Workshop 101: path to profit

Strategy guide for players starting out, pitfalls to avoid, as well as a few numbers you need to know for minmaxing your factory.

Introduction

Welcome to Little Big Workshop, where you start as a small mom and pop business crafting random bits and grow up to be a large manufacturing complex mass producing advanced technology!

This guide goal is to guide you through those steps, with a specific way to play, which is by no means the only one. There are multiple ways to enjoy the game, so feel free to try different strategies! After all there is not only one way to success.

Also included, several useful values to keep in mind, so you don't have to dig through the forums for specific information or re-calculate things every time.

This guide contains spoilers about what awaits you ahead. If you don't like spoilers, I suggest you do a play through and complete all the milestones before reading this guide.

At this point, you probably won't need it anymore though...

This guide was written for the main game only, before any DLC was available.

Early game: Survive!

You start the game with 20.000 coins, 3 rooms, a loading bay and a small amount of land to start your mom and pop factory.

The tutorial is well made, and even if you won't use everything you just learned right away, it's not advised to skip it on your first playthrough.

First, follow the tutorial, by purchasing a Woodworking Station, two Assembly Stations, a Coffee Maker 2000 and 2 other break room items. Where you place them is not that important, since you'll be moving things around often. It's probably best to place everything against a wall though.

If you choose not to follow the tutorial, I recommend skipping the Woodworking Station and only buying break room items as needed instead of 3 at once.

Once you followed or skipped the tutorial, you start for real and start paying salaries for your workers. The game starts off very easily, with a lot of very profitable easy projects on the market, but you should already keep in mind a few things.

Making profit: the most important concept is about making profit. You have only 2 variable costs when producing items: materials and salaries.

• To minimize materials cost, you should always try to have products attributes as close as the requirements. There is no bonus for having better quality products.
  
• To minimize salaries cost, you should try to use operations that requires the least amount of time, given the choice, on the most efficient workstations you can buy at the time.

You should have noticed that Woodworking Station and Metalworking Station, while allowing a lot of operations, only have a 25% efficiency. This means you won't use them for long, and will use better workstations very soon. I advise you to buy one of each at most (or skip those altogether) and use workstations unlocked by Wood / Metal Production #1 unlocked on the first and second row of R&D respectively.

First recommended stations: no matter what, you'll need Assembly Stations. If you followed the tutorial, you can use that Woodworking station to produce a few items, but to finish the Bronze Milestone, your best bet is to focus on Plastic products: you won't replace Injection Press for a while (until Plastic Production #2), and there is no upgrade to Paint Station, so definitely buy 2 or 3 of each to start cranking out plastic products.

When buying new workstations, be careful about your cash: you will need a healthy reserve to be able to purchase materials and pay salaries while products are being made. If you go under -5.000 coins, it's instantly game over.

Client challenges vs market products: client challenges have a fixed price, a hard deadline and change at every market cycle, while market products have a variable demand and pricing but long running products.

Early game, client challenges are a very bad option: you will struggle to meet the deadlines, have generally worse price than the market since you have a low relationship and clients don't pay as well as a market product with high price, and you will have to re-organize constantly your production for new products.

On the other hand, choosing a few easy to produce products on the market and commiting money means you won't have any of those problems. Just be sure to sell any remaining product before the product is discontinued.

You should only do enough challenges to progress through the milestones until late game.

Mood and decorations: while the tutorial doesn't force you to build any, don't forget about decorations in your rooms, otherwise there will be a bad mood and your workers will be tired faster, thus work less for the same salary.

Don't go overboard there: one of each decoration per room should be enough, as any same decoration item after the first in a room gets you less and less decoration points. If you still have a negative mood, move some workstations to another room for now.

Later in the game, you will unlock better decoration items and sell off all the ones you have access to at the beginning. You get 3 better ones after completing Bronze Milestone, then 3 even better ones after completing Silver Milestone. By the end of the game, you'll have removed all of the starting decorations.

Obstruction: another important concept not well explained in the tutorial is obstructions.
Anything on the ground slow the movement of your workers, meaning they are less productive.
You will need to use the Obstruction Lens to find out what is causing issues. At the beginning, having a clear empty path in the middle of your rooms in good enough: avoid placing workstations, decoration or zones in the middle of your rooms!

Break room items: first you obviously want a Coffee Maker 200 and a Vendotron, since they raise your capacity, but after that, which ones should you buy when you need more?

Just like decorations, you incur a malus for each item after the first in the same room. Most break room items have the exact same recovery per tiles occupied (since your real estate is very limited), except two: the Chess Board have a slightly higher recovery/tiles occupied, which means it should be your third item (after Coffee Maker and Vendotron), and the Break Table is far worse than others, meaning you should never buy one.

Once you have filled a room with one of each break room items, you should build other small break rooms in your factory, to take advantage of full recovery per item bought, and so that your workers don't travel too much to find a break room.

Middle game: Expand!

Finish the Bronze Milestone by expanding your existing room (instead of building new ones, which is more expensive), so that you have enough space for the new machines required for the 3 client challenges you need to do to enter the middle game, which is all about expanding your little factory to a decent size factory.

Remodeling: you may be tempted to go directly for an "optimal" layout.
Don't. What's optimal changes throughout the different phases of the game, and at first, since your factory is so small, having optimal layout doesn't change much, and remodeling is very costly. Instead, make the maximum of the 3 rooms provided for free by expanding your 2 work rooms to either the maximum possible for a small room, or the maximum possible for a medium room.

At this stage, the malus for a large room is too much, and even medium room is a lot, so I'll advise you to stick to small rooms. See below for cheatsheet of "optimal" room sizes for small and medium.

Choosing workstations: this is the stage where you'll start buying a lot of workstations. Since there are costly, it's best to be conservative in your spending, by only buying what you need right now, and avoiding over-scaling something that might not be useful in the future, or have an upgrade.

See below for a detailed explanation of all workstations.

Late game: Plan!

Roughly when you finish Silver Milestone, you will start to need to buy more plots because you won't have enough room for all your workstations.

You might not feel the need just yet, but it's a good idea to start planning your factory layout as a whole, and not continue randomly creating room one by one.

In other word, it's a good time for a full rebuild, in another part of the map, to take advantage of new 200%/250% efficiency workstations by having room designed around them, and a production line with a clear workflow starting with an import bay and ending with an export bay.

Factory Focus: after Silver Milestone, you unlock Factory Focus. Don't make the mistake of ignoring it, as it has great options that can be better than regular Research ones. There are 2 trees, but you are not locked to the one you choose first: at the end of the game, both will be totally unlocked.

You have roughly 3 choices regarding which workstations you unlock first:

• Metal/Wood/Plastic Production #3 allows you to lift bottlenecks at the start and middle of your workshop by using 200% machines.
  
• Klonk! machines allows you to lift bottlenecks in the start of your workshop by using 250% machines directly. Rushing for those allows you to skip over a few Production #3 machines like the Foundry and Advanced Injection Press.
  
• : while Particle Manipulator as issues, being too expensive, not a real upgrade (apart from detail advanced operation, which is not used a lot), Advanced Assembler is a godsend, as it will greatly reduce the number of assembly station you need, helping you solve assembly bottlenecks and allowing you to tackle assembly-heavy products.

No matter what, Advanced Assembler should be either first, if you like assembly-heavy products, or second to keep up with the newly added productivity at the start of your factory.

To choose between Metal/Wood/Plastic Production #3:

• Wood real contribution is Advanced Table Saw which isn't made obsolete by Particle Machine. In my opinion, it should be unlocked before Metal, because straight cuts are the most used operation in wood production, whereas the most used operation in metal production, casting, is best done on a Klonk! machine.
  
• Metal unlocks Foundry and other less used machines. Since the Foundry Klonk! is 2.5 times more efficient than the Foundry, it's not as big of a deal as it seems.
  
• Plastic only unlocks Advanced Injection Press, that you should skip over if you don't delay too much Klonk! machines, and Plastic Extrusion Machine, which can be totally ignored. Unlock it last.

After trying Production #3 first, and Klonk! machines first, both suffer from lack of Advanced Assembly, meaning you need to buy lots of Assembly Stations to avoid assembly being a bottleneck. I recommend going for Assembly Stations first, then Klonk! machines, both because their huge size means you have to redesign rooms around them, and because Casting is the most used metal operation. Last, unlock Wood/Metal/Plastic Production #3 (in that order), to finally have all the most efficient workstations.

End game: Optimize!

After all your work to build the perfect factory, odds are it will not perform as well as you thought it would. Guess what? It's time for a full rebuild!


Game developer reaction to me asking for help because the previous layout did not work after unlocking Klonk! machines and Advanced Assembler.

You can still complete the game with a subpar factory using end-game workstations (Klonk! machines and Advanced Assembler), but you might struggle to keep making a profit or complete final client challenges as you might have low operator productivity, high obstruction, or both, which makes completing the last milestone a hard challenge.

Instead, you can do what the game developer intended, and redesign your factory once again!

Large workshop warning: you might be tempted to go all the way and fill all the available space with buildings and workstations, and hire as much workers as possible.
Unfortunately, the game really isn't optimized for that: you will hit several issues which makes it counter-productive to do that:

• workers will have a lot more distance to travel, meaning your Operator Productivity rank will tank, and so will your profit, since there is no way to attribute workers to a specific room/workstation and they will wander everywhere
  
• you will have to choose between large arrays of workstations linked with a billboard, meaning longer travel times, or several smaller arrays, meaning you will have to re-dispatch workstations all the time
  
• at the same time, you will still have to pay a rent for every interior tile
  
• your throughput will become more variable, meaning either you will have idle workers (lost profit) or workstations waiting for workers, all the time

A good sweet spot is around 35 workers and about 2000m2 of interior tiles, from my experience. This allows you to finish the game and complete all the achievements without any issue.

Help! My factory doesn't make any profit

If your factory doesn't make any profit at any point of the game, you likely have several problems with it. Here is a checklist of problems you can encounter:

• Too many workers: if you often (or always) see the idle workers icons, or if your Operator Idle Time is not S (under 5%), you probably have too many workers. Fire the less experienced ones, there is no penalty for that.
  
• Too many obstructions: if your Worker Obstruction rank is S or A (under 20%), you will need to redesign your factory to have less obstructions. Before you start remodeling, disassemble unused workstations, move things around to clear a way for your worker, and ensure you don't have too many jobs queued up that take too much storage space everywhere.
  
• Low Operation Efficiency: at each step of the game, you will have to replace workstations with more efficient ones. Don't keep using the less efficient ones for too long, because that eats into your profit big time. Plus, you get some of the money back!
  
• Low Operator Productivity: one of the trickiest to tackle, the first step is to ensure you have some general storage near the import bay, workstation input zones linked to every workstation/billboard, and export zone near your export bay. Also ensure none of them is filled by parts, otherwise workers will have to use farther storage. If that's done already, you might have a layout issue: your production lines are just too long and your workers travel too much. Time for remodeling!
  
• Bottlenecks in the production line: if you don't pay too much attention to which workstations you attribute which operations, bottlenecks can start to form, where a few workstations have a long queue, while others are waiting on those or have nothing to do. Redispatch part of those operations to other free workstations of the same type, or buy new workstations to tackle the work.
  
• Not enough work in parallel: unless all you have is wood machines, you shouldn't take only wood products: diversify your products so that a lot of operations can be done in parallel. You might have more workstations than workers, but that's fine! Workstations don't have recurring costs.
  
• Not selling items at a good price: try to take products that have a good profit margin in the market, but also look at the future of those products. If their value drops sharply before you can produce them, it's not worth it! To optimize resell value, you can also sell part of your items before the whole job is done, to sell part at a higher price, or hold on to finished products when their price is going to rise in a few cycles.

Workstations

Workstations can be divided into 4 tiers:

• Tier 0 are your first general workstations. Some will only be used very early game, while other will last you the entire game. Be careful about which one you should invest in.
  
• Tier 1 are unlocked on the first and second row of the research tree, and have 100% efficiency. They will be used through early and mid-game. Some workstations without better alternative will last until end-game
  
• Tier 2 are unlocked on the fourth row of the research tree and have 200% efficiency. You will start using them at the end of mid-game to replace some Tier 1 workstations to earn more profit;
  
• Tier 3 are unlocked on the last row of factory focus and have 250% efficiency (Injection Klonk!, Foundry Klonk!) or replace Tier 1 workstations without Tier 2 alternative (Advanced Assembler, Particule Manipulator)

Since blueprints all use operations roughly in the same order, you can plan ahead where each workstation should be located in your factory, instead of placing them at random.























Icons meaning:

the price of the workstation

the noise of the workstation

there is a better workstation that you unlock later. Avoid over-investing in those workstations, because you will sell them later.
there isn't any workstation that replace this one. Feel free to invest more in those ones, because you might use them even late game.
the particle manipulator performs that operation. It's more of a sidegrade than an upgrade, since the particle manipulator has the same 200% efficiency as Tier 2 workstations, so you should not wait until you can afford one.

heavy usage: all products of that category use it, meaning you will need to invest in several workstations.
on-demand usage: a few products of that category use it, meaning you can either skip any product that use it, buy one to be able to produce it and store it when not in use, or sometime buy 2 or even 3 if the operation is really lenghty and becoming a bottleneck.
you should not buy those workstations, because there are better workstations you unlock at about the same time.

Basic 1/2

Assembly Station
2 805⠀⠀|⠀⠀Tier 0⠀
-4⠀⠀⠀⠀|⠀⠀7x4
Replaced by: Advanced Assembler
Usage: heavy⠀|⠀⠀Place: near Export

The core of your workshop, you will need quite a few ones to scale your production. Don't go overboard, as you will have to replace them late game. When planning their position, keep in mind the replacement is one tile deeper, but one less tile wider.


Woodworking Station
2 475⠀⠀|⠀⠀Tier 0⠀
-4⠀⠀⠀⠀|⠀⠀6x4
Replaced by: all T1 wood workstations
Usage: mostly skipped over⠀⠀|⠀⠀Place: sold ASAP

Your very first workstation. It won't last long, because it's so bad, and will make your products cost so much in salaries. You should only ever buy one, and resell it has soon has you have required tier 1 wood workstations


Metalworking Station
2 060⠀⠀|⠀⠀Tier 0⠀
-4⠀⠀⠀⠀|⠀⠀4x4
Replaced by: all T1 metal workstations
Usage: mostly skipped over⠀⠀|⠀⠀Place: sold ASAP

Same as Woodworking station, you should only ever buy one. If possible, choose between Woodworking and Metalworking and only buy one and skip directly to Tier 1 stations.


Glue Station
3 120⠀⠀|⠀⠀Tier 0⠀
-6⠀⠀⠀⠀|⠀⠀4x4
No replacement
Usage: on-demand⠀⠀|⠀⠀Place: after Table Saw and Milling Machine, before other Wood stations

A few products will require gluing, but not a lot. You won't need many Glue Stations, and can just skip any product that requires gluing until at least mid-game.

Basic 2/2

Injection Press
2 300⠀⠀|⠀⠀Tier 0⠀
-5⠀⠀⠀⠀|⠀⠀2x4
Replaced by: Advanced Injection Press, then Injection Klonk!
Usage: heavy⠀⠀|⠀⠀Place: near Import

Most plastic-based products have at least one Injection step. As explained above, plastic-only products are a great start, so you should definitely buy a few. On the other hand, don't invest too hard on those, because there are Tier 2 and Tier 3 replacement which will make those obsolete


Sewing Station
2 895⠀⠀|⠀⠀Tier 0⠀
-7⠀⠀⠀⠀|⠀⠀5x4
No replacement
Usage: on-demand⠀⠀|⠀⠀Place: anywhere before Assembly

A few products use Sewing, either as sole operation before assembly, or to product a specific part. Choose whether to create or ignore sewing-heavy product, until late game where you should have just a few stations for advanced products that have one or two sewing operations.


Welding Station
4 230⠀⠀|⠀⠀Tier 1
-6⠀⠀⠀⠀|⠀⠀4x4
No replacement
Usage: on-demand⠀⠀|⠀⠀Place: between Foundry and Assembly

Mostly used by advanced product, you will need a few ones to keep up your volume, especially for Mitzurella products. Scale the number of Welding Stations according to your volume as you go.


Small Foundry
2 640⠀⠀|⠀⠀Tier 0
-6⠀⠀⠀⠀|⠀⠀4x4
Replaced by: Foundry then Foundry Klonk!
Usage: heavy⠀⠀|⠀⠀Place: near Import

All metal products require casting metal. You will need a fair amount of those, but don't overinvest as they will be replaced later on.


Paint Station
1 560⠀⠀|⠀⠀Tier 0
-8⠀⠀⠀⠀|⠀⠀6x4
No replacement
Usage: on-demand⠀⠀|⠀⠀Place: between Injection Press and Assembly

Early plastic products nearly all require some painting, but later it falls into disuse. If you focus on plastic products early, buy as many as injection press, but no more.

Light Machinery 1/2

Advanced Assembler
7 435⠀⠀|⠀⠀Tier 3⠀
-17⠀⠀⠀|⠀⠀6x5
No replacement
Usage: heavy⠀⠀|⠀⠀Place: near Export

Like the assembly station, but better. Upgrading to advanced assembly station will make a big difference in your profits, because there are so many assembly steps late game.
It's hands down the best workstation, and the one you should unlock as soon as you can to replace the regular Assembly Stations.


Wood Bender
3 120⠀⠀|⠀⠀Tier 1⠀
-12⠀⠀⠀|⠀⠀4x4
No replacement
Usage: on-demand⠀⠀|⠀⠀Place: between Table Saw and Assembly

A few products use it, but not that many, and you can often choose another operation. Buy as needed, but not more than a handful.


Table Saw
3 340⠀⠀|⠀⠀Tier 1⠀
-12⠀⠀⠀|⠀⠀4x4
Replaced by: Advanced Table Saw, Particle Manipulator
Usage: heavy⠀⠀|⠀⠀Place: near Import

This is the most common wood operation, and you will likely need quite a few to keep up if you choose to produce wood product. Don't overinvest because there is an advanced version.


Bandsaw
5 195⠀⠀|⠀⠀Tier 1⠀
-12⠀⠀⠀|⠀⠀4x4
Replaced by: Table Saw / Scroll Saw, Advanced Table Saw, Particle Manipulator
Usage: do not use⠀⠀|⠀⠀Place: near Import if you insist on using it

The Bandsaw is an odd station. It does the same as the Scroll Saw, and half as well as the Table Saw, combined into a single station. That later part is not useful: you do not want to loose on profits by doing an operation on a workstation twice slower, just like Tier 0 workstations are replaced ASAP. Then compared to Scroll Saw, it's more expensive, take more space, produce more noise, for the same result. There is really no reason to buy one.


Lathe
3 785⠀⠀|⠀⠀Tier 1⠀
-12⠀⠀⠀|⠀⠀4x4
No replacement
Usage: on-demand⠀⠀|⠀⠀Place: between Table Saw and Glue Station

A few wood products use it, but not that many. You will definitely need a few ones for those products, unless you decide to avoid those. It's a neat 4x4 tiles size, making it easy to fit into your factory, so I advise you to take a few.


Metal Lathe
4 270⠀⠀|⠀⠀Tier 1⠀
-12⠀⠀⠀|⠀⠀4x4
No replacement
Usage: on-demand⠀⠀|⠀⠀Place: between Sheet Machine and Assembly

The metal counterpart of the previous workstation. It's even less used, so don't buy more than a handful of those, or skip products using it altogether.


Scroll Saw
3 560⠀⠀|⠀⠀Tier 1⠀
-11⠀⠀⠀|⠀⠀3x4
Replaced by: Particle Manipulator
Usage: on-demand⠀⠀|⠀⠀Place: between Table Saw and Milling Machine

Another operation that isn't used a lot, buy a handful of you need it, otherwise don't bother pre-emptively being one.


Abrasive Saw
3 265⠀⠀|⠀⠀Tier 1⠀
-9⠀⠀⠀⠀|⠀⠀2x4
Replaced by: Advanced Abrasive Saw, Particle Manipulator
Usage: on-demand⠀⠀|⠀⠀Place: near Import

Contrary to its wood counterpart, nearly no product use it (I actually couldn't find a single blueprint using it), so you probably won't even need a single one. Too bad, because at 2x4, it's the smallest workstation along the Injection Press.

Light Machinery 2/2

Plasma Cutter
3 900⠀⠀|⠀⠀Tier 1⠀
-12⠀⠀⠀|⠀⠀4x4
Replaced by: Advanced Plasma Cutter, Particule Manipulator
Usage: on-demand⠀⠀|⠀⠀Place: near Import

A few metal products require a Plasma Cutter, but that not a lot, and considering there is an upgrade, it's not a great investment.


Sheet Machine
3 990⠀⠀|⠀⠀Tier 1⠀
-15⠀⠀⠀|⠀⠀5x4
No replacement
Usage: on-demand⠀⠀|⠀⠀Place: near Import

A few metal products require a Sheet Machine, but it's not a common operation either. Buy a few ones to fill that need, and that will be enough.


Plastic Extrusion Machine
7 130⠀⠀|⠀⠀Tier 2⠀
-15⠀⠀⠀|⠀⠀6x4
No replacement
Usage: on-demand⠀⠀|⠀⠀Place: near Import

This machine is entirely optional: you can always choose a regular injection instead of plastic extrusion. As such, there is very little reason other than micro-optimizations (you might make more profit compared to regular injection), especially after you unlock Inection Klonk!


Foam Injection Machine
4 900⠀⠀|⠀⠀Tier 1⠀
-11⠀⠀⠀|⠀⠀3x4
Replaced by: Injection Klonk!
Usage: on-demand⠀⠀|⠀⠀Place: near Import

It's less used than Injection Press, but there are still enough producst with Foam Injection to justify buying a few machines early game.


Robot Testing Station
8 020⠀⠀|⠀⠀Tier 1⠀
-14⠀⠀⠀|⠀⠀4x5
No replacement
Usage: robots only⠀⠀|⠀⠀Place: near Export, after Assembly

You can safely ignore that station until late game, since robots tends not to be very lucrative. The main reason to get one is when you start to tackle IncoInc challenges, which are only robots. Unless you run several robots jobs at the same time, one station will probably be enough until the final challenge.


Particule Manipulator
61 600⠀⠀|⠀⠀Tier 3⠀
-12⠀⠀⠀|⠀⠀3x5
No replacement
Usage: heavy⠀⠀|⠀⠀Place: near Import

This workstation is in a weird place. On one hand, it can replace a lot of other workstations. On the other hand, it's so costly, it's not more efficient than most tier 2 workstations and come so late in the game that, by that time, you probably won't need it at all to complete the game. The main reason to get it is to simplify your production line: it drastically reduce the number of machines, and thus travel time, and avoid the hassle of reconfiguring your factory to tackle a new product.
The only real efficiency gains comes from:

• "Detail Advanced" operation, that is twice as efficient as the Advanced Milling Machine (but not "Detail Simple"
  
• Jigsaw Cut operation, that don't have any associated Tier 2 workstation

It also unlocks Plastic cutting operation, which is not used anywhere! (let me know if you find a blueprint that uses it.

That's two low usage operation, and an unused one. That's a lot of money (3 times the next most expensive workstations, the Klonk! machines, which are already expensive) for very little efficency gain.

Heavy Duty Machinery 1/2

Form Press
5 120⠀⠀|⠀⠀Tier 1⠀
-23⠀⠀⠀|⠀⠀4x5
No replacement
Usage: on-demand⠀⠀|⠀⠀Place: after Sheet Machine, before Assembly

Enough products use it to justify buying one, and that will probably be enough considering operations don't take much time. There seems to always be a Sheet step just before, so place it just after a Sheet Machine.


Metal Bender
4 740⠀⠀|⠀⠀Tier 1⠀
-18⠀⠀⠀|⠀⠀4x3
No replacement
Usage: on-demand⠀⠀|⠀⠀Place: after Foundry, before Welding

The Metal Bender is not used frequently, wait until you need it, or avoid products that absolutely require it until you have to get one.


Milling Machine
2 895⠀⠀|⠀⠀Tier 1⠀
-20⠀⠀⠀|⠀⠀4x5
Replaced by: Advanced Milling Machine, Particule Manipulator
Usage: on-demand⠀⠀|⠀⠀Place: after Table Saw, before Assembly

Another infrequent use workstation that you should try to skip if you can, especially as there are both Tier 2 and Tier 3 replacements.


Advanced Milling Machine
8 685⠀⠀|⠀⠀Tier 2⠀
-23⠀⠀⠀|⠀⠀4x6
Replaced by: Particule Manipulator
Usage: on-demand⠀⠀|⠀⠀Place: after Table Saw, before Assembly

This station is not great: on one hand, it's way cheaper than the Particule Manipulator, but on the other hand it's not used a lot, and the Detail Advanced step is only 100% efficiency, compared to Particule Manipulator 200% efficiency. You might have to get one to produce a specific product, but that's about it.


Advanced Injection Press
8 060⠀⠀|⠀⠀Tier 2⠀
-18⠀⠀⠀|⠀⠀4x4
Replaced by: Injection Klonk!
Usage: do not use⠀⠀|⠀⠀Place: near Import

Since Plastic Production #3 is available at the same time as Klonk! machines, you can totally skip over this machine by unlocking Klonk Machines Brand first.
It's a shame, because it's not a bad workstation, all considered: it's not too expensive, not too large, and is used for the most common Plastic operation.


Advanced Abrasive Saw
6 530⠀⠀|⠀⠀Tier 2⠀
-16⠀⠀⠀|⠀⠀3x4
Sidegrade to Particle Manipulator
Usage: on-demand⠀⠀|⠀⠀Place: near Import

Just like its Tier 1 version, I couldn't find a blueprint using this operation. Another workstation you can probably forego.

Heavy Duty Machinery 2/2

Advanced Plasma Cutter
7 800⠀⠀|⠀⠀Tier 2⠀
-23⠀⠀⠀|⠀⠀4x5
Sidegrade to Particle Manipulator
Usage: on-demand⠀⠀|⠀⠀Place: near Import

While not a very frequent operation, you will probably have a few metal products that require it. Since the operations are quite long, I recommend getting 2 or 3 directly to avoid having a bottleneck at that step.


Foundry
7 800⠀⠀|⠀⠀Tier 2⠀
-29⠀⠀⠀|⠀⠀8x5
Replaced by: Foundry Klonk!
Usage: heavy⠀⠀|⠀⠀Place: near Import

Since Metal Production #3 is available at the same time as Klonk! machines, you can totally skip over this machine by unlocking Klonk Machines Brand first.


Advanced Table Saw
9 185⠀⠀|⠀⠀Tier 2⠀
-20⠀⠀⠀|⠀⠀5x4
Sidegrade to Particle Manipulator
Usage: heavy⠀⠀|⠀⠀Place: near Import

This is the most used wood operation, and as such you should definitely invest in a few of those, enough so that they don't become a bottleneck. This is what allows you to produce advanced wood product for a healthy profit.


Metal Extruder
6 460⠀⠀|⠀⠀Tier 1⠀
-23⠀⠀⠀|⠀⠀6x5
No replacement
Usage: heavy⠀⠀|⠀⠀Place: near Import

While you can totally avoid the Metal Extruder, as you can always use a Foundry instead, it would be a mistake to do so: using the Extrude Metal operation is generaly way faster than the Cast operation, even if that Cast operation is done on an Injection Klonk!, meaning you will get more profit by using the Metal Extruder. It also allows you to spread the operation to more workstations.


Foundry Klonk!
22 000⠀⠀|⠀⠀Tier 3⠀
-41⠀⠀⠀|⠀⠀11x7
No replacement
Usage: heavy⠀⠀|⠀⠀Place: near Import

It's the second best workstation (after Advanced Assembler). While it's expensive and bulky, the efficiency gain you achieve with it is totally worth it, and you should definitely replace any Small Foundry or Foundry with it, and go as far as plan entire rooms around Klonk! workstations.


Injection Klonk!
22 000⠀⠀|⠀⠀Tier 3⠀
-41⠀⠀⠀|⠀⠀11x7
No replacement
Usage: heavy⠀⠀|⠀⠀Place: near Import

The third best workstation, since it has competition with the Advanced Injection Press, and the operation are less used in advanced products. You should still try to get at least one as soon as possible, but after Foundry Klonk!

Research & Development

There are a lot of Research & Development skills to unlock. While ultimately you will unlock everything, and even have tons of spare points you can't spend, getting the best skills first can help you greatly, especially at the beginning of the game.

I marked the skills you should unlock first, as they all transform how you play the game greatly.

R&D: Bronze milestone

Your first research options are all very good options that will be useful throughout the game.

Billboards: while it's required to progress in the Bronze Milestone, billboards are not a great investment early game: they take scarce real estate, and don't bring much to the table since you can manually re-dispatch jobs when needed. They are very useful later in the game though, to avoid micro-managing jobs dispatching between multiple workstations.

Storage Management: this should be your first unlock, work input zone and export zone will greatly enhance your production line, by having materials near their workstations, and export zone near the loading bay.

Wood Production #1: this allows you to start investing in real wood workstations that you will keep for a while. Unlock constructions tools first though, since you will need more rooms to place those workstations. This unlocks Glue Station, Wood Bender, Table Saw, Bandsaw, Lathe, Scroll Saw and Drilling Machine

Construction Tools: your 3 initials rooms are good for the first minutes of the game, but will start to feel really limited. For that reason, you should unlock Construction Tools on your first level up.

Eco-friendly Materials: more materials mean more options, looks awesome. But in practice, eco-friendly materials are expensive, which eats into your profits. You should avoid those as much as possible, and won't start using them until mid/late game. There are better skills to unlock in second and third row before you really need to unlock Eco-friendly materials

R&D: Silver Milestone

After finishing Bronze Milestone, you unlock 2 rows of R&D options. While you may be tempted to spend all your points there, it's a good idea to keep a few points for next Milestone instead of spending them on less useful R&D options, since the next Milestone has lots of great options that transform the game as well.

Metal Production #1: this allows you to start investing in real metal workstations that you will keep for a while. Since you probably already unlocked Wood Production #1 and started buying wood and plastic machines, this can wait a bit. It unlocks Welding Station, Metal Lathe, Abrasive Saw, Plasma Cutter, Sheet Machine, Robot Testing Station, Form Press, Metal Bender and Metal Extruder.

Plastic Production #1: same as Metal Production, especially since it only unlocks Foam Injection Machine.

Wood Production #2: specialists have a much higher salary, and don't bring much to the table. Since you don't want too many specialists, especially wood/metal/plastic, leave that for last. Specialists really become interesting when you unlock Wood Production #3, which unlock advanced machines that can only be operated by specialists.

Plots: allows you to buy more real estate. Unlock it once you are close to filling the starting area. Since remodeling is expensive and plots are costly too, it will be a while before you need it. When you decide you need plots, you should also focus on "Befriend the Mayor" to get a reduction on plots price.

Employee cap #1: the starting 10 employees cap is very low. You should unlock this as soon as you finish the Bronze Milestone because you will desperatly need more employees

Market Prediction: this is a game changer! You can plan ahead according to future demand and price, to quickly abandon products that fall in price, and start a production run for next 2 market cycles. You also receive an advance warning about discontinued products. You should also unlock this as soon as you finish the Bronze Milestone.

Expert Hustler: since you won't be using client contracts much in the beginning, it is a rather low priority skill, though it start being useful in the mid/late game when you start focusing on clients.

Anti-slip Boots: not a game-changer, but still a nice overall productivity boost. Since most other skills in that tier are not required right now, you'll probably have enough points to unlock it right when you complete Bronze Milestone

Metal Production #2: exactly like Wood Production #2, you really don't want to pay specialists higher salary right now.

Plastic Production #2: exactly like Wood and Metal Production #2

Loading Bay: once you unlock plots and start really expanding your factory, having a second loading bay allows you to separate Import from Export, meaning you can have a production line with Import => Machines for raw materials => Intermediate machines => Assembly => Export, reducing your employees travel time. This really allows you to get fancy in your factory layout and deliver raw materials as close as possible to your first machines.

Direct Marketing: just like Expert Hustler, this start being useful when you concentrate on client contracts, toward mid/end game.

Befriend the Mayor: this is the major reason you might want to unlock Expert Hustler early: cheaper plots are good, but reducing your rent is great: it reduces your fixed costs, which is especially useful at the beginning.

Assembly Specialist: this is an exception compared to other specialists: since almost every product requires assembly, you will always have assembly operations ongoing. It makes sense to have a few specialists to speed that up.

R&D: Gold Milestone

Metal Production #3: it's moderatly useful, as it unlocks Advanced Abrasive Saw, Plasma Cutter and Foundry. While the Foundy can be skipped over to Foundry Klonk!, the 2 others are useful as they are both medium usage

Plastic Production #3: the least useful of the three, it unlocks Plastic Extrusion Machine and Advanced Injection Press. The former can be entirely skipped as you can always choose an Injection operation instead of Extrusion, and the latter can be skipped over to Injection Klonk!

Wood Production #3: the most important of the three, it unlocks Advanced Milling Machine and Advanced Table Saw. That may not seem like much, but since Straight Cut is the most used Wood operation, this is a great improvement.

Internship Program: a random inexperienced worker is not very useful, since you already have 20 (or more) experienced ones.

Employee cap #2: at some point of scaling up your factory, you will need more than 20 workers. That will be when you will want to unlock the cap again.

Market Manipulation: this active ability is bad. Really bad. It will reset ALL the market, including products your factory is already working on. You can take huge loss by clicking it.

Delay Transport: this can help you complete tight client challenges, but is overall awkward to use. Unlock "Longer Deadlines" first, as it's exactly the same, but passive.

Workplace Training: passive efficiency is always great to have. It's less important than improved workstations though.

R&D: Factory Focus

Hidden in the sidebar of Research and Development is Factory Focus. Don't sleep on it though, as there are some gems hidden in there. You can choose and pick on both trees, you are not going to be locked into one when you start on the other one.

Mass Employment: reducing your employees salaries is a great way to improve profits, especially if you didn't specialize too many of them.

Industrial Design: the noise reduction is barely noticeable since you already have the most efficient decorations items. The only reason to unlock that is because it's a prerequiste to Klonk! machines

Klonk Machine Brands: the Klonk! machines are great: despite their huge size, cost and noise level, they more than make it up with an improved efficiency, especially the Klonk! foundry, which is 5x better than Small Foundry (when you can select the avanced casting operation) and 2.5x better than Foundry.

Market Expansion: at some point, you will be limited by how many items the market wants to buy. This is a good time to unlock Market Expansion. Or you can do like before: produce other items, which is why it's not a great option.

Code Red: one of the few active ability. The cooldown is huge, and it's overall better to improve your factory than rely on active abilities, so leave it for last

Super Haulers: you should have few haulers in the first place, so specializing them is low priority, especially considering the other speciality is much better.

Worker Specialization: if you specialized a lot of workers, this is a great pick. If you unlock this and not Mass Employment, your specialists will temporarily be cheaper than regular employees! This will change again once you unlock both though.

Technicians: specializing a few haulers into technicians is great, since from that point forward, you won't need to manually order workstations repair. You can even activate overdrive all the time without penalty, since technicians will repair workstations before they wear out!

Longer deadlines: this really helps completing client challenges, but you should have a wide margin already. Leave it for last, or when you want to start tackling clients final challenges

Turbo-Overdrive Mode: with technicians, you can already use overdrive all the time, so this active ability is close to useless.

Premium Materials: those materials are too expensive to be really useful: if you have to use some of them in a blueprint, it will cut too much into your profits to be worth it. You will still need to unlock it for the next skill.

Über Workstations: this should be your first goal when you unlock Factory Focus, as assembly is the most common operation that nearly all blueprints use, sometimes a lot. Particule Manipulator can be forgotten until you get really rich though, because the price is steep for a single workstation.

R&D: Champion Milestone

Those last options are really lackluster and won't change how you play the game. Which is a good thing, seeing as you probably rebuilt your factory once or twice already.

Workstation Optimization: this is the best option of this row, as more efficiency is always good for more profit. You probably won't feel any change though

Service Routines: after having a few Technicians, you won't need that skill at all.

Expanded Intern Program: at that point, two more interns won't make any visible difference.

Employee Cap #3: you can finish the game with way less than 50 workers. In fact, having too many workers is a bad thing because you will have to pay them and keep them occupied, while keeping your factory not too large (otherwise your operator productivity drop too much).

Volunteer Workers: you should generally have a very stable number of parallel operations. Temporary additional workers will just sit on their thumbs.

Operations ranks

Exact thresholds are a pain to collect, so for each rank, there is the thresholds I guessed, then minimum and maximum values I observed for that rank. Feel free to send me more datapoints so that this guide can have the exact thresholds.

Operator Productivity

• S - > 250m⠀⠀⠀⠀(261m)
  
• A - 250m > 230m⠀⠀⠀⠀(250m / 232m)
  
• B - 230m > 172.5m⠀⠀⠀⠀(229m / 173m)
  
• C - 172.5m > 90m⠀⠀⠀⠀(172m / 95m)
  
• D - < 90m⠀⠀⠀⠀(85m)

This is measure how many minutes per day your operators are productive. This is mainly impacted by how well your factory is organized, and more importantly its size. At the beginning, you should easily stay on S rank, because your factory is so small, but later on this rank will drop, and even the most organized late-game factory will hardly reach A rank. Try not to go lower than B rank, otherwise this will kill your profits.

Average Operation Efficiency

• S - > 110%⠀⠀⠀⠀(112.5%)
  
• A - 110% > 100%⠀⠀⠀⠀(102.1% / 102.8%)
  
• B - 100% > 80%⠀⠀⠀⠀(82.9% / 100%)
  
• C - 80% > 55%⠀⠀⠀⠀(58.9% / 77.4%)
  
• D - < 55%⠀⠀⠀⠀(50%)

This is the least interesting figure: you will start low with the two 25% efficiency workstations, then quickly reach B rank at 100% efficiency for most of the game, then promptly shoot up to S rank when you unlock 200%/250% efficiency workstations.

Worker Obstruction

• S - < 17.5%⠀⠀⠀⠀(17.4%)
  
• A - 17.5% < 20%⠀⠀⠀⠀(17.7% / 20.0%)
  
• B - 20% < 25%⠀⠀⠀⠀(20.0% / 24.7%)
  
• C - 25% < 30%⠀⠀⠀⠀(25.2% / 25.8%)
  
• D - > 30%⠀⠀⠀⠀(??%)

This is the figure you have the most control over through your factory layout: you can have S-rank throughout the game, A-rank is acceptable, but anything below means you should re-think your layout. The Obstruction Lens is your friend to understand how different objects affect obstruction.

Operator Idle Time

• S - < 5%⠀⠀⠀⠀(4.9%)
  
• A - 5% < 10%⠀⠀⠀⠀(5.1% / 9.8%)
  
• B - 10% < 20%⠀⠀⠀⠀(10.1% / 19.4%)
  
• C - 20% < 35%⠀⠀⠀⠀(20.6% / 33.6%)
  
• D - > 35%⠀⠀⠀⠀(36.1%)

If you have idle operators you have 3 solutions: firing excess workers, adding more jobs, or dispatching jobs from overloaded to idle workstations. No matter what, you should strive for S-rank all the time. Anything below means you are paying workers for twiddling their thumbs.

Useful values

Room sizes

Size	Tiles	Decoration penalty
Small	<= 400	0
Medium	<= 600	-25
Large	> 600	-50

Tiles to room size conversion
The game calculated size in meters including one wall, but not the other. 1m = 2 tiles. A few examples to illustrate:

Size	Interior tiles	Total tiles including walls
6m	11	13
8.5m	16	18
15m	29	31

Optimal room sizes

Room size	Game size	Surface	Tiles number
Small	10.5m x 10.5m	20 x 20	400
Small	9.5m x 11.5m	18 x 22	396
Small	8.5m x 13m	16 x 25	400
Small	6.5m x 17m	12 x 33	396
Small	6m x 18.5m	11 x 36	396
Small	5.5m x 20.5m	10 x 40	400
Medium	12.5mx 13m	24 x 25	600
Medium	11.5m x 14m	22 x 27	594
Medium	10.5m x 15.5m	20 x 30	600
Medium	9m x 18m	17x 35	595
Medium	8m x 20.5m	15 x 40	600
Medium	6.5m x 25.5m	12 x 50	600
Medium	5.5m x 30.5m	10 x 60	600

Q&A

What are the best products?
That's for you to discover! Plus the "best" products is ever-changing depending on which workstations you have, which are currently unused, and the required attributes. Run the numbers each time!

What is the optimal layout?
A lot of the fun is about trying layouts, so again that's for you to discover! I originally wanted to share my layouts, but they are not as good as I first thought and don't have their place in this guide.

I'm stuck with unwanted items / my production is at a standstill / I don't understand zones, decorations and breakroom, please help?
I suggest reading this great guide by miekydsc: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2199711182

Where can I ask more questions?
I'll try to answer any comment there, but the best place is to join the Discord [discord.gg]

Conclusion

[Prometheus0000]

Hey, I wanted to point out a mistake, the Metal Extruder is using the foundry's symbol, which was quite confusing until I looked ingame. Also it'd be nice if it showed the % numbers if you ever feel like it, there's nothing showing why something is better right now.

I appreciate the guide and the work that went into it.

[fradow]

Thanks!

Looks like a copy-paste mistake no one spotted up until now.
I fixed those lines, it was indeed 600 tiles.

[Lucky]

Thank you - easy to understand - Well done

I don't get the last 2 room Tile numbers
Optimal room sizes
Medium 6.5m x 25.5m 12 x 50 396
Medium 5.5m x 30.5m 10 x 60 400

Thanks for taking the time to create this

[Kamulton]

Really thank you !

[Mr. Anonymous]

I only wish there were a way to save this as I refer to it all the time while playing.

[alkonavt96]

Thanks a lot!

[fradow]

@albonavt96 Sure, go ahead. Being credited for the original version would be great ;)

[alkonavt96]

Can I translate your guide to Russian?

[@CmdrSchwegs]

Great guide, thanks!

[Louise]

I got the game on primge gaming. Really enjoying it, only problem is that i needed to restart 2 times in a row. Guide seems interesting and really helpful.