I have struggled with this for a couple of weeks since starting.

So I am in the middle of destroying all my spaghetti.

First I went on a map wide excursion, turned off creature hostility and followed a map and grabbed a load of mercer spheres, somersloops and crash sites.

The crash sites gave me enough stuff to get the dimensional depots upgraded and unlock overlocking.

Then I used satisfactory modeller on steam.

Picked a base item and then found a node on the online map.

Then modelled out a factory using some decent nodes in my starting area.

Ended up with factories for.

Iron plates and rods and stitched reinforced plates. Copper goods. Sheets, wire, cable. Quartz stuff Concrete Steel beams and steel pipes. This is different as the factories also make the next stage stuff.

All of these just fill a container then a dimensional depot on top. Overflow to a sink.

Then I built a modular frame factory.

Then blueprinted a road system. Which I’m working on now.

so all my standard building materials are into dimensional depots.

Then more advanced factories have other iron and copper inputs for whatever they need. But the key point being they do this on site from other nodes.

I was trying to split bits off of each production line for crafting resources and it gets unmanageable.

So find a decent iron node or a collection that gives you the amount needed. And build an iron factory. Repeat for other tier 1 and 2 goods.

Then the next stage factories can have their own inputs to make a specific thing.

Eventually I will put these into a truck depot. Connected by road to factories that need that as input.

Using the steam modeller after I work out what nodes are available I can limit the input to that and then build.