Factorio, First 5 minutes to first 50 Hours

The basics of getting set up to the mid game with a focus on how the game works, not a how list of of how everything should be layed out.

Updated for 0.16

Updating to 1.1

Disclaimer:

This is a guide explaining how mechanics work, not how to use each machine. A lot of experimentation is expected of the reader due to Factorio being about how to do things yourself. As such the guide will start very tutorial-y (place x and y like so) but move on to a step by step guide and then a list of ingredients.

Circuit network guide (this used to be located here, but was moved to a different guide): http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=643629703

The 0.16 update changes very little to do with the early game. Now that 0.16 is out, I will list this guide as updated for that update, however, for what this guide covers, 0.15 is the same.

On the topic of 0.17, this guide is mostly up to date. Bar one piece of information I think everything carries over. However, there will be an update. The guide needs a bit of rewrite and new screenshots as the current ones are 3 years old. Factorio has changed massively in those 3 years, so new screenshots should hopefully make it easier to understand.

Finally, some sections of the guide will most likely be rewritten, to improve their readability and correct grammatical and spelling errors.

World Generation:

When generating a world there are lots of options, so this is a quick run down of all the different settings for your world:

Water: A setting often best left at medium, unless terrain segmentation is turned up. Due to water being infinite, having a low water setting is not the end of a world due to the guaranteed presence of some in the starting area

Iron/copper/coal/stone/oil: Richness/Frequency/size: Size: The size setting affects the size each ore vein, a higher setting means each vein will have more tiles of ore. Frequency: How often a vein spawns in world generation. Richness: The amount of ore per tile in a vein (random, but higher settings give higher random numbers).

Enemy Bases: Similar to above

Starting Area: this is the area in which the player spawns. There is always guaranteed to be at least 1 vien of each ore + some water in the starting area. It also comes with a no insect guarantee.





A good choice of settings for a new player

So the settings above will give a relatively normal map, with richer and larger resources than normal. The starting area will be large so the player has a large area to expand before running into the biters.

Resource size and density has been set to 150%, as has starting area.

Starting out:

First: salvage the crashed ship! The crashed ship has 8 magazines of regular ammo and 8 iron plates. Hold control and left click on the ship to quickly recover the supplies. Or you can hold right click to destroy the wreck and get the supplies that way. Just watch out, the fire is hot.


The next thing to do in any world is to find one vein of each of these of 4 resources: Coal, Iron, Copper and Stone. Opening the map (M) will show where the resources are, as one of each is guaranteed to spawn in the starting area.


Next, place (left click) your starter burner mining drill on top of a coal vein, this will help provide a steady source of fuel. But as it is it'll spew coal out on the floor and then stop. So chop down (right click and hold) a tree/trees and use the wood to craft a wooden chest and place this in front of the output of the mining drill. This is the little metal chute on the graphic or pressing alt will show an orange arrow, this is the location of the output on the machine. Press alt again to hide this if you want. There's no need to use an inserter, the drill will automatically output into the chest, in fact an inserter will remove fuel from the drill. The direction this faces can be changed by pressing 'R' when placing the drill or afterwards.



Once your burner mining drill is down mine (right click and hold again) a piece of coal manually and place it in the drill (the wood you collected earlier will also do, but it won't last as long). Or find some huge rocks and mine them. While big rocks drop stone, huge rocks will provide stone and coal. Then, left click the burner mining drill, then you can either shift click the coal from your inventory or move it manually. Now you have a fuel income, you need a resource income.

Visit the iron ore deposit you found earlier and mine 1 piece of iron ore and place your stone furnace down. Smelt the iron ore to get your 9th plate, find some stone (or you possibly have some from mining huge rocks) and craft a 2nd burner mining drill. Place the 2nd burner mining drill on the iron patch, fuel it and watch it mine.



Keep the both burner mining drills fuelled and craft a 3rd mining drill as you smelt more iron plates. Place it facing into the previous burner mining drill you placed like so. Remember you can rotate buildings before or after you place them by pressing "R". This way, both burner mining drills will be fuelling each other by depositing coal into the other's inventories and will create full stacks of 50 coal in their inventories.

Keep making burner mining drills to get a larger resource income of iron and coal. You'll also want a copper mining drill as well and stone, if you didn't choose to mine big and huge rocks.

Next Steps:

Power is the next step in the game, but first a tip on how to automate your coal income to help out.

Automating coal production

We've already "automated" coal production with what is known as a coal snake, where burner mining drills feed coal into each other and this can be expanded upon by adding more mining drills into the loop, however, there is the issue that getting coal out is a manual process and this is factorio, where "manual labour" is a dirty word. This should be automated. So using some of the iron income you've set up, craft some transport belts and burner inserters and place them like so:

Now you can run the coal belt to some stone furnaces, like this:

This will provide coal to your stone furnaces, automatically, removing the need to refuel them yourself. You can use this to save some effort in managing your furnaces.

Better Mining

Power in Factorio mostly revolves around steam. Especially early game. To get more coal for the steam engines, you can either choose to use the burner mining drills or... upgrade to the electric mining drill. The electric mining drill is twice as fast and uses only 3/5ths of the power of the burner mining drill, making it far more efficient. Not to mention it mines in a 5x5 area, rather than a 2x2.

From now on, I'm going to assume that you upgrade to electric mining drills for your power production.

Building the Steam Engines

Head to your nearest source of water. Place your offshore pump on one of the green squares, then place down your boiler and steam engines nearby, like so.

I choose to use underground pipes in this demonstration to connect the offshore pump to the boiler, but that is personal preference.The pipe in between the engines in preference, but provides space for placing electric poles between the engines to connect them to the power grid.

The ideal ratio of pumps to boilers to engines is 1:20:40, so one offshore pump is plenty for now.

Now you''l need to run a transport belt from the mining drills to the boilers to provide coal to fuel them. Burner inserters are a good choice use here, as the belt of fuel will keep them supplied at all times and they will be able to work at full speed, even in a brownout scenario.

Power Transmission

Next, electric mining drills need electricity and that electricity will need to be transmitted from the steam engines to the mining drills.

Craft some small electric poles using copper and wood. These will provide power your mining drill. When selected in the hot bar you will see a blue square around it, this is the area in which machines can connect to the pole. Outside this area machine will not get power. So ensure when placing them that the steam engine or mining drill is inside this blue area (only one tile of the machine is enough). Also electric poles must be able to connect to each other, when placing them they will show which other poles they can connect to with cables.

If you left click to place one electric pole, then drag the mouse, the game will automatically place another pole at the maximum reach. This also works when walking.

Centralized power generation and storage with energy transmitted using electric poles is a common strategy, due to the cost comparison between power generation and power transmission.

Starting up

By now your base should look something like this:


Once you have your mining drills connected to your engines, place coal in your boilers, they will burn the coal to boil the water into steam, the steam will flow into the engines, which will use the steam to produce power. The electric mining drill will begin to mine coal, place it on the transport belt to be transported to the boilers to refuel them. Congratulations! You now have a functioning power system.

If demand outstrips supply all electric items will slow down due to lack of power. This can cause a "brownout" where the mining drills slow down their production, which results in less coal, which results in less power, which means the mining drills slowdown further...

Always keep a eye on your power and fuel production.

Remember the ratio 1 offshore pump to 20 boilers to 40 engines.

When running long belt distances you will always be one conveyor short

Research:

Research takes place in research labs, using science packs. This is how you get more technology to use, some of it will help your logistics, some production and some military. First of the research screen (T) is where you choose what technology you want to research next. Also on the research screen you can see how many science packs you require to complete a research.

After you have selected a technology you'll want to place a lab, these require power. Initially you'll be crafting and placing the science packs into the lab manually. However you'll quickly research the technology required to automate the production of science packs and you already know how to put items into and remove them from machines. Multiple labs do speed up research and there is a research topic which allows labs to work faster. Modules also help speed up the rate of research, lower energy costs or provide more research from each science pack.







A basic Lab automation method along with a demonstration of a long handled inserter

Automated ore processing:

(You may want to look at research first, it's just that this makes research easier, while research can make this easier).

This is first step to a true factory. The first thing we are going to talk about however is the sides of a conveyor belt.

Tricks of the conveyor belt trade

Conveyors have 2 sides and items can be on one of the two sides. Neither side merges with the
other at any point and are completely separate. Inserters can pull from either side but only output to side of the conveyor opposite to them. If two conveyors approach from opposite sides (i.e. a conveyor moves up with two conveyors joining at the same point on opposite sides) the items don't cross the conveyor they just get dumped onto the side they aproached from. These are the tricks we are going to be using to help automate our ore processing.

Putting this to use

Either place down a second electric mining drill (or if you have researched the ability to make splitter belts place one of these down in you coal line to split it) and run a second coal line to where you want your furnaces to be. Place an electric mining drill on the ore vein you want to automate (iron/copper) and run a conveyor line towards your furnaces(at least 4 recommended).

Now merge the two conveyor lines so that coal is one side of the conveyor and the ore is on the other. Play around with the system until it works. Lead this combined conveyor line to your furnaces and now it's time for the second power machine: the regular inserter. While a burner inserter will do here, a regular inserter is a nice thing to have, especially as we now have a power grid. Like burner inserters point them into the furnaces and like all electric machines, connect them to power. They'll automatically put coal and ore into the furnaces.

On the other side of the furnaces place another line of conveyors and place regular inserters pulling out of the furnaces (pointing away). These will place items onto the conveyor line and where they can be collected at the end by a inserter and a wooden/iron chest.
Repeat this for the other ore.


The end product


A slightly larger ore processing system for later game.

Military Part 1: (Defenses and Weapons)

Defenses

Defences are critical. Enemies who break through can devastate a base and put back progression greatly. Defences are based around 4 objects: Walls, Gun Turrets, Laser Turrets and Flamethrower Turrets.

• Walls have high health and are mainly used to hold back attackers until turrets are cable of killing them. Typically, one line of walls is enough to hold off most attacks, but later in the game 2 layers of walls are typically needed.
  
  
• Gun turrets are the first level of active defence, requiring a stock of ammo to shoot, making them best suited for early game. They can be resupplied using chests with inserters, meaning a logistics network can make maintaining these easy.
  
  
• Laser Turrets are the second tier of defence, requiring only power to shoot, making them far easier to maintain. This combined with the fact that they have a good base damage makes them excel at late game defence.
  
  
• Flamethrower turrets are on par with Laser Turrets. Unlike Laser Turrets, they don't need batteries to be manufactured, however they need ammo in the form of flammable liquids. This can be satiated by supplying crude, heavy or light oil to the Turret. This types of turret however, it is the longest ranged.
  
  
• Land Mines: The last resort. If it falls to the point where your defences cannot keep up, land mines can buy you more time to improve your defences, for as long as you can manufacture them. Anything in their blast radius is damaged however, so placing them to close to your walls can leave easy access for any surviving biters.

The Player

When it comes to combat the player is a one man show, able to machine gun, shotgun, incinerate, explode in 3 different ways, laser, ram, electrocute, poison and hack enemies to death. And deploy swarms of deadly robots, all without taking a single scratch. That is once you have researched the technology to do so. Otherwise you stand a snowball's chance in hell of escaping the biter swarm with that pistol and 10 rounds of ammunition. Here's a list of weapons and why they may or may not be a good choice depending on the situation.

Pistol:

Pros:	Cons:
Accurate, able to shoot over/through walls	Slow fire rate
	Low damage
	Damages one enemy at a time
	Can be annoying to get rid of

Recommended for: The very start of the game but after that wherever the pistol may be a good choice the machine gun will do it's job better.

Machine Gun:

Pros:	Cons:
High fire rate	Extremely high fire rate at high tech levels (possible to burn 50 rounds in 30 seconds).
Higher damage	Damages one enemy at a time
Accurate, able to shoot over/through walls

Recommend for: A good weapon at all points throughout the game, if the research is carried out to increase it's firerate and damage. Easy to use and no risk of collateral damage to your base make it excel in base defense.

Shotgun:

Pros:	Cons:
Damages enemies randomly, meaning more than one can be killed at a time	Low fire rate
Very high damage	Due to random firing can struggle to kill the last few enemies of a swarm
Ammo is cheap and used at a low rate	Innacurate, will damage your base.

Recommended for: Early to mid game crowd control, and forest clearing due to it's effectiveness at killing trees.

Combat Shotgun:

Pros:	Cons:
Damages enemies randomly, meaning more than one can be killed at a time	Mid game Item
Even higher damage	Due to random firing can struggle to kill the last few enemies of a swarm
Ammo is cheap (but used faster)	Innacurate, will damage your base.

Recommended for: All places where the shotgun was recommended. The combat shotgun is a low maintence version of the flamethrower as the ammo is considerably easier to make and it is impossible to cook yourself on a shotgun.

Flamethrower:

Pros:	Cons:
Very high damage	Ammunition can be hard to fabricate
Damages enemies randomly, meaning more than one can be killed at a time	Possible to accidentally kill yourself
Ammo is mostly made out of infinite material	Innacurate, will damage your base.

Recommended for: a late game replacement for the shotgun, when energy shields give you some warning before you cook yourself and manufacturing of ammunition is easy

Rocket Launcher:

Pros:	Cons:
High damage (pretty much guaranteed to one hit big insects)	Hard to manufacture ammunition
Explosion damage	Slow projectile
	Long reload time

Recommended for: Cases where high damage is needed. These are effectively long range grenades and excel at the job of destroying high health structures (like nests)

Nukes:
These technically belong in the rocket launcher section, as they are fired by it. However, treating a nuke like any other rocket...

Pros:	Cons:
Guaranteed death of anything in the blast radius	Including you and your base
Guaranteed death of anything in the blast radius	You might survive on the edge if you have extensive energy shields
Guaranteed death of anything in the blast radius	Expensive to research and maunfacture

Recommended for: Enemy bases. Not your own. While a late game base with construction bots may be able to patch holes in itself to fix the "occasional" nuke strike, 5 or 6 will severly cripple any attempt at auto-repair. Only the largest of mega bases with redundant power, smelting and crafting will be able to fix the damage that a small nuclear war inside it will deal.

Miltary Part 2: (Armour)

Even with all the weaponry described above, well, humans are fragile. So you are definately going to need some armour to keep you alive.

Basic Armour

While an item in the game, this referes to both basic and advanced armors. These you just put on and they do a decent job of keeping you alive. Of course the advanced armor lasts longer and protects you from more damage, but they both work as a way to keep you alive, nothing more.

Modular Armour

Modular armour is sort of the ultimate thing in the game, the higher tier versions can keep you alive even through the wost possible scenarios. To use modular armor, right click on the item in your inventory. The crafting menu will be replaced with another smaller inventory-like screen. In here you can install modules that allow your armour to do more than physically protect you.

The only issue with this is power. All the modules in a power suit need power to operate, and it's completely separate from your energy network, meaning that you do need to work on modules to produce energy for your suit.

Energy Producing Modules:

• Solar panel: produces a small amount of energy during the day, and a large number of them are capable of running all but the most power hungry modules. If you want your suit to continue running at night though you may need batteries
  
• Portable fusion reactor: One of these can run your suit for ever, no issues. The only down side is they are large modules, one will consume a large portion of the module space, only the power armour T2 can support 2 of these at once.
  
• Batteries. These are useful with early power suits which run on solar power, it allows them to run at night. Later on 1 or 2 might be useful as a power buffer when using a PFR for cases of large energy demand (like personal laser firing, energy shields rebuilding and the dishcharge defense has just been fired.]

Combat orientated modules:

• Energy shields mk1 and 2: These provide a second health bar that is drained before your own health and recharges faster. This is becomes the modular armour's main way of protecting you, as once that shield goes down, the most basic modular armour is only as good as the advanced armour.
  
• Personal Laser Defense: A laser that shoots all enemies in range. This is a module to be careful with as if you are only using solar panels this could chew through your energy reserves and leave you with no energy to recharge your shields.
  
• Discharge Defense: An attack that damages all enemies in the nearby area. Again, watch your energy consumption!

Utility Modules:

• Exoskeleton: This increases your run speed. Multiples of these do stack, so having extras can be a good idea.
  
• Night vision: Pretty obvious.
  
• Personal Roboport Mk1 and 2: Allows you to have your own personal construction bots follow you around. These will remove items from your inventory to build blueprints, and will return items to your inventory when they deconstruct items. Pretty useful when far from your base, but use a lot of power.

Oil Processing:

I'm going to leave oil processing set up mostly as an experiment (as Factorio is about making your own setup) but a good system does make use of fluid storage tanks, electric pumps and pipe-to-grounds. There's no real definitive answer as to the best, so experiment. However crude oil, pumped out by pump jacks is refined into the 3 fractions: heavy oil, light oil and refinery gas in the refinery. Refinery gas is the most used fraction, followed by heavy oil with light oil being used only for solid fuel cubes and ammunition for the flamethrower, Flamethrower fuel. Later on it becomes possible to crack oil, producing the more useful gas from the less useful other fractions, alongside a better refinery method of producing the wanted fractions. An example of an oil production system is:


Note that pipes will always connect to neighbouring ones. Using pipe-to-grounds can help solve this issue.

Pumps move fluid from one side of the pump to the other, and don't allow it to flow back. This can be useful to ensure a special backlog of material for one crafting process or to drain tanks before moving them, so that all their contents aren't lost.

Oil is necessary to advance in the game, a small list of things that need oil: express transport belts, electric engines (and by extension robots), laser turrets, modular armour that actually works and the goal of the game.

Minor things:

Modules:
Modules are upgrades for machines that let the run using less power, faster or providing more output from ingredients. They do have some downsides however. For example, speed and productivity modules increase the power cost and the pollution production of a machine. Productivity modules alos slow down machines.

Vehicles:
Vehicles are a fast method of travel, and have the advantage that they can act as a health buffer for the player. Not to mention the tank has an extreme amount of health and a cannon and a flamethrower built in. And it can destroy insect nests by ramming.

Production and Power graphs:
These are 2 graphs. The power graphs shows the power draw and the most power hungry machines. It'll also show how much power is being generated at a time. It can be accessed by clicking on an electric pole. The production graph shows how many resources are being produced/consumed and can be accessed by pressing P.

Questions, suggestions and corrections are all welcome in the comments.

[infra-dan-accelerator unit 84725]

warning:out of date

[Marcy :3]

could you update the world gen recommendation to current version's world gen options?

[sp1der_hrph]

well big oof with that

[Half Phased]

None of the worlds in the screenshots actually still load with the current version of the game, so I can’t provide an exchange string, sorry.

[sp1der_hrph]

question (if you still exist) whats the exchange key for this map?

[Phoenix]

Thank you!

[Half Phased]

Okay then, here's a PDF version of the guide. https://www.dropbox.com/s/jbrpfc2cyf0lwvs/Factorio%20guide.pdf?dl=0

[Phoenix]

Would it be possible to have this guide uploaded as PDF?

[Anthracite]

and yeah, that was it
I just didnt see your coment. Thanks though XD

[Half Phased]

The power poles have to be connected to a machine which draws power for the engines to work, until then that's going to flash.

I think...