New to Factorio: Help

[Rephath]

I'm looking for tips for beginners. What did you struggle with when you started you could help others with?

Also, the main problem I'm having now is I have to go to all my stone furnaces and manually remove items then manually insert them in my assemblers and manually remove the finished products from the assembler and move them to another assembler. I've tried using inserters to move products out of furnaces and into and out of assemblers. This isn't working. With a name like Factorio there's got to be a way to automate turning raw materials into more complex products.

[KatherineOfSky]

The campaign functions as a tutorial -- you should play it to learn the very basics of the game.

[Rephath]

Did. Couldn't find any info on extracting finished products.

[KatherineOfSky]

The campaign missions include examples of setups, showing inserters moving product from either machine to machine, or machine to chest or belt.

If you show us a screenshot of how inserters are "not working" we can help.

[piccolo255]

Explanation of inserter mechanics: https://wiki.factorio.com/Inserters

My guess is your problem is this:

Insertion limits

Depending on where an inserter is moving items, it does not always fill up the entire target inventory. This allows other inserters taking from the same transport belt to pick up their share of the items. For example, if a boiler has 5 or more items of fuel in it, an inserter will not insert additional fuel. This allows the other fuel to travel further down the transport belt. When the fuel drops below 5 items, the inserter will resume inserting fuel, up to the limit of 5 items.

The limit for assemblers is 2x the amount required for a single craft, and it stops inserting if there are several items in the output slot. To keep inserting/crafting, you need another inserter to take the finished items out of the assembler and put them into a chest and/or belt.

[NullaPax]

Move items from furnaces into crates then from the crate into the assemblers.
You can set limits to crate quantities.
Then move items from assembler into another crate.

[Thryden]

When you are placing inserters, you'll notice a yellow line on one side and a yellow arrow on the other. The yellow line is the side it'll take items from and the yellow arrow is where it'll place them. If inserters are placing items on transport belts, they'll continue placing items on until whatever they are taking from is empty. If they are placing items in assembling machines, they'll only place 2x the amount needed. If the assembling machine is making red potions, the inserter will place 2 copper plates and 2 gears in and let the rest pass, until the assembling machine makes a potion and uses some of the materials.

For other tips:

Always leave room for expansion. You're always going to have to increase production, especially of plates and circuits. That was one of my problems, cramming everything together and then when I needed to expand I had to take just about everything down.

Have a main bus. The most common resources needed are iron plates, copper plates, green circuits, red circuits, blue circuits, plastic, batteries, and steel. You will also need a lot of coal and stone bricks. Consider placing these in one big "road" of conveyer belts with two spaces between every two or four belts. Use splitters to branch off the products to the assembling machines that need them.

[THE kilroy]

Iron is king, no such thing as enough iron. Hopefully that doesnt take too much of the new player experience away