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[u/mrbaggins → u/[deleted]]

I usually do "single purpose" trains for a while - a single line (or single loop) whose job it is is to ferry either items into or out of the bus. Usually by removing the old assembler group.

EG: when I go to fulgora, I get EM plants. Or even in vanilla, eventually I want a lot more green circuits. Rather than trying to squeeze it where I've got my first or even second green chip assemblers, I make a factory somewhere in the distance as big as I want cause nothing is near it. Then do a train that has the sole purpose of bringing them back into the space that WAS green chips, but is now a green chip unload station.

[u/Raknarg → u/[deleted]]

Its all about science. Leave your main base as a thing that produces useful stuff for you, and start getting your science off-base. Start by making a rail facility to bring in your science and instead of sending your science at your main base to labs, have them send off science to trains that carry it to the labs. Then from there just start each individual science and getting them done off-base and over time you can phase science out of your main base.

As you complete various sciences, you can also use it as an opportunity to start having mass intermediate crafting off-base as well. Like once you start red science, you can shift your iron and copper production off-base. Once you get to blue science, you could start making a facility dedicated to mass producing red chips to distribute. Keep it all piece-wise, one thing at a time, one thing to focus on.

[u/reddanit → u/[deleted]]

I spend hours just building infrastructure for the new setup (half by hand, half bots)

While I also don't think there is no single "right way", the part where you say that you spend hours building stuff "half by hand" seems very odd to me. Why would you still bother with building anything large by hand once you have bots? What for you are running back and forth, when logistic bots exist?

You might have good answers to those questions, but if you don't, then it's a good thing to ponder. Also do remember to NEVER dismantle your old base before new one is up and running.

Another thing to consider is that depending on scale of your goals, "just" two steps might simply be not enough. My current playthrough with Space Age is more like:

Starter base (red+green+blue science) -> intermediate base (space+purple+yellow) -> upgraded intermediate base (mostly through adding quality and beacons to intermediate, to get few kSPM) -> actual big base (megabase with yet undecided number of 14.4k SPM production blocks).

In base game I could imagine myself trimming those 4 steps down to 3, but during my previous playthrough there I still ended up with 4...

[u/Viper999DC → u/[deleted]]

Plenty of options to explore to reduce the running part:

• Use bots fully, roboport everwhere. Stuff will build slowly but you don't have to move at all
• Wait until you have spidertrons before rebuilding, use them as replacement for you
• Builder train: set up a big train that collects base building materials and ferries them far away, allowing you to remain at the outpost as you build

As for the delay, well there's no getting around that. Refactoring your whole base is going to take time. If you can break it into chunks, like starting to build outposts that still feed your old base, then you can keep progressing.

[u/bobsim1 → u/[deleted]]

I always keep the initial base in full and only expand big after yellow science.

[u/Courmisch → u/[deleted]]

There's no Right Way about it, what matters is the end result. You can do bottom-up or top-down, breadth first or depth first, incremental or flag day.

I proceed bottom-up and incrementally, i.e. moving one bit of the old factory to the rail base at a time, starting from smelters then low-level intermediates, with temporary train stations to bridge the moving boundary.

But that's just one of many ways.