Satisfactory is the kind of game that you can play for tens and hundreds of hours and still be learning new things. You'll find ways to build faster and ways to build your factories more efficiently. You'll soon realize that the factories you build in the early game are really badly setup and really inefficient. That happened to me so I tore it all down.
Replacing old for new
Sometimes the old have to pave way for something new to thrive. My old startup factory in Satisfactory wasn't really built with a plan in mind. It was just built to get my initial starting production going. I had no idea what kind of parts I would need to produce in the future so it was hard to future proof it. It was also mostly a mess, and me being a person who appreciates tidyness and symmetry it was simply time to say goodbye.
My new factory is a lot more tidy and future proof. It turns out building a symmetrical factory is actually a lot more efficient in this game, both in terms of building speed and when it comes to efficiency of production. I'm using something called the manifold method to build my factories now which is just so pleasing to the eye. The buildings line up on two rows with the input facing the middle. The raw materials then come down the middle and is split to each of the buildings. Output comes out the back and is merget further down the line to go on to a new compound to be forged into new things yet again.
I did the math when setting all this up which means it's future proofed for the next tier of upgrades. I can upgrade the belts and overclock the buildings without having to tear anything down. It's a very pleasing thought not having to worry about building new stuff when I get new upgrades. That was plaguing me in the early games when I didn't know what upgrades I would get in the future.
It's taken a lot of time to build this new factory. It took me 3-4 hours of my morning last weekend but I'm so pleased with it. It's no longer an eyesore and it's pleasing to the mind to know that production is flowing perfectly through this monster. I might sit down and focus a bit on the architecture in the future. Right now it's just foundations on foundations and it's not really aesthetically pleasing aside from the symmetry.
All images in this post are screenshots taken by me.