Top 7 Mistakes Newbies Make

Don't make these TOTALLY UNFORGIVABLE ERRORS as a new player! All your friends will laugh at you and it will be your fault (it won't actually be your fault)!
Includes some bonus tips and tricks! Minimal spoilers!
This guide contains videos. All the videos have NO sound.

Not Reading Stuff

Read everything. Read the descriptions on new buildings in your build menu. Read the lists of controls that appear below many windows. Read the hover texts. Read the info displays on your machines.


Good thing you read the hover text on this item, otherwise you might have wasted a lot of time and effort in the future


Now that you've noticed this, your life just got a lot easier

This is most important when you're upgrading the HUB at the start of the game! There's lots of hints to read and lots of new buildings to study the descriptions of. Many new players will rush through the HUB upgrades and then wonder why they're doing so much manual crafting, ignoring all the automating machines they've unlocked along the way. (Remember you can review all the hints from your Codex with X, if you blew past them.)

Ignoring (or Misinterpreting) the Production Tab

Lots of people misunderstand the production tab on their machines, or just neglect its information entirely. If you misunderstand it, it's totally your fault! (It's not actually your fault)

Here's a constructor making iron rods. It consumes a maximum of 15 iron ingots per minute (1 iron ingot every 4 seconds). This is not necessarily how many iron ingots it is currently consuming; if the constructor were only consuming, say, 10 iron ingots a minute, this display would still say "15 per minute" in the iron ingot section.
This same constructor creates a maximum of 15 iron rods per minute (1 iron rod every 4 seconds). Just as with input, if the machine's actual output were less than 15 rods per minute, it would still say 15.

If this constructor receives iron ingots at a rate faster than 15 per minute, it will not consume them any faster, and will not create iron rods any faster either. Nor will building more power generators speed up production.

Upgrading Every Single Belt ASAP

Many new players rush to get faster conveyor belts and then promptly set to upgrading most, if not all, of their existing belts. Faster conveyors mean the factory works faster, right? Well, not always.

Here's a screw-making constructor. It only consumes 10 rods per minute at most, and the starting mark 1 conveyor belt can deliver 60 rods per minute. Obviously, thanks to the belt's slow speed, there's a bit of an initial lag between the very first moment the rod-making constructor starts spitting rods out onto the belt and the moment the first rod hits the screw constructor, but once that's over with, the flow will be more than steady enough, minute after minute.

Here's a machine that needs 60 screws per minute to work at its maximum production. If only one screw-making constructor is feeding it, it'll only get 40 screws per minute, because that's all the screw-making constructor can make. Increasing the speed of the conveyor belt connecting the two will not help the situation.

Even if a machine (or a group of machines) needs more than 60 units of input per minute to work at top speed, the machine(s) behind it need to be providing more than 60 units per minute before a belt upgrade will do anything meaningful.

Another situation that calls for upgraded belts, of course, is when machine(s) feed over 60 units per minute into a container.

Not Linking Multiple Biomass Burners to the Same Network

Each power-using machine utilizes a fixed amount of power whenever it's running. Each power generator provides a fixed amount of power capacity whenever it's running (+20 MW for your starting biomass burners, +30 MW for additional ones you build). Going over capacity forces the generators to shut down.

Many new players attach different sets of machines to different power generators, creating several separate power grids, and wind up with a nightmare setup that's incredibly difficult to manage. Just attach all your generators to the same power grid and they'll pool their capacity together into one big megacapacity total.

Don't be afraid to build more generators: you'll have more generators to fill with fuel, but each one will burn its fuel more slowly than before, and nothing will be wasted. (Fear of building more generators is the hidden eighth newbie mistake.)

Placing New Power Poles with Shortcut 1

Shortcut 1 is usually pretty unnecessary. The game will place new power poles for you if you point at the ground while using shortcut 2:

This is especially useful when stringing power lines out across long distances. Start a line with shortcut 2, keep going until the game says the wire is too long, then move the cursor back a bit; you won't have to estimate the necessary distances beforehand manually.

Missing When Placing Mergers or Splitters on Existing Belts

Yes, you can place a splitter or a merger on the middle of an existing conveyor belt, but you need to be pointed directly at the belt. And I mean directly: if you're off even a little bit, it won't work.

Here's an example of incorrect mid-belt splitter placement. It kind of looks like it's on the belt, but it's not, because the build cursor is a little bit below the belt itself. You could solve this situation by simply looking up a bit until you see the splitter "snapping" to the belt, though it can be a little tricky to get the belt placed exactly where you want it.

Here's an example of correct mid-belt splitter placement. Note that in this case, the engineer is standing on top of the belt itself and looking down at it, making it easy to target.
You might be wondering why I'm suggesting a dumb thing like standing on top of a conveyor belt while building. Fear not, grasshopper: conveyor belts only move you if you're standing on the center of them. Stand on one of the edges and you'll remain still.

Ignoring Resource Node Quality

This one is borderline spoiler, but it's so important that I included it anyway.

Every resource node comes in one of three possible qualities: Impure, Normal, and Pure. The deposits sometimes found on top of resource nodes are always Pure, but the nodes themselves vary. The better the quality of a node, the faster it yields resources.

There is no real advantage to using a lower-quality node except, possibly, convenience of location.

BONUS Basic Tips and Tricks

Keybindings and controls:

• Press the C key to crouch. Crouch while running to power slide (doesn't work when running uphill). Jump while power sliding to jump higher.
  
• Use Alt+mousewheel to change hotbars.
  
• Use Alt+click to briefly "ping" what you're looking at (useful for multiplayer, and for streamers.)
  
• If you should find yourself in a vehicle of some kind, hold V for the autopilot menu.

Nearly every building has at least one ladder on the side. These ladders aren't just for show; they're actually usable.

Having trouble placing the top of a conveyor lift at the top of a cliff? Place a conveyor pole at the edge of the cliff, then "snap" the lift to the pole and lower it from there.

You can rotate the tops and bottoms of conveyor lifts independently of one another, though only in 90 degree increments.

When placing conveyors on the ground (not directly into or out of machines), look up after the first click to set the height of the pole.

To use the Sample Building functionality, enter either build mode or dismantle mode, point at an existing building or other constructed feature (such as a conveyor belt), and middle-click. It's like the dropper tool in a paint program and is extremely useful.

[fishstalker001]

thrust me you do not want to see the spageti felds in my playthrough

[cutiedogluka]

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[NightFire]

Power pole is useful when you want to split off a power line between 2 poles, when both poles have maxed connections.

[mikers]

not much people do the oppisite

[mikers]

these are good errors I made in the past

[Quix0r]

Another bad idea is to ignore MAM and the alternative recipes, you can often save tons of materials (and production sites).

[Quix0r]

I have upgraded all belts to MK5. Sure they run quickly empty (or full, depending). What you have to do is to check each value in the maschine's production tab. Take highest and divide belt capacity by that highest value And you have found the proper amount of maschines. If you have a odd result, e.g. 5.5. You need to build 6 maschines and one on 50%.

With this tactics, you should have neatly filled up belts.

[haha yes]

I've played for hundreds of hours, and did not know about the bonus tip for scrolling between multiple hotbars! thank you!

[Hollowess]

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[Doug Rules 2.0]

I disagree with the power poles one, I just have slot one a higher level of power pole so I can upgrade them if needed