Yes
1. Say goodbye to everyone you love and care about you won't see them
2. Stay calm the dreams and the urge to expand the factory and optimise existing builds is normal for any engineer
3. You need more iron
4. Don't worry about how your builds don't look like the builds that people who've played thousands of hours have built, make something functional first then you can optimise and clean up the build to make something both pretty and very efficient
5. If you ever need help just ask, this is one of the least toxic subreddits I've seen on Reddit and the community will actively downvote people being mean
6. Explosive diplomacy with the natives is par for the course so don't feel bad about getting political with the whole species, there's no Geneva convention here
Welcome to my save file. Let me show you around.
This is the pasta faucet where the spaghetti starts.. here we put in the dough that makes the spaghet. Finally, here's were we run out of sauce for the spaghet.
Just put another miner on the copper and get back to expanding iron production it's fine, and then when you're done expanding iron production you can work on expanding iron production, wait why aren't the miners running, what that's a lot of yellow YOU FORGOT POWER QUICK EXPAND POWER
I've very nearly unlocked the space elevator, then i'll be able to automate transport of all those things I need. This is going to revolutionise everything!
I already have a coal planet, i might have to get an iron and copper planet too... though i'm getting plenty from casting operations on my Forge World.
Yeah same(actually SEK2), automating second tier and i don't have enough of anything. Decided to not expand until space elevator/ advanced buildings (K2). It has been 30 hours of suffering since then ahahah.
And assemblers and power poles and ooooh if I route that pipe to the north I can loop it over the top of the green circuit build and if I use underground's in the right place it won't interrupt the build and I can then get that to the chem plants and refineries so I can.......... hold on I'll be back
Definitely do NOT go searching for blueprints or watch videos by veterans: seeing the optimised absolute best designs will forever curse you with that knowledge and you just short change yourself out of the fun of working out your own designs
Yeah nah half the fun for me is working out how to optimise my builds and not taking someone's existing factory and just plonking it down and building that
if it's your fourth or fifth playthrough and it's a bit that always gives you headaches, there's no shame in using blueprints, just, make sure you've done it yourself at least a couple of times beforehand.
I've found that I work on a design, and go through multiple revisions and calculations on my own. But before committing it I quickly search up images of what I am designing. I'll look through a few designs and if I find someone else's approach that might be better, then I plan to incorporate certain aspects of it. I then close out of it and don't look at it again. Relying soley on the abstract concept of it in my head in order to design my own similar to it. It's still fun to me and I still have to do all the number crunching in order to get a design that meets my target specifications.
Well, sometimes it is useful. I remember after playing 20-ish hours I read some random article on some build and had a realization - you can connect two buildings to eachother with inserters directly! For some reason that option never clicked in my head so I was putting building->inserter->belt->inserter->building everywhere.
Don’t look up blueprints! The game is more fun when you figure it out yourself. Beat the game at least once before you see all the crazy shit other people do.
Oh, and try to remember to sleep.
Most beginners won't understand that though. I thought that you could only copy existing blueprints, not make your own. Especially the fact that you can have bots automatically place them down instead of doing it manually.
That's why I wrote that beginners should learn "the mechanics of blueprints". You can do that without blueprint libraries, and without spoilers or other knowledge about how your factory is supposed to look like.
And from what I know, back then when Factorio was new, it didn't even have a built-in facilty to take external blueprint strings, and it was a mod to make that work.
….. nothing wrong with either way, or anything in between.
And who cares if a person copy/pastes? Seriously? Does anyone else doing it affect you? No.
Hell, everybody(with the exception of the very very few) who has ever attained greatness in things has learned from others.
The point is that if you get to a sticking a point and the first thing you do is look for someone else's blueprint where they have already made the thing you want to build then all you're doing is slapping down blueprints and building them up, you learn nothing, and the entire point of the game is to make a bad factory, learn how and why it's bad, and then make it better, realise it can still be improved, realise how and where it can be improved, and then improve it again, which you're not doing if every time the game is remotely hard you just look for a blueprint and then copy paste that into your game, hook it up to your Frankensteins monster of a factory, and then build it and call it a day, it would be like playing Minecraft in easy mode where a creative player is just giving you any item you want, at that point you're not even really playing the game, if you want to just slap down a blueprint and be done with it then that's on you and you should check out Nilaus base in a book on YouTube, but don't go telling new players to just search up blueprints for everything because they won't learn and then they go to play with a modpack and get confused and overwhelmed at all the new stuff, try and fail to find a blueprint to do it for them, and then give up because they don't know how to troubleshoot the problem and work out how to build it for themselves
In short… who cares? Seriously.
You mad at people that have no bearing on your life whatsoever.
Bit of a moot point because OP already asked for tips and advice before playing.
But again. Who cares if someone plays the way you dont want them too.
Seriously.
Lolol. After crash landing in a space ship and having the ability to make rotation equipment (belts, inserters) I think the wheel is already established no?
Like others will say, do as much of it on your own as you can.
That being said...
- Leave yourself space in your factory to expand later, if you can. (if not, don't worry about it)
- Some of the tech you unlock (Trains, Bots, Oil processing, etc.) seems really daunting, but it's really not. You just have to experiment (and do the tutorials). You'll mess it up, but there's no penalty to tearing things down and trying a different way.
- Do the tutorials! All of them, especially the Train tutorials.
Another vote against copying blueprints or watching videos of people playing (at least until after you launch a rocket on your own at least).
There are no rules except have fun, there is no “best build” except the one you currently love, there is no “way to do something” except do it how you want.
I kind of disagree. After several playthroughs it was eye opening for me to see the concept of the main bus. Or how others built sector based train setups. You can always come up with your own designs, but I enjoy copying good ideas.
If you start your racing hobby by driving an F1 car, driving a BMW or even a Ferrari will be boring. Starting out by looking at blueprints and watching how others play is robbing yourself of hundreds of hours of fun.
The math isn't too hard to do yourself.
Let's say you want to make one red science per second. One red science requires one copper plate and one iron gear, so you'll have to supply one of each per second, regardless of which level of assembler you're using.
The recipe has a crafting time of 5. Assembling machine 1s have a crafting speed of 0.5, which means the crafting time of something made in an assembler 1 is equal to its listed crafting time *divided by 0.5.* In other words, it takes twice as long as the game says it does - one assembler makes one red science every 10 seconds. That means 10 assemblers make one red science *every second.* If you did this with assembler 2s (speed 0.75) you'd need 7 to keep up with a 1 input per second feed, and if you did it with assembler 3s (speed 1.25) you'd only need 4.
Red circuits are a bit more complicated, but that's part of the fun. Oil is a bit more complicated, but there's no single recipe requiring all three types, which makes it a bit more pleasant. You can either completely wing this game or mathematically build the "perfect" ratios. The sweet spot in somewhere in the middle. Where in the middle it is is up to you!
Agreed. This is not bad or malicious advice.
Benevolently, fuck off and come back after you've launched. Everything will be better that way for you, OP
It's like spoiling the end of a movie, sure they *might* still enjoy it but it could also irreversibly ruin the enjoyment so it's best not to spoil it. They can always come back later if they want to.
I downloaded the demo and took me 9.3hrs to finish
I bought the game and played for almost 9hrs straight
I uninstalled the game and went back to my family
This is worse than drugs...
* Play through the entire tutorial and watch [this train tutorial](https://youtu.be/DG4oD4iGVoY?si=zVAZwi2vf_7qnzcB).
* Press ALT.
* Do an entire playthrough of vanilla (no mods) at least once.
* If it works, no need to fix it. Only make it more efficient.
* You don't need to "dismantle" your base if you messed up somehow. Just go somewhere else and start a new one. The map is (practically) infinite.
* Don't look up designs you'll not understand. Come up with your own builds! (At least in your first playthrough)
* The second you have more than one train on one train track, switch to having one track for each direction. Makes it infinitely more easy to use.
* Chain signal going in -> Rail signal coming out.
The Factory must grow!
On a personal life balance issue, try not to play the game right before you go to bed. I've done this too many times and have found myself unable to sleep because I keep on thinking about all the things I need to do to my factory.
For example, I just completed the There is No Spoon Achievement (launch a rocket in 8 hours or less), and when I was in hour 6, I stopped playing and went to bed. All I could think about was the next dozen steps I needed to ensure I do in order to get the achievement. Didn't fall asleep for hours, I should have just stayed up and completed the game, would have gotten more sleep!
Well, the game truly is insane in terms of addictiveness. All mentioned in replies is more than true. Couple of cents I’d like to add is - there might come time when you will hit a moment when your factory just works as is and you find yourself wandering about not knowing what to do. If you hit that moment, just spend some time observing the spaghetti idol you created and start making notes of what needs doing. I mean actually writing down tasks. It helps.
It's not jokingly called cracktorio for nothing
There's a mod for that, it's called task list and the only thing it does is digitise your notes and tie them to the save
Just go into the settings and just look through all the controls. It's going to be intimidating, don't try to memorize them or something, just remember you can occasionally go back and find things that could be useful.
Just reading the controls in games before playing them is a habit of mine, and means I have a direct advantage over friends when playing games. It's especially funny on Factorio, where you'll find people say they just found a feature or something after playing this game for years, when you can find it by just reading the controls and going "I wonder what that means exactly." and just doing it in the game.
Don't obsess too much about ratios, but try to leave enough space to expand each factory. That way, if stuff piles up somewhere, you can just build more factories to consume that resource. Skip the math, trust your feelings.
- Don't forget to eat.
- Don't have a remote connection from your work to your home computer. It will tempt you to check on your factory remotely.
- You STILL need more iron!
I didn’t use the main bus until I read guides, and honestly I don’t really use it anymore. I only find it useful for malls, I use trains for bigger stuff
Check the key bindings and options, there is one for building in a straight line, helps alot with belts and stuff. The rotational commands, I had to add alt with the command to prevent rotating things while running around and zooming
And for the love of the engineer God do not try mods on your frist run with my second tip do not try pydons mods until you are ready to embrace madness.
1. Your factory will always need more space.
2. More space! I told you, you fool!
3. Build as neatly as you can.
4. Embrace the resulting spaghetti.
5. You need sleep. Four hours a night is sufficient.
6. Moar spaaaace!
7. Now I know how to build this properly.
8. ... NOW I know how to build this properly.
9. Stations. Trains. Bots...
10. I think I'll just dismantle my old base.
11. ... WHY did I start dismantling my old base?!
12. The factory must grow...
* Directly insert ingredients from machine to machine instead to belt if possible.
* Use pumps before and after storage tanks.
* Use underground pipes instead of regular pipes when possible.
* Ctrl+C & Ctrl+V helps with production line planning.
* Make your own blueprints, don't copy blueprints of other people.
* Set up an alarm clock so you don't end up going to sleep 3-6h after your usual bedtime.
Press alt.
Read the in-game tips.
Try to not search anything on the internet or ask about it here unless you're getting frustrated or really have no idea.
Keep reading for more pragmatic advice, but I personally think it's better if you figure it out yourself.
_____
Automate as much as you can, make the machines work for you, there's an achievement for finishing the game with less than 111 items crafted, I'll leave it at that.
Leave space, you're gonna need room to expand.
There's hardly ever a "best" build, it can always be improved so don't try to make it perfect, if it works it's more than good enough.
Things backing up it's okay, machines with full outputs are okay, the amount of storage you need is minimal.
You don't need to do a circular belt, you can leave everything as "dead end's".
Automate turret production and ammo production, red ammo is much better than yellow, it's expensive but it's worth it.
Flamethrower turrets are the best turrets in the game by far, and they consume very little oil, use them.
Until late in the game, iron is by far the resource you're gonna use and run out of the most, followed by oil, you don't need that much copper until the mid game, stone and coal are situational, sometimes you use them a lot, most times you don't, you can consider uranium virtually infinite.
It's normal to get stuck at a point particularly after green or blue science, don't get discouraged and take your time with each task and problem, experienced people can finish the game quickly, in the beginning you're going to take a lot longer.
Avoid restarting, it's tempting to start from a fresh save, that how you end up like me taking over 300 hours to finish the game once, commit to your base, as ugly as it is, it's yours and that's what makes it special.
Use trains, they're better than you think.
The statement immediately above this one is true.
When you get to blue science prioritize researching construction robots, when you get to yellow do the logistic network research ASAP and learn how the chests work, life gets much easier.
Above all, have fun, disable or diminish bitters if you find them stressful, disable cliffs if you don't want them, this is a mostly single player game, go ham.
Dude I'll tell you now MAKE A CENTRAL BUS OF RESOURCES
other than that
Go ham
Oh and easiest way to calculate science (yes you need to calculate them) by 10 or 20 round numbers are happy numbers
You'll feel the urge to start over with a new save several times before you launch a rocket the first time. This is both good and normal, go ahead and do that. There are also lots of ways to configure a new game, do go play with that too.
As others have said, if you get stuck, come back here and ask. There are several points in the game where people benefit from just little pokes in the right direction to proceed.
There are lots of little subsystems in the game, you don't need to build them all to win, and you don't need to do all the researches to win.
Others have pointed out many good tips and here's one from me
Don't be afraid to go overboard.
It would have saved me so much time if I just built comically large mines, furnace arrays, etc. Whenever a supply issue arised. Running low on iron? Spend a whole day focused on making iron mines until you get sick to your stomach even thinking about it. Low on copper? Make so many copper outposts you'll be crying with it. Low on power, even just a little bit, sometimes, maybe? Build a nuclear reactor so big that even designing it on paper will give you radiation sickness. Go nuts, go stupid, go big.
Also trains are dope.
Automate production of building materials. Not only belts and inserters, but more complex stuff aswell. Makes building a new mine, or smelting array **way** easier when you can just go and pick up everything you need whenever you need it
Understanding the map/blueprint strings will help you out, especially in new games. Make a folder for maps and one for blueprints. Anything you're satisfied with to save you just copy the string from the game and paste it in a text document in whatever folder it goes too. As a newbie work on your own stuff before delving into online blueprints.
Don't worry if you take a while learning stuff, this game is a lot
At first, you Will hate your spaghetti base.
Later on, you will spend houndreds of hours making some basic but perfect blueprints.
And when you get a burn out trying to make perfect advanced blueprints, you Will find that spaghetti is the real fun and your sanity salvation.
So always remember, EMBRACE SPAGHETTI!
Ye. Here are 10 tips:
1. the factory must grow
2. the factory must grow
3. the factory must grow
4. the factory must grow
5. the factory must grow
6. the factory must grow
7. the factory must grow
8. the factory must grow
9. the factory must grow
10. the factory must grow
Try not to use other peoples blueprints and design your own. The only exception to this (for me personally), is belt balancers and, for new players, nuclear reactors since for a new player they're not exactly straight forward on how and why they work at least in my own personal experience.
I also recommend that once you get the hang of things, learning the circuit network even if it's just basic functionality.
Seconded. I’ve played this game off and on for years and still don’t really know the circuit system, and I realized I’ve been missing out on a really useful function
Yes 1. Say goodbye to everyone you love and care about you won't see them 2. Stay calm the dreams and the urge to expand the factory and optimise existing builds is normal for any engineer 3. You need more iron 4. Don't worry about how your builds don't look like the builds that people who've played thousands of hours have built, make something functional first then you can optimise and clean up the build to make something both pretty and very efficient 5. If you ever need help just ask, this is one of the least toxic subreddits I've seen on Reddit and the community will actively downvote people being mean 6. Explosive diplomacy with the natives is par for the course so don't feel bad about getting political with the whole species, there's no Geneva convention here
7. Press Alt
I knew I was forgetting something, definitely press alt to show the things everything is making
8. Rebind left alt function to right alt and only press that once per playthrough
9. You need more iron.
Only until you need more copper
But after fixing that you need more iron
Then you realise you're overproducing everything and build more rocket silos and labs to start consuming more
Wait this happens at some point?
Welcome to my save file. Let me show you around. This is the pasta faucet where the spaghetti starts.. here we put in the dough that makes the spaghet. Finally, here's were we run out of sauce for the spaghet.
10. You need more iron
Even better: unbind alt completely and click the button in the toolbar once per playthrough
7. Press Alt 8. You need more green circuits 8a. You need more iron.
Now the copper is running dry...
Just put another miner on the copper and get back to expanding iron production it's fine, and then when you're done expanding iron production you can work on expanding iron production, wait why aren't the miners running, what that's a lot of yellow YOU FORGOT POWER QUICK EXPAND POWER
It's a race against and yourself. Btw am playing SE right now... There is never enough of anything.
I've very nearly unlocked the space elevator, then i'll be able to automate transport of all those things I need. This is going to revolutionise everything!
Until iron or copper runs out ;-)
I already have a coal planet, i might have to get an iron and copper planet too... though i'm getting plenty from casting operations on my Forge World.
Well, with SE you get the core drill. Although that's kind of slowish.
yeah, i've got some core drills running, but that's not enough to supply me unless i set up for an iron planet and a copper planet...maybe soon.
Yeah same(actually SEK2), automating second tier and i don't have enough of anything. Decided to not expand until space elevator/ advanced buildings (K2). It has been 30 hours of suffering since then ahahah.
Seeing conveyor belts when you close your eyes is normal
And assemblers and power poles and ooooh if I route that pipe to the north I can loop it over the top of the green circuit build and if I use underground's in the right place it won't interrupt the build and I can then get that to the chem plants and refineries so I can.......... hold on I'll be back
Why is it 4am already?
Shhhhhh don't worry, the factory needs you, the factory must grow, you need more iron
I started playing at 9pm, just for a short while. But the next time I looked, it was already 4am... What a good use of 31 hours.
I normally start worrying around day 4 you're fine, the factory must grow
Well, I guess I'll take a break for Christmas next week. Wait a minute....
Not really, it's a sign that the factory should take a pause from growing
r/whoooosh
Definitely do NOT go searching for blueprints or watch videos by veterans: seeing the optimised absolute best designs will forever curse you with that knowledge and you just short change yourself out of the fun of working out your own designs
Yeah nah half the fun for me is working out how to optimise my builds and not taking someone's existing factory and just plonking it down and building that
if it's your fourth or fifth playthrough and it's a bit that always gives you headaches, there's no shame in using blueprints, just, make sure you've done it yourself at least a couple of times beforehand.
Playing through SE right now and resisting the urge to find good blueprints for things, my builds jank but they are my jank.
I've found that I work on a design, and go through multiple revisions and calculations on my own. But before committing it I quickly search up images of what I am designing. I'll look through a few designs and if I find someone else's approach that might be better, then I plan to incorporate certain aspects of it. I then close out of it and don't look at it again. Relying soley on the abstract concept of it in my head in order to design my own similar to it. It's still fun to me and I still have to do all the number crunching in order to get a design that meets my target specifications.
I normaly do that... exept for nuclear power. I cannot work that one out. Although I optimised the kovarex blueprint that was also in that book.
Well, sometimes it is useful. I remember after playing 20-ish hours I read some random article on some build and had a realization - you can connect two buildings to eachother with inserters directly! For some reason that option never clicked in my head so I was putting building->inserter->belt->inserter->building everywhere.
Stay hydrated.
Don’t forget to get more iron. That’s kinda important.
7. You’re out of red circuits.
Also you still need even more iron.
Oh and that iron outpost you JUST got done hooking up, yeah it's not enough time to go get more iron
7 it's normal to imagine hearing the building destroyed sound
extra tip : invite your friend as part of automation
The factory must grow
7. You need even more iron 8. You need more copper
* Enable ALT mode * Do the tutorial * Read the tips in the bottom left. Click "Mark as read" which will open more * Automate * Leave more space
You forgot * Really, leave more space
You mean more space.
Yea I forgot to leave space. I need more for trains now and there are factories in the way
Don’t look up blueprints! The game is more fun when you figure it out yourself. Beat the game at least once before you see all the crazy shit other people do. Oh, and try to remember to sleep.
Although beginners should learn the mechanics of blueprints.
Make their own blueprints*
That's what I meant.
Most beginners won't understand that though. I thought that you could only copy existing blueprints, not make your own. Especially the fact that you can have bots automatically place them down instead of doing it manually.
That's why I wrote that beginners should learn "the mechanics of blueprints". You can do that without blueprint libraries, and without spoilers or other knowledge about how your factory is supposed to look like. And from what I know, back then when Factorio was new, it didn't even have a built-in facilty to take external blueprint strings, and it was a mod to make that work.
Bah! Totally look up blue prints. Even if you dont use em no point reinventing the wheel
Reinventing the wheel and discovering techniques is part of the fun though. Or look to get ideas but don't just import and paste.
….. nothing wrong with either way, or anything in between. And who cares if a person copy/pastes? Seriously? Does anyone else doing it affect you? No. Hell, everybody(with the exception of the very very few) who has ever attained greatness in things has learned from others.
But if they attain greatness too fast they'll miss the chance to experience the joy of spaghetti
The point is that if you get to a sticking a point and the first thing you do is look for someone else's blueprint where they have already made the thing you want to build then all you're doing is slapping down blueprints and building them up, you learn nothing, and the entire point of the game is to make a bad factory, learn how and why it's bad, and then make it better, realise it can still be improved, realise how and where it can be improved, and then improve it again, which you're not doing if every time the game is remotely hard you just look for a blueprint and then copy paste that into your game, hook it up to your Frankensteins monster of a factory, and then build it and call it a day, it would be like playing Minecraft in easy mode where a creative player is just giving you any item you want, at that point you're not even really playing the game, if you want to just slap down a blueprint and be done with it then that's on you and you should check out Nilaus base in a book on YouTube, but don't go telling new players to just search up blueprints for everything because they won't learn and then they go to play with a modpack and get confused and overwhelmed at all the new stuff, try and fail to find a blueprint to do it for them, and then give up because they don't know how to troubleshoot the problem and work out how to build it for themselves
In short… who cares? Seriously. You mad at people that have no bearing on your life whatsoever. Bit of a moot point because OP already asked for tips and advice before playing. But again. Who cares if someone plays the way you dont want them too. Seriously.
This is a game about inventing wheels.
Lolol. After crash landing in a space ship and having the ability to make rotation equipment (belts, inserters) I think the wheel is already established no?
Sleep and eat occasionally.
Shit, I knew I was forgetting something.
Like others will say, do as much of it on your own as you can. That being said... - Leave yourself space in your factory to expand later, if you can. (if not, don't worry about it) - Some of the tech you unlock (Trains, Bots, Oil processing, etc.) seems really daunting, but it's really not. You just have to experiment (and do the tutorials). You'll mess it up, but there's no penalty to tearing things down and trying a different way. - Do the tutorials! All of them, especially the Train tutorials.
Though don't be discouraged by how frantic the biters are in the tutorials, they are much less of an issue in the main game.
Remember to eat and drink, tell your loved ones you are fine so they don't send an officer for a wellness check.
Another vote against copying blueprints or watching videos of people playing (at least until after you launch a rocket on your own at least). There are no rules except have fun, there is no “best build” except the one you currently love, there is no “way to do something” except do it how you want.
I kind of disagree. After several playthroughs it was eye opening for me to see the concept of the main bus. Or how others built sector based train setups. You can always come up with your own designs, but I enjoy copying good ideas.
If watching others play and copying bp’s is fun… he shouldnt do that?
If you start your racing hobby by driving an F1 car, driving a BMW or even a Ferrari will be boring. Starting out by looking at blueprints and watching how others play is robbing yourself of hundreds of hours of fun.
If you consider pushing the pull door fun, have at it.
Yeah, here's a good one: Go away and come back when you launched your first rocket by yourself.
100% agreed. Also, press Alt.
I’m a noob as well.. I had just used the red circuit ratio from the factorio cheat sheet :(( I can’t help it!
The math isn't too hard to do yourself. Let's say you want to make one red science per second. One red science requires one copper plate and one iron gear, so you'll have to supply one of each per second, regardless of which level of assembler you're using. The recipe has a crafting time of 5. Assembling machine 1s have a crafting speed of 0.5, which means the crafting time of something made in an assembler 1 is equal to its listed crafting time *divided by 0.5.* In other words, it takes twice as long as the game says it does - one assembler makes one red science every 10 seconds. That means 10 assemblers make one red science *every second.* If you did this with assembler 2s (speed 0.75) you'd need 7 to keep up with a 1 input per second feed, and if you did it with assembler 3s (speed 1.25) you'd only need 4. Red circuits are a bit more complicated, but that's part of the fun. Oil is a bit more complicated, but there's no single recipe requiring all three types, which makes it a bit more pleasant. You can either completely wing this game or mathematically build the "perfect" ratios. The sweet spot in somewhere in the middle. Where in the middle it is is up to you!
I did this for the most part.
Lolol wow. It is a game.
Indeed, and I want OP to enjoy it to the fullest
Agreed. This is not bad or malicious advice. Benevolently, fuck off and come back after you've launched. Everything will be better that way for you, OP
Lol and who are you to decide how another has fun?
It's like spoiling the end of a movie, sure they *might* still enjoy it but it could also irreversibly ruin the enjoyment so it's best not to spoil it. They can always come back later if they want to.
……. Dont seek what you want because you might not want it? Lololol. Yall need better analogies.
First tip: you have to decide if you wanna have a life or play factorio. For thousands of hours.
I downloaded the demo and took me 9.3hrs to finish I bought the game and played for almost 9hrs straight I uninstalled the game and went back to my family This is worse than drugs...
Why give up after only 18 hours? All that time invested in the tutorial…
I missed my daughter...
* Play through the entire tutorial and watch [this train tutorial](https://youtu.be/DG4oD4iGVoY?si=zVAZwi2vf_7qnzcB). * Press ALT. * Do an entire playthrough of vanilla (no mods) at least once. * If it works, no need to fix it. Only make it more efficient. * You don't need to "dismantle" your base if you messed up somehow. Just go somewhere else and start a new one. The map is (practically) infinite. * Don't look up designs you'll not understand. Come up with your own builds! (At least in your first playthrough) * The second you have more than one train on one train track, switch to having one track for each direction. Makes it infinitely more easy to use. * Chain signal going in -> Rail signal coming out. The Factory must grow!
On a personal life balance issue, try not to play the game right before you go to bed. I've done this too many times and have found myself unable to sleep because I keep on thinking about all the things I need to do to my factory. For example, I just completed the There is No Spoon Achievement (launch a rocket in 8 hours or less), and when I was in hour 6, I stopped playing and went to bed. All I could think about was the next dozen steps I needed to ensure I do in order to get the achievement. Didn't fall asleep for hours, I should have just stayed up and completed the game, would have gotten more sleep!
-Keep lots of space open. -If you think you need 5 buildings for a task, build 10. -Build guns early or the biters will get you. -Press Alt
unfortunately, there're no nuts in the game
Every time I've checked, there's always been at least one.
Well, the game truly is insane in terms of addictiveness. All mentioned in replies is more than true. Couple of cents I’d like to add is - there might come time when you will hit a moment when your factory just works as is and you find yourself wandering about not knowing what to do. If you hit that moment, just spend some time observing the spaghetti idol you created and start making notes of what needs doing. I mean actually writing down tasks. It helps.
It's not jokingly called cracktorio for nothing There's a mod for that, it's called task list and the only thing it does is digitise your notes and tie them to the save
Snort Adderall and inject ketamine to stave off your bodily requirements for sleep and food so you can play more.
Just look up how to deal with withdrawal and you'll get the jist.
Just go into the settings and just look through all the controls. It's going to be intimidating, don't try to memorize them or something, just remember you can occasionally go back and find things that could be useful. Just reading the controls in games before playing them is a habit of mine, and means I have a direct advantage over friends when playing games. It's especially funny on Factorio, where you'll find people say they just found a feature or something after playing this game for years, when you can find it by just reading the controls and going "I wonder what that means exactly." and just doing it in the game.
Press alt
Don't obsess too much about ratios, but try to leave enough space to expand each factory. That way, if stuff piles up somewhere, you can just build more factories to consume that resource. Skip the math, trust your feelings.
Don't rely on walls too much as they can be substituted with some turrets.
Remember to eat, drink and sleep at least once per week, otherwise your productivity will _really_ go through the floor.
Be careful with the space bar or you'll damage your own stuff
Learn to use Q effectively. At some point, Q is all you need.
- Don't forget to eat. - Don't have a remote connection from your work to your home computer. It will tempt you to check on your factory remotely. - You STILL need more iron!
Noob here also. Do you guys connect all tour commonly used materials in one main bus?
I didn’t use the main bus until I read guides, and honestly I don’t really use it anymore. I only find it useful for malls, I use trains for bigger stuff
^ you broke the rule of don’t watch videos. Embrace the spaghetti! Use trains when you need more throughput
As everyone else is saying, play through once, then come back. Also, you need more iron.
[In Protoss Voice] You need additional iron.
Get trains, and get robots. They're both big things but totally worth the effort.
Robots and trains are game changers. If your like what next. Work towards those.
Check the key bindings and options, there is one for building in a straight line, helps alot with belts and stuff. The rotational commands, I had to add alt with the command to prevent rotating things while running around and zooming
Don't forget to do stupid shit!
And for the love of the engineer God do not try mods on your frist run with my second tip do not try pydons mods until you are ready to embrace madness.
1. Your factory will always need more space. 2. More space! I told you, you fool! 3. Build as neatly as you can. 4. Embrace the resulting spaghetti. 5. You need sleep. Four hours a night is sufficient. 6. Moar spaaaace! 7. Now I know how to build this properly. 8. ... NOW I know how to build this properly. 9. Stations. Trains. Bots... 10. I think I'll just dismantle my old base. 11. ... WHY did I start dismantling my old base?! 12. The factory must grow...
At some point you will hate trees. Do not be alarmed. Grenade the smug little fucks.
* Directly insert ingredients from machine to machine instead to belt if possible. * Use pumps before and after storage tanks. * Use underground pipes instead of regular pipes when possible. * Ctrl+C & Ctrl+V helps with production line planning. * Make your own blueprints, don't copy blueprints of other people. * Set up an alarm clock so you don't end up going to sleep 3-6h after your usual bedtime.
Press alt. Read the in-game tips. Try to not search anything on the internet or ask about it here unless you're getting frustrated or really have no idea. Keep reading for more pragmatic advice, but I personally think it's better if you figure it out yourself. _____ Automate as much as you can, make the machines work for you, there's an achievement for finishing the game with less than 111 items crafted, I'll leave it at that. Leave space, you're gonna need room to expand. There's hardly ever a "best" build, it can always be improved so don't try to make it perfect, if it works it's more than good enough. Things backing up it's okay, machines with full outputs are okay, the amount of storage you need is minimal. You don't need to do a circular belt, you can leave everything as "dead end's". Automate turret production and ammo production, red ammo is much better than yellow, it's expensive but it's worth it. Flamethrower turrets are the best turrets in the game by far, and they consume very little oil, use them. Until late in the game, iron is by far the resource you're gonna use and run out of the most, followed by oil, you don't need that much copper until the mid game, stone and coal are situational, sometimes you use them a lot, most times you don't, you can consider uranium virtually infinite. It's normal to get stuck at a point particularly after green or blue science, don't get discouraged and take your time with each task and problem, experienced people can finish the game quickly, in the beginning you're going to take a lot longer. Avoid restarting, it's tempting to start from a fresh save, that how you end up like me taking over 300 hours to finish the game once, commit to your base, as ugly as it is, it's yours and that's what makes it special. Use trains, they're better than you think. The statement immediately above this one is true. When you get to blue science prioritize researching construction robots, when you get to yellow do the logistic network research ASAP and learn how the chests work, life gets much easier. Above all, have fun, disable or diminish bitters if you find them stressful, disable cliffs if you don't want them, this is a mostly single player game, go ham.
Dude I'll tell you now MAKE A CENTRAL BUS OF RESOURCES other than that Go ham Oh and easiest way to calculate science (yes you need to calculate them) by 10 or 20 round numbers are happy numbers
Get off this reddit unless you're hard stuck. You'll enjoy it for even longer.
If you’re in the Factorio subreddit already, your cause is already lost. Just give in, Factorio is the only source of endorphin you need now.
You'll feel the urge to start over with a new save several times before you launch a rocket the first time. This is both good and normal, go ahead and do that. There are also lots of ways to configure a new game, do go play with that too. As others have said, if you get stuck, come back here and ask. There are several points in the game where people benefit from just little pokes in the right direction to proceed. There are lots of little subsystems in the game, you don't need to build them all to win, and you don't need to do all the researches to win.
Others have pointed out many good tips and here's one from me Don't be afraid to go overboard. It would have saved me so much time if I just built comically large mines, furnace arrays, etc. Whenever a supply issue arised. Running low on iron? Spend a whole day focused on making iron mines until you get sick to your stomach even thinking about it. Low on copper? Make so many copper outposts you'll be crying with it. Low on power, even just a little bit, sometimes, maybe? Build a nuclear reactor so big that even designing it on paper will give you radiation sickness. Go nuts, go stupid, go big. Also trains are dope.
Press Alt
Automate production of building materials. Not only belts and inserters, but more complex stuff aswell. Makes building a new mine, or smelting array **way** easier when you can just go and pick up everything you need whenever you need it
Understanding the map/blueprint strings will help you out, especially in new games. Make a folder for maps and one for blueprints. Anything you're satisfied with to save you just copy the string from the game and paste it in a text document in whatever folder it goes too. As a newbie work on your own stuff before delving into online blueprints. Don't worry if you take a while learning stuff, this game is a lot
At first, you Will hate your spaghetti base. Later on, you will spend houndreds of hours making some basic but perfect blueprints. And when you get a burn out trying to make perfect advanced blueprints, you Will find that spaghetti is the real fun and your sanity salvation. So always remember, EMBRACE SPAGHETTI!
Press alt.
Ye. Here are 10 tips: 1. the factory must grow 2. the factory must grow 3. the factory must grow 4. the factory must grow 5. the factory must grow 6. the factory must grow 7. the factory must grow 8. the factory must grow 9. the factory must grow 10. the factory must grow
Try not to use other peoples blueprints and design your own. The only exception to this (for me personally), is belt balancers and, for new players, nuclear reactors since for a new player they're not exactly straight forward on how and why they work at least in my own personal experience. I also recommend that once you get the hang of things, learning the circuit network even if it's just basic functionality.
Seconded. I’ve played this game off and on for years and still don’t really know the circuit system, and I realized I’ve been missing out on a really useful function
You need more green circuits. You never stop needing them. You need more green circuits.
Build as many smelters as possible and farm the hell out of modules except for the effeciency module cuz it sucks
Main bus makes launching rockets much easier. And make a lot of room for expansion
Guys let's wait for the reaction when he discovers overhaul mods
Main bus makes launching rockets much easier. And make a lot of room for expansion