Originally got the sub 8 hour achievement during a 2-player game in Early Access, back when you had to collect alien orbs to get science. It was before cliffs, and logistics bots were easier to get, so I was curious if it would be much easier or much harder.
And not least I wanted to get the achievement “properly legitimately”, i.e. single player release version.
All in all it was easier than I feared! With proper settings I didn’t even encounter the biters even though they were present, and the run was doable by just winging it with little pre-planning and no restarts.
Yeah yeah it’s a phone photo. I originally took it to brag on snapchat. :)
Congrats, what’s the tactics?
Most obvious is to max out resource patches and starting area for map generation. This meant I could keep the base small and not hit biters.
I made some tech cutoffs: No solar, no nuclear, no bots, no trains, no weapon, no armor, no beacons, small (steel) power poles only, and stick to red belts and blue assemblers.
Get belts automated quickly. If you have enough of those you can worry less about optimal placement and just drag a long belt.
Then automate miners, smelters, inserters and assemblers. Slapping down a new smelter line in 5 minutes is the best possible remedy once something slows down.
Small bus with two resources on each belt, except for iron and copper which got a full belt each.
Steel got its own separate mining/smelter section from separate patches, as did circuit production.
I went for electric smelters when available, because it was easier to place them, but I think it slowed me down: They were slow to make at scale, and required a lot of power expansion.