My first working platform that has now taken me to my first two planets!
After the sad fate of Space Boat which went through the asteroid field like pudding through a cheese grater, and Space Boat II which did not have enough production capabilities to ward off wandering asteroids at Fulgora, the Space Boat III worked perfectly.
With the ability to travel safely and refuel and rearm itself in orbit around any of the starter planets, it is now running autonomous supply transport between Nauvis, Fulgora and Vulcanus without needing any oversight.
At some point I'll have to make a platform with bigger storage and stronger production capabilities so it can travel faster, but for now it does a solid job. :)
Yeah, I've considered adding them, but I decided not to. Each space platform you add is more weight, and if you're getting hit at all that means you needed more turrets and/or ammo. Adding walls, in my opinion, is submitting to the fact your design failed. I'd rather use the space for solar panels and make sure I never get struck by an asteroid.
So far this philosophy has worked well. My first ship was moderately successful, though it didn't have enough solar to produce more ammo than it consumed at Fulgora (it needed redisigned slightly, but Fulgora constantly has asteroids so it died there). My second barely gets enough power, though not enough to produce as much fuel as I'd like.
Basically, you could use the space that are walls to instead not need them. That's my choice, but it's a decision you need to make. Walls definitely have a purpose in space, but it's one I'd rather design away than rely on.
Oof.
Factorio is an interesting game in that I've always winged it (reading about how to play games seems... pointless to me), but I once looked something up that I couldn't figure out and had a "holy shit, that's way easier than what I've been doing!" moment.
I still would rather figure things out than use other people's templates... but I did once steal a template for a nuclear power plant because it was so much darned better than what I was coming up with.
This is something core to my preference of Factorio over all other resource management games I've tried: most others put you under stress, and it's a hurry just to build enough to stay alive. Factorio gives me time to figure things out, and while I may not come up with the best patterns, it's the process of design that I like.
Anyway, communities like this are nice because it feels less like stealing designs than borrowing ideas.
Yeah, I agree. I use a blueprint book for balancers, because designing those isn't fun for me and there's so many different ones you might need. In the past I've also grabbed people's rail blueprints because there were only so many ways to make them that I'd didn't really do much (with the new rail stuff, there's a lot more ways).
Ideas though are great to share. You still need to think about how to implement them, but they can help you consider things you wouldn't have on your own, or inform you about less obvious things.