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Because this community deserves more activity.
Today was spent setting up a basic Quartz/Silica factory, from one of the pure nodes in the giant Rocky Desert cave.
Got it most of the way done. Need to finish running power along the input belt line, finish enclosing the Depot wing, bring the road up to meet the building, setup truck stations, and color and light the whole thing.
Mostly, early on, I'd tap what I need and produce everything I can from it
I automate pretty much every part I can with a focus on the current objective, and leave things running indefinitely
As I go up in tiers I'll upgrade miners and belts if it makes sense, like I could get something I need by expanding existing production and there's room available
At higher tiers, I mostly set out to solve a specific need, like I need to make these parts and I want them produced at this rate, so I start by looking at what I already have, and the components I don't have I'll set up production for
I rarely set out to completely max out a node right out of the gate, unless that makes sense for what I need
By the end phase, my build schematics were surprisingly simple as a lot of it was just bringing production together and extending, overclocking, and/or slopping to feed the inputs I needed
For the four iron nodes, I probably tap one or two because that's what I need right now and build my platforms covering the rest which I'll maybe open up and tap later if needed
A friend of mine, however, has made these stackable blueprints with as many of each maker building as he can cram into them. He'll then go to a set of nodes and start dropping a massive tower of these things together to set up an absolutely unholy amount of whatever it is he needs. His landscape is dotted with these monster factories reaching skyscraper height