City blocks, bus, or other?

Nothing like a good old spaghetti Bolognese

Main bus early on at least until I have bots and trains. Then I usually transition to a distributed train network of specialized sub factories (plus usually one bot mall). Think city block (sub factories) but I just put stuff wherever there is room and I don't cram everything in an organized grid. I like working around lakes and having a more organically grown train network.

I personally prefer main bus, but with train pickup/dropoff spots for high usage items like plates, circuits, fluids, etc. The processing areas aren't "city blocks" per se, but little stations for processing specific items, if that makes sense. Reason being, if I put copper plates on the bus and that feeds directly into circuit production, then space on my bus is being taken up to create intermediate products

In a non overhaul playthrough, I normally use a main bus until the first rocket, then transition to full LTN to scale up to 1k spm and beyond. In BA, I use mostly crawler bots then logistic bots since the thought of a main bus or a belt fed mall in BA terrifies me.

Centerbus in starter- and main base, later with attached LTN dropoff/and pickups at the outer sides. In Space Exploration landingpads where needed.

Other for me. I never really could proprerly do a bus and city blocks are too advanced organisations. I have block of production randomly spread over the map, where I have space (I like to keep lakes and forest as much as possible) connected by train.

I start with a bus leaving enough headroom for multiple stations in the top part and a mall close by.

After trains, first I bring ores and then I start building minifactories for dedicated production drifting away from main bus.

When bots are available I start by converting the mall and then the main base is turn more or less into city blocks, but keeping the main bus.

Not as extreme as this but you can get the idea.

Fot the moment, it has worked everytime (including K2, let's see how it goes with current run of B&A) and the main plus (IMHO) is that I don't end up with a base that looks the same every run.

I am on my second playthrough of SE/K2 and start with a bus feeding a mall blueprint I designed. About the time I get cargo rockets available, I switch over to a grid based city block design with a rail grid I designed. As of right now I have about 40 LCCCCL trains and around 160 stations.

I only use a bus at the start for the mall and research. Once my first ore patches are dwindling I have transitioned to blocks by product as well as the mall. Ingredients in, products out. All by train.

It depends on the goal of the base.

I've always wanted to do a fully automatic city block, where each block produces exactly one resource, but get bored before that happens.

I'm currently working through seablock, and that's some crazy spaghetti. The limited space and the general lack of speed means that there is a lot of tearing down and optimizing my builds. In traditional Factorio resources and space is basically unlimited so optimization isn't necessary, in seablock a clogged belt means the entire factory stops running. So now I'm focused on efficiency.

Mine start as a bus and then evolve into city block, I rebuild after the first launch leaving the mall fed by the bus.

These are more different states of the game. If you try to create City Blocks without some sort of starter base you in for a very slow bad time, simply due to number of bots and resources you need. Generally, a main bus is used to get to automation of bots and various essential supplies (Electric Poles, Concrete, Rail Tracks, Assemblers etc) then you can start to transition. If you have biters, you’ll want artillery as city blocks take a huge amount of space and clearing manually would take ages.

I tend to use a large main bus and build my train network "organically". I've tried doing the city-block layout and it just doesn't wind up holding my interest. I think in reality I just like playing with trains lol.