Alright, NOW it's done. For reals this time.
I did indeed use satisfactory-calculator.com to fix this. Specifically, I used it to manually lower the entire half of the beltway that was slightly higher than the other half, and absorbed the height discrepancy between the two buildings at the end of the upper beltway, here:
A few more glamor shots of the steel campus:
Next up, I got all the lighting done at the Nobelisk Factory:
So that concludes all of the temp factories that need to be rebuilt, except for Frames, Quartz, and SAM, all of which I'm putting off until next phase, because I don't have Manufacturers.
SO, that means it's time to start Project Parts!
This one's gonna be a decent distance away, since I've basically exhausted all the resources in the plains, so first step is to extend the tubeway to our new location.
Additionally, I need to go even farther out to get some Coal. As it happens, I already have some very close to the existing tubeway that leads to the power plant (I only used 2 of the 4 Coal nodes down by the lake) so I also built out a full loop of the tubeway, to connect up to a segment near those Coal nodes.
Next, I branched off to all the resource nodes, as well as down to the beach, where the factory will start. I'm thinking about doing some kind of organic megafactory for ALL the project parts, so I'm gonna need a loooooooooooooooot of space out on the water.
Finally, I decided I wanted a new design concept for miner outposts, so I came up with this, and built it out on all the resource nodes (except the Coals).
Wow it's all so clean. Where are you getting those lights, I haven't unlocked any I'm particularly happy with.
I can't wait to start again and have a plan going into everything, I've just unlocked the hoverpack and drones, so right after getting into the habit of spacing factories out rather than packing everything into as small a footprint as possible I've started flying around and lazily building into existing factories without planning. Last night I plonked down a supercomputer factory basically inside another factory, with the conveyors all clipping through each other, then I stuck a drone plaform on top, redirected some fuel to it and called it a day. No idea if it's even all working.
I've got 2 nights of work (security work, so 13h shifts including ~6h of downtime) before I can play again, so I think I'll sketch up some designs to tidy up my train system and redo a couple of areas before the mess gets too big. I keep detailed spreadsheets of every station and which platforms load & unload what on to which trains, as well as a separate sheet with each train, the time table and cargo loads/unloads. Trains have definitely been my favourite mechanic so far.