Need help figuring our how labs/research works.

[Hoppled]

Well I'm at the part of the campaign called "new hope". My objective right now is to research automobilism. Before that, they had me research some other stuff- like automation, etc.

Anyways, it says under the recipes I need 100x green science and 200x red science tubes to research automobilism. I tried putting the science in manually but it did not work. I have no idea what to do or what approach to take.

Here is a screenshot of what it looks like: http://imgur.com/a/cZPpj

[Emmote]

I'd help but I can't view imgur links. (Can't you use Steam's screenshot tool?)

Just going to have to guess for now...
Have you clicked Research to start the research? If not it won't do anything.
The labs have to have all kinds of beakers that the research needs before it'll start, so both red and green at the same time.
And of course the labs need power, etc..

[Hoppled]

Originally posted by Emmote:

I'd help but I can't view imgur links. (Can't you use Steam's screenshot tool?)

Just going to have to guess for now...
Have you clicked Research to start the research? If not it won't do anything.
The labs have to have all kinds of beakers that the research needs before it'll start, so both red and green at the same time.
And of course the labs need power, etc..

yeah its uploaded on my profile

[Emmote]

Ok, I checked it. It says at the top right "Press T to start research" or words to that effect. That means you haven't selected a research to start yet. So it won't do anything.
So, do as it says. ^^

[Malhagor]

labs need at least all the colored potion of a recipe to work

[Warlord]

Most important bit:
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That particular research needs both green and red science in the same lab at the same time. Any research that asks for multiple science colors needs all the variants in the lab at once.
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Also, automate it. The inserter at the bottom is taking out of the assembly machine, but there is no belt in front of it to place the pack. Move the belt so it is under the arm.

Next, items do not simply "flow" into a receiving machine (a lab is kind of like an assembler). You must use another inserter to take off of the belt and insert into the lab.

Try for parallel research. This means getting multiple labs in a row all getting the necessary science packs at once in order to research faster. The 100x and 200X means it needs 1 green and 2 red science per run, and 100 runs total. If you have 10 labs at once, they all only need to run 10 times to finish. Much faster than 1 lab 100 times.

[Momaw Nadon]

You need inserters taking the red and green science out of its assembly machine and on to a belt, the at the labs you'll need inserters to take the science off the belt and place them into the lab - not having the belt start at the machine and end at the lab.