> great is the enemy of good enough One-man Factorio is a lot different than big-team Factorio. As a single factory-developer, you need to be startup-like and

> great is the enemy of good enough One-man Factorio is a lot different than big-team Factorio. As a single factory-developer, you need to be startup-like and remember that your time in the present is the most valuable resource. So always automate everything the first time, because you WILL need more of that component. But do it in a quick and dirty and unscalable manner so you can move on to something else. Start with box-fed production lines; when you're sick and tired of refilling the boxes, it's time to re-do it better. Build a system to support this throwaway development, where you can tear things down later and replace them and it keeps working. Start with a narrow bus, not eight lanes each for iron and copper — but keep it open for expansion downstream. When you run out of space near the start of the bus, don't just move things a few tiles to squeeze in an incremental upgrade: build a much bigger production line further downstream. You'll have more and better components to do it right. And always, always, always, keep your interconnects separate from your production components. You don't need a single straight-line bus like some people think, right angles and parallels and grids are fine, but if your belts are snaking through something else, it's real hard to tear down that something-else, and it's real hard to scale up. Encapsulation is important. And when you're finally scaling up like crazy, ready for the big leagues, use a high-throughput component someone else developed and have your robots install it.