. Except for super autistic problems like balancing 4 or even 8 belts, can't be arsed to figure that out.
Like this guy who says this is his first base after 50 hours.
Now, I don't know if he's lying or what but I'm at 40 hours right now and you'd have to play by routine to be able to build this in 50 hours. But I think a lot of these people on reddit are full of shit too.
Factorio is really a game that you can play however you want. I think the community is partly to blame because they will try to tell you what you
should do instead. I don't think there is a right or wrong way to play a game. Sure, there is an optimal way to build your factory but for crying out loud it's a game not a job at NASA.
If I wanted to I could beat the game without laying a single piece of rail. Or only use steam engines for power, or whatever. Heck, maybe I'll go trainless just to piss some people off.