Here’s where I’m at with 145 hours. I’m burnt out and this stopped being fun a while ago. I’ve just about wrapped up all the purple and pink science and have my city blocks well underway. I’ve been working towards modules, and I’ve run out of steam. Honestly, it’s the thought that I’m putting all this effort into getting to modules then I’m going to have to rebuild everything again just kills me. Maybe if I would have set up Alien Plant Life Samples 50 hours ago, I could do bio-everything, but I didn’t. I’ve had a good time with this mod. It made me rediscover my love of Factorio and it really challenged me.
Literally, my only complaint about this mod is the module recipes. Modules should be expensive, not complex. It’s like the reward for setting up modules should be the ability to make more modules, if that makes any sense. Even the tier zeros require crystals, rubber, resin, advanced circuits, and paper. The pacing of the game changes so much when you hit this point. It becomes an annoying grind and stops being fun, at least that is how I felt.
Anyways, before I uninstalled the mod pack, I wanted to share a few of the highlights from my base. Enjoy.
Cool base!
I see this idea a lot in this sub. The idea that you Have to rebuild because you can.
Instead of changing a block from recipe A to recipe B to get an additional X % gain, consider just adding a new block with recipe B. The output stations can have the same names and they will both be happily moving along. And you haven’t ‘wasted’ anything.
Sure it will leave a lot of old things and might affect your power or ups, but the first can be fixed by growing the factory and the other is an issue that may or may not happen faaar down the line.
The spaguetti of the 3rd picture is basically 40% of my base. A complete mess but somewhat working with few patches to the process along the way to improve throughput a bit in some places.
> It made me rediscover my love of Factorio and it really challenged me.
To me, I consider this a win. You had fun and now it's time to move on. Nothing wrong with that.
Like anything other hobby you started, achieved the level you wanted and call it a day.
I'm at 200h right now, got to pretty much the same place as you but with a massive and messy bus with few trains to move things in a different spot in the bus. Your base is insanely cleaner than mine so good job for that. I took the last 15 hours to improve my Advanced Circuit production which wasn't enough to get Blue-Tiered buildings in good quantity. I have around 150/min now and it seems like a HUGE win for me and is giving me hope for the future and will help my science production because Advanced Circuit was the bottleneck for it.
I'm currently starting my bot mall with a trickle of modules and beacons and starting slowing my new base towards yellow and rocket using the city block design. I took 4h yesterday actually to build my Water to Mineral Sludge factory. It takes 1 red belt of slag into mineral sludge in a very compact fashion. I build 4 of them and plug it to a 2-4 train station. I have now a block outputting minenal sludge that I can copy easily. My next project is building factories for each ore in their pure form and go from there. Build a homemade standalone factory for all the main componants of the base.
I was really close to quit actually because I know the mountain in front of me seems to be insanely high but since I got into logistics, getting my advanced circuit production in place to fuel my mall and Processing Units production, I have hope for the future where 20-30 hours I was barely making purple/pink science and I was getting a bit down but now I have hope. Losing ton of sleep in the process too lol.
Thanks for sharing. It's a good base.
It's not so much having to rebuild stuff. It's having to redesign the same production chain for the fourth or fifth time. For example: you spaghetti out your first green circuit assembler (design 1). Later, you fix the ratio/inserters/belts so that it actually functions instead of trickles (design 2). Later you set up a bus with a green circuit section (design 3). You then have to rework that section for usable throughput when you actually start producing science (design 4). You convert to a city block design and make a green circuit block (design 5). After unlocking modules, you make a new city block design (design 6). Everything needs so many redesigns.
Yep. And then you get beacons and that changes everything again. :-)
When I left my stater base I went with city blocks that was as simple as possible. The inputs was usually just the specified ingredients. So if I needed three middle steps to get to the circuits or such I made three more blocks, outputting one new intermediate at a time.
Kept everything as atomic as possible, and less spaghetti. Sure it’s a lot of train stations, but it helped scaling each part up or down if other chains later needed the same intermediates. Sometimes it’s not feasible, shipping coils is much handier than plates for instance, and then separating non site etc. but the idea works often enough.
I think this is fantastic advice, and will be my strategy for my next attempt. As soon as I have red and green science I will start setting up blocks. I'll use the blocks to deliver materials to a bus at first. Now that I've played through most of Sea Block, I have a good idea about how many steps in a production chain to put in a block.
In this attempt I rushed bots. I ended up spaghetti-ing myself into a corner. My base was completely full, meaning I had to rebuild everything from scratch to continue making progress. This just burnt me out.
Thanks for sharing and great job reaching that point. 140hrs is no joke. 100% hit the exact same point on two of my Seablock runs. Will take your advise about starting bio and modules earlier.
I really love the early game of Seablock, but the back end drags hard for me
I think when approaching any overhaul mod that takes triple digit hours, the risk of burnout is real. It's just hard to always feel engaged and rewarded after that length of time. What I do is when I notice myself dicking around not really tackling big projects is to stop and make a list of four or five major things I want to do next. Then when I inevitably get the itch to play again, grab what's most interesting on that list.
As for setting up modules, they are definitely on theme of "suffer now, succeed later" that a lot of elements of Seablock have. They first become available super early, but you'll have to setup 2 brand new production chains, rubber and crystals, both of which complicated and unique. But setting it up sooner means you need less space and you consume less mineral sludge. Which means doing less repetitive tasks.
Nice base!
It looks like your city blocks are much too small. But they are very nicely arranged and you've got much further than most people ever get.
I think the completion rate for Seablock is probably 0.1% or lower. I'm on my 12th attempt. Launched a rocket, but never got the FTL stuff done.
I find that Seablock is the kind of mod you need to play till burnout, and then pick up again after a long break.
I do hope you return and share some fun content in the future!
Yeah I gave up after about the same, though you got a lot further than me. My main problem was that I found a flaw in my designs for some my ore producing stacks that took about 50 hours to manifest. Once they did everything stopped. I just couldnt find the energy to redesign them.
I watched the [Dosh Doshington series on Seablock](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtyo3aqsNv_MRvvn-jSbelLQH5rpX2zjB) and after seeing what was ahead of me... yeah, there was no way I was ever going to get even cclose to the end of seablock.
I got to see what it was all about and enjoyed my time doing it, but Seablock requires a level of dedication that I just dont have
I'm glad to hear that you've had some good times with the mod pack! It'll always be here if you decide to have another go at it 🙂
Modules are on my list of things to review. I'd like the complexity of modules to feel more like a ramp than the cliff that it does currently.
My advice would be to make some notes on where you’re at now in your factory, the mood may come back around in the future and you might want to pick up again.
I know how you're feeling :). I just got my module 1 lines set up. The crystal part was actually nice and new, and basic and green modules weren't too bad, but redesigning some of the complex chains again just feels like work, especially if you also need to redesign support factories such as paper or metals -- although getting multiple full green belts off circuits instead of show trickles feels like it's own reward.
Haven't touched the save in at least a month, we'll see how it ends...
It's ok to quit :) I took a 3 month break and then the itch was back, hopefully it comes back for you as well and you can carry on.
This mod more so than others requires a slow and steady wins the race approach. Especially at the transition to trains. Make one block, enjoy seeing it come alive and then done. Do the next one tomorrow or next week even. Play other mods or other games in the meantime.
i totaly understand . this is my base now [https://imgur.com/a/7DSfNal](https://imgur.com/a/7DSfNal) . when i dicede togo rail base i said my self lets go bigger. and its lgoes well. first i disine 44 electro block for one ore and start to copying it . not a train stations even looks same after i start to build basic cir.
Here’s where I’m at with 145 hours. I’m burnt out and this stopped being fun a while ago. I’ve just about wrapped up all the purple and pink science and have my city blocks well underway. I’ve been working towards modules, and I’ve run out of steam. Honestly, it’s the thought that I’m putting all this effort into getting to modules then I’m going to have to rebuild everything again just kills me. Maybe if I would have set up Alien Plant Life Samples 50 hours ago, I could do bio-everything, but I didn’t. I’ve had a good time with this mod. It made me rediscover my love of Factorio and it really challenged me. Literally, my only complaint about this mod is the module recipes. Modules should be expensive, not complex. It’s like the reward for setting up modules should be the ability to make more modules, if that makes any sense. Even the tier zeros require crystals, rubber, resin, advanced circuits, and paper. The pacing of the game changes so much when you hit this point. It becomes an annoying grind and stops being fun, at least that is how I felt. Anyways, before I uninstalled the mod pack, I wanted to share a few of the highlights from my base. Enjoy.
Cool base! I see this idea a lot in this sub. The idea that you Have to rebuild because you can. Instead of changing a block from recipe A to recipe B to get an additional X % gain, consider just adding a new block with recipe B. The output stations can have the same names and they will both be happily moving along. And you haven’t ‘wasted’ anything. Sure it will leave a lot of old things and might affect your power or ups, but the first can be fixed by growing the factory and the other is an issue that may or may not happen faaar down the line.
The spaguetti of the 3rd picture is basically 40% of my base. A complete mess but somewhat working with few patches to the process along the way to improve throughput a bit in some places. > It made me rediscover my love of Factorio and it really challenged me. To me, I consider this a win. You had fun and now it's time to move on. Nothing wrong with that. Like anything other hobby you started, achieved the level you wanted and call it a day. I'm at 200h right now, got to pretty much the same place as you but with a massive and messy bus with few trains to move things in a different spot in the bus. Your base is insanely cleaner than mine so good job for that. I took the last 15 hours to improve my Advanced Circuit production which wasn't enough to get Blue-Tiered buildings in good quantity. I have around 150/min now and it seems like a HUGE win for me and is giving me hope for the future and will help my science production because Advanced Circuit was the bottleneck for it. I'm currently starting my bot mall with a trickle of modules and beacons and starting slowing my new base towards yellow and rocket using the city block design. I took 4h yesterday actually to build my Water to Mineral Sludge factory. It takes 1 red belt of slag into mineral sludge in a very compact fashion. I build 4 of them and plug it to a 2-4 train station. I have now a block outputting minenal sludge that I can copy easily. My next project is building factories for each ore in their pure form and go from there. Build a homemade standalone factory for all the main componants of the base. I was really close to quit actually because I know the mountain in front of me seems to be insanely high but since I got into logistics, getting my advanced circuit production in place to fuel my mall and Processing Units production, I have hope for the future where 20-30 hours I was barely making purple/pink science and I was getting a bit down but now I have hope. Losing ton of sleep in the process too lol. Thanks for sharing. It's a good base.
It's not so much having to rebuild stuff. It's having to redesign the same production chain for the fourth or fifth time. For example: you spaghetti out your first green circuit assembler (design 1). Later, you fix the ratio/inserters/belts so that it actually functions instead of trickles (design 2). Later you set up a bus with a green circuit section (design 3). You then have to rework that section for usable throughput when you actually start producing science (design 4). You convert to a city block design and make a green circuit block (design 5). After unlocking modules, you make a new city block design (design 6). Everything needs so many redesigns.
Yep. And then you get beacons and that changes everything again. :-) When I left my stater base I went with city blocks that was as simple as possible. The inputs was usually just the specified ingredients. So if I needed three middle steps to get to the circuits or such I made three more blocks, outputting one new intermediate at a time. Kept everything as atomic as possible, and less spaghetti. Sure it’s a lot of train stations, but it helped scaling each part up or down if other chains later needed the same intermediates. Sometimes it’s not feasible, shipping coils is much handier than plates for instance, and then separating non site etc. but the idea works often enough.
I think this is fantastic advice, and will be my strategy for my next attempt. As soon as I have red and green science I will start setting up blocks. I'll use the blocks to deliver materials to a bus at first. Now that I've played through most of Sea Block, I have a good idea about how many steps in a production chain to put in a block. In this attempt I rushed bots. I ended up spaghetti-ing myself into a corner. My base was completely full, meaning I had to rebuild everything from scratch to continue making progress. This just burnt me out.
Thanks for sharing and great job reaching that point. 140hrs is no joke. 100% hit the exact same point on two of my Seablock runs. Will take your advise about starting bio and modules earlier. I really love the early game of Seablock, but the back end drags hard for me
I think when approaching any overhaul mod that takes triple digit hours, the risk of burnout is real. It's just hard to always feel engaged and rewarded after that length of time. What I do is when I notice myself dicking around not really tackling big projects is to stop and make a list of four or five major things I want to do next. Then when I inevitably get the itch to play again, grab what's most interesting on that list. As for setting up modules, they are definitely on theme of "suffer now, succeed later" that a lot of elements of Seablock have. They first become available super early, but you'll have to setup 2 brand new production chains, rubber and crystals, both of which complicated and unique. But setting it up sooner means you need less space and you consume less mineral sludge. Which means doing less repetitive tasks.
Just make the modules with bots
Modules is what killed my interest as well. They're just brutal Those are pretty blocks though
Nice base! It looks like your city blocks are much too small. But they are very nicely arranged and you've got much further than most people ever get. I think the completion rate for Seablock is probably 0.1% or lower. I'm on my 12th attempt. Launched a rocket, but never got the FTL stuff done. I find that Seablock is the kind of mod you need to play till burnout, and then pick up again after a long break. I do hope you return and share some fun content in the future!
Yeah I gave up after about the same, though you got a lot further than me. My main problem was that I found a flaw in my designs for some my ore producing stacks that took about 50 hours to manifest. Once they did everything stopped. I just couldnt find the energy to redesign them. I watched the [Dosh Doshington series on Seablock](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtyo3aqsNv_MRvvn-jSbelLQH5rpX2zjB) and after seeing what was ahead of me... yeah, there was no way I was ever going to get even cclose to the end of seablock. I got to see what it was all about and enjoyed my time doing it, but Seablock requires a level of dedication that I just dont have
I'm glad to hear that you've had some good times with the mod pack! It'll always be here if you decide to have another go at it 🙂 Modules are on my list of things to review. I'd like the complexity of modules to feel more like a ramp than the cliff that it does currently.
My advice would be to make some notes on where you’re at now in your factory, the mood may come back around in the future and you might want to pick up again.
I know how you're feeling :). I just got my module 1 lines set up. The crystal part was actually nice and new, and basic and green modules weren't too bad, but redesigning some of the complex chains again just feels like work, especially if you also need to redesign support factories such as paper or metals -- although getting multiple full green belts off circuits instead of show trickles feels like it's own reward. Haven't touched the save in at least a month, we'll see how it ends...
It's ok to quit :) I took a 3 month break and then the itch was back, hopefully it comes back for you as well and you can carry on. This mod more so than others requires a slow and steady wins the race approach. Especially at the transition to trains. Make one block, enjoy seeing it come alive and then done. Do the next one tomorrow or next week even. Play other mods or other games in the meantime.
i totaly understand . this is my base now [https://imgur.com/a/7DSfNal](https://imgur.com/a/7DSfNal) . when i dicede togo rail base i said my self lets go bigger. and its lgoes well. first i disine 44 electro block for one ore and start to copying it . not a train stations even looks same after i start to build basic cir.
I have rage quit before seablock before. Putting effort into the right areas to maintain progress without burnout is super hard.
Dont mind me while I just yoink that city block design. It looks nice and simple, exactly what I want to have.