Hey all!

I'm on my first playthrough and I'm loving this mod. I've just finished setting up my base to produce all of the basic tech cards up to blue (including military). I've tried to keep my base organized around a main bus, but I've had issues finding good places to put certain production sites. Many of my raw resource refinement areas have been crammed in so that I can fit things onto my main belt. Maybe it's because I don't have enough raw resources on my main bus and too many intermediates, or is using a main bus not an optimal design for Krastorio 2?

So far I have iron, copper, blank tech cards, wood, coal, half stone brick half stone, green circuit, glass, coke, electronic components, steel, plastic, red circuits, and I've just added a small refined rare metal line as well as blue circuits on my main bus. I haven't set up advanced oil yet though. My base is becoming a bit too cluttered to add in the necessary factories to get past blue science. Do you think my issues stem from what is/isn't on my bus, or is it a general design issue? What have you guys been putting on your main belts/how have you guys been organizing your bases? Thanks for any help or suggestions!

Bus is just a massive long slow storage chest. I am using trains for long distances, transport drones and sometimes flying drones for medium distances, and belts and sometimes flying drones in short distances. I am using flying drones only when i can't use belts or transport drones (like when there are many intersections). Just roleplaying logistic in real life a bit.

My base was a spaghetti on first run as well, so you'll learn as you play. One thing you'll realize is that early on techs "expire" and will not be needed in the future, so not point in putting on bus everything.
In my play I never put coke (only needed for steel), for military science I used to do biodomes, but it's easy enough to collect enough creep nearby to get all military done without a single biodome and just put it in large chest.
Later on you'll need quite a few other items at large quantities, so I keep my bus "lean" early on.
What I put at the start-mid game is iron, copper, steel, plastic, circuits, adv circuits, blue circuits, glass (half belt is enough as that becomes obsolete too), 2-3 belts of electronic components (if you're building modules from bus).
You'll need rare metals for several items, so keep full belt of it.

For tech cards, I used to put them on the bus, but you need so many of them later on, that I have dedicated production for 2 different techs.

I did play a lot of vanilla (Standard) Factorio before. I finished the mod yesterday and managed to get the intergalactic radar loaded.

I did use a big main bus setup (about 30 belts wide, grouped into 4 belts each)
The setup I built was : mining starting resources below the main bus setup and melting of copper plates, 4 lanes iron plates,4 lanes, glass plates,1 lane Rare metals bars, 2 lanes and steel plates 2 lanes, Wood, 1 lane, all below the start of the main bus.

So as I called it " facility productions " (green circuits, red circuits, the MALL etc., steel bars, electronic components ) did I built on the left side of the main bus, all research related buildings (the cards, the labs etc on the right side of the main bus)

Further distance from the main bus were my big oil refineries, gas processing and Matter processing , connected with longer belts, and some train driven connections..

Thank you all for your replies! They have been very helpful. I'm going to rebuild and reorganize parts of my base to better fit your guys' advice now that I have robots online.